I understand you, I just bought the Aspire 4720Z, and tried
Ubuntu, everything worked except for the sound(it’s seems to be
detected, all volume up, but I got no sound from the speakers) and the wifi, (atheros AR5700EG). Wi’ll like to hear from your experiences.

Mandriva is a great distro, but don’t give up on PCLinuxOS for the wrong reasons. While it is true that updates appear first on the Pass servers, this seems to be more due to logistics than to a desire of encouraging more donations. Updates appear on the regular servers withing a couple of days, usually. It is not like the old practice Mandriva used to have of releasing first to Club members and a month or more latter to the community. I really like the fact that PCLinuxOS offers the option of faster, more reliable, servers to those willing to give a small donation ($20 is barely more than a meal at a Chinese restaurant for crying out loud.) I wish all distros offered this choice, including Mandriva who’s mirrors are often slow.

Any way, the Mini Me version of PClinuxOS 2008 is out, and it is awesome!

But there are problems with Ubuntu as well…..biggest of all is that Ubuntu defaults to GNOME….

I have used Ubuntu for long time…..currently using Gutsy….everything works fine….but the problem is of customization….GNOME doesn’t allow me to change things the way i want….with time i get bored and a little frustrated with this fact….although things work fine but this should not mean that one can not change his/her system….

other is that Ubuntu seems really slow to me….may be it is something related to GNOME….

and finally Amarok….this is something i can’t live without…..its the best Music player you will ever play with…..Although i can run it in GNOME, but it takes too much time to load and also takes up too much of RAM in GNOME causing further slow down of system…K3b is also great app (though Brasero in GNOME has filled this void)

You wrote that you are using PCLinuxOS….thats a really fine OS….one of best of KDE distro….but its development cycle seems slow….and apps are limitedin repoistories….and the fact that they have concept of paid servers under which they provide updates first to paid user makes me reluctant to use PCLinuxOS….this is something against Linux principles (at least i think so…..)

i am currently downloading Mandriva 2008…..seems its a really good KDE distro….

Konqueror has a feature of ‘right button is back’ which you might want to use instead of the (IMOHO obsolete) imwheel.

KMail can use maildir and mbox dirs without problems; even have different folders of different formats. This is really useful since you can ‘convert’ your mailbox by just dragging all of them to another folder. Note the kmail configuration option of the default format for new mailboxes.

The systray is a open-desktop wide spec; so all apps should implement it and thus being able to show up in your systray. If they don’t (and claim to support systray docking) thats a buggy app.

OK WELL, SAMBA AND VISTA….
install rinetd
edit /etc/rinetd.conf
include the line “192.168.123.123 445 192.168.123.123 139″ where 192.168.123.123 is the IP of the Samba server; 445 is the port of Vista’s smb use, and 139 is Samba’s smb port…