Well, I've been using 64 bit Ubuntu on my new machine (AMD Phenom,
Nvidia graphics, 8G of RAM and a 1TB drive) for more than a week now.
I have only three problems, but they are all annoying.
The worst is that sometimes when a window is placed on the screen
(usually by starting a program), sometimes it comes up a blank gray
box. Nothing will make the contents appear (that I have found) other
than minimizing it and restoring it. Then the contents are displayed,
but never refreshed unless the procedure is repeated. I have yet to
determine whether logging out or rebooting is required to bring things
back. It doesn't happen often enough to make it easy to check, and I
just got serious enough about it to care last night when I was working
on (trying to work on) my checkbook. I could have found out this
morning, but I forgot and shut the machine down to install a new UPS.
Next time I'm going to find out. I suspect logging out and back in
again will fix it.
Tied for second most annoying thing is the USB ports. I mentioned on
the 20th that I was having trouble printing. It turns out that the
trouble is intermittent USB ports. They always work on an external
disk drive, usually work on a memory stick, often don't work with my
printer, and never work with my camera (or its card in an adaptor).
The other second place problem is that Firefox will not download
files. Nothing happens when you click on a download link.
Looking these up with Google, I see that the first problem is likely
an Nvidia driver problem that's been around for a long time. It seems
to affect relatively few people, so I don't expect a fix soon.
The USB port problem seems to be a known interaction of 8.04 and 8.10
with some hardware. It might be fixed in 9.04, or so I hope.
The Firefox problem has not been researched yet.
I've been living with the grayed out windows. I've been printing to a
printer on another computer to get around the USB problem (and
plugging my camera into that machine as well). I've been using 32 bit
Firefox in a VirtualBox virtual machine running 32 bit Intrepid to get
around the download problem (VirtualBox works well running 32 bit
clients, not so well on 64 bit clients)
I have mixed feelings about the whole situation, but I do want to be
able to use all of that memory.