Stock Ubuntu 8.10 on EeePC 701

Just installed a stock Ubuntu 8.10 on my EeePC 701 and the result is a mixed bag.

On the plus side, Ubuntu automatically detected and configured the correct resolution for the EeePC. That part was fairly simple and straightforward.

On the downside? Well, there are several:

Installation took forever. Okay, it might have been my choice of hardware: instead of overwriting the onboard flash disk, I decided to install on an 8GB SD card. It took a couple of hours to copy the files and configure the system.

Wifi still doesn't work out of the box. This was supposed to have been one of the things included in Intrepid. Unfortunately, it's not in the stock kernel. I still have to install via the backports.

The screen real estate is still cramped. My main problem during the pre-installation / selection phase was that I couldn't get to the confirmation buttons.

Shutdown doesn't work properly. This is a documented bug.

The disappointment stems from the expectations that 8.10 was written for the EeePC. At a minimum, I would have expected something better with the screen real estate layout and the onboard Wifi. While there are automated scripts to fix all this, they're all written for earlier versions of Ubuntu.

I know there's also Ubuntu-eee but I've been avoiding it because it's not an official port. But the way things are, I think I just might try it next.