i recently got my first real desktop system — as in: not a thinkpad. it’s an 8 core, 8GB, 1 terabyte system with an nvidia graphics chipset allowing two large displays to be powered: really sweet. installing ubuntu maverick 10.10 from the alternate install CD1 was simple and straight forward. installing the latest nvidia drivers from the x-updates ppa and running nvidia-xconfig provides the correct configuration for the 1920×1200 display (second display on order 
and, except for suspend–resume, everything works fine.
the issue with suspend–resume is that the machine goes through the motions of suspending but then just comes back 
d’oh. googling around for “maverick suspend problem” i stumble over a post in the ubuntu forums citing the maverick release notes —
When the XHCI module is loaded for USB 3.0 operation the system cannot suspend. Manually unloading XHCI will allow suspend to complete normally. To avoid future suspend problems, the workaround is to add SUSPEND_MODULES=”xhci-hcd” to /etc/pm/config.d/unload_module then the system can suspend normally.
— hmph. following those instructions, suspend–resume are working.
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…to be able to use disk level encryption! the home directory encryption offered by the normal ubuntu install CD suffers from path length issues and also stability issues. disk level encryption has so far worked quite well and we use it on all our machines now. ↩
