Comment 7 for bug 1072311

I've tried a workaround since reporting this bug: I've installed Fedora 17 and it works great!

The most obvious improvement is that I now get gnome-3d (Ubuntu 12.04 always switched back to gnome-classic and I've never liked the Ubuntu Desktop). I didn't do any measurements, but things even feel a bit smoother (may be imagination, of course, but newer kernels *are* supposed to do things more efficiently, aren't they?). All this confirms that there is definitely no reason to turn this kind of hardware into garbage as the Ubuntu team has done! I can easily run Open- or LibreOffice. I can browse the web and watch videos (though I avoid switching to full screen ;-)). I can even run Eclipse and do some development work.

Of course, Fedora is a bit different and some packages are a bit more tedious to install, but before you go out to buy new hardware, give it a try!