<quote who="David"> > Once installed it looks very pretty and slick, but during the install, all > the packages downloaded from the net instead of from the CD. Did I do > something wrong? I never found Debian hard to install before, so this is > just slightly easier.
If you download the Preview CD, as opposed to a recent nightly CD, a huge chunk of the packages would have been updated. Some definitely came from the CD, but it still would have been a big download. :-) > 1: Windows. I had WinME and debian already installed. During the disk > partition phase Ubuntu asked if I wanted to be able to boot from Windows, > but after installation completed, grub wasn't reporting any options for > Windows. I've not had to deal with this before, since both Woody and Sarge > "Just worked" ;-) See point 6 below. Intriguing, this should just work. > 2: Screensaver. When you (initially?) set the screensaver, you have to > reboot the daemon, which is not explained. I figured it out by fiddling > around. Nit-picking? I don't think so because Ubuntu claims that > everything will "just work". All that's needed is an "Apply" button. xscreensaver is an unfortunate exception to pretty much any GNOME rule you could think of, though only some of the options require a daemon restart. > 3: Hot plugging cameras. My Nikon hot plugged beautifully, but as > explained at the slug meeting, you can't upload anything from the inbuilt > software because of a known bug. OTOH, I can use the camera as a > removeable USB device and it works fine. I tried to umount it, but it was > reported as "in use". No obvious processes using it, so i just switched > it off. I still don't know why it appeared to be "in use". Unfortunately, the file monitor daemon (fam) that ships with WartyWarthog is annoyingly broken in this respect. Because the device is mounted 'sync', you can just pull it out, but the new file monitor daemon (and kernel features) in HoaryHedgehog will solve this. > 4: Gnomemeeting. Page 7/9 of the configuration druid asks me to choose a > video manager, and suggests video4linux. Video4Linux is not available in > the drop down menu (in fact, nothing is!). There are some Video4Linux > libraries installed by default, but I have no idea if these are what is > required. There is no obvious way to configure them into Gnomemeeting. I > had a logitech webcam plugged in when booting, which appeared to be > detected, and which works under windows. Right now I don't have > GnomeMeeting working :( Which model camera? > 5: Sound. Inserting my favourite Mahler CD automatically started up a CD > player (good!), but no sound came out (bad!). Maybe Ubuntu doesn't like > Mahler. Now I have to get Grub to notice Windows to make sure it's not a > hardware fault. Damn it. I hate this problem. So, modern computers don't have an audio cable running from the CD drive to the sound card. They actually have to digitally 'rip' the audio off the disc to play it, *exactly* the same way an mp3/ogg ripper would do. It's infuriating. But - it will be sorted in the next release. :) > 6: Grub. A little digging revealed a "hidden-menu" option for grub, which > for some bizarre reason had been set. Hold down ESC while grub loads and > voila! but since I obviously want to be able to boot Windows, this is a > failure of the "just works" principle. Agree, if you've got more than just Windows, it should probably not do that. I'll confer with Colin, our installer guy. ;-) > 9: Application Menu. Hmm.. well, maybe it's me, but... . I wanted to add > an application to the menu.. which I haven't done before because I have > never used Gnome. The help menu has no search function! Eventually I > figured out how to add a program to the menu, but it's counter-intuitive > and complicated. Indeed. Not something GNOME has attempted to fix, because it's horribly ugly code down there. I believe this will be sorted in GNOME 2.10 (and thus our next release). > 10: File Manager. Perhaps a small point, but confusing. The on-line docs > for Gnome refer extensively to "file manager", but nowhere in the Ubuntu > desktop menus is anything that says file manager. Now that I know what > they mean it's blindingly obvious, but it took quit a while to figure > it out. Is this because I'm a mac user? :-) > It's a promising start, but not as good as OS X, especially for a > non-geek. Patience. - Jeff -- linux.conf.au 2005: Canberra, Australia http://linux.conf.au/ "Are you XFire's crazy girlfriend? And if so, shine on you crazy diamond!" - Paul Cameron -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
