[frgeek-michiana] Re: Installed Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

  • From: "Chuq Jackels" <chuq00@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <frgeek-michiana@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 3 May 2010 22:45:49 -0400

I have come to the conclusion that most distro's have a hard time with USB
wifi cards, especially DLINK, but built in wifi cards such as laptops and
netbooks seem to have no issues.
I have 10.4 LTS installed on my desktop (wired connection) and my netbook
and EVERYTHING works great! I installed the netbook remix and the interface
is very nice. I am going to see how well the netbook interface works on a
desktop install. The interface that it uses can be installed via 
sudo apt-get install netbook-launcher
I installed 10.4 netbook remix on my Moms netbook and she likes it, she can
find everything that she needs and is much easier than windows. I am
thinking I have converted another windows user! LOL
My Mom BTW does not use the computer very much at all, just to play games
(which she likes the fact that she has a ton available at no cost!) and soon
to be using email again! She has been without email for a few years since
changing ISP's and not having much time to mess around with it.
But as far as 10.4 LTS goes it is doing good. I have it installed on a P3
1.13 Ghz (I believe 512mb ram but maybe only 256) cheap onboard 8 MB Dell
video card, upgraded it from 9.10 Edubuntu.
I also did an upgrade on my Desktop which is dual core 2 Ghz Celeron (yada
yada yada) and it runs excellent. 

My only complaint with the install is that if you do not have either 8.4 or
9.10 then you have to either do a fresh install or step up the upgrades from
say 9.4 to 9.10 to 10.4 which is a real PITA!! Not to mention a big
bandwidth hog! And time consuming! I really wish that I did not have to do
the step ups and not have to do a clean install just to get up to 10.4.

 The thing I do not like with 10.4 is that the minimize maximize and close
is now like the MAC so they are in the left side at the top.

I installed the netbook-launcher on my daughters desktop 10.4 and it is a
very nice interface. I just have to play around with it and try to get the
programs I want in the "Favorites"

Ok well that is enough about it for now!

Chuq


-----Original Message-----
From: frgeek-michiana-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:frgeek-michiana-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tom Brown
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 8:42 PM
To: FreeGeek Michiana
Subject: [frgeek-michiana] Installed Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

1. Grub

Over the weekend, I downloaded and installed Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on my test 
box at home which already has VL 6.x on the main drive. The Ubuntu 
installer recognized the OS and gave me the option of resizing 
partitions so it could create a separate partition for Ubuntu. That's 
what I did. I updated and upgraded the default install packages, and 
grub displayed a boot menu on the next reboot.

2. Wireless/Wired

Wireless doesn't work out of the box. I didn't expect it too in spite of 
claims that wireless networking has improved on Ubuntu. The OS seems to 
have found the D-Link USB wireless N adapter and the access point but 
can't connect the two. At least the lights blink on the adapter, a good 
sign. The wireless subsystem operates fine under VL 6.x so I know the 
equipment is good and the gui configuration on both distros is right.

The wired network works flawlessly out of the box. Ubuntu sees the 
Windows network which is really a Slackware file server running Samba.

3. Network printing

The desktop effectively hides what is happening in the background so I 
assume CUPS handles network printing. Our multi-function printer (MFP) 
has a network interface built in, and our laserjet does not. CUPS found 
the MFP on its own and installed drivers (I haven't tested them yet). 
After I indicated which host the laserjet is connected to and which 
driver to install, CUPS successfully configured the laser printer.

4. Window controls

Whenever I attempt to use a window control, I first mouse to the right, 
see there are no controls, then mouse to the left to correct. Seems an 
arbitrary decision to have moved the controls.

5. Video/Sound

Ubuntu chose 800x600 instead of 1024x768. The desktop gui utility fails 
to reconfigure X windows at 1024x768 so it can only be done manually. I 
think Mike pointed this out earlier.

I downloaded an AVI format video and tried to play it with the default 
movie player. Ubuntu automatically asked me if I wanted to install 
restricted files. I said 'yes', and the package manager downloaded and 
installed the minimum files to play the video. The libraries also suport 
mpg/mpeg videos.

The sound subsystem is not working. Fr. Robert fixed Marc's sound by 
disabling the modem. The sound and modem chip are the same chip, a DSP. 
The modem software had grabbed the DSP and wouldn't let go.

6. Responsiveness

The test box has an MSI mainboard, 2 MB of DDR2 500 RAM, a Pentium 4/2.8 
GHz CPU and an 80 GB SATA drive. Any distro I would likely use should 
run well on this hardware, and Ubuntu runs fine as expected. OpenOffice 
doesn't leap to the screen, but opens comfortably.

6. Overall

After a month or two, I suspect 10.04 LTS will be fully functional and 
stable although my hopes are not high for wireless networking, always 
the fly in the ointment.


Tom
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