Moving Sister over to Linux - Ubuntu is NOT ready for PRIME TIME yet...!
Posted by: Anonymous
[ip: 75.69.85.120]
on February 07, 2008 03:48 AM
Told her to buy a 1420n (this was early, before the price discounts), just after they went on sale for the 1st time.
She did that, and we loaded Automatix on and she was happy with the results.
When the upgrade came along to 7.10... I did that finally over Christmas during the family dinner (everyone comes from a long ways away to this and heck it gets pretty boring at my other sisters, as she has banned me from using her Windows computers because they got a virus just after I left once... and they blamed it on me (go figure with 4 kids using it going to all kinds of sites that I took a look at a history of), it was not I who did it, but she is the expert (always has been since we were kids that she knew everything and could never be wrong). So, I told my other sister to bring her laptop, as she wanted to do something to get some app or something, and I figured I would try the Ubuntu upgrade (the updates she had not been doing to a while first, then I did the upgrade). Finished the upgrade, and some things did not work right.
So - the other day I got it when visiting, brought it home (a few hours drive away)... and downloaded the Ubuntu 7.10 DVD from the Dell site (the Intel Graphics version), and instantly Compiz was not working? Checked here and there and discovered that Ubuntu 7.10 has problems with the Intel Graphics drivers or the chipset... REALLY with DELL in the picture and HUGE for them, I would figured that they would have had this FIXED before DELL released the 7.10 DVD for the 1420n? Also, Automatix seems to have less stuff... like no REAL PLAYER for example (and they have lumped together the Win32 codecs and the DVD non-free stuff, aka illegal in the US, into the same feature selection, that I would not select..). I would use the Win32 codecs as we have WIndows (retail version) that she owns and she has PAID for the use of those codecs already, so that I would like to have on her system... but she would not use the DVD player software (that I have learned that DELL is selling on every system since the 7.10 version came out anyway, but DELL has no way for a DELL Ubuntu customer to even BUY this DVD player software at all (very strange)?
The Mozilla browser with the DELL Ubuntu 7.10 DVD install, can not play any videos on the BBC News Site at all (viewing this site with the Opera Browser is NOT PROBLEM at all), and so once again, other than being a real RAM hog, it seems that Mozilla really does not have their act in place yet on having it easy to get the Real Player plug-in working either , and there is not .deb file for real player in the Ubuntu repositories for Real Player that I find really strange. Oh - once Real Plyer is installed, you gotta manually edit the about:config to get rtsp to be viewable as well? Come on folks, this is basic user stuff, if you want to rule the desktop this stuff just needs to WORK OUT OF THE BOX or be easy to install and enabled when you install the .deb files!!! And the help on the FORUM is all confused and I have been working for days to get the BBC news videos working to no avail... everything else is working (except of course the Ubuntu 7.10 problem with the Intel Graphics Chipset and driver so that you can't run Compiz... if you do get it going then you can't watch any videos it seems, and this is listed as an unfixed problem on the DELL user forum site).
Gwenview is in the Repositories (it is good that Kubuntu will be using it as the default graphics viewer this spring with the release of 8.4...), BUT with Ubuntu you still gotta hunt down the KIPI plugins in Synaptic Admin area, and KNOW as a newbie would NEVER know, that they were there in the first place... why the Ubuntu Gwenview deb does not put the Kipi plugins as a dependency is a mystery.
Oh - I tried to run that same laptop, in testing, on an external VGA projector and it just was not a good experience either. So, I took my old trusty Dell Latitude (really old) and used that instead with an older Ubuntu on it and that was ok except that I could not adjust the brighness to the external vga connector it seems).
So - Ubuntu still need work... I would figure that the Xorg stuff would be fixed before they started to play with Compiz, but that is the way with LINUX distros where the geeks like to play with the new stuff, before they have the old stuff running perfectly at all.
Hopefully, Ubuntu will address core issues that are talked about on all the forums, that need fixing really baddddly, before the LTS version this spring.
Oh - and their edubuntu stuff, really stinks at detecting graphics and needed resolutions on some older VGA LCD screens like the NEC LCD1545v (get nothing but an out of range error on several VGA LCD's other than that one too)! Very strange!
Ubuntu is not mature, and the Dell upgrade should have been seamless (so some geeks at Ubuntu really don't got the picture yet, that as the very least that they need the DELL hardware to be FULLY compatible with NO PROBLEMS before their mothers allow them outside to play with anything else. It they don't then they need to be sent to bed without supper!
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Moving Sister over to Linux - Ubuntu is NOT ready for PRIME TIME yet...!
Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 75.69.85.120] on February 07, 2008 03:48 AMShe did that, and we loaded Automatix on and she was happy with the results.
When the upgrade came along to 7.10... I did that finally over Christmas during the family dinner (everyone comes from a long ways away to this and heck it gets pretty boring at my other sisters, as she has banned me from using her Windows computers because they got a virus just after I left once... and they blamed it on me (go figure with 4 kids using it going to all kinds of sites that I took a look at a history of), it was not I who did it, but she is the expert (always has been since we were kids that she knew everything and could never be wrong). So, I told my other sister to bring her laptop, as she wanted to do something to get some app or something, and I figured I would try the Ubuntu upgrade (the updates she had not been doing to a while first, then I did the upgrade). Finished the upgrade, and some things did not work right.
So - the other day I got it when visiting, brought it home (a few hours drive away)... and downloaded the Ubuntu 7.10 DVD from the Dell site (the Intel Graphics version), and instantly Compiz was not working? Checked here and there and discovered that Ubuntu 7.10 has problems with the Intel Graphics drivers or the chipset... REALLY with DELL in the picture and HUGE for them, I would figured that they would have had this FIXED before DELL released the 7.10 DVD for the 1420n? Also, Automatix seems to have less stuff... like no REAL PLAYER for example (and they have lumped together the Win32 codecs and the DVD non-free stuff, aka illegal in the US, into the same feature selection, that I would not select..). I would use the Win32 codecs as we have WIndows (retail version) that she owns and she has PAID for the use of those codecs already, so that I would like to have on her system... but she would not use the DVD player software (that I have learned that DELL is selling on every system since the 7.10 version came out anyway, but DELL has no way for a DELL Ubuntu customer to even BUY this DVD player software at all (very strange)?
The Mozilla browser with the DELL Ubuntu 7.10 DVD install, can not play any videos on the BBC News Site at all (viewing this site with the Opera Browser is NOT PROBLEM at all), and so once again, other than being a real RAM hog, it seems that Mozilla really does not have their act in place yet on having it easy to get the Real Player plug-in working either , and there is not .deb file for real player in the Ubuntu repositories for Real Player that I find really strange. Oh - once Real Plyer is installed, you gotta manually edit the about:config to get rtsp to be viewable as well? Come on folks, this is basic user stuff, if you want to rule the desktop this stuff just needs to WORK OUT OF THE BOX or be easy to install and enabled when you install the .deb files!!! And the help on the FORUM is all confused and I have been working for days to get the BBC news videos working to no avail... everything else is working (except of course the Ubuntu 7.10 problem with the Intel Graphics Chipset and driver so that you can't run Compiz... if you do get it going then you can't watch any videos it seems, and this is listed as an unfixed problem on the DELL user forum site).
Gwenview is in the Repositories (it is good that Kubuntu will be using it as the default graphics viewer this spring with the release of 8.4...), BUT with Ubuntu you still gotta hunt down the KIPI plugins in Synaptic Admin area, and KNOW as a newbie would NEVER know, that they were there in the first place... why the Ubuntu Gwenview deb does not put the Kipi plugins as a dependency is a mystery.
Oh - I tried to run that same laptop, in testing, on an external VGA projector and it just was not a good experience either. So, I took my old trusty Dell Latitude (really old) and used that instead with an older Ubuntu on it and that was ok except that I could not adjust the brighness to the external vga connector it seems).
So - Ubuntu still need work... I would figure that the Xorg stuff would be fixed before they started to play with Compiz, but that is the way with LINUX distros where the geeks like to play with the new stuff, before they have the old stuff running perfectly at all.
Hopefully, Ubuntu will address core issues that are talked about on all the forums, that need fixing really baddddly, before the LTS version this spring.
Oh - and their edubuntu stuff, really stinks at detecting graphics and needed resolutions on some older VGA LCD screens like the NEC LCD1545v (get nothing but an out of range error on several VGA LCD's other than that one too)! Very strange!
Ubuntu is not mature, and the Dell upgrade should have been seamless (so some geeks at Ubuntu really don't got the picture yet, that as the very least that they need the DELL hardware to be FULLY compatible with NO PROBLEMS before their mothers allow them outside to play with anything else. It they don't then they need to be sent to bed without supper!
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