canam101
September 17th, 2010, 05:29 PM
I switched the other day from mint 7 to ubuntu 10.4. There was
nothing wrong with mint, but I was two releases behind, and thought
it might be a good idea to try ubuntu again, and get the latest
release while I was at it.
I had switched from ubuntu to mint a year or so ago because mint
allowed me to stream videos from any site, while most sites did not
work with ubuntu. I tried downloading various codecs but nothing
worked.
This time around, ubuntu does the job as well as mint.
The installation and, so far, the use of the os has been fairly
painless. There were, however, a few glitches.
When I initially installed ubuntu, I chose the dual-boot so that I
could keep mint. Everything seemed to install properly, but there
must have been a problem with grub because on re-booting, the only
boot screen was for mint. It may only have needed a one-line change
to fix things, but I didn't feel like figuring out what the one
line was, so I re-installed ubuntu, this time as a standalone. That
worked.
I had copied my home directory from mint to an external drive, so I
was able to copy over the config files for various utilities -
browser, email and news clients, etc., and that worked.
I don't care for having a top and bottom panel so deleted the top
one. I was then finding that various apps were disappearing instead
of minimizing, and almost gave up until I made a maximum effort and
found the 'indicator applet' to add to the panel. This kept the
minimized apps in view.
The only app that won't work properly is my old favourite, kalarm.
It won't minimze to the tray, but sits on the panel. It cannot be
closed down - I have to open the system monitor and kill the
process. It worked perfectly with mint. I was able to duplicate
most of its functions with gnome-schedule, which writes entries
into crontab. This is fine for running commands, but I also need to
have pop up displays at various times and do not know how to do
that with a cron job. Does anybody know of a way to do that?
A nice change is to the package manager or, as it is called here,
the ubuntu software center. Very nice easy to use utility.
I had hoped my logictech webcam would work, but, as with mint, the
os can't see it.
All in all, it seems to be about the same as mint, but at least I
am using the latest version of the os. And the browser version is
newer. I assume other apps are newer versions too.
ETA: Some apps are running with what looks like lower resolution - as if I have an inferior graphic card. Most, though, look normal. The two that I noticed are deluge, and the softphone Twinkle, which looks especially cheesy.
nothing wrong with mint, but I was two releases behind, and thought
it might be a good idea to try ubuntu again, and get the latest
release while I was at it.
I had switched from ubuntu to mint a year or so ago because mint
allowed me to stream videos from any site, while most sites did not
work with ubuntu. I tried downloading various codecs but nothing
worked.
This time around, ubuntu does the job as well as mint.
The installation and, so far, the use of the os has been fairly
painless. There were, however, a few glitches.
When I initially installed ubuntu, I chose the dual-boot so that I
could keep mint. Everything seemed to install properly, but there
must have been a problem with grub because on re-booting, the only
boot screen was for mint. It may only have needed a one-line change
to fix things, but I didn't feel like figuring out what the one
line was, so I re-installed ubuntu, this time as a standalone. That
worked.
I had copied my home directory from mint to an external drive, so I
was able to copy over the config files for various utilities -
browser, email and news clients, etc., and that worked.
I don't care for having a top and bottom panel so deleted the top
one. I was then finding that various apps were disappearing instead
of minimizing, and almost gave up until I made a maximum effort and
found the 'indicator applet' to add to the panel. This kept the
minimized apps in view.
The only app that won't work properly is my old favourite, kalarm.
It won't minimze to the tray, but sits on the panel. It cannot be
closed down - I have to open the system monitor and kill the
process. It worked perfectly with mint. I was able to duplicate
most of its functions with gnome-schedule, which writes entries
into crontab. This is fine for running commands, but I also need to
have pop up displays at various times and do not know how to do
that with a cron job. Does anybody know of a way to do that?
A nice change is to the package manager or, as it is called here,
the ubuntu software center. Very nice easy to use utility.
I had hoped my logictech webcam would work, but, as with mint, the
os can't see it.
All in all, it seems to be about the same as mint, but at least I
am using the latest version of the os. And the browser version is
newer. I assume other apps are newer versions too.
ETA: Some apps are running with what looks like lower resolution - as if I have an inferior graphic card. Most, though, look normal. The two that I noticed are deluge, and the softphone Twinkle, which looks especially cheesy.