Heliode
March 14th, 2005, 02:10 AM
Hello everyone!
I thought a rant about how well Ubuntu worked out for me would be a refreshing change from the issues you normally get on support forums, so here goes nothing!
First a bit of introduction; I've been running GNU/Linux in general, and Ubuntu in particular for a while now. Long ago I started with Redhat, then Mandrake, followed by Gentoo (which still runs my PC and my server) and lately Ubuntu on my crappy old laptop, practically granting it a new life in terms of functionality.
but onto the topic at hand; Friday afternoon (around 12:00, got home from school early for a change) my girlfriend calls me to say that her "damn computer is at it again" in the sense that it had suddenly gained the feature to automatically supply her and her family with advertisements (again..). Needless to say, at this point the machine ran Windows (XP).
This happened before, so I told my gf that I had a solution that would get rid of the problem once and for all; install Ubuntu on it. Now, my gf knew a bit about the "whole Linux thing" from what she watched me use, and she already thought it was pretty cool, but she (let alone her family) had little to no experience using it, so it was a bit of a gamble. Also I was a bit unsure if I could meet all their demands about what it should be able to do. However, spending hours ridding their box of spyware every month or so didn't seem like a plan either, so I decided to go ahead with it.
I already had a "warty warthog" cd around, so I grabbed it and went over to my gf's place. After preparing the partitions I start the installation, which was incredibly quick compared to Windows XP. I might add that the machine in question is a Pentium III 733 mhz with 384 of memory and a 20 gb hard disk.
After the installation, I let Ubuntu do its updates. They have a small home network (the machine in question, a laptop and a router) so connecting to the Internet was the easiest thing ever; it worked completely automatically.
After the whole installation sequence the machine boots into X, I log in, and everything works perfectly. The first thing I do is set languages to Dutch (with some help from a great Ubuntu Wiki article) for Gnome itself, Firefox and OpenOffice (menus, spell checker, etc). Although I like to think I'm pretty good at English, my gf & family prefer to have their pc in Dutch so this helped a lot.
I set up a few icons so she could access shared folders on their laptop, as well as links to her documents on the Windows partition (fat32, luckily).
I already had them on Firefox / Thunderbird on Windows, so I just import those profiles and viola.
Next, printer. I had some bad experiences with printers + Linux, so I was getting a bit worried here. No need though. Ubuntu immediately recognized that it was there, and after installing the driver it worked just fine. Phew!
Even her brothers MP3 player/flash drive worked without changing a setting. I was so surprised by this that I decided to give the thing a stress-test; I plug in my Logitech V500, my 128 mb pen drive, my 128 mb mmc card (into their external USB cardreader) and their MP3 player all at once. All worked immediately and without problem, even my V500's touch pad scroll-thing! (being used to Gentoo, I didn't expect anything like this).
It was 17:00 when everything was finished. I remember it took me two days to get Windows XP installed and running correctly with all additional applications like MS Office, virus scanner, firewall, antispyware, diskkeeper, and other windows crazythings. And now, I got their machine running in one afternoon with an OS that, not too long ago, was considered by many to not be fit for desktop use. Well I can tell you, it most certainly is with Ubuntu!
Now they can safely and easily surf the web, email, IM, edit photos, write stuff and whatnot. The only thing they can't do with it compared to Windows is play (most) games, but they're not into that anyway so they didn't care.
They've been working with it all weekend now. I set up Remote Desktop just in case, but I haven't needed it yet. It "Just Works(tm)", and very well! Right now my gf's dad is asking himself why they ever used Windows in the first place.
I'm sure a lot of people have had similar experiences. Please post them if you feel like it!
I thought a rant about how well Ubuntu worked out for me would be a refreshing change from the issues you normally get on support forums, so here goes nothing!
First a bit of introduction; I've been running GNU/Linux in general, and Ubuntu in particular for a while now. Long ago I started with Redhat, then Mandrake, followed by Gentoo (which still runs my PC and my server) and lately Ubuntu on my crappy old laptop, practically granting it a new life in terms of functionality.
but onto the topic at hand; Friday afternoon (around 12:00, got home from school early for a change) my girlfriend calls me to say that her "damn computer is at it again" in the sense that it had suddenly gained the feature to automatically supply her and her family with advertisements (again..). Needless to say, at this point the machine ran Windows (XP).
This happened before, so I told my gf that I had a solution that would get rid of the problem once and for all; install Ubuntu on it. Now, my gf knew a bit about the "whole Linux thing" from what she watched me use, and she already thought it was pretty cool, but she (let alone her family) had little to no experience using it, so it was a bit of a gamble. Also I was a bit unsure if I could meet all their demands about what it should be able to do. However, spending hours ridding their box of spyware every month or so didn't seem like a plan either, so I decided to go ahead with it.
I already had a "warty warthog" cd around, so I grabbed it and went over to my gf's place. After preparing the partitions I start the installation, which was incredibly quick compared to Windows XP. I might add that the machine in question is a Pentium III 733 mhz with 384 of memory and a 20 gb hard disk.
After the installation, I let Ubuntu do its updates. They have a small home network (the machine in question, a laptop and a router) so connecting to the Internet was the easiest thing ever; it worked completely automatically.
After the whole installation sequence the machine boots into X, I log in, and everything works perfectly. The first thing I do is set languages to Dutch (with some help from a great Ubuntu Wiki article) for Gnome itself, Firefox and OpenOffice (menus, spell checker, etc). Although I like to think I'm pretty good at English, my gf & family prefer to have their pc in Dutch so this helped a lot.
I set up a few icons so she could access shared folders on their laptop, as well as links to her documents on the Windows partition (fat32, luckily).
I already had them on Firefox / Thunderbird on Windows, so I just import those profiles and viola.
Next, printer. I had some bad experiences with printers + Linux, so I was getting a bit worried here. No need though. Ubuntu immediately recognized that it was there, and after installing the driver it worked just fine. Phew!
Even her brothers MP3 player/flash drive worked without changing a setting. I was so surprised by this that I decided to give the thing a stress-test; I plug in my Logitech V500, my 128 mb pen drive, my 128 mb mmc card (into their external USB cardreader) and their MP3 player all at once. All worked immediately and without problem, even my V500's touch pad scroll-thing! (being used to Gentoo, I didn't expect anything like this).
It was 17:00 when everything was finished. I remember it took me two days to get Windows XP installed and running correctly with all additional applications like MS Office, virus scanner, firewall, antispyware, diskkeeper, and other windows crazythings. And now, I got their machine running in one afternoon with an OS that, not too long ago, was considered by many to not be fit for desktop use. Well I can tell you, it most certainly is with Ubuntu!
Now they can safely and easily surf the web, email, IM, edit photos, write stuff and whatnot. The only thing they can't do with it compared to Windows is play (most) games, but they're not into that anyway so they didn't care.
They've been working with it all weekend now. I set up Remote Desktop just in case, but I haven't needed it yet. It "Just Works(tm)", and very well! Right now my gf's dad is asking himself why they ever used Windows in the first place.
I'm sure a lot of people have had similar experiences. Please post them if you feel like it!