PhilD
April 9th, 2005, 07:06 PM
Just installed Ubuntu 5.04 today, I have used other Linuxes in the past (Mandrake, Gentoo, some distro I can't remember back in the days of the 0.9* kernels when Linux came on floppies) and I have to say this is the best so far! I thought I would drop down my observations so far while things are fresh in my mind.
1. A graphical installer is definitely needed, mainly to deal with the partioning in a more intuitive manner. I believe this is planned for the next release. The "flow" and messages relating to setting the system clock could also do with some work.
2. Sound just works! But can we get rid of the drumbeat on bootup? It will frighten the children :-#
3. The http://ubuntuguide.org/ is great, but the green-on-black is very hard to read, and it's not obvious, nor mentioned, that you can cut and paste the commands into a terminal :wink:
4. I was able to use the guide to get my local NTFS partition (I am dual booting) and a couple of remote Windows shares mounted into /mnt in about 20 minutes, and without rebooting. However, it would be better if there was some "point and click" way of doing this. Interoperability with Windows is such a large need that Samba should be installed by default?
5. There was a problem with X on the install CD which meant I was forced to boot into 640x480, with no other resolutions available. Needless to say this was painful. Strangely, I did not have this problem with the release candidate "live" CD. I was able to fix the problem using the forums.
6. Still not found a decent mp3 player to compete with WinAmp :-? Rhythmbox sucks and XMMS doesn't work. Gonna try "amarok" next.
7. I installed Emacs and boy is Motif ugly! I use Emacs a lot under MS Windows (TEI Emacs) and it uses the GTK toolkit there. Is there a way to make it do that under Ubuntu?
8. Fonts look great! :-P :-P :-P
9. There are some things about the Gnome environment that are confusing me at the moment, but that is probably down to my lack of experience (and the default install removing some stuff like the menu editor). For example, if I download an app from the repositories am I always going to get a menu icon? And how can I add applets to these little gnome panel thingies? Still, for one afternoon playing I have to say I am impressed - this is very close to being a Windows replacement. No doubt with a few more days effort I will be at home in the Gnome environment.
10. When using Synaptic, it's a pain to have to put the CD in the drive. There should be a preference which says "don't ask for the CD if it isn't in the drive".
11. Cut and paste and all my keyboard keys seem to be working! What is the world coming to?
12. There is no "General Hoary Chat" forum!
All in all, a fantastic distro guys, pat yourselves on the back O:)
1. A graphical installer is definitely needed, mainly to deal with the partioning in a more intuitive manner. I believe this is planned for the next release. The "flow" and messages relating to setting the system clock could also do with some work.
2. Sound just works! But can we get rid of the drumbeat on bootup? It will frighten the children :-#
3. The http://ubuntuguide.org/ is great, but the green-on-black is very hard to read, and it's not obvious, nor mentioned, that you can cut and paste the commands into a terminal :wink:
4. I was able to use the guide to get my local NTFS partition (I am dual booting) and a couple of remote Windows shares mounted into /mnt in about 20 minutes, and without rebooting. However, it would be better if there was some "point and click" way of doing this. Interoperability with Windows is such a large need that Samba should be installed by default?
5. There was a problem with X on the install CD which meant I was forced to boot into 640x480, with no other resolutions available. Needless to say this was painful. Strangely, I did not have this problem with the release candidate "live" CD. I was able to fix the problem using the forums.
6. Still not found a decent mp3 player to compete with WinAmp :-? Rhythmbox sucks and XMMS doesn't work. Gonna try "amarok" next.
7. I installed Emacs and boy is Motif ugly! I use Emacs a lot under MS Windows (TEI Emacs) and it uses the GTK toolkit there. Is there a way to make it do that under Ubuntu?
8. Fonts look great! :-P :-P :-P
9. There are some things about the Gnome environment that are confusing me at the moment, but that is probably down to my lack of experience (and the default install removing some stuff like the menu editor). For example, if I download an app from the repositories am I always going to get a menu icon? And how can I add applets to these little gnome panel thingies? Still, for one afternoon playing I have to say I am impressed - this is very close to being a Windows replacement. No doubt with a few more days effort I will be at home in the Gnome environment.
10. When using Synaptic, it's a pain to have to put the CD in the drive. There should be a preference which says "don't ask for the CD if it isn't in the drive".
11. Cut and paste and all my keyboard keys seem to be working! What is the world coming to?
12. There is no "General Hoary Chat" forum!
All in all, a fantastic distro guys, pat yourselves on the back O:)