Beginning with Ubuntu

[Vorian]

I have a little project I'm working on and I just have one question.

What was the most challenging thing you experienced when you started using Ubuntu, and how did you overcome it?

Thanks in advance for your feedback
:guitar:

[raijinsetsu]

I couldn't compile the compiler... oh wait... that's Gentoo... nvm.

[mcurtiss1970]

fixing the tapping on the touchpad.

and the wealth of informationout there made fixing it a snap!

[nowshining]

Getting dialed into the Internet with my external modem, after some time away from the boards after asking that one Post well later on came back and starting the search again and then someone mentioned gnomeppp (i think I still have the page as I saved it on my usb flash drive) so I installed it.

Since I'm a bit smarter than the Average Bear I then decided to go into setup seeing what options it had - had autodetect - clicked - modem lit up and then I was really really happy and then inserted the right info and Bingo I was up on the net. :) Other than that I can live with the changing of software titles, etc..

Just a tip tho: and may be useful: -- Why I chose Ubuntu was because they shipped out FREE CDs with FREE shipping and handling and no money spend on my part. I actually gave some of em' CDs away. ;)

[starcraft.man]

Finding documentation that I needed to learn and fix problems. I trawled the web and found wikis, the forums, and a handful of other sources. I understand why it can seem intimidating to the average user...

[jadoti]

I have a little project I'm working on and I just have one question.

What was the most challenging thing you experienced when you started using Ubuntu, and how did you overcome it?



Finding information on how to get the GeForce 8300 GS in my new Dell up to it's full resolution :( However, after several stabs at it over a few days, Dell support, and more, I finally found the answer buried in the ubuntu wiki.

[seshomaru samma]

The most challenging thing for me was finding the right keywords to put in google and learning how to ask questions intelligently in forums and IRC. After I learned that , there was no stopping me...
At first , when I encountered a problem I went to google-groups and entered a full question like " how to enable Chinese input on Ubuntu Breezy?", I would go through thousand of pages and could figure out what was appropriate to my situation.
It took time and these days my googling skills are highly developed....

[sp0onman]

coming from an only windows background, the hardest thing was well really getting used to not stuffing things up. but after i learned a few really basic commands in the terminal and finding the guides i needed everything was easy, mostly thanks to these forums.

[ukripper]

Not to loose my calm while tinkering settings. Resolved issues with patience.

Most important challenge, enhancing my research techniques to find exact solution to my problem.

All achieved!

[aaaantoine]

I would say my greatest challenges are still ongoing, to some degree.

Challenge: Cannot get sound working in Flash in Firefox on AMD64 OS, even after following Kilz's in-depth how-to guide.
Resolution: Decided sound in Flash isn't that important during regular browsing. If I decide to visit YouTube or HomestarRunner.com, I'll use ies4linux to get sound. This at least still keeps me in Ubuntu.

Challenge: Cannot get Compiz-Fusion to work on my Radeon Xpress 1100.
Resolution: Waiting for Gutsy (and / or better driver support) before I try again.

Challenge: Cannot manipulate Stored Procedures on an MS SQL Server through Linux.
Resolution: Thank the Lord I can even use MS SQL in Linux to begin with, but I still have to switch to Windows to work with Stored Procs.

[misfitpierce]

Probably compiling stuff from the source. Should have something auto grab dependancies when trying to build. That would be fantastic.

[nowshining]

"something auto grab dependancies when trying to build. That would be fantastic."

totally agree with you. :)

[AlanRogers]

Getting my head round the concepts that I could download a full operating system and attendent programs FOR FREE, run it from the CD in memory as a test, install it alongside of Windows so easily, install/remove software without having to go to hundred's of web sites or CD-ROMs and gain support from like-minded people who really wanted to help and see me succeed.

[nvteighen]

Understand file permissions. I really needed to read a lot (and also experiments with the Live CD) before I could manage and understand them correcty.

[bapoumba]

Most challenging thing: compile and configure all the stuff to have my FAI usb modem work back in the warty days. That was such a pain... I could not have DSL at the time in my area. I had very little knowledge of Linux. What does compile mean ?

Once I got it over with (several weeks reading and testing), nothing could ever frustrate me that much :)

[LowSky]

Getting my Nvidia 8600 set up was fustrating... until envy!

Being pissed off that a DVD couldn't "work out of the box", then realizing windows was the same way I calmed down, then got annoyed when I could find the codecs...lol... I'll admit I was having a bad day for other reasons when this all went down.

tryinng to compile is a pain, but I do it very little that it doesn't worry me.

I'm now trying out 64bit gutsy and so far it works alot better than 64bit fiesty did. And flash does work on 64bit machines... I can prove it

[tgalati4]

Compiling from scratch was tedious--grabbing each dependency as it showed up as missing. Not hard just tedious.

What was a challenge for me was getting dual screen to work with an nVidia display and an Intel display with different resolutions. It works fine, but it took several iterations to get xorg to fire up properly. Lot of forum-searching, and head scratching.

[matthew]

Well, I came here in April 2005 with Breezy. My problems were getting my ATI fglrx video drivers and ipw2200 wireless card drivers to work. At the time, installing either was difficult, and the intel wireless driver was at version 0.22 and required downloading and installing firmware and a kernel module.

Today, it's just install and the wireless works, then click System->Administration->Restricted-Drivers-Manager and everything works!!

[ddrichardson]

Finding where everything was after coming across from Slackware - just getting used to files being in "the wrong place".

Overcome? RTFM!

[pluviosity]

I started with Feisty, and really the only thing that gave me grief was trying to get my 56k winmodem to work (it's a pain not having broadband at home...). Everything else worked on first boot or through the wonderful instructions of this forum :)

Learning the basic CLI commands was *interesting* but not necessarily challenging in my case.

[PriceChild]

Getting my usb adsl modem going... eciadsl worked my modem better than in windows though once I figured it out :D

[derekr44]

Widescreen resolution
nVidia binary drivers
Folder/File permissions (chmod)
Where are my Program Files???

[andrewPCT]

Can you say Broadcom Wireless cards? I overcame this problem by always keeping a CAT5e handy.

[slira]

What was the most challenging thing you experienced when you started using Ubuntu, and how did you overcome it?


:guitar:


most challenging thing:
put a agere 131x ethernet card working under ubuntu 6.06, in a LG laptop

how did you overcome it:
with lost of help from the forums (and other sites) and lots of patience
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=396467&highlight=ethernet+131x&page=3

[Nevon]

Setting up a development server with Apache, PHP, Mysql and Ruby on Rails running together. In the end I used my windows partition for web development using Instant Rails.

[PartisanEntity]

The most challenging thing for me was getting my wireless card to work and understanding what the commands meant that I was entering into the terminal.

The terminal itself did not scare me, all I had to do was copy and paste commands, but I simply did not know what they did or meant.

That was it really, everything else, from installation to usage was pretty straight forward really.

[Vandread]

Well as you guys can see Im new here, always used windows and consider myself an advanced user. I dont know what possesed me to install ubuntu 3 days ago but im glad I did. Of course I didnt know how to install anything but I looked at some tutorials and have compiz fusion, awn dock, amarok all configured within a matter of 3 days. The hardest thing for me was getting compiz fusion to work LOL. I had no title bars so I couldnt move windows around. That took me until about last night at 11pm. I absolutely love ubuntu and its now on my laptop, windows vista/xp on my desktop. Havent touched my desktop in days. :)

Even though this might not be the thread for this but I just want to say thank you to all the help ive found on this forum even though I was lurking. I hate asking for help but I might be asking for some in the near future so I decided to make an account.

[Am3ndment]

Mine was (read: is) connecting to secured wireless network. (But i will beat my broadcom one day ;))

Haven't really got other problems. Thanks to good guides. (Even tho, i still dont know what most of those commands does :))

[Henry Rayker]

Wireless...hands down. My first experiences with Ubuntu were incredibly sour due to the fact that, try as I might, I could not get wireless working. Not only that, but when I DID finally get it working, moving from release to release would severely break it again...

When I first installed Ubuntu, I had a PCMCIA card based on the rt61 chipset. No matter what I did, Ubuntu just would NOT see my card...so I gave up, went out and bought a D-Link DWL-122G using the rt2500usb chipset. I bought this because it worked "out of the box" in Breezy...when I upgraded to Dapper, it broke...my rt61 card would lock the machine and my rt2500 usb adapter would either not see any APs or would just hard lock the machine. I was pissed. I wound up learning more and installing the proper drivers and all...but the fact that a device that worked perfectly in Breeze was 100% busted in Dapper was a little bit...ridiculous to me. I waited for Edgy and, again, none of my cards worked. I wound up also getting a minipci card (ipw2200) which also required setup...

Considering that when I began using Ubuntu, everyone was clamoring about "better laptop support" and "better wireless support" I felt a little stilted. Especially because those phrases weren't even brought up anymore...everything was Beryl this and Compiz that and I just couldn't take it. I left and went to Fedora and was much happier. My system ran much slicker, my wireless worked fine out of the box (all 3 modules. The only thing I had to do was "yum install <firmware-package>")

Another MAJOR annoyance was the fact that Ubuntu couldn't auto-detect the fact that my laptop uses a widescreen. EVERY X update would hose my settings and I'd have to dpkg-reconfigure xorg-xserver just to get reasonable resolutions...Ubuntu is the ONLY distro I have tried that is so inept.

EDIT:
Did I overcome the problems? Yes. I actually was able to, for the most part, fix everything I had an issue with...however, fixing and re-fixing the same small issues every time I run an update isn't exactly my definition of fun, so I just couldn't do the Ubuntu thing anymore. Fedora handled those small issues much better; not only that, but things like NetworkManager (which I was told didn't work with Ralink cards here on the Ubuntu Forums) just worked fine. Also, the system was just faster. Now I am working on installing Gentoo (it takes so long to get everything up and running, but it's even faster than Fedora, so it's worth it). While there are loads of little configuration oddities, everything is just a lot more open and simple to deal with, in my opinion.

[FuturePilot]

Getting mp3 playback. Hey, I was a beginner, I hadn't the slightest clue:p

Getting the Nvidia driver installed. I didn't know it was in the repos. This was back when the restricted repos weren't enabled by default.

Getting Java installed. Didn't know that was in the repos either. Man, disabling the restricted repos really messed me up

[mips]

Lack of step by step documentation. Had to search wide and far for stuff and not being familair with linux made this even harder.

I like a manual ;)

[Rumor]

I had to search my post history to see the answer to this. I started with Breezy and the first challenge I ran into was sharing the printer connected to my computer with the Windows computers on my home network.

Cups? Cups is fer coffee.

[Sunflower1970]

I started with Edgy in Dec 2006.

1. At that time the most challenging things was my nVidia driver. Envy wouldn't work, had a heck of a time with the nVidia drivers from the nVidia site...couldn't figure out what to do with them, honestly (Totally green coming to Linux at that time) only Automatix worked for me. Now, though, with the restricted drivers, I don't need Automatix, or Envy at all :)

2. My printer/copier/scanner from Epson. Took a while to figure out where to get all the drivers and how to get all functions working.

3. My ATI AIW TV card. I got it to work..once...but haven't bothered with it for some time now since my cable reception is crappy in the room where my computer is.

4. Configuring all my mouse buttons. Did some searching here on the forums which brought up the answer.

5. My laptop has an ATI card in it. Took quite a while to figure out how to make the white borders go away when using Beryl/Compiz.

6. How to configure a dial-up software modem. (After some searching I did find the info, but that took a few days...and I haven't needed it since)

7. Right now it's trying to teach myself how to compile..

[karellen]

well....I had no problems beginning with ubuntu as my hardware is pretty old and well supported out of the box, but I remember in my first days of using Linux finding tutorials and documentation about the command line and then learning how to use them was the most difficult thing for the easy-going windows user that I were at that moment

[oldos2er]

There's apt-file for installing dependencies. Not really "automatic," but it works.

[xpod]

Getting my head round the concepts that I could download a full operating system and attendent programs FOR FREE, run it from the CD in memory as a test, install it alongside of Windows so easily, install/remove software without having to go to hundred's of web sites or CD-ROMs and gain support from like-minded people who really wanted to help and see me succeed.

+1
I`d only been using a computer for 4 months prior to discovering Ubuntu and even most simple pc terms were still just gobbildygook to me.All good frustrating fun though:)
The fact that all this....and more is available for free is one thing though but the fact that it`s sooooo much better(imo) than that other thing i used is just truely astounding.

Still struggling to get my head round it all.:)

[Tiekyl]

My first day into ubuntu...I couldn't get my 1024x768 resolution. It took me about a week to find the Restricted drivers manager..before that I was just editing conf files and generally breaking things.

I've also broken grub quite a few times...

The only way I've ever overcame it is reading a few articles..then sleeping on it. Everything seems so much less complicated the next day.

[siralphred]

My biggest issue with ubuntu is the inconsistencies it has with various hardware, since staring to use ubuntu about a year and half ago i have changed laptops 3 times and in each one ubuntu behaved differently, its a pain to have to go through forums just to get things set up all over again, and i know it may not be entirely from ubuntu but from hardware manufacturers but its still frustrating
Another issue i have is not knowing what commands i type in terminal mean, i know i can read books to get a better understand but if people who post these commands will just give a brief summary of what some of the commands do will help a lot.

Finally reading through this forum i saw a couple of people having problems with their broadcom, i had this issue for a long time also and the quickest and easiest way is to use the script found here, it automatically detects your broadcom card and sets it up for you http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=405990&highlight=wireless

[PatrickMay16]

My biggest problem was finding replacements for the software that I used in windows. I mostly got through that, but there are some things I never managed to replace. No problem, though, because Wine sorts that out for me.

Another big problem was working out how to use things, how to set things up, how to fix problems, etc.

I installed Ubuntu on September 20 of 2005. For the first ten days, I wasn't comfortable with it, and I would often boot up windows. But by the first of October, I had stuff beginning to work well, and I was spending more time running Ubuntu than I was running windows. By the beginning of November, I barely used windows at all any more.

[nowshining]

"will just give a brief summary of what some of the commands do will help a lot."


ditto I myself will take that into consideration. :) but you'll have to to when you give a command to someone else. ;)

[picpak]

My very first problem in Linux? Figuring out how to get it. I'd never heard of DistroWatch. linux.org couldn't tell me a thing. I couldn't go to any distro's homepage because I didn't know any distros. It became so bad that I assumed Linux was a by-hackers-for-hackers deal that could only be found by contacting them. Eventually I stumbled across the now defunct linuxiso.org which overwhelmed the crap out of me. All it had was the distro names and links to their ISOs. I finally decided upon Suse.

Burning ISOs didn't overwhelm me: I had used Cheetah CD burner at the time, and I remembered there being an option for ISOs.

Now, my very first problem in Ubuntu? Well, my hardware is old and has been working in Ubuntu since Hoary (I sorted out my sound card problems in Suse). My biggest hurdle was the terminal: I had barely used it at all in Suse or Mandriva, and since back then all there really was was ubuntuguide.org, I was taken aback by the fact that *every* guide on there used the terminal.

I was also confused when using the terminal: I didn't know if my password went in because there was no visual feedback, I didn't know when to prefix commands with sudo, I didn't know what any of my commands were doing, and I didn't know if things worked or not because the terminal didn't say anything if it worked correctly. All problems that still exist today.

Another setback was switching from KDE-based distros to the GNOME-based Ubuntu: an entirely different environment that I still can't get used to today. I also couldn't figure out the terminology: what exactly is an apt-get? A Synaptic? A nautilus? A metacity? A GTK? I didn't have any problems in Suse or Mandriva because I never changed the themes (Fact: back then, you wanted to change the default theme. Badly).

I'd say that was about it: that and finding good alternatives to my Windows programs with good documentation for them.

Of course, I managed to fix all these problems by searching around the forums, putting two and two together, and basically eventually figuring out how a lot of the system works. I'm still baffled by a lot of things, but not nearly as badly as I used to be.

[jviscosi]

I got started with Mandrake and worked out most of the challenges there. Probably the biggest one was getting out of the habit of reinstalling the OS every time something went wrong. (Guess which OS I was coming from ...) Probably the second biggest was compiling programs from source and/or learning to be patient enough to wait for new packages to come out.

In Ubuntu, the thing I had to get used to was the lack of a control center and all the "draks" that I was used to in Mandrake. Webmin helped get me over it. ;-)

[odiseo77]

Being used to Debian, Ubuntu has been quite easy for me, but I'd say what I've found harder to do in Ubuntu (and on debian too) was to change from a WEP encryption key to WPA-PSK on my wireless connection. If this helps, this (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/RalinkRT2500) is the document I think helped me to solve this problem.

Greetings.

[Vorian]

Thanks for all the great responses!
:guitar:

[hessiess]

my furst big problem was geting the wireless network to work. next was geting the nvidia drivers to work, without crashing x

[wersdaluv]

For months and months, none of my usb devices worked. After about 5 months of looking for the answer, I figured out that I had to use irqpoll as a boot option due to hardware incompatibility.

Right now, I am still facing a serious problem. I am a PIM junkie and I can't sync my Pocket PC with Kontact (I prefer Kontact over Evolution). I still have not solved it.