thelinuxlink.net

Well, it's time to put my money where my mouth has been. I've been shilling for Ubuntu for the past few weeks ever since I installed it on my PPC system. Now I am going to put it through some paces as a general user and report my results on the show this week.

My goal is not to judge the installation process beyond the hardware detection cababilities after the system is up and running. What follows is a list of tasks I would suspect a general user would want to do with their computer and see how difficult it is with Ubuntu:

1) Connect to the internet and set up an email account: First I will be doing this through my Lan of course. I will be using my speakeasy account for pop3 access.

2) I will try hooking up my printer to it. I plan on using both the Laserjet I have and the Cannon I no longer use.

3) I will create a text document in the office product and print it out.

4) I will connect my camer to it and see if I can get pictures directly off the camera, not using a flash reader.

5) Pull in and edit the pictures

6) Connect my usb scanner to the system and see if it is detected. If it is, I will scan a picture or document.

7) I will put in an audio cd and try to play it. Maybe I will then try to rip a track.

I will use synaptic to install a few programs, probably games and do general searches on applictions categories.

9) I will shutdown the machine and install a winmodem and see how that goes. If I can set it up I will use my speakeasy dialup account to check the email I set up earlier.

10) I will try out my external modem and repeat the process for 9.


Any other ideas you can think of that a general user would want to do?

How about burning files to a CD? Using a CF card or FlashKey (you know, testing the automounts for each)?

Right now, burning is not an option as I don't have a burner in the device. Maybe that will be a future test.

As for the thumbdrive! Definetly!

Dann,
Did you do your tests with warty or hoary? I tried warty, but did have issue with it.

I did my test with warty.

What were your issues?

Mostly issues with having a newer (centrino) laptop. Upgraded to hoary and loving Ubuntu, may become my choice for a linux desktop.

Mike

I installed Ubuntu on my old 800mhz PIII this past weekend. I followed the unofficial guide for many of the extras. My thoughts:
- the install was very easy
- did not automatically setup my second 'data' hard drive
- nvidia driver setup was painless
- root password not setup was kinda annoying but easily fixed
- no mp3 support, another annoyance but not a big deal
- I'm getting a message on bootup saying the hotplug modules not found
- once you setup the extra apt-get repositories you can install almost any application. Just remember to comment out the universe entries when doing a dist-upgrade otherwise things will get very messy
- developer packages not setup by default, easy to install

Things to do:
- get some decent backgrounds with Ubuntu theme (any suggestions)
- fix the nasty hotplug errors I'm getting
- setup apache and finally get my web page/blog going

Overall verdict: Easiest debian based install ever

Patrick wrote: - root password not setup was kinda annoying but easily fixed

By design, of course, rather than an 'omission'

- I'm getting a message on bootup saying the hotplug modules not found

yeah - I seem to remember getting something like that at one point. Is hotplugging working OK then?

Things to do:
- get some decent backgrounds with Ubuntu theme (any suggestions)

There is a package - can't remember what's it's called, probably something like ubuntu-themes or similar.

- setup apache and finally get my web page/blog going

I think it's kind of funny that a lot of the reviews, and subsequent criticisms, of Ubuntu have centred on the very things that define what it's trying to do. Because they are trying to create a real desktop distribution, there is:

• No root password
  No development packages installed
  No servers installed (SSH, Apache, MySQL, etc)
  Etc

I think that these are the things that make it great for new users - I've just installed it for my wife, because I think she will easily be able to handle all the things she would normally do. However, I won't be installing it for myself, because I know that my 'desktop' is much more of a server than a 'normal' person would have, and thus I am sticking with Debian. If, in the future, I decide to run seperate server and desktop machines, Ubuntu will probably hit my desktop too.