[Wylug-discuss] Ubuntu CDs - Who's Using Ubuntu?

[Martin Rowe]

On Thursday 06 January 2005 11:06, Dave Fisher wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I noticed that Martin Crowe seemed to be in exactly the same position as
> Nigel re excess Ubuntu disks, which prompts me to ask:

Hi Dave

Martin Crowe? - was that me in disguise? ;) It was a pity as the discs
arrived two days too late for the York LUG install day.

>   Who's using it, and how many users are there in wylug?

After a successful trial on my laptop I've put it on several more machines
and so far it's working very well. I get all the things I like about Debian
without all the hard work of getting things working. My kids seem to like
it too, as they've been booting into Linux much more often since Ubuntu was
put on :)

> I'm runing a couple of Ubuntu machines at home and a couple of friends
> have installed it for their familes with mostly favourable impressions.

I've the mother-in-laws PC to upgrade yet - that should be a good test <g>

> Thus far I've only noticed a few obvious practical differences from a
> stock Debian Testing system:
>
>  * Knoppix-like simplicity and hardware detection during the install
>
>  * A properly integrated multimedia desktop

I haven't used the default software for much as yet. Totem doesn't seem to
like any of the video files I've tried with it (which might be a config
issue - I've not seen/used Totem before) so I've stuck with mplayer.

>  * 6 monthly release dates

I'm looking forward to seeing how an upgrade goes. Having tracked Debian
unstable since Potato came out I've got used to random things breaking or
stopping working for a while. My only experience of regular upgrade cycles
is from early Mandrake days, and they never went well - I invariably ended
up doing a fresh install :(

> That said, the small scale, simplicity and undemocratic nature of the
> Ubuntu organisation has an appeal - at least in comparison with the
> worst aspects of Debian bun-fighting.

So far it looks like quite a positive community - hopefully that won't
change too soon.

> I've also been led to believe that a significant proportion of the core
> development team are UK-based.  Is this actually true?
>
> On the downside, Ubuntu seems to have all the fiddliness of Debian when
> it comes to building and using custom kernels, 3rd-party/home-rolled
> kernel modules, etc. Ditto for file system layout and naming
> conventions.

Fortunately the standard kernel has worked very well for me. All the
hardware on my new laptop has been picked up, and stuff like wireless
worked with very little effort[1]

Regards, Martin
[1] It seems there can be an error loading the ipw2200 module every now &
then, and I think it happened at install time, as it couldn't establish
networking during the install until I dropped & reloaded the module. This
is most likely due to the early state of the driver rather than an Ubuntu
issue.
--
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