<b>Ubuntu</b> Bite the BIG ONE microlimp !

[kide]

Richard:
Well, aside from the obvious (you gotta have a running system, or a friend with one, or wait for the USPS to bring a CD in the mail), it loaded smoothly, with no hitches. I rebooted and it came up and ran fine. It downloaded and installed a number of updates after the reboot I explored the file system a little and ran Firefox.

My biggest issue at this point is that I run a dual display using an Nvidia display adapter. The OS identified correctly that there was a third party driver necessary (and available) to use the features of the adapter, which also installed smoothly. Unfortunately, the driver doesn't like the default configuration script, so when you enable the second monitor (which it sees and uses with no problem), you cannot save the new configuration, as the driver configuration program pukes when it can't parse the file.... Since I'm a "newbie", I soon learn that this is a file in the root directory, so I have to learn about sudo commands by starting on the Ubuntu forum, where I also learn that this problem has been known for a long time, but the fix isn't in the distro, nor has the driver been fixed. There are a half dozen threads dealing with the problem, I followed the advise on most of them, interesting result is the console now has a white background and white typeface. And per the instructions given by the OS, I'm supposed to stop the X graphical interface and restart it, but lots of searching led me back to what I was doing anyway, shutting the OS down and restarting.....

These are the types of little hiccups that result from group efforts having lots of contributors, who are not being totally controlled from a central point - missing, conflicting, or out of date information that a total neophyte, who just wanted a running computer would walk away from - and I've gotta tell you that one of my specialties has always been researching and resolving these specific computer related problems.

So, at this point, how do I rate this distro? At LEAST an "A" ... because the problem I'm having is not typical to a low buck setup, was not directly the fault of the distro and there is a solution to it. The GUI definitely looks great, the audio works fine ( I listened to some I-radio from the Netherlands while trying to get the second monitor running) and I'm looking forward to getting into the software library...

 

[rpalmer]

Kendell Ide,
I did not know you needed a working system with the CD. Maybe it needs at least a partition. I don't know. It's been some time since I tried ANYTHING with a blank drive.

Personally... and you would know the nuts and bolts of it... I think nVidia has too many problems where ever it is. But that is just my experience with their product and a lot of what I have read seems to support that. But I guess we all read what we like to believe. I have never ran multiple monitors. I don't even run more than one session of X. Perhaps you will be the man to set this multiple monitor problem to bed. Just think your name forever remembered and written into scripts.

The sudo command is a pain to remember. I'm sure you are just use to going to root access to do whatever instead of "sudo". It's a common complaint with Unix users. I'm glad you found the distro useful. There are some politics involved with software that is proprietary or close enough to it. But it is all available. I guess I'm surprised that you gave it an A. But that is because you did have a problem. It does that a big man to say that their problem was not someone else's fault. So pass the word. Help free some folks from mandatory hardware and software upgrades. And you can also forget about DMRC blocks built into your software. - Peace -

 

[kide]

Richard - I meant that if you downloaded the ISO image, you'd need a working PC to create the actual bootable load CD. (think "bootstrap"). I don't buy many display cards, the one in question has always worked well for me - actually the chipset on that mobo is Nvidia also..
Haven't looked at it in a couple of days - got some fixin' to do on a XP Home system that they shut off, evidently while the OS was ready to write something to a system file (not from my house..)Kind of ironic - they did this because they got one of the fake "infected PC scan" popups and powered the PC off in a panic. Of course they don't have the recovery disks from Dell nor any idea of the installation key.......(but we have Linux based tools for retrieving that....

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