Comments

One response to “links for 2008-04-29”

1. 2008/04/29

   Steve

   I saw this yesterday, and I liked it.

   I’ve read through most of the comments and some of it is interesting, but too many are simply saying “Why make it like Windows, there’s always a ramp up”. This is true, but when your target audience are accustomed to something perhaps you should concede a little ground.

   I’m also amused that people saying it took them ages to swap from XP to Vista, yes, there was some confusion when I did, but really it was just like a slightly different version (and auto search the installed programs from the Start menu rocks, no more hunting for an app, just type “Minesweeper” and it’ll pull up the program whereever it is).

   ANYWAY. I installed Ubuntu (Gutsy) the other week because there’s something weird going on with my Media PC (running XP, all Media files on a NFS share) with videos not being smooth. IS it a router issue, an OS issue or what? Well I’ve been looking for an excuse to try Linux and actually do something with it so I installed. By and large it’s been smooth (apart from losing the boot partition when the install crashed due to a damaged install disk, a new disk fixed that though) but there still frustrations. I’m not a computer n00b. I’ve run Windows since 3.1.1, and DOS. I’ve installed and administered Solaris and Linux in my old job (important point, always from the terminal via SSH though) but I’m still struggling. Sometimes Gnome doesn’t start properly – it recovers but I lose my theme (not important but STILL) and it took me an entire evening of fiddling to get it to the point where I could rip a DVD. Something I can do in two minutes on my PC – downloading and installing libdvdcss was non-trivial for some reason.

   Having no MP3 support out of the box was a minor pain – but in fairness it was easy to get hold of the codecs. The add/remove apps tool is awesome though – really good.

   So – I’m still wrestling with Ubuntu (not fighting it) to get it to the point where I can just let it boot up and then my Girlfriend can play music, or watch a DVD, or view photos without my sitting there helping her. It’s a LOT better than my last foray into Linux-land, but thankfully I don’t need a printer, hey?

   Reply