just wanted to make a quick post about ubuntu feisty fawn (7.0.4) (who comes up with these version names?), i've got it installed on a freebie notebook i got from work. the specs for this notebook, it's a compaq armada e500 (i think they came out about 2000, very old), p3 600mhz, 128mb pc100 ram, 12gb hdd, and some other stuff. it's definitely not anything that could be used by a techie. fortunately, it's just for my parents to learn how to use a computer. i'm pretty sure using linux on it, is a much better option than trying to install some bloated version of windows.
it runs pretty slow because of the lack of ram i think, but it's ok once it's started up, i'm guessing don't run too many apps at once though. i don't think having my parents learn on a linux based machine is too demanding, i'm pretty sure ubuntu was developed with that in mind. it was real easy to setup/install, and my favourite, wireless networking was installed and worked (with wpa1)!! got the wireless tips from ubuntu forums, in the networking and wireless section, if anyone is interested.
anyways, it's been really good to use so far, i can't say too much, as i haven't used it that much yet, but having used a fair bit of open source software before, i don't think this is going to cause any real difficulties, they pretty much imitate (or is that emulate) commercial software interfaces and functionality. finishing off, i can't say enough about how easy it was to install the ubuntu desktop version, i can't remember if i had to press all that much, or enter all that much information. it was pretty much, just double click install, select your partitions, and that was it. easier than windows, and definitely easier than fedora (which has a lot to learn in terms of product lifecycle *six months, give me a break), and wireless actually works, and isn't hard to setup).
just once annoyance, i can't get the startup script to load the wireless connection on startup, but it only takes one double click and about 30 seconds, so nothing too bad, ubuntu team, good job, and keep it up.
pic taken from the laptop centre uk site.
i've now also dumped fc5 as my linux backup, considering i could never get wireless, or even ffmpeg (with 3gp) working on it, i might as well switch to ubuntu and at least get wireless. rdiff-backup works just as well, and it can even mount ntfs partitions, so i think it's win-win. i may eventually install apache, php, etc, but only if i actually use them.
dtra
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10:23, 10th-jun-2007
hehe, i've dumped ubuntu as my linux backup on my pc, rdiff-backup didn't work (different versions), so i switched to fedora 7, wireless is surprisingly easy to get working on it (as opposed to what i had read). the one minus is that ubuntu mounted the ntfs partitions automatically, while fedora you have to do it manually.
dtra
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17:11, 13th-jun-2007