Ubuntu - First Impressions

[nez]

Hi all,

I downloaded a live CD of UBUNTU today, i have tried out installing Suse and mandrake last year but it didnt go to well, but im trying to get more into linux at the moment and today i dived back in with this live CD from Ubuntu.

I was very impressed at the ease of use, just poped the CD in and rebooted and it all work, the only bit of hardware that didnt work from the getgo was my soundcard, but that doesn't work on windows either unless i install the drivers.

Everything worked very easily, as a desktop system for someone who doesn't need to fiddle, linux seems to have reached a point where it can be usuable without having to much difficulty, unlike last time i tried with SUSE i had multiple installation errors and all sorts of difficulties with my ATI 9800 pro, but now everything has changed.

I have downloaded the full DVD of Fedora Core 4 and once i get a new DVD writer i will install it on a seperate HDD and switch between them as needed, i dont want to mess up my windows install at the moment so i wont be dual booting them yet but i might do that in the future but its more likely i will build a second system for running linux on as a home server and using windows for my games.

Im very impressed with how far linux has come in the past year and i will definatly be getting into linux in a big way from today onwards.

Nez

[directhex]

i run ubuntu on my laptop.

it's a reasonable distribution for some uses (and the default install is pretty slick & functional)

for the sound card, try getting your hands on the advanced ALSA volume control settings bits (something like right click on the volume panel applet, open volume control) - there should be a setting marked something like "digital output" you want to un-tick, or a "line-out as microphone", or _something_ that you need to tick or untick.

[directhex]

there, something like this:

(cba to boot the laptop with ubuntu on it, but xfce4-mixer is pretty close). remember, you need to change the ALSA setting, not the OSS setting (OSS is a legacy audio driver, not used on ubuntu by default)

[nez]

Im not to botherd about it with the Live CD, but when i come to install it on a HDD i will have a play around, and the live CD did not have any sound codecs installed so i couldnt play a wav file even if i the sound card was working!!