Easiest installation so far
Until this day I have only run Linux on old outdated hardware, primarily for experimenation or for server use. But today I decided to install it on an old but relatively speedy laptop to test the desktop experience. The laptop has a 2Ghz P4 processor, 512MB of ram and a 32MB ATI card. Installing Ubuntu on older hardware before have been difficult so I was a bit weary of spending my entire day of installing it on my laptop.
The overall impression of the installation was very positive. I could use the partitioning program to resize my existing NTFS-partition and I managed to squeeze two additional partitions besides the XP-partition that I am going to keep around for a while. Novice users would probably feel a bit intimidated by the text-based installer and all the questions during the installation process, but for me it worked very well.
The only thing that was really annoying was that Ubuntu did not properly configure my wireless network card. It identified the chipset (Atheros) correctly but there were no WPA options available. More on the wireless issue later.
With the exception of the wireless issue the operating system installed smoothly and upon booting I realized that I had installed from an old beta version of Dapper Drake. A quick search on the Ubuntu forums (which are quite good) revealed that everything I needed to do was to run an update.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
The download of all updates went quite fast using a mirror in Sweden. In contrast to the XP reinstallation I had to do the previous month,it was a real breeze. No multiple restarts, just one download, one reboot and everything was in place. The reboot was probably unnecessary since I did not upgrade the kernel, but I thought that it wouldn't hurt.
I had to do quite a bit of surfing before finding information regarding how to setup my wireless network card. It is a common Netgear WG511T and finally I just surfed by a page that recommended installing network-manager-gnome. A simple installation and a reboot later I had a network-manager symbol in my systray (or whatever its counterpart is called within Gnome) that allowed me to connect to my NetGear router using WPA.
I wish that the installation disk would include that program already, perhaps it does in the 6.06 installer.
A more annoying issue with Ubuntu(and much of the Linux world) is the exclusion of binary software for which the source code is not open. I really like Open Source, I do, and I use a lot of open programs if they are a viable alternative. Sometimes OSS software is superior, sometimes it is a cheaper alternative that proves to be sufficient. But still I want Codecs, Media Players, DVD-support and good graphic drivers available from the start. I don't really care that the OSS community is trying to make a point, I will still need to install this to have a fully functional system.
Fortunately I had heard of a script called Automatix that would install much of this more or less automatically. It worked well and installed all the parts I think should have been included in first place. Not much of a hassle for me but it is still an unnecessary additional step IMO.
The Ubuntu desktop is really nice, IMO. Very clean and simple and I like the brownish colours. This is the first Linux desktop that I would dare to put into the hands of my mother.
Now I will play around a little and see if it is as good as it looks.
Just some random minor notes comparing Ubuntu to XP running on the same laptop:
* XP GUI is a bit snappier to respond to input.
* I really like the update management in Ubuntu. Having all packages under one umbrella ensures that you have the latest software at a simple click. IMO it is long overdue for other ISV's starting to use Microsoft Update on Windows. I don't know if it is Microsoft not allowing ISV's to hook into the system or if it is the ISV's that are unwilling to use Microsoft Update. Either way, it could be greatly improved.
* Using Synaptic in Ubuntu you can point-and-click to install software from a big catalogue.
* XP installation is a bit easier but also slower and more tedious considering the multiple reboots.
* Better performance for my WG511T Netgear card in windows. I wish Netgear would provide a native Linux driver of their own.
* The time needed to get at fully functional Ubuntu system was actually much less than the similar time needed to get an XP system up and running. This surprised me.