Ubuntu v9.04

OK, so I needed to test a Linux distro, why? Because, I am looking into a new shiny net-book, and a few happen to come with Linux… Now there are a lot of flavours out there, so where to begin. Well actually, not such a hard issue, since the ones I have been looking at seem to all use Ubuntu, and I have also been pondering the future of myself and a Pandora, which has also been seen running this one…. so Ubuntu it is.  

Quick nip to Ubuntu’s web site, and download the latest version (9.04 Desktop Edition at the time of writing) a version higher than the ones on the net-books (usually quoted as v8.04), but the old Dell C610 laptop (1Ghz Pentium III processor with 512Mb of memory) I was going to use (being the only thing I could lay my hands on quickly) as the test machine is very much lower spec than all the net-books, so may be slow, but should go OK. And if Ubuntu recognises all the hardware on this and work… it should pretty much handle anything I throw at it in the future.

First job, burn a CD from the downloaded .iso image. No worries here, Roxio is installed on my base machine, so a quick copy to disk sorts this out.

Next on to the Dell C series laptop… need to change the BIOS to boot from CD, … OK that took 2 attempts, since it fairly blasted it’s way through the POST (don’t ask me how…the thing usually runs like a dog!), and I didn’t hit the f2 key quick enough.

Then the install…. CD boots (well CD drive works then), screen flashes… now at this point, I’m thinking back on previous flurries into Linux, where screen resolutions came out all wrong, no hardware was recognised etc.. etc.. but then I get a lovely Ubuntu install progress bar in the middle of the screen, pleasently ticking away as it does it’s thing.

Ubuntu Desktop

Eventually this clicks off, and the screen flashes a couple more times, and the Ubuntu desktop is presented, wow, it’s recognised the size of the screen, then a mouse pointer appears, and … wait for it … moves when I use the track pad! A new screen is then shown, asking me to complete a few questions, location, time zone etc..

Then came the biggest surprise of all, the partition manager starts to load and asks how I want to handle the drive, either side-by-side with Win XP Pro (eugh..) or take the whole disk. A couple of warnings about losing data etc.. sorts that one out, and then I am asked to put in my name, a password and whether or not I want to log in or simply turn on.. another warning about the password I selected, not being 8 characters, but rather than telling me to sort it out, and jolly well pick a password with 8 characters it also has the option to keep the one I have chosen … Microsoft take note here, we’re not all security minded buffoons. Then the installer continues on it’s merry way installing Ubuntu.

Well, this takes a while, but to be honest, I expected it to on this old Dell, but that said, I was re-partitioning, vaping what was originally on there, and installing a whole new operating system, so 20 minutes wasn’t really that bad I suppose.

Then reboot time. This is the nail biting time for anyone who has installed a new operating system, not because you’ve lost data, but you just don’t want to go through the whole shebang again… and then the warning, oh no… here we go… Ubuntu politely reminded me to take the disk out of the CD drive, once done, press enter, (Doh!) and boot up re-started again, enter username and password and I’m in!

Ubuntu Login

On boot, the Evolution set-up wizard began, not sure if this was me, or intended, as I was trying all the Ubuntu buttons at the time, but this swiftly took me through my e-mail setup. Surprising if this is intended, as I haven’t as yet connected to a network or the Internet at all, but it accepted my inputs OK.

Ubuntu uses a Gnome desktop, and seems very clean, I have previously used a few different Linux distros, but in the main, KDE has been the GUI that I have played on. In ease of use, I found no issues what-so-ever with Gnome, everything was where I thought it should be, and I was able to navigate my way around sufficiently.

Quite a bit of software comes bundled with Ubuntu, so I’ll take a bit of time to go through this now. There are 6 sections in the Applications menu, Accessories, Games, Graphics, Internet, Office and Sound and Video, and I suspect that the ordering of these gives a clue as to the intended market, i.e. games, graphics, Internet all up there, with Office coming in just above the bottom of the list. However, it has OpenOffice Presentation, Spreadsheet and Word Processor there, ready to go, and with Evolution integrated mail and calendar, probably all you may need to start. The Internet section yields the usual suspects, Firefox, Pidgin messenger etc, but also holds, Terminal Server Client, Remote desktop viewer and a Bit Torrent client. Obviously you can find Gimp in the graphics, as well as a few more. The games are a little limited, but to be honest, if you’re used to what you get with Windows… you’re going to like what is here ‘out of the box’.

Applications Open

Running the System testing tool from the System/Administration menu, yields confirmation that Ubuntu has indeed picked up all my hardware for this machine, and is running it correctly, including screen resolution of 1024×768 and network card. All very impressive for a first time install onto a machine that is less than new.

Now the biggy, would plugging in a network cable yield a connection to the outside world without any fiddling around under the hood? Actually yes, plugged in and the network connection icon flicked into life, and held steady showing the now ubiquitous double monitor icon. Clicking on Firefox, brought me straight to the Ubuntu starting page for v9.04, which is a Google search field, then browsing to my site, brought the page up in a couple of seconds, not bad for this old machine.

Ubuntu Home Page

Thought I’d try my G.HO.ST VC next, and found the need to install Flash … everything was looking good, until I actually downloaded the install. I tried the .deb version for Ubuntu v8.04 with unfortunately no success, apparently there was a lib file missing. I then tried the other options from Adobe’s site, just in case I got the wrong flavour of Linux… which I hadn’t, and didn’t help either. A quick browse on the Ubuntu forums found the answer though, and I had to open up the terminal and enter in these lines of code:

$ sudo aptitude purge flashplugin-nonfree
$ sudo aptitude install flashplugin-nonfree

Ubuntu On - Line

That done, everything worked swimmingly well. Logged into my VC, no issues (other than my resolution was now hopelessly small compared to my regular machine, but G.HO.ST noticed, and offered to re-arrange my apps for me).

A pop-up then appeared, offering me the option of downloading and installing 59.9Mb of updates, which I did. Now whether or not the Flash player would have been sorted out by my running these updates before trying a manual install I don’t know, but I suspect that it would to be honest.

All in all, this install has been absolutely amazing, probably the best OS I have installed (and there have been a few..) with the possible exception of OS-X, no extra drivers were necessary to install (something Windows XP can’t manage after all these years), and everything worked straight away, no fiddling around (except the Flash install – which may have been avoided if I’d run the updates initially).

So on initial impressions, I think this operating system is well worth a go, and won’t be holding me back on grabbing myself a net-book if it happens to be installed.

[UPDATE - June 17th 2009] I seem to have missed the USB functionality in this posting, so just to set the record straight, inserting a 4GB USB drive fired Ubuntu into life, and it auto-mounted the drive with a drive link icon on the desktop and opening the file explorer. After previous Linux versions making me mount anything this was very refreshing…. but maybe I’m just out of date….

~Mark~