Ubuntu 9.04 came out on Friday .. I upgraded my laptop (Dell D820) to that yesterday and did a total restructuring of the machine. I also put back a (small) Windows partition .. I've been bitten enough times without being able to present that I had to do it!
So far excellent experience with Jaunty Jackalope! I had some issues with Thunderbird and the Lightening plugin (basically, it doesn't work :() but that's ok because we're in the process of moving to Google Apps .. so I took the chance to set up GMail and the Google Calendar to work offline etc..
I have to say the end-user quality of Ubuntu is amazing for a free product, no, for any product really. I think Ubuntu raises the bar that we at WSO2 and other open source manufacturers must meet or beat!
Showing posts with label ubuntu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ubuntu. Show all posts
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Friday, June 27, 2008
Trying Ubuntu for Windows users
One of the really cool features of the latest Ubuntu release (8.04 .. Hardy Heron .. the one that came out in April) is that if you're a Windows user, you can stick the CD into a booted Windows machine and they say "install". When you do that, it ends up installing Ubuntu as a "program" under add/remove programs and it gets added to the Windows boot manager. When the system boots up you can default boot to Windows or boot into the installed Ubuntu image. If you don't like it then you can go to Windows Add/Remove programs and just "uninstall ubuntu".
That's an absolutely incredible way to try Ubuntu and give it a whirl without nearly ANY effort. No longer do you need to let grub take over and have Windows be secondary to Linux - you can be a Windows user but just have Ubuntu almost as an "application" in Windows.
There's of course the choice of using VMWare or something like that to run Ubuntu but this is a much nicer way.
You're a Windows user and haven't tried Ubuntu yet? No excuse for not trying it any more! Doesn't mean you need to switch .. just try it and see what you like and don't like about it. Who knows there may be apps there that you like to use. If you've got kids you may love the plethora of educational games that are available freely for Ubuntu. If you don't find it useful simply go to Add/Remove Programs and yank it!
That's an absolutely incredible way to try Ubuntu and give it a whirl without nearly ANY effort. No longer do you need to let grub take over and have Windows be secondary to Linux - you can be a Windows user but just have Ubuntu almost as an "application" in Windows.
There's of course the choice of using VMWare or something like that to run Ubuntu but this is a much nicer way.
You're a Windows user and haven't tried Ubuntu yet? No excuse for not trying it any more! Doesn't mean you need to switch .. just try it and see what you like and don't like about it. Who knows there may be apps there that you like to use. If you've got kids you may love the plethora of educational games that are available freely for Ubuntu. If you don't find it useful simply go to Add/Remove Programs and yank it!
Monday, April 28, 2008
Upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04
Over the weekend I upgraded my laptop (Dell D820) to the Ubuntu release that came out a few days ago, Ubuntu 8.04. Rather than doing a dist upgrade or using Synaptic, I decided to reinstall without eating my /opt and /home partitions.
I had some initial trouble with the CD - it seems that burning the image at "auto" speed (which presumably defaults to as fast as it can) doesn't work. The installation gets just over a third of the way through and then it dies with an IO error. It does however suggest trying to burn the CD at a lower speed- so I burnt another CD (on another machine; mine was no longer booting as part of /boot and / were gone) at 4x and it worked like a charm.
Most of the stuff works out of the box - the microphone which didn't work with the older version (I stayed at last April's Fiesty Fawn release and didn't upgrade in October) is working now. However, sound controls, which worked with the LiveCD boot are not working with the installation. So there are some issues yet, but boy, I have to say this OS is getting more and more slick.
I think I could give this to my parents now and they'd be ok using it and even installing it without help. Some stuff is still not quite there (I haven't tried yet but I'm not expecting video conf stuff to work well yet for example), Thunderbird doesn't deal with Exchange invites properly yet etc. etc., but things are getting better for sure.
Update (April 28th): I tested the new version of Skype and audio and video worked without a hitch as well! Awesome .. I stand corrected :).
When I put the Ubuntu CD on a Windows Vista box at home it gave an option to install within Windows .. and basically instead of Grub it uses the Windows boot loader and installed Ubuntu in a directory in Windows without having to partition the machine. That is seriously cool.
Now Edubuntu (the Ubuntu distro which is targeted to the k-12 education community) comes as an add-on for Ubuntu. We haven't got that working on the Vista set up yet but hopefully later today.
I had some initial trouble with the CD - it seems that burning the image at "auto" speed (which presumably defaults to as fast as it can) doesn't work. The installation gets just over a third of the way through and then it dies with an IO error. It does however suggest trying to burn the CD at a lower speed- so I burnt another CD (on another machine; mine was no longer booting as part of /boot and / were gone) at 4x and it worked like a charm.
Most of the stuff works out of the box - the microphone which didn't work with the older version (I stayed at last April's Fiesty Fawn release and didn't upgrade in October) is working now. However, sound controls, which worked with the LiveCD boot are not working with the installation. So there are some issues yet, but boy, I have to say this OS is getting more and more slick.
I think I could give this to my parents now and they'd be ok using it and even installing it without help. Some stuff is still not quite there (I haven't tried yet but I'm not expecting video conf stuff to work well yet for example), Thunderbird doesn't deal with Exchange invites properly yet etc. etc., but things are getting better for sure.
Update (April 28th): I tested the new version of Skype and audio and video worked without a hitch as well! Awesome .. I stand corrected :).
When I put the Ubuntu CD on a Windows Vista box at home it gave an option to install within Windows .. and basically instead of Grub it uses the Windows boot loader and installed Ubuntu in a directory in Windows without having to partition the machine. That is seriously cool.
Now Edubuntu (the Ubuntu distro which is targeted to the k-12 education community) comes as an add-on for Ubuntu. We haven't got that working on the Vista set up yet but hopefully later today.
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