Amazing

I’ve never had a linux installation go this smoothly before. There was literally zero problems.

After I installed all the apt-get upgrades, I did some additional updates as recommended by "10 Things To Do Just After Installing Ubuntu". This installed a bunch of other stuff IMHO that should have been on the Desktop flavor of Ubuntu in the first place.

This explains why in past installations I couldn’t play simple mp3 files. It doesn’t support it out of the box.

After all those updates were done I did a little testing with some music and movie files from my NAS and everything checked out. Amazement #1.

Next I tweaked the UI to make for a smooth transition for my family. First, I moved all the top panel components to the bottom bar and removed the top bar.

Next I disabled and removed the multiple desktop functionality. That would just confuse my family since they’re coming from the world where "There can be only one desktop".

After that, I started to go through my requirements list and perform the make-or-break tests that would decide if this box makes it to the family room.

• Internet browser for web mail, surfing, social sites, etc.

  Since we already use Firefox exclusively for all our internet, webmail, myspace needs this was a no-brainer.
   

• Photo Management

  I had my doubts about this one. We use Picassa for our photo management and even though Google has a version for linux, it uses a customized version of WINE to do this. However, it installed and worked like a charm. Amazement #2.
   

• Scanning and printing (hp 1210 All-in-one) photos and documents.
  
  This was another doubtful one since we have trouble getting this POS working on Windows. When I plugged in the USB, Ubuntu found it, installed it and was done. I printed a test page with no problems. In-fact, this printer now works faster than windows when sending print jobs to it. Amazement #3.

  In addition, the scanner worked beautifully with Ubuntu’s XSane scanning software.

• Transfer data between digital cameras and flash-based mp3 player via usb.

  This worked absolutely perfect! As soon as I plugged in our Nikon Coolpix it mounted it on the Desktop as a drive. I could browse it just like a file system. The next test was if it would work with Picassa’s Import function.

  I fired Picassa up, went to Import and there it was. Although one quirky thing, it listed two different devices for the same camera. One works as it should, but when selecting the other, it disconnects and unmounts the camera. Weird, but by no means a show stopper.

  Our Sansa MP3 player worked even better. As soon as I plugged it in, a cool MP3 Player icon popped up on the desktop letting me know it was successfully mounted.

  Just with the camera, I could browse the MP3 player just like a file system. In addition, the built in Music manager RhythmBox displayed it under its device’s tab. I could then drag my music from the browser to the device and it all worked seamlessly. Amazement #4.

  Although I haven’t seen a spot to create custom play-lists on the player I’m sure someone has created either a script or program to do this already. If not, I can simply make one since the play-list is just a text file.

• Yahoo Messenger

  This was removed from the list due to lack of use on the Windows.

   

• Word processing and spreadsheet work

  Since OpenOffice is a default install, and it can pretty much open anything, this is all set. Plus we already use OpenOffice exclusively so switching isn’t a problem.
   

• Basic graphic editing

  Aside the manually installed Picassa, Ubuntu comes with a crap-load of other graphic editing tools. And since I switched from PhotoShop to GIMP a long time-ago, this was an easy one.
   

• Easy enough for a 5 year old

  The first day I had this up and running, my 5 year old had got on to http://pbskids.org and played flash games with Caillou and the Super Readers with no problems.
   

• Minimal learning curve to switch

  So far so good. The wife has been using it with her iGoogle page, MySpace stuff and Gmail with no problems.

 

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