Ubuntu 10.10 - Oh Wow!

[Ghastly]

I've been using Linux for my work laptops for going on 2 years now (as well as Linux in various flavors for SAN's etc. in my work) and up to this point I felt that Linux distro's were just too iffy to even try to place in front of a non-geek.  It works - but if something doesn't work you're knee deep in geekity in 3 seconds flat. And the previous distros I worked with lacked polish to the extent that you knew that you were going to be knee deep about 30 minutes after you handed it off.

So mentally I'd consigned Linux a role of "the special OS".

But last Friday I downloaded Ubuntu 10.10, breaking with the focus on Fedora as the testbed for RedHat that I'd standardized my work stuff on.

And was blown away - all the problematic stuff I spent hours to days on with the laptops at work just worked with 10.10 - it seems at least as polished at first glance as Win 7, and I pretty much couldn't find a snag in it.

Is anyone successfully placing this in front of non-tech users - either home or workplace?  If so, what has tripped you up?

<S>!

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I've been using Linux for my work laptops for going on 2 years now (as well as Linux in various flavors for SAN's etc. in my work) and up to this point I felt that Linux distro's were just too iffy to even try to place in front of a non-geek.  It works - but if something doesn't work you're knee deep in geekity in 3 seconds flat. And the previous distros I worked with lacked polish to the extent that you knew that you were going to be knee deep about 30 minutes after you handed it off.

So mentally I'd consigned Linux a role of "the special OS".

But last Friday I downloaded Ubuntu 10.10, breaking with the focus on Fedora as the testbed for RedHat that I'd standardized my work stuff on.

And was blown away - all the problematic stuff I spent hours to days on with the laptops at work just worked with 10.10 - it seems at least as polished at first glance as Win 7, and I pretty much couldn't find a snag in it.

Is anyone successfully placing this in front of non-tech users - either home or workplace?  If so, what has tripped you up?

<S>!

10.10 is a testing distribution so it's not really meant to be a fully polished version. There are several reports of problems with 10.10 and I can attest to that personally (running 64-bit version might affect too). It may well work for you and good if it does.

Personally I'm beginning to doubt the life span of the whole Ubuntu distribution with the news of ditching X11 in favor of wayland which is considered almost alpha level at the moment - and X11 has its share of problems still years after release. Part of which wayland is supposed to address though.

Still such a radical change at this stage eraticates any trust for Ubuntu as a stable distribution. No wonder people call it Debian unstable fork

[Spikes]

I'll have to try it...last ubuntu I've used was 8 I think.

[pervert]

I use Ubuntu kids use it too, only trip ups I can think of is setting up wireless internet and finding a decent program that will play DVDs. In saying that microsoft has really got the finger out with windows 7, I couldn't really find fault with it.

oh and btw aces high runs with wine on ubuntu just fine.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I use Ubuntu kids use it too, only trip ups I can think of is setting up wireless internet and finding a decent program that will play DVDs. In saying that microsoft has really got the finger out with windows 7, I couldn't really find fault with it.

oh and btw aces high runs with wine on ubuntu just fine.

Do you use nvidia graphics? Because on my ati-based computers AH2 won't start on wine no matter what I do. You get the welcome screen and it runs 250fps vs. 30fps on XP but when 3D is supposed to start, crash.

[skribetm]

has anybody tried UNR on their net/notebooks?

[pervert]

Do you use nvidia graphics? Because on my ati-based computers AH2 won't start on wine no matter what I do. You get the welcome screen and it runs 250fps vs. 30fps on XP but when 3D is supposed to start, crash.

Actually it was nvidia but an older card, what you are describing is how it was for me before the graphics update. Have you tried it recently?

[Ghastly]

Whack!  (That's the sound of Ghastly getting knocked out of Ubuntu Nirvana by cold hard reality...)

Ok, perhaps 10.10 isn't as seamless as I'd initially thought.

Has anyone else experienced difficulties while playing Encoded DVD's such that the DVD navigation is not proper, and you can't get to the Title or DVD menu?  This may push me back to my Fedora 12 installation, despite the fact that F-12 no longer properly supports the BIOS on our work laptops (Panasonics) and I'm still stuck at a March/May? kernel version release.

Note - I'm well aware of the legal issues, and the fact that you have to add support for encrypted DVD's manually.  It's not that 10.10 won't play the commercial DVD's once I've done so, it's that I can't navigate the menu on several that I had no trouble with under Fedora 12.  Some just "hang" Movie Player, but others indicate that they are playing, but aren't when you first start them - but if you select Title Menu, it starts playing the first episode, although it indicates that it's only as long as the title segment would be.  And there's no way to get to the menu, so no way to change settings or get to other episodes on the DVD.

Whack!

<S>

[pervert]

Whack!  (That's the sound of Ghastly getting knocked out of Ubuntu Nirvana by cold hard reality...)

Ok, perhaps 10.10 isn't as seamless as I'd initially thought.

Has anyone else experienced difficulties while playing Encoded DVD's such that the DVD navigation is not proper, and you can't get to the Title or DVD menu?  This may push me back to my Fedora 12 installation, despite the fact that F-12 no longer properly supports the BIOS on our work laptops (Panasonics) and I'm still stuck at a March/May? kernel version release.

Note - I'm well aware of the legal issues, and the fact that you have to add support for encrypted DVD's manually.  It's not that 10.10 won't play the commercial DVD's once I've done so, it's that I can't navigate the menu on several that I had no trouble with under Fedora 12.  Some just "hang" Movie Player, but others indicate that they are playing, but aren't when you first start them - but if you select Title Menu, it starts playing the first episode, although it indicates that it's only as long as the title segment would be.  And there's no way to get to the menu, so no way to change settings or get to other episodes on the DVD.

Whack!

<S>

Its funny how the little things like playing DVDs make such a big difference, for your average user they really don't want to start reading through the legal issues thing or googling for days on end to find out how to make this or that work, and that includes me.

[Ghastly]

Its funny how the little things like playing DVDs make such a big difference, for your average user they really don't want to start reading through the legal issues thing or googling for days on end to find out how to make this or that work, and that includes me.

Yep, and they shouldn't have to. 

I do realize that DVD playback is a special case where the open source developers hands are tied.  And Linux has come a long long way in the last two years especially.  2 years ago getting wireless networking to work was catch as catch can - and you either bought hardware you "knew" would work and hoped the manufacturer hadn't changed the hardware, or took the chance that you'd spend hours if not days manipulating things by hand, and that it might never work at all. And getting the Verizon wireless EVDO card to work took me about 3 days on and off. Installing Flash and an Acrobat reader were beyond the skills of most users.

Today, all of that just works seamlessly.

But in terms of placing this in front of other people, I'd feel as though it would have to play movies and MP3's.  Or even for my own use - while I'm remoted into work for the hour long train ride at 7 AM, I do often watch DVD's on the train ride out at the end of the day.  I have a dual-boot of XP on the system, but under Fedora, I almost never had to dualboot XP.

So... first DVD's, then Netflix ( Yeah right.... ) and then it's " just perfect "!

<S>

[Tigger29]

It's not just the DVD issue.. but that is definitely part of it.  It's like this... when (ubuntu) linux works.. it works well!  Almost just as easy as windows... if not easier.  But when it doesn't work, all hell breaks loose!

I played with linux a bit in the past.  I decided to give 10.10 a try just for the heck of it, so I made a dual boot setup.  It worked easy enough.. but when I reboot into linux, I get the ubuntu splash screen and then the screen went black.

I got the 'start up' sound, but then the monitor gave me the 'unsupported resolution' message.  Basically, it was sending a signal that my monitor didn't like, and there is no easy way to change it.  What I had to do was change a boot up parameter in the linux boot area (the name of which escapes me for some reason right now).. it was like "ro nomodeset" or something stupid like that.. and this allowed me to boot to a command line, in which i was able to set the video for compatibility mode or something... and then it boot.. and then I was able to set everything up properly.

In one hand it wasn't THAT big of a deal, but it did require me to do a lot of research, depending on others having the same issue and the same knowhow as to how to get it to work.. in order for me to fix my issue, so on the other hand, there is NO WAY that the 'average user' would go through this hassle.  NO WAY at all.  They would get the black screen... maybe double check their connections... maybe pound the F8 key a bunch of times hoping for some kind of safe mode or something... and then throw it all away and install Windows instead.

And this was on the FIRST BOOT!  Imagine running into problems later down the line!

I understand it's open source and all that, but the problem is that only 'geeks' are contributing to it all, and because of this everything has to be done in a geeky way, using manual settings and text based commands... and because of this Linux will never become mainstream.

[pervert]

I was quite impressed with it playing aces high, on an old pc it served as a stop gap and boosted the performance allowing me to play a little longer until I got something faster. Aces High had a few quirks with characters appearing over text etc, and the menu background going see thru when you logged out but nothing that affected how it played, my fps was very good better than windows xp even though I was running an emulator to play it.

[Tigger29]

Speaking of Aces High, I installed it through WINE and can load it to the opening screen, but anytime it actually tries to do anything, it crashes.

Click on OFFLINE, it crashes.
Click on Video Settings, it crashes.
Click on Account Management.. it gets to the name/password screen just fine.

This tells me it's a video thing.  I can't find any GUI setting for WINE that fixes this... any suggestions?

ATI HD5830 Video card by the way.

[WWhiskey]

I used to have AH on my linux, with wine and it worked good with the keyboard but my stick hat switches would mess it up!
I have ubuntu on my spare computer and it is the only one I let anyone else use,,,, nobody touches my game computer!
never had a problem with it,, all the kids use it and no trouble at all!

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Speaking of Aces High, I installed it through WINE and can load it to the opening screen, but anytime it actually tries to do anything, it crashes.

Click on OFFLINE, it crashes.
Click on Video Settings, it crashes.
Click on Account Management.. it gets to the name/password screen just fine.

This tells me it's a video thing.  I can't find any GUI setting for WINE that fixes this... any suggestions?

ATI HD5830 Video card by the way.

Same exact thing on my computers and I'm sure it's related to ATI 3D drivers.