Re: PING: Ian Smith- UBUNTU

On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:37:40 -0000
"Glenallan" <robt.black@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Ian Smith" <ianinhoose@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:20071030190149.688fc8d6@xxxxxxxxx
On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:27:18 -0000
"Glenallan" <robt.black@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Josiah Jenkins" <josiah-jenkins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

How old ??? About 5 years.
It very successfully runs XP Home.
It only has a 400 mHz processor.
It's only 8 G HDD, but I have spare
160 G HDD portable Drive.

Maybe I should leave well alone.?
-----------

G


It wouldn't run on my old desktop box (which I have
subsequently retired and dismantled) which had two
Intel 200Mhz Pentiums on a Tyan motherboard.

Why not run Ubuntu from the CD (prior to installing)
to see how it goes.

My £0.02 worth.

-- jjj

JJJ's suggestion is a good one. If you have the standard Ubuntu
CD, it should be able to boot up, access internet, run many built-in
programs etc, without affecting the hard drive in any way, so you can
"try before you buy". The "live CD" is usually how I assess any linux.
It will be a bit slow from the CD until you do the actual hard drive
install. 8GB would be enough for Ubuntu, I reckon. The actual
installation experience is pretty straightforward, and should be over
in about half an hour.

My experience of this latest Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon), released last
week, has been very positive, and some of the "wrinkles" of previous
releases have been ironed out.

If you do decide to install and, on reflection, it appears rather
slow, you could try the lightweight variant, Xubuntu, which is
intended for older systems, it being more frugal with resources. I
used that one quite successfully for a while.




Is it straightforward to set up a Broadband Connection??
Also tell me how it handles Word documents, please.
Any peculiarities I should know about, like
you had a hard time with ......... [whatever]

G

If your PC has a built-in ethernet port or PCI network card, it should
just work right away, and connect automatically with your broadband
modem. When bootup is finished, you should be able to surf immediately.
At least that's what mine did.

"Word" documents are handled nicely by Openoffice and Abiword packages.
Openoffice and Gnumeric will open/edit spreadsheets too. I haven't
encountered problems in this respect.

On boot up, you have to login as a user with a password, but you can
make this automatic if desired. Any administrative tasks which change
system settings usually prompt you for the password at each occurrence.
So choose a memorable one!

Say goodbye to drive letters, eg. A:, C: and D:. Now you have 'sda1' for
disk 'a' partition 1, 'sdb2' for disk 'b' partition 2, etc. Fairly
logical. You get used to it _eventually_. Icons for each partition and
any CD/DVD's or external HD's are presented on the desktop.

I had an issue with monitor gamma correction. But I like the colour
balance just right, for photo manipulation etc. Apparently, such a thing
is not built into Ubuntu's user-friendly settings, even though other
linux's have it. Quite frankly, I'm surprised at this, given the level
of attention they paid everything else. Anyway, got round it by using a
small script which runs automatically at startup. Not obvious for
newbies.

Oh, and the usual menu bar appears at the _top_ of the screen in Ubuntu.
A bit disconcerting at first, but it can be moved and customised.

Here's a screenshot of my current desktop setup, slightly customised
from default Ubuntu -
http://www.1r5.net/photos/screenshot.jpg

Anyway, if looking for more info, you're very welcome to email me
(remove "naespam").
.

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