Nvidia driver installation should definitely be made as seamless as possible. But I guarantee your grandma will not be messing with dual booting or network drives. If the stated goal is noob-friendliness then these two issues are really non-issues.

Even more put off when I decided to install (with a mental note NOT to use NV drivers) but it tried to load them anyway (I’m pretty sure) and crashed. Since I had failed to make head or tail of the partitioning tool to achieve what I originally wanted (dual boot Intrepid/Hardy) then had to reinstall Hardy.

And 8.10 doesn’t yet solve a major gripe; you can’t see network drives from inside apps. I know - edit fstab - but it took me most of an afternoon last time to find out how (and I am used to working at a DOS prompt). And then the machine won’t shut down - so I spend another hour writing a script to unmount them manually. Whilst in Gatesville it just works (usually). This alone makes it IMPOSSIBLE to suggest Ubuntu to friends and family with modest home networks.

Moral: Big penguins - please remember that your minor workround can be a showstopper for the novice

I’d expect this sort of comment maybe on the Mandriva site, but not here.

There are real problems with 8.10 for noobs: partitioning interface doesn’t work with unformatted free-space; still no Broadcom wifi network adapter drivers that work “out of the box”. These are show-stoppers for noobs.

Vista gives us this terrific window () of opportunity for linux. Now is the time to help with documenting work-arounds for the show-stoppers to bring newcomers on-board.

Ubuntu is great, 8.04 was a perfect release as far as I’m concerned.

The above list isn’t quite what I’d like to see worked on, but there are some good things there.

The private directory is handy (I gave up bothering to encrpyt my whole drive). So is the usb installer, I’ve always wanted to have Ubuntu on usb, but it was a bit of a pain to do so I opted for other distro’s instead.

Things I’d like to see.

- I know it’s not directly related to Ubuntu, but a better scanning interface. XSane is awful in terms of usability.
- A better layout for GIMP, much like GIMPshop.
- Cleanup of the grub loader, give it a nice theme etc… and clean up the naming of the boot options.
- And then just loads of bug fixes. All the little things.

Ps. A great feature to add to ubuntu 8.10 is an option where we can switch from one OS to another OS on a diff partition while running Ubuntu. This would really help some students, because alot of people still use windows for some things and wine likes to be difficult sometimes =)

There are other distros for people who want all the bells and whistles or who want maximum speed. It isn’t possible to focus on everything in 1 product so Ubuntu should strive to be Linux for the masses and let Slackware, Debian, Damn Small Linux, etc. focus on other areas.

Making life easier for “noobs” is what got Windows (and Mac) to the top of the food chain.

If you have to read the manual, it’s to complicated.

I have tried Kubuntu: not ready for prime time.
Then I have tried Ubuntu 8.04.1 AMD 64: I am very impressed!

There is certainly (like other distros) room for better.

I was very impressed by:
Worked immediatly on ethernet, with Firefox 3.0 64 bits (great).
I did like the very sober menus, and ease of modify them: did not use Gnome for at least 3 years: what a progress!
I over all do like the use of the mouse right button: very simple, good!

1) the easy install of NVIDIA driver. (Great quality)

2) the easy manual (well documented) install of Broadcom Wi-FI support: I had trouble there with Open Suse 11.

3) How easy it was to get working:
Skype, (Linux, 2.0) including the video cam.
My Philips DGX320 USB speakers.(great sound)
KDE4 applications, like K3B, and more…

Where more work will make it even nicer:

a) Install: Manual Disk partitioning, is so poor that I used Gparted from a live distro. Actually my favorite install/partitioner would be Gparted/Qparted/QtParted plus an “FSTAB maker”, modifying gparted or qparted may be a good way to do it?
The /etc/fstab file needs some manual adjustments for proper access: it would be nice if the installer was taking care of this with a simple to use GUI.

b) install: Ubuntu has no respect for other existing Linux partition, and will just wipe out /boot: this is a pain (need to save somewhere else etc…) and does not have to be: appending the UBUNTU stanzas to /boot/grub/menu.lst should be a pretty minor task…

There I may I suggest to name the usual files (linuzxxxx and initd) to have a string like UBUNTU so they are easy to identify.

This would also be a nice way for some one who is not a nerd, to add one more Linux and to try it! I usually do that top test pre-releases or in this case new (for me) distros.

There some discussion between the leaders of multiple distros may help, to get common ground. But the GRUB team, may be the right one to propose something simple and “common ground”.

c) Synaptic as a front end to apt-get is good, as it is.

But for “nerds” (like me) installing from source, and other packages, apt-get is certainly not as good [does not resolve depencies] as either YAST (a front end) or SMART on Open Suse.

I have installed SMART, on Ubuntu, it works but it does not (yet) resolve dependencies as SMART with RPM’s on Open Suse : it will be great when it will be fully functional!

I have no favorite, but am wondering if there is need for so many packages schemes (rpm, deb, and more).
With only one, (or some commonality) would it not be easier to constanly enhance the wheel without re-designing it: not a critic, just a question…

c) Blue Tooth: could not really make it work!
It sees my BT Moto headset (H700) but does not work.
All this wireless stuff, on Linux (all!) is not ready yet.

d) Sound: seems to be a problem on all current Linux Distros.
Ubuntu is better than most, but still issues there…
Sound applications behavior is just not consistent: this may be due to the number of possible interfaces?

f) KDE4: Is indeed nice, but just take your time, and release the next Kubuntu, when it is ready: no need to rush, because Ubuntu is good!
Eventually, I tend to believe that KDE based will be the “Heavy weight” (hard disk) and Gnome based the “Light weight” (flash drive) Linux GUI.

Conclusion: Congratulation and thanks to all these contributors to Ubuntu: great Distro, Great job, which easily explains its success.

Jeffersonian.