Linux Newbie Info Request

[lconrad at laymusic.org (Laura Conrad)]

>>>>> "Matej" == Matej Cepl <ceplm at seznam.cz> writes:

    >> pretty slick these days, although their default install has
    >> holes in it that might be hard for a newbie to navigate around.

    Matej> Could you elaborate on this, please? I am on Debian
    Matej> thinking about "upgrade" to kubuntu (I was just told on
    Matej> IRC, that there is no way how to upgrade, I will have to
    Matej> probably reinstall, but anyway), so I would be interested
    Matej> in hearing all nasty little secrets of Ubuntu.

I don't know anything all that nasty, but here are a few of the
problems I hit on last week's install:

         I could ssh or scp from but not to the new machine.  This
         turned out to be because openssh-client was installed but not
         openssh-server.  This in spite of the fact that I started
         with the server install cd, in the hope of avoiding that kind
         of issue, which I had also been through when I put Ubuntu on
         the laptop.

         When I first partitioned the drive, I misread the prompt for
         specifying the size, and ended up giving Windows 200 GB and
         Ubuntu 50 GB instead of the other way around.  This might
         have been me being in a hurry, but I'm usually a fairly
         literate person.

         Sound mysteriously didn't work at first, and then
         mysteriously started working after I installed some seemingly
         unrelated things.  It still seems to have some problems --
         the clicks on pysol get really badly out of sync after it's
         been running a few hours.

         The current big practical problem is that there doesn't seem
         to be any way to install tetex 2.5 on Dapper.  There's
         someone on the ubuntu-users mailing list trying to help me,
         but we aren't succeeding as well as I'd like.  On my old
         debian system, I just pinned tetex, and it just worked.

         As you would expect, the server install didn't install X.  I
         attempted to install it piecemeal, but didn't get a
         functioning X windows system until I said to install gnome.
         I'm sure I would have done that eventually anyway, but it
         does mean that some of the dependancy stuff isn't as
         dependable as it might be.

Most of these problems were pretty trivial for an experienced linux
user to fix, but I can imagine a newbie being pretty stumped.  The
users list is unusually good source of support.

On the whole, it was a remarkably smooth install compared with the
others I've done.  My impression is the the upgrade route is
definitely not recommended, and if you can do what I did and install
on a new disk and then mount your old root drive so you can copy
config files as needed you'll probably be a lot better off.  Although
it still can't find the filter for my samsung printer.

-- 
Laura (mailto:lconrad at laymusic.org , http://www.laymusic.org/ )
(617) 661-8097	fax: (501) 641-5011
233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139