My Negative Gutsy Experience

[Denis Melnikov]

Hi,

I'm a volunteer to install LTSP at my children's school.
I'm not a newbie and supposed my skill sufficient to
deploy Linux in a small school net.

First, I'd installed Feisty, it happened this spring.
Two things were striking upon installation, very slow
thin client booting (3-5 min.), and transparent mounting
of local devices (CDs, floppies, USB keys) - great!
Unfortunately the server wasn't put into operation.

I've been back to the server at the moment of Gutsy release.
So I decided to upgrade Feisty to Gutsy, first, to speed
up client booting, and second, to test upgrade
possibility. Upgrade was successful and booting now
takes 1 min - great! But this is the end of our success
story.

1) Local devices stopped mounting.
Rarely a floppy icon appears at some user's desktop.
Rarely an USBkey or CD mounts. But this happens without
any relationship with username or computer. The fact is
that only one user have an access to local devices at
a time. Of course, all users are allowed to mount local
devices.

2) We need Russian (localization, fonts, layout).
After installing appropriate packages user need to
change desired language before EACH logon.
How to make the language default? For one user and
for all users?
Can I leave desktop English, and change locale only?
When I change language Gnome asks me to rename folders
in my home - Media, Music, etc. - into Russian.
If I forget to select language I'm asked to rename
them back. 'Don't ask me again' checkbox has no role.
How to make keyboard layout switch default for all?

3) How to make proxy settings in Firefox default for all?

4) Sound works from time to time. In Flash clips it
doesn't work at all. In control panel sound works.
And sound icon in righthand upper corner always
looks as 'mute'.

5) One user's desktop background have disappeared after
ordinary logon. In this user's session gnome-panel started
to fail loading modules. When he tried to add Switch-user
module to the panel, he got the same failure message.
By the way, how to setup default (again 'default')
collection of panel modules, i.e. switch-user,
keyboard-layout, etc.?

6) Server downloads and installs updates and display
an icon asking to reboot after that. But reboot menu
at client reboots the client only. To reboot the server
I have to 'shutdown -r now' at command prompt. Clients
should get a message that allow them to finish their
work. But alas, they are forcibly logged off.

7) When one right-click inside entry field at login
screen, the screen blanks and login reappears in several
seconds (X restarts?).

After all the troubles I couldn't prove Linux to be the
good choice if needed. Whether IT teacher wasn't
interested in it.
Unfortunately, I have to establish Edubuntu Gutsy
is far far away from system ready for non-IT admins.

Denis

P.S. Now I'll try to install clean Gutsy. If troubles
stay I'll downgrade to Feisty.