John's S7 report

[John]

Had part of my lon-promised box shuffle today. Got fet up with my 
Gateway, it's picky and didn't like the extra RAM I bought. Being based 
on i815 it can't use more than 512 Mb anyway (how did I get _two_ of 
these obnoxios devices?).

took my 30 Gb out, put in 10.2. Not detected. Agggh.
Eventually found another. Silly me, it was in the Acer (Via chipset).

So Wife's won the Gateway PIII 550, i815 chipset etc.

I didn't manage to get my S7 upgraded to 8 though my modem, so 7 it for now.

Booted okay, didn't get to choose my kbd layout.
The disk aready had a Debian derivitave so I as happy to use existing 
partitions.

However, it would have been nice to be offered the chance to resize and 
preserve my existing system.

When I booted, I specified 'vga=791." This worked well, and I would like 
to have seen it propogated to my grub configuration.

This peecee is not connected to any LAN; it seems odd to be forced to 
configure a network. The mobo has an onboard NIC; I'm not going to 
remove it.

Given the lack of a working LAN, it seems pointless to run ntpdate to 
set my clock.

(I hit on the idea of setting the clock silently during install some 
years go. I installed it on a box that had XP installed but not 
registered, and advanced the clock by some months (correctly), The 
result; XP wouldn't run;-)).

I was promised a chance to set the root password, didn't get a chance 
actually set it.

Seems pointless wasting time asking for user password twice; in the 
event it gets muffed, breaking in to set it properly is no big deal:-)


On reboot, it asked me to reinsert the U CD and asked me which device. 
How the hell should I know? "The" CD drive, there's only one. If there's 
a choice, how about spitting out the tray and telling the user "that CD 
drive?"

It appeared to mount it at /cdrom: I thought that's wrong now. Isn't it 
supposed to be /media/cdrom?

At one poiint I saw it installing apmd: I won't be using it, I use 
ACPID. Works fine on most of my boxes, pre-2000 or not.

I thought this is supposed to be a general user desktop? Why gcc, gdb 
and other developer packages. _ I do not_ want my wife writing programs 
in C.

Not that she could, she's a kindergarten teacher.

I noticed it setting up some imaginary firewire. Seemed pointless to me.

I suggest grub artwork go in before the first boot. The basic standard 
grub menu looks pretty third-rate compared with what I've seen from RH 
and SuSE. I've not done the second boot yet, but I'd guess yours looks 
better too.

having got it installed I logged in as me and started looking round. How 
to I create more accounts? No, not there.

Eventually, I found it accidently in System Preferences!! I couldn't 
actually do it because it wants root's password. root hasn't a password.

Screen resolution has come up at the truly magnificant 640x480. The 
hardware can actually do 1280x1024. Hmm.

It was then time to get the Acer going for me, so I shut it down.

It didn't turn the power off.

I'm not sure that you will convert me to gnome - I gave it a pretty 
thorough workout some time ago before I settled on KDE (despite Red 
Hat), but I will certainly look at it again.

II don't like the fact that there's no button where Windows users expect 
"start." I think that is going to confuse Suzanne for a while; she's 
been used to it in KDE at home and Windows at work for some time.

I expect to install a Wireless card in it RSN, and that  will be its 
network connexion. I was interested to see wireless tools being installed.

I was less pleased with pcmcia stuff being installed on a machine that 
is clearly not a laptop; Woody could figure that one out (after the 
event to be sure), I'd like U to save time and not install it if it will 
never be used.

Oh, watching it install stuff off the CD and not knowing how long it's 
going to take or whether it's going to ask silly questions isin't very 
exciting. It would be useful if it could say, "This will take half an 
hour; there are no more questions to answer."



In the past week I've moved live Sarge systems from one box to another. 
On both occasions it was a major drama. Is U expected to handle this neatly?