My experience with Ubuntu...not great

[David Fawcett]

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 11:00 PM, Microbe <xxxmicrobexxx at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey folks,
>
> I thought I would share my experience installing Ubuntu.  As
> background, I am the guy friends, family and neighbours call when they
> have trouble with their Windows PC and am pretty good at it.  I can
> also find my way around a Linux terminal OK.
>
> Having read about how good desktop Linux is nowadays I thought it was
> time to give it a go.
>

Sorry you've had a hard time of it, but good for you for checking it out.

Now lets see to these issues eh?


> Well, the first problem was listening to music. MP3s were associated
> with the movie player.  I managed to sort that out easy enough but
> even when I pointed MP3s at Rhythmbox, no go...it can't play layer1
> MP3s or something.  Not a good start.
>

Many people don't realise that MP3 is actually isn't an open source codec.

Due to these licensing restraints Ubuntu can't offer MP3 support out of the
box.

That may be why you can't play MP3's because the codec has not been
installed as yet.

Personally I like to use VLC.
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ubuntu.html



> OK, let's get Skype going.  I downloaded the proper version only to
> have the install fail with the friendly message about a dependency
> needing dbus >= 4.3 I think it was.  At this point I can imagine the
> average mug giving up and I wouldn't blame them, but I was
> determined.
>
> It took me a while to find dbus to download but I did it.   Oh shucks,
> it depended on something or another XML.  I grabbed that and guess
> what...on and on it went.  It was just too hard.
>

Dependency hell is what that is called and it's easily avoided by either
using the Software Center or downloading .deb packages.

That being said I was unable to replicate your fault.

I noticed that a few people have suggested using the software center already
but I used the following link without any problems:
http://www.skype.com/intl/en/download/skype/linux/choose/

For your reference I downloaded and installed the Ubuntu 8.10+ 32 bit .deb
package without any issues.

Lastly it's a Skype beta and pointing the finger at your OS for issues with
a beta product isn't really a fair call. ;)
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