[Ubuntu-be] Ubuntu Feisty - A little disappointed...

[Stijn Verslycken]

Hello,

Yesterday I decided to start playing with Ubuntu Feisty. Edgy was
installed on my system, but I wanted to see and use the installer, so
I decided this time not to use the dist-upgrade functionality and
perform a clean install.

I own a Dell Inspiron 6400 (in the States known as E1505), which is
quite common and sold all around the world. This laptop has a Core 2
Duo T7200 cpu, 2GB RAM, a 160GB Sata disk, ipw3945abg wireless nic,
broadcom lan nic, ...and an ATI Mobilty Radeon X1400...

I started off by booting a Feisty Live cd. The kernel loaded, the
fancy Ubuntu boot screen showed up and after a short while all
activity stopped and my numlock/capslock/... leds started blinking: a
kernel panic had occurred... Really cool :(

I killed my system, rebooted into Edgy and burnt the alternate cd for attempt 2.
The alternate installer successfully completed the installation,
although I got X related questions during the installation about what
screen resolution I wanted to use. This is something I had never seen
before in any installation of Ubuntu or Debian... Once the
installation was completed I booted the system and the first thing I
saw was a Linux kind of a BSOD, asking me whether I wanted to see the
X debugging output or not. Then I was confronted with an extremely
user friendly login prompt...

I tried the "dkpg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" routine, in order to get
at least X up and running in some basic mode, but whatever I tried
(vesa, ati,...) with very very basic settings didn't work at all. The
startx debugging info kept complaining about a screen that could not
be found...

I ended up downloading and installing the latest official proprietary
driver from the ATI-website, building and installing my stuff from
their run-file. Then I was able to log in graphically.


Even though I really hate to be confronted with these kinds of
problems, I'm generally able to solve these things, because I've been
using Linux on the desktop for quite some years now (since 2002) and
because I'm into IT in general.

Ubuntu, Ubuntu-be and many more organizations want to promote Linux on
the desktop. Average Joe should be able to install and work with Linux
on his own pc, without a hassle. Unfortunately, this is not what I
experience... So it's getting much harder for me to recommend Ubuntu
to any average computer user, since they may experience the same
horrible stuff as me, but they don't know what to do at all...

Personally I still support the goals of Ubuntu, I see the progress
they make, I see their goals and I like the fact that their software
is always pretty much up-to-date...but I can't stand the big blunders
they make: a couple of months ago the big X-server breaking update
that got released, now this X problems and kernel panics when
installing (or using the live-cd),...


I just wondered how you as an Ubuntu-promoting organization deal with
these kinds of issues?


-- 
Stijn "Slike" Verslycken
mailstijn at gmail.com