[ubuntu-uk] FWD: [[Hampshire] Report on Tesco Ubuntu machine]

[Alan Pope]

This mail popped up on the Hampshire LUG mailing list, and I thought other 
Ubuntu people might be interested in the comments. 

I have already pointed out to Peter that his upgrade method (dapper -> 
gutsy) was probably not optimal. I'm also concerned that the vendor is 
talking about Windows in this way when selling Ubuntu kit.

Cheers,
Al.

----- Forwarded message from Peter Salisbury <peterthevicar at users.sourceforge.net> -----

From: Peter Salisbury <peterthevicar at users.sourceforge.net>
To: Hampshire LUG Discussion List <hampshire at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 23:28:37 +0000
Subject: [Hampshire] Report on Tesco Ubuntu machine

Hi folks,

After three weeks waiting for stock to come in, I finally took 
delivery of a £139 Tesco machine with built in Ubuntu (actually they 
gave me 10% off because the case was a bit dented so it ended up 
costing just £126). Probably worth the money for the moment when they 
said, "You do realise it doesn't have Windows?" so we could 
reply, "That's exactly why we want it".

However...

I'm afraid it would probably not be a good first introduction to Linux 
for its target audience. As it's the first PC I've bought as a 
complete machine I was expecting a 'turn on and go' experience. 
Trouble is that it comes without a monitor and it boots up with the 
screen resolution set to 1600x1200, so both my (fairly new, fairly 
good) LCD monitors complained 'Signal out of range' and gave a blank 
screen. Of course I simply Ctrl-Alt-F1 and nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf 
and took out the higher resolutions. Can't see a novice managing 
that. Also can't see many people who are buying a £139 PC having a 
1600x1200 monitor lying around at home!

Once that was done it was straight to a login screen asking for a 
username and password. Neither was in evidence in any of 
the 'documentation' (one sheet offering support for £99 a year and 
the motherboard booklet). Luckily we guessed it was esys/esys or it 
would have been Ctrl-Alt-F1 time again! 

Another source of fun for the unwary would be the pretty-looking CD 
with some DVD application software ..... for Windows!

That got us into Ubuntu Dapper, default mud brown with its rather 
childish theme. OpenOffice was at 2.0, Firefox at 1.5 so I went for 
an upgrade. NOT an easy process; I think it would have been quicker 
just to download the install CD and start from scratch but I was 
nervous about losing what I had working. I ended up using aptitude as 
I found both the package managers (Adept and Synaptic) very 
cumbersome in comparison. It took a lot of goes round the block and a 
few dpkg -i of individually downloaded packages to upgrade to Gutsy. 
There were two or three times where files had moved between packages 
which often gets apt in a circular frenzy. I only had to reboot once 
though!

Through all this I stuck with Gnome, thinking I'd eventually see the 
point, but in the end I cracked and installed kubuntu-desktop. It 
took four minutes over a wireless connection to download and 
transformed Ubuntu into Kubuntu. Much more to my liking. I can't say 
I think much of the Kubuntu replacement for kcontrol though - it 
seems to be missing lots of the controls and doesn't seem to have 
gained anything in the process.

Several things really impressed me:

1) The PC is virtually silent - FAR quieter than the laser printer 
next to it. It's got a huge circular Intel cooler on the CPU, the fan 
hardly has to move.
2) The inside is well laid out with the cables attached to the case 
with cable ties
3) It's really easy to get into the case (once you're removed the 
annoying 'warranty void if...' sticker) and there's plenty of room 
for expansion: 3 PCI, 1 AGP, 1 spare DDR 2 slot, one spare drive bay, 
one spare CDROM bay, one empty FDD bay. There's SATA on the m/b but 
no SATA power connector so you'd need an adapter. The on-board 
graphics and sound are fine for office use.
4) The keyboard is very nice and has a bank of special keys for 
volume, play/pause, start browser etc WHICH ALL WORKED! The mouse is 
a nice enough optical job.
5) The wireless card worked immediately with a reasonably obvious GUI 
to set the IP etc.
6) I was amazed when I plugged in our two USB printers and up popped a 
message saying they'd been configured and installed. Things have 
certainly moved on since I last started from scratch! Similarly our 
Logitech Skype headset plugged in and worked; and two essential 
Windows apps worked under wine so there was no need to arrange a dual 
boot.
7) The Kubuntu theming and general look and feel are very well done, 
with gtk apps like jpilot blending in much better than I've managed 
on my Debian system.
9) But best of all of course, I bought a PC with Linux installed on 
it. Still seems cool to me!

ATB, Peter

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----- End forwarded message -----