Ubuntu-MD Meeting Follow-up Summary

[Brian Kemp]

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On 04/03/2013 10:48 AM, railroadman1 at aol.com wrote:
> Thank Ron, I got Wubi working and was able to down load 12.04 using
> ethernet and get it working... Stuart
> 

Stuart:

Your experience with "wireless not working until updates" is still
pretty common. If you're buying a machine to run Ubuntu (or other
GNU/Linux distributions) you can choose your hardware to avoid this.
The problem is that "I cherry-picked my hardware" doesn't help the
people who are installing it on a former Windows machine. :)

"ufw" is the built-in default firewall and should be already
installed. There's a front-end to it called "gufw", I believe.

GIMP is a package install away - should be in the software center.

As for the Polaroid tablet...hold off on that purchase. You may end up
wasting your $80:

The tablet may not have an unlockable bootloader. No unlockable
bootloader, no alternative operating systems. Period. (This is what
the people raising hell about "Restricted Boot" are going on about.)

Polaroid may not release the source code for the Linux kernel (they
are legally required to do so; doesn't mean they do). If they don't,
the board may not be well supported (if there's a build at all).

The installation tools may not exist outside of Polaroid, or they may
not work with GNU/Linux - so you'd have to find someone willing to
write free software versions.

Ubuntu may not support the hardware in that tablet (processor might be
an older architecture, like ARM6 vs ARM7; this is why Firefox doesn't
work on older Android phone).

Over on this side of the field (the GNU/Linux community0, early
adopters are punished unless they're the sort of people willing to
blaze the trail.

If you want a tablet "now", I'd save your money & for a Nexus 7 or
Nexus 10. Those have unlockable bootloaders, Google releases the
source code to the kernel, the tools ("fastboot") are readily
available (not in Software Center, but not hard to find), and I'm
near-certain the Ubuntu developers were testing those devices.

- --BK
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