Feedback on Ubutu after 2 weeks

[Joaquin Cuenca Abela]

Hi,

I've been using Ubuntu since ~2 weeks ago, and I wanted to share my
experiencies. I will almost exclusively list only things that went
bad, and ignore the many things that were good. I've filled bugs for
the bugs I knew where to fill them. If this is not the right place for
these kind of comments, please say me where should I send it.

At first look, it looks like a really polished distro. Kudos to all the devs!

The install was fast and without a glitch, except by the fact that it
screwed the boot of my Windows XP partition (problem fixed now using
sfdisk).

Now, the problems:

I have a usb hub, and attached to it I have several accesories, among
them a webcam and the plantronics dsp300 headset. I also have a CD/DVD
writer, and a secondary CD/DVD reader and an epson stylus color 680.

The first thing I did was to use the needed packages to be able to
play mp3 files and divx films.
Used rythmbox to import my mp3 collection, it freezed in the middle of
the import (more exactly, when it had done ~10% or less of the
import).
Restarted rythmbox, tried to play a mp3 file, no sound. Fiddled a bit
with alsa configuration, and to make a long history short, it didn't
work. Unplugged the USB hub (with the headset/webcam), restarted, and
now sound works. Is this headset supported at all? Any help debugging
this problem?

However, rythmbox is still unable to import my library so I'm stuck
with totem to ear mp3 files.

Tried to navigate to my windows fat32 partition. Nautilus segfaulted
(bug #160630). Fixed my fstab and now nautilus works ok. Accented
characters in files don't show ok, however, even when I (think) have
selected the right codepage in the fstab.

USB Mass storage devices appear automatically on the desktop when
plugged, but have several problems using an iBead mp3 player. Even if
df reports ~120 M free on that unit, a cp fails saying that there is
not enough free space. In fact, I can only copy files to the iBead if
I delete some previous contents. It seems that it only sees as free
the space that has been deleted after the last mount. Anyone else with
this problems? Agains which module should I report it?

No problems importing contents from a digital camera.

Using a usb hard disk, the transfer throughput was less than half the
theoretical throughput of USB1 (ie, it was a pita to copy something).

When I try to unmount the usb drive, it says that somebody is still
using it, so it can't be unmounted (same error when unmounting through
the command-line). Lsof shows fam as the culprit. You need to kill it
to be able to unmount.

Tried to use the printer. Added my printer to the gnome-cups-manager,
send something to print with openwriter. The printer prints rubbish
(random ascii characters). Cancelled printing operations, stopped and
restarted the printer. Keeps printing rubbish. Stop cups (the printer
icon on the gnome-cups-manager disappears, nice touch!), restart cups
(the gnome-cups-manager segfaults), restart the printer... keeps
printing rubbish.

I have not tried to turn on the printer since then. (should I report
against gnome-cups-manager, cups, ghostscript, ??)

Created two extra users, and changed the default language to
fr_FR at UTF-8 on one of them (called "adel"). When "adel" tries to do
anything that involves gsudo, nothing happens (ie, when you click on
the menu "run as another user", or click on something that needs root
rights, as synaptic).

Tried to play some films with srt subtitles with totem. No way to use
the subtitles trough the UI. It seems the bug has been fixed now.

Burned some DVDs (with nautilus). The first burned DVD was ok, but:

1) it seems it's burning at 2x, when the burner / dvd media can burn at 8x
2) there is no way in nautilus to keep the previous contents of the
DVD and burn additional content in another session. It always erases
previous contents.
3) After burning some DVDs, nautilus shows a cdrecord error (don't
remember exactly what error). However, the DVD has been correctly
burn.

Cheers,

-- 
Joaquin Cuenca Abela