First impressions with Ubuntu

[Julien Olivier]

Hi list !

I've just installed ubuntu, and my first impressions are that it's a
very good distribution. It might stay on my laptop for a while :)

Now, I noticed a few problems:
 - The CD volume of the OSS mixer is at 0 after install. Thus, audio CDs
don't work. I had to go the the sound volume controler to change it.
 - OpenOffice and Firefox aren't internationalized in French (and there
is no French dictionary either in OOO).
 - If you start your computer with a USB mass storage device plugged in,
it won't be reconized by HAL. You have to unplug it, and re-plug it.
 - My sound card is an Intel Corp. 82801DB (ICH4) AC'97 Audio
Controller. On this sound card, I can't control the volume using the
"volume" or "PCM" channels. Only the "PCM2" channel controls volume. The
first problems is that PCM2 is muted by default, and is not controlled
by the sound volume applet. Is there a solution to this ?
 - If you change the icon theme to "hicolor", all the icons disappear,
and the trash applet crashes.

Now, some questions about legally-encumbred apps:
 - After installing toolame (I also tried with lame), I still can't rip
to MP3 with sound-juicer. Do I need to do anythig else ?
 - Why don't you provide ndiswrapper packages. Are there any legal
reasons not to ? I think it would be great to have it by default, and to
even build a front-end so that one can easily install Windows drivers
for his WiFi card.
- How to install Flash and the JRE for Firefox ? How to install DVD
playback, additional multimedia codecs ? Is there a repository for all
this problematic packages, such as livna.org for Fedora or PLF for
Mandrake ?

Finally, a suggestion:
 - I like Ubuntu's default theme, except one thing: the brown color on
the window title bar. I think brown isn't a very neutral color. I would
prefer something blueish... But that's only a  question of taste of
course.

Sorry for the long email, I just hope it will be useful. And
congratulations for this great distribution !

-- 
Julien Olivier <julo at altern.org>