First impressions with Ubuntu

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Fri, Sep 17, 2004 at 10:27:06AM +0200, Julien Olivier wrote:

> 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.

Fixed in alsa-base 1.0.5a-1ubuntu4.

>  - OpenOffice and Firefox aren't internationalized in French (and there
> is no French dictionary either in OOO).

Did you install openoffice.org-l10n-fr?  Each translation for openoffice can
be as much as 20 megabytes, so we do not install every language by default.
In the future, this will be more automated, based on a choice of languages
in the installer.

>  - 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.

It works for me here.  I boot my system with a USB card reader attached
(which shows up as a mass storage device), and it shows up in
hal-device-manager without any re-plugging.

Perhaps it is specific to your device?

>  - 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 ?

I do not think there is a simple solution to this.  I have seen other cards
with both PCM and PCM2, where PCM is the useful one. :-/

>  - If you change the icon theme to "hicolor", all the icons disappear,
> and the trash applet crashes.

Please report this in bugzilla.

>  - 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.

There are only a few cards which require ndiswrapper that I am aware of, and
it is by nature difficult to support.  That said, look for unofficial
packages to appear sometime soon.

> - 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 ?

There will be more news about this soon.

> 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.

The artwork and themes are temporary; we will have our own look and feel for
the final release.

-- 
 - mdz