First impressions with Ubuntu

[Mark Shuttleworth]

>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 :)
>  
>
Thank you!

> - 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.
>  
>
When you say "recognized by HAL" do you mean "show up in the hal device 
manager"? Or do you mean "automatically mounted under /media/"? Both 
should happen, please file a bug in bugzilla.ubuntu.com if it doesn't.

> - 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 ?
>  
>
Matt, it should be no problem to set the volume for PCM2 as well as PCM.

> - 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.
>  
>
This is coming. It will have BIG WARNING signs on it, and we can't 
really debug or solve problems you might experience while running with 
windows drivers, but it will be possible to do this without having to go 
and find ndiswrapper somewhere else and compile it.

>- 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 ?
>  
>

I don't know how complete they are yet, but add "universe multiverse" to 
the deb line in your /etc/apt/sources.list to get other software. 
multiverse might not yet exist.

>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 rest of the desktop is likely to switch to something more earthy, so 
the window border colour will be more in tune when that happens. If it 
still doesn't appeal to you, try Computer->Desktop preferences->Themes

-- 
Ubuntu! Building a Desktop OS for the 21st century. www.ubuntulinux.org
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/