Problems after using UBUNTU for about 13 Days...

[Karsten Fischer]

Caveats in UBUNTU (or, more precise, UBUNU & Gnome & Debian)

First off all, UBUNTU seems pretty stable and easy to use. Compliments 
to the developers.

Still, comparing the Desktop-Usability of UBUNTU with the only other 
Desktop-Unix (OS X)available, Ubuntu stays at the second place. 
Granted, UBUNTU runs on three different platforms: the x86-Family, 
AMD64 and PowerPC (up to G5); whereas OS X runs only on the PowerPC. 
Nevertheless, it is after all possible to produce a Unix-based System, 
which is easy to use, needs barely knowledge of computers to set it up 
or to maintain it. With this example in mind, Ubuntu should strive to 
reach a similar goal.

The current problems seem to be mostly GNOME-related, with only a few – 
but extremly annoying – bugs in the underlying system. I tried to sort 
them into the following categories: Platform-specific, 
Desktop-Specific, OS-Specific.

Now, let the list begin:

Platform: PowerPC (iBook G3, summer 2003, 800 Mhz G3, 640 MB RAM)
OS-Specific:	While running on Battery-Power, Ubuntu seems to drain the 
battery almost twice as fast as OS X; CPU is running at 400 Mhz – as it 
would in OS X, but this doesn't seem to have 	any dramatic influence on 
battery-usage. Way to go there...

OS-Specific:	the modem is neither detected nor is any software 
installed (using the Desktop-install) for the use of it. Very 
interesting, since nearly any Mac produced in the last three to four 
years seems to have a modem. Internet via Modem as well as Fax should 
be installed as default I think.

Desktop-Specific:	My Digital camera (a no-name brand which identifies 
itself as USB-Mass storage) seems to be detected, I even get a dialog 
which states that there seem to be pictures on it and if I would like 
to copy them to the computer – great. Unfortunately, in the next window 
I am asked to select my camera, since there seems to be no camera 
connected to my computer. Regardless which camera I choose, I couldn't 
import any pictures of it.

Desktop-Specific:	The Keyboard doesn't work as anticipated. After a 
long, long time of fiddling with it I came up with a work-around: every 
time I log in, I open a terminal and issue the following command 
'xmodmap -e „keycode 64=Mode_switch“', after which I can use the 
Option-Key to generate things like the '@'-smybol using the 
Apple-default Option-l. This seems to be a minor bug, but pretty 
annoying – and is probably fixed in the latest builds. By the way: it 
seems that the default buttons for closing a window (which seems to be 
– in most cases – the same as closing the application) is something 
strange and should set to the default Command-W and Command-Q

Platform: any

Desktop-Specific:	Documentation. This is a simple topic: there is 
almost none of it. When I pressed the Help-Button, loacted conveniently 
in the Menubar (called 'Panel' here, which may be more appropriate 
since every app seems to have its own Menu sticking at the top of their 
window) I get an awful lot of documentation, but in fact hardly 
anything usable. Especially since I selected German as my default 
language – but the Help System is always English. What I expected – and 
probably most users of Ubuntu – would be an introduction to the OS, 
perhaps a chapter „Differences to Windows & OS X“, several guides like 
„How to connect to the Internet, Printing, Faxing & Scanning, How to 
set up your local Network“ and so on. And I would prefer a native 
Helpsystem.

Unsure:	I greatly appreciate OpenOffice, but there seems no way to get 
Spellchecking to work.
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