Cautious possible new member/user

[Stephen Constantinou]

Dear All

After lots of loyalty to Mandrake/Mandriva I have experienced more 
things not working out of the box as I have happily ungraded from 
earlier versions.  My level of skill is low, though I do know I have 
learnt a lot since Mandrake 8.5.  I know calculate four things that used 
to be working by default as not working now without user intervention. 
Even autofs was not working automatically, which means I will have to 
manually mount unless I use up some tech support to learn to overcome 
this.  I have never managed to get my onboard/soft dial up modem on my 
laptop working in any version of Linux.

I have browsed the website but I cannot find an exhaustive list of 
applications that you included.  Since Mandrva was on a DVD and I am 
about to burn the ISO I want to check a few things so that I do not have 
an unrealistic expectation.

1) Can I expect to have openssh installed by default so that all I have 
to do is start konqueror and enter the ip/username of the other Linux 
(Mandriva 2007) computer on my network?

2) Can I expect SAMBA to be installed by default with an entry in the 
menu to start Samba when I want to connect to my Windows PC (which is 
also the Mandriva 2007 as it dual boots)?

3) Can I expect Openoffice to be installed by default?

4) Does the Ubuntu have any othe VNC tools, not VNC itself.  In Mandriva 
I was using a KDE tool the name of which might be like

5) Do I have to choose between Gnome and KDE or is one the default?

6) Are there any applications for watching DVDs?

7) Do you use CUPS

8) Every version of Mandrake/Mandriva I have ever had displys an error 
message during boot that slamer (or something similar) could not be 
found/loaded.  This I think relates to the soft modem.  Does Ubunto 
support soft modems?  Please say yes!

9) Will my PCMCIA external CDROM be supported?

10) Will USB flash disks/pen disks, floppies and DVD/CD ROMS be 
supported so that I only have to insert and they will be recognised?

Hope to hear from you

Thank you

Stephen