My Shout

Ubuntu initiation rites

by Stan Beer

Wednesday, 22 February 2006

I must say that my first week as a Linux user – or more specifically an Ubuntu user - has been a real education. The first lesson I learnt is that some members of the user community are a really touchy lot, while others are very helpful.

Just to recap, I tripped at the first hurdle in my attempt to install Ubuntu on a Windows XP computer. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong when I tried to download and burn an installation CD. I didn’t realise that with ISO files, you can’t use the Windows Media Player CD burner – you need a CD burner that can handle ISO files.

My beef was that this was not documented on the Ubuntu download page. Yes I know now that there is an Ubuntu Wiki where such things are discussed. But it wasn’t front and centre on the download page where a beginner would expect to find such a thing. After reading my article, a nice chap from the Ubuntu documentation team contacted me and told me that he has since rectified that situation and posted a link to the Wiki piece on how to burn ISO disks on the download page. I also received some very helpful suggestions in emails from knowledgeable Ubuntu users, some of which had gone through similar experiences when they first started out with Linux.

Then of course, I got some emails that were not so nice. Some more or less told me I was some sort of moron and lame brained idiot, who had no business writing about Linux for daring to suggest that the Ubuntu documentation was less than perfect. The Ubuntu forum was buzzing with sneering remarks such as: “Is he kidding?”, “What a lamo” and so on.

What I noticed is that most of the helpful suggestions and remarks came from mature and serious Linux contributors – developers actually working on projects to improve the distributions and senior people using Linux in enterprise and education applications. They understand that it’s an important part of software development to make it as idiot proof (or in my case lamo proof) as possible. The sneerers and abusive email senders seemed to be mainly kids – or at least that level of maturity.

Now for the good news. After successfully burning an Ubuntu installation disk, I easily installed it on my Windows XP desktop PC in a dual boot configuration. The installation process took about 30 minutes and the only part where I was little unsure was how big to make the Linux partition on the disk. Anyway I made a semi-intelligent guess and it worked fine – perhaps I should have consulted the Wiki first though!

Now that I have Ubuntu up and running – and I must say I like the Gnome user interface - the next thing I need to do is get my Linux computer hooked into the wireless LAN and get the printer installed. I don’t have a driver for my printer – a Canon LBP810 laser. Right now, all I have is Firefox, Open Office.org 2.0 and I’m in the process of trying to set up my Evolution email accounts and transfer my data from Outlook. I also need to look into getting my bookmarks across to Firefox.

I still have a lot of work ahead of me but all in good time. I think tomorrow is networking day. Hopefully when I express frustration at not being able to do something next time, I won’t get flamed for missing the obvious.{moscomment}

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