I just installed Ubuntu for the first time (I've run GNU/Linux since '96). I kept a log as I went, since it is usually difficult to get first impressions twice. Overall, I was very impressed with the process, but I ran into a couple of very minor hitches, and one minor bug. I asked in an IRC channel, and they suggested that I post this as a blog and file some bug reports. I will file some bug reports, although some of these don't cleanly fit in bug reports (they are more policy issues). I filed more than I normally would (some of these seem frivolous -- 88445, 47, and 48), since that's what I was advised to do. At that point, someone in the channel suggested I could e-mail him about it, so I stopped filing. Note: I was installing on my laptop in my professor's office, where I did not want to disturb him, and so having forced sounds during install were a problem. I think there ought to be some way to do an install without annoying sounds. This makes it undesirable to install Ubuntu in cubicle farms, and in many other environments where system sounds would be considered rude (family watching TV, meetings, airplanes, etc.) Overall, I was extremely impressed with Ubuntu. The above were trivial details compared to the issues I'd encountered with most distributions. Video mostly worked out-of-the-box. Sound, wired, and wireless networks did work out-of-the-box. Suspend worked out-of-the-box. X mostly worked out-of-the-box (minor resolution issue). Install notes: * Obnoxious sound when install started * System had several recovery partitions I did not want mounted. Installer would not let me proceed without mount points for all partitions. This should be a warning instead of an error. I did not want my Windows, recovery, and other file systems checked, looked at, or modified in any way. * I went back and forth between "prepare partitions" and "prepare mount points" to figure out which partition is which. The system forgot the new partition I created was ext3, and I needed to delete it an recreate it. * Once or twice, I had a delay after I hit "forward" or "continue" button before something happened. Maybe I was hallucinating and this was a mouse problem, but you should have immediate feedback when you do something (if nothing else, the dialog should immediately vanish, and the delay should be before the new one pops up). * Better feedback on what is happening would be nice. I like the Debian approach, where one of the VTTYs has an exact log of everything that happens. * I reboot. Sound comes back (after being muted). I can't turn it off until I log in, even with the keyboard volume control buttons. Those should always work -- even at the log-in prompt before authenticated. * I log in, get disturbed by sound again, and muted it (mute button on the keyboard). Most of the sounds went away, but the xterm still beeps. Really, really loudly. I know that one of these is "PC speaker" and the other is "sound card," but mute should mean mute (this is a problem with most or all distributions). * Ubuntu, rather cleverly, recognized my wired and wireless cards. Curiously, I could only see them by typing ifconfig. The network button on the toolbar only showed me the loopback interface. * I plugged in a network cable (which didn't change the above), and ran dhclient manually, which worked, but showed the error: "chown: failed to get attributes of '/etc/resolv.conf'" twice. * After configuring the interface with dhclient, the network button on the toolbar showed it, but would not let me configure it ("You are not allowed to access the system configuration"). * All ports were closed with a default install! +50 points to Ubuntu for proper security. Most distributions start with a ton of open ports. * However, the CD I grabbed from ubuntu.com didn't include any security fixes. Point releases with security fixes make systems more secure. -5 points. (At one point, I installed a GNU/Linux distribution, and it was broken into while apt-get upgrade'ing a clean install). This is less of an issue, since all ports are closed. * Upon installing, I ran apt-get update/upgrade. After that, the "Software updates" in the UI still told me that there were 7 important security updates, which it proceeded to download and install. There seems to be some inconsistency with how security updates are managed. Or maybe it just did a dist-upgrade (rather than my upgrade). * Over the next several days, I continued installing packages. I found that many packages suggested packages not in the repository. I did not keep a log of exact cases, but I was installing LaTeX, as well as some development tools. It should be straightforward to write a script to find all of the instances of this, and remove non-existent suggested packages. * My laptop has an Intel graphics card (945gm), and the LCD has 1680x1050 resolution. This was not correctly configured by Ubuntu -- it ran at a lower resolution. To use the correct resolution, I had to manually install the following utility: http://www.geocities.com/stomljen/ * When I tried to make the above run on bootup, I wanted to add it to the appropriate /etc/rc?.d. I normally look at default runlevel by looking at /etc/inittab. It wasn't there. I did 'init', whose documentation was incomplete. It, for instance, did not document 'init RUNLEVEL,' which worked (I used 'init 6' to reboot), but wasn't mentioned in either the help or the manpage. The init manpage pointed to the telinit page, which pointed back to init, but neither pointed to acutal upstart documentation. 'man upstart' also did nothing. * The system does not hibernate. I think this is because I did not create a swap partition, which, I believe, is required for hibernation (and which Ubuntu encouraged me to create on install). When I try, it displays an error in text mode, but too briefly to fully read. It should ideally detect that there is no swap partition, so it cannot hibernate, and let me know without trying, or if not, display the error for long enough to let me read it. It does suspend fine. * The power button on the Gnome toolbar stepped working at some point. It worked again after a reboot. I think this was related to an apt-get upgrade, but I could be wrong. * I set up my laptop to suspend on close lid. This is generally nice. What's not nice is that if it suspends for 30 seconds because I'm switching places, I need to retype my password. Screensaver, by default, should have a minimum time to password, and this minimum should apply even if it is in suspend mode. Better yet, the screensaver/lock should only run after suspend, and only after it's been suspend for some amount of time. This may be a configuration option. I'll look later. * I have no printers set up. OO.org couldn't print to file. I don't know if this is a general bug, or something specific to my system. For whatever reason, setting up printing didn't work (may be a firewall issue on my cups server and not an Ubuntu issue), so I wanted to print to file, scp over, and lpr. I had to export to pdf, pdf2ps, scp, and print instead. On a sidenote, Ubuntu would pretend I was printing, when really, I wasn't. It should detect that it was not connecting properly. * Detect LAN printers did nothing for me. In addition, there was no way in the GUI that I saw to just connect to a CUPS server, and use all the printers there like I did on my old laptop. Eventually, I had my girlfriend set up a client.conf (she's a computer person), and then it worked. I suspect detect printers is for Windows printer sharing, but it would be ironic if we supported Windows printer sharing better than CUPS printer sharing. * With the client.conf set up by my girlfriend, Firefox worked fine, but the PDF viewer didn't see any printers still. * I decided to configure a USB TV tuner. It's not mine, but I bought it for a friend, and wanted to test it (PlayTV USB 2.0). Ubuntu didn't recognize it, but I found good instructions (http://lunapark6.com/?p=2682) on how to set it up. I set it up, installed MythTV, and got the completely question non-sensical: Configuring mythtv-database This information will be used to create a database and user for MythTV. Unless you have explicitly changed the password on the MySQL server, leave this blank. What is the password for the MySQL administrator account 'root': I left it blank, as requested, and it didn't work, as expected: Setting up mythtv-database (0.20-0.2ubuntu2) ... Failed to connect to database: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2) at -e line 5, <> line 1. Failed to create database (incorrect admin username/password?) If you supplied incorrect information, try: dpkg-reconfigure --force mythtv-database dpkg: error processing mythtv-database (--configure): subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1 * When the power cable unplugs, the computer beeps, and does one of three things: - Nothing (LCD backlight goes lower -- nothing else) - Tells me the power cable was unplugged - Tells me that the power cable was unplugged, that the battery is critically low at 94% charge, and that I have 3-7 minutes remaining. Which one of those happens is pretty random. The last one is a bug (my guess is that if the system queries about power draw at the wrong moment during the unplugging, the power draw is reported wrong, and the time remaining is calculated wrong). I decided to read some documentation next. I actually kinda wish apt had a "make it work" option and a "just install it" option. I can see cases where apt forces fake dependencies on me (I want to run some server remotely, and it makes me install it locally as a dependency), and others where I want everything to just work, and it is a touch too manual. Ideally, I type "make-mythtv-work", and it installs everything needed for it to run and to be configured properly. I type "install-mythtv-minimal," and it installs the basic mythtv, nothing else, and if I want to, it lets me connected to a remote SQL server.