Comments for The Ubuntu Experiment

Comment on The partition table by Vincent

Vincent — Sat, 30 May 2009 09:41:29 +0000

Hmm yeah… I’m a bit at a loss as to why I did that as well. If I were to redo it now I’d have chosen 2GB. It hasn’t really done harm, I suppose, since she was far from short of space.

Anyway, I can’t redo it now – the external hard drive is broken so it’s just Windows now…

Comment on The partition table by n00b

n00b — Sat, 30 May 2009 05:39:01 +0000

swap-partition of 10 GB – ok!? So you have 5GB of memory installed.. what an unusual number. Not that it’s impossible of course, just odd.

Ubuntu has this to say about swap-partitions.

# If you have n MB of RAM, you need between n and 2*n MB of swap.
# If you have a large enough disk, use 2*n MB swap.

Hard drives are considerably slower than RAM.

Now then, personally I’d say if you have 1GB system memory, use around 512mb for swap. This case for using massive swap is really going to degrade performance as the hard drive is going to be… well nothing really a Linux kernel isn’t that silly… of course it won’t try to use anywhere near that!

Why have 4GB of really nice fast DDR memory to then trash your O/S with a lame old 10k hard drive swap-partition?

Fix your system if you got swap wrong.

sudo mkswap /mnt/512Mb.swap

sudo swapon /mnt/512Mb.swap

gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

add this line at the end of the file:

/mnt/512Mb.swap none swap sw 0 0

What’s there to put to the test? It’s debian with some user friendly bits…

Comment on The first steps: problems with setting up Ubuntu by Vincent

Vincent — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:10:29 +0000

I’m certainly not going to deny that OpenOffice is an excellent applicaion, and working with the native format probably really isn’t difficult – if you’re consciously doing it. My mother would not even be aware that her co-workers wouldn’t be able to read it.

Comment on About screen resolutions, email, scanning and themes by Lex Ross

Lex Ross — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 22:32:01 +0000

It’s a shame Ubuntu manual would not tell you much about using Compiz and all its shortcuts. The way I discovered it was Open SuSE manual, and it cost me several hours of surfing. Then I had to install Compiz configuration tool which has explanation to various options. It is unclear why compiz options are packed the way they are. Win+TAB should be in basic options, as it does not require faster graphics card. And my 65yo dad finds grouping and tabbing windows to be very convenient. It does not heart to have it enabled in advanced effects, rather then sticky wobbling windows that are annoying to people of all ages.

Comment on The first steps: problems with setting up Ubuntu by Lex Ross

Lex Ross — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 22:20:55 +0000

Interesting that using Ubuntu at work on a daily basis, it never occurred to me that the menu item can be dragged to the desktop. Not from the panel though – a little inconsistency here.

As to the OpenOffice, one of the things I like best about it, is that it can email documents, converting them on the fly. So I use compact OASIS format and when I need to share the document, I simply go to the File->Send->Document as MS Word for instance.

It is also very useful when I need to send a quote to the customer and I don’t want them to see my calculations in the spreadsheet. For that, I simply choose ‘Email as PDF’ – in Windows, we used to print to PDF first, then save it to the temp folder, go to Outlook, attach PDF, click on attachment to verify the correct file is attached, then delete the temp file. Actually, temp files were never deleted )

The bottom line is, it is fairy easy to use native format, I even convert incoming documents to OASIS sometimes, then edit them and send back in whatever format they originally came. Works great!

Comment on It’s time to face it: Linux is not coming to the desktop. Ever. by Vincent

Vincent — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 10:35:38 +0000

ikkefc3 and Chris Lees, that’s exactly what I thought! If someday Windows breaks down then, for the time being, Ubuntu is “forced upon her”, and then she might really find out she likes it

Unfortunately, most people don’t have a dual-boot set up by someone else, so when their Windows breaks down they just don’t have a computer until they buy a new one with, again, Windows

Comment on It’s time to face it: Linux is not coming to the desktop. Ever. by Chris Lees

Chris Lees — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 05:56:05 +0000

Linux is coming to the desktop, but in a different form to the way you tried it.

I had a similar experience; I installed Ubuntu onto a friend’s new laptop as a dual-boot with Vista. She said that she doesn’t like Vista, so I excitedly arranged to install Ubuntu on it.

Even though I spent two whole nights getting the hardware to work properly (bleeding edge cheapo laptop) and installing useful programs for her, she will only use the Ubuntu partition for pirating DVDs in K9Copy. Everything else, she boots into Vista for. Ubuntu’s foothold on her computer is under threat too – the other day I caught her looking up “DVD Shrink” for Windows.

As the above poster testifies, someone who has no pressing desire to try something new will just stick to Windows. When the barely-computer-literate (BCL) switch to Linux and actually use it, it’s because their choice of using Windows has been removed – either through OS damage, intentional removal of Windows, or through buying a Linux-preinstalled computer.

That’s the lesson I’ve learnt. It doesn’t matter if you’re using Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS or Mandriva – Linux just won’t get used by the BCL unless there’s no choice.

Comment on It’s time to face it: Linux is not coming to the desktop. Ever. by ikkefc3

ikkefc3 — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 22:16:41 +0000

This also happened at few years ago with my parents (suse 9.3 and Windows XP dualbooted). A few years later (2007) we bought a new computer. I installed it as a Ubuntu/Windows Xp dualboot.
On an evening when the electric power fell away in the middle of a Windows boot, Windows wouldn’t boot anymore, so they tried Ubuntu. They figured out how they could “internet.” Now, a year later, my mother organizes her photo’s (and e-mails them to friends, which she never did in Windows), and listens to internetradio(on shoutcast with Elisa Mediacenter), my father can read his own E-mail (instead of asking someone elso to read his e-mail) and finding documents with Beagle ought to be much easier than Windows Explorer. My father uses only a Windows Vm to play checkers.
Conclusion: Your mother could still be going to use Ubuntu if she wants (e.g. when Windows “breaks down.” (and this does almost count generally).

Comment on It’s time to face it: Linux is not coming to the desktop. Ever. by Vincent

Vincent — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 09:18:01 +0000

@openwaves – thanks, I’ve updated the post. It probably still holds that she won’t be able to open them (with her version of Office). But then again, I guess one of my brothers will install an illegal version of Office ‘07 for her. Sigh.

@byrningbunny – thank you. You put in words what I wanted to say. I’ve added it to the post so it stands out more.

@Satchmo – well, actually, I’m quite sure that Macs are not coming to the desktop. Sure, it can conquer a niche part of the market (and I think it’s doing very well in that), but it won’t make massive inroads against Windows, not with people like my mother. And most people are like my mother when it comes to technology.

If Evolution doesn’t do it why didn’t you install Thunderbird which is much better for end users?

It’s not that “Evolution doesn’t do it”, it’s that it didn’t do it immediately, the way she wants to. Thunderbird wouldn’t do that either, because that, too, is a program unknown to her.

Also, if Ubuntu were to come pre-installed, most people would be using the default email application, which is Evolution.

Comment on It’s time to face it: Linux is not coming to the desktop. Ever. by be4truth

be4truth — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 01:38:20 +0000

Judging Linux by one user – well. If you have to move your mum over to use a cell phone you will encounter the same problems. I agree that Linux is not an OS that works without support. If Evolution doesn’t do it why didn’t you install Thunderbird which is much better for end users?
There is hardly anybody in my community who manages to be on Windows without having troubles sooner or later. It is not a question about Ubuntu or any other distro. If you want an end user machine it is certainly different then when you install a network with lots of computers.