[olug] ubuntu 5.10

[Scott Miller]

As I understand it, Ubuntu is geared for the "it just works" windows
replacement crowd.  ie mostly the non-techies.  Perhaps they view emacs and
tcsh as 'too techy' to have gotten far in getting those added to the
"supported package" yet.

That being said, I do realize there are many items that are in the supported
package that seem to contradict the apparent thrust toward non-techies.
Things like integrated development environment packages and python and perl
and ruby etc.  However, there are many non-techies involved in the software
development world these days, and without some of those tools, the target
market shrinks a whole lot.  Emacs, tcsh?  Not so much.  If you're into that
level of detail, your probably not in the target market.

On a personal note, I set it up around 2 months ago as my wife's email/web
browsing machine.  It works, and that's about all she cares about, so I
don't end up spending much time supporting that machine.  So, even though
I'm probably not included in the target market, I found a good use for it
anyway.

-Scott

On 2/18/06, Rob Townley <rob.townley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On my Dell Latitude with Debian, the  only way the screen comes back
> is to do Fn+CRT/LCD key combo - the key that switches LCD, CRT, or
> Both.  Brings the display back.
>
> On 2/18/06, Matt Anderson <manderso at cs.wisc.edu> wrote:
> > After an 18 month Linux-on-the-desktop hiatus (been using a OS X
> > PowerBook), I installed Ubuntu on my old Dell Inspiron laptop a
> > couple of days ago.  I was mostly very impressed at how smoothly the
> > process went -- it autoconfigured X windows to use the 1920 x 1440
> > display, and once I found the graphical network interface
> > configuration tool, setting up my D-Link DWL-G650 wireless card was a
> > snap.  Mostly, everything just worked, and worked out of the box.
> > The hardware volume buttons (fn-page up and fn-page down) even work
> > and a little graphical volume meter pops up in X when I adjust the
> > volume with them.
> >
> > A couple of big annoyances though:
> >
> > * tcsh is not installed by default, and doesn't seem to even be
> > available part of the default package set.  After adding most of the
> > unsupported package repositories, I was able to find a tcsh-kanji
> > (which I installed and it works fine), but no plain old tcsh.
> >
> > * There is no emacs or xemacs (or micro emacs either).  Not installed
> > by default, and maybe not in the supported package set either (I
> > can't recall if I looked before I added the non-supported sets).  I
> > think that's just *bizarre*.  I can find packages through apt-get or
> > synaptic, but I get dependency errors and complaints about packages
> > that can't be or won't be installed for some reason or another.  So
> > no emacs or xemacs that's easy to install.
> >
> > Does anyone have experience with these issues?  Did I miss something
> > obvious, or are there some moderately big problems with this Ubuntu
> > release?  I doubt I'm the only one that thinks a lack of tcsh and
> > emacs is a big deal.  :-)  I haven't much desire to grapple with the
> > debian/ubuntu package management system, and though I don't really
> > *want* to install emacs from source either, it sounds like the
> > easiest thing to do at this point if I want it installed.  Anyone
> > already deal with this issue?  What did you do if so?
> >
> > A additional minor annoyance -- If I uncomment the line
> > "#ACPI_SLEEP=true" (which should enable suspend to RAM or 'sleep')
> > in /etc/default/acpi-support, and then execute /etc/acpi/sleep.sh,
> > the laptop (apparently) goes to sleep just fine, but refuses to turn
> > the display back on when it wakes up.  I've never had a working
> > suspend on a linux laptop, so I think I can live without it, but I've
> > become very accustomed to those little details working without a
> > hitch since switching to OS X.
> >
> > Things have really come a long way in the 8 years since I first tried
> > to install linux on a laptop, but man, I still wish things would work
> > just a little better, more smoothly, than they do.
> >
> > --
> >   Matt Anderson
> >
> >
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