Sorry if there are a few über-geeky posts in the next couple days.  But, I did say that I would share my experiences with running Ubuntu…

Forgot a few things in my post(s) from the last few days.  There were a number of additional packages I could have mentioned, but here are the highlights…

First, turn on all those non-default software repositories (except maybe the bleeding-edge development channels), then get all the gstreamer plugins, the microsoft core fonts, and thumb through the add/remove software window.  I like to sort by popularity, because there’s usually a reason that a lot of people are downloading it.  You can find a number of the packages that I mentioned the other day using this method.

I was glad that my monitor worked out of the box, at the right resolution and frequency.  A welcome change.  I also noticed that SeaMonkey was in the software channels now, so that kind of makes ubuntuzilla an unneeded commodity for me.

I forgot to mention how to get DVDs running.  Take a look at medibuntu for more info on that.  Or, is Automatix still around?  I haven’t used it in a while…  Oh, I guess not.

The thing that’s really sticking in my craw right now is the wealth of issues (well, just two I guess– but big ones) that I had with samba immediately upon installation.  In the past, I have run samba on my desktop machine because it was an easy way to share files back and forth between my desktop and laptop (in case I didn’t need or want to use the server as an intermediary).  Well, samba crashed every time I tried to start it so far.

The second problem (MUCH bigger) was getting my server mounted with full read/write access at startup.  This absolutely has to work for me.  At this point, I can get the share to mount (although not where I tell it to, for whatever reason), but I can’t write to it.  I’m going to check around the forums a bit today when I have time, and see if I can get these things resolved.  If it looks like there’s going to be a wait for a fix of some kind, I’d probably go back to Gutsy and wait for a while.

Oh, and finally (almost forgot)– Firefox 3 is the default browser for Hardy, even though it’s stil in Beta.  Granted, they’re on like the 5th or 6th beta version now, but fact is this: almost none of my extensions work, or a couple of them work wrongly.  I can still install Firefox 2, but I’ve never had to change the “default browser” in Ubuntu.  I’m sure it’s not too tough.  But maybe ubuntuzilla won’t be obsolete after all…