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On Tuesday 14 November 2006 12:31, Neil Winchurst wrote: > A little while ago I moved over from Mandriva to Kubuntu Edgy. In many > ways kubuntu is very different from all the RedHat style distros I have > used before (Suse, Mandrake/Mandriva). Luckily I have had great support > from the user group, much appreciated. > > Some of the defaults that surprised me include - > > The numlock key was not turned on at log on. I had to find out how to > change this. I don't use numlock myself, so I had not noticed that Neil - but its a valid point, a lot of folks do. > > The panel at the bottom of the screen could not be hidden, which is how > I normally work. It was easy to sort out, but I would have expected the > panel-hiding buttons to be there as the default. > I do use the panel hiding - well, the right hand one - so yes, another very valid point! > Once I learned about the repositories I found that I had to do some > work to include two of them. Again I would have expected all of them to > be available from installation. > I think the issue there is with free/non-free software. If people want the non-free stuff, then the option is there if they enable the repositories. Like you, I do use those extras -non-free codecs etc are useful for functionality for the majority of users. Of course, there are people who prefer to have a totally free software system - and so the choice is there. For a system aiming to attract new users to Linux, it may be better to have all the repositories available by default I guess, but it would not be popular with all. > There was not icon at all on the desktop. OK it was easy to add them > except that I have not yet found out how to include an icon for the > Home folder. All my previous distros have automatically included that. > Yes, I found it a little odd too! By the way, if you open Konqueror, you will see the default options there, including the Home directory - if you drag and drop that folder to your desktopand click Link here, you will find the Home folder will now be there. > It took me some time for find out that I cannot open up a terminal > screen directly from Konqueror. I have been used to moving around the > various folders in Konqueror and then using ctrl-T to go to a terminal > screen which would be in the same folder. > Again, use the drag and drop/Link here method - select the Konsole from your menu and carry out the drag n drop. Or, if you want the Konsole on Konqueror, use the Settings menu in Konq,Configure toolbars and you can add the Konsole there to your Konqueror toolbar. > My home folder was as expected but when I moved up to the root folder I > could not see any files at all. This was sorted out thanks to help from > the group, but not how I would have expected it to be from installation. > Yes, that is a strange move by the Ubuntu team which they introduced with Edgy - and it is one which has been commented on by many users. Hopefully they will drop that idea in the next release! Or at least make it obvious how to revert to the usual KDE settings. > To end for now with something that really impressed me - > > Before installing kubuntu I made some space on my disk by reducing the > size of my /home partition using diskdrake in Mandriva. This left me > about 110 Gb of empty space. > > Normally when installing a distro I have had only two choices re > partitioning the hard disk. Either remove everything on the disk and > finish up with just the new distro. Or do my own partitioning of the > disk. > > Edgy gave me a third choice, use any empty space on the disk. Great. I > chose that and the installer did the rest. It found Mandriva and left > it there for me. I ended up with a dual boot system by which I can > choose to run either Mandriva or Kubuntu. Brilliant. > > These are all personal comments, no complaints intended. I just > wondered if any group members would be interested. If not, then sorry > for wasting everyone's time > > Regards > > Neil Winchurst Most interesting Neil. It may be useful to comment to the Ubuntu team as well - that way your views can be taken into account for the next release. I still believe the Mandriva partitioner to be the most user friendly one I have used - I wanted it incorporating into the distro I work on, but despite having permission to do so (and even a mandrake dev to help) it never happened. Not that other partitioners are complex, but the Mandriva one is very user friendly if you have straightforward needs. I personally would like to see all distros ensure the basic tools for building packages from source are there by default - the make,gcc stuff and the kernel sources. I have lost count of the number of times I have been contacted by users who have downloaded a distro via a friends machine and attempt to set up their 56k modem only to discover they will need another 100mb or so of files before they can do that - and that means another trip to the mates house to download those files.... At least documentation in distros is much better these days! The Kubuntu/Ubuntu docs are very good indeed and there are some excellent tips and tweaks in the wiki and on their forums. Mark -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html