I’ve been using Linux since September 9, 2003: first Mandrake (now Mandriva), then MEPIS, then Ubuntu through a few versions, over to Fedora Core (formerly the personal version of Red Hat) because I couldn’t get Ubuntu to identify my Ethernet card on my eccentric little machine, and now I’m writing this on Ubuntu 7.04, codenamed “Feisty Fawn”, and hereafter called simply Feisty.
At last, I think we have a winner for the moderate user’s desktop. Over the next few days, I’ll review why I think this, point out online installation and configuration helps and talk about what and how I make changes.
Start with the download
If you have stable broadband Internet access, grab a copy of Feisty at the main Ubuntu site (www.ubuntu.com). There’s a download link in the upper right hand corner, but you might want to poke around the site to understand the ethos and scope of Ubuntu Linux.
When you do download it, choose the 7.04 desktop edition. Choose a location as near you as possible. (From DC, I’ve had good luck with Wayne State University in Detroit.) Finish the choices and click to be sent to the download page. I don’t wait for the autodownload, but cut and paste the “download location” page URL and open it in another browser window/tab to find Bittorrent downloads.
You can order disks free of charge, but they take forever to be sent (or did when I ordered some once.) You can buy Ubuntu discs but neither of official North American distributors supply Feisty. I will mail the first five North American readers a copy of Feisty as a help to non-bandwidthed readers. Reach me through the contact page.
Burn your iso to a CD. If you’ve never done this before but have CD burning capacities, look for burn an image directions in your software.
Reboot. You’ll probably have to enter the boot menu by pressing F12 before your current operating system boots up. From this, you can try Ubuntu “live” without affecting your current OS. One downside, I tried Feisty live and the screen resolution was all screwed up and the network didn’t work. As a rule, an installed operating system runs better than one running “live.” If it seems odd, shut it down and reboot. For me, third time was a charm.
OK, enough for now.
I have the UBUNTU Feisty dvd, and with experimentation, I was able to semi-automatically download the UGLY codecs. UGLY means that they are not distributed by any known linux distribution. I seem to be able to play any multimedia that can be played by windows media player.
Feisty is impressive and it worked right from the start.
However, I have for now, decided to remain with my current distribution FC6, simply because the total install included KDE, GNOME, PHP, MYSQL, APACHE, etc. I really wanted a distribution that would exploit my dual core desktop machine in 64 bit mode, but would install safely on one drive, without modifying the contents of the other.
My configuration is harddisk1 fedora fc7 (really beautiful even at test 3 level)
fedora fc6 (what I currently have that has all the codecs, etc)
I was planning to replace FC7 with UBUNTU, but have been bitten in the past with disabling one drive logically, only to have it rewritten, even though I said, do not use.
Still, I will continue to explore it in live dvd mode. Looks great, and everything worked as expected.
Leslie