Ubuntu 9.04 Not Ready for Prime Time
I’ve installed Ubuntu 9.04 on a virtual machine and couple different physical machines. While the virtual install was pretty smooth, the physical installs have not gone as well. In both cases, aquiring, installing and configuring the video drivers, both from ATI and NVIDIA, turned out to be a complete pain. Even after spending many hours getting them working, it’s difficult to change resolutions. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a driver that automatically detects the available resolutions and allows you to select between them. Apparently, in Ubuntu, that is too much to ask.
About a week after the first install, OpenOffice.org 3 was released. Since, Ubuntu 9.04 ships with OpenOffice.org 2, I tried to upgrade on one of these machines. I downloaded the new version, but that file could not be used to perform an update in Ubuntu. One of the suckiest aspects of Ubuntu is that their are at at least 3, sometimes 4 ways to install and uninstall an application and they are all completely incompatible. So I picked an install method an it informed me that I needed to unstall OpenOffice.org 2 before I could install 3. I did that. Now, I am informed that all of the components have not been uninstalled and then need to be uninstalled before I can install 3, yet there is not indicator how to do this and none of the 3 uninstall methods works anymore. I am now stuck with a machine without 2 or 3 and can’t install either. How can the most popular Linux distro not work with the most popular open office suite?
On the other Ubuntu machine in my living room, I installed Boxee. Since the makers of Boxee don’t really want their product to be used by a wide user base, they have limited their support to Mac and Linux. Mind boggling. Yet, the latest version of Boxee doesn’t work with this ATI video card. Amazing. Looks like Windows 7 Media Center is the way to go.
I was trying to sell Ubuntu on my kids, since it does load and run faster than Window XP on older hardware. Hoever, these crazy driver and install issues tell me that this platform is still only ideal for teinkerers and not a real competitor to Windows.
First Panorama
Here is the first panorama that I’ve created using my new Canon SX10IS. It was put together using Canon PhotoStitch and cleaned up in Photoshop. There was netting right in the foreground that prevents of the stitches from being seamless and the lighting levels varied widely from one of the building to the other, but it still looks decent zoomed out.
My ET:QW Stats
