I installed Kubuntu yesterday. Here are a few comments.
Kubuntu doesn't inquire if the system clock is set to UTC or local time. It expects UTC. I bet most people have their BIOS clock set to local time. If you're late evening in America, you must also think to change the date to the following day. This is a potential source of problems for newbies. It would be better to ask.
Keyboards are all there! Great! Many distros do not offer the keyboard that I use, the Canadian Multilingual. Even the Inuktitut keyboard is there! Besides Suse, I'm not too sure many distros offer all keyboards. Of course, some will say there might be only 100,000 people writing in Inuktitut, but the keyboard is consequently harder to find. Very nice tought, those keyboards!
It would be nice if the autopartitioning system said how it intends to partition. After manual partitioning, there is no badblocks check. This should be an option. Of course, it takes a long time, but otherwise, you don't know exactly what you're installing on.
Towards the end of installation, I received a warning saying that the server couldn't be reached for updates -- of course, my modem wasn't on! -- and that lines pertaining to security updates would be commented.
Well, they were all commented! Will all newbies know how to uncomment a file? How many will uncomment comments too? Maybe the installation program could have asked if the modem was on?
So I uncommented universe, multiverse, satanic verses, everything, and tried to make only security updates. I saw no option for this in Adept. Did I miss something?
Then, at about 80% of the installation, i received a message saying:
"There was an error committing changes. Possibly there was a problem downloading some packages or the commit would break packages."
Which packages? No clue. Will this cripple my system? How do I eventually file a bug report?
After taking note of the error message, I clicked OK and Adept immediately crashed. I went back into it to complete the update, but I received an error message saying that another program, possibly apt-get or Synaptic, was trying to access the database. Clicking Yes didn't succeed to fix the problem. I then tried by myself. (Cancel option.)
I checked with ps ax, but no old session of Adept seemed to try to acces the database. I rebooted. Still no result. I tried apt-get update, maybe upgrade afterwards, and received a message saying I must try dpkg --configure -a . I did, and that fixed the problem in hardly more than a minute. I could get back into Adept... but the 80% installation was now complete, there was nothing else to do. Very strange!
I installed Firefox and Icedove without any problem afterwards, but when I start kate to edit sources.list. I receive the following messages:
Error: "/var/tmp/kdecache-mike" is owned by uid 1000 instead of uid 0.
Error: "/tmp/kde-mike" is owned by uid 1000 instead of uid 0.
Error: "/tmp/ksocket-marcel" is owned by uid 1000 instead of uid 0.
kate: WARNING: Pixmap not found for mimetype application/pgp-keys
kate: WARNING: Pixmap not found for mimetype application/pgp-keys
kate: WARNING: Pixmap not found for mimetype application/pgp-keys
df also gives weird results:
df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 4324760 2624524 1480548 64% /
varrun 127968 140 127828 1% /var/run
varlock 127968 0 127968 0% /var/lock
udev 127968 60 127908 1% /dev
devshm 127968 0 127968 0% /dev/shm
lrm 127968 34696 93272 28% /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/volatile
/dev/hda3 3549856 85440 3284088 3% /home
In my experience, there should only be /dev/hda2 and /dev/hda3. What's the rest?
Conclusion.
Despite some nice features, it's certainly not the most worry-free installation I've made in my life. Would Synaptic be more reliable than Adept? What about these UID and df problems?
Thanks!
Kubuntu doesn't inquire if the system clock is set to UTC or local time. It expects UTC. I bet most people have their BIOS clock set to local time. If you're late evening in America, you must also think to change the date to the following day. This is a potential source of problems for newbies. It would be better to ask.
Keyboards are all there! Great! Many distros do not offer the keyboard that I use, the Canadian Multilingual. Even the Inuktitut keyboard is there! Besides Suse, I'm not too sure many distros offer all keyboards. Of course, some will say there might be only 100,000 people writing in Inuktitut, but the keyboard is consequently harder to find. Very nice tought, those keyboards!
It would be nice if the autopartitioning system said how it intends to partition. After manual partitioning, there is no badblocks check. This should be an option. Of course, it takes a long time, but otherwise, you don't know exactly what you're installing on.
Towards the end of installation, I received a warning saying that the server couldn't be reached for updates -- of course, my modem wasn't on! -- and that lines pertaining to security updates would be commented.
Well, they were all commented! Will all newbies know how to uncomment a file? How many will uncomment comments too? Maybe the installation program could have asked if the modem was on?
So I uncommented universe, multiverse, satanic verses, everything, and tried to make only security updates. I saw no option for this in Adept. Did I miss something?
Then, at about 80% of the installation, i received a message saying:
"There was an error committing changes. Possibly there was a problem downloading some packages or the commit would break packages."
Which packages? No clue. Will this cripple my system? How do I eventually file a bug report?
After taking note of the error message, I clicked OK and Adept immediately crashed. I went back into it to complete the update, but I received an error message saying that another program, possibly apt-get or Synaptic, was trying to access the database. Clicking Yes didn't succeed to fix the problem. I then tried by myself. (Cancel option.)
I checked with ps ax, but no old session of Adept seemed to try to acces the database. I rebooted. Still no result. I tried apt-get update, maybe upgrade afterwards, and received a message saying I must try dpkg --configure -a . I did, and that fixed the problem in hardly more than a minute. I could get back into Adept... but the 80% installation was now complete, there was nothing else to do. Very strange!
I installed Firefox and Icedove without any problem afterwards, but when I start kate to edit sources.list. I receive the following messages:
Error: "/var/tmp/kdecache-mike" is owned by uid 1000 instead of uid 0.
Error: "/tmp/kde-mike" is owned by uid 1000 instead of uid 0.
Error: "/tmp/ksocket-marcel" is owned by uid 1000 instead of uid 0.
kate: WARNING: Pixmap not found for mimetype application/pgp-keys
kate: WARNING: Pixmap not found for mimetype application/pgp-keys
kate: WARNING: Pixmap not found for mimetype application/pgp-keys
df also gives weird results:
df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 4324760 2624524 1480548 64% /
varrun 127968 140 127828 1% /var/run
varlock 127968 0 127968 0% /var/lock
udev 127968 60 127908 1% /dev
devshm 127968 0 127968 0% /dev/shm
lrm 127968 34696 93272 28% /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/volatile
/dev/hda3 3549856 85440 3284088 3% /home
In my experience, there should only be /dev/hda2 and /dev/hda3. What's the rest?
Conclusion.
Despite some nice features, it's certainly not the most worry-free installation I've made in my life. Would Synaptic be more reliable than Adept? What about these UID and df problems?
Thanks!
fficial&client=firefox-a
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