Ubuntu, a problem install

Wed Jul 16 10:06:59 CDT 2008

I do not know if others have had the same experience that I have had, but I keep on hearing people talk about how great Ubuntu is and that it is easy to install.

I decided to give it a try the other day and my experience was anything but good.

It was easy enough to install on my machine, but when it was done installing, I could not get it to work correctly for me. I happen to enjoy using the console quite a bit, but the default fonts for the console on my Dimension 2350 were gigantic.

Finally, I had a problem with the X-window system. The default install was set at 1280x1024 pixels and my poor old eyes are not ready for the small fonts at that resolution so I changed it to 1024x768. After I changed it, the X-window-system was unusable. I have a picture of what happened but it is hard to understand without an explanation. The X-window-system was jerking back and forth and I was no longer able to get it to do anything. I tried CNTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE but when it came back it was still doing the same thing, so I finally gave up and reinstalled a Debian system.

Why Ubuntu has this problem on a Dell Dimension 2350 when both Fedora and openSuse work perfectly, I do not know. All I can say is that Ubuntu is not very user friendly compared to other Linux Distributions such as Debian and Slackware.

I don't think we can say the Linux desktop offers the very best experience. —Mark Shuttleworth