Ubuntu on the Desktop - not ready?

19:04.09 - Friday 9th February 2007   (Link to This Entry)

Nope, Ubuntu doesn't apppear to be ready for every day usage. not for me at any rate. After all the hassle of getting it installed and working, several niggles have cropped up which basically annoyed the hell out of me, and right now I am in two minds whether to reformat (again) and stick Windows 2000 on there all on it's own. Where to start?

Epson Perfection 2480 Scanner and Ubuntu? Finally!
I finally got my trusty old Epson 2480 working but nowhere in the install did it say 'You need the firmware from the driver CD, it'll be in one of the cab files so you'll need a utility to extract that, then copy it to this folder and then edit this config file'. For the love of god - this crap should all be built into the SANE installer/config thing and should not require a user to hunt around Google for an hour trying to find out why the hell it doesn't work.

Networking keeps.. not working. Only on Ubuntu!
When I originally installed Ubuntu it picked up my network cards (dual board, see) and installed working drivers for them without fuss. So why don't they work anymore? I started last week sometime when I couldn't get connected for love nor money, but Windows 2000 (which I dual boot this machine with) would work without problems. On that occasion I turned the machine off overnight and tried the next day - instant connection!

Today, or rather last night, I had the same problem - no connection, left the machine off overnight. No such luck this time though, I simple cannot get connected to the Internet. Once again, Windows connected without problems on the same network card, connected to the same router via the same Cable modem and with the same LAN IP. Ubuntu? Not a chance.

These are just two of the things that have been annoying me, but it's painfully obvious that, unless you're going to supply someone with a fully-configured machine so that they don't have to do anything, the average user is going to get pissed off with things just not working and give up - much like me - and go back to something that does work.

I shall be hunting for a fix for the networking problem tonight, but if I don't find it there will be another reformatting session pretty soon.