Re: [Hampshire] UNR - out of the box on tour

Damian Brasher wrote:
> I have just returned from a trip which took me to Debrovnik, then to my
> final destination in Athens to stay with family, via Sarajevo, Belgrade and
> Thessaloniki. Planes, buses and trains. I took my Acer Aspire One, 110-Ab and
> installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix to disk using the image transferred to a 1GiB
> USB memory stick the day before I left and used it out of the box. I usually
> use Fedora based operating systems for personal computing but need to stay
> familiar with modern Debian based distributions for development purposes so
> took this opportunity to test drive UNR. I’m familiar with the Debian
> environment.
>
> My computing needs were minimal. I used Firefox, OOo Writer, F-Spot Photo
> Manager, Gimp, File Browser, Skype, the command line to make a few
> adjustments and a few games of Lango. I used numerous wireless facilities. My
> Camera is a Fujifilm F10 6.3 Mega Pixel and the direct USB connection worked
> without additional software and appeared as an external memory device simply
> accessible using the file browser.
>
> Interface - there is no doubt the Ubuntu colour scheme has improved. The
> browns are more toned and the orange a better match for the browns. Coffee
> and chocolate with a little orange zest and smooth multi-coloured icons seem
> to work well together. Two years ago, I installed then removed Ubuntu after a
> few days due to the colour combination which I simply didn’t like. No
> problems this time. The desktop layout is intuitive and clear and made good
> use of the AA1 screen. I was happy to swap between applications using the
> task bar like icons located in the top left hand side of the screen.
> Applications are easy to find. A niggle, it took me a few minutes to realise
> the grey scroll bar on the right existed.
>
> Performance - Application start time was acceptable if a little on the
> hesitant side. Boot time is fine. The default sound server presented problems
> when I attempted to use Skype, much used on this trip, I was a little
> irritated that it took me two hours to make Skype work and had a poor Wifi
> link at the time. I was on holiday so did not want to spend a long time
> fixing this. As switching from PulseAudio sound server to ALSA in Sound
> Preferences did not fix Skype I simply broke PulseAudio by removing some of
> its key packages and re-installed Skype. Video in Skype no longer worked but
> I didn’t care as I was not planning to use video. Video still worked with
> Cheese Webcam Booth. Once Skype was working as long as the network connection
> was solid there were no more problems. I used some of my trip time, whilst
> based in Thessaloniki, to write a first draft of a short eBook about small
> development collaboration, which I plan to make available for sale soon. I
> wrote just over 10K words using the AA1 and OOo Writer in a couple of days.
> The screen size is an obvious drawback but UNR font rendering is clear and
> enabled me to craft the words comfortably. The AA1 screen is also
> exceptionally clear, one of the features I really like about these particular
> netbooks.
>
> Network - Wireless worked well most of the time. One in three or four WLAN
> connections required a reboot and or a network restart. This may be a driver
> problem or due to the fact I used a number of WLAN clouds during the two week
> trip and the connection became, unscientifically ‘clogged’. Ubunutu supply an
> alternative proprietary driver, the use of this did not improve the
> connection, in fact WLAN stopped working completely when I enabled it, so I
> continued with the default. Wired LAN worked perfectly.
>
> Power management - suspend worked, hibernate failed. The AA1 system fan was a
> little noisy at times, I know there are some scripts available to quieten the
> fan. I rather hoped this had been handled automatically. But the weather was
> really warm at times and I undertook most of my computing whilst drinking
> coffee in a cafe, so the extra noise was unnoticeable. AA1 froze only once
> during the whole trip, probably due to overheating. I always achieved the
> specified two hours battery life.
>
> Applications - Good selection for such a small installation image. I needed
> to additionally install Skype, Gimp and Java. These required a significant
> number of additional package dependencies, I used apt-get install from the
> command line and satisfied these after an hour. Aptitude would have been fine
> too. Finding the right Java package took a little extra effort, I eventually
> used apt-get to install Java from the pre-defined multiverse package
> repository rather than the version downloaded directly from Sun.
> Adobe-flashplugin worked out of the box? I don’t have a history entry
> relating to the installation of adobe-flashplugin, it must have either been
> trivial to install or it was working out of the box. I needed Java Firefox
> plugin for the FaceBook photograph upload tool every few days for the
> duration of the trip. Automatic updates work well, as I often had a poor WiFi
> connection I disabled them for the duration of the trip as the pop-up
> messages became annoying each time I reconnected, two steps were required and
> this took about quarter of an hour to achieve, finding my way around the
> Administration and Preferences settings. As for the command line, I don’t
> often use sudo on a daily basis to execute commands as root, but as I was
> using the command line sparingly it did not matter.
>
> Final Thoughts - Evidently additional effort has been spent improving the
> colour scheme. I am sure this is and will pay dividends. Not essential
> depending on your skills and resources, but I would suggest tuning UNR for
> performance before embarking on a trip and perhaps taking additional time to
> ensure all the applications you need will work properly before travelling.
> The platform felt solid and served its purpose well. An elegant, lightweight
> solution for a reasonable initial investment of my time.
>
> Damian
>
>
I have a Dell Mini 10v, which came with Ubuntu 8.04 - Dells own
version (sort of a Netbook Remix, with some Yahoo branding).

I thought I'd replace it as soon as it arrived, but everything works,
as far as I've tried it, so it's still there. I think maybe I'll try UNR
9.10 which is currently in beta and should be released at the end
of the month. Boot times are said to have improved significantly.

There are also some unofficial spinoffs to try, such as CrunchBang
and EasyPeasy.

Michael Dell was recently quoted as saying that nobody likes
netbooks - they prefer full sized notebooks. I think he's wrong - I
know several satisfied netbook owners. Maybe Dell would rather
sell more expensive notebooks.

The model I got is still on sale on Dell's site at £199 for the basic
model (with an 8Gb SSD).

MikeD