First things first. Another very nice
release party for PA Ubuntu LoCo.
(Philly/Southeast region)
Food - An Install - Questions about switching people from other operating systems - all good stuff!
Always a good time, if you have the opportunity I recommend attendance. The empathy of other Linux users will recharge your need to geek.
The only jaunty preparation I did was to install the
Ubuntu Net Remix to a usb thumbdrive so people could check it out. It was a big hit, would've been bigger if I would have remembered my ac adapter, but the 2 hours of playing with it and laughing at the big icons on a regular sized laptop were worth the effort. (by the way, it seemed to be the right size for my middle-aged eyes)
The following Sunday I updated my home laptop to jaunty with the assistance of my granddaughter Jordyn. Went super smooth, only some workspace switcher issues.
The release party had reminded me of how well Compiz works as an advocacy tool - you don't have to like it - you don't have to use it - but believe me: it grabs people attention! So, I Compiz'd up my gnome session. I rarely use gnome anymore, preferring to use xfce, the Xubuntu desktop, but since the majority of users are using gnome, I like to have it a session change away.
Compiz and the compiz-config are super easy to turn a capable device into a cube spinning terror. Also, btw, no fglrx driver for jaunty, would the open radeon driver work? YES! 3d effects were NO PROBLEM with the open driver.
jimf@dell6000:~$ glxgears
3834 frames in 5.0 seconds = 763.588 FPS
I'll take it!
Still one Gnome problem: Nautilus would crash - opening nautilus from terminal pointed me to the preferences segment of gconf. I looked at the info in the gconf-editor and kept missing that one of the boolean options was set to 'false' - DOH - 'false' was interpreted as a string, and indeed, NOT A BOOLEAN VALUE. Reset the key, and all was well, a fully functioning, cube spinning, advocacy heroin, Gnome session.
Very nice.
Now, what desktop for Jordyn?
