majorsilence

I bought and then received on December 24, 2008 my new dell minis. I bought one with Ubuntu and one with XP. The XP one is working well even if the way the mouse pad works is annoying. Ubuntu on the other hand has been a rather large disappointment. It is not worse than any other install of it that I have done, but it is not much better.

I figured since I was getting Ubuntu preinstalled that the hardware would work. Oh how I wish that was so. They ship with a defective kernel/wireless driver. Seriously, what the hell am I paying for? It certainly is not quality assurance. I know this because the quality of the install is no better than if I did it myself. Basically I cannot connect to any external ssh or mysql server if I am connecting through a NAT. This a known problem. It has been fixed for months in the regular ubuntu repositories but not in the dell mini repositories. I could reinstall using the official ubuntu instead of the dell one but I should not have to do this as it is supposed to be a computer that just works. I do not need to connect to mysql or ssh that often but it is certainly annoying not being able to use these tools when I have to.

Also, audacity will record once and only once, and then all I get is static. I really wish this software would work. I really like the Gnome desktop. I mean I really really like it and software available. However there is always problems with the hardware and there is no need of this when this is a preinstalled system.

I know why there are multiple Linux distributions; people have different needs and therefore have different requirements. Even so I wish there was only one distribution with different setups for server, desktop, and embedded. One place where all the developers could refine and perfect the system instead of everyone doing their own thing. A real system instead of a bunch of packages thrown together. This way all the software would be developed against the one ultimate Linux distro instead of written on one, trying to run it on another and it mostly working.