Learning to love it?
I'm starting to feel the Ubuntu learning curve. Yeah, its not much different than Windows XP, but there a a few spots where it puts the same thing in a different place. For example, the system clock is in the top right corner, I keep looking in the lower right where it is in Windows. When I went to connect the wireless (which I find to be a pain anyway) it gives you the option to use either an ASCII or Hexadecimal WEP key (that is to say, the encryption key used by secured wireless networks). Maybe its because I'm a mechanical rather than an electrical engineer, maybe its because I have a cold and my head is a little thick, but when I saw the option of ASCII or Hex I went "whaaaa....?"
After a break and a bit more fiddling, I realized that the key for my router (Linksys WRT54GS) is in hex format. Duh. Well, duh now that I've had some time to think about it.
I do like the way Ubuntu has of switching between networks. All the available wired and wireless connections are in a drop-down menu in the upper right, which is basically the system tray without the typical Windows clutter. You just click on the one you want, and if it need a key or password you enter it in a pop-up window (if its your first time connecting). Which is nice. For some reason I have never understood, Windows treats wired and wireless connections as completely separate entities. Most of the time I had to manually refresh the wireless network list because Windows doesn't seem to want to set my home network to automatic and leave it that way.
When I run out of geeky stuff to do, Ubuntu does come with good games. Mahjongg, Sudoku, chess, a tetris clone, even a clone of minesweeper, etc., are installed by default and are offline games. Eat that Windows. Solitaire and Minesweeper doesn't really do it for me.
Rhythmbox is another interesting pre-installed app. It is a lot like iTunes and Winamp 5.5 in appearance. The playlist editing is a bit different from what I'm used to - I haven't quite figured it out yet. It shows track title, artist and album information by default, which doesn't leave room for a long playlist (in the main window anyway). When it was done playing my playlist, it started playing my library from the beginning (by artist), which was unexpected and annoying.
I have a firewall (Firestarter) running, next up on my list are anti-virus (yeah, there has been the odd virus for Linux) and BitTorrent.
After a break and a bit more fiddling, I realized that the key for my router (Linksys WRT54GS) is in hex format. Duh. Well, duh now that I've had some time to think about it.
I do like the way Ubuntu has of switching between networks. All the available wired and wireless connections are in a drop-down menu in the upper right, which is basically the system tray without the typical Windows clutter. You just click on the one you want, and if it need a key or password you enter it in a pop-up window (if its your first time connecting). Which is nice. For some reason I have never understood, Windows treats wired and wireless connections as completely separate entities. Most of the time I had to manually refresh the wireless network list because Windows doesn't seem to want to set my home network to automatic and leave it that way.
When I run out of geeky stuff to do, Ubuntu does come with good games. Mahjongg, Sudoku, chess, a tetris clone, even a clone of minesweeper, etc., are installed by default and are offline games. Eat that Windows. Solitaire and Minesweeper doesn't really do it for me.
Rhythmbox is another interesting pre-installed app. It is a lot like iTunes and Winamp 5.5 in appearance. The playlist editing is a bit different from what I'm used to - I haven't quite figured it out yet. It shows track title, artist and album information by default, which doesn't leave room for a long playlist (in the main window anyway). When it was done playing my playlist, it started playing my library from the beginning (by artist), which was unexpected and annoying.
I have a firewall (Firestarter) running, next up on my list are anti-virus (yeah, there has been the odd virus for Linux) and BitTorrent.
posted by Colin at
3:05 p.m.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home