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... But a beginner can have a bloody good try.
A year ago, I gave a friend of my mum's over here on the Isle of Man (where I am back for Yule) a laptop, and paid for them to get an ADSL connection. It's an old Vaio that used to belong to a client of mine. I replaced its dying 6G hard disk with a 20G one, but it only has 256MB of RAM and a PII-450. I put Ubuntu 7.10 on it, which actually runs quite well.
This week, back across the water, is the first time I've seen the machine since. My plan was to bung in 512MB of RAM and upgrade it to 8.04 LTS.
But...
Apart from dropping something into the keyboard so that it beeps continuously when turned on and the Delete key only working intermittently, it still runs OK... But boy had they messed up the system.
The desktop, Documents directory and home directory were full of about 2-3GB of Windows installers for the Google Toolbar, various games and nasty little freebies, Flash player and so on.
~/Documents was renamed to ~/Documentsgoogle and there were empty files and directories everywhere named "New Directoryjohn smith" (not their real name). There were empty files and folders galore, most called "New Filejohn smith" and "Untitled Folderjohn smith (7)" and so on. (How did the long username get in there?) Many of these had been compressed into tarballs, too.
I'd simplified Ubuntu's dual panels into one, Windows-style one. I'd got rid of desktop-switching and the Shut Down button, too.
From the remaining single panel, the main menu was gone, and so were all app quick-start buttons. The wastebin was gone, too. (Which is a shame, as it had no less than 301 Windows installers in it, but with no icon, you can't empty it.) There were 2 clocks, though, and 3 copies of the fast-user-switching control. (Note to self: remove the user-switching control and the "minimise all windows" control next time, too.) So, no way to start or run programs. There was a saved copy of eBay's CSS file and a tarball of it too. (How?!) Most of Gnome's file associations had been reset, and there were multiple entries for things like text files - right-click one and the first 20 options were to open it with the archive manager, then 15 entries to open it with Synaptic. Oddly, you couldn't open text files. ;¬)
Although the 50+ Windows Google Toolbar installers hadn't worked, obviously - no, I am not putting WINE on it to make them work - they (or Google) had installed it anyway. And about 20 other random extensions, including one in Albanian. I don't speak Albanian and neither do they; I had to Google the vaguely familiar word "shqip" to work out WTF it was. Apart from that it was in Albanian, I have no idea what it was. The icon was of a jigsaw piece
There were numerous bookmarks to 404 pages and other things that hadn't worked. And one or 2 to eBay auctions and stuff.
Somehow, the magic Firefox bookmark folder "Bookmarks Toolbar" had been renamed to "Ubuntu and Free Software links" or words to that effect. I don't know how, as I couldn't rename it back again. The original folder called that was gone.
Ubuntu was sufficiently hosed that the upgrade to 8.04 was impossible.
I am reformatting & reinstalling as I speak. There was not a single actual document file or anything to keep.
(And did you know that you can't use a live/desktop Ubuntu CD to upgrade an existing installation? I didn't. Apparently, only the Alternate CD can do that. Of course, I didn't bring one of them over with me.)
It's really quite impressive.
My mate denies it, but I suspect A Mate Who Knows About Computers (when I have my consultant's hat on, my most feared arch-enemy) has been looking at it, and has been utterly baffled by something that isn't Windows.
But while it still works, it's remarkable just how buggered-up an Ubuntu box can get in the hands of a novice, isn't it? I am irrestistably reminded of Verity Stob's classic State of Decay essay.
I thought Ubuntu was at the stage where it was getting pretty much Granny-proof.
I was wrong.
A year ago, I gave a friend of my mum's over here on the Isle of Man (where I am back for Yule) a laptop, and paid for them to get an ADSL connection. It's an old Vaio that used to belong to a client of mine. I replaced its dying 6G hard disk with a 20G one, but it only has 256MB of RAM and a PII-450. I put Ubuntu 7.10 on it, which actually runs quite well.
This week, back across the water, is the first time I've seen the machine since. My plan was to bung in 512MB of RAM and upgrade it to 8.04 LTS.
But...
Apart from dropping something into the keyboard so that it beeps continuously when turned on and the Delete key only working intermittently, it still runs OK... But boy had they messed up the system.
The desktop, Documents directory and home directory were full of about 2-3GB of Windows installers for the Google Toolbar, various games and nasty little freebies, Flash player and so on.
~/Documents was renamed to ~/Documentsgoogle and there were empty files and directories everywhere named "New Directoryjohn smith" (not their real name). There were empty files and folders galore, most called "New Filejohn smith" and "Untitled Folderjohn smith (7)" and so on. (How did the long username get in there?) Many of these had been compressed into tarballs, too.
I'd simplified Ubuntu's dual panels into one, Windows-style one. I'd got rid of desktop-switching and the Shut Down button, too.
From the remaining single panel, the main menu was gone, and so were all app quick-start buttons. The wastebin was gone, too. (Which is a shame, as it had no less than 301 Windows installers in it, but with no icon, you can't empty it.) There were 2 clocks, though, and 3 copies of the fast-user-switching control. (Note to self: remove the user-switching control and the "minimise all windows" control next time, too.) So, no way to start or run programs. There was a saved copy of eBay's CSS file and a tarball of it too. (How?!) Most of Gnome's file associations had been reset, and there were multiple entries for things like text files - right-click one and the first 20 options were to open it with the archive manager, then 15 entries to open it with Synaptic. Oddly, you couldn't open text files. ;¬)
Although the 50+ Windows Google Toolbar installers hadn't worked, obviously - no, I am not putting WINE on it to make them work - they (or Google) had installed it anyway. And about 20 other random extensions, including one in Albanian. I don't speak Albanian and neither do they; I had to Google the vaguely familiar word "shqip" to work out WTF it was. Apart from that it was in Albanian, I have no idea what it was. The icon was of a jigsaw piece
There were numerous bookmarks to 404 pages and other things that hadn't worked. And one or 2 to eBay auctions and stuff.
Somehow, the magic Firefox bookmark folder "Bookmarks Toolbar" had been renamed to "Ubuntu and Free Software links" or words to that effect. I don't know how, as I couldn't rename it back again. The original folder called that was gone.
Ubuntu was sufficiently hosed that the upgrade to 8.04 was impossible.
I am reformatting & reinstalling as I speak. There was not a single actual document file or anything to keep.
(And did you know that you can't use a live/desktop Ubuntu CD to upgrade an existing installation? I didn't. Apparently, only the Alternate CD can do that. Of course, I didn't bring one of them over with me.)
It's really quite impressive.
My mate denies it, but I suspect A Mate Who Knows About Computers (when I have my consultant's hat on, my most feared arch-enemy) has been looking at it, and has been utterly baffled by something that isn't Windows.
But while it still works, it's remarkable just how buggered-up an Ubuntu box can get in the hands of a novice, isn't it? I am irrestistably reminded of Verity Stob's classic State of Decay essay.
I thought Ubuntu was at the stage where it was getting pretty much Granny-proof.
I was wrong.
