Memory card reader (USB port) : ins and outs ?

[Vincent Trouilliez]

> I forget:  what are the problems you had with Hoary such that you will
> skip it until the next version in the fall?  I remember you mentioning
> problems a few times on the list, but can't remember the details.

Well, basically I was disappointed that the things that I epxected to
work better, didn't get better, and some things that I took for granted,
got worse in Hoary. Of course there are also some nice little touches
here and there and some promising stuff, but overall, not enough to
justify a move. I am of course putting great hopes in Hoary+1 and can't
wait to see what it will be like.

A- My main problems (things that have deteriorated):
----------------------------------------------------
1) Nvidia drivers have become troublesome, won't work, no matter what.
2) Lost the GUI to edit the applications menu
3) TV card (tuner) has become trouble some/buggy
4) Don't like the redesign of the volume-mixer panel (don't like the new
icon either)
5) CRT Monitor not detected anymore, requires manual tweaking of
xorg.conf
6) No "Control+H" short-cut anymore to hide/show 'dot' files in
Nautilus. The new "menu accelarator" feature in Gnome should let you
easily define new shortcuts, but it's buggy, and have been told in
bugzilla that it's normal and won't be fixed.
7) Lost the week numbers in the calendar applet (still there, but need
to be enabled in Gconf by hand)
8) Gnome menus and applet (calendar mainly) don't appear to be preloaded
when Gnome starts, makes the system feel slow/cheap.
9) "showDesktop" icon has changed, don't like it
10) When I double-click on a picture thumbnail in Nautilus, to preview
it with EOG, the EOG window size and location is unpredictable and most
of the time, set very inappropriately.
11) plus a few other bits and bobs that I won't mention as they have
hopefully/probably been fixed since I last used Hoary.


B- Things that I was hoping would improve but didn't :
------------------------------------------------------
1) Video files playback (totem-xine) still needs work. All the video
files that caused problems in Warty, still have problems in Hoary
2) Various controls in Rhythmbox and Totem still feel sluggish/not
responsive, makes the machine feel slow despite everything else works
normally.
3) External parallel port Iomega ZIP100 drive not installed.
4) SCSI Scanner device not created
5) SCSI scanner still requires root permissions to be used.
6) The installer will not mount partitions from the other IDE hard
drives, only the partitions of the disk it's been installed onto.
7) Evolution still super sluggish
8) Sound preview in Nautilus wasn't fixed, and even got worse (used to
play mp3 and wav but not ogg. Now doesn't play anything but mp3)
9) Nautilus CD burner doesn't do audio CD's nor multi-session CD's, you
burn say 10 MB then the CD is wasted, can't add any more data on it
later on.

C- Things that I found were improved, or new things (either complete or
still needing development) I liked :
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Parport ZIP drive device creation and mounting/unmounting was less
buggy/unreliable, making it a tad easier to live with
2) I could at last select English Language and French K/B Layout (was
buggy before, GDM and X would be stuck to English layout)
3) New trash icon looks absolutely lovely, I pinched it and retro-fitted
into Warty ! :o)
4) Totem-Gstreamer is making some progress (but still far useable)
5) New "Add/Remove" GUI in the Applications->System Tools
6) Device manager : new button to upload your H/W info to the Ubuntu's
H/W database
7) More polished Synaptic GUI
8) Update manager + notification icon
9) proper transparency support for the Gnome panels.
10) I can now log-out immediately after logging-in. In Warty, once you
have just logged-in, you have to wait a minute or two before you can
log-out, for some reason.


Well, that's all I can recall from the top of my head right now.

> Right now I'm totally the opposite:  I have zero problems with Hoary,
> and I'm  just waiting for the official release to totally switch to
> Hoary from Warty on my home machine (I dual-boot both versions)

Yeah, I am curious to test the stable version of Hoary, to see what has
been improved and/or fixed. But that will have to wait until I can get
hold of some working hard drive, which is a pretty rare sight on my
shelves recently... :o(


--
Vince