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From: The Natural Philosopher on 17 Feb 2010 07:42
voice_of_reason(a)australia.edu wrote:
> Hi All:
>
> For a long time I have wanted to ditch Micro$oft and I am now
> considering making the move to Ubuntu. There are a few questions I'd
> like to clarify first.
>
> My main concern is with "Plug-n-Play".
>
> As it is now, I plug my camera into a USB port and voila...my photo
> downlaod software automatically kicks in. I plug my Western Digital
> external HD into a USB port and voila...I automatically see the new
> directories.
>
> From what little exposure I've had to linux in the past, devices
> needed to be "mounted" to /dev before they could be used. And I
> vaguely recall something about having to edit the mounttab file.....
>

These days the desktop GUI will monitor for hotplug attempts and do
something reaonsably sane.

> Has any of this been streamlined in contemporary versions of linux
> (e.g. Ubuntu)?
>
> Also:
> What of making wireless internet connections?
>
> As it is now, when I turn on my laptop at home, it auto-detects my
> home wirelsess network and connects. Same when I am in my office.
>
> Are there similar features/capabilities available in Ubuntu?
>

More or less, yess.


> Answers/Comments/Advice appreciated!
>
> Thanx!
From: ray on 17 Feb 2010 10:53
On Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:56:20 -0800, voice_of_reason wrote:

> Hi All:
>
> For a long time I have wanted to ditch Micro$oft and I am now
> considering making the move to Ubuntu. There are a few questions I'd
> like to clarify first.
>
> My main concern is with "Plug-n-Play".
>
> As it is now, I plug my camera into a USB port and voila...my photo
> downlaod software automatically kicks in. I plug my Western Digital
> external HD into a USB port and voila...I automatically see the new
> directories.
>
> From what little exposure I've had to linux in the past, devices needed
> to be "mounted" to /dev before they could be used. And I vaguely recall
> something about having to edit the mounttab file.....
>
> Has any of this been streamlined in contemporary versions of linux (e.g.
> Ubuntu)?

That is usually handled without incident with the 'hotplug' feature on
modern Linux distributions

>
> Also:
> What of making wireless internet connections?
>
> As it is now, when I turn on my laptop at home, it auto-detects my home
> wirelsess network and connects. Same when I am in my office.
>
> Are there similar features/capabilities available in Ubuntu?

It may or may not work that well. Depends mostly on how well your
particular wireless adapter is supported.

>
> Answers/Comments/Advice appreciated!
>
> Thanx!

You can go a long way toward finding the answer by simply booting a Live
CD/DVD. It will boot and run from the CD/DVD without any changes to your
computer. Most likely, it will come up with the wireless connection
active and will support your USB devices by simply plugging them in. If
that works to your satisfaction, there is also a utility on the desktop
to start the installation.
From: ray on 17 Feb 2010 10:55
On Wed, 17 Feb 2010 10:08:02 +0000, Mark Hobley wrote:

> voice_of_reason(a)australia.edu wrote:
>> From what little exposure I've had to linux in the past, devices needed
>> to be "mounted" to /dev before they could be used. And I vaguely recall
>> something about having to edit the mounttab file.....
>
> You can use automounting (as Microsoft Windows does).

Actually, that is 'hotplug' - 'automount' is something entirely different
- it allows you to 'automount' remote file systems simply by addressing
them and then automatically unmounts them after a specified period of
unactivity.

>
>> What of making wireless internet connections?
>>
>> As it is now, when I turn on my laptop at home, it auto-detects my home
>> wirelsess network and connects. Same when I am in my office.
>>
>> Are there similar features/capabilities available in Ubuntu?
>
> Yes. No problem. As long as you choose hardware that is compatible with
> Linux, you will have no problems with this either.
>
> Anything Bill can do, we can do better!
>
> Mark.

From: J G Miller on 17 Feb 2010 11:04
On Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:56:20 -0800, voice_of_reason wrote:

> For a long time I have wanted to ditch Micro$oft and I am now
> considering making the move to Ubuntu.

Your first move should be to acquire an Ubuntu Live CD/DVD, fire
it up and test all your devices for plug and play functionality.

Since the Live CD/DVD does not do anything to your hard disk
(unless you tell it to install Ubuntu on to your hard drive)
you have nothing to lose in doing a dry run Ubuntu desktop session.

After you have done this, you could, as a courtesy, reply back to
the newsgroup with news of success or failures with your particular
peripheral device models.

PS If you do not like the default brown color and do not want to
have the hassle of installing extra software to get functionality
of proprietary codecs etc, then you should be downloading Mint Linux,
which is Ubuntu plus some useful extras.

<http://www.linuxmint.COM/>

Just as with Ubuntu, the LinuxMint DVD can be used as a Live DVD
for doing a dry run test drive.

From: Ivan Marsh on 17 Feb 2010 12:12
voice_of_reason(a)australia.edu wrote:

> Are there similar features/capabilities available in Ubuntu?

I usually use CentOS because most of what I do is server based but I just
installed Ubuntu on my Dell Studio laptop and everything works exactly how
you'd expect it to.

--
"All right, all right, if it will make you happy, I will overthrow society."
  - Philip J. Fry
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