With few exceptions Ubuntu has proven to be far less overwhelming territory than I had initially anticipated. The work the community has put into developing an open source operating system that is accessible to the general public has been extraordinarily successful, as is shown by its increasing profile amongst non-techies.
Several of the tasks I had expected to be ominous proved to be anything but. Getting a printer set up for example was nearly as simple as a PC; in fact it was more so because Ubuntu never asked for a driver disk. I merely went to System -> Admin -> Printing -> Add New, it recognised the existence of a network printer and then prompted me to finalise the process. It was positively beautiful.
On the other hand, the process of getting a USB web camera and microphone working has proven to been an absolute pain in the arse. I’ve spent days trying to get this working and have only achieved partial success.
As it stands now I’ve managed to get the web camera recognised by Skype in the options area, however the situation with the audio remains a dog’s breakfast. At best the quality is poor, with low, echo-laden sound punctuated by snaps and clipping.
Furthermore it would seem that Skype is far more flexible with things than some of the other applications in the OS, because in all other cases I’m met with an error message indicating no device is found.
Ultimately the solution seems to involve a project at berliOS, which seeks to:
“…provide all necessary software components to fully support UVC compliant devices in Linux. This include a V4L2 kernel device driver and patches for user-space tools.”
I’m still at the beginning of this process, so if you have experience in getting this working PLEASE impart your knowledge in the comments area.
References:
- Linux UVC driver & tools @ berliOS
Dealing with hardware in linux is often difficult because of availability of drivers. The best drivers are made when the maker of the hardware provides technical information about their device so that the linux kernel hackers don’t have to guess so much. However, most hardware manufacturers don’t want their competitors getting hold of that same information. A middle ground is where the hardware vendor creates a driver themselves but there can be issues with this too because there is no really standard linux kernel: Customers could be running any number of customised linux kernels with different features turned on or off depending on their distro or choices made when compiling their own kernel.
Having said that, Ubuntu shines as a distro that has devoted a great deal of effort towards making it work on any hardware.