[LAU] notes regarding a new installation

[Dave Phillips]

Greetings !

After many (too many ?) years using Fedora 23 I decided/admitted a 
system upgrade was long overdue. I chose Ubuntu 18.04 simply because I 
recently installed it on a Toshiba Satellite laptop - a fun story itself 
- and am satisfied with the results, especially after installing some 
Ubuntu Studio components. Anyway, that machine is now a smooth-running 
gun, so I figured, "Why not put Ubuntu on the desktop iron ?". And so 
begins the tale...

My DVD drive is broken, so I planned to use the same bootable USB stick 
I used for the laptop. That was the first problem. I tested the stick on 
the desktop and discovered that my mobo wouldn't boot from it, 
regardless of BIOS settings for boot selection and order. At last I 
thought that the stick wasn't recognized because of the file system 
type, so I created another bootable stick. This one was recognized, but 
only long enough to inform me that there was no operating system on it. 
Okay, a little more googling helped me out, I tried a different stick 
preparation software because unetbootin has problems with some mobos. 
This time the stick booted properly and at last I had an Ubuntu display.

 From that point the installation was trouble-free - including the 
addition of the Ubuntu Studio stuff - until reaching the part where I 
installed the nVidia drivers. I had added a new graphics card, so I had 
to jump through a few more hoops before I finally had a working video 
setup.

Software installation was a breeze and I soon had a complete development 
environment. Again, no significant problems building and installing my 
most-used software.

Email proved to be the final bug-bear. I was able to configure for 
incoming mail without trouble but my outgoing server simply was not 
functioning. I called my ISP, had a long chat with a helpful fellow, and 
still had no outgoing mail capability. At long last I found an on-line 
report regarding the same problem and discovered that a single setting 
should be changed. I made the change and finally have outgoing mail again.

Two days configuring this machine. Why I still don't usually recommend 
Linux to normal users.

Best regards,

dp