[samiam]

OK, here is the situation. I bought a 2100 with Ubuntu to evaluate both items for my employer. We are a Windows shop, and I'm anything but a *nix expert, but I have managed to successfully stumble through a couple of Linux and BSD installs (server and workstation) from the command line in the past. However. since I am acceptance testing Ubuntu on behalf of non-IT Windows users, I am trying to pretend that the Gnome GUI is all there is to work with. On first boot, I was prompted for a user name and password to create the initial user account. Did that. Immediately after, a prompt displayed asking if I wanted to connect to the local wireless network (SSID correctly detected). Since we are static IP, I declined, pending configuring the NIC. I found a USB drive with available space and did the system back-up. Then I tried to get back to the wireless set-up. I did manage to find a dialog that allowed me to set it to Manual with the appropriate IP, gateway & DNS addresses. However, I was not able to save that information, apparently because my account does not have administrator privileges. I did some research at the Ubuntu site, etc., and I think I learned enough to to what I need to to at the cl either through sudo, or creating a real root user. However, the point is to do this from the GUI as if I have never used any OS but Windows. So, how is that supposed to work? Is there some fairly easy way to do this from the GUI under the user I was prompted to create? If not, how is the typical Windows user expected to deal with this? And why is the offer of connecting to the wireless network made, and why is the network parameters dialog made available, to a user who does not have the privileges to do those tasks? I would really like to be able to recommend Linux as an alternative to Windows for company use. In the three years since I last exercised a Linux set-up, I have heard nothing but praise (especially re Ubuntu) for how user-friendly it has become regarding installation and use. I'm sorry to say that what I have seen so far does little to corroborate those evaluations. It really is not going to increase adoption to layer on a vastly improved GUI (which it unarguably is) if that turns out to only be a tease, and the neophyte user needs to drop into the cl for such trivial tasks as setting up the wireless NIC parameters. I'm hoping that someone here will point out something that I have stupidly overlooked in this process. Thanks. -Samiam

[ugm6hr]

What is a 2100?

It appears you have created a "limited" user. Why? The default initial user should have "sudo" (or administrator) permissions.

Network manager is the default wifi configuration application for Ubuntu 9.04 (and 8.04LTS), and prompts you for the "sudo" password when you open any dialogue box that requires it. I have no idea how you installed Ubuntu, but it appears your installation does not. Ubuntu only prompts you to create a user at the time of installation, not afterwards, so presumably you are trying to add additional users?

The other thing to ensure is that auto-login is disabled, since it just reduces security, and makes prompting for other passwords more annoying.

I hope that makes sense, but you have not supplied enough information to offer direct help.

If this is not a specific to the Mini, I would recommend ubuntuforums.org over this forum.