Pre-sale questions about Ubuntu + Mini

The media player (rythmplayer) plays ever file type I've tried including WMAs. 

There is an iTunes app.  I'm not sure of the name.

Open Office comes installed.

Firefox is the installed browser.

Memory is available.  Check the Ubuntu.org forums for sources.

 

Alternatively you can run a kubuntu based laptop...that is...get the ubuntu and then install kde desktop...which comes with Amarok...which I use and it is very very good....all you would need to do is select Amarok in your synaptic package manager

Don't even need to install kubuntu (KDE) as far as I am aware.....When I got my dell inspiron recently it came with open office already on

The other thing I do is use soundKonvertor to convert wmas to wavs then mp3

 

I also recall amarok has magnatunes....never used it myself but info is here...bit like itunes but without the grey suits hovering I guess!

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnatunes

 

on the memory front ...I bought the desktop with 4gb ram fitted which cost a little more but was worth it

1) Is there a bundled media player that will handle MP3's and WMA's?

 

There are plenty of great media players available for Linux.  Amarok, as suggested above, and other KDE applications, do not actually require you to run the full K Desktop Environment. They will work under Gnome and all libraries required will be installed automatically when you attempt to install Amarok. That said, KDE 3 is my preference over Gnome or KDE4. Gnome is a very nice desktop and it's really easy to work with. You should consider sticking to it for the first six months at least and run any KDE applications you might want to try inside Gnome.

 

Other good media players include VLC (more in a minute) and XMMS which resembles Winamp.

 

2) Is there an official iTunes for Linux Ubuntu? (As in, cane I access the iTunes store, account, etc.)

 

No. There is no native iTunes interface for Linux, however, it is possible to get iTunes running under Wine. Do a search at http://google.com/linux for "iTunes under Linux". (Very curious considering OSX runs on Darwin which is a Linux derrivative).

 

However, you can use your iPod with Linux. Amarok works well with iPods in fact (My wife's favorite) as does gtkPod. Be very careful when you first launch them and it asks you to select your music folder. Do not select your entire home directory as they will scan every single file, hidden files and all folders included, which can take a very very long time.

 

 

3) I bet this is a silly question, but can I run OpenOffice?

 

 Ubuntu 8.04 ships with Open Office 2.4. I wouldn't recommend it though (and I'll avoid that long winded rant). Try working with Abiword instead, it's much more stable and does most of the things OpenOffice tries to do.

 

4) Which browser is included out-of-the-box? 

 

FireFox 3.0b is included out of box with Ubuntu 8.04 and it will be upgraded to 3.03 during the initial upgrade.

 To get a larger idea of what ships with Ubuntu, check out the page on DistroWatch.com http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ubuntu

 

5) Hardware question: can I install my own RAM into the Mini's? (Vs. buying upfront from Dell)? 

 

Sorry, I don't know this one.

 

6) ...anything else I should know about before deciding to buy?

 

Remember when you first used Windows? Linux is like that. Given time you learned to use Windows. Give it some time and you'll learn you use Linux. Make sure you give it a solid effort and learn as much as you can.  Don't shy away from the command line. It's the most fun you can have without your mouse on!

 

 

My needs are word processing via OpenOffice and/or Google Docs, playing lots of music, a complete web surfing experience (Flash, various chat apps, etc.) and quite frankly that's about it.

 

You shouldn't have any problems doing any of that, but your first weekend will be a huge learning experience. 

  

I guess my main concerns are finding out not whether or not I can use specific programs. For example, when I installed Ubuntu I was pleased with it's robust media player --except it didn't recognize WMA.

 

The one thing you will need to do before anything else media related is to open your package manager and include the "non-free" repositories to get access to the proprietary codecs like WMA. Depending on which package manager you like, there are several, the process is a little different. Look for something along the lines of "Manage Repositories" or PPA.

 

The easiest way to get media players working is to install VLC and then all the other media players. VLC requires all the codecs it can get it's hands on so that one install will fetch as many codecs as it can and install them. The other media players will use whatever is already installed. So open the non-free repositories (That's non-free as in speech, they're the propietary codecs - you don't have to pay to access them), install VLC first, then Amarok and other media players.