Ed Hewitt Yet another Tech & Gaming Blog!

My Thoughts on Ubuntu 10.04

Ubuntu 10.04 is out today! To mark the occasion, I am going to give you my thoughts of Lucid Lynx.

Ubuntu 10.04 is yet again an excellent release. This release is an Long-Term Support version (LTS) which has an aim to be a very stable release, and in most cases it does. With an aim to be stable release does not mean lack of features, it has

The All-New Ubuntu Desktop (click to enlarge)

tons of great additions. The key feature of 10.04 is the all new look to Ubuntu. Ubuntu has under gone new branding, with a new logo. Along with the new logo comes an entirely new UI to Ubuntu. The new Light theme makes Ubuntu look far more slick and professional than before. Ubuntu finally looks great! Part of the theme comes a new arrangement of the close, minimise, maximise buttons. They have moved from the right-hand side of a window to the left, like Mac OSX. It has caused complaints from many Ubuntu users, personally I like the change. Plus, it is very easy to move the buttons back to the right using Ubuntu Tweak. Along with the new theme, comes changes to the notification area. For many users the notification area, or system tray, has been filled with many different icons. In Lucid, these icons have been replaced with indicator applets, which are design to look and act similar, giving the user information about certain things going on with their computer. Such as, battery monitor, sound, network status and music playing. One of Mark Shuttleworth's own inventions has made it into 10.04, the Me Menu. This new menu which sits at the top right of your screen is used for all your social networking. It allows you to set your status (on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc) and change your status on your IM client (Available, Busy or Away). New wallpapers and the Ubuntu-Mono icon set finish off the brilliant look and fell to Lucid!

Further improvements have been seen since the last release, 9.10. An new kernel (2.6.32) provides improved hardware support, which also makes Ubuntu the first OS to support USB3.0 out of the box. The new kernel also supports the new open-source nVidia drivers, nouveau. However, I am having issues with these new drivers, causing crashing, no providing the correct resolution and no 3D support. Luckily, you can use the official nVidia drivers, which cause no problems at all.

One of Ubuntu 10.04 's main aims was to have social out of the box, making it the first OS to do so. Improvements to the Instant Messenging client, Empathy, as seen the added support of Facebook Chat from the desktop. Gwibber is a new addition to Ubuntu, which is a micro-blogging client. It allows the user to follow their friend's statuses and post their own on many services, such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, etc. The default applications in Ubuntu has been important for this release. For the first time, Ubuntu has a video editing application, Pitivi. It is a basic and easy to use video editor, which does the job well. Gimp has been dropped in favour for a more user friendly F-Spot. F-Spot has a very easy to use editing feature, with the key basic editing tools. Many games have been removed, however 5 have stayed which seem to the popular ones with many users.

Ubuntu One, which is Ubuntu's online service which was added in the last release, has seen improvements in Lucid. Improvements have been made to their cloud storage service to important the user experience. However, the service  is still not stable enough in my opinion. I'm still using Dropbox, hoping Ubuntu One will be ready soon. One of the major new features in Ubuntu One has been the Ubuntu One Music Store. It works like iTunes. In the default music player in Ubuntu, Rhythmbox, there is now the Ubuntu One Music Store. You can browse the store, find your favourite tracks, buy and download. DRM-Free MP3s. The store is powered by 7-Digital, so it has a great library of Music. However, it is abit pricey compared to my favourite Amazon MP3.

Improvements to applications already Ubuntu have been made. Firefox 3.6 is faster than ever. OpenOffice 3.2 also boasts faster startup times. Gnome 2.30 provides a very stable desktop, before its jump to Gnome 3. Ubuntu also boasts improved speed, with boot up times faster than ever. Expect to me on your desktop within 15-20 seconds of pressing your power button.

Overall, Ubuntu 10.04 is an excellent release. Many improvements to the Ubuntu desktop make it the best-looking OS out. The OS is more user-centric than ever before, with applications and social networking features which will appeal to most modern day computer users. There are now ever more reasons to move away from Windows and Mac OS X!