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 Channel Futures

Open Source


Ubuntu 10.10: Ten Days In

  • Written by Christopher Tozzi
  • October 20, 2010
Today, October 20, marks 10 days since the release of Ubuntu 10.10.  Now that we've had a week and a half to evaluate it on production machines, here are some thoughts on how close it comes to scoring the "perfect 10" to which Ubuntu founder and financier Mark Shuttleworth aspired when he

Today, October 20, marks 10 days since the release of Ubuntu 10.10.  Now that we’ve had a week and a half to evaluate it on production machines, here are some thoughts on how close it comes to scoring the “perfect 10” to which Ubuntu founder and financier Mark Shuttleworth aspired when he announced the new release back in April. Now, here’s our perspective.

October 10 wasn’t the first time I’d tried the new Ubuntu release, of course.  I’d had it running in a virtual machine for many months before that date, and played with it on spare machines as time allowed.  But it’s impossible to get a complete feel for all the merits and flaws of an operating system until you deploy it in the wild and have to depend on it, for better or for worse.

Fortunately, however, Ubuntu 10.10 has yet to give me a major reason to regret installing it on the Dell netbook that I use day in and day out.  On the contrary, I’ve been generally quite happy with the new release so far.

New Applications

For starters, I’m liking the new features in the Ubuntu Software Center, which has now fully replaced other graphical tools to become the one-stop shop for finding, installing, managing and deleting applications.  Standalone Debian packages are now opened in the Software Center by default, replacing the gdebi tool.

The recent addition of Fluendo’s DVD Player as the first for-purchase application in the Software Center also opens up exciting new possibilities for installing commercial software via the Software Center:

Ubuntu Software Center screenshot

I wish the Software Sources tool, a.k.a. software-properties-gtk, were still available from the System menu instead of being accessible only in the Software Center, but there are worse things in life than this.

I’ve also grown quite fond of Shotwell, which replaced Mono-dependent F-Spot in this Ubuntu release as the default photo manager.  In fact, after using Shotwell for the last few months, I’ve decided I like it so much that I’ve committed to it my precious collection of photographs of eighteenth-century documents, on which my academic survival depends:

Shotwell screenshot

Shotwell stands out because it’s fast and efficient.  I also like how it organizes photos by “event,” as well as the fact that it can be configured to store all photos and data in a single directory, making my collection of images portable and easy to back up.

In addition, Shotwell helps advance Ubuntu’s aspiration to be “social from the start” by making it easy to upload photos to Flickr, Picasa and Facebook.  It would be nice to see more sites supported than those three, but I suspect they cover the needs of a majority of users for the time being.

Last but not least, a list of the positive new features in Ubuntu 10.10 wouldn’t be complete without a kudos to the installer, which is now simpler and faster than ever.  Ubuntu developers had the good idea of starting the heavy-lifting of the installation process in the background while the user is still filling in information that isn’t needed until the end.  Thanks in part to this common-sense improvement, installation took less than twenty minutes on my netbook.

The Bad

My complaints about Ubuntu 10.10 mostly involve minor issues.  For one, I was annoyed to discover that control-alt-D, the hotkey combination that in previous releases would expose the desktop, has now been replaced by superkey-D, just like in Windows.  This change might make it a tiny bit easier for Windows expatriates to make the switch to Gnome, but it’s a little obnoxious to see Ubuntu conforming to the conventions of the proprietary world instead of sticking to the configuration to which Linux users have been accustomed for years.

A similarly minor issue, but one that nonetheless bothers me almost every day, is the loss of the keyboard shortcut for taking a screenshot of only the active window.  I’ve yet to figure out whether this is a general bug, a problem specific to my hardware or an intentional change, but it would be nice if it were fixed.  Bonus points for addressing the egregiously longstanding bug where the Gnome screenshot tool fails to capture window borders when compiz is running, but don’t get me started on that one.

Other than these relatively negligible annoyances, I can’t say there’s anything I’d change about Ubuntu 10.10.  I won’t go so far as to call it “perfect,” because experience has shown that to be a word which usually leads to regret later on.  But I would describe it as pretty great, and definitely worth trying out.  After all, with the installation process so quick and easy, what excuse is there not to?

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Tags: Cloud Service Providers Digital Service Providers MSPs VARs/SIs Mobility Open Source

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9 comments

  1. Avatar zenarcher October 21, 2010 @ 11:04 am
    Reply

    I can think of one excuse not to, if you happen to be using Nvidia GeForce 8xxx series video cards. Your monitor will go into sleep mode, immediately after the BIOS screen, once you install the Nvidia proprietary driver. So, unless you’re happy with a crippled Nouveau Nvidia driver, I’d suggest waiting. All over Nvidia series cards seem to be fine. All was well from Alpha 1 through the Release Candidate, so it had to be a last minute glitch.

  2. Avatar zenarcher October 21, 2010 @ 11:29 am
    Reply

    A bit more for users of Nvidia 8xxx series graphic card users:

    http://linuxtrends.com/an-ubuntu-10-10-upgrade-double-whammy/#comment-4550

  3. Avatar someone October 21, 2010 @ 12:58 pm
    Reply

    I’m using Mint 8 based on Ubuntu 9.10 myself, but I’m pretty sure this should work the same way in Maverick: if you want to redefine your keyboard shortcuts, all you need to do is go into Preferences-gt; keyboard shortcuts and change them back to what you like.

  4. Avatar sec October 21, 2010 @ 1:11 pm
    Reply

    I’m not surprised that Ubuntu has borrowed a few “features” from Windows. Some Canonical executives are former Microsoft employees. Btw, a few more bugs has been detailed by another reviewer at
    http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2010/10/13/ubuntu-10-10-review/

  5. Avatar Mike October 21, 2010 @ 5:37 pm
    Reply

    I have had a few issues as far as my ati 4850 goes. When compiz is enabled, using ati drivers with desktop effects on, switching users over to my wifes side. Her side is bone stock just with desktop effects enabled. But in her side the mouse cursor icon flickers whenmoved or stationary. It’s very annoying. The machine also has issues redrawing anything open on her side. This forced me to try everything. Nothing works except having only one side logged in. Oh well maybe next year. I don’t blame ubuntu,if amd would release better open source drivers I am sure it would work better.

  6. Avatar sergio October 21, 2010 @ 7:22 pm
    Reply

    Hey I have a Debian Sid (GNOME 2.30) and Alt+Print doesn’t work for me too.
    I ran xev or something like that and guess what? All the keys seem to work, Print works with other modifiers, Alt too but Alt+Print gives no output at all.
    And GNOME still comes with that key combination pre-configured for a window screenshot.
    Now I don’t remember if it doesn’t work outside GNOME too, but I kind of suspect so, so it could be a xorg bug?
    I never went trying to find out but now you mentioned I see it’s a more generic bug.

  7. Avatar LAS October 21, 2010 @ 8:43 pm
    Reply

    Using Meerkat 10.10 64 bit on 4 machines. Excellent.
    USB and 3G performance is improved. Snappy amp; polished.
    Happy with .35 kernel.

    I prefer using all OSS video drivers – Compiz runs smoother, plymouth and tty resolutions are preserved.

    Projection works great. MSI U230 – netbook style running smooth on 4GB.

    The new Ubuntu font is all over my documents (and desktop) and people love it. Gnome never looked better.

  8. Avatar nnull October 22, 2010 @ 3:57 pm
    Reply

    Reason not install? I heard it’s not significantly different from the previous desktop version. Tablet changes alot, but not desktop. I even saw benchmarks showing it’s slower when running various tasks.

    So, I am running the old version happily. Why would I risk problems, and times, while there is very little promise of it delivering something great over the last iteration?

    Sure, it’s great, but so was the last version.

  9. Avatar Christopher Tozzi October 22, 2010 @ 9:38 pm
    Reply

    nnull: true, the desktop hasn’t changed fundamentally in the new release. I suppose the only major reason to upgrade is to get a newer application stack, but if you’re happy enough with what’s available on Lucid (or don’t mind using PPAs to get newer builds of whichever applications you need), then I’d agree that it makes sense to stick with 10.04. But that’s not as fun 🙂

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