Headline Feeds
Lucid Lynx, Canonical's latest desktop release of Ubuntu (10.04), sports a new look and feel designed to attract new users, both in business and at home.
No doubt the launch of a music store component for the Ubuntu One cloud service available through the Ubuntu OS will give consumers a reason to consider one of the most popular Linux desktops.
Canonical, the commercial outlet of the community-developed Ubuntu Linux distro, clearly wants to make migrating to Ubuntu easy for new users to experience right out of the box. The company has partnered with several computer makers to preinstall the long-term support version on a range of computers this summer.
Existing Ubuntu users who have no interest in the music outlet or the social networking tools integrating into the desktop still have good reasons to upgrade to version 10.04. Lots of tinkering under the hood has produced a reliable and more responsive distribution.
Define Sexy
That could well be the motivating factor behind this latest Ubuntu release. The question was how to make it look as appealing as the Mac, said Chris Kenyon, vice president for OEMPartner Devices for Canonical.
"It is evident that the community did a huge amount of work to make it a polished OS. This release stands out. It runs quite deep in user experience. Much of the social networking is more integrated, making it sexy to use," he told LinuxInsider.
Another big change in Lucid Lynx is enhancements to the boot routine and changes to the software center that feeds more apps to Ubuntu. Boot times continued to drop over the last two years, and designers are working to bring more software in an app store environment, explained Kenyon.
Antisocial Nature
Mine, that is, not Ubuntu's! One of my fears in upgrading to Lucid Lynx was the tweaking done to the social networking with the new Me Menu. I was concerned that the desktop integration would be too intrusive.
This menu consolidates the process of accessing and updating social networks, including Facebook, Digg, Twitter and Identica. It also integrates chat channels so users can talk with friends or colleagues on Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Talk, MSN, IRC and pretty much every other network.
That added feature is there to attract business users and consumers alike who fancy frantic updates and hourly reports on who is doing what. But I can live without constantly reading and responding to fellow followers and friends in plain sight of the desktop display. I've also avoided several smartphone choices that pushed similar social networking integrations.
If there was no way to avoid that feature, Lucid Lynx would have forced me to reinstall version 9.04, the previous release.
However, my worries proved unfounded. I have to open the Gwibber Social Client under the Applications/Internet menu to configure and activate the social networking desktop component.
This software package is added to version 10.04. You can still add it to a previous Ubuntu version by installing the Gwibber Microblogging Client via the Ubuntu Software Center. So the Me Menu of Social Networking tasks is not a deal-breaker for us anti-social types.
What Else's New
Do not look for much in the way of more glitz and glitter. Aside from a few cosmetic changes, most of the improvements are found under the hood.
For example, boot speed is much quicker on almost any machine. Getting to the desktop was much faster on my slightly older hardware clunkers.
Developers paid a lot of attention to enhancing Ubuntu One's enhanced desktop integration for more efficient access to the online service's files and folders. They added bookmark and contact sharing. This makes the built-in access to the Ubuntu One cloud much more direct and seamless.
Better Tunes and Package delivery
Lucid Lynx spruced up the Ubuntu Software Center with version 2.0. The interface is sleeker. It's easier to recognize Ubuntu-provided software from packages supplied by Canonical's partners.
The Ubuntu One Music Store provides music directly through the default music player. The store provides the purchase of singles and albums and allows users to share DRM-free music from one location across multiple computers and devices.
The music store is added in this upgrade through the Rhythmbox 0.12.8 music management and player package, However, you must be running Lucid Lynx to gain access to the music store. On another of my computers that runs Ubuntu 9.10, the resident Rhythmbox 0.12.5 does not have the menu option for the Ubuntu One Music Store. It cannot be added because the Software Center and other package managers do not provide Rhythmbox 0.12.8.
Lucid Lynx and its link to Rhythmbox 0.12.8 provides off-the-shelf iTunes connectivity. It has support for both MTP (media transfer protocol) portable players and Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPods.
Oh No Factor
If you are a seasoned Windows or Linux user, the latest redesign of the window box controls could be very annoying to you; if you are a Mac user, you will feel right at home.
The position of the maximize/restore, minimize and close button is now located on the left side of the screen. If nothing else, it is extremely annoying, but at least it gives more room for notifications in the right corner.
There is a work-around, however. An Ubuntu Tweak package is available here. This free software will not only return these buttons to the right, but it will also carry out some other tweaks for Ubuntu preferences.
Hello Canonical: Put an option for where to place these buttons in the preferences panel.
Other New Stuff
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS brings with it the Linux kernel 2.6.32 and better support for Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) proprietary graphics drivers. Also under the hood is the latest Gnome desktop environment.
New themes and a new collection of screensaver graphics adds some interesting eye candy to the Ubuntu desktop as well.
Gone, hopefully for good, is the drab, earthy brown signature style of the previous distro. Replacing it is an updated color palette called "Ambience." It is replete with hints of orange and light brown wallpaper.
Panel Play
Say hello to a new panel notification area. The new design is a combined grouping of embedded menus, called "application indicators."
This gets rid of some of the panel clutter. More work was also done on the messaging indicator menu added in Ubuntu 9.10.
A key addition is PiTiVi. this is a video editing tool that is built on the GStreamer multimedia framework. I haven't used it much, but my limited hands-on exposure shows that PiTiVi is easy to use.
New Nautilus
I was never a fan of the resident Gnome file manager, Nautilus, in previous releases. But Nautilus is now a bit better thanks to a split view mode that makes managing files a lot easier. Turn the twin panel feature on and off with the F3 key.
Another Nautilus redisign is the removal of the address bar in text mode. But you can quickly restore with Ctrl + L.
No GIMP and Abi and ...
Gone as well in the default installation of Lucid Lynx are the classic GIMP image editor and the Abiword word processor. Of course, you can add them from the package manager.
I was glad to discover that upgrading from Ubuntu 9.10 did not remove GIMP and other software I added along the way.
Also gone is support for bluetooth, compiz extra, ekiga, gnome-pilot, gnumeric, xsane, and a host of libraries. If you use these apps, seek support from the open source community rather than from Canonical.
More Details
The Lucid Lynx install removes 32 packages from version 9.04 and adds 207 new packages. It upgrades 1,553 packages.
The total download takes 984 MB. It took about 116 minutes to install.
