Ubuntu

As a computer refurbisher I am always pleased when people are open to switching to Linux. Long story short I was doing some work for a client that I'd switched to Linux when I ran the following command in his home directory:

sudo rm -rf /home/username/.gnome2

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One of the reasons I love Linux is because it's extremely customizable. The screenshot above looks a lot like MacOS X, but is in fact Linux (the Gnome footprint for the start button gives that away).

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Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, has released some details about a lighter weight Ubuntu he and his company are working on for the future.

There are lots of positive comments about the changes, but I wonder how much of it is innovative? A lot of this technology already exists in Ubuntu. It seems to me that most of the innovation is just an attempt to bloat Ubuntu with social network systems.

Canonical is revising some of the Ubuntu interface for netbooks, this is my take on it, it's just the bottom panel switched to the side with a few social networking icons.

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The Places drop down menu in Ubuntu contains a number of folders, including Documents, Pictures, and Videos. Accessing these folders through the Places menu is convenient. To add other folders to the Places menu open the folder you want to add then drag it to the sidebar Places. In the screenshot above I have a folder called Downloads I created in Ubuntu 9.04 (9.10 has a Downloads folder, 9.04 does not), then dragged it over to the Places sidebar just under the Documents folder.

A screen shot from an upgrade of Ubuntu 9.10 to Ubuntu 10.04.

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I ranted a little yesterday about the bugs in Ubuntu 9.10 caused by the introduction of GDM2. It looks like Canonical is aware of those bugs, but they're a low priority that likely won't get fixed for the next "Long Term Service" (LTS) release of Ubuntu. With Mark Shuttleworth stepping down as CEO, I'm starting to think this almost mirrors when Bill Gates stepped down as CEO of Microsoft, the company took a nose dive and put out junk.

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A couple of sources, Ars Technica and the more thorough Web Upd8 are reporting on Ubuntu's new theme. The Ars article seems to buy the "we assembled a team of artists" line, while the Web Upd8 article is critical of the new theme, basically saying it's a rip off of Mac OS X.

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Working in a computer refurbishing environment I get a lot of opportunity to test equipment. One of the nice surprises came a few weeks ago when someone bought a Micro Innovations IC435C web cam from a local bargain store and brought it into our shop. The client wanted us to install the drivers for the camera in their Windows machine. We did the installation and also popped it into our Ubuntu Linux machine.

Ubuntu normally doesn't have any web camera applications installed so I installed Cheese:

sudo apt-get install cheese


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My notebook, a Lenovo 3000 C100, is my main computer at home. In fact it's the only computer I own at home. Because it is my only computer I run a LTS (Long Term Service) version of Ubuntu Linux on it. Now I like to try out shiny new software as much as the next guy. I could go to work, buy a machine, and use it as a Linux development machine, but I'm trying to reduce the number of computers we have in the house, not increase them.