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Re: [LUG] Ubuntu 10.04 (Daily Build 18th March 2010) first impressions

 

Rhia Knowles wrote:
On 18 March 2010 15:35, Rob Beard <rob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi folks,

Well the laptop for my folks has arrived, I'm just backing up Windows 7
*just in case* they don't get on with Ubuntu (although saying that they
aren't used to computers so it should be easy enough to just show them
Ubuntu/Gnome).

Now I did find an issue with CloneZilla (Jaunty I think) on this new laptop
where it wouldn't boot.  So I figured, right time to try Lucid.  I'd tried
daily builds of Lucid before in Virtualbox but they wouldn't boot, so I
wasn't sure what was going to happen.

So I downloaded Ubuntu 10.04 Alpha daily build 18th March 2010.  Created a
bootable SD card (no USB sticks handy!) and proceeded to boot.

First of all the isolinux boot menu is different, it still asks for language
but it seems to just sit there for a couple of seconds until I press enter.
 Not sure if that's me, I didn't really look at it much, might be just me
being impatient.

Other than that the logo has changed and it's purple.

So I selected the option to boot without installing (can't remember the
exact wording) and up came a new fancy Ubuntu splash screen with the new
logo on a purple background with some dots.  All in all it took about 30
seconds or so to boot.  Much quicker than CD and without the drop down to a
text console for some debug messages which I got on Ubuntu 9.10.

The actual switch from the splash screen to the desktop was seamless, I
didn't even realise X had started until I heard the Ubuntu startup sound.
 I'm not sure if it's using Plymouth but it was certainly fancy.

Yeah thats the new usplash it came in with Karmic.
This is something more than usplash, it was completely seemless like on Fedora. Actually according to Phoronix it is Plymouth...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzgwMA

(Just without the debug messages).

The desktop looks pretty much the same, the colour scheme has changed a bit
to a light grey colour which will take a bit of getting used to.  The
background is purple but the icons still have the brown theme which TBH I
didn't think went too well, but I can't do any better so I can't argue with
it.
You could try http://gnome-look.org/index.php?xcontentmode=121 for a
new theme. Download, then drop the tar.gz into the theme dialog to
install it.
Yep, I might do, I tend to stick with the default theme.
The window title bars are different, the minimise/maximise/restore/close
buttons are on the left hand side.

Hmm, annoying.

Yep, I have found a couple of guides to alter it. It requires the use of gconf-editor...

http://tinyurl.com/yheqgwh

It does however break the look of the buttons as they're designed to be displayed as maximise, minimise and close rather than minimise, maximise and close.

Personally I think that as a minimum they should offer a choice of which side it the buttons are, even if it means taking 5 minutes to create another theme, one for the buttons on the left hand side and one for the buttons on the right hand side.

That was about as far as I got, I had to get on with sorting the machine out
but I'm planning on having another play tomorrow.

The machine in question is an Acer Extensa 5635Z with Pentium Dual Core
2.1GHz CPU, Broadcom ethernet, Atheros Wireless and Intel GMA4500M graphics.

I did notice some flickering, I put this down to Compiz although I will
investigate further tomorrow.  At least I can say the wireless and Bluetooth
(which my notebook doesn't have!) works out of the box.  I'm guessing the
webcam will too, but I'll find out tomorrow.

So yeah, initial impressions of Ubuntu 10.04 and this notebook are very
good.

Rob

Cool. I'm stuck running Mint7 (Jaunty based) on this laptop as
Karmic/Mint8  Kernel Panic.
Might try it out on the desktop at some point when I'm not drowning in
assignments.
I'm going to try it probably this weekend, I was going to get it installed last weekend but got distracted with sorting other things out (always seems to be the case, something more interesting comes up rather than backing up my hard drive and upgrading or reinstalling).

Rob




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