Is ubuntu reaching the end of it?

I started my life of Linux with Mandriva, it made me realize Linux is better than windows and I felt like I know something about operating systems by that time Ubuntu was there but it looked bulky and I hated that shade of brown color and its large icons. As the time goes by I got to know about LinuxMint which I loved (by the way I never sticked to Mandriva because it didn’t support my Huawei E220 which is my primary source of Internet connectivity) and I started to use LinuxMint as my primary OS I still had windows by the side because I didn’t like the presentation templates in open office, Mint supported my Huawei E220 that was the main reason for my transition. Mint was bas ed on Ubuntu after few release cycles I thought of moving to Ubuntu because it’s the same as Mint and the UI started to look better, and among other reasons the Mint made Ubuntu less stable so basically Mint is less stable than Ubuntu.

The transition took with Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) and my OS world was perfect!! free software all the time, just an apt-get to install those and the Ubuntu software center made some promises with nice descriptions. From there onwards the OS became better and better and better. Nice UIs, faster booting times, new logos, nicer user friendly installation guides and Ubuntu made the perfect OS for the open-source community and most of all its became the best OS for the newbies in Linux.

Lets talk about Linux for a bit, Since the beginning of GNU project it was all about freedom. Men and women who were involved in Linux always talked about freedom free software, freedom to distribute freedom of use and Linus Torvalds helped Richard Stallman with his philosophical idea of free software and the Linux community always withstand any dictatorship they always challenged the monopolies. That lead to success of this community.

Now new ubuntu comes with Unity, for what I have experienced its still in the development phase and its still not desktop worthy, but it seems like Mark Shuttleworth thinks its desktop worthy. Its a crappy desktop environment where you cannot change the position of the launcher and the reason for that is the launcher should match with the ubuntu logo which is in the top left hand corner. As the latest reports says there wont be an ubuntu logo after all it will be just a blue triangle, but still they are arguing about it lets just hope for the best.

Change is good it makes people think differently and act differently but those changes should not make people slaves. Ubuntu says; the Gnome support will still be there for another few releases and then after that Gnome no more. That will make the Ubuntu transition for a newbie difficult, the user friendly OS will not be that user friendly. I highly appreciate the work the Ubuntu developers put behind to build such a wonderful OS but I have this big question

IS UBUNTU REACHING THE END OF IT?

This is just a thought!
What do you think about? Leave a comment!

bye!

The change it self – Lucid Lynx

Hey guys! hope you have already installed “Lucid Lynx” or as we all know it ubuntu 10.04. I installed Lucid few hours back, and it is definitely a change. I installed it by creating Startup Disk, it was an exciting idea for me, because I tried it out for the first time. The installation was really impressive, it took me less than 10mins (it was that fast) and I’m proud to say, from today onwards I’m totally “opensourced” (at least the operating system) and also I might install windows on virtual box in time to come (if I want it).

What I like about Lucid:
- E220 Huawei dongle works like a charm (it was not like this when I was using Karmic)
- The UI design is way cooler than the earlier editions and the window controls on the right hand side of the window border gives it a more sleek look.
- Ubuntu software center is renewed with more features.
- Gnome-terminal looks purple
- And finally the menu items are improved and more user friendly.

Terminal

Software Center

What I don’t like about Lucid:
- The indicator applet takes too much space (the space between icons are too much when comparing to the icon sizes).
- Bluetooth with phoenix bios still suck till you install omnibook module (check my post on Phoenix bios and bluetooth)

I hope the indicator applet problem will get solved soon its not that much of a big issue.

Lucid Lynx really shows that change can happen, because its that good, and when you use it you’ll realize its fast(i.e. installation, boot-up and response time).
Now I’m gonna tell you about few things you have to do after installing Lucid(there are many blog posts about that but here I’m gonna tell you what I did so far)

1. Change font sizes, the default font size is 10 but I changed it to 9.

2. Remove the panel on the bottom and install Docky
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:docky-core/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install docky
then add more docklets change settings to make it look like what I did or as you prefer,

3. Lucid comes with Empathy as the default chat client it was the same with Karmic too but I like pidgin so I installed pidgin sudo apt-get install pidgin if you want to change the smiley theme to those smilies in yahoo messenger or MSN messenger download the file in this LINK extract it on ~/.purple/smileys then go to Preferences -> Themes -> Smiley Theme and select original – M@her and that will do the trick.

4. When it comes to twitter I use Choqok as in my previous post so to install choqok, sudo apt-get install choqok but in default Gwibber comes with Lucid.

5. I installed chrome too by downloading and installing the .deb file

Those are the major changes I did after installing Lucid Lynx.

If you are new to Linux then the best OS to use is ubuntu and also if you are new to computing then again the best OS is ubuntu that is what I recommend.

bye for now download, install and experience the change !!!!!!!

~~ Rusiru Boteju ~~