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Posted on 05/03/2010 11:18:38 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
It seems that every time Ubuntu gets an update there's talk about how the new version will finally usher in the era of user-friendly Linux and turn the open-source operating system (OS) into a serious competitor to OS X and Windows. We've been running the latest version, 10.04 (code-named Lucid Lynx), since it first hit beta in mid-March. While we have a hard time seeing it replace Windows 7 anytime soon, the regular six-month intervals of serious improvements are finally paying off in an arguably consumer-ready OS.
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image at website
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The other major new feature to Lucid Lynx is the "Me Menu," a drop-down in the upper right-hand corner that allows you to change your IM status, post updates to Twitter and Facebook, and manipulate your Ubuntu One account. Ubuntu One debuted in 2009, and gives all users 2GB of free online storage. The cloud-based syncing solution has grown into a seriously high-quality product. You can sync contacts between computers and cell phones (including the iPhone), notes written in the top-notch Tomboy app, Firefox bookmarks and any file or folder on your computer with a simple mouse click. Most impressive, though, is integration with the new Ubuntu One Music Store, accessible form within the Rhythm Box music manager. Any songs purchased are automatically added to your Ubuntu One online storage, meaning your purchases are easily and automatically synced across all your computers. Even better, they can be accessed from any Web browser at the Ubuntu One site.
(Excerpt) Read more at switched.com ...
Seems a bit faster ...
Are they also updating the Netbook Remix?
How about USB wireless adapter support?
Agreed...I installed it on a spare P4 this weekend and have been impressed thus far. Installed quickly, Boots quickly, and even had built in support for my no-name brand wi-fi adapter.
Still running into minor quirks though that would give the average user fits. First app I installed was Galleon for my Tivo. A fairly critical libc++ library was missing from my distro that I had to hunt down just to get the Sun/Oracle Java installer to work.
Probably still not quite ready for the average joe...but getting there.
My best Linux box is down because I pulled the hard drive to help a friend out. Am thinking of trying Ubuntu soon when I reload it. I have been using Redhat with XFCE GUI. Ubuntu comes with option of XFCE and simply love that GUI.
How long have you been using Ubuntu?
Have you ever used XFCE?
I love to read these breathless reports of a “user-friendly Linux”....
We’ve been reading them since, what, the last 10 years?
Here’s the problem: Good GUI design is *hard*. It takes a lot of thought about how people use computers. Most of the people who are involved in Linux development don’t have the time to think hard for a long time.
The way Apple got a clean UI was that they had a UI guy known as “The Tog” (aka Bruce Tognazzini) who would ride herd on app developers. In the very early days of Mac development, if you put out an app on the Mac that had a goofy UI, you might get a call from The Tog, offering to help you smooth it out. It worked, because after awhile, the critical mass of apps that did things “the correct way” became established, which pretty much gave new app developers a big body of examples of how to handle various things.
Linux has no such UI visionary - so you have a bunch of people all riding off in different directions, with X11 and a toolkit in hand. X11 for UI is already bad enough, but without a single look-n-feel for the UI... it will take half of forever to arrive at a truly “user friendly Linux.”
I attended LinuxCon last year, and everyone was touting Linux on the Desktop.....mmmhhhhhh......yeah, right. While i am a huge fan of the -ix systems/OS’s, they aren’t quite ready from Grandma or Grandpa. Don’t really think they will be unless folks can’t afford a commercial OS (wouldn’t be surprised, but then they probably won’t be able to afford electricity either).
The IX’s are better relegated to the back office, where they are reliable, steady, fast and CHEAP. But, maybe one of these days.
Ubuntu has done a good job with their kernel and UI, but i wouldn’t make my father use it just yet.
Works for me, keep the masses out of linux. I don’t want it dumbed down to accommodate lazy users.
My son hasn’t used Windows in 5 years. I used Windows 7 Ultimate, but still have to go to him when I need videos converted quickly (simple command line expression) to Flash and other seemingly mundane tasks that take forever in Windows.
I believe in hardware power./...
No patience with old boxes...
Don’t know,...but would expect so.
They start with Ubuntu and add things ,...including their own Update schemes.
Thanks,...will look at that.
You miss the point, NVDave. Windows and Apple provide a single GUI experience. Linux provides several. KDE, Gnome, etc. You can pick and choose what you want. Sure setting it up might be hard for most people, but if you feel Linux lacks a great desktop experience then create one! Sky is the limit.
On a side note, Ubuntu sucks. It’s Linux for Windows users.
This is an OLD argument. KDE sorta proves the point is incorrect. Android, et al - absolutely buries the argument.
Can we something else now.
Seriously, any even slightly experienced user can pick up a Mac, or Linux box, or Windows 7 box and get work done. They are all THAT SIMILAR.
I haven’t used Mint yet but i’ve heard great things about it. Our DBA swears by it.
I think the main hurdle is still application support. Installing Ubuntu on a brand-name PC today is as painless as one can expect. And the GUI may not be as shiny and nice as OSX or Windows but it’s clean, functional and easy enough for the non-power user while at the same time being the premier OS of choice for developers. But in my opinion, the Linux alternatives to Word and Excel just aren’t close. And until you have main-stream support for gaming, you’ll never get it onto high-end home-PCs.
It was a hoot reading DW last week when they reviewed the new flavor of Ubunto...the buttons had been moved to the other side of the toolbar or something.They were having a hissy over that
Arch user here
Yea, I know. When X11 became the face of Unix back in the early 90’s, I played with all manner of window managers.
It was fun... for awhile. For nerds, X11 and the configurability of Unix window managers is neat. For the end user, when X11 blows chunks... it is a world of confusion on the other end of the phone.
As for which variant of Unix I prefer: BSD, followed by SunOS. I’ve never been a huge fan of Linux... I guess I’ve been bitten by the “exactly which distro/version/release/build of Linux are we talking about?” question a few too many times.
My AT&T 3G aircard finally works with this newest ubuntu update. The coolest part is I didn't have to hassle with kppp or even ppp, all I did was click the network icon just like with Windows 7.
I have an hp dv2000 pavilion laptop with two hard drives. On one I run ubuntu with eclipse and force.com ide plugin to do serious code hacking. On the other I have Windows 7. The ubuntu system stays in the laptop for nearly everything now that the air card works and evolution connects to the university email outbound smtp. Bottom line: I am very impressed with this latest ubuntu build.
Good news. Thanks!
You're a friend indeed....
Well, I have to clear up some confusion for you.
1. Apple didn’t “steal” the Xerox GUI from Xerox. Tesler went to work for Apple in 1980 - in other words, a person from Xerox who had been working on the Alto’s and D-machines went to work with the GUI ideas in his head. He worked on the Lisa project, where they implemented a bunch of ideas not so much from the Star/D-machines’ desktop, but from the SmallTalk-80 environment.
That said, Apple did a LOT of work on the UI themselves. The SmallTalk-80 UI had a three button mouse, the Star desktop had a two button mouse. Apple decided this was too confusing, and they worked to get it down to a one button mouse. The Xerox interface also had a lot more “modal dialogs” than the Apple software did. Apple hammered on developers pretty hard to avoid modal dialog boxes in the UI.
Apple took more than just the GUI ideas from Xerox. AppleTalk was lifted from XNS rather directly and without shame. It is funny how no one ever seems to mention that Xerox might have had a stronger case for IP theft in AppleTalk than in the UI.
2. The Star didn’t run on a 8-bit system - it was a custom CPU made from four AMD 2901 bit-slice processors - each one of these bit-slice chips was processing four bits. You could say that 4x4=16 bits in an instruction word, but that’s not exactly so. It had a cycle time which would equate to about 8MHz, and a “soft” word size. It is difficult to describe how to make a CPU out of bit-slice processors to people unless they’ve had a background in computer architecture - but I’ll try to distill it down.
You use the bit-slice processors to implement what you want in each instruction - in effect, you’re using the bit slice chips, which are controlled via a micro-code program, to create your instruction set and architecture. Writing microcode is sometimes likened to writing assembly language - and that’s usually wrong. Writing microcode is like writing assembly code for each instruction; you need to explicitly do things like set up the address but, lock the address, fetch the contents, release the bus, etc. You can’t just say “load ‘source address’, r0.”
At cisco, we used bit-sliced chips to implement the AGS+ packet controller which would allow us to “fast switch” packets from one line card to another - doing ACL’s and routing during the switch. Our “word” was 80 bits wide, and was actually two sub-words that were each 8 bits of instruction, 32 bits of address pointing to an input packet or an output packet. Code to do relatively straightforward stuff, even stuff that would be straightforward in 68K assembly language, went on for page after page in microcode.
But it ran like a raped ape.
The reason why the Xerox engineers looked at you like you were from Mars is that at that time, 32 bit systems were the province of mainframes and super-mini’s like the VAX. You weren’t about to get 32 bits into a desk-side system for the approximately $16K that the Star (8010) was sold for. Motorola had released the 68000 CPU in 1979, and that was a huge leap forward, but even it was doing only 24 bits of addressing. The 68K was slow, tho, and it lacked the “bitblt” type of functionality that could be made to work in bit-slice CPU microcode. A bitblt was necessary to make the GUI move along at a reasonable rate. The first GUI on a microcomputer that could do the sorts of things the D-machines could was the Amiga - and it had a bitblt co-processor chip.
3. In the early 90’s, I got the opportunity to help my girlfriend (now wife) who was working at Xsoft with their X.25 software - and as a result, I got to crawl around inside the D-machines’ networking software, the Mesa2 compiler, etc. It was a slick, slick system for the early 80’s, but by the early 90’s, it was clear that it wasn’t going to scale. Mesa was a far better system programming and implementation language that C, C++ or any C variant ever was, is, or will be. Alas, Xerox just could never see the point of releasing the language spec for Mesa to the world. The closest language I could give you for reference is Modula-2 - which is because Wirth spent a summer at PARC, got to see Mesa, and it completely changed his thinking away from toy languages like Pascal.
Xerox people by then (the early 90’s) were migrating to Apple in ever larger numbers, and with these people went the years of experience in a GUI, internationalization, fonts, etc.
He had lost his job and his hard drive failed. I even installed it and re-installed his OS for him. Had done work for him before.
No, I haven’t. Can you flip me a URL?
Linux Mint 9 based on Lucid 10.04 is imminent....a few weeks away.
There is a 32 bit and a 64 bit version....codecs installed handle much of what is seen on the internet...youtube will work.
Based on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, Linux 2.6.31, Gnome 2.28 and Xorg 7.4, Linux Mint 8 "Helena" features a lot of improvements and the latest software from the Open Source World.
I hope you didn’t think I was being sarcastic. I sincerely meant what I said. We should all have friends like that. It’s a “shirt off the back” thing and you are to be commended.
Have know him since grade school, his was in my younger brother’s class. I went to Lodge with his father. Old family friends. Small town closeness.
I have the best neighbors in the world. My family has lived in this county for 110+ years. Some of the neighbor families were friends in Alabama before the Civil War. Connectedness.
Some of my ancestors were born in Texas during the Republic.
I moved away for 25 years, have been back for past 13 years. It is still home, and the last time I looked this is still Texas where I live.
I am going to download it. thanks
The hard part I have with ubuntu is installing applications
Just burned 8....I will look for Mint Linux 9.
How come? It shouldn't be hard using Synaptic. Find the app, Mark for Installation, and click Apply. It does the downloading and installing, including any needed extras for you. Is it applications from the web you have problems with?
Is it applications from the web you have problems with? >>>>>>>
Yeah. I guess whatever I need is in the Synaptic download manager? Which I found out after trying to download and install an application. It was an HTML editor
Windows is much more straightforward as far as downloading and installing. I wish Linux was like that. Download and install.
thanks
It is as straightforward, its just in a different direction. You pretty much nailed it. Pretty much anything you need is in the repositories, pre-packaged for you and ready to go. Like I said, find it, mark it, click apply. Synaptic, the package manager does all the downloading and installing for you.
Besides ease of use the advantages of a repository system are that packages are pre-built to work on your OS version and are certified free of malware, viruses, etc. The Ubuntu repositories have tens of thousands of packages in them, so you have a good chance of finding an app that does what you're looking for. Then if you wish you can add other repositories that might have something you want that the Ubuntu repositories don't, be it newer versions of programs, or stuff that can't be included in Ubuntu like the codec needed to decode aka watch dvd's which isn't included because watching a dvd breaks the content protection on the disc thereby breaking the DMCA. sigh.
Anyways, this particular process is a decided disadvantage for the repository system as the process of adding a third party repository isn't as straightforward as I think it could be. It involves the user pasting a command into a terminal that adds the repository and key to authenticate the packages from that repository. Copy, open Terminal, Paste, close Terminal. Quick and easy, but new users understandably are intimidated by command lines.
Anyways, it seems easier and less risky to me than downloading and installing an app on faith from a web site. I've caught toolbars from that once or twice.
Mint has a small selection of apps in its software Portal and install of those is quite easy...very different than Ubuntu in this area....see :
Cool - thanks!
Besides ease of use the advantages of a repository system are that packages are pre-built to work on your OS version and are certified free of malware, viruses, etc. The Ubuntu repositories have tens of thousands of packages in them, so you have a good chance of finding an app that does what you're looking for.
I didn't see thousands when I looked.....maybe other repositories are out there. I can now see the advantage of a repository system
Anything in an Ubuntu depository will work with Mint-Linux you think? Can you recommend a good website maker like FrontPage in Windows?
Arachnophilia is not in the mint linux repository as far as I can tell. I have not install mint yet but just looking at what it calls the software portal. http://linuxmint.com/software/?sec=category&id=168&release=6 It might be in ubuntus repository
Oh no problem. Linux isn't Windows and Windows isn't Linux. Which is better is a matter of user preference, but they each do certain things their own way that can not be immediately apparent to new users. I was just reading an article on Windows Tips today I realized I would be lost at a Windows 7 desktop if I was sat down today and tried to use it beyond basic stuff like starting programs. Whereas a decade ago I could make Windows 2000 sit up and do tricks.
I didn't see thousands when I looked.....maybe other repositories are out there.
You probably haven't enabled the extra Ubuntu repositories. Enabling them is simple, but here's a site that also breaks down how to do it and what each repository is:
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/sources
That sight actually has a lot of good info for the new user including how to add third party repsositories like Medibuntu and GetDeb.
An indespensible resource for someone coming to Ubuntu is Ubuntu Forums. If you have a question or a problem, someone else has probably alread had it and has gotten help there. The jerk ratio there is pretty low for an internet forum. I found one discussion about possible HTML editors. From 2006 its a bit dated but it names some good possibilities for web editors, including Arachnophilia, which, yep, isn't in any of the repositories. Note that nothing stops you from installing programs using the downoad and install method that you're used to, you just should be conscious of what you're installing when you do it that way, just like you would be conscious of whether a third party repository is reputable before you would add it. (Medibuntu and GetDeb are, btw)
Anything in an Ubuntu depository will work with Mint-Linux you think? Can you recommend a good website maker like FrontPage in Windows?
I really can't speak on Mint as I haven't tried it but I know it is reported to come a little more feature complete out of the box with for instance the mp3 and dvd codecs already installed. I believe Mint uses its own repositories... can't be sure and I'm a little short on time at the moment to bring myself up to speed on it. Regarding a replacement for Frontpage, if you do a Google search for Frontpage Linux Alternative or better Linux Alternatives you'll get a ton of sites that offer great counterparts to programs you're used to.
Heh—maybe I’m better with Windows 7 than you are. I have read your post a few times. Thanks for all the help. I will load 10.4 Ubuntu today and see what I get. The luscious lynx or whatever it’s called
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