New Ubuntu release today. Being a total shiny new gadget whore who specializes in free gadgets, Marduk is now running Gutsy Gibbon. He would have been running it last week but the beta CD hard froze my system while launching gdm, and I was not hardcore enough to tinker with making a beta live CD boot properly.
Thus far, I am impressed. Of note:
1) My sound worked right out of the box. The fix for Feisty wasn’t hard, once I found it, but it was a fix I had to redo a lot, what with my constant reinstalling.
2) Gaim turned into Pidgin, Pidgin is now the Ubuntu IM client. I kept all my account information from Gaim and worked right when I started it, so that was painless. I’m liking it fine; it’s very iChat. Chalk it up to more open source designers wishing they worked for Steve Jobs.
3) Wireless worked right out of the box too. I got the notice that it was using restricted drivers for the wireless right at startup which was informative and useful. I’d thought they were going to rip out the restricted drivers from the base install, and I didn’t get that notice on the liveCD boot, so I’m wondering whether this is a holdover from the Feisty install. I don’t care so much, except that it also lists restricted drivers for my video card. I had to use them to get my TV-out to work, but they’d hard freeze my system without warning when they were active. Downside of restricted drivers is no support, and I kinda want to be able to walk away from Marduk for several hours and have him still working when I get back.
4) New icons. They’re prettier. The new default wallpaper is prettier too, or I’m assuming so based on the liveCD boot; I didn’t touch my /home partition so everything’s still customized my way.
5) My tablet does not work, even after a reboot with it plugged in. I didn’t have to configure anything in Feisty (don’t think that stopped me trying) so that’s a downside.
6) The boot and shutdown cycles just leave a blank black screen up there. It makes me panic and switch over to the command line view. I’m not convinced that it would actually boot if I didn’t, but this has only been tried twice so we’ll have to see.
The repos are down, which makes sense, so I can’t get any of the restricted codecs etc. installed tonight. I’ll do that, and then if I’m nuts, maybe I’ll see whether they actually did get Compiz and Beryl tamed because I mean, hey, Vista doesn’t work, but having cool graphics like the ones Vista ripped off is still fun.
On an unrelated note: Damn you Heinlein for homage naming characters. You’re not the only one, but I can’t quite remember anybody else right now. (Hogan might be another, I’m not sure.) I just ran across the original Hazel a couple hours ago and now I know everything about her because I’ve met half a dozen Doc Smith fanboy produced Hazels. I can’t tell whether I’m fond of her because of what’s actually in there, or because I’ve been programmed to read Hazel=awesomeness. Much fist-shaking at your spoilery self.
Anaea Lay 