the zesty ape

the excitement of ubuntu’s next release was at fever pitch when i caught up with my linux os news updates of late (i kinda found out that i only have six months to squeeze the most out of my ubuntu installs before a new one gets released and i yearn an upgrade) – gusty gibbon was released amongst much fanfare (from the fans at least – heh). i fired the wget in the office box and drove down hours later to cut it into a dvd.

installation was preety much standard easy, not much changed since the last. did have an issue with updating packages though, possibly due to the large number of users accessing the same server or starhub was very stingy with their bandwidth (in which i pay 80 bloody dollars per month – gawddammed rip off). first impressions were very positive with new eye candy and what-nots, but digging deeper i found some things that were a deal breaker for me. restarting the machine or starting up took longer – like minutes longer. never had that problem on my x31 with feisty but somehow starting up gusty took yonks to get to its login prompt. then there was the oversized fonts on the console that were so big that you’d only see only the first few letters of a line. even the prompt is hidden somewhere off screen. desktop effects (via compiz) were supposedly turned on by default with the gibbon, i can’t even turn it on manually without getting an error (was working fine in feisty – which was still in its “experimental” stage).

i tried find the fixes to listed gripes (and a lot more) but since the official release was only a few days old, its kinda tough to come by.

(update)since this has been sitting in my “drafts” section for about a month:-

i gave ubuntu’s gusty gibbon another go when i got back from vietnam (all the issues with windows that i faced in vietnam left a very bad taste so much so that i didn’t want to see another windows machine for a while. besides, running vista on the x31 would be the equivalent of asking a bi-plane to go supersonic). yup the listed gripes were all there but this time there were numerous forum threads on them.

with increased user base numbers, a community driven operating system benefits from its users as more and more people eyeball every detail of the release. moving along the same lines as the community, loads of developers and powerusers are also getting on board with helping out others with issues on their installs. its amazing to see a free operating system getting this much attention as compared to multi-million dollar closed sourced OS release.

almost all of my gripes have been solved though it does take a little technical massaging to coax my aging machine to run the gibbon to its full glory. imagine taking all of vista’s eye candy (transparent windows, glassy window frames and animated transitions), add the ability to customise every aspect of the system (from the design and type of the login window to splash screens to even the size of window frames), then include multiple virtual windows and also a good dollop of speed to keep everything running harmoniously to the user. all these on a tiny notebook with 1.4ghz mobile processor and 768mb of ram (as compared to vista which needs a more “gusty” processor and at least 2gb to get its eye candy working properly)

i see grim everyday

 

icing on the cake fact : i got photoshop 9 and elements to work on the gusty…woot!