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Ubuntu 9.04 Released
Mohamed Zaian writes "Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, announced today that Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition is free to download from Thursday 23 April. Also announced were the simultaneous releases of Ubuntu 9.04 Server Edition and Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix (UNR). Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition delivers a range of feature enhancements to improve the user experience. Shorter boot speeds, some as short as 25 seconds, ensure faster access to a full computing environment on most desktop, laptop and netbook models. Enhanced suspend-and-resume features also give users more time between charges along with immediate access after hibernation. Intelligent switching between Wi-Fi and 3G environments has been broadened to support more wireless devices and 3G cards, resulting in a smoother experience for most users."
Don't forget Kubuntu! It's got KDE 4.2 now!
Summation 2
If we give you free beer, we'll get your free speech, whether we want it or not ;)
--- Mr. DOS
I was skeptical about the usefulness of those notifications when Shuttleworth first blogged about them, and after a couple weeks with them, I can safely say they need a lot of improvements.
For one, they are way too obtrusive. They are so frequent (I agree that there is no reason to have every IM, every contact sign-in/out broadcast up on the screen), and there is no way to dismiss them. Yes, I can hover "under" them and they fade away, but sometimes I just want the distraction to go away entirely.
And, that fading behavior is pretty worthless too. It's completely unintuitive. I am always moving my mouse over to the notification to interact with it (dismiss it, or whatever) only to have it completely disappear.
It's such a wasted opportunity too. If I get an IM, wouldn't it be sweet if I could click on the notification to bring up the window? Or, better yet, wouldn't it be sweet if I could send a quick reply in the notification bubble itself? Digsby on windows does this and it's pretty fantastic. But no. Instead I have to hunt through my task bar/docky to find the application providing the notification and click on it in order to respond to the notification. Why can't the notification system make it easier to deal with notifications?
To me, it feels like Shuttleworth thought some growl-like notifications would help spruce up the system and implemented it half-assedly without really considering how people want to use the thing.
Wow, I could almost cut the smugness in your post with a knife. Apparently people who *really* use computers like to configure everything about them. These people are "advanced" or "power users", while everyone else is a retard or just a normal "user".
There are many people such as myself who have used plenty of window managers and desktop environments, and who like them to mostly stay out of the way. I don't want to endlessly configure my shiny little windows. If I want to do "real work", then I'll open up a terminal window and use Bash or Python. I'm sure there are plenty of other Slashdotters who take this same approach, judging by the relative popularity here of Ubuntu vs. Kubuntu.
And really, if you're obsessing about features in your GUI, are you really doing "real work"? The people I see who really care so much about that stuff are often just geeks who like to sit in their rooms and tinker with Linux, not people who are actually doing programming or sysadmin work on it.
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems