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Ubuntu 9.04 Is As Slick As Win7, Mac OS X
An anonymous reader writes in with an opinion piece from ZDNet Australia. "Here's what the official press release won't tell you about Ubuntu 9.04, which formally hit the streets yesterday: its designers have polished the hell out of its user interface since the last release in October. Just like Microsoft has taken the blowtorch to Vista to produce the lightning-quick Windows 7, which so far runs well even on older hardware, Ubuntu has picked up its own game."
From the article: I particularly noticed the Ubuntu difference when I put the operating system to the test by simultaneously launching and using multiple applications, listening to music and more while using my spare CPU cycles in the background to encode high-definition video with Mencoder. Ubuntu still felt very fast--even with traditionally sluggy pieces of software like OpenOffice.org.
Isn't it strange that people are still surprised that their computers are fast? Computers have gotten ridiculously fast compared during the last 20 years, and still they seem slow to many of us. Is that just the result of crappy programming, or is there more to it?
-- Cheers!
Lifehacker has a well laid-out and illustrated introduction avec screenshots.
"If you create user accounts, by default, they will have an account type of Administrator with no password." KB Q293834
And the effects are mostly great (on their own), but it still lacks coherency in its design. The UI elements still look ratty, old-fashioned, and ugly, and the visual effects (while fluid) are all over the place. Don't hate me for this, but at least Windows 7's design is much more coherent, from the UI controls to the visual effects - they look like they work together. What I've seen of 9.04 is quite the opposite - it looks like everything is engaged in a mortal struggle against everything else. A fluid, nifty effect generates a window that's full of 90s-esque design elements. It's rather jarring. Like taking a swanky elevator to a penthouse, and the doors open to reveal a highly-functional chicken coop.
At work, the boss gave the developers extra monitors and a video card with dual DVI output. One guy got it working under Ubuntu 8.04 after some hackery. Another guy's Windows XP picked it up without much trouble. My Ubuntu 8.04 workstation wasn't so cooperative, even with the other guy's config options.
Last week, I installed 9.04 beta and it picked up the dual monitors without breaking a sweat. It even put the size/manufacturer in the upper-left corner of each monitor as the display options were being adjusted.
All it needs now is a "Launch World of Warcraft from my Windows partition" menu entry, and it'll take the world by storm.
They're plenty of use. I used a tablet for all of my college notes, which made it convenient to copy&send to friends who might have missed class. The fact that I couldn't install Linux on it (despite several failed attempts) was irritating, because my battery life was better on Linux (surprise!) and the tablet was significantly faster under Linux. Unfortunately, the calibration would frequently de-align itself and screen rotation didn't always rotate the calibration as well (i.e. pointing at the lower left would make the cursor jump to the upper right).
In answer to your comment about desktop use, I know many artists who do most of their work in Photoshop using a Wacom tablet. They hate using a mouse for that kind of work. If you question these users' importance overall, I can only direct you to the frequent conversation about 'I need apps that don't work in Linux! You can't use GIMP as a replacement for Photoshop!'.
I agree it's not that huge of a deal, but it might be a dealbreaker for a not-insignificant number of people.