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Ubuntu, Kubuntu 13.10 Unleashed
llebeel writes "Canonical announced its free Ubuntu 13.10 Linux operating system (OS) release, on the same day as Microsoft's remedial Windows 8.1 service pack update. We speak to Canonical founder and Ubuntu creator Mark Shuttleworth who tells us what to expect."
Adds reader jrepin: "Kubuntu Linux 13.10 has just been released and is available for download. It comes with KDE Software Compilation 4.11, a new application for discovering and installing software, a simpler way to manage your system users. and a new Network Manager applet gives a simpler UI for connecting to a range of network types. You can now setup Wifi networking from the installer making it easier to install updates and extra packages during the install." ZDNet has a fairly tepid review of the incremental rather than startling improvements of the new release, and notes "Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, due for release on 17 April next year, will now perhaps come as even more of a shock if its promised big changes are fully realised."
Just me or is this a circular link?
ZDNet link was bad. Proper one is Here
I shudder to think of what those might be. More change for change's own sake I suppose.
I think in the early days Ubuntu was very good for linux. It showed that you could have a linux install that was fairly user friendly. Then it got better and better. But then suddenly it seemed to become Mark Shuttleworth's Ubuntu. Now it seemed to be a Red Hat envying I want to become a tech billionaire Ubuntu. Next it was an iPhone envying I want to be Steve Jobs Ubuntu. The key symptom of this being that it was both trying to appease the Linux crowd all the while annoying them to death all the while making sure their PR department was working overtime.
Then along came the Linux Mints, they saw what Ubuntu had been and focused on that. As someone who is asked by many people "What kind of computer should I get?" I will only be advising Linux mint for those people where Linux is a good fit; that is those people who surf the web, send gmails, watch YouTube, and type the occasional document.
The worst part of this for Ubuntu is that with all the hype hype hype they could make Ubuntu pretty awesome and I still wouldn't believe it and ever go back.
Xubuntu 3.10 now has support for virtual memory!
Awesome! Maybe my new 56k modem will have a working driver!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Ubuntu GNOME, a version of Ubuntu that replaces Unity with GNOME was also release as a 13.10 final derivative today. I've been using it since the beta and it's pretty nice. While it ships with GNOME 3.8, it can be upgraded to 3.10
http://ubuntugnome.org/ubuntu-gnome-13-10-is-released/
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
That's a good one, now how about a crazy theory about why the moon landing and the last public Beatles performance were in the same year?
It's a much nicer interface then GNOME. I'd install Unity on Fedora if it worked.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
I agree. I don't get all the Unity hate here. It's a GUI that lets me do most things without moving my hands from the keyboard. What's not to like?
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
I didn't like it because the application bar on the left only had a teeny little arrow pointing to the icon when the app was running. It wasn't obvious at first what that meant.
All the HATE that you refer to is probably because unity sends your local search query out to the internet. That way, Canonical can see when you're searching your own hard disk for "Hot llama porn.mpg".
People like what they're used to, even if it's not necessarily the best thing.
That's why it takes an awful lot of work to convince someone to switch from Windows to Linux, especially when they are at a point in which regedit-hacking is "natural" and "easy" to them.
That's why neither Emacs nor Vi have adopted standard rest-of-the-world shortcuts such as ctrl+c, ctrl+v, after they've been around for, like, 30 years?
That's why you can't remove an option or change something in a software without disrupting someone's workflow (I'm too lazy to look up the relevant xkcd).
My answer is: forget about these old get-off-my-lawn users grumbling and go on, especially if what you are doing makes sense from a usability point of view. Focus on making things easy for new users instead.
(I guess I can kiss my karma goodbye - I have probably offended every possible category of Slashdot users here.)
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
Right now it's fashionable to hate Unity/Canonical.
I use Unity on all of my desktops/laptops and find it fast, stable and productive. Incremental updates is what you want from a mature, well designed product, not massive changes every single release.
... I don't get all the Unity hate here.
I get the hate, at least up until now. It's the horrible reliance on compiz. Way too many parts that can (and do) break on updates.
Operating system updates should only have incremental improvements.
Twinstiq, game news
oblig xkcd: http://xkcd.org/1172/ ;)
The video and audio players are already in need of unnecessary rework, too.
For me it's the menu at the top and the launcher at the left. I can't stand any of them. I always merged Gnome 2's top bar in the bottom one on any fresh install, deleted the parts of them that I don't use and thank's god Gnome 2 has no launcher/docker. The app menu or ALT-F2 are good enough. I'm working on 12.04 with fallback mode (I think it's called like that) and obviously I deinstalled the packages for the global menu. My screen is tall enough to handle per app menus (still a 16:10). The compiz cube is great for handling workspaces and it gives a good cognitive methaphor of what a workspace is, instead of just materializing windows out of nowhere. I rotate the cube with CRTL-ALT-arrow, ALT-tab works as expected so I use the touchpad very little.
But yes, sometimes compiz breaks on updates and must be reconfigured, even without Unity. Annoying but it gets fixed soon and I go back to a DE I can work with.
Don't forget Lubuntu. The LXDE variant of Ubuntu is, in my opinion, and under-appreciated distro. The stability and community support of Ubuntu, with the speed of the lightweight LXDE and without that distracting Unity stuff. For older PCs or machines with modest specs, this has repeatedly been my distro of choice. 13.10 added Zram for the live CD too, which will help with low spec machines. By the way, Lubuntu is a good choice for former windows users because of the familiar taskbar, window, and menu layout. I never did get used to having the buttons on the left when I used Ubuntu.
That's why neither Emacs nor Vi have adopted standard rest-of-the-world shortcuts such as ctrl+c, ctrl+v, after they've been around for, like, 30 years?
The editors you're more likely to see preinstalled on these GUI Linux distributions, such as Gedit, Leafpad, Geany, and Kate, all support the well-known keyboard shortcuts out of the box. But I'll grant that that's not much help when you're accessing a remote computer through SSH.
Is 1MB RAM enough for the WinPrinter driver? Trying to rejuvenate my Packard-Bell.
My answer is: forget about these old get-off-my-lawn users grumbling and go on, especially if what you are doing makes sense from a usability point of view. Focus on making things easy for new users instead.
Would have agreed if you said "focus on making things better instead". If you break the existing functions for high productivity, and replace it with something that's "easy for new users", it's no wonder people get upset. People are only "new users" for a few days or weeks, then many people require more advanced functionality. So optimising only for "new users" at the cost of more advanced functionality, like Ubuntu and Gnome seem to do, is bound to cause frustration.
Lie down? I don't understand what it's laying.
People like what they're used to, even if it's not necessarily the best thing...
That's why neither Emacs nor Vi have adopted standard rest-of-the-world shortcuts such as ctrl+c, ctrl+v, after they've been around for, like, 30 years
Uh, no. That's not why emacs and vi don't implement the windows shortcuts. The reason is that it wouldn't make sense. Both emacs and vi are more than just text editors -- they are editing paradigms. You have the emacs paradigm, you have the vi paradigm, and you have the windows paradigm. Trying to combine them would be like trying to jam a square peg into a round hole. Just find a new editor that uses the windows paradigm.
It's not as if emacs and vi users have been asking for the windows shortcuts all this time, and the developers have stubbornly refused. There is no reason to ask for such a thing, because if you aren't happy with the paradigm, the correct solution is to switch editors. FYI, there are plenty of other linux editors which do implement the windows shortcuts. These editors, of course, follow the windows editing paradigm.
You're not a vi or emacs user, are you? ;)
It's a GUI that lets me do most things without moving my hands from the keyboard. What's not to like?
You don't quite get this GUI thing, do you?
That's the kind of mentality that leads Firefox to shipping with a different interface every version.
entropy happens
the same thought occurred to me
It was painless, took about 15 minutes and works fine now. The only issue I've noticed is that the windows titlebars become transparent when I click on them and when I right-click on them the popup menu (Move to Desktop / Activities / Minimize / ...) is transparent and unreadable. Searching through the options didn't give me any lead.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
The term GUI doesn't imply a control method. You're thinking of WIMP
-- Using the preview button since 2005
But why would I be searching my hard drive for "Hot llama porn.mpg"?
/home/USERNAME/Tax/Backups/2010/Business/Online/2010tax.pdf/Pr0n/Animal/4legs/fuzzy/llamas/
That file would be under:
Obviously. I mean where else would it be?
The point is, keep your files organized and you never need to search for them in the first place.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Search is the primary interface for Unity. Apple convinced Mac users that doing a search for everything you want to access is better than an organized menu, and Ubuntu is trying to mimic that.
Don't expect vendors to support non-LTS versions of Ubuntu (see: List of Ubuntu releases).
13.04 is only supported until Jan 2014, and 13.10 will only be supported until July 2014 (WTF only 9 months of support?), so there's no reason for vendors to bother supporting them.
I wouldn't expect vendors to support anything other 10.04 LTS (server-only; still supported until April 2015), or 12.04 LTS (supported until April 2017).
I have found that to convert Windows users to Linux users, setting them up with a dual boot Xubuntu system and encouraging them to use the Linux side as often as possible has been very effective. This includes my wife and my sister who are both very non-nerdy.
Windows went through many, many UI changes between Windows 3.1 and Windows 7. Almost all of those changes were improvements, and relatively few people complained.
No, lots of people complained, they just didn't have any choice. A minor change to Windows vs a major change with a new operating system. However, if Ubuntu ships with a new desktop environment like Unity, Linux users have a choice -- change the distribution but not the full OS.
I do agree that:
companies are trying to forcibly merge the dual-monitor-desktop experience and the smartphone experience in to a single unified experience and this grand experiment has spectacularly failed.
One size does not fit all.
Technically, Emacs keystrokes are shortcuts, because all of that functionality can be referred to by full name after M-x (by default).
Re your other comment, Windows shortcuts are not better, they are standard.
And no, you're wrong, I have been using Emacs for a while and I still use it every now and then today. I have kept the habit of pressing Ctrl-X Ctrl-S to save rather than simply Ctrl-S when I am using another editor. Doesn't do me any good and is occasionally dangerous (when I happen to have highlighted text, or stuff in the clipboard I wish to preserve).
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault