Ubuntued

The Ubuntu team has been busy it seems. Proof, I received this email a couple of days ago:

The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the Release Candidate for version 7.10
of Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Gobuntu, and Xubuntu codenamed “Gutsy Gibbon”.
…
We consider this release candidate to be complete, stable, and suitable for
testing by any user.

The final release of version 7.10 is scheduled for 18 October 2007…
LTS, with security support until 2011, rather than upgrade to 7.10.

Lots of new features and fixes in 7.10 most notably (what I’m interested in):
- A 3D desktop environment (Compiz Fusion)
- Free flash support with Gnash (finally, I was really missing descent flash support on Ubuntu)
- Also GNOME can now automatically detect printers, and you get to install firefox plugins through the repository.
- Gobuntu 7.10: a new flavor of Ubuntu composed exclusively of open-source non-restricted software.
- Other updates on Kubuntu and Edubuntu.

I’m currently running 7.04 (Feisty Fawn). I think I’ll wait at least until 18th October (date of the final release) before updating to 7.10, in case some ugly bug surfaces during the test period. However, if you feel like you could lay a helping hand, feel free to update here.

Okay, so let me tell you a bit myself and why i started the Ubuntued blog. I’ve been a Windows user ever since the 3.11 version. I’ve tried some linux distribution in the past particularly Mandrake (now Mandriva) and Red Hat. What bothered me the most about it at the time, was the lack of some very basic attributes: appropriate drivers for of my hardware, good IM client, descent office suite and development environments, and games exclusively running on Windows, not to mention the lack of accessiblity on some linux distros. I only used Linux occasionally, or as a mean to recover data when Windows screwed up (on average, I formatted everything and installed a fresh copy of Windows two-three times a year).

I first got acquainted with Ubuntu in 2005, a few month after it was released (initial release 2004-10-20). A friend, hooked me up with a copy. Seemed like a descent distribution… but this is where it stopped. Recently:

1. I had to deal with Ubuntu more often as part of whatever i’m doing
2. my laptop screwed up badly (the motherboard was toasted)
3. after replacing the board, I had to format the disk and I was a bit reluctant about Windows Vista (and bored of Windows XP which was my default OS)

The combination of these three factors led me to give Ubuntu a full-time try out; my initial plan was to use it for just two weeks; then get back to good old Windows. But much [of what used not to work correctly] has been doing well with Ubuntu, so I decided to stick to it a bit longer. Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t an Anti-Microsoft anarchist, I sincerely think Windows is just fine; i just want to try something else; see how thing would work out in the different environment… and Ubuntu is turned out to be a good choice.

I’ll be describing in this journal, my transition as a full time Ubuntu user as well as tips and trick I learn along the way, (as well as other possibly unrelated stuff =)