Thursday, July 29, 2010

Things I love about Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx

The things I Love and Hate about the new Ubuntu 10.0.4 Lucid Lynx.
  • GNOME 2.30
This is the final 2.x release before the major upgrade to 3. This will be the last time you will see the GNOME 2.X in Ubuntu flavor. For me it is fantastic. GNOME 3 will be a graceful successor to GNOME 2.x. In fact, I can promise that GNOME 3 will succeed where KDE 4 failed — in being a useful desktop upgrade right out of the starting gate.

  • HAL begone
Ubuntu 10.04 has done away with HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) during the boot process. This means that 10-second boot time has finally arrived. Hence the 10 second booting can be achieved in a charming way. The removal of HAL also drastically speeds up resume-from-suspend times for those of you in laptop land.
  • Cloud Computing
It is known to everyone that the Cloud Computing is going to take over the whole computing world. Well… it is a matter of time concern. However the Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx is ready with Cloud Computing. The Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Installer now supports auto-discovery of all UEC components (even if the controllers and Walrus are on different servers). This is a huge step forward in the cloud computing arena for sure.
  • KDE 4.4
10.04 is the first LTS release to contain KDE 4. And this version, 4.4.2, is the most useful, stable yet. If you have been waiting around for a release of KDE 4 that is actually USEABLE, this is it –a viable version of the KDE 4.x desktop that doesn’t require a seemingly infinite amount of tweaking to gain any semblance of stability. KDE 4.4.2 is rock solid.

  • Improved Sound Controls
Prior to 10.04, Ubuntu sound control was almost always hit or miss. You could control the volume from the panel applet and not much more. Now, however, you can control sound volume, input/output devices, and hardware all from one user-friendly location. And unlike previous versions, Pulse Audio comes with numerous improvements. Pulse Audio was one of the major misses in recent releases. It has now reached sufficient maturity so that people won’t be begging for a coup.

  • Ubuntu One Music Store
In the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx edition, they have integrated the Ubuntu One Music Store to its Rythmbox music player. This reflects the ability of the Ubuntu Software Centre to enable you to purchase commercial software right from the desktop. Also the songs you purchased from the Ubuntu One Music Store can be synched with all your Ubuntu One registered computers.

  • Apple iPhone Support
Yeaa… Well coming towards to Apple iPhones… Ubuntu 10.04 has built-in Apple iPhone support, allowing drag-and-drop capabilities in Rhythmbox. You no longer do need to hack-n-slash ifuse to try to get this system working. Now you, your Apple iPhone, Ubuntu, and Rhythmbox can happily drag and drop your way to music Nirvana.

  • Ubuntu One iPhone Apps
Canonical has released some Funambol-based mobile client applications. One such client is the Ubuntu One client for the Apple iPhone. This lets you keep your files in sync between your Ubuntu machines and your mobile device. This is a paid-only service (with a 30-day trial for Ubuntu One members).

  • Social networking integration
Ubuntu 10.04 has done much for social networking integration. From the main panel (top panel), you can instantly interact with social networking sites. This feature, called the MeMenu, is built upon the Gwibber framework (which itself has been rebuilt on top of the new desktop couch backend). The MeMenu also supports multi-column view so that you can monitor more than one social network at a time.

  • Open Source NVidia Driver
Ubuntu 10.04 now have open source driver for the NVidia graphics cards. Now you do not have to rely on the proprietary drivers (at least for the NVidia cards). I can assure you that the open source drivers will work as good as their proprietary counterparts.

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