Hello again, everyone. I’m still going for some odd reason, so you’ll have to put up with another godforsaken post.
As of late, I’ve been using the latest (unstable) version of Ubuntu Linux, codenamed Edgy Eft. It’s to be released later this year (October, to be precise) and it’s certainly going to be an interesting release. The previous release (Dapper Drake) was aimed to be stable and polished, just what you need if you want a stable, production-ready desktop. Edgy, however, is a little bit different. It’s starting to introduce new technology and features, ma of which are emerging around the Linux community.
First off, it includes F-spot by default. F-spot is a lot like Picasa, and is a photo manager and simple photo editor. If you’re into the Web 2.0 buzz, you can upload your photos to Flickr. It’s not as feature-laden as I’d hope, but it’s developing quickly and certainly has a lot of potential. While Picasa is available for Linux, F-spot is certainly a program that can go far.
Ubuntu is always released with the latest version of Gnome (the desktop environment) and this release is no exception. This release is mostly improving on the last version (2.14) and doing a few minor improvements. However, they’re concentrating on speed and performance. Gnome’s startup (after you’ve logged on) probably takes around five seconds, and programs should load fairly quickly. OpenOffice is still rather slow, to be honest, but it’s far better than what it used to be (was 20 seconds, now about 12).
Another bit of speed info, this time it’s to do with startup/shutdown times. Ubuntu’s always been a bit slow at shutting down, so it was made a goal to improve this as much as possible. And so they did. It now takes just a few seconds, compared to the good 30-second wait it used to be. As for the startup speed, it’s currently minor. You see, they’re making a new system to start up the computer (called upstart). The actual idea isn’t to make the computer start faster, instead it’s to update the old technology. The previously-used technology is years old and it’s always been holding back the computer a bit. Anyway, Upstart is a good idea and, once it’s all done and dusted, startup should be improved more than the 2 seconds it’s taken off already (about 45 seconds down to 43).
The latest version of Gaim has also been included. Gaim is a wonderful IM program, allowing you to run MSN, ICQ, YIM, AIM, IRC and Jabber all together (as well as some other random ones I’ve never heard of). The latest version comes with a newer, better interface and lots of random extra features.
Last, and certainly not least, is the inclusion of AIGLX. Those of you who know me well have probably heard me getting overly excited about something called Xgl. It allowed you have a lovely set of desktop effects rendered by your graphics card. Anyway, AIGLX is a different method of doing this (and isn’t a big workaround hack like Xgl) and is going to be the default way of special graphics like this. Anyway, this has been turned on by default. To have the snazzy effects, you need to do two simple commands and it’s all yours.
sudo apt-get install compiz
compiz –replace
This should work on most graphics card (even integrated cards) and I’d guess that a Radeon 9000/GeForce 2 upwards will support the effects. As a point of comparison, it works fine on my 9700 Mobility, only slowing if Firefox has been open for a long time. While this may be emerging technology, it’s certainly very good and is comparable to Vista’s Aero effects (just without requiring a brand new graphics card).
That’s it from Edgy for now. I wouldn’t recommend using it as your primary OS yet (it’s still unstable) but once released it should be a very capable and powerful OS. I’ll keep you updated as more features are shown off.
