Ubuntu's "Lucid Lynx" Enters Beta 366
ActionDesignStudios writes "The upcoming release of Ubuntu, titled 'Lucid Lynx,' has just entered the beta cycle. Alongside the usual desktop and server versions, a special version has been released that is designed to run on Amazon's EC2 cloud service. This release of Ubuntu does away with the brown 'Human' Gnome theme we've all become accustomed to, replaced by a new version Canonical says is inspired by light. The new release also includes much better integration with social networking services such as Twitter, identi.ca and Facebook, among others."
Used it for a few days.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Boot times are FAST on my laptop down to 27s (85s booting on 9.04)
Music Store (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Using it since Alpha 1 (Score:5, Interesting)
Pure speculation, but it could be that their goal is to order the window buttons in *increasing* order of their impact on the window, so that the easiest to click button merely resizes the window rather than of taking it away or destroying it. This arguably makes more sense then the OSX interface where the easiest button to click of the three is the one that gets rid of your window.
Re:Using it since Alpha 1 (Score:1, Interesting)
It would have made less sense to users upgrading to OS X from previous versions. The window close button has always been in the upper left corner on a Mac.
Re:"Does away with" the Human theme? (Score:0, Interesting)
Modded Insightful?
Really? Some troll talking about how awful and evil black people are?
The guy turned the ugly brown theme into a disgusting racial rant.
For shame.
Re:Using it since Alpha 1 (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's a screenshot of my netbook...
http://operationinertia.org/SD/Screenshot8080.png [operationinertia.org]
I switched to Chrome because... well, I don't know. I'm just more comfortable with it in the short time I've used it.
The nice thing about Window Picker Applet is it always keeps the close button to the right edge, so if it's the last applet on the upper panel then I can always expect the close button to be in the upper-right corner.
Maximus removes the window decoration on maximized windows and maximizes all windows windows by default (with some exceptions). Chrome, when using the GTK theme and allowing the DE to manage the decorations nests quite nicely.
I also hid all the subdirectories in the gnome menu and left just the stuff I use in the root.
I grew up using computers, but lately I've been less serious about them. Ubuntu caught me somewhere in between and it just does me right.
Re:What I want to know is ... (Score:3, Interesting)
The new release also includes much better integration with social networking services such as Twitter, identi.ca and Facebook
Why should an operating system "integrate" with a social networking service?
Ever hear about that "Killer App" everyone's been looking for?
Re:Using it since Alpha 1 (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:f1rst p0st (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't want my OS to be interesting, for fuck's sake. I want it very predictable and unobtrusive.
Here, here. Glad to see someone else who doesn't give a shit that an "OS be tightly integrated with/for social networking"? Why is staring at our electronic bellybuttons so frikkin' important??? Could we be more self-absorbed, here on Planet Hollywood? {grumble grumble... slinks back off to cave...}
Because in order of x sells from greatest to lowest, it is Sex, Vanity, then Convenience. Social Networking provides all three.
Re:Using it since Alpha 1 (Score:5, Interesting)
As long as I can easily switch it back to how it currently is, I don't really care. I'm not sure what the reasoning is behind the switch besides pissing off current users.
At a guess, the hype over the past few years has convinced Canonical to try to become the Apple of the Linux world.
It's not working (much like my sound card for the past 4 versions of Ubuntu...)
Re:Using it since Alpha 1 (Score:4, Interesting)
Looks nice except for that huge grey bar on top: that's a waste of screen space. I'm now using Easy Peasy (Ubuntu Netbook Remix based) and that is doing something similar except putting the title bar of the window also in the top menu bar, saving those pixes for something useful. Very important on a small screen like the EEE701 has. I'm using it much more now than when I had the stock Linux on it.
The maximising is great on those small screens but on my normal desktop monitor I don't do this: I miss the easy drag-and-drop between windows...
Re:Using it since Alpha 1 (Score:2, Interesting)
The buttons got moved because Ubuntu has something planned for the right hand side for 10.10
Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010 (Score:4, Interesting)
gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout --type string menu:minimize,maximize,close
Gnome. User friendliness, redefined.
Seriously, what's wrong with those people ? Do they fear that having options will confuse users (I heard that one a lot) ? "oh no, there's a button order option, I felt compelled to click on it and now I'm in existential crisis !"
KDE lets you just move the buttons around with the mouse, seems much simpler to me, but what do I know.
Re:Using it since Alpha 1 (Score:3, Interesting)
I also use Awesome for that reason. It's especially nice on very large monitors because you can split a screen to have multiple windows maximized in one of several layouts rather than having to juggle them. That said, I dislike how a lot of runtimes (Java, Adobe AIR) don't work with tiling window managers so well.
Re:Alternative layouts (Score:2, Interesting)
Windows 3.x had that layout as well.
Re:About those crazy buttons (Score:3, Interesting)
(He was even talking about moving the scroll bar away from the right side of the window, on the grounds that few people use it, and scroll wheels/touchscreen interfaces are becoming the big new thing. This doesn't give me the warm fuzzies either.)
Huh. Now that, I find interesting. It's very rare that I use the scrollbar widgets to do actual scrolling. But I'd miss the visual cue on where I am in the document and how much of it I'm seeing.
Re:I'm using Lucid Lynx Beta... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm really enjoying Lucid. (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been enjoying Lucid a lot. The graphical finishes are really nice, and the social integration really is the first feature that I think makes Linux a nicer GUI to use than either Windows or OSX.
Can't wait for gnome-shell. Been playing with it a bit, and while not ready for prime-time quite yet, Linux is really moving into being a leader rather than a follower for the first time.
Re:f1rst p0st (Score:3, Interesting)
> At least Fedora does not have these delusions of grandeur.
Sadly they do. You can't install without a graphical desktop for example. What the heck is that all about? We used to laugh at NT for that. A SERVER wasting resources displaying a graphical login nobody will ever see! Of course with Fedora having a use by date shorter than some cheese you would have to be kinda daft to put Fedora on a server anyway.
One example: So after months and months of users bitching and moaning about the loss of the minimal install that would allow a text mode install they are going to put minimal back in for F13. But NetworkManager would drag in darned near everything so they left it out, which is sensible. What isn't sensible is they refuse to fix the original network subsystem to be enabled by default if NM isn't installed. So yes you can do a minimal install but you won't have a working[1] network. Not that you can really get rid of NM anyway, they are busy little beavers wiring NM into everything. No network manager, no Firefox, evolution or whatever IM client they are shipping now because all those and probably more refuse to go online unless NM is installed, running and says it is connected. Before they are done the clowns will probably have apache hardwired into NM. Network manager is just useless cruft unless you are on a laptop; why is there such an urge to make it indespensible?
[1] Yes once we realize what the problem is us old folks can figure out that "chkconfig network on ; service network start" will fix things but dangit in 2010 a working network shouldn't be something you need a wizard around to get working. Anything other than plug cable in, light goes on and the network 'just works' is horribly broken.
Re:Why do people like Ubuntu? (Score:2, Interesting)
I absolutely don't get what perceived obfuscation people are talking about. Just like the OP I've been running linux distros for 15 years and I agree that Slackware in 1995 was more transparent if one took the time to learn about it. It also did much, much less.
So yes, mainstream linux distros have become more complex. Debian in 2000 also seemed more complex than 95's Slackware. But that's because the systems actually do more on your behalf. And if you can learn how 95's Slackware works under the hood, you will also manage to understand Ubuntu 10.04. And once you do, its not any more obfuscated than things were 15 years ago.
And don't tell me there were less sound problems in 95.