Ubuntu 8.10

Well, well, well, after a series of posts on iPhone, here's one for Ubuntu 8.10. I just went through a quick trip to see what are the new features that is directly noticeable (other than those small small version number changes!)

Tip: You can make Ubuntu interface significantly nicer by making changes to system font sizes. In laptops "Subpixel smoothing" works great. These settings gave me a nice professional look for the overall interface.

1. Wallpaper is definitely better than Gutsy.
2. As usual, networking is faster than windows.
3. It took my laptop's ATI X200M video driver automatically. Desktop effects enabled. (I like that)
4. My sound card is also working fine. (Skype runs well)
   
5. Nice softer look in Human theme.
6. One click Shut Down menu. (I love it!)
   
   
7. A Shut Down dialog box is available via System -> Shut Down
   
   
   
8. Revamped Network Manager 0.7 (I wished they didn't)
   
   This is a total disaster. Hey, I can see and edit my MAC address and MTU! Wonderful ha! I know so many home users who needs to see the MAC address of their NIC. Last time I checked, lot of users were having problems with packet fragmentation problems and MTU. I take it that changing the IP address is not so important! Because it's in the 3rd tab! After MAC and after 802.1x security. This will make things really easy for novice users!
   
   
   And it has absolutely NO MEMORY at all. It doesn't save any of my network settings. Is this a joke? This screenshot shows my 'ifconfig' output and IPv4 settings. The IP address and subnet masks were all set here moments ago! When I reopen the network manager settings are all gone. It's better if they send a fix for this but this is certainly not the way to handle major releases.
   
   It's significantly better if they kept the old Network Manager. But they just upgrade for the sake of upgrading.
9. USB Startup Disk
   Now you can create a CD image of Ubuntu on the USB drive very easily and use that to install ubuntu.

Well that's what you see at the first glance. The only bad impression I had was the new Network Manager which is not good at all! It seems Shuttleworth is taking good features from "Apple" GUIs and integrating with Ubuntu, which is a good thing. The new shut down menu is like the one in MacOS X. And the new Disk usage bar in the installer look like the one in iTunes.


This is the iPhone disk usage bar in iTunes:


That's it. Share your experience!
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