Ubuntu 10.04 is Released
So the day is here and we’ve been using Lucid for a while as it’s involved.I generally don’t upgrade my laptop’s internal hard drive until about a week or two after the final release. But my external hard drive and netbook having been lucid for a long time now.
What I like:
Me Menu – Excellent feature, excellent design, good work. A bit of extra polish that goes above and beyond any other operating system.
PiTiVi – A good simple video edit, it needs a bit more polish and a bit more bug fixing for various different media formats that people might want to edit, but it’s a really good start.
Ground Control – Is now in the repositories and I’m biased but I’m very pleased to see it available without any difficulty so people can get right into contributing to FOSS.
Updated Software Center – The state of the software centre in 9.10 was a bit raw and rough around the edges so it’s great to see further advancement with the design of the centre. Especially when it comes to getting things from PPAs.
Branding – I like the new branding, I think the font is cleaner and more polished and the logo is acceptable. We’ve already been replacing various logos in the community, although the release of the SVGs could have been done weeks ago instead of waiting all this time for them.
What I don’t like:
Default Theme – See previous post, I don’t like it, the white is garbage and the black is bearable.
Window Buttons on left by default – See previous post, bad decision backed up by Iraq dossier level of excuses.
Removal of Gimp – I like gimp, it could do with a lighter version, but I don’t yet see any replacement for what it does for people’s image editing needs.
What’s Missing:
Most of these items are because we have a lack of investment of either time or money in various projects, all of them are things Canonical isn’t focused on but users are hungry for.
Phone Syncing – We still don’t have the designs right at the moment and data access for older devices is bad.
Printers and Scanners that work – So many devices don’t work, with either never work or are just missing identification and proper PPD files.
Accounting – At some point people are going to demand to be able to do more accounting, much easier. Something like PiTiVi for accounts which is simple and effective for quick uses.
libdvdcss – An installation method that doesn’t suck like Dracula.
What are your thoughts?
I agree! I was just setting up my system thinking how much getting dvd’s to work just unacceptably sucks for newbies. There’s no excuse for this. I know the _reason_. But the reason has been there for several years now and a better solution than pasting medibuntu repository info into Terminal is _long_ past due.
I would disagree with you about the accounting program point.
As you know the LiveCD has limited space and so not everything can go in, however we have OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet which can suffice for many people, and those who want something more advanced, there are two (i think) accounting applications listed in the featured applications section in software-center
Gimp is not removed. You can still install it using apt-get install gimp. AFAIK it’s only removed from the installation CD to make room for applications more commonly.
A good (“light” even) accounting application would be a great plus. But for a lot of people I presume even a superior alternative has got a long way to being viable against Quicken or MYOB for serious users.
I don’t really see the placement of the buttons as an issue, but that’s just me. The removal of gimp I see as a good thing, but I agree there needs to be something to fall in its place, something not unlike paint.net I would presume.
I also very much agree with the libdvdcss situation. It’s fine for me to run a few commands but for something nearly everybody is going to want to do making it anything other than a click or two is crazy. Maybe we need a ballot screen.
Can’t really say I’ve had any issues with printers, mine all work out of the box but scanners are an issue I find.
I also find it strange there is no file sharing solution that is not samba.
I was chocked by the new “purple” theme. I actually think my eyes was physically damaged from the vulgarity of it. The brown was not sexy but at least it did not cause vomit effects.
I wonder if it’s just me or others feel this as well or just one more sign that the horrid 80’s fashion is back.
I totally agree!
Printer and scanners drivers are a big problem.
My Canon PIXMA iP 1800 worked good with Ubuntu 9.04 but with 9.10 onwards its a paper weight! Because the version of Cusp had changed.
Why not include both version? With a small distro like Puppy Linux my printer works fine!
Changing the Button position is one thing, but changing their order is well, Perhaps change for change sake?
> Phone Syncing
Opensync/multisync needs to be tested thoroughly, moved to main and included by default.
> Accounting
I have heard good reviews about homebank but never used. Perhaps it can be proposed for default inclusion.
> libdvdcss – An installation method that doesn’t suck like Dracula.
Can you please explain what you mean by this. Currently the only thing user needs to do is run – sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh
Do you have any better solution in mind? If yes then I am surely interested in collaborating on implementation.
For a simple image editor try Pinta.
http://pinta-project.com/
Macs come with iMovie not Final Cut Pro, not so Apple can make more money off people, but because Final Cut Pro is completely over kill for average users.
Similarly, GIMP has no right whatever being including on the Ubuntu CD. I’d agree that Ubuntu needs to sort out its image apps (even the default image viewer arguably isnt the best image viewer for Gnome), but GIMP being removed was the right step.
I don’t like theme, I just installed human-theme package and selected Human-Clearlooks. What I don’t understand is if theme gets purple why menus bot black and white? What not purple?
I installed KolourPaint application for simple photo editing – it is excellent simple program (also like Microsoft Paint in Windows – so also drawing). The only think I don’t like is it is KDE application – which is fine for me, but for users that are used to GNOME can post some problems. That is probably one single most wasteful think in Linux distributions – you have Gnome apps, KDE apps etc, but what it should be done is KDE application should perfectly align to Gnome system, so when run on Gnome should look and feel like Gnome app, when Gnome app is run on KDE it should look and feel like KDE app.
I think the problem with a lot of the accounting software for linux is that almost all of them properly implement double entry bookkeeping.
I say this is a problem because this is confusing for most people who just want to keep track of household finances, especially when they are first setting up their accounts.
However, if you aren’t scarred by double entry, I highly recommend ledger. It is a command line program that simply parses plain text files that you create. It is not a solution for the nontechnical or those unfamiliar with the idea of double entry, but it is super flexible. Also, it doesn’t seem like it would be hard to write a python interface to it that would make it more bearable for a beginner.
http://wiki.github.com/jwiegley/ledger/
Martin I simply love you blogs and I can’t help to feel you have a lot in common with me and other users.
In terms of themes, wouldn’t it be nice if it looked like http://danrabbit.deviantart.com/art/Dash-Context-Pane-Concept-159408760 with the close, max, min on the right of course. BTW that screenshot is part of the elementary-project.com .
Notice how there no File, Edit, View, Help, etc (menu bar). I posted a Compact Menu View on the ayatana mailing list at https://lists.launchpad.net/ayatana/msg01447.html to a possible solution to this, but clearly that is going nowhere.
+1 Monochrome icons and MeMenu
-1 for keeping the notifications down another notifications height… they should all be in the same place and pushed down when another one comes like they originally had it.
-1 for four workspace by default (what normal user uses 4 desktops?). There should be no more than 2 workspaces. Wow a spinning cube neat. Now that I’ve seen it let me do something actually productive. I mean really who has 4 desks that they work on.
-1 for community involvement. I mean here we have the community bringing FAR better themes than ubuntu default theme and they aren’t doing ANYTHING about it.
-1 for close, max, min on left
-1 for theme
…(i could keep going, but i don’t want this to be too long
)
I feel like we’re taking one step forward and two steps back with Ubuntu. I also feel like the 6 month release cycle needs to go. Some of these official releases are giving ubuntu a bad name. Here are some ideas:
1. Create a new Application Menu/Icon standard. Get rid of/hide the Menu Bar (file, edit, view, help). I suggested an idea to address this on the ayatana mailing list (link above) and clean up all the garbage (see DanRabbits mockup of Dash File Browser that they forking nautilus and coding themselves).
2. Gnome Shell is the wrong direction in many respects and certainly not ready for prime time anytime soon.
3. Work on a new/better GTK. Work on clutter as well as other desktop technology that improve applications and the OS and create a new standard upon which these application can follow and help convert them to this new standard (requires a lot of teamwork/other distros).
4. The Palm Device icon JUST NOW (ubuntu 10.04) got removed from the administration menu. What wrong with that picture? A papercut, yes, but this really needs to go further… just look a print dialogs.
5. Make email fun again! Make office apps fun again and really just apps in general fun again! Ubuntu really has to focus in hard in making applications seamless and part of the OS. Without good applications the OS is useless and yes that means more man power and more time contributing to apps.
6. Ditch the 6 month release cycle… make updates of apps continuous. New version of Evolution, firefox, open office and they work and are stable? Great! (click and update). THAT’S bleeding edge. Make it EASY to rollback versions just in case it doesn’t work.
Martin, I’d love to knock brains together and see you post a blog with the title ‘10 things to make ubuntu drastically better.’ In any case, as always, your blog is great!
For once, we agree 100% on something.
I don’t have much to add except I have the exact same agreements… except I don’t use the MeMenu, but to each his own.
for accounting i use skrooge because it has multi-currency homebank is also nice but since it doesn`t have multi-currency i can`t use it. wxbanker is also good for basic accounting but it also doesn`t have multi currency
I have printerproblems. After upgrading to 10.04 my canon pixma ip 1980 drivers dont work.
I had a problem in 9.10 aswell but solved it following this guide:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1305248
Anyone knows what the problem is, I have found many people on different forums who shares the problem, but havn’t found a solution yet.