Ubuntu 13.04: No privacy controls as promised, but hey - photo search!

First the bad news: most of the big new features planned for Ubuntu 13.04, or Raring Ringtail, haven’t made it – they’ve been pushed back to 13.10, due in October. Despite this, the Ringtail is actually rather good. Assuming you're a fan of the Unity interface and got past the privacy fiasco of last year - either because you’ …

[Anonymous Coward]

Erratum

"However, cool as the Photo Lens is, unless you really love Amazon search results in your Dash, you're better off skipping the Photo Lens until the Smart Scopes and better privacy controls land later in 130.10 or you uninstall the Amazon Lens."

: )

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Erratum

Is the graphics and large file transfer performance in Ubuntu still a lot slower than Windows 8, or have they caught up yet?

[Bakunin]

Re: Erratum

"Is the graphics and large file transfer performance in Ubuntu still a lot slower than Windows 8 ..."

Do you have a citation for that? Or perhaps some context?

[Dave 126]

Re: Erratum

>Do you have a citation for that?

Googling 'Ubuntu slow transfer speeds' does bring up a lot of discussion results...

[Cameron Colley]

Re: Transfer rate.

I'd like some more information also. Otherwise I'd say it's just people doing it wrong:

http://www.google.com/search?q=windows+8+slow+transfer+speeds&btnG=Search&hl=en&gbv=1

[TheVogon]

Re: Erratum

"Do you have a citation for that? Or perhaps some context?"

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_windows8_ubuntu&num=1

http://www.hecticgeek.com/2012/11/windows-8-vs-ubuntu-12-10-file-copy-performance-comparison/

[Matt 21]

Re: Erratum

I'm running Ubuntu and haven't seen any performance issues or graphics problems. I'm not even using a graphics card nor an up-to-date CPU. I don't seem to be the only one.

Transfer speeds are about 10% better than I see on my Windows PCs and graphics seem about the same.

I don't mind Ubuntu too much and certainly prefer the interface to Windows 8. I'm not a Mac owner nor an Apple fan but I'd say that the MacOS interface is a little nicer although there are some areas where Unity is better. This is, of course, just my opinion.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Erratum

More than one review has shown that the large file copy performance and the Open GL performance lag Windows.

[h3]

Re: Erratum

It still sucks for graphics.

If you use a normal window manager and good quality drivers then it is fairly similar.

(At least meaning Nvidia binary drivers or Xig if you have already a license).

That is the difference between this and what Microsoft are doing is Microsoft haven't degraded performance.

(With the exception of a few very minor cases with specific games when hyperv is enabled).

Large file transfer performance is not meaningful enough. All of them work fine if you use a semi decent way depending on the situation. Linux smb 3.0 performance is obviously not going to be as good as is using anything Canocial made (Going on past experience). nfs4 and Linux might be ok now. Stuff like axel or curl is incredibly fast on Linux. The windows ui standard copy method is pretty good but still better to use robocopy (Or xcopy - probably the powershell copy but I don't know the syntax by heart).

[Bill the Sys Admin]

Unity, and the fact that an idiot like Mark Shuttleworth is in charge. Its a no for me thanks. Probably a very well rounded distro for those who just want to jump ship from Apple or MS.

[Bill the Sys Admin]

The open source feeling has long lost Ubuntu, they are now just a wanna be Apple. Fair play to them they have done well to get where they are. But at the cost of lots of their die hard users that started it all off.

I use openSUSE, with KDE. Very good piece of software.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The open source feeling has long lost Ubuntu..."

"I use openSUSE..."

How short our memories are!

[yossarianuk]

choice - unlike with Windows

I absolutely hate Unity, however the Ubuntu base is great and swapping desktops is easy (Kubuntu I find better than Windows 7 to work with)

And that is the great thing about Linux in general, you actually have choice.

Windows 8 users, what choice do they have?

If you running a Nvidia card and not running any Gnome3 based desktop (like Unity) FPS in games is higher in pretty much all games I have tried in Linux - just use a non crap desktop.

[andreas koch]

@ Bill the Sys Admin

Your opinion, have it.

But there's no need to call someone who clearly isn't an "idiot" just to use it as a derogatory term.

Unless, of course, you don't know what the word means or who you're writing about.

[CAPS LOCK]

Still too brown, if you ask me.

Still someone must like it. Same goes for Unity I suppose. (Kubuntu/Xubuntu/?buntu blah blah blah)

[Mystic Megabyte]

Re: Still too brown, if you ask me.

Here's a little test for you:

Go and look at a fire engine. What colour is it?

My guess is that your answer will be "Brown".

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh?

"It's too bad that the new privacy features didn't make the cut for this release because one of the best new features in the Unity dash is the new Photo Search Lens, which taps not just any photos you have in Shotwell, but any images you've uploaded to Flickr, Facebook or Google."

I don't really understand the need for searching online locations for files that originated and presumably are still stored, on your hard drive.

[Mark #255]

Re: Huh?

Your presumption may well be false.

Cameras on phones, many compacts, and any other cameras loaded with eye-fi SD cards will upload to "the cloud"^W^W a server somewhere online without requiring PC-based intermediation.

[Dave 126]

Re: Huh?

Especially as Ubuntu's plan is to run across devices like phones and tablets... most of my photos live locally on my PC (other than those snapped on my phone), but cloud services are one way of making them accessible to mobile devices. If Ubuntu is to be used on mobile devices, it makes sense for it to have a feature like this. Concept / implementation...

[melt]

"Smart Scopes are part of Canonical's long-term plan to make the Unity Dash as much a web-search interface as application launcher. The goal is to add some 100 different search providers to the Unity Dash, allowing you to search everything from websites like IMDb and DeviantArt to your browser bookmarks, Tomboy notes and more"

So Sherlock from MacOS 8 then?

[Ragequit]

Wake me up...

When kernel 3.9 is released. I have no want or need for features found or not found in Ubuntu 13.04. What I'm interested in is upstream changes to KVM/VFIO that might make things easier for vga passthrough.

Btw am I the only one that doesn't trust some search aggregator with my login credentials? One would assume they would be encrypted but how much care is really taken (they can't store hashes since it's logging in on your behalf)? /shrug. Maybe it's fine and they've taken the proper steps. Still, it's a matter of security over convenience. To some the latter is more important.

[Craigness]

Re: Wake me up...

OAuth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OAuth

[Richard Wharram]

Been using this

Been using this as my primary sofa-surfer for a couple of weeks. Very snappy and polished. A great experience for a household machine. Far more pleasant and quicker than Win7 on my Thinkpad T400. Also finding the interface less fiddly than Cinnamon.

[csumpi]

Re: Been using this

"quicker than Win7 on my Thinkpad T400"

Bullshit.

"Also finding the interface less fiddly than Cinnamon."

Fiddly? Really?

[Richard Wharram]

Re: Been using this

Yes, it's quicker. Do you want me to time page loads or boot times?

[Connor]

Amazon...

I don't understand why people complain about the Amazon lens so much. If you don't need it, just ignore it, it appears at the bottom and so is easily ignored. But when you DO want to buy something from Amazon, it is a quick and easy Amazon search, the results appear in an easily viewable and navigable form with pictures and description making it much faster than viewing the Amazon site. Of course most importantly, every time you purchase something from Amazon, which most of us were doing anyway, Canonical gets a cut from Amazon's end. If you like your free OS, surely that is an easy, free, zero-effort and non-obtrusive way of helping pay for it?

It's also useful for discovering stuff, say searching Dash for your Greenday albums and then seeing that they have a new album out! What luck!

In all honesty the only problem (aside from the occasional slight delay in results) I have with the Amazon lens, is that it is just Amazon and that I have to open a browser and multiple tabs to check out the competitions prices.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Connor

"Of course most importantly, every time you purchase something from Amazon, which most of us were doing anyway, Canonical gets a cut from Amazon's end. If you like your free OS, surely that is an easy, free, zero-effort and non-obtrusive way of helping pay for it?"

You make a good argument IMO but there are also flaws within your reasoning. Because lets face it: without Debian there wouldn't be an Ubuntu. Most of the real work isn't done by Canonical at all, but with all the volunteers which maintain the Debian packages, which also eventually find their way into Ubuntu.

As such your argument could also be easily turned around: how much of Canonical's cut finds its way back into Debian? If Canonical likes their free OS so much to build a whole company on top of it, surely its also an easy zero-effort to help pay for it?

Yet somehow I don't see that happening.

With that in mind I think people have every right to complain or share their discomfort. The OS isn't free afterall; it has a pricetag attached. You either pay through advertisement, or invest some of your own time to de-install the whole lot, time costs money too you know.

IMO there's more to this than merely "helping pay for the OS".

[CaptainHook]

Re: Amazon...

@Connor

You seriously don't see a problem with every search term you make on your computer being shared with at least 2 companies, only 1 of which is anonymised, and you just have to take Canonicals word for it that the search terms they pass on to Amazon are anonymised, there is no way for you as a user to check?

No problems searching for the report you've got on your harddisk using the search terms "Terminal Cancer Doctors Report"?

[sjsmoto]

Re: Amazon...

If I'm looking to buy or download something, wouldn't it make sense to add the Amazon search to software center instead?

But If they're stuck on adding all of these searches to the dash, at least offer a prefix to limit the search locally, like "my editor" or "my report" so it only looks on my computer for a file or program containing the word editor or report.

[csumpi]

Re: Amazon...

"I don't understand why people complain about the Amazon lens so much."

Maybe, because, let me see, perhaps there are still people who use their computer for work or at least something constructive, other than updating their fecesbook profile, twatting, or buying crappy stuff that they don't need.

[Shasta McNasty]

Rush, rush, rush

Why are software releases rushed out?

Surely its better to say "The release will be delayed 3 months to accommodate all the planned enhancements we promised you" instead of "Here is the release as promised for this date. Oh, by the way, All those features you wanted had to be dropped as we couldn't fit them in to the timeframe."

Software lives and dies by its user base. If you piss the users off by "delivering incomplete releases", you'll kill the product and they'll go elsewhere.

[Graham 32]

Re: Rush, rush, rush

But someone else may see it as "the features we promised you, that you're waiting for, and are ready to ship are going to be delayed for 3 months because something else you don't care about isn't ready yet."

Some companies declare what they're going to ship and wait until it's ready. Some companies say when they're going to ship and ship the things that are ready at that time. Two systems, both good, both bad, it just depends which features you're waiting for.

[Tom 7]

Re: Rush, rush, rush

Because people keep uninstalling things and we have to put them back!

[Jordan Davenport]

Re: Rush, rush, rush

In all honesty, the non-LTS releases are simply milestones for those wanting the latest and greatest as soon as stable, more or less "Community Previews" in Microsoft's newer marketing lingo for betas. The shortening of the support period from 18 months to 9 months should especially emphasize that point.

If the features get left out of the LTS releases, yeah, I can see your point - you'll have to wait two more years for the features to land in a proper release. That said, the non-LTS releases just can't afford to be delayed. You can usually add a repository for backported features as soon as they're stable (or even before, as is the case with Smart Scopes) if you just can't wait another 3 months for the features to arrive past your hypothesized 3 month delay.

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of missing features and Ubuntu...

Has anyone seen the wandering Matt Asay lately e.g. his Open and Shut feature seems to have been missing since February.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/Author/2613/

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Speaking of missing features and Ubuntu...

My guess would be it's the shame...

[Avatar of They]

sob. sob.

Still has Unity... Oh for the love of a box that says 'click this and you never have to use, need or look at Unity.' (and all the privacy stuff, and anything to do with online searches) and I might care about ubuntu 13.

I so desparately want steam on linux, but not at the price of everything else unbuntu comes with.

Come on Gabe, bring out steam for Mint.

[Mystic Megabyte]

Re: sob. sob.

♩♬♪♩ is the sound of my tiny violin.

<=== It's in the right hand pocket

[Avatar of They]

Re: sob. sob.

Almost worth an upvote for the musical notes in your reply, - Almost. I guess you are one of the small % of happy Unity users (or just a more vocal one?) so good on you for supporting it.

I have a VM with 12:10 on it and occasional dabble, but god does it stink.

However to know Mint works with Steam. Awesome.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: sob. sob.

I'm using Mint and have steam installed, simply go to the steam website and click the link at the top right corner which says install, simple!

[RegGuy1]

Re: sob. sob.

I have to agree with this dude. Unit was so difficult to use I gave up and went back to 10.04. Quite happy with that, thank you very much.

But then I only need a browser, a file manager and some bash xterm shells. Life is sweet!

[Craigness]

Re: sob. sob.

How hard is it to press the "windows" key and type "xterm"? Just think of it as CLI and you'll be much happier.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: sob. sob.

"How hard is it to press the "windows" key and type "xterm"? Just think of it as CLI and you'll be much happier."

"windows" key???? what you talking about !!!!

[Obvious Robert]

Re: sob. sob.

I so desparately want steam on linux, but not at the price of everything else unbuntu comes with.

Come on Gabe, bring out steam for Mint.

As I'm sure you know, Mint basically is Ubuntu with a load of codecs preinstalled BUT without Unity or the online search privacy issue. As a rule of thumb, if it works on Ubuntu then it works on Mint - including Steam.

[Mark Leaver]

Re: sob. sob.

Mint is basically Debian with some codecs from Ubuntu installed.

On the whole, I am thinking that Mint will look good installed on my main desktop at home. If I want to search Amazon, I will open a browser... not the search box on my desktop

[Not That Andrew]

Re: sob. sob.

Considering that the Steam deb has been repackaged for every flavour of Linux under the sun, including Slackware, I'm pretty sure you could find a way of installing it on Mint. Or you could just add the official Steam repository http://repo.steampowered.com/steam/ to your repositories, the way the Linux Mint blog recommends.

[Greg J Preece]

Re: sob. sob.

Still has Unity... Oh for the love of a box that says 'click this and you never have to use, need or look at Unity.' (and all the privacy stuff, and anything to do with online searches) and I might care about ubuntu 13.

You've never heard of Kubuntu? That's what I'm running Steam on. ;-)

[Shanghai Tom]

Re: sob. sob.

I use Ubuntu a lot, but as Kubuntu, either download kubuntu or use the default Unity install then download XFCE and set is as the default.

No privacy issues, no Amazon hook up, and it's fast.

Unity on a two screen ( large panel displays too ) is not a good experience for me.

I have a windows VM running for those things that have no drivers / utilities / whatever yet in Linux but all my work is otherwise done on Kubuntu.

Except for one thing, accessing my office via Citrix on any flavour of linux is excriable, so for that I use the Windows VM and access it from there, orders of magnitude faster that running natively on Linux, Come on Citrix, extractum digitem !!

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: sob. sob.

I'm fast becoming convinced that Canonical do not want Ubuntu to be seen as a Linux distribution, but as an operating environment that happens to run on top of Linux, in the same way that OSX is an operating environment running on top of Mach and BSD.

They want it to be distinct and different, and that appears to extend to being prepared to piss off long term UNIX/Linux users.

This may be a clever strategy. If they can get the wider population to adopt Ubuntu and accept it for all it's strengths as an environment in it's own right, rather than a Linux distribution, then it may be able to ditch the (undeserved IMHO) stigma that appears to blight Linux in the eyes of the community of non-Linux computer users.

But it sure does make me cross.

I'm just waiting for comments like "Oh. Ubuntu. That used to be base on Linux at one time, didn't it?". As soon as that perceived distance has been achieved, then maybe, just maybe Mark Shuttleworth will be content.

Or maybe I'm just an old fart, too out of touch to be relevant any more.

[Anonymous Cowherder]

Install cinnamon and upgrade

I've been running ubuntu on my main PCs for years, well since fedora jumped fully in with gnome3. When ubuntu made the leap away from gnome2 I struggled for a bit, dallied with XFCE and mint but as soon as cinnamon was available on 12.04 I've been back. (Had a strange dns issue on mint that I didn't have time to sort out).

Since then I've just needed to sudo apt-get dist-upgrade and away I've gone. There's been issues with networked printing and something else that escapes me now but I've not seen unity for years, haven't needed to.

I do wish they'd stop dicking about with useless stuff, get the platform unbelievably stable, get it to work with most mainstream hardware vendors, make sound and video work seamlessly, decent fast file system and a good portfolio of tools then work on hardening it so that it is the most secure OS.

[Richard Wharram]

Re: Install cinnamon and upgrade

I have Mint alongside 13.04 so I'm happy enough in Cinnamon but when I tried to install Cinnamon on top of 13.04 it wasn't fully functional. Trying to bring up the dialog to edit the panel didn't respond. Does it not automatically installed all the required packages?

By contrast, installing KDE causes it to load pretty much all of Kubuntu. It even changes the splash-screen :)

[adnim]

I have a search box

in Firefox for the web, with several search engines, Amazon is one of them.

I know if what I am searching for is local or out there on the Internet.

I sacked Ubuntu for Mint on the desktop, and CentOS as a server.

I is happy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I have a search box

I have multiple cloud storage areas and can't always remember which one I use for a particular file. Not all files are synced locally so a single search of all clouds is very useful.

However, removing Firefox's ability to search online and forcing you to use the Dash is a MASSIVE FAILURE on Canonical's part. I have no idea what they were thinking with that one, and I completely understand if this issue is what made your knee jerk in the direction of Mint. For me, it's Shuttleworth's insistence on including a lot of drivers which I will never use which forced me to build my own distribution. I is happy. Will they never learn?

The kernel itself has a lot of stuff I don't need, so I'm working on a new one just for me. I do worry though, that if my usage pattern changes I'll need to add new functionality to the kernel before being able to do anything. Swings and roundabouts I suppose.

And I NEVER use the -r switch for the ls command. It's a huge frustration that it's there in the first place. I suppose someone thought it might be useful !

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: I have a search box @AC

the '-r' switch in ls? As in reverse the order of the listing?

I use it multiple times a day. It reverses the order of the search, and is incredibly useful when used with the '-t' flag to find the most recently changed file, as in 'ls -ltr | pg' (or less, if you like).

You could just let it run to the bottom, but that's not what I want to do.

One thing which has hone wrong IMHO, is the fact that the order that files are sorted has changed with the advent of multi-byte character sets, such that the sort order is affected by the collating sequence of the NLS code page you are using. Add to this the stupid (again IMHO) default of the GNU ls to ignore non-alphabetic characters (like '.') into the equation, and the order that shown becomes almost complete nonsense for any practical purpose.

Life used to be so much more simple.

[Hayden Clark]

What does LTS mean, anyway?

I don't get how they can ship unfinished features on an LTS build. Either they will remain in the unfinished state for the next 5 years, with just the occasional bug fix, or they will be finished/removed/replaced in the future, so a 13.04 install next year will be significantly different to a 13.04 build now.

How are you supposed to rely on LTS for a stable platform?

[Rebajas]

Re: What does LTS mean, anyway?

I don't get your comment - last LTS was 12.04, I think the next one will be 14.04...

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: What does LTS mean, anyway?

No. He's right.

If a problem in an LTS release is not fixed in the first year of the life, it almost certainly won't ever be.

One of the problems in 10.04 that gathered a huge number of sufferers was the interface to musicbrainz, which is used to identify the CD you're playing or ripping. The fact that it would not work in the library implementation that shipped with Lucid meant that you could not us it to rip CDs, without you keying in the album and track info in manually, regardless of the ripper you used (they all relied on the library implementation in Ubuntu).

After a year of relative inactivity, the responders on the Ubuntu bug tracker suggested people upgrade to a newer release of Ubuntu. After 2 years (still in the support window for Desktop), they closed down all of the reports as "will not fix". And the stupid thing is that the problem was well known, and could have been worked into the repository with comparatively little effort. People even offered to do it, but the updates were not put back into the source tree.

None of the Canonical responders were prepared to put the effort into what they saw as an old version. So I have to ask, what value is there to LTS releases. I'm not asking them to back-port the features from newer releases, but I would expect them to fix known bugs, even if they are not security related.

To fix the problem, I had to update to Precise, with all the collateral pain that caused. Now using Cinnamon on Precise relatively happily. I try Unity every now and then (it's still installed), but inevitably go back.

[NB]

Enough

Personally I've had enough of *buntu, even Xubuntu 13.04 has been bloated with zeitgeist and loads of gnome and unity dependencies that have no logical reason to be there. I've jumped ship to Arch and couldn't be happier. It's fast, stable, does what I want, how I want and doesn't fuck about.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it me, or is anyone else getting fed up with all these "cute" names they come up with for an OS.

"Raring Ringtail"

"Mint"

"Gingerbread"

"JellyBean".

God knows what else.

When I here people talking now, I don't know if they are referring to a new OS version or something in the damn kitchen!

I MUST be getting old when stuff like this is deemed as cool and hip (Do people even say "cool" and "hip" anymore?).

[Salacious Crumb]

Cute names?

"Raring Ringtail" is quite intriguing.

Looking forward to 'Spunky Spermwhale'.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Spunky Spermwhale

Ouch.

...But re the cutesy names... they are just marketing fluff and ideas for splash screens and desktops (I actually used the narwhals; it appealed to me). In proper conversation, we're better off sticking with the numbers.

[graeme leggett]

unless you are already in the know, it's hard to tell without looking it upwhich comes after or before what.

How about building numbers into the names

"Knock on the door"

"Five Alive"

"Six of the best"

....

"On it's own - Eight!"

[Rukario]

Is it me, or is anyone else getting fed up with all these "cute" names they come up with for an OS.

"Raring Ringtail"

"Mint"

"Gingerbread"

"JellyBean".

God knows what else.

"Snow Leopard"

"Mountain Lion"

I'm looking forward to OSXI to being called "Bigglesworth" though I had to upvote "Spunky Spermwhale" for Ubuntu 13.10. I have to wonder, though, what will 17.10 be called... will Ubuntu go back to A?

[CadentOrange]

I have to wonder, though, what will 17.10 be called... will Ubuntu go back to A?

It'll be Arsey Aardvark.

[Serge 2]

Oh Linux...

The software that was and always will remain in a beta stage... There. I said it!

[Paul 129]

Re: Oh Linux...

VS M$ The software that should always remain in a beta stage...

VS Apple The software that always keeps users always in a padded cell...

There I said it!

Actually Win8 looks pretty damned robust at the moment. Its a shame really. Who wants to be locked in to M$ forever? Please avoid!

[asdf]

Re: Oh Linux...

Funny Google has managed to build a pretty sizable empire leveraging it. Their biggest hack (publicity wise) from China was because they had XP boxes laying around.

[Peter X]

Is it stable yet?

Had to lol at the LTS comments above; I'm running 12.04 (LTS) and I'm still waiting for it to stabilize! It's certainly the most crash-prone Ubuntu I've used, and I started on 06.06

So should I move to 13.04? Well, given that this presumably only gets 9 months support, I'll probably have to pass. But then again, I feel like 12.04 has been left to rot. It's crash-prone, but it's also got a skip-load of stupid bugs like the often-ghosted-paste-menu-item-in-nautilus bug, or a weird one that I see all the time where when the mouse rolls over menu items, they seem to change their size causing the whole menu to jump about... and I've no idea how to even search for a bug on that. It's hard enough to describe!

It's almost like Canonical are focusing on their business plans, and completely forgetting their users are what stops them from being a complete irrelevance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unity Dash ..

Is it possible to permanently disable Unity Dash, personally I'm on Lubuntu 12.10 ..

[ecofeco]

Re: Unity Dash ..

At the log in screen, I just choose what type of desktop I want to run from the drop down menu.

That becomes the default each time I log in.

[Anonymous Coward]

I look forward to the Xubuntu branch release with relish!

[ecofeco]

Hate Unity?

Then don't use it.

I love Ubuntu and run Ubuntu. I just do it without Unity.

Problem solved.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hate Unity? Then don't use it.

I do ... And no, I don't. I use a version of Ubuntu 12.04 that did not come with it anyway, and I installed MATE.

The problem is not with one horrible desktop (personal opinion) or with privacy invasion itself, it is with the attitudes and directions taken by Shuttleworth and Co.

[csumpi]

How about changing the color scheme?

The Ubuntu color scheme with the oranges, browns and purples just makes my stomach turn. In fact it kinda looks like vomit after a long night out. It's pretty much _the_ worst designer job, ever. And even after changing controls, themes, colors, you'll eventually find some orange highlighting somewhere.

Who cares about privacy, when the freaking thing is so ugly it can't be looked at?

Paris, matching the taste level.

[ecofeco]

Re: How about changing the color scheme?

Well it's part of their logo, isn't it?

That said, I agree. More built in themes would be nice.

[Tom 7]

Re: How about changing the color scheme?

Wow - has it got to the point where people spend more time whining about colour schemes than it would take to fix.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How about changing the color scheme?

Can't you have any colour scheme that you want? Any wallpaper that you want?

If not, then Unity must be far worse than I ever thought. Shirley not?

[Wibble]

Doesn't look ver *work* oriented

Seems more play oriented than doing work.

Whilst it's nice to do some photo managing, it's hardly the raison d'etre of a computer -- unless you're a photo geek. Similarly all that search crap.

I couldn't imagine simply replacing one of the major operating systems for that load of fluff that is Ubuntu. Still, as someone's bound to point out, I don't have to as there's plenty of work related distros.

I honestly thought that about three years ago we could look forwards to Ubuntu seriously making inroads into the Windows dominated desktop, especially in corporates and business. There's no chance of this making the cut. And windows lives on...

[asdf]

wow

>Assuming you're a fan of the Unity interface

Glanced at article saw that at the top and remembered why I use Mint instead. Nice to skim to see some of the features that might make it upstream but for the most part made reading the article quick and easy for me.

[James Hughes 1]

I like Unity

There, I've said it. I use it at home and work for dev stuff and it's absolutely fine. Once you get the hang of it there is no real difference between it and any other desktop, just a different usage model. Never had any performance issues, and one things I really like is that it get better with every release.

So there you go. I'd like to thank Canonical for actually trying to shake things up a bit, and, for my purposes, succeeding.

[Cipher]

OK, Ubuntu has lost me. They continue to go in what is, IMO, the wrong direction.

They had a shot, all they had to do was remove the anti-privacy features or at least make them off by default. Clearly they have another agenda...

[Anonymous Coward]

meaning of the word Ubuntu

The Urban Dictionary - http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ubuntu - defines Ubuntu as:

'Ubuntu is an ancient african word, meaning "I can't configure Debian"'

There are many other definitions provided as well, most of them NSFW, but relevant and on-topic for the subject matter being discussed.

[agricola]

Same ol' same ol. Ubuntu and Shuttleworth are irrelevant, and off the radar.

"...First the bad news: most of the big new features planned for Ubuntu 13.04, or Raring Ringtail, haven’t made it – they’ve been pushed back to 13.10, due in October.

"...prompted Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth to promise that future releases would offer ".

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"...Ubuntu 13.04 is actually the sort of release that has been missing lately from the Canonical camp...".

NO, IT IS NOT.

It is precisely the type of offal which Shuttleworth and Canonical have been serving up since rev. 11.04: bug-ridden, diminished capability, loaded with 'features' which are only there to stroke Shuttleworth's massive ego, and pre-loaded with promises from Shuttleworth to fix all the blunders in the next release.

Given your own writing and assessment of 13.04 (see above), would you please explain, Mr Gilbertson, how you arrived at the conclusion contained in the last quotation, above.

"One small deed is worth more than the most grandiose of promises"--a fact never learned by Mr Shuttleworth.

He has one year. FireFox OS will close his doors, and solve all our problems

[maknesiumblog]

Update to Ubuntu 13.04 free guide

Hi again,

I'd like to update my previous comment, as Ubuntu 13.04 has been released. So I wrote a new guide on how to update from Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal to 13.04 Raring Ringtail in very easy steps. There are also screenshots and detailed explanations. Hope to be useful.

Looking forward to your feedback :)

Maknesium

[maknesiumblog]

Re: Update to Ubuntu 13.04 free guide

The guide can be found here:

http://www.maknesium.de/upgrade-to-ubuntu-13-04-raring-ringtail-in-less-than-20-minutes-without-problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse Me

Some of use have debian beards to brush, and simple config files to edit. Away with your polish!

[Paulusgnome]

But what about the missing Unity launcher?

Updated from the trusty 12.04, only to find that the Unity launcher was broken, leaving just the desktop background displayed after logging on.

Apparently this is a known bug which quite a few others have also experienced. Grrrrr!

Being a long-term Linux user, I found out how to fix it, but its not a good look to have to fix bugs such as this - it makes Linux in general and especially Ubuntu look like something for the uninitiated to avoid.http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/fail_32.png

[Wardy01]

Its still crap

Why ...

It's a bitch to install on my hardware because it doesn't understand one of the most used GFX cards on the market.

File transfers to and from my linux based NAS are more than double the speed on the same machine running windows.

It still (IMO) looks like crap, anyone can add a few gradients to an interface and call it new, try creating something new!

No I don't feel like spending hours removing everything I don't want and setting up a ton of small apps that basically don't like each other because versioning on dependencies.

Begin flaming and down voting.