crazybobbles

Woohoo! Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft is finally released and ready for downloading!

For those who aren’t aware of what Ubuntu is, it’s a Open Source Linux Distribution. To further break that down into something more understandable, it is a free open source operating system like Windows XP or Mac OSX. Ubuntu is one of the most popular linux distributions out of the lot and pose to become more popular then Max OSx and Windows (check this out).

One of the things I was most looking forward in getting was Beryl and Aiglx. These are eye candy apps which make the desktop system much more pretty and fun to work with haha. Previously, there was something known as XGL which replaced the current Desktop system, this proved to be slightly dangerous due to the fact that things can ever so easily screw up. Aiglx provides a more safer alternative as it’s simply an extension to the desktop system. You can easily fallback to the original system if Aiglx fails. Beryl is simply the thing that controls Aiglx. Or something, read it up ahaha.

So yeah, managed to get Ubuntu installed as well as Beryl and Aiglx so immediately I went straight at customising the desktop so it looks like Mac OSX (since I want to get one haha). The results are amazing

Thats me running a few apps including Open Office: Writer, Gaim (messaging client), and some other odd stuff.

The eyecandy stuff run very smoothly on my shabby laptop (thought the graphics card would crap out). Which means I can easily use all of this when doing my regular things. Though if i didnt want to have all the eyecandy installed I can simply not run them.

Of course, the above just details the flashier side of Ubuntu’s latest release, there are many other features that have been improved, including:

• Tomboy, an easy-to-use and efficient note-taking tool
• F-Spot, a photo management tool that enables tagging, photo editing and automatic uploading to on-line web management sites such as Flickr
• GNOME 2.16, which in addition to new features such as enhanced power management, makes the GNOME desktop more secure, faster and more stable
• Upstart, a replacement start-up manager offering a cleaner design, eye-catching effects and a substantially faster boot time
• The latest Firefox web browser, which offers inline spell check support in web forms, easy recovery of crashed sessions, built-in phishing detectors, enhanced search engine management with built in OpenSearch support, and better support for previewing and subscribing to web feeds
• Proactive security features, preventing many common security vulnerabilities even before they are discovered
• Evolution 2.8.0, which brings new features such as vertical message panes

Here’s a video of it all in action after installing Beryl

So yeah, if you’re into the whole open source scene, Ubuntu is definitely worth getting and all.