Loading ...I was hunting around the web looking for a LiveCD that would let me try out the new Gnome 2.16 build, and eventually found the Ubuntu daily LiveCD builds. According to the manifest these builds are sporting the 2.15.90 build of Gnome 2.16, which sounds late enough to get a good idea of how it runs.
I did learn that unfortunately, all the new/awesome compositing work that went into Metacity won’t be realized until your distrobution of choice adopts X.org 7.1 version, which includes the accelerated extensions that Metacity is utilizing (aka no more XGL/Compiz stuff). It looks like Edgy Eft, the next version of Ubuntu will be using X.org 7.0 out the gate unfortunately, so no cool accelerated features for us out of the box, but we will be on Gnome 2.16.
I came across this great link giving a review of Gnome 2.16 and all the features the user found in it, give it a read!
In addition to the link above, I booted the LiveCD I downloaded from the link above and took a test drive. My initial impressions are:
- Fast. Lots of performance enhancements. Things were loading very fast which is not my previous experience from the LiveCD.
- Horrible default fonts (this is on the TODO for Edgy last time I looked):
- Ease-of-use enhancements, like the new repository dialog:
- Some new programs in the default install:
- Custom keyboard keys on my Microsoft Natural Pro internet keyboard worked! I couldn’t believe this, I fired up the keyboard shortcut manager, found the mapping for “Launch Browser” and just hti the “Web/Home” key on the top of my Microsoft keyboard and BAM, the mapping worked:
- Removable media support is expanding, lots of controls for how to handle it:
- Installing Flash worked right from Firefox this time, but (understandable) Synaptic didn’t see it, so I reinstalled from Synaptic and I guess it just overwrote whoever I installed from Firefox. Either way, Google Videos and YouTube were working fine in 60 seconds from a clean boot:
Overall I have to say that Gnome 2.16 and Edgy Eft are shaping up to truely be a “6.10″ Release of Ubuntu. I say that, because the change between 6.06 (Dapper Drake) and 6.10 (Edgy Eft) are not going to be big. As mentioned above, a ton of the exciting work going into Gnome 2.16 is the compositing work in Metacity, but that is not going to be realized out of the box for Edgy, although I imagine there will start a thread covering it in depth soon (if there isn’t one already).
So what you are left with is really just a nice, polished release of Ubuntu as a nice compliment to what 6.06 was. Even though Edgy was suppose to be the “all new bleeding edge feature” release, I believe it happened too quick and a little too early for any major new features to make it in, just a lot of polish. I would say, that polish, is right up my alley! (Digg this)
Update #1: Just ran across another great summary of new features.
Loading ...
August 17th, 2006 at 11:47 am
I dont understand why has ubuntu not included any of the flashy new compositing stuff they have mentioned it for the last 2 releases and each time have failed to bring it
August 17th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
Joseph,
My only input on this subject is that before I tried out XGL and all the new compositing work, I couldn’t understand why this wasn’t the *focus* of the next release of Ubuntu. After running XGL/Compiz and the Novell’s SLED desktop for about a week I have to say that the stability and compatability is not there yet. The little annoyances (like entire X-crashes while watching a movie or playing an OpenGL game) is very infrequent, but annoying enough that I think it could really ruin a major launch of a desktop.
I am first and foremost looking towards all the enhancements in 6.10 and then secondly looking forward to the release after it near the middle of 2007 that finally integrated not only the X.org 7.1 server but all the fixes that go into Gnome’s next release to work better on it.
This next release of Gnome is the first with *all* this new work, there is invariably bugs in it, so leaving it off as a default and allowing people to manually install X.org 7.1 and activate it and use it is a great way to get some testing out of it so when they finally do activate the 3D desktop as default in the next-next release of Ubuntu, it should be sufficiently stable.
Atleast that’s my hope
August 18th, 2006 at 6:17 pm
I’m happy they did not include any of the Xgl stuff, for all I got when I tried it was annoying ‘effects’ that slowed down my reasonably fast pc. The handy screenshots in the window switching were just to fuzy to make anything of it. I prefer a simple icon.
August 24th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
The whole point of this release was to push the boundaries a little bit. That would give us a slightly less stable release, but we’d get to play with new features and help stablise them for the next LTS release.
It seems that edgy is mearly Dapper, but with updated Gnome. Not very impressive yet. I doubt I’ll be changing my Dapper install anytime soon.
August 24th, 2006 at 1:09 pm
Ribs,
I agree I thought that was the point of Edgy as well, but like you said, it looks more to be a simple upgrade path from 6.06 to 6.10, not much else.