For the most part, Edgy is not the leap that we saw from Breezy Badger to Dapper. Instead it looks like the Ubuntu crew took it upon themselves to clean things up a bit more where it counts and give the base install the important tools a user would need. For example, the Applications toolbar is really getting perfected, the "Accessories" section has Archive Manager there by default, as well as a handy Disk Analyzer as well (this is in addition to the calculator, dictionary and screenshot programs already there before). The music section now also has a good version of Rhythmbox as well (was that there before?).
The Places toolbar got some major changes, allowing you to get to all of your mounted drives much easier than in the past with a simple option called "Computer" that gives you all the mounts. Good stuff, but the only problem is they got rid of the "Disks" option that was under the Admin options! This was a quick and easy way to check my free disk space (which is important considering how much I chewed up). There are other ways, but I don't see why this one had to go away.
Finally, the System toolbar is mostly the same, with a (possibly) new options for the look and feel of the GUI and extra account options.
All in all, aside from my Disks gripe, the tweaks are nice, and make it easier to get to things that the average user needs.
A few GUI tweaks though, good ones too! There's a nice little button in the right corner for logging out that's apparently been there since Dapper, but never showed up before for me (because I fucked around with XGL and Gnome before). It also seems that more apps in Edgy minimize to taskbar icons in the right corner, which I quite like (I hate it in XP, but here it feels less invasive).
Oh, and no more sound issues with flash and firefox. I've got Strong Bad emails to catch up with.
The bad
- Edgy seems a bit more sluggish than Dapper, and I'm not sure if its the apps I'm running or Edgy itself. I hope its not my hardware - in any case its not like its horrible, just not as snappy as I remember in the past.
- Default option is for two virtual desktops instead of four. Why is this?
Conclusion: Dapper Drake was fantastic for me, and allowed me to do a lot of fun hacking. It was such a solid release that I hate to leave from it, but the bottom line is that Edgy is necessary to easily get newer versions of your favorite apps (I'm sorry if I don't fucking build everything from source). Already I was able to get a better version of Banshee that supports all the plugins I wanted, so in the end it was all worth it. I'll play around with it some more and see if anything else good or bad happens. Also later I'll do separate impressions of Banshee and the new version of GAIM.
2 comments:
I envy you I am still trying to figure out Windows XP.
Hi Chumly, thanks for the comment.
To be honest, I've used XP far more than any distro of Linux, and I still don't know as much as I probably should about Windows. It doesn't bother me too much though, since I believe that there's no real test of how savvy one is with computers, though people like to brag. What's important to me is that a person knows enough to get done what they need to get done with their computer. And if they can't, I'm certainly one to try and help them out.
Also, if you ever get around to Linux experimentation, Ubuntu is the most helpful and friendly community out there. I wouldn't know half the things I do now if not for the tips they provided to me almost every day. We all learn from someone :)
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