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On Thursday I installed the latest Ubuntu release (7.10) on my Dell 700m laptop.  Prior that it was running an older Ubuntu release (6.10) up until about two weeks ago when, in anticipation of the new release, I backed up my data and started experimenting with other distributions.  This has pretty much become my ritual anymore around the time of Ubuntu releases.  I usually alternate which computer I upgrade every release (either the desktop or laptop) so that each computer typically runs on the same release for about a year.

Over the last two weeks I installed Fedora 8 Test 3 and OpenSUSE 10.3.  I ran OpenSUSE 10.3 during most of that time and noted several features/improvements that I liked.  The first thing I liked was that the new Gtk interface for YaST which significantly makes it feel more at home on a GNOME desktop.   It now has the same basic look and feel of Novell’s GNOME Control Center.  I really liked the “1-Click Install” feature that OpenSUSE has implemented.  Right now 1-Click Install packages are commonly found in the Software Portal at opensuse.org and a few other sites but with time I think they will be popping up all over.  Basically when you click to install the software from a website you load a YaST Metadata Package that automatically configures the repositories that are needed for the package and any dependencies.  It asks for your root password and away it goes. 

Now on to Ubuntu…This so far has been the best install on this laptop yet (of any distro).  Here is a list of a few of the things that I have liked/greatly appreciated in this new release:

• Automatically configured screen resolution to 1280×800:  No more adding additional packages, messing around with config files, or running special utilities. 
• Compiz enabled by default.  This is a nice addition in my opinion.  I have been using Compiz (or Beryl) on both my laptop and desktop systems for a while now and not only is it more visually appealing but believe it or not there are productivity enhancements that I sorely miss when I am on a system without it.  Compiz is running extremely well on the laptop, especially considering it has an Intel Integrated Graphics chip in it that is several years old at this point.   I also like the fact that they made some sensible decisions regarding the desktop effects defaults.  
• SD Card Reader works!  This is the first time EVER that the integrated SD card reader on this laptop has seen any action.  After every install of every distribution I stick a card in this and wait and see what happens…usually nothing.  On this install I stuck an SD card in from my camera after taking some pictures of Ty helping carve some pumpkins and to my amazement and disbelief an SD card icon appeared on my desktop and the import photo’s dialog  popped up on the screen…very nice!
• Deskbar/Tracker installed and enabled by default. On the Mac I use Spotlight all of the time…it’s almost an addiction…to find files, applications, etc.  On Linux I have grown to love the Deskbar applet for the same reasons.  In the past I have always relied on Beagle as the search back-end but the Ubuntu folks have decided to go with Tracker instead.  At this point I am not entirely convinced of this but I will give it a try.  Deskbar + Beagle/Tracker Live Search plugin rocks.  So far what I miss is a feature I have been using A LOT.  On my desktop system (and my previous laptop install) I had the Beagle Firefox extension installed which indexed every page I went to.  I can’t tell you how many times just in the last week where I have had to try to find an obscure page that I visited and used Deskbar with Beagle Live plugin to find exactly what I was looking for.  I have not, in recent memory, had any issues with system performance and Beagle being enabled, even with the Firefox extension, so only time will tell how well Tracker works.
• Java packages available in the repositories.  Not just any packages, but the most recent updates as well.  I was pleasantly surprised to find all of the packages for Java 6 Update 3 in the repositories.  They also have a package for Netbeans 5.5 (no 6.0 test releases yet).  Given that I have been doing a lot of Java programming for work lately and my IDE of choice is Netbeans this works out extremely well for me. 

Overall performance has been great, even with Compiz enabled and Tracker running in the background.  At least as fast, or faster, than the previous release I had installed on the laptop which was 6.10. 

All of this plus the updated versions of all of the usual packages makes 7.10 a very nice release.  Now I just have to wait until Friday to get my hands on the next release of OS X.

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 7:26 am and is filed under Linux. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.