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Ubuntu Reviewed: Hands on With Lucid Lynx
switched.com ^ | May 3rd 2010 at 1:35PM | Terrence O'Brien

Posted on 05/03/2010 11:18:38 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach

It seems that every time Ubuntu gets an update there's talk about how the new version will finally usher in the era of user-friendly Linux and turn the open-source operating system (OS) into a serious competitor to OS X and Windows. We've been running the latest version, 10.04 (code-named Lucid Lynx), since it first hit beta in mid-March. While we have a hard time seeing it replace Windows 7 anytime soon, the regular six-month intervals of serious improvements are finally paying off in an arguably consumer-ready OS.

A Completely New Look

*********************snip*****************************

image at website

*****************************************************

The other major new feature to Lucid Lynx is the "Me Menu," a drop-down in the upper right-hand corner that allows you to change your IM status, post updates to Twitter and Facebook, and manipulate your Ubuntu One account. Ubuntu One debuted in 2009, and gives all users 2GB of free online storage. The cloud-based syncing solution has grown into a seriously high-quality product. You can sync contacts between computers and cell phones (including the iPhone), notes written in the top-notch Tomboy app, Firefox bookmarks and any file or folder on your computer with a simple mouse click. Most impressive, though, is integration with the new Ubuntu One Music Store, accessible form within the Rhythm Box music manager. Any songs purchased are automatically added to your Ubuntu One online storage, meaning your purchases are easily and automatically synced across all your computers. Even better, they can be accessed from any Web browser at the Ubuntu One site.


(Excerpt) Read more at switched.com ...


TOPICS: Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: computers; hitech; internet; linux; software; ubuntu; windows
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

I haven’t used Mint yet but i’ve heard great things about it. Our DBA swears by it.


21 posted on 05/03/2010 1:22:19 PM PDT by ChinaThreat (3)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

I think the main hurdle is still application support. Installing Ubuntu on a brand-name PC today is as painless as one can expect. And the GUI may not be as shiny and nice as OSX or Windows but it’s clean, functional and easy enough for the non-power user while at the same time being the premier OS of choice for developers. But in my opinion, the Linux alternatives to Word and Excel just aren’t close. And until you have main-stream support for gaming, you’ll never get it onto high-end home-PCs.


22 posted on 05/03/2010 1:37:17 PM PDT by SwedishConservative
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To: klystron

It was a hoot reading DW last week when they reviewed the new flavor of Ubunto...the buttons had been moved to the other side of the toolbar or something.They were having a hissy over that

Arch user here


23 posted on 05/03/2010 1:45:24 PM PDT by Harold Shea (RVN `70 - `71)
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To: klystron

Yea, I know. When X11 became the face of Unix back in the early 90’s, I played with all manner of window managers.

It was fun... for awhile. For nerds, X11 and the configurability of Unix window managers is neat. For the end user, when X11 blows chunks... it is a world of confusion on the other end of the phone.

As for which variant of Unix I prefer: BSD, followed by SunOS. I’ve never been a huge fan of Linux... I guess I’ve been bitten by the “exactly which distro/version/release/build of Linux are we talking about?” question a few too many times.


24 posted on 05/03/2010 4:14:38 PM PDT by NVDave
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To: JoeProBono
How about USB wireless adapter support?

My AT&T 3G aircard finally works with this newest ubuntu update. The coolest part is I didn't have to hassle with kppp or even ppp, all I did was click the network icon just like with Windows 7.

I have an hp dv2000 pavilion laptop with two hard drives. On one I run ubuntu with eclipse and force.com ide plugin to do serious code hacking. On the other I have Windows 7. The ubuntu system stays in the laptop for nearly everything now that the air card works and evolution connects to the university email outbound smtp. Bottom line: I am very impressed with this latest ubuntu build.

25 posted on 05/03/2010 4:33:18 PM PDT by gcraig (Freedom isn't free)
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To: gcraig

Good news. Thanks!


26 posted on 05/03/2010 4:46:52 PM PDT by JoeProBono (A closed mouth gathers no feet)
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To: Texas Fossil
My best Linux box is down because I pulled the hard drive to help a friend out.

You're a friend indeed....

27 posted on 05/03/2010 4:49:07 PM PDT by Cyber Liberty (Build a man a fire; he'll be warm for a night. Set a man on fire; he'll be warm the rest of his life)
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To: sleepwalker

Well, I have to clear up some confusion for you.

1. Apple didn’t “steal” the Xerox GUI from Xerox. Tesler went to work for Apple in 1980 - in other words, a person from Xerox who had been working on the Alto’s and D-machines went to work with the GUI ideas in his head. He worked on the Lisa project, where they implemented a bunch of ideas not so much from the Star/D-machines’ desktop, but from the SmallTalk-80 environment.

That said, Apple did a LOT of work on the UI themselves. The SmallTalk-80 UI had a three button mouse, the Star desktop had a two button mouse. Apple decided this was too confusing, and they worked to get it down to a one button mouse. The Xerox interface also had a lot more “modal dialogs” than the Apple software did. Apple hammered on developers pretty hard to avoid modal dialog boxes in the UI.

Apple took more than just the GUI ideas from Xerox. AppleTalk was lifted from XNS rather directly and without shame. It is funny how no one ever seems to mention that Xerox might have had a stronger case for IP theft in AppleTalk than in the UI.

2. The Star didn’t run on a 8-bit system - it was a custom CPU made from four AMD 2901 bit-slice processors - each one of these bit-slice chips was processing four bits. You could say that 4x4=16 bits in an instruction word, but that’s not exactly so. It had a cycle time which would equate to about 8MHz, and a “soft” word size. It is difficult to describe how to make a CPU out of bit-slice processors to people unless they’ve had a background in computer architecture - but I’ll try to distill it down.

You use the bit-slice processors to implement what you want in each instruction - in effect, you’re using the bit slice chips, which are controlled via a micro-code program, to create your instruction set and architecture. Writing microcode is sometimes likened to writing assembly language - and that’s usually wrong. Writing microcode is like writing assembly code for each instruction; you need to explicitly do things like set up the address but, lock the address, fetch the contents, release the bus, etc. You can’t just say “load ‘source address’, r0.”

At cisco, we used bit-sliced chips to implement the AGS+ packet controller which would allow us to “fast switch” packets from one line card to another - doing ACL’s and routing during the switch. Our “word” was 80 bits wide, and was actually two sub-words that were each 8 bits of instruction, 32 bits of address pointing to an input packet or an output packet. Code to do relatively straightforward stuff, even stuff that would be straightforward in 68K assembly language, went on for page after page in microcode.

But it ran like a raped ape.

The reason why the Xerox engineers looked at you like you were from Mars is that at that time, 32 bit systems were the province of mainframes and super-mini’s like the VAX. You weren’t about to get 32 bits into a desk-side system for the approximately $16K that the Star (8010) was sold for. Motorola had released the 68000 CPU in 1979, and that was a huge leap forward, but even it was doing only 24 bits of addressing. The 68K was slow, tho, and it lacked the “bitblt” type of functionality that could be made to work in bit-slice CPU microcode. A bitblt was necessary to make the GUI move along at a reasonable rate. The first GUI on a microcomputer that could do the sorts of things the D-machines could was the Amiga - and it had a bitblt co-processor chip.

3. In the early 90’s, I got the opportunity to help my girlfriend (now wife) who was working at Xsoft with their X.25 software - and as a result, I got to crawl around inside the D-machines’ networking software, the Mesa2 compiler, etc. It was a slick, slick system for the early 80’s, but by the early 90’s, it was clear that it wasn’t going to scale. Mesa was a far better system programming and implementation language that C, C++ or any C variant ever was, is, or will be. Alas, Xerox just could never see the point of releasing the language spec for Mesa to the world. The closest language I could give you for reference is Modula-2 - which is because Wirth spent a summer at PARC, got to see Mesa, and it completely changed his thinking away from toy languages like Pascal.

Xerox people by then (the early 90’s) were migrating to Apple in ever larger numbers, and with these people went the years of experience in a GUI, internationalization, fonts, etc.


28 posted on 05/03/2010 5:06:15 PM PDT by NVDave
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To: Cyber Liberty
You're a friend indeed....

He had lost his job and his hard drive failed. I even installed it and re-installed his OS for him. Had done work for him before.

29 posted on 05/03/2010 5:11:07 PM PDT by Texas Fossil (Government, even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

No, I haven’t. Can you flip me a URL?


30 posted on 05/03/2010 5:14:07 PM PDT by NVDave
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To: NVDave
Live CD

Download Linux Mint 8 Helena

Linux Mint 9 based on Lucid 10.04 is imminent....a few weeks away.

31 posted on 05/03/2010 5:20:06 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach ( Support Geert Wilders)
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To: NVDave

There is a 32 bit and a 64 bit version....codecs installed handle much of what is seen on the internet...youtube will work.


32 posted on 05/03/2010 5:22:26 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach ( Support Geert Wilders)
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What's new in Linux Mint 8 Helena?

Based on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, Linux 2.6.31, Gnome 2.28 and Xorg 7.4, Linux Mint 8 "Helena" features a lot of improvements and the latest software from the Open Source World.


33 posted on 05/03/2010 5:24:07 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach ( Support Geert Wilders)
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To: Texas Fossil

I hope you didn’t think I was being sarcastic. I sincerely meant what I said. We should all have friends like that. It’s a “shirt off the back” thing and you are to be commended.


34 posted on 05/03/2010 5:24:22 PM PDT by Cyber Liberty (Build a man a fire; he'll be warm for a night. Set a man on fire; he'll be warm the rest of his life)
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To: Cyber Liberty

Have know him since grade school, his was in my younger brother’s class. I went to Lodge with his father. Old family friends. Small town closeness.

I have the best neighbors in the world. My family has lived in this county for 110+ years. Some of the neighbor families were friends in Alabama before the Civil War. Connectedness.

Some of my ancestors were born in Texas during the Republic.

I moved away for 25 years, have been back for past 13 years. It is still home, and the last time I looked this is still Texas where I live.


35 posted on 05/03/2010 5:35:12 PM PDT by Texas Fossil (Government, even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

I am going to download it. thanks

The hard part I have with ubuntu is installing applications


36 posted on 05/03/2010 5:39:37 PM PDT by dennisw (It all comes 'round again --Fairport)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

Just burned 8....I will look for Mint Linux 9.


37 posted on 05/03/2010 6:30:49 PM PDT by dennisw (It all comes 'round again --Fairport)
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To: dennisw
The hard part I have with ubuntu is installing applications

How come? It shouldn't be hard using Synaptic. Find the app, Mark for Installation, and click Apply. It does the downloading and installing, including any needed extras for you. Is it applications from the web you have problems with?

38 posted on 05/03/2010 6:41:14 PM PDT by MichiganMan (Oprah: Commercial Beef Agriculture=Bad, Commercial Chicken Agriculture=Good...Wait, WTF???)
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To: MichiganMan

Is it applications from the web you have problems with? >>>>>>>

Yeah. I guess whatever I need is in the Synaptic download manager? Which I found out after trying to download and install an application. It was an HTML editor

Windows is much more straightforward as far as downloading and installing. I wish Linux was like that. Download and install.


39 posted on 05/03/2010 6:48:35 PM PDT by dennisw (It all comes 'round again --Fairport)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

thanks


40 posted on 05/03/2010 6:49:43 PM PDT by expat_panama
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