If Ubuntu announced that a radically new theme would be included in Ubuntu 9.04, would you believe them? After promising exactly that in 8.04 and again in 8.10 without ever delivering, I would not. What if they promised to ship a perfectly stable and bug-free release for the next LTS? I might sort of believe it, but I would be skeptical, after what happened with Hardy Heron. What if they told you the next release would be so exciting you would have to upgrade the second it came out? Once again, I would be skeptical. The thing is, I still use Ubuntu on my computer with absolutly no intention of switching. So why am I so skeptical of Ubuntu’s ability to do anything? Four words: over promise, under deliver.

I admit that Ubuntu is in a really difficult situation. Being under the level of scrutiny that Ubuntu is under and not getting some negative press would be almost impossible. Still, Ubuntu has not had the best track record for the past couple of releases.

Back when Ubuntu 8.04 came out, it was widely criticized for including beta and early-release software in a Long Term Support Release. Though Ubuntu 8.10 seems to have been received better, I am not the least bit impressed with the choice to leave one of the most highly anticipated features, the ability to easily have an encrypted “Private” directory, out. If you want to use it, you have to install it yourself. Perhaps the biggest problem, though, is the art. For a long time, people have wanted a new theme for Ubuntu. In 8.04 a radical new theme was promised. Unfortunately, it never came. Instead it was delayed until Ubuntu 8.10. Guess what, it never came. All of these seem to be cases where Ubuntu over promised, bit off more than they could chew, and fell just a little short.

The good news is that I think a single great release could put these problems in the past. The biggest priority has to be new artwork. It has been promised for so long, it needs to happen. Next, a really great release would have to be rock solid. No beta software and minimal bugs are a must. Finally, something new and exciting would have to be included. I realize that you can’t introduce much without also introducing bugs, but a great release would need something to make people really want to upgrade, even if it were something simple. I believe that if this happened, Ubuntu would quickly regain people’s confidence. Let me be clear, Ubuntu is a great distribution, but I feel that it needs to do a better job of delivering on its promises.

Fedora 10’s release is coming up at the end of this month, all the features are decided, so why not take a look at what to expect?

• A Cleaner Startup Fedora 10 is expected to have a much improved startup. In addition to a faster time to boot, there are supposed to be less flickers and glances of text. The goal is to have a fast startup without any flickers out of the GUI.
• Better Hardware Support As with every new release, Fedora 10 is supposed to have better out-of-the-box hardware support. This release, the focus is on remote controls, webcams, and printers. If you have a troublesome device of any of these types, you will probably want to check out Fedora 10.
• First Aid Kit Mess up your system? No problem with Fedora 10. First Aid Kit combines numerous methods for recovering messed up systems into one automated, safe process. This should be good for tinkerers and anyone who has a habit of messing up their systems.
• More Desktop Environments Fedora 10 is also going to feature some new less common desktop environments. LXDE, a lightweight, modular everyday desktop environment as well as Sugar, the OLPCs interface, will both be included for you to try out, or even use day-to-day.
• Online Service Integration Perhaps the most interesting new feature of Fedora 10 is the integration with web applications, though the GNOME Online Desktop. Functionality is still fairly limited, but you should be able to log in to some accounts, such as your GMail account and enjoy some integration between your desktop and the cloud. GNOME Online Desktop may not be the most impressive feature today, but it certainly stands to be in the future.

As you know, this Saturday I will be doing a live review of Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex. Today, the day before the review, I wanted to let you know what I will be particularly looking for in this release.

1. Artwork. The artwork for this release was a bit of a train wreck up until a few weeks before the release. I will be very interested to see how it comes out in the end. I sharply criticized the original plans, but that was before the last-minute art overhaul. Still, I doubt I will like what I see as much as I like the Heron in the previous release.
2. Choice of Software. Last release, Ubuntu included a beta version of Firefox and early versions of other programs in an LTS release. This drew criticisms from many and, although I don’t believe I every wrote about it, certainly annoyed me. Still, without including the beta version of Firefox, Ubuntu would probably not have Firefox 3 yet. This release, particularly since this is not an LTS release, will be interesting. Will early and potentially incomplete software be included, or will this release be more cautious.
3. Integration of Private Directory. One of the most talked about features of Intrepid was an encrypted private directory for each user in their home folder. Early reports have suggested that manual configuration is needed to get this working, though. I am going to be interested to see if it is set up out of the box or needs configuration. And, if configuration is requiered, how much.
4. Guest Account. This release will bring a special guest account, designed to let someone else check their email or something on your computer. My question is: how is this feature implemented and how useful will this be?
5. Overall. The biggest question for me is: do I see a good reason to run out and upgrade my computer to this release. I will most likely be testing it out in a VM for purposes of the review (specificially, so I have the chance to take screenshots if I want) and installing it on my computer later on. Will I see the need to do the upgrade the next day,though, or will I be happy to wait?

These are the main things that I am going to be looking for in this release. If there is anything else you would like me to make a point of covering, please mention it in the comments, or just come and bring up whatever points you want in the live review.

Either way, don’t forget to come! The event will occur on November 1st at 1:00 PM Eastern US time here or at live.linuxloop.com (either works).

A while ago I complained that the wallpaper for Intrepid Ibex looked like a “pile of crap.” Luckily for all of us Ubuntu users, the latest build of Intrepid Ibex has a new wallpaper.

While I cannot claim to like this new wallpaper quite as much as the one included with Hardy Heron, I like it a lot, lot better than the original wallpaper for Intrepid. Whatever you may think about it, I certainly think that it is at least in the realm of the Hardy Heron wallpaper, which was great.

To whoever created this wallpaper and to whoever got it included in Intrepid, thank you and congratulations!

First, a little history: Ubuntu 8.04 (the current release) was supposed to have an all new theme, since it is an LTS release. Unfortunately, that got delayed until 8.10, due out in October. Now, in the month of October and past the artwork deadline, what we have is definitely not an all new theme.

Phoronix has recently posted some screenshots from the daily live cd. Here is a comparison of what the next version of Ubuntu looks like next to the desktop background for Fedora 10, the upcoming version of Fedora.

The comparison is almost laugh-out-loud funny.

It is extremely hard to judge artwork, since one man’s pile of crap may be another man’s masterpiece. The problem is that, when everyone already says your orange theme looks like a pile of crap, don’t actually use a pile of crap as your next background!

I think that the lesson here may be in how each distribution handled their art process. Ubuntu never really had any organization, as far as I can tell. Fedora, on the other hand, had a very structured process with deadlines and a vote at the end. I don’t really care what you think of those methods in theory, just look at the results.

Now I understand that Ubuntu could suddenly come out with something better out of thin air and that Fedora might decide to color the Solar theme brown and replace the sun with a pile of dog crap, but I think there is a clear winner and loser here, at least as far as art goes. Hopefully the next release of Ubuntu will go better and/or something will happen between now and Ubuntu 8.10’s release.

Recently, the executive director of the Linux Foundation, came out basically saying that Solaris, Sun’s recently open-sourced operating system, will never go anywhere. He even took a shot at it being open-source, saying that open-sourcing it was “too little and too late.”

Okay. First of all, in my opinion, the Linux Foundation should not be in the business of criticizing any other operating system, unless they are specifically defending Linux. Furthermore, if there is any operating system that should be completely off-limits, it should be an open-source one, such as Solaris. If anything, they should be praising Solaris for becoming more open.

One of open-source’s huge advantages is collaboration and sharing. If one project does something interesting, that can be picked up in other projects. If we are all busy criticizing each other (non-constructively, that is), we lose that advantage.

Perhaps it is too much to expect the Linux Foundation to be above the constant flow of attacks from Microsoft, Apple, and the other major players, but it seems that, at least with other open-source operating systems, the criticism should at least be kept to minimum.

Previously, I covered some features that might be included in Fedora 10. Today, here are some interesting features that have already been approved.

Fedora 10 will feature two new desktop environments: Sugar and LXDE. Sugar is the desktop environment used on the OLPC XO laptop, making it a very interesting choice for Fedora. Perhaps more US schools will adopt it? It will definitely be interesting to see where it goes.

LXDE is a lightweight (and modular) desktop designed for everyday use. Although I have not used it myself, it seems to be a fairly promising desktop for older and lower-end computers, making it a good choice for inclusion in Fedora or any Linux distro.

Another interesting “feature” of Fedora 10 is going to be better support for HDTVs and remotes. Improving support for these pieces of hardware is a very good move, in my opinion. Linux has a lot of potential on HTPCs due to all the incredible software out there for HTPCs, so making all the hardware work out of the box would be great.

Finally, there is First Aid Kit. The plan for this feature is to create an easy way of using common recovery methods to rescue a messed up system. There is really almost nothing you can do to prevent people from accidentally messing up their systems, so the best approach is to create tools, like this, that can fix these problems.

Between this and the artwork, I think Fedora 10 will be a good release.

Ultimate Edition, sometimes called Ubuntu Ultimate Edition, is a modified version of Ubuntu with a new theme and tons and tons of applications. To make room for all this stuff, Ultimate Edition is distributed on a DVD, rather than a CD. That said, at only 1.3GB, Ultimate Edition is one of the smalled DVD distros.

I would say that the target audience for Ultimate Edition (which I will call UE from now on) is definitely Ubuntu users looking for some modifications. For those people, one of the main reasons to choose UE is the theme. Most brown-haters will like the new back with blue highlights theme a lot. While I am not a huge fan of dark themes in general, this is one of the best I have ever seen. A lot of what makes this the case is the blue, which helps lighten certain parts. As with any Linux distro, you can change the theme if you don’t like it, but it takes some time and effort to make a really great theme.

Apart from the new theme, the main attraction of UE is all the installed applications. Almost every application most people will ever need is already there, plus a bunch more. So, unless you are working with a lot of audio or video stuff, if you don’t want to bother installing anything, UE might be a very good choice. I say unless you do audio or video work, because UE has relatively few applications in this category. Also, there are a number of distros designed specifically for audio and video work, such as Ubuntu Studio and Musix GNU/Linux.

If you are an Ubuntu user with a big hard drive who is not particularly worried about the bloat of all the included applications, UE is definitely worth a look. Additionally, if you don’t like Ubuntu’s default theme but do like Ubuntu, UE is a good choice for you, too.

Sorry for all the distro updates recently instead of the news. I have been away for a couple days here and there. I believe this will be the last one for some time.

Musix GNU+Linux is, according to its website, “a 100% free multimedia operating system intended for music production, graphic design, audio and video edition, and all kind of tasks.” This means that there are more audio and video applications included, at least on the DVD version, that you have probably ever heard of.

Upon booting the live DVD and logging in (no password on the non-root account), a fairly standard KDE (3.5, not 4) interface is presented. Apart from the massive list of applications, which include, in addition to all the audio and video stuff, a fair number of other applications, there were a couple of little things I liked a lot.

First, like NimbleX, Musix has an icon for connecting to a wireless network on the desktop. I like this, since connecting to a WiFi is usually one of the first things someone wants to do. Unfortunately, though, Musix did not recognize my wireless card.

Second, instead of just using one desktop, you can switch between desktops. I don’t mean workspaces, which you have too, but different desktops. There is a default one, then an audio one, a video one, and others. On, for example, the audio one there is a picture of some old radio and icons for all the audio-related applications.

Other than these differences, Musix is a pretty standard distribution, but a good choice if you want audio and video applications at your fingertips. Additionally, Musix is 100% free (as in freedom), so, if that matters to you, that is an added bonus.

Probably 90% of the Linux distros out there are supposed to be newbie friendly. You also see a few distros, such as Gentoo or Slackware, designed for advanced users. But you rarely see a distro for “intermediate users.” Frugalware is one of those few distros. According to the Frugalware site, Frugalware is “a general purpose linux distribution, designed for intermediate users (who are not afraid of text mode).”

Upon booting up the live CD, you are greeted by a nice terminal. No graphical interface. Quite unusual in modern distros. Accompanying that, though, was a helpful explanation of what to do, which is important since you need to know the username and password and because you have to use the command xstart, not startx, to get into any sort of GUI.

Once you login and type “xstart” you are taken into a familiar KDE 3.5 environment. Despite the almost total lack of Frugalware branding, the theme used is quite nice.

Since part of Frugalware’s philosophy is to not mess with upstream applications, you are unlikely to discover many changes from a default KDE setup plus added applications.

The most recent stable release of Frugalware came in March of this year when 0.8 (Kalgan) was released. The next stable release, 0.9 (Solaria), is expected in September, but you can, of course, always check out the development releases.

If you are finding some of the more popular distros too newbie-friendly and you want a geekier distro, without going all the way to Gentoo, you might want to check out Frugalware.