Ubuntu Rebranded

Ubuntu, the Linux distribution is going for a major revamp with the new release touted for April – Lucid Lynx. They are giving up the brown – yes , you heard it right . They are replacing the base theme from Human to “Light”. The move , which was highlighted in the Alpha 3 ( I suppose ) should be their answer to the long prevailing outcry “ Out of all the colors , why Brown ? “. But , being used to it from a while , I am rather ok with brown – seems a little more human ;-)
But the new logo which they have published has had some issues in the internet world which made comments which Mark or Matt Asay would never have thought about- Racism . It is too heavy a topic for me to dwell into. Some are claiming it as the narrow-mindedness that many people have about these stuff and as an attempt to deface the move. Canonical was already under fire over their switch from Google to Yahoo as the default search engine in their next release. Coming to think of it Lucid Lynx ends up being very important for many reasons. LTS (Long Term Support) – will be supported till next LTS comes in and updates will be available without any issue.

• Rebranded Ubuntu - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Brand
• Search engine from G to Y!
• Matt Asay as the new COO.
• v Ubuntu Music centre with 7digital integrated to Rhythmbox.
• Iphone and Ipod touch working without tweaking, without jailbreaking, without patching - with Nautilus and Rythmbox. ( Already working in Alpha 3 as I heard ) – That’s a good one ;-)

Edit : Forgot to add this one. Shuttleworth was approached by the LXDE team earlier last year with a proposition of adding a light weight Ubuntu ( Xubuntu is a waste - though its called light weight ) and it seems to have materiliased since the repos already have a "lxde-desktop" added. I tried the same and found it awesomely fast .

I didn't like one thing though - the default GNOME network manager gets replaced by LXDE one . ( not sure of the name though ) - Could be purged and gnome network manager can be added without much issue. But I didn't like the default behavior.

Ubuntu updating every sec ?

Recently I am having some trouble in Ubuntu with updates. Feels like they never get updated fully. Even if i have updated it a second back , i will have some packages or source or something getting updated the very next second. I am confused !! Conspiracy , says my roomie ;-)

A few lines of bash script and I am downloading the entire LO podcast from episode #1 ;-).

What I am upto

It's been a while i have written something over this space. Not that I didn't get any time for it. Just being plain lazy.Life remains monotonous other than for a few moments where you are elated or dismayed due to a reason or another.

• Tried Lubuntu-desktop over the gnome installation and found it to be faster as they say . Xubuntu sucks to be honest. Too many of *buntu's to choose from.
• Removed Windows for good after some thought. Yes , I do have the privilege of 7 running in another machine which is used only for syncing my Iphone and running that wretched software of Apple's called iTunes.
• Valentine's day is over and our old friend Muthalik was back making special appearance at some places. My question towards both the lovers and Muthalik - Why one day ? ;-)
• My i(Phone & Pod) are getting fast filled with high quality podcasts than songs.If you see me laughing over nothing with the earphones plugged in - be sure I am listening to Fab & Dan. They are Effing Awesome.
• Downloading a lot of free songs from Jamendo these days as the quality of songs has been on the higher side . If you love the service , do drop a dime - Though they aren't pleading for donation ( even when they need it - seems stupid )
• Hathway seems to have decided not to restore ESPN & Star Sports to their channel list .They will have some angry customers. I have been knocking the door ( well, breaking would be the apt word ) of the local Hathway customer service and they are blurting one thing only - " One more week sir. Committe meeting . New Packages - Surely sports channel included ". Guess I need another service.
  
• Standing at a total weight loss of 32.5 kg after an year ( not the best ones if you ask me ).
• iPad - Why Jobs? Why ?
• Pros of taking a call which you know is from a customer care number - Airtel upped my broadband speed to 1Mbps for an added 100Rs into my account .I don't see the catch till now.
  

Karmic

The new release of Ubuntu - 9.10 aka Karmic Koala is out. The download link is here .
Tried it as an update on my lappie running Jaunty and everything seems fine till now. Well , you never know what others would claim.

Wifi - running , check
Sound - running , check
Pidgin still remains as its an update . Empathy would be there in a fresh install.
The new backgrounds are something which you might feel as different as you start off with tweaking your machine. Yeah , yeah : the UI splash screen has undergone many changes as well. The blinking filesystem check is another .

Let me go back to it ;) ..

Diet plan - not for me ...for Linux and some softwares ;)

"We are definitely not the streamlined, hyper-efficient kernel I envisioned when I started writing Linux"

Linus Torvalds

The always-witty “nerdy Helsinki techie" as he calls himself is not to be misapprehended with this recent statement of his at the LinuxCon in Portland. The remark which many feel would raise a tantrum in the internet world or a “flame-war-of-sort”, had it been made by some spokesperson of an alternate Operating System, is getting looked at by every other tech-blog you know.

Wasn’t that in the cards always (Though Linus is pointing @ the kernel which he believes has gone scary these days)? With each new Linux distro trying to go mainstream and compete heavily with all the rest of the alternate OS’s. Something to contemplate, says many.

My .02$ on how bloated the OS’s or softwares (not the kernel, since I decided to keep my mouth shut on things which I know for sure that “I-don’t-know-enough-to-comment-on”) these days are:

1. Blame it on the end-user. Most of the users who come into Linux these days come with an expectation which they hold due to their experiences with their older OS’s (which apparently are eating into their wallets with every new release – both Software and Hardware wise). And then you can’t blame the Linux devs trying to bring in some of that flavor ( or the eyecandy ) to woo the new found audience .
2. Creeping Featurism -- The addition of so many unwanted “packages” into the base system makes even the Linux OS’s grow chubby. Why not let the user handle their needs? But there definitely comes a divide when you have a majority who loves all of it to work out of the box( I am not an exception ) and have them pre-built or incorporated rather than going about to add them later. Firefox is one example which handles the bloat efficiently ( as I can perceive ) . With an array of plugins to add on , Mozilla has let the user take the control and has always provided a base which can be tweaked according to their needs.
3. One example of a software which I feel has grown too big is the pdf handler from Adobe. I still remember a good friend of mine pointing out the same a few years back and predicting it to go heavier with every release. For a normal/casual user , the use of pdf reader limits to the point of just reading it . I couldn’t but not ponder on the good old days – where you had the pdf reader for around 3Mb or something ( Acrobat 4 or 5 ) with the full installation going up to a maximum of 20 Mb. The recent versions have their installer amounting to some 105Mb.

To sum up , if I am to strip down a software to my needs I wouldn’t find myself using 1/3^rd of the features included. The fairly sizable footprints which many of these leave are unnecessary in most cases. Then why are we using it? If it’s just to stay with the crowd, I prefer to remain where I am unless I am forced to.

Disclaimer

The above mentioned piece is completely based on how the author understands it. There may be fatal errors and hence not to be taken as it is.