Living with Gutsy Gibbon

I've been living with Gutsy Gibbon, the latest Ubuntu release since the release of the beta in late September. It has been an interesting experience going through the experience of a beta release, the first thing I noticed was the last of introduction music. I wondered if Ubuntu was going to go silent, but when I downloaded the full version, the sounds have returned, so as the brown background.

On the 18th, I fired up and downloaded what was left of the upgrade. The problem with downloading on the day of release is all the servers get very busy and the download is a crawl. Fortunately with all the upgrades before, there was only a few files that were required to bring my OS to full release glory.

Now, what was my opinion. It is a delightful upgrade. A number of the problems with 7.04 are fixed.

Let me give the list of what I like:

I can use my Canon Printer. I have set up the Canon as the network printer and 7.10 found it and found the right printer. Now I can sit anywhere in the house and print any document I want printed. As well, when I plug in my HP Printer, it is found as well. I can make either one the default printer for this laptop.

An interesting feature is that at the first usage, it checked the battery and stated it was an older battery with limited time. The battery is almost 4 years old and is the NI type.

The problem I had with the microphone headset have been fixed. With Feisty, the mike did not work well at all. The problem was when I used Skype. I would try and it wouldn't work. In fact Feisty became very buggy in late June for some reason.

The search deskbar applet is a good feature. It allows you to more search engines then Google and allows you to search files for the same name. Couple this with the Tracher Search Tool nothing will get lost, ever.

True plug and play. I plugged in my camera and it was found. As well to unmount is straightforward and again, it is identified correctly.


My one drawback, and this is more the age of my laptop, I can't used any of the enhanced destop features or visual effects. I have seen them on the older desktop, but with the laptop, its not possible. Although this is more due to the fact the video is not supported or cannot support Linux. Still as I said, it's an older machine and it's one of the drawbacks I have learned to accept.

Wireless again is a breeze, simply plug in the wifi card and it connects.

The other features that are mentioned such as the quick change from one user to another is not a feature I will use since I'm the only one with this laptop.

F-Spot, the photo is not only a simple photo editing tool and it allows fast upload to flickr and a number of other photo hosting sites. It's a very nice feature of Ubuntu.

Pigdin, the multiple platform messenger tool. It is GAIM with a new name.

It has the latest Firefox and the Open Office Suite.


With all this, it's going to be a good six months and then 8.04 will be released and if it has more enhancements, it will be great. Of course the added feature of the next upgrade will be the long term support.

I'm going to upgrade until the machine can't take it any more.