I have now installed the latest version of Ubuntu and have been using it all day. There are a few things I have found that are improved and many things that are not. This is not just from a web surfing point of view but of doing real work.
Before I get on to my gripes here is what I like…
WiFi connections seem to be made much quicker now. When the desktop appears after logging in, straight away it tells me there are access points available. Once I initiate a connection, it happens really quickly, shaving off at least a couple of seconds. Boot up also seems a tad quicker which is good.
Now to the problems…
This is going to be a longer list. For a start, the new interface – Unity – seems to get in the way of my work flow. It may be that I need to get used to it but it just seems to make things harder, more clicks to get to your apps. Luckily, you can select ‘Ubuntu Classic’ when you log in and use the old menu system. Just one problem though, the Skype Icon that appears in the system tray will not show (under Ubuntu Classic) even though it is still running. The current advice is to minimise and not close. However under the Unity interface, the Skype icon is displayed fine. after
One of the new features is a common menu area, very similar to Mac’s. This means that Under Unity, the Windows top bar can behave differently to what you are used to. But there are other problems. When I tried using Google Chrome Browser and TweetDeck, they sometimes refused to show properly. There was a gap between the window and the common menu area. That gap was mistakenly taken as being part of the Window so that when you tried to drag the window, your mouse pointer was actually much lower down. It is know that Unity has bugs…
Overall, on my Samsung laptop, there is no apparent speed increases but moving windows around does seem more responsive. The new office apps are fine (any real difference between them and OpenOffice?) and everything else seems to work as before the upgrade. It sill have not fixed my suspend problems (crashes on wakeup) and still can’t control the screen brightness via keyboard shortcuts.
Otherwise I am still a happy Linux user. Most of the problems I encountered are either things I have to learn/work around or will get fixed as per normal in good time.
If you want the very latest version then go ahead and upgrade but if you are happy with 10.04 then stick with what you have.
