There is nothing i enjoy writing about more than operating systems, and the Unix variants have always been my number one love in journalism. More than an opportunity to inform you, the reader, about what is new, what is now deprecated and the best way to operate your hardware, it gives me the excuse to play around with low level code, as well as explore an OS too many. But this particular version of the Linux system is something i was eager to write, not because i am a fan of Ubuntu (which i am not), but because it's rather historic.
With the 11.10 version, Canonical is gone where no Linux vendor has done before- they are literally showing both Microsoft and Apple the finger, and just after they've both announced radical changes in the way their own systems interface with the user. Namely, just as Microsoft announced that Windows 8 will be tablet-centric and low hardware oriented, and revealed their new "streamlined" GUI, and Apple were about to release their own flavor of minimalistic, yet attractive look-and-feel, Canonical quietly brought the Unity interface to Linux, saying "We did it both better and faster than both of you". So how does Unity fare against its main competitors in both the OS wars and intra-system battle against the established Gnome 3 and KDE 4?
1. Installation
The installation was always the big, scary monster in the Linux world, and surprisingly, Canonical never did much to improve it. Sure, they have the wubi installer, but it rarely works: namely, for 11.10 it simply doesn't. So i had to either use a classic live cd install, or install from a thumb-drive. Seeing how i didn't have a spare CD-ROM, i went with the thumb drive. After downloading a little bit of software- namely this one - i managed to turn my 1 gigabyte flash drive into a live, bootable medium. Thing is, since my drive is USB 2.0 i had to wait for 30 minutes before everything was done with it, even though i have the uber 3.0 interface. But for the classic CD-ROM approach, it will boil down to the 2 minutes you need to burn a 600 megabyte image to disk.
Now here is where the fun starts- formatting hard drives. The Ubuntu format utility is pretty much terrible, as it is probably meant to be- cryptic enough to scam you into formatting your entire partition. Now I've nothing against Ubuntu, but i don't plan on removing my Windows 7 home ultimate i paid so much for, so i had to reboot into Windows and write down the names of all the hard drives and partitions so i know what I'm partitioning and don't butcher my system accidentally. After that, installation is a breeze- you get a huge repository to choose packages from -all .deb, of course- and installation is all automated for you. Then you just choose a language and root password, and that's it.
2. Proprietary software
Ubuntu 11.10 comes with a bunch of third party proprietary software, mostly drivers and codecs. Now, some might complain, but i'd say that it's a good thing for everyone, except perhaps Richard Stallman. That means that Ubuntu is compatible with most hardware right off the bat, and it managed to read my graphics cards, all 8 processors and all networking utilities (WiFi, WiMAX and Bluetooth) and all the exotics like USB 3.0, Firewire, Lightpeak and even Sony MagicGate with no problems. In fact, it does so better than Windows does even after driver installation.
3. The user interface
Ok, now we're getting somewhere. There's been a lot of buzz among Linux hackers about the Unity system- apparently, not too many people like it. I found it to be rather interesting for portable work, though. Simple and minimalistic to be used on a laptop computer, yet elegant enough to effectively finger Microsoft's Aero. Admittedly, it might not be everyone's brand of orange juice, but i find it far better than GNOME 3. Now, there are a few bugs here and there (but not too many and not too bad), and the left-side window panel is a bit strange for those of us coming from Windows and KDE, but overall, i like it. I don't see Microsoft and Canonical swapping market shares, but i at least see Ubuntu making it into the OEM machines rather more often. I haven't had the chance to test out the API for it, but i'm willing to place a good bet that it's going to be fun writing decent software for Unity.
At least for me, if not for the Free Software Foundation.
Final words
I've already written enough, but i don't believe I have effectively shown my opinion of it. I installed it expecting a rough Debian with a face-lift, but ended up really liking Ubuntu. I am thinking about installing it permanently, and that says something right there.
Free 64-bit SuSE dvds, anyone?
Versus-approved
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