Smoothwall Firewall project

Tuesday 25 November 2008

The Latest Ubuntu release - an unspectcular upgrade

I used this title as a complement and not a dig at the Ubuntu communities latest offering. Upgrading to the new version was a complete non-event, which shows just how far the Linux desktop has progressed in the last few years. The machines I upgraded worked just as well after the upgrade as they did before, but with the new features that Ibex offered. To be honest they were not that noticeable, and were in general just point upgrades for some components , plus the obligatory upgrades of the Kernel, Gnome etc.

The desktop theme is usable, but there are several people on the web who are offering much better designs, and I think it would be good if with the next release some attention was paid to that.

Here is one that I have used:

Update your desktop

I also would have liked to have seen Open Office 3 being installed by default, but it is trivial to change the installed version to the new version.

Upgrade to Open Office 3

I do find it slightly comedic that microsoft shrills run around saying that Linux is not ready for the desktop. Well I have been using it as my desktop for over ten years now, and to say this is the best yet, would not be an exaggeration. I'm not stuck with one particular distro, as I used Fedora for years, but found the last upgrade not satisfactory, so I decided to have a change.

I would definitely recommend you try this distro. as it allows very easy access to the world of Linux.