Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" Review

[Calixte]

Here's a review I've written for Ubuntu Maverick on TechHaze (http://techhaze.com). I tried to be as complete as possible but I'm sure I've missed some important details. If so, please point them out either here, of on the article's comment section. Thanks!

http://techhaze.com/2010/10/ubuntu-10-10-maverick-meerkat-review/

I've divided the review into Look and feel, Applications, Software center, Ubuntu One, and the indicator applet. I've left out the installation process because I guessed that most people were simply going to upgrade. I might write a short article about that sometime.

PS: I'd like to post it directly, but I fear it is to long for comfortable reading within the forum. Sorry for that.

[WRDN]

An all-new “History” tab helps you keep track of all the changes you have tone to your system

:-k

Decent review.

[smellyman]

Great review. Nicely done hitting the highs, lows and middles.

Well structured too.

I get tired of some reviews where the first 12 paragraphs are sreenshots of the install process that goes into way too much detail.

followed by one paragraph about the actual OS.

that was well balanced.

[inobe]

really nailed on kde ?

http://techhaze.com/2010/05/ubuntu-with-a-k/

[t.rei]

really nailed on kde ?

http://techhaze.com/2010/05/ubuntu-with-a-k/

I'm sorry, but what has the KDE vs Gnome discussion got to do with the 10.10 release?
I personally go for gnome anyday. The reasons and pro's and con's are totally not to be mentioned in this thread.

I liked the review. And I like the way ubuntu is going.

Something that I find overlooked often however is:
Empathy is still the default chat and it was not, and never became "done". While well integrated it still does not support OTR or any kind of encryption and even small bugs like "can't set my local alias for icq" are around for ever. At least finally there are metacontacts. But without OTR I guess it'll be 'something to replace as soon as you get serious'.
Either give them people some real support or integrate pidgin as an alternative. :/

[smellyman]

really nailed on kde ?

http://techhaze.com/2010/05/ubuntu-with-a-k/

Yeah, first review was good. That link though....hmmmmm?

more like an editorial. You like KDE ok...so use kubuntu.

[laimigrante]

i wish ubuntu improve reconize and manage external usb hard drive, i do not use my external hard drive with ubuntu, take forever to read the hard drive and sometimes do not work, i use windows or other distro with kde, not good as windows in that, but work fine, other than that i dont use windows except for that, so i wish ubuntu work on that.

and purple and orange, what are they thinking??? halloween! yes is october but please, i just dont like orange that much, but other things look great!

i will upgrade tomorow in one of pc, in other leave with 10.04, the orange stop me because i use ambiance i love that dark color. :lolflag:

[MisterGaribaldi]

The review overall looks interesting and, as others up-thread have said, it is well-balanced. That being said, there are a few spelling and grammar issues, and some missing commas as well.

Good review, though.

[CharlesA]

Nitpick: It's Ubuntu 10.04, not Ubuntu 10.4, but there is only one instance of it..sooo.. :P

Nice review overall.

[perspectoff]

Review was spot on.

It wasn't particularly a review of Meerkat vs. Lynx, though.

Kind of a very insightful view of the course of software development in general.

I happen to love KDE over Gnome, for almost exactly the reasons stated in the article.

I disagree that there is no software center in KDE. Although I tend to still use Synaptic Package Manager (Gnome/Ubuntu) on rare occasions, KPackageKit in Kubuntu has made leaps and bounds in its presentation of software since its first release (which was pretty painful way back in Intrepid, I'll admit).

Gnome is klunky and slow to navigate, compared to the way KDE has evolved. But, that is just my experience after about 500 installations of both.

To be perfectly honest, I use Knoppix from time to time when I really feel the need for speed. (But I will never be able to get a non-Linux geek to ever use Knoppix.)

Maverick is moving into the cloud. The average user doesn't care about the cloud, and, in fact, there is a growing nervousness about cloud-based services in general (for security and privacy reasons).

It's an important thing for business users, and I think Ubuntu's developers want a piece of Red Hat's pie, and Maverick is concentrating on capturing more of the corporate world and is doing a good job of that.

But the average joe probably won't notice or care about these changes and Maverick will not seem radically different from Lucid, I suspect.

[t.rei]

Not Ubuntu - not any Linux - is going to get Corporate Estate as long as something like univention.de (http://www.univention.de)(german site, sry) is about the only thing that has a WORKING colaboration solution that includes user-management, client-management , permission-management, and the regular groupware applications (mail, calendar, contacts, notes, appointments, sharing, version management ...). And I am not saying 'that you can get to work if you let a professional at it for a month and then are restricted on keeping that expert simply for administration and upgrades. The competition here is Exchange + Sharepoint + Outlook + Office. This is the ONE thing I am still waiting for, before I can - with a clear concience - suggest Linux to even small-buisiness network.

They would be interested, believe me, I get asked quite often about alternatives. But there isn't such a thing. I don't think "the cloud" should get as much hype as it does.

As soon as I (and anyone knowing a bit about it) can do an "apt-get install ubuntu-groupware-server" and get the software needed and the interfaces to set up and maintain this server including backups and upgrades the buisiness world might actually swarm the first distribution to do it WELL.

But as a client computer I am tempted to say: "Ubuntu 10.10 is the best all-round private operating system you can currently get." It does have it's own flaws and some issues (empathy/telepathy OTR, consistency in indicators!!!) have to be stomped, but overall, it's the best: Average over security, ease of use, intuitive interface, supported hardware, access to additional software, stability.


---
dangerous comment: I don't like KDE anymore (and I used to be an enthusiast) because it is getting bloated. And Akonadi, the single-process-console and the "if plasma hangs, well... reboot!" mentality keep me from going back. But the beauty of linux and *buntu is: they understand that they do NOT work against each other. And it's your - OUR - free choice. Even Windows and Mac have their users who love the os, the look, the feel, the whatever-makes-you-like-something. ;)

[Calixte]

Thanks for your input people!
I can't answer to everyone, so here are a few things I'l like to say:

1- Thanks for spelling corrections. Generally we're much more concentrated of getting a perfect article out in that sense at TechHaze, but I wanted it published just after 10.10 was released.

2- I didn't post the article on KDE in this thread, and did not talk about it in the article. What I think of KDE belongs elsewhere.
But since it has been brought up, I'll say a few words: I don't prefer KDE to Gnome, nor Kubuntu to Ubuntu. I prefer Ubuntu to both, but I love a lot of things in KDE that I'd love seeing in Gnome. You can comment on that in my article "Ubuntu with a K (http://techhaze.com/2010/05/ubuntu-with-a-k/)" if you think I'm a douche for that.

3- Yeah, Ubuntu has it faults, but all in all, it rocks!

4- Something else I wanted to say, but I forgot

[lancest]

i wish ubuntu improve reconize and manage external usb hard drive,


I've noticed 10.10 is faster to auto-mount usb storage devices. Speedier than previous versions on my machines.

[inobe]

I'm sorry, but what has the KDE vs Gnome discussion got to do with the 10.10 release?
I personally go for gnome anyday. The reasons and pro's and con's are totally not to be mentioned in this thread.

:/

what does the de have to do with this thread, they are both buntu's !

i use kubuntu, been using it for years, it's name is kubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat :lol:

i have nothing against gnome, never did, i like the kde de and that's what i use in any distribution.

now the editorial/ review i felt was a little off base and the typos were bad, worse than what i can produce :P

[toupeiro]

Maybe I am not a poster child of the average user, but none the less, every person I've shown ubuntu one to has loved it. Every person I've shown Jolicloud to for netbooks (I'm sorry, despite a few minor annoyances, it's a GREAT netbook OS) has loved it. I see no fear of the cloud from normal users at all.... Meerkat, in this respect, is going in the right direction.

Breaking software sources on day 0 though sucked, but it's easily worked around with Synaptic Package Manager (which survived this release, apparently. :) )

[Ctrl-Alt-F1]

Breaking software sources on day 0 though sucked, but it's easily worked around with Synaptic Package Manager (which survived this release, apparently. :) )

What do you mean? I haven't had any issues.

[cariboo]

There was a bug in one of the dailies from late last week, where the repositories where not enabled. There was a fixed released early Friday.

[Calixte]

Maybe I am not a poster child of the average user, but none the less, every person I've shown ubuntu one to has loved it. Every person I've shown Jolicloud to for netbooks (I'm sorry, despite a few minor annoyances, it's a GREAT netbook OS) has loved it. I see no fear of the cloud from normal users at all.... Meerkat, in this respect, is going in the right direction.

Good point. I personally love Ubuntu One, and the people I've shown it to seemed to think the same. Especially great if you have multiple Ubuntu machines.


now the editorial/ review i felt was a little off base and the typos were bad, worse than what i can produce :P
Sorry about that. I'm correcting what I can in my free time. OpenOffice's spelling correction is not great.