poofyhairguy
August 23rd, 2005, 06:23 PM
Breezy Colony 3 Review
Well, yesterday I looked at OSNEWS and saw a Hoary review and thought to myself "thats a little old to be reviewed." Many of the comments complained about a lack of a good Breezy preview, so I thought I would make one. This is my review of the Breezy Colony 3 release. Please remember that this is just my opinion, I don't know a lot about the under the hood changes, so this is mostly a superficial review (the kind I would want to read).
I have to say that overall...I hate to say this but...Breezy has kinda disappointed me. Just because its not as big of a jump on the surface between Warty and Hoary (in my opinion). There are hints at a lot of under the hood stuff, and I can only review the stuff you can actually see (most reviewers are like this). I guess it would only be fair to give the good and the bad, so I'll do it that way.
The good first:
The first thing I noticed about Breezy is that fonts are a little different. I would say better, but someone might debate that.
Secondly, Breezy now has a "Boot Manager Settings" tool which allows you to pick what OS you want by default to boot, how long you want for grub to show and those sorts of things. Its less powerful than the grub manager on the forum but its still neat.
Thirdly, Breezy has a "disks manager" tool that allows you to see all of you disks. It will tell you how full a disk is, what format its in (ext3 ,ntfs) and what its properties are (read, read write, etc). Unfortunately this tool kinda disappointed me. From what the tool shows you, you think that you can use it to mount ntfs disks (as opposed to using the ubuntu guide's way) but when I tried I failed. Also, this tool doesn't do the big thing I wanted it to do- allow the user to turn on DMA through a GUI tool. You still have to touch the command line to do that in Breezy.
Fourthly as of the Colony 3 Breezy is still pretty stable so its workable. The xserver problems that I have read about in the forum did not affect me.
Fifthly, There is a new "services settings" tool. This tool allows you to pick what services start when your computer starts. Its pretty neat. I never knew that my computer booted with fetchmail, but I'm glad I can make it not. This tool is my new favorite part of Breezy.
Sixth, (this one I didn't notice at first, don't know why) is a "about me" tool that allows you to do something neat: easily change you password with a GUI. Very nice. The name made me think it was a different thing than it was, but its cool that can be done with a GUI too.
Finally, there is a "multimedia systems selector" too. This thing allows you to chose the input and output source for audio and video. No more killall esd! A very nice improvement. I think this tool hints at the important under the hood changes in Breezy. In a superficial review like this one, thing like this get downplayed.
The bad:
First bad thing for me was the installation. I have broadband, and because of that it seems that the damn installer wants to download updates if it can detect that you have a fat pipe. The problem is that the day I installed it the Ubuntu server was down (I know because I wanted to upgrade to Breezy) and so it got to a certain point and just hanged. I'm an impatient man, so I rebooted. I was happy to find out that I was booted into the login screen, but when I logged in and tried to do something with apt-get it told me the thing was locked up. I knew that I had put mirrors in my sources.list, so I didn't know what was wrong. I restarted my xserver only to find that Breezy was still trying to install itself underneath, and it was hung up and the same point. I wasn't able to get into synaptic until the next day, when the main Ubuntu server was back online. If the server can't take a Colony release, the day of the official release is gonna suck if the installer still insists on downloading updates. I recommend anyone installing Breezy unplug their broadband till the installation is over.
Secondly, besides the fonts I don't see any visual improvements in Breezy. No wobbly windows or nothing. Despite all the noise about Cairo, corners still look pixelated and there is not more visual bling than in Hoary. Metacity still does the draw black crap all over my screen thing, and even worse now when my computer gets pegged (aka my CPU is maxed out) whatever Window is maximized is replaced by complete blackness when you try to minimize it. I hope that is fixed before the final release, or the beginner forum will be filled with "how do I disable this black feature" posts.
Thirdly, I didn't get what I really wanted for Christmas. The savior for all Metacity woes (xcompmgr) is still really unstable. It still produces garbage when Xine is playing full screen yet gstreamer can't use w32codecs yet so there is no way around it. Xcompmgr still crashes when I leave it on over night. The lack of an improvement in the area almost made me cry.
Fourthly, Openoffice just won't work. It would rather crash than open the writer. I hope that is fixed. And I can't get the new "gnome-app-install" tool to work at all. Not from the menu, not with gksudo.
Fifthly I can't figure out how to edit the menus without smeg. So I just installed smeg....but wasn't there supposed to be something else? Also there is no GUI way to edit your xorg.conf yet that I can find.
Finally, Breezy took away my "run dialog." I loved that thing because I could start a program or kill the gnome-panel without opening a terminal. It will be missed.
Basically, as you can tell I'm disappointed. And before you jump on me and say "its the development release!" let me say that I know...I was reviewing the Colony 3. Many of the bugs might be fixed...I'll file a few bug reports myself. The problem is that the feature freeze has come and gone, and what I really wanted is not here. Sigh.
I will say that Breezy is more stable than I thought, so I would say if you have been holding back jump in and help bug test. Personally, the Colony 3 has shown me one thing- I better learn to love KDE. :) I hear the 3.5 version is bringing improvements in the kcompmgr, sounds tasty. One day Metacity will fall, and I will dance a jig on its grave when it does.
Have a nice day.
EDIT: *Slaps forehead* I try to write a superficial review but I forgot a fun new eye candy. When tasks want to be clicked on in the taskbar, they kinda glow. Its better than a hard blink, and I would faint if they ever give you a way to control the color that glows (yellow would kick ass there). Also the default nautilus is better....much needed I say.
EDIT 2: I thought about it, and I remembered that if I read this review, I would want screenshots, so here they are:
1. Bootmanager tool
http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/9199/bootmanager1op.png
2-4. Disk tool
http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/1458/disktool10wo.png
http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/1772/disktool16os.png
http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/6353/disktool23sx.png
5. multimedia systems selector
http://img117.imageshack.us/img117/7546/mulitmediatool0py.png
6. Service tool
http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/1094/servicestool0iv.png
7. Password tool:
http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/556/password8za.png
All those people that complained about Ubuntu's lack of GUI will like this release I think....
EDIT 3: One really nice thing is that Evince is the default document handler. It does a really good job, especially with PDFs.
Well, yesterday I looked at OSNEWS and saw a Hoary review and thought to myself "thats a little old to be reviewed." Many of the comments complained about a lack of a good Breezy preview, so I thought I would make one. This is my review of the Breezy Colony 3 release. Please remember that this is just my opinion, I don't know a lot about the under the hood changes, so this is mostly a superficial review (the kind I would want to read).
I have to say that overall...I hate to say this but...Breezy has kinda disappointed me. Just because its not as big of a jump on the surface between Warty and Hoary (in my opinion). There are hints at a lot of under the hood stuff, and I can only review the stuff you can actually see (most reviewers are like this). I guess it would only be fair to give the good and the bad, so I'll do it that way.
The good first:
The first thing I noticed about Breezy is that fonts are a little different. I would say better, but someone might debate that.
Secondly, Breezy now has a "Boot Manager Settings" tool which allows you to pick what OS you want by default to boot, how long you want for grub to show and those sorts of things. Its less powerful than the grub manager on the forum but its still neat.
Thirdly, Breezy has a "disks manager" tool that allows you to see all of you disks. It will tell you how full a disk is, what format its in (ext3 ,ntfs) and what its properties are (read, read write, etc). Unfortunately this tool kinda disappointed me. From what the tool shows you, you think that you can use it to mount ntfs disks (as opposed to using the ubuntu guide's way) but when I tried I failed. Also, this tool doesn't do the big thing I wanted it to do- allow the user to turn on DMA through a GUI tool. You still have to touch the command line to do that in Breezy.
Fourthly as of the Colony 3 Breezy is still pretty stable so its workable. The xserver problems that I have read about in the forum did not affect me.
Fifthly, There is a new "services settings" tool. This tool allows you to pick what services start when your computer starts. Its pretty neat. I never knew that my computer booted with fetchmail, but I'm glad I can make it not. This tool is my new favorite part of Breezy.
Sixth, (this one I didn't notice at first, don't know why) is a "about me" tool that allows you to do something neat: easily change you password with a GUI. Very nice. The name made me think it was a different thing than it was, but its cool that can be done with a GUI too.
Finally, there is a "multimedia systems selector" too. This thing allows you to chose the input and output source for audio and video. No more killall esd! A very nice improvement. I think this tool hints at the important under the hood changes in Breezy. In a superficial review like this one, thing like this get downplayed.
The bad:
First bad thing for me was the installation. I have broadband, and because of that it seems that the damn installer wants to download updates if it can detect that you have a fat pipe. The problem is that the day I installed it the Ubuntu server was down (I know because I wanted to upgrade to Breezy) and so it got to a certain point and just hanged. I'm an impatient man, so I rebooted. I was happy to find out that I was booted into the login screen, but when I logged in and tried to do something with apt-get it told me the thing was locked up. I knew that I had put mirrors in my sources.list, so I didn't know what was wrong. I restarted my xserver only to find that Breezy was still trying to install itself underneath, and it was hung up and the same point. I wasn't able to get into synaptic until the next day, when the main Ubuntu server was back online. If the server can't take a Colony release, the day of the official release is gonna suck if the installer still insists on downloading updates. I recommend anyone installing Breezy unplug their broadband till the installation is over.
Secondly, besides the fonts I don't see any visual improvements in Breezy. No wobbly windows or nothing. Despite all the noise about Cairo, corners still look pixelated and there is not more visual bling than in Hoary. Metacity still does the draw black crap all over my screen thing, and even worse now when my computer gets pegged (aka my CPU is maxed out) whatever Window is maximized is replaced by complete blackness when you try to minimize it. I hope that is fixed before the final release, or the beginner forum will be filled with "how do I disable this black feature" posts.
Thirdly, I didn't get what I really wanted for Christmas. The savior for all Metacity woes (xcompmgr) is still really unstable. It still produces garbage when Xine is playing full screen yet gstreamer can't use w32codecs yet so there is no way around it. Xcompmgr still crashes when I leave it on over night. The lack of an improvement in the area almost made me cry.
Fourthly, Openoffice just won't work. It would rather crash than open the writer. I hope that is fixed. And I can't get the new "gnome-app-install" tool to work at all. Not from the menu, not with gksudo.
Fifthly I can't figure out how to edit the menus without smeg. So I just installed smeg....but wasn't there supposed to be something else? Also there is no GUI way to edit your xorg.conf yet that I can find.
Finally, Breezy took away my "run dialog." I loved that thing because I could start a program or kill the gnome-panel without opening a terminal. It will be missed.
Basically, as you can tell I'm disappointed. And before you jump on me and say "its the development release!" let me say that I know...I was reviewing the Colony 3. Many of the bugs might be fixed...I'll file a few bug reports myself. The problem is that the feature freeze has come and gone, and what I really wanted is not here. Sigh.
I will say that Breezy is more stable than I thought, so I would say if you have been holding back jump in and help bug test. Personally, the Colony 3 has shown me one thing- I better learn to love KDE. :) I hear the 3.5 version is bringing improvements in the kcompmgr, sounds tasty. One day Metacity will fall, and I will dance a jig on its grave when it does.
Have a nice day.
EDIT: *Slaps forehead* I try to write a superficial review but I forgot a fun new eye candy. When tasks want to be clicked on in the taskbar, they kinda glow. Its better than a hard blink, and I would faint if they ever give you a way to control the color that glows (yellow would kick ass there). Also the default nautilus is better....much needed I say.
EDIT 2: I thought about it, and I remembered that if I read this review, I would want screenshots, so here they are:
1. Bootmanager tool
http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/9199/bootmanager1op.png
2-4. Disk tool
http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/1458/disktool10wo.png
http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/1772/disktool16os.png
http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/6353/disktool23sx.png
5. multimedia systems selector
http://img117.imageshack.us/img117/7546/mulitmediatool0py.png
6. Service tool
http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/1094/servicestool0iv.png
7. Password tool:
http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/556/password8za.png
All those people that complained about Ubuntu's lack of GUI will like this release I think....
EDIT 3: One really nice thing is that Evince is the default document handler. It does a really good job, especially with PDFs.