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Yellowdog428
December 17th, 2007, 07:48 AM
I will preface this with I am new to Linux. I played around with 7.04 and have now jumped into 7.10 with a dual boot on my Desktop and a linux only laptop and I am moving more and more away from Windows. I am having a blast learning the ins and outs and learning a lot.

I read a lot of posts here on the forums and post a little of what I have learned but was wondering what has changed.

What I am looking for is what has changed over the course of a few years. What are some good things that you have seen Ubuntu do and what linux in general has done to make it a more "User friendly" OS.

For instance, I love that Ubuntu has included Samba with the OS. One of the first things I installed when playing with 7.04 was Samba. Sharing files with my windows network is KEY to me cause I am still very Windows dependant.

I think providing some desktop effects is important to appeal to the GUI types as well. One of the things thatt interested me in Ubuntu was seeing a video on youtube with people playing with Compiz.

I guess I am wondering about the evolution if Ubuntu (or even linux as a whole).

What are things that have changed that make your experience better or worse?

Also thanks everyone that has made this a great learning experience!
Cheers

kpkeerthi
December 17th, 2007, 07:55 AM
1. Compiz (fusion) seems to be very stable (on nvidia) to me. Never crashed so far.
2. Improved printer support. Pretty much plug and play.
3. Restricted media support: ubuntu-restricted-extras to the rescue.

macogw
December 17th, 2007, 08:07 AM
Wireless support has improved. I just posted in a thread where a Broadcom user was asking for help with Dapper. That card works very easily with Feisty or Gutsy.

jfank
December 17th, 2007, 08:19 AM
There seems to be better support for the ATI Radeon Video Cards now. It is a restrictd driver on the new version on Ubuntu, but it is less hassle getting the video card to work properly, and better wireless improvements like macogw mentioned. It will take time for Linux to be completely user friendly, but it is getting better with every new version of all linux dist. are released. All I can tell you is after I started using Linux I HATE WINDOWS, and the best part of Linux is that it's not a monopolizing franchise like Microsoft has become where everything in the world is controlled by Microsoft. Linux lets you play with the kernal and even change it into something of your own.

macogw
December 17th, 2007, 09:31 AM
I thought Radeons used the open source driver. When I saw a Radeon 9250 using fglrx on OpenSuSE, it was only capable of 1 frame every 2 seconds with Beryl. The open source driver worked beautifully.

gn2
December 17th, 2007, 12:27 PM
More availability of GUI configuration tools.

For example, when I first started using Ubuntu (and it wasn't very long ago), to change the screen gamma, you had to edit a text file, now you just move a slider.

The fancy 3D stuff is all a bit of a show-pony, I can't see that it does anything genuinely useful.
Personally I would prefer if it was left out of the standard installation, but could be easily added if required by the user.

Yellowdog428
December 17th, 2007, 05:31 PM
Great! Keep em coming!

I am real interested in things maybe before Gusty/festy.
I have heard a lot about how Ubuntu has come such a long way over the years, so what else is out there?

Cheers

jespdj
December 19th, 2007, 01:01 PM
Have you seen this: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/710tour

blueturtl
December 19th, 2007, 02:11 PM
I have been a user since 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog - yes, the one with the funky name) and though it might seem little has changed since, Ubuntu is in fact making progress by leaps and bounds. I will list the things I have noticed.

Progression since Hoary...
No more need to manually enable DMA for CD/DVD drives
No more need to manually edit xorg.conf or install the NVIDIA driver by hand
No more need to re-login after installing something to update Applications-menu
No more need to manually download and install/compile things like mplayer, mplayer-plugin, Java or Flash-player (those can be now installed neatly via apt-get)
The included video player now searches and downloads packages required for playback automatically!
Wireless support has improved substantially (many more devices supported, network-manager allows for easy connections).
No more wireless keyring query at logon.
The sound-system has been fixed, now all users get sound, even if logged in simultaneously
Can now automatically import settings, bookmarks and wallpapers from Windows (if Windows install present)
Printer configuration and installation has been further eased for supported hardware
System boot time and responsiveness have consistently improved with each release(!)
3D desktop enhancement now a part of the default desktop on supported hardware
System can now read and write to NTFS file systems without extra configuration (eases file sharing withing the system and with external hard-drives).
Applications menu can now be edited without 3rd party add-ons.


Things that have regressed:

Can no longer set screensaver preferences damn it!


These are just things I've noticed. There are many more things that are improving that others are more affected by and things that we don't notice that go on behind the curtains.