My own look at the new Breezy preview

[jdodson]

http://cs.georgefox.edu/~jdodson/breezy_preview/

The HTML formatting sucks because I wanted to create a quick webpage in OpenOffice. Well I won't do that again, but it is readable at least. If you are having viewing problems on the webpage, use the alternate PDF or OpenOffice formats. Enjoy!

[TravisNewman]

http://cs.georgefox.edu/~jdodson/breezy_preview/

The HTML formatting sucks because I wanted to create a quick webpage in OpenOffice. Well I won't do that again, but it is readable at least. If you are having viewing problems on the webpage, use the alternate PDF or OpenOffice formats. Enjoy!
forbidden. I don't have permission to access /~jdodson/breezy_preview/

edit: fixed

[jdodson]

forbidden. I don't have permission to access /~jdodson/breezy_preview/

edit: fixed

:) It is now finally finished. I fixed some formatting issues, it should look fine now.

[xequence]

Its nice to see screenshots and pictures of what we are looking forward to, thanks alot :)

[Muhammad]

I've achieved the post-newbie ubuntu level of experience, do you think I should upgrade to Breezy right now no questions asked? :)

[XDevHald]

I've achieved the post-newbie ubuntu level of experience, do you think I should upgrade to Breezy right now no questions asked? :)
It's worth it!

Note to dodson: You might want to fix the dead server link for posting a comment at the bottom of the page. Dude, awesome screen shots!

The requested URL /~jdodson/breezy_preview/getArchive.php was not found on this server.

[Arktis]

Neato.

The new version of Gnome(the Desktop enviornment of Ubuntu) is Gnome 2.12. A new feature of Gnome 2.12 is the Cairo rendering engine. The way Cairo renders the new Gnome is very cool.
I see no difference in the appearance of the two dialogues except for the fact that the top corners are messed up in the 2nd shot, making breezy look worse

[jdodson]

It's worth it!

Note to dodson: You might want to fix the dead server link for posting a comment at the bottom of the page. Dude, awesome screen shots!

The requested URL /~jdodson/breezy_preview/getArchive.php was not found on this server.

Thanks for the headsup bro! This was a very quick writeup, so I did not test all the links. It is fixed now.

[Muhammad]

I'm downloading it right now! :D

Don't blame me if I posted 10+ threads in the Beginner's section tommorow XD

[jdodson]

Neato.

I see no difference in the appearance of the two dialogues except for the fact that the top corners are messed up in the 2nd shot, making breezy look worse


Ah well if you put the images side by side(ignoring my bad cropping job) you will notice the buttons are shaded differently. I use Hoary 8 hours a day for my job, the Cairo rendering is a very noticable to me.

[jdodson]

I'm downloading it right now! :D

Don't blame me if I posted 10+ threads in the Beginner's section tommorow XD

I am waiting for the full release to upgrade. I upgrade last time from Warty to the preview and I had issues, I check the preview out on a live cd, though i do want to upgrade now. the headaches and 100 meg daily upgrades are just not worth it for me.

[XDevHald]

I'm downloading it right now! :D

Don't blame me if I posted 10+ threads in the Beginner's section tommorow XD
On this case of a new install, I wouldn't doubt it :D A user who installs a new distro averages about more than 20 posts their first few days on running it;)

You're welcome jdodson :D

[TravisNewman]

I am waiting for the full release to upgrade. I upgrade last time from Warty to the preview and I had issues, I check the preview out on a live cd, though i do want to upgrade now. the headaches and 100 meg daily upgrades are just not worth it for me.
FWIW I upgraded no problems to somewhere around Colony 4. It's much snappier it seems, and it just looks cool :)

[Stormy Eyes]

FWIW I upgraded no problems to somewhere around Colony 4. It's much snappier it seems, and it just looks cool :)

I just upgraded too. I had to fiddle with my xorg.conf, because the keyboard driver is kbd instead of keyboard, and X now expects to find my trackball on /dev/input/mouse0 instead of mouse1, but once I fixed X my machine started to purr.

[poofyhairguy]

How Clearlooks is in Breezy made me a Metabox person.

[mrtaber]

I'm sticking with Clearlooks for now (the jaggies on the rounded corners don't bother me that much), but Metabox is one of the cleanest...I've used it for long periods before :)

I'm having pretty good luck with Breezy Preview so far; just the typical minor problems--Flash sound okay in Firefox, not in Epiphany; xmms-flac plugin broken :( ; and Evolution calendar problems (no weather calendars, and I can't delete calendars). All-in-all, pretty minor.

One real big upside for me is: DMA! Yes, you still have to enable it manually, but now just by adding lines to hdparm.conf, without messing with entries in /etc/modules (and the order of the entries).

And Breezy is definitely snappier on my machine!

So far, I'm very impressed.

Mark :)

[majikstreet]

Breezy is very nice.

I agree with you.

I don't use gnome so I can't say anything about gnome....

Yes, I have Breezy on my computer :)


majikstreet

[Phantasman]

Nice review. Cutting edge betas always get me in trouble. I'll wait. ;-)

[Kapre]

jdodson - nice quick review. Kudos to Gnome.Org for the job well done (although I dont get the splash being an "alkaseltzer" ).

K

[jdodson]

cool.

[escuchamezz]

Breezy preview doesn't even install on my computer, back to MEPIS :-P

[jdong]

Great job. You've captured the key new features in Breezy visually :) However, there's some things that still deserve mention:

GNOME 2.12's better anti-focus-stealing notification (the taskbar button now pulsates slowly instead of just brightening -- less likely to be ignored)

The Update Manager has a notification bubble that deserves a look.

Lock Screen now has a button for switching users -- a feature that's been in KDE for years now.

Mono, monodevelop, and mono-based apps work extremely well now

Breezy backports (in the final release) will be in sources.list, so it can be activated with just a checkbox.

gnome-app-install is now nearly complete enough to replace Synaptic for most day-to-day use, even boasting a search engine.

Beagle desktop search works well -- regardless of xattr support -- enough that it's usable as a search tool :)

Eclipse IDE now runs natively, thanks to GCJ 4.0

Nautilus's new navigation is less cluttery than 2.8-style spatial, more noticeable/efficient than Hoary-hacked 2.10.

GNOME menus instantly receive new application entries, without restarting GNOME or zapping gnome-panel and losing a bunch of notification icons!

gksudo greys out the screen when awaiting root authentication -- in Hoary, some users were confused as to why their screen was suddenly disabled, when in fact gksudo's awaiting password entry but the small dialog was overlooked.

[majikstreet]

Great job. You've captured the key new features in Breezy visually :) However, there's some things that still deserve mention:

GNOME 2.12's better anti-focus-stealing notification (the taskbar button now pulsates slowly instead of just brightening -- less likely to be ignored)

The Update Manager has a notification bubble that deserves a look.

Lock Screen now has a button for switching users -- a feature that's been in KDE for years now.

Mono, monodevelop, and mono-based apps work extremely well now

Breezy backports (in the final release) will be in sources.list, so it can be activated with just a checkbox.

gnome-app-install is now nearly complete enough to replace Synaptic for most day-to-day use, even boasting a search engine.

Beagle desktop search works well -- regardless of xattr support -- enough that it's usable as a search tool :)

Eclipse IDE now runs natively, thanks to GCJ 4.0

Nautilus's new navigation is less cluttery than 2.8-style spatial, more noticeable/efficient than Hoary-hacked 2.10.

GNOME menus instantly receive new application entries, without restarting GNOME or zapping gnome-panel and losing a bunch of notification icons!

gksudo greys out the screen when awaiting root authentication -- in Hoary, some users were confused as to why their screen was suddenly disabled, when in fact gksudo's awaiting password entry but the small dialog was overlooked.
I noticed the thing with the gksudo, I like it!

[cowlip]

I really like the new nautilus. THe places menu s a great concept in conjuction with the new list view. I definitely prefer it over Windows Explorer now that I can add my network there :)

[jdodson]

thanks jdong! i only was commenting on things I noticed from using it for 30 minutes on the livecd. thanks for the addition!

[benplaut]

nice!

i'll add it to ubotu on #ubuntu's definition of !breezy :) (if that made no sense to anyone, just ignore it)

[qalimas]

I've been on Breezy since Colony 3 came out, and I've had few problems.

Notably, they are:
Samba won't install -- apt packages are broken for it
Wesnoth won't compile, from the log output, I think the problem is it needs the only version of g++ I don't have installed, which, is broken in apt right now.... :(


So, basically the only thing wrong is a few broken apt packages, and that's not stopping me ;)

[jdong]

I've been on Breezy since Colony 3 came out, and I've had few problems.

Notably, they are:
Samba won't install -- apt packages are broken for it
Wesnoth won't compile, from the log output, I think the problem is it needs the only version of g++ I don't have installed, which, is broken in apt right now.... :(


So, basically the only thing wrong is a few broken apt packages, and that's not stopping me ;)


jdong@delta:~$ sudo apt-get install samba
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Suggested packages:
samba-doc
The following NEW packages will be installed:
samba
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/2389kB of archives.
After unpacking 6070kB of additional disk space will be used.

Preconfiguring packages ...
Selecting previously deselected package samba.
(Reading database ... 88278 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking samba (from .../samba_3.0.14a-6ubuntu1_i386.deb) ...
Setting up samba (3.0.14a-6ubuntu1) ...
Generating /etc/default/samba...
TDBSAM version too old (0), trying to convert it.
TDBSAM converted successfully.
account_policy_get: tdb_fetch_uint32 failed for field 1 (min password length), returning 0
account_policy_get: tdb_fetch_uint32 failed for field 2 (password history), returning 0
account_policy_get: tdb_fetch_uint32 failed for field 3 (user must logon to change password), returning 0
account_policy_get: tdb_fetch_uint32 failed for field 4 (maximum password age), returning 0
account_policy_get: tdb_fetch_uint32 failed for field 5 (minimum password age), returning 0
account_policy_get: tdb_fetch_uint32 failed for field 6 (lockout duration), returning 0
account_policy_get: tdb_fetch_uint32 failed for field 7 (reset count minutes), returning 0
account_policy_get: tdb_fetch_uint32 failed for field 8 (bad lockout attempt), returning 0
account_policy_get: tdb_fetch_uint32 failed for field 9 (disconnect time), returning 0
account_policy_get: tdb_fetch_uint32 failed for field 10 (refuse machine password change), returning 0
* Starting Samba daemons.. [ ok ]


Samba looks fine here...

[qalimas]

After checking my sources file, it appears when I upgraded, it changed back to use Hoary's reps O_o

Changed and updated, all works fine now, I should have thorught to check that in the beginning XD

[poofyhairguy]

Breezy backports (in the final release) will be in sources.list, so it can be activated with just a checkbox.

What about extras?



gnome-app-install is now nearly complete enough to replace Synaptic for most day-to-day use, even boasting a search engine.


The only problem I had with it is that it would not remove packages, and almost EVERYHTHING needs you to remove Ubuntu-desktop. It that fixed?

[jdong]

What about extras?


Extras, due to legal shadiness and lack of official-level quality (otherwise they'd be in universe/multiverse) are not endorsed or supported official by Ubuntu, and therefore cannot make their way into sources.list officially.

[poofyhairguy]

Extras, due to legal shadiness and lack of official-level quality (otherwise they'd be in universe/multiverse) are not endorsed or supported official by Ubuntu, and therefore cannot make their way into sources.list officially.

Thats cool. There is still this:

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=64629

[jdodson]

Thats cool. There is still this:

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=64629

Wow, nice.

[dahli.llama]

Does Breezy fix the multiple sound sources problem from Hoary?

That is the only problem I'm having right now and it's not much of one. I cannot get sounds from City o Heroes played with Cedega to play at the same time as music from Beep. I've tried every solution mentioned on this site, but nothing seems to work.

If Breezy fixes that I will be a very happy camper.

[macgyver2]

GNOME 2.12's better anti-focus-stealing notification (the taskbar button now pulsates slowly instead of just brightening -- less likely to be ignored)
That way that's done just looks excellent!


The Update Manager has a notification bubble that deserves a look.
When I first saw this I thought "yikes, how did windows update get on here!" :)


gnome-app-install is now nearly complete enough to replace Synaptic for most day-to-day use, even boasting a search engine.
IMO this is a really big deal. I think it pretty much gets rid of one of the reasons why some first-time Linux users don't want to switch. In the past while showing Ubuntu to potential new-users we've gotten to how to install stuff...a lot still found Synaptic a bit confusing because in the lists of packages there was all sorts of stuff they shouldn't need to be concerned with (library packages, application data-packages, and so on). I'll have to show them this...I think they'll like how there's not the same clutter as in Synaptic.


GNOME menus instantly receive new application entries, without restarting GNOME or zapping gnome-panel and losing a bunch of notification icons!
Hmm...in Hoary, new application entries always showed up instantly for me. The only thing was that the icon didn't appear until after a restart...the icons just showed up as the little no-icon rectangle.

[jdong]

Hmm...in Hoary, new application entries always showed up instantly for me. The only thing was that the icon didn't appear until after a restart...the icons just showed up as the little no-icon rectangle.

Actually, only GNOME/GTK specific items would show up immediately, icon-less. Try to install a QT app or an otherwise GNOME/FDo-unaware app, and it takes restarting gnome-panel (lose tray icons) or a logout to show up.