Tuesday, November 27, 2007

(K)ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon

It's been a really long time since I posted anything and there are several reasons for that and something I tend to rectify. So here is a post.

I still am not the biggest fan of (K)ubuntu but I have to admit Canonical has done a great job. Since I use Kubuntu I will make a couple of statements. Hardware detection and setup was SWEEET!!! Everything, including the built in winmodem is up and running on my Compaq Presario C700 Laptop that I just bought and the only thing I had to do was activate the firmware file in the Restricted Drivers control panel for the modem. All other devices setup without a hitch.

For some odd reason Dolphin was made the default file browser. For some this isn't a bad thing but if you are going to change the default file browser there needs to be a way to select Konqueror without removing Dolphin. However simply removing Dolphin will return Konqueror as the default.

Some will prefer Dolphin because of its simpler more graceful interface but it is limited on options so power users will (like myself) want to remove it and get Konqueror back. Since I use Firefox and have it set as the default web browser which comes up no matter what app or interface I am in I have already seperated my file browser from my web browser. Good idea bad implementation on that.

Apps are solid, plentiful and KDE 3.5.8 is really solid since it is a bug fix release.

Beryl is gone and compiz is it and I am still learning the differences so I can get my 3-D desktop going as I like (cube and all) but there is no real documentation so I am experimenting with it still. I had just figured out Beryl (sigh)

Multimedia setup is a breeze as well and Automatix2 is only needed to get a few codecs that Canonical does not carry in its repos. Surprisingly that's very few compared to the Feisty Fawn repos.

Anyway (K)ubuntu is very much improved with 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon and despite the sudo scheme that I hate I really am impressed. It scores a 9 out of 10.