Ubuntu update one week on
After about a week or so of using the new Ubuntu release Jaunty, I’ll give my opinion on it.
Firstly, does it excite me as much as Hardy (the first Ubuntu I installed). No. Nothing negative on that front. Jaunty has some pretty nifty features. Mostly behind the scenes though. Hardy was my first venture into Linux so it captivated me on that level as well as an OS level. Jaunty doesn’t do that for me.
Bugs in Hardy are still bugging me in Jaunty. I think they are mainly to do with my system though. 64 bit flash issues, no usplash screen on boot, very old and outdated graphics card so I can’t do any fancy stuff that I would like - like use Compiz. Having said that Jaunty now correctly identifies my monitor out of the box. Which is nice. Probably the only way to resolve the other issues are to buy a new computer. Which I will do. Just not now. I like squeezing an extra half year or so out of my computer. I bought it back in 2005 and have only upgraded the memory.
VLC: finally got this update that I was waiting for. Much better file handling. Love it. Now I only want it to automatically generate thumbnails for videos like MPlayer does. But I guess having them both around isn’t that bad a thing.
Amarok: Upgraded to version 2 and then 2.1beta soon after. 2 was horrible. Fucking horrible. 2.1 isn’t that much better but it is a step in the right direction. Version 2 was supposed to built from the ground up. Whatever that means. And like Winamp3 has suffered becasue of it. At least Winamp3 was still pretty kick ass. I feel that Amarok2 is nothing compared to version 1.4. Its a step backwards. But I hope that as with Winamp, they improve it pretty rapidly and jump a verion (where was Winamp4?!?!) and come up with an absolute killer Amarok4.
U or K: Ubuntu. I don’t like having programs look shit when they don’t need to. Like Firefox. So Ubuntu for now until Mozilla release a QT port of Firefox. Then we’ll see.
