Tuesday, May 7, 2013

[Review] Ubuntu 13.04

Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail

¿De qué está hablando? Versión en español

Top things to do after installing Ubuntu 13.04

After a week I decided to do a (quick???) review of Raring Ringtail.

New functionalities and esthetic changes

Unity 7

Ubuntu Raring Ringtail came out and there are many changes that you can notice.

When you launch the Dash you can see that the icon set has changed:
Since version 12.10 (Quantal) you can see a Preview of the application that is installed or that you may want to install in your system. In 13.04 this functionality has been improved and now it's faster. If you want to install or uninstall a program just right click on the icon and choose what you want to do.

Other icons have changed, for Files, Update Manager, Ubuntu Software Center, the Dash.
New functionalities arrived with this new version. For example you can add a "Show Desktop" button or you can enable/disable the different workspaces.

When you want to turn off your computer or log out you will see that the dialog is different.

If you have different windows of the same application you can see a list of all the windows when you do a right click in the Launcher.
Now Ubuntu One is installed by default and the indicator is installed too. As always you can get 5GB of free storage and if you invite someone to Ubuntu One you will get 0.5GB extra.

In general Unity has improved a lot, many people complained that it was too slow. Truth is that the changes and corrections they made are very notorious and now Unity is very fast. For example LightDM used 25.7MB of RAM, now it only uses 0.6MB. This shows the process that is going in Canonical with their plans for Ubuntu in all devices (TVs, phones, tablets).

Since Ubuntu 12.10 you can register different accounts from different sites (like Facebook, Google, Twitter...) this will allow the Dash to do a request in those sites when you do a research with it.
Canonical added a Legal notice that explains how the requests to those sites are implemented.

Finally if you go to "System Settings">"Mouse & Touchpad">"Test Your Settings", you will see a very nice interface where you can test the speed, sensibility... of your mouse or touchpad.

New packages and programs

Linux 3.8


If you want to check what version of Linux you are using just do (from the Terminal):

uname -r
In this new kernel you can expect many changes. The most relevant are: new graphic drivers, new filesystem, some improvements for Ext4 and Btrfs. And new support for hardware of cours. In this page you can read more about the changes.

LibreOffice 4.0

Ubuntu 13.04 comes with LibreOffice 4.0. You can expect some new functionalities in this version. Like in Firefox you can change the Theme of the interface.

What really caught my attention was the app that lets you navigate through your presentation in Impress. Just search for "LibreOffice impress remote" in the Google Play Store, and you can control Impress using Bluetooth.

KDE 4.10

If you are fans or KDE, in the Raring packages the new version of KDE is included. I really like KDE because of the graphic effects, I think it's worth trying.

Gnome 3.6

Sadly the last version of Gnome (3.8) didn't make it to the official repos of Raring. You need to use a the Gnome Team PPA to install the latest and greatest version of Gnome.

Files 3.6.3

In 13.04 the file navigation changed. You can see at your left that the icons are different. It is a more minimalistic look which looks very nice I think. Also all modification where moved to the right (in the little wheel).

Other changes

In this new version of Ubuntu this new packages where included: Upstart 1.8, Python 3.3, CUPS 1.6.2, among others.

Wubi was left behind

Ubuntu had some issues with the installation of Raring from Wubi, because the corrections couldn't be made in time for the release. It was decided that Raring was not going to be supported for Wubi. No modifications haven't been made for Wubi in order to make this installer work with UEFI systems.

Conclusion

I strongly agree with the review made by the Linux Action Show, this may be the best release of Ubuntu yet. But it can also be one of the most boring? With all the announcements made by Canonical with Mir, Ubuntu Touch, maybe the teams couldn't make all the changes that they wanted.
This shows the status for all teams and what was done (or not)
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