Its that time of the year…
No! This is not a post on some conference happening during this time, every year. Its about the “Gibbon”. Yes, I just upgraded to the next release of Ubuntu codenamed “Gutsy Gibbon“. Not much difference between Feisty Fawn and Gutsy when it comes to Artwork. But there have been significant addition of features and the latest from upstream. The upgrade from Feisty went very smooth except for some trouble because of my emacs-snapshot installation which I later did a fresh install; otherwise it was a “All is well that Ends well” upgrade. Some significant things that caught my attention were the following:
- Leaving a message when the system is locked is a nice small feature.
- Open Office is now v2.3
- Gimp is 2.4rc.
- 2.6.22 series kernel.
- Bluetooth apps have got even better but not yet like the KDE counterparts. I still remember afresh using pradeepto’s lappie for doing some data transfer between my mobile and his laptop.
- Games have upgraded, especially torcs, the circuits have improved a lot with better scenic and more realistic backdrops.
- Pidgin rocks!
- Thunderbird 2.0 ’s new mail pop up by default makes it more “Outlookish” but still a good little one.
- Compiz-Fusion in by default
More as I explore.. Oh yeah I forgot again. The power management notifications just got even better 
Experience them yourself! Hold your breath ladies and gentlemen.. The Gutsy is gonna be out! Yet another milestone for the Ubuntu Community. Great job guys!
October 15th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Does it still install proprietary drivers by default without informing the user?
October 16th, 2007 at 10:20 am
@Jef,
No. Theere is a pop up asking you whether you want to install specific “Restricted” drivers for some hardware. If you chose no, then it doesnt. To be sure of 100 % freedom, one can try gnewsense or may be gobuntu.
October 16th, 2007 at 9:41 pm
“No. Theere is a pop up asking you whether you want to install specific “Restricted” drivers for some hardware.”
That is only for some hardware. For others like wireless, Ubuntu atleast till the last version used to install proprietary drivers silently. I just wanted to know if that is still the case. Can you check and confirm that has changed in this version atleast?
“To be sure of 100 % freedom, one can try gnewsense or may be gobuntu.”
That completely misses the point. If I want 100% freedom, a Ubuntu variant is very unlikely to be a good choice anyway.
October 17th, 2007 at 9:51 am
Yeah. It does display a warning dialog atleast for my Wireless card. It also includes a “Restricted Drivers Manager” for managing all such non free drivers.
October 18th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
Not for all proprietary drivers though. Some of them get installed automatically and without warning. I wanted to know if that still happens. Looks like you aren’t even aware that it does that. That seems to be the common case among Ubuntu users due to false marketing.
October 20th, 2007 at 8:55 am
Jef,
No.I run my own self-compiled kernel also for most needs. What I gave you was information. I get your point and we are working towards attaining that complete free system. We are almost there.
October 20th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
“No.I run my own self-compiled kernel also for most needs. What I gave you was information”
Of course but it still does not tell me whether Ubuntu continues to automatically install proprietary software or not in some instances.
“I get your point and we are working towards attaining that complete free system. We are almost there.”
The best way to get there is to refuse to install proprietary software by default and only install such software if the user wants to do so in ALL instances. Discretely installing proprietary software in a distribution is a bad mistake that Ubuntu has been doing and it is not clear yet whether they have stopped doing so even in the latest release.
Unfortunately that important point has been lost in between all the marketing.
October 29th, 2007 at 4:53 am
Confirmed. Ubuntu STILL does the dirty deed.
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20071029#review
“As we’ve come to expect from Ubuntu, support for non-GPL drivers is well integrated into the the system, to the point that it automatically enabled the MadWiFi driver for my wireless card without my approval.”
Don’t you see how this is bad both from the legal as well as moral perspective or do you support Ubuntu in what they are doing here?