Simply Ubuntu

OMG! Ubuntu is reporting on Canonincal's decision to abandon a separate netbook edition of Ubuntu.

"One of the benefits of the direction that’s been taken with the next release of Ubuntu is that there is no longer a need for a separate netbook edition. The introduction of the new shell for Ubuntu means that we have a user interface that works equally well whatever the form factor of the PC. And the underlying technology works on a range of architectures including those common in netbook, notebooks, desktops or whatever you choose to run it on. Hence the need for a separate version for netbooks is removed."

Given my own experience I'm ambivalent to the passing of Ubuntu Netbook Remix, but nonetheless, I couldn't let it pass without comment.

Sources & References:
OMG! Ubuntu The end of Ubuntu Netbook edition
Canonical Blog Ubuntu Netbook Edition folded into Ubuntu for next release

Back to the Future

Sadly, the grand experiment is over (for now): Ubuntu Notebook Remix was just too temperamental for my taste and I couldn't find a way to adjust the panel. The problems with the interface and power applet continued to plague the setup and I just couldn't be bothered to try and resolve the issues.

So, despite loving the look of UNR, I have restored the DELL Inspiron to the desktop version of Karmic, but I may just start looking at other open source OS to try out on my Christmas present......

Bizarre

Ubuntu Netbook Remix is demonstrating some bizarre behaviour!

The gnome-power-manager, fragile at the best of times in the desktop version, has a life all of its own in UNR: on battery power, the brightness is randomly adjusted without warning and my phantom power-cord crash seems to have returned.

The GUI is also a little peculiar! Earlier, I couldn't scroll to the bottom of the Administration tab in the System Menu and the last three icons were truncated.



When I removed the Language Support icon (to makes some screen real estate available), everything returned to normal!

I love the look of this OS but, twenty-four hours in and it's starting to look a little too temperamental!

Playtime - Ubuntu Netbook Remix

Banging on about experimenting with my new laptop is all very well, but installing the desktop version of Ubuntu Karmic is not that adventurous, is it? So, for no better reason than I had a couple of hours to kill, I decided to see how Ubuntu's Netbook Remix would look on the DELL Inspiron 1501.

It's been an interesting couple of hours! Firstly, my initial install disk was corrupted (almost certainly my fault, the burn speed was probably too high) and I couldn't run the live CD. However, burning a second disk did the trick and I confess that I liked the look & feel of the GUI so much that I decided to install it immediately.

I was anticipating a problem with my WIFI card, so I had a wired connection on the first boot. A simple update via the terminal made sure that the driver for the wireless card was available:

sudo apt-get update

Then all I had to do to get the NIC working was to activate the b43-fwcutter driver and reboot - easy when you know how!



However, I was not expecting problems with my graphics! I'd purposely avoided the latest version of the netbook OS thinking that I should be safe with the tried and tested, Karmic. However, turning on the enhanced graphics features turned out to be a disaster: all my active windows disappeared and I was forced to revert to the "none" option in Visual Effects (Appearance), which is easier said than done when you can't see the dialog box!



Actually, I'm not sure that I ever turned on the Extra graphics option when I installed the desktop version and, to be honest, I'm not sure that I miss them that much on the laptop. I certainly have no intention of upgrading the graphics on the 1501, so I'll just leave the eye candy turned off for the time being.

The good news is that all the network shares are all available, but I have yet to turn on the firewall, so I anticipate some modifications to the /etc/default/ufw configuration file, but that is straightforward enough.

It'll take a while for me to decide whether I like UNR or not, so I anticipate a few more posts on the subject. But, for now, it's 03:00 (am) and time for bed!