Ubuntu 13.04
The new version of the world's most popular free (and open-source) PC operating system, Ubuntu, is now available as a free download from Ubuntu.com. Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" largely contains under-the-hood improvements that most people won't notice, but does contain a few new user-facing features ... such as a more visible notice about how its Unity search feature logs your keystrokes and sends them to websites like Amazon.
What about new features?The search built into the Unity Dash -- basically equivalent to a Windows PC's Start menu search or a Mac's Spotlight search -- now searches more websites, including the BBC's. There is also now a notice in the search field that it searches websites and not just your computer, and a legal disclaimer that explains that Ubuntu allows Canonical and third-party companies to log your search keystrokes. These were not included when the feature debuted, at which time it also allowed people to accidentally search for underwear sales and pornography.
The new Ubuntu Linux distribution, 13.04, aka Raring Ringtail, is ready to go, and for most users, it may be all the desktop they need.
However, Unity is not a user-experience failure like Windows 8's Metro. Instead, it's very good at what it sets out to do: Provide a user-interface (UI) that's easy enough for an 80-year old to use and provide an interface that's designed to work equally well for desktops, tablets, and smartphones. In short, Ubuntu is not for Linux power users, it's for all users.
Ubuntu 13.04: The Linux desktop for everyone (Gallery)
That's very clear in Ubuntu 13.04. While this new version doesn't offer a lot of new features, it has done a nice job of cleaning and speeding up the ones it had. In particular, I noticed how this works on a review system, a 2008-vintage Gateway DX4710. This PC is powered by a 2.5-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor, has 6GBs of RAM, and an Intel GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) 3100 for graphics. Unity itself was much faster than before on the same box.
That's because Ubuntu spent a lot time making performance improvements to Unity. These include: "reduced memory consumption and a great number of small UI fixes to bring a better overall shell experience. Those are like being typo-tolerant in the dashboard when searching for an application, using the mouse scroll wheel on a launcher icon to switch between applications, or better available third-party device handling."
Of course, if you really want Ubuntu, and you really can't stand Unity, there are a wide variety of Ubuntu 13.04 variants with different desktops. These include: Kubuntu, with KDE; Xubuntu, with Xfce; and Lubuntu, with LXDE.
One change I didn't care for is that Ubuntu versions now only have one workspace available by default. If, like me, you want to more than one workspace, you can add more with the Behavior tab in the Appearance panel of System Settings.
Under the hood, you'll find the Ubuntu Linux kernel 3.8.0-19.29. This, in turn, is based on the 3.8.8 Linux kernel.
For applications, Ubuntu 13.04 supports LibreOffice 4.0 for its office suite. It also includes Firefox 20 for the Web browser and Thunderbird 17 for email. Rather use something else, I'll take Chrome and Evolution for my Web browser and e-mail thank you very much, you can easily get more applications using the Ubuntu Software Center. This is Ubuntu's native app store. I should add that there's a known problem with installing Chrome on Ringtail. This is expected to be fixed with the release of Chrome 28.
One eternal complaint about Linux is that "There aren't any games!" Actually, there always were lots of them. Now that Steam is producing games for Linux in general, and Ubuntu in specific, that canard contains less truth than ever. Heck, Dell will even sell you an Alienware Ubuntu-powered gaming PC these days.
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