Ubuntu 10.10 for Netbook and Smart Phone

In their article today “Ubuntu 10.10 (“Maverick Meerkat”) Review” ExtremeTech.com discussed their testing of the new Ubuntu 10.10 for netbook and smart phone, including their new cloud which provides 2GB storage free, with more for a low price. I recommend the read.

It has multi-touch (assuming your hardware does a minimum of four-finger multi-touch)

Free 2GB cloud storage

A client for Microsoft windows so you can use your free cloud on older Microsoft PCs

They have a mobile plan for $3.99/month so you can access your cloud from your iPhone or Droid phone, for example to stream your music. No limitations to usage.

It has “Unity”, a feature that lists icons for your most used apps down the left side of your screen, like a phone. They expect if netbooks are going anywhere they will need to include touch screens. Thus they are a little ahead of the game: you touch the app to launch instead of browsing through menus. The menus are still there: you don’t need them most of the time.

Of course the workspace switcher is still there so you can not only have multiple windows open at a time, you can have multiple desktops each with multiple windows open. I use this a lot when I am being interrupted — just click on the workspace switcher to pick a currently unused workspace, deal with the interruption, then click back on the workspace you were using before to return to exactly where you left off. Also good for quickly switching from reading the comics to reading email when someone walks up to chat.

I can not say how the cloud stuff works from my own experience, although I can tell you it simply appears like any other network disk in your Computer window. I guess I just don’t trust putting my files out on the Internet, no matter who promises me nothing will happen. Still, the inherent ability for Linux (for years) to simply connect to any other *ix type computer  tells me it should be no problem — it just opens in your file manager / navigator like everything else.

I did upgrade my Ubuntu desktop 10.04 automagically to 10.10 some time ago — it took a while but it was painless and automatic, AND I could continue to use the PC even while it was being upgraded. I also like the GWibber feature which lets me watch my FaceBook and Twitter unobtrusively while I work — if something new comes in the launcher will blink to tell me so. The only downside I experienced was on my desktop at work I heavily rely on VMware, and VMWare did not compile in the latest release — a common problem with VMWare — so I was forced to fall back to the prior version. VMWare will eventually catch up, it is just irritating that I pay these people money and then must wait a few months before I can use the product again.

Hope this Helps!

-jdn-

Another article you may enjoy is the “8 Reasons to Build Your Own PC”. You can find it here.