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Quick Look at Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook and Desktop Editions

Ubuntu 10.10

When Canonical released its most recent Long Term Support (LTS) version of Ubuntu, 10.04 ("Lucid Lynx"), in April, the company claimed it was making major steps toward making the Linux operating system a serious mainstream competitor. And, upon looking at it, we agreed: A number of changes, in both appearance and function, had brought Ubuntu a lot closer to what average users expect from an OS (to the extent that any users of Linux can be considered average). With the new release of Ubuntu 10.10 ("Maverick Meerkat"), which is now available for free from ubuntu.com, Canonical is taking things one step further: If ordinary people can now bear to be around Linux for long periods of time, they're going to want (and need) features that will keep them there.

That, in a nutshell, is what Ubuntu 10.10 is about. Desktop users won't notice a ton of differences with regards to most functionality this time around, though there have been a few tweaks here and there. The most significant changes come in Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition, which offers users of highly portable miniature laptops an entirely new way of approaching the computing process that's tailored specifically for them (but doesn't sacrifice Ubuntu's own unique character).

Changes and Additions

Whereas Ubuntu 10.04 LTS made a grand show of cosmetics, dumping the drab brown color scheme that had long been its trademark in favor of a more friendly purple, Ubuntu 10.10 definitely keeps its alterations subtle. The biggest news about it may just be its new, uh, font. Titled Ubuntu, it brings the sleek, but no-nonsense, appearance of 10.04's streamlined Ubuntu logo to the rest of the OS. Though the Ubuntu font is fine, we must admit that most of the time we didn't even notice it—it's perfectly readable, but doesn't stand out in any way (which, come to think of it, is probably the best thing for a font to do).

The new font is emblematic of the changes in Ubuntu 10.10 as a whole: minor additions and alterations that don't add up to any world-changing functionality. The biggest new features in Maverick Meerkat are centered on the cloud, and the way the OS interacts with it by way of its Ubuntu One cloud storage system. All users of Ubuntu get 2GB of free storage in Ubuntu One, and you can easily add more by logging into your account on the one.ubunutu.com Web site. A "20-pack" of storage will net you an extra 20GB of storage, for the price of $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year, and you can purchase as many of these as you want.

Adding to the cool factor here is that Canonical is working on a Windows-based client, so you'll even be able to synchronize your files and music (including that purchased from the Ubuntu One Music Store via the included Rhythmbox Music Player) on a Microsoft-based PC. That's a major step for Ubuntu, and probably one that will helpencourage adoption—at least among second and third PCs.

A third option cements Ubuntu's cloud-gazing focus, as well as its well aim to be equally accessible to users who live off their smartphones. For $3.99 per month or $39.99 per year, you can get the Ubuntu One Mobile plan, which lets you stream your music library from your Ubuntu One account to your iPhone or Android-based phone. There's no limit on much you can stream, and contact synchronization is thrown in free of charge. Your credit card isn't even charged until 30 days after you sign up, giving you a chance to decide whether or not you like it.

A lot of this sounds impressive, but we weren't able to try out theMobile or Windows clients ahead of time to see how they function in the real world. But it's on our list, and we'll report back as soon as we know how well they really work.

Software

Canonical has upgraded the desktop environment from Gnome 2.3 to Gnome 2.31 (not 3.x, as was originally planned—that will have to wait until the next version); and a new version of the Gwibber social networking client, which improves support for inline images, Twitter lists, and third-party applications, now comes standard with the distro. So, for that matter, does a new image editing and management application. It's no longer F-Spot, which was used in 10.04; now the included app is Shotwell. As F-Spot was one of the few universally derided aspects of 10.04, we don't anticipate that losing it will bother many people.

Of course, if you love F-Spot and want it back, it's easy enough to find it: Just head to the Software Center, accessible from the Applications menu, and download it yourself. That's where you'll notice another development in 10.10. The software center is no longer exclusively for downloading free programs, but also gives you the option to buy commercial apps from under the "Get Software" subhead. There were very few choices available during our testing period—except for some test wallpapers that appeared very briefly, the Fluendo DVD Playerwas it, as a matter of fact—but we imagine that the paid store will populate soon enough. We imagine that the new software center could irk people who believe that free Linux distros need to keep everything "in the family," so to speak, but anything that simplifiesthe process of finding high-quality Linux software, free or paid, is fine by us.

Ubuntu 10.10 also has full multitouch support; to take advantage of it, you'll need hardware that can recognize four-finger touch or better. According to Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth, the goal is to have "touch-aware versions of all the major [Ubuntu] apps" ready for the release of Ubuntu 11.04 ("Natty Narwhal") in April.

There was one other thing we noticed, though given how recent the news is we don't blame Canonical for this: The Release Candidate of Ubuntu 10.10 that we looked at still came preinstalled with OpenOffice.org as the productivity app, rather than LibreOffice. (Yes, the apps are essentially identical, so it doesn't matter much either way, but we thought we'd point it out for the sake of completeness.)

Netbook Edition and Unity

If the desktop version of Ubuntu 10.10 was primarily an obligatory upgrade, Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition is anything but. This is a full-scale rethinking of the Ubuntu aesthetic so complete that to wrap it in the 10.10 blanket seems borderline disingenuous. It's almost a new operating system in and of itself.

At the heart of Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition is a new interface called Unity that yanks the most popular OS functions from the menus and places them in a launcher on the left side of the screen. Canonical had two excellent reasons for doing this. First, most netbooks have very narrow screens, so removing the top and bottom menu bars frees up valuable real-estate on tiny displays. Second, the larger icons make the programs even easier to access with inaccurate netbook pointers or, particularly, touch screens.

You haven't seen too many touch-screen netbooks? Neither have we—and that's precisely the point. Canonical is guessing that if netbooks are to have a future, it will be inextricably intertwined with the evolution of the tablet, for which touch is a vital component of interaction. Whether we start seeing touch-screen netbooks or more robustly powerful tablets, it's almost a given that the two fields will somehow merge—and Canonical is ready either way. (The advanced multitouch support will come in handy, too, no doubt.)

The choices of default launcher icons was excellent: Firefox, Empathy IM, Evolution e-mail, Rhythmbox, the Software Center, and so on, and of course you can add your own programs to it by firing them up, right-clicking on their icons, and then selecting "Keep in Launcher" (just like pinning items in Windows 7). Another nice inhabitant of the launcher is Workspaces, so you can set up "subdesktops" of programs without cluttering up your whole screen—just click the icon, then select any of four available workspaces to view just the programs you have running there. (This isn't quite as robust as what MeeGo for Netbooks does, but it's still nice.) Of course, icons for Files & Folders,Applications, and the Trash are here as well.

The downside of the Unity innovation is that, without the menus, the interaction changes with almost every program, and that might take some getting used to. Whereas the standard Applications menu groups programs by their type, in Netbook Edition the default is to show you icons for everything. You can, of course, choose to see just accessories or just games if you want, but the "links" for doing those are traditional text, not buttons, which spoils the cohesion of the design as a whole.

For Netbook Edition to completely succeed (especially as a touch-screen alternative), it needs to be absolutely consistent from start to finish. In Ubuntu 10.10, it's not quite there—but it's off to an amazing start. If Linux blew its one big chance at mainstream adoption by not having the user-friendliest interface imaginable just when the netbook craze hit a couple of years ago, Ubuntu Netbook Edition signals it's ready for a second chance. And as long as netbooks and tablets keep up their popularity, we wouldn't be at all surprised to see that happen.

Testing and Performance

We tried fresh installs of both the Desktop and Netbook Editions of Ubuntu 10.10, as well as an upgrade from 10.04 LTS to 10.10 on thesystem we constructed for less than $200 back in July. (See? We told you we were going to keep using it!) Because of an incompatibility with the USB installer app, we weren't able to test the Netbook Edition on an actual netbook, but did get it running on a Lenovo ThinkPad T400. We tested with the Release Candidate version of the new Ubuntu OS.

One of the earliest changes in this version of Ubuntu comes during the installation, which is even more straightforward and simplified than before. In addition to being informed that you'll need to meet certain requirements for the install procedure (do you have the necessary drive space, if you're using a laptop are you plugged in, and do you have an active Internet connection), you're also given the option to automatically download closed-source drivers that you may need for your hardware to optimally function. Being able to choose this at the same time you specify that you want to download softwareupdates during the installation is a tremendous, time-saving convenience.

Because the two versions of the software is so similar at its base, there was very little difference in the install time required for the Desktop and Netbook Editions. Both took us about 25-26 minutes to set up on the ThinkPad, including the time required for downloading updates during the installation; to fully update the software post-install, we needed another 20 minutes. The upgrade procedure was a bit slower—start to finish, software updates included, we needed about an hour, but it was a process far less painful than what we've experienced to last few times we've tried to upgrade an existing Windows installation.

Performance
We ran a few simple benchmark tests on our $200 Linux PC with a fully updated version of 10.04, and then after the 10.10 upgrade. Here's what we saw:

The results were more or less a wash in these first two tests, with both the Peacekeeper browser benchmark (using the latest version of Firefox) and the Handbrake video transcoding program displaying at best minor performance differences.

On our Geekbench processing test, 10.10 finished noticeably (if not depressingly) behind 10.04 at almost every turn, though most users probably won't notice much sluggishness. Interestingly, Maverick Meerkat came out just ahead of 10.04 on the Stream test, by about the same margin.

All told, performance between the two versions of the OS should be more or less identical on the same hardware.

Conclusion: Call for Unity

With regards to Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition, we really have to give Canonical credit: The company has come up with a winning solution to the difficult problem keeping Linux relevant in the age of netbooks and tablets. The Unity interface is one of the smartest and most intuitive we've seen yet, and is well poised to inspire users who never would have previously looked twice at something running an OS other than Windows. Netbook Edition has achieved that long-vaunted Linux goal of looking like something anyone can (and would want) to use in a way that even Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, despite its many improvements, couldn't.

If the news isn't quite as good for the Desktop Edition, it's only because comparable innovation hasn't stretched remotely as far. We understand that not every version of every operating system will be a radical rethink, and that's probably for the best. But given how far Ubuntu went with 10.04 LTS to make it an Everyman Linux, we hoped that 10.10 would continue that mission. Really, it hasn't. For those who particularly need or want the new features and better social integration, it's nice to have these things. But most Linux users don't care so much about them, and Ubuntu's revisions aren't yet at the point where everyday users will delete iTunes in fits of coruscating ecstasy. They need more, and Canonical still hasn't completely provided it.

Ultimately, Ubuntu 10.10 strikes us as a "gateway" release. Unless you're using a netbook, or other specialized hardware, it doesn't offer much on the surface that's new—but the tweaks and new offerings on hand suggest that great things are just around the corner. We can't wait to play with the Ubuntu One mobile and Windows clients to see how well they work—if, as these developments suggest, Ubuntu is on the cusp of cracking directly into the mobile and Microsoft spaces, we could be looking at the start of an exciting new way to package Linux for the masses. If the multitouch features are as cool advertised, future versions of Ubuntu well be even better positioned to make inroads into those ever-expanding markets.

We're not sure any of that will necessary make Canonical and Ubuntu household names, though it certainly won't hurt. But if the Netbook Edition gains the traction it's capable of, we wouldn't be surprised to hear people discuss "Ubuntu tablets" in the same breath as "Android tablets" and "iPads." It's still too early to know that for sure, but we wouldn't put the possibility for success in this area past an OS nicknamed "Maverick."