my opinion on todays trusty tahr build

most of ubuntu users are pretty much awaiting the launch of ubuntu 14.04 also called trusty tahr. so i thought why not report the progress the ubuntu team is making in building the tahr.

i downloaded the daily build today and gave it a try. booting was fairly quick. actually it was faster than ubuntu 13.10 in my laptop. of course my ubuntu 13.10 installation has software installed and but still it felt faster than 13.10. no issues whatsoever with the build for me. yes, i am using an i3 laptop with intel hd as my only gpu. so there is almost no scope of any problem at all with intel providing the latest drivers to keep their linux customers happy. but still if i am correct there are no issues with any graphics cards after 13.10(i could be wrong). so folks if you have any other graphics card, don't ask me because i don't have the hardware to test.

coming to the review, ubuntu seems to be rock solid in this stage. no crash or system warning. it looks pretty much like ubuntu 13.10. the strange thing is that in system details, it shows that it is ubuntu 13.10. the wallpapers are also the same. the icon theme is the same. i was really expecting that ubuntu would adopt the ubuntu touch icon theme for tahr. since the true convergence and unity 8 is postponed, so is the convergence of the icon theme, i suppose.

there is a new web browser. probably the browser from ubuntu touch. it is simple and neat. the barebones of this browser is a trouble for me. i have a proxified internet service and the browser would not work under proxy. guess what there is no settings option anywhere. and it truly is optimized for touch screen interface. not at all comfortable and the absence of indication of tabs is just frustrating. more clicks means more headache. thank god ubuntu has also provided with the firefox browser. i think that ubuntu developers should realize that should not experiment with major ui changes in an lts version. an lts version is what every user in the world would upgrade to and so, any changes should be delayed for the next release. else, ubuntu should provide a community release which faithful ubuntu users would test and comment.

i did have a problem with proxified networks in ubuntu a lot. when i installed fedora, empathy would work under a proxy for google accounts. but empathy never worked for me in ubuntu. this has continued into tahr. please do correct it ubuntu developers.

interesting addition is the presence of hibernation in ubuntu. hibernation is back in ubuntu. i myself do not prefer hibernation because ubuntu boots quickly and i do have the time to spare and i also have the patience to save my work. but still ubuntu is now at par with the rivals.

i have also noticed that the top command shows cpu usage is lower but the ram usage was noticeably higher than that of ubuntu 13.10. i think that people have bigger rams but smaller processors. for example intel atom notebook today comes with 2gb ram which is good but processor is poor. so, to optimize it even for the smallest of hardware, they must have did that. positive move i should say.

it comes with the newer builds of libre office which look the same to me. the rest is the same. nothing new. you can expect ubuntu 14.04 to be rock solid stable version of the ubuntu we are used to with the addition of a ubuntu touch browser that is not helpful at all.

i wish that ubuntu provides attention to supporting proxy in some applications as universities tend to have proxified networks and that is where students are usually obliged to have ubuntu for programming.

i also wish that ubuntu has a cool startup animation as shown in the examples directory. today's animation is already outdated and even ubuntu gnome, kubuntu and all others have made some lively animations.

i wish that ubuntu updates software center to have an option of sorting results by mostly downloaded and it would be the default way of sorting applications.

i wish the ubuntu developers all the very best to make this release successful

A flaming hot laptop

i was bored with looking at my laptop looking stock. My friends have some alienware laptops. of course there is a white sony, an acer, macbook which look cool.  i too wanted to have something that could turn everybodys head. mostly i wanted something that the alienware people would turn around to see. i had a black fujitsu lh531 laptop. it is not so bad looking. it has some silver lining and the logo is chrome. but still not good enough to convince me that my laptop is in the same league as alienware. so here is what i did.

firstly i tried on making design with a pencil. the graphite looks awesome on black laptops. everyone really admired it. it gives a mean stance to the laptop. but within a week of usage, it slowly got rubbed off or spread to the surroundings. time to use the eraser. but then i got some paint thinner and wiped it and it was gone in a stroke.

to get a more permanent application, i tried out nail polish. since i had no experience with nail polish, i did not realize the fact that nail polish is semitransparent. that is when i painted red nail polish on the black laptop, it just looked darker black. i wanted something that made my laptop look more conspicuous.

now comes the conspicuity tape. i first thought of spray painting but was more frightened that things may go irreversibly wrong. so i sticked to the paln of conspicuity tape. look at the how it looks now.

 

i know it is not such a good job. but i will refine the artwork slowly. drop in any comments on how it looks.