Ubuntu's New 'Gutsy Gibbon' Brings Linux Out of the Jungle

By Scott Gilbertson
WIRED
10.18.07 | 12:00 AM

On Thursday, Canonical, the London-based company which acts as Ubuntu's commercial sponsor, released version 7.10 of the software. This latest release, dubbed "Gutsy Gibbon," proves that Ubuntu Linux can compete with and, in some cases, trump Windows as an everyday desktop system when it comes to pure usability.http://www.wired.com/software/softwarereviews/news/2007/10/ubuntu_gutsy

I'm really at a loss here with these new releases.

Mandrake wasn't my first foray into Linux but it was the first real easy to use desktop system for me. When Novell made Suse freely available I tried it and loved it. Currently I've been using Ubuntu Feisty and it just works. I spend less time maintaining Ubuntu than Windows XP.

I'm tempted to go back and try Mandriva. If not that maybe I'll just go BSD all the way. :cool:

I was ecstatic to see 7.10 come out today as I have been trying to run Feisty on a wide screen monitor and it really does not like it.

7.10 is stated as having far broader hardware and monitor support so I am in the middle of an in-place upgrade as I type this. Hopefully it works.

I'm running a wide screen monitor and an HD projector off a GT7800 card on Feisty (64 bit). I'm using the Nvidia drivers installed via the restricted drivers manager. What I found is that there is an Nvidia control panel, similar to the one in Windows that made setup quite easy.

The catch is that it isn't well documented where it is and it isn't on any menu. You have to launch it from the command line. I can't remember the exact name of the utility but if you type nv[TAB][TAB] it will come up (nvidiasetup or something). You have to run it as root so you need to use gksudo to launch it.

I've heard that Gutsy is supposed to have a similar utility now. I may give it a go but right now my install AINTBROKE so I'm no rush to fix it. ;)

I just updated a box I use at work from Feisty to Gutsy by pushing the big update button that appeared on the regular updates program. It took a couple of hours including downloading almost 1gig of files.

It all seems to have gone very smoothly. It took about four mouse clicks with the last one being a reboot.

My important cron job is still running when it's supposed to. :)

I did the same on a work desktop machine. Had one minor glitch with the Kmenu settings (I use Kubuntu) but that was easily resolved.

Maybe it's just in my head but Gutsy seems a wee bit faster than Feisty.

Updated, from feisty to gutsy, the home box recently. Again about four mouse clicks. This box is a 64bit AMD and runs 64bit linux.

A couple of minor issues.

Some flash videos stopped playing. Getting flash to work on Feisty 64bit was an issue. About: plugins showed that I now had flash and gnash installed. With synaptic package manager I removed both and reinstalled Flash. That worked fine.

Audio on one user stopped working. PCM was muted on the mixer.

Firefox seemed awfully slow. Found a suggestion to change network.dns.disableIPV6 from false to true in about:config. Made a huge difference in speed. I have no idea why.

Best looking, most usable desktop I've ever used.

I have been using Ubuntu since Dapper, and have found Gutsy to be the best one yet. There is a memory leak with the newest nVidia drivers, but that one isn't the Ubuntu dev's fault. I have been using the 64bit OS since Edgy and it has been pretty smooth sailing.