I upgraded the netbook AND the laptop to Ubuntu 10.10, Maverick Meerkat, today. The upgrades were 100% uneventful. Answer about three questions during the process, reboot when it tells you, then you're done. Easy peasy!
Image #1: Netbook Edition upgrade a runnin'
Image #2: I didn't read the release notes or any documentation, so I was surprised at the dramatic change in the Netbook Edition desktop. It's called the "Unity Interface." At first I thought, "I hate this shit", but after a few minutes I was floored at how great it is. I love it! That fancy and friendly dock on the left won't yet hide, but auto-hide is in the works in a future update. My desktop is so dark that it blends right into the blog background. If you click the image, you can see it better over on flickr.
Image #3: These two sofa sloths watched me trying out the upgrade. I pointed the netbook webcam at them just after the upgrade and snapped the pic using the Cheese app.
Fuenteovejuna did it 
Hell ya, the interface looks amazing!
It's cool. When an application wants your attention, its icon jiggles slightly in the dock on the left. It made me laugh the first time I saw it.
That Unity Interface looks very good.For the rest It's like sitting behind my own desktop :)Always running the latest Ubuntu, it's so easy to handle! :yes: I even found a nice office app to get straight into my Google Docs. 😀
Unity is a bit alien to me, still like the pure Gnome better.
Originally posted by vladimirg:
That's Lucy. She's been in the family for six years now.Originally posted by vladimirg:
On the netbook remix, the default taskbar was on the top, now it's mostly on the side. When you maximize something on the Unity desktop, it now merges up into the top bar to increase available vertical screen space. It's easier to see than describe, so I should do a screenshot of it.
My friends always look strange at me when they see I keep my taskbar on top 😀 Well, we see I'm not the only one. Is it a default?
I didn't know you have a dog (if is it yours? 🙂 )
you have been carrying that wallpaper for quiet some time now 🙂 :up:good to know the upgrade went off smoothly for you 🙂
Originally posted by slackwrdave:
:up:wow the picture quality of your webcam is pretty good 🙂
but I hear pidgin is far more secure than empathy 😛
Originally posted by decodedthought:
Thanks. It does do quite well. Amazing for a cheap-o Linux netbook. The video calls using the Pidgin messenger work quite well except for the audio. If I don't slip on a headset, the audio does a "woop woop" from a feedback loop.
BTW I see you have Chromium installed, do you like it? I do.I'm testing Opera 11 on both Windows and Ubuntu with various results.By the time it all works well with more extentions I think it will become again my favorite browser 🙂
Originally posted by slackwrdave:
:lol:have you tried voice calls using empathy ?
Originally posted by decodedthought:
You da man! It has indeed been around awhile. I still have one backup wallpaper that dates back to Windows 95! I still have e-mails from back then, too. 🙂
Never have. I've used so many messengers (Psi, Gajim, others) over the years that I hesitate to go into yet another one, but I hear good things about Empathy.
Originally posted by JanndeSmit:
VERY much! It's light as a feather, and I like the Spartan interface. No distractions. I just wish the license were totally GPL. It's close, and some of it is. I don't totally pick software because of licensing, but it is a factor. "Open source" means little without a decent license to back it up. I carve out an exception for proprietary Opera because I've used it for many years and there's a sweetness to what they do.Another proprietary exception back when I was leaving Windows was the Pegasus e-mail program. Even though it was closed source and restricted license, I used it because I liked the guy who owned/developed it.
Originally posted by decodedthought:
I'm not sure but Pidgin has a few privacy things I like. You can use it with GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) for heavy-duty encryption. It also has built-in Pidgin encryption if you so choose, or you can use it with OTR (Off the Record) messaging.All of the above work with any protocol Pidgin can do, i.e. ICQ, Yahoo, AIM, Jabber (XMPP), and others. It will make you feel like a secret agent. :sherlock:
I upgraded to UNE 10.10 2 weeks or so ago. The problem is getting my windows-restricted Blackberry to tether on Ubuntu. It won't let me use "Phone as Modem". I've tried blueman with PDAnet (a BlackBerry app) and it wouldn't work. I've tried PDAnet and Gnome PPP – it still wouldn't work. I can't try the Tether app as it's Windows-restricted. (I paid 50 bucks for it, too.) Too bad they're not going to make a Linix program. 😦 In the meantime, I'll stick with Windows 7. Now I have to ACTUALLY use anti-virus, etc on it. XD
Originally posted by JoshuaPhelps:
Yeah, if I already had the 'Berry, I'd probably boot Windows if it meant getting online or not.Originally posted by JoshuaPhelps:
I *had* this friend on myopera who would brag about all the support apps he used with Windows. Things like "Smoker" (I dunno, WTF?), registry do-hickeys, optimizers, firewall, anti-virus, spyware cleaner, all kinds of things. I knew he kept bringing all these things up to show that he knew how to fuck with Windows, but one day I messed up and left a comment like: "How many crutches does that OS need to walk on?" He gave me the mega kick/ban for that one. 😀 Continuing with Windows fun: there's a TV commercial that tries to get you to whip out a credit card and pay for Windows de-sucking software that you could download for free anyway. The URL is maybe cleanmypc.com. They talk about one of the symptoms of an infected PC is that it takes more than 3 seconds to download your e-mail. We all know that depends on whether you have broadband or dialup (heaven forbid, NetZero) and how many porn pics your friends are e-mailing you that day. :whistle: I'm just up half the night and having fun.
Yes, you need a lot of stuff to keep Windows as clean as possible and keep it running. You better get to the startup registry and turn off as much as as possible with starting Windows :headbang: Starting up all that shit you don't need causes most problems, your computer gets filthy before you can wink an eye. 😆 You will spend more time on cleaning than working. :awww:
Originally posted by JanndeSmit:
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. It's "msconfig", I think. I've lost my knowledge of Windows over the years, but I remember doing that with my mom's PC.I got my mom a bargain-basement cheapie PC, and on those machines Windows comes with a ton of crapware. Trimming down the start-up stuff helped a lot. I think I hate McAfee the most in this department. I've never seen such nagging. You pay for an operating system that continues to ask you to whip out a credit card.My Debian machine starts up and shuts down so fast it's almost weird. There was some update a few months ago that took the shutdown time down to about 2 seconds. Ka-whump, and it's off.
Originally posted by slackwrdave:
Starting my Ubuntu takes awhile because of the dual boot, but closing down everytime brightens my day 🙂
Originally posted by JanndeSmit:
😆 so true !
Originally posted by JoshuaPhelps:
Hmmmm! Sounds like you go to fun places sometimes. 😀 I'm just playin'. I'm a freak about constantly wiping cookies, history, etc. I hope to keep 'em guessing.
Originally posted by JoshuaPhelps:
That's a standard, yes :up: Firefox is still the best to configure this as a default I think.CCleaner is fast and reliable :)Keep your browsers clean.
Originally posted by slackwrdave:
Oh. My. God! I heard of that! D: When I was watching their commercial, I was thinking in my head "Huh, I guess they think the technically-inclined folks are imbeciles and would actually pay to use a POS software that probably is infected with adware/spyware/viruses/etc…". If those folks have a problem with their Windows-based machines, switch to Ubuntu Linux or have a relative who is good with computers (Such as, um, me. :]) fix it for them.Originally posted by JanndeSmit:
Yea, that's what I do. 😀 The only things that start up is Comodo Firewall, Avast Anti-Virus, and the Spybot Search & Destroy Tea-timer app. It starts up pretty fast. EDIT: I also turn off some services that I do not use.I always clean my history, cookies, etc with CCleaner (Also known as Crap Cleaner), then I use the default Disk Cleaner, and every week I defragment the computer with Auslogics Disk Defrag or Iobit Smart Defrag.If I need to remove some empty registry entries, I use Iobit toolbox and clean it and use the registry cleaner in CCleaner. :)Oh, and I always delete my history with the secure clean option "on".
I don't use Firefox all that much. Opera is my main browser. :)Originally posted by slackwrdave:
I get over-the-top paranoid about erasing my history sometimes. I even run PeerBlock to block government IP's.
Originally posted by JoshuaPhelps:
Mind many of the private corporations, too, though it would be harder to know and be specific about those. They ring Washington DC like termites sucking off of the fat queen. In many places around DC, your GPS will malfunction wildly.
Oh damn!