Feature overview – Ubuntu ‘Lucid Lynx’ 10.04 Beta 1
We have already told you that since the release of ‘Lucid Lynx‘, Ubuntu is ‘human’ no more. However, seeing as the Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 1 has been rolled out, we are here to discuss the additional changes & feature upgrades it brings out.
Canonical planned to use kernel 2.6.32.9 in this version of Ubuntu, as it comes with a lot of enhancements in the file-systems, graphics and hardware supports. The GNOME desktop manager has also been upgraded to version 2.3, and the Kubuntu build uses KDE SC 4.4. According to the release notes, this build has removed HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) completely so as to speed-up booting time (and to resume suspended sessions). The boot procedure now has been given a new look and feel, like that of the Alpha builds, with a few more tweaks for performance.
Ubuntu Lucid has improved support for nVidia hardware and it sets the ‘Nouveau‘ video driver (a free and open source driver for nVidia Cards) as default, and uses kernel mode settings to enhance graphics performance and resolution detection. The proprietary nVidia graphics drivers are still available; in fact Ubuntu Lucid provides three updated driver packages and the ability to install them all together (though you can configure only one to use at a time).
The themes that we mentioned earlier are named Ambiance and Radiance. The wallpapers, and also the icon sets are totally refreshed. Canonical has done some serious tweaking with the notification area, which now gives more usability for session management, communication etc. as well as more consistency.
Other changes include: the default search engine in Mozilla is set to Yahoo! (replacing Google) and the Home Page is user selectable to be either Google or Yahoo! The MeMenu in the Panel, built upon the Gwibber project, now provides social networking integration with Twitter, identi.ca, Facebook etc. with a multi-columnar view to monitor multiple feeds simultaneously.