Monday, April 23, 2007

Feeling Feisty?

About 14 months ago I switched to Ubuntu Linux (from Gentoo). It's been a good ride. Dapper Drake was awesome (my mom still uses it), Edgy Eft was a good upgrade, and now the Feisty Fawn has arrived.

Cool stuff:
  • New Tomboy ;-)
  • Installer offers to migrate settings from Windows, if you have it installed.
  • Fresh install. Double-click latest Naruto ep. Totem opens, tells me it can't decode divx/xvid/whatever, but it thinks I should install some codec packages, and after clicking OK a few times the packages are installed and the video starts playing. I didn't have to restart Totem (or my machine, of course) or even press the play button again. It was awesome.
  • Similarly, getting desktop effects and proprietary video drivers going was just a few clicks; no manually editing configuration files. Of course, this doesn't change the fact that my video card is too slow for such things.
  • Feels faster.
  • All the other great improvements moving from GNOME 2.16 -> 2.18.
  • Magnatune and Jamendo available directly from Rhythmbox. That means free access to ~35,000 streaming tunes.
  • Lots of French hip hop available from Jamendo.
Uncool stuff:
  • Migration assistant didn't offer to bring over my Firefox settings from Windows. I had to do it manually. :-(
  • When I tried to play MP3s and AACs from Rhythmbox it just errored out. It should be as friendly as totem. I had to install -good, -bad, and -ugly all on my own.
  • Jamendo and Magnatune won't work right now for some reason...must be camera shy, since I only brought up Rhythmbox to take a screenshot.
  • Buying tunes from Magnatune requires too many steps and interaction with three separate apps.
  • Lots of French hip hop available from Jamendo. ;-)
Token boring screenshot:

Token spinning cube screenshot:

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