One of the most popular desktop Linux distributions, Ubuntu, received its second major update of the year last week, putting the latest version at 11.10. This marks the second release where the Canonical-developed Unity desktop environment is made default, but unlike the previous release, there is no pre-installed GNOME 2 “classic” environment here.
I posted an in-depth look at 11.04 at its release this past spring, my thoughts on it being for the most part positive. The biggest issues had to do with Unity, either with bugs or the tedium incurred when using it. Since that release, Canonical has fixed up those bugs and made the environment easier to use overall, while adding in some new functionality.
The built-in indexer/search has experienced an overhaul, with music being the major addition. Searching for a song or band name will bring it up in the search, at which point you can click on a song to launch it in your favorite audio player. If you have a rather large music collection, you’ll appreciate the music filters that the search will bring up. You’ll be able to sort by decade, genre and so forth – all from within a simple pop-up.
Another major addition to 11.10 is the long-awaited revamp of the Ubuntu Software Centre. It now looks and acts like an app store, which to me is a refreshing change over a normal repository. While most of the software found here is free as you’d expect, there is a growing number of commercial applications being made available all the time.
In addition to all this, the application switcher has also seen some improvement, making it easier to get from one app to another without having to use your mouse on the taskbar. Improvements have also been made to the system tray up top, especially with regards to social aspects of the OS. Noticing the differences if you don’t already use those features is a bit tough, though.
You can read a bit more about what’s new at the URL below, where there’s a quick video posted that does a good job of showing off the four new major features. I had planned to take 11.10 for a spin, but quite frankly it’s little different than 11.04. That’s not to say it’s not a good upgrade, but I hoped for a bit more. We’ll see where 12.04 takes us.