Wednesday 1 May 2013

Mini review of Ubuntu 13.04

Alright,currently I am using Ubuntu 12.04 as my main Linux distribution.12.04 was really good,even the graphics drivers worked correctly,it is fast and it is still working without hiccups.I have tested Ubuntu 12.10 but it failed because it had 2 bugs:

1)It sucked up my computers resources.Honestly,after 5-10 minutes of uptime my laptop became sluggish as hell.But then I thought,hey maybe it will get fixed if I just installed the graphics drivers,since the interface is all 3d and stuff,however...

2)...the drivers were not working.Whatever I did the drivers just refused to work.Probably because my laptop has Intel/ati hybrid graphics,which is a pretty rare combination.This is more the fault of the graphics card manufacturer since they are the ones making the drivers.The open source drivers were just too slow so the system was sluggish.

And now I am testing Ubuntu 13.04.And how is it?Well it is definitely an improvement over Ubuntu 12.10 because the resource bug was fixed.Now it uses marginally more resources than Ubuntu 12.04 did.The graphics drivers are still not working,but it is almost a non issue right now because the system is usable now.When I compare the user interfaces of 12.04 and 13.04 I can just say wow.Because the GUI is so much better.Even compared to 12.10 the GUI is better because 13.04 now has a new set of beautiful icons and the launcher was reworked,not in the way the launcher looks,but in the way it works.One little minus is that the workspaces now are turned off by default.

Also 13.04 now has a new and sleek updater.It is just there you barely notice it.If you just want to install your updates,you can.If you want to view all the little details about your updates,yes you can.

One bad thing I have noticed is that my laptop has shut down because of overheating while I was using Ubuntu 13.04.My laptop may have a hardware error,but it is enough to make me suspicious.This might be also because of the graphics drivers.Who knows,maybe it is just a random occurrence,it did not happen that often.

So to sum it up:
Pluses:
-many glitches fixed
-a new beautiful and even easier to use GUI
-many small improvements in general
-a push in the right direction
Minuses:
-workspaces turned off by default
-the whole thing still feels like "Work in progress" because it still has some glitches
-amazon searches are still present in dash.

So as you can see I have mostly just compared Ubuntu 12.04,12.10 and  13.04.
I mean I could have compared it to Windows 7 as well but naah.Both Windows and Linux have their pros and cons but I simply think Linux is way better than Windows,especially Windows 8.
So is 13.04 better than 12.04?
Maybe.
Will i switch to 13.04 as my main distribution?Maybe but probably not in the next few months.

What if I won't switch to 13.04 at all?
I will probably wait for 13.10 or 14.04(I hope not,that would be a veery long wait) or just switch to another Linux distribution.I mean Ubuntu is a fantastic Linux distribution,but I wouldn't be surprised if I found a Linux distribution I would like even more.I mean there are more  than 700 Linux distributions out there.Anyhow there is actually a list of reasons why I am on Ubuntu.

If only canonical would make better business decisions.