I recently got an iPhone and in true geek fashion I have been excitedly showing some of its fun features to anyone that will listen.  The one feature that seems to get a lot of reaction from people is the AppStore.  People love how you can simply select something and next thing you know it is installed and ready to go.  No download and unzip, no double click the icon, no restarting, no fuss.

None of them realize that there is an entire operating system that generally functions the same way albeit a lot less flashy.  The package managers in most modern Linux distributions work on the exact same principals.  Simply select an application you wish to install and it will take care of the rest.  Some distributions go even farther and have a bit friendlier interface to their repository such as Ubuntu’s Add/Remove programs.

Perhaps Ubuntu should take a few ques from Apple on this and improve the experience a bit more.  First of all the naming convention is boring and could easily be confused with the traditional Windows area which no one used.  Second they should provide screen shots of the applications. Generally before I install an application I want to know what the interface looks like.  Finally they should try and integrate some social capabilities.  This would allow users to read reviews from other users who may be like them.

These few changes could greatly improve the experience of adding applications.  It could also become a major “selling” point of the OS.

The upcoming Ubuntu release, Hardy Heron had its first beta release today and I decided to take it for a spin.  Overall there is a lot of improvements to the user experience and the product continues to grow at great rates.  As with any beta software try it at your own risk.   Here are some more thoughts form the first hour of use.

The good

• Smoother boot… the screens blend together with out the jarring resolution changes
• Love the new background used on the GDM and desktop.  I think this is the best one yet
• Theme in general is a lot more polished
• Love the package manager icon in the task bar that lets you know when it is being used.
• Firefox 3 is fantastic
• System Monitor looks 100x better
• Avant Window Navigator is in the Repository
• “Add to Panel” redesign is great

The bad

• A change in the Intel 3945 wireless driver prevented me from connecting to a hidden SSID network.  I had to set the SSID to visible to connect.  After the first connection I was able to turn it off again.
• 3D doesn’t seem to work as smooth on my 945 graphics
• The initial install had a large increase in idle memory footprint.  This is mostly because of several new features that are probably pretty handy for most users.  Idle was about 325Mbs. (I have eliminated several items I don’t use and it is down to 285Mb)

The ugly

•  Firefox 3 is blends with the operating system… I miss the old look and when a theme is available, I will be adding it.
• I would have liked to see more advancements in the general theme for this release but it just did not make it in time.

To join the community I decided I would submit something I have wanted for along time, “Ubuntu Lite”. Read more about it at Ubuntu Brainstorm idea#412: Ubuntu Lite and while you are there be sure to give it a vote ;)

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It boils down to a boot order issue where dbus and HAL are scheduled to boot at the same time. The problem with this is that often HAL requires dbus to be up and running. To figure out if this is the specific cause you can take a look at the /etc/rc2.d/ folder. You simply want to make sure HAL’s three digit prefix comes after dbus’s. For example “S12dbus” followed by “S13hal”. If it doesn’t simply execute something like the following command in the terminal. Make sure you change it to match your system.

If you have ran into this problem I hope this will help you get it fixed.

This is great news for all the Linux and Mac users out there!

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Here is a shot of my new computers layout. Nice and clean if you ask me.