Posted by Migo on Apr 21st, 2007
A few days ago we promised we would give you a “first impressions” look at Feisty Fawn, the new version of Ubuntu Linux. Well, today that promise is fulfilled. I did a clean install of Feisty, old habits from Windows die hard. So, without further ado, I give you my first impressions of Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn).
The first thing I noticed was how much more smoothly the installation from the LiveCD went. Before, the installer was a little jerky, but it went as smoothly as possible this time. They’ve made other alterations to the installation process as well. Most noticeably the partition editor, I’m not sure if they’ve swapped programs or not, but it used to have a large color-coded diagram of your partitions where now there is only lists. It doesn’t really effect the overall installation process, it’s just not what I’m used to seeing during an Ubuntu install.
Start up and shut down seem to take a lot less time as well. The sounds for login/log off, however, may make you think you’re sound card isn’t configured correctly as they sound like horribly sped up versions of the sounds from the previous version. Also, there are a few plugins that I used regularly that are not yet available for the current version. Nothing I can’t work around or find a replacement for, but annoying nonetheless.
What it lacks in applets and such, it makes up for with being less resource intensive. I keep a resource manager applet in my panel at all times, it’s something I’ve done since I used Windows, and my resources aren’t nearly as taxed with this version of Ubuntu. This, in turn, keeps things running a little smoother and less jerky. I haven’t taxed the system too much yet, but I have yet to have it freeze or anything like that.
The codecs you’re used to grabbing are still available through Synaptics or apt-get, and they work just as well as they did in previous versions. Video playback, mp3 support, Windows media formats, and other proprietary formats all seems to run flawlessly. The same with Flash support through Firefox, and video playback through Firefox (which I tend not to do).
I haven’t messed around with Compiz or Beryl, but I may write about them at some point as well. Beryl, is not installed by default, which a lot of people were upset about. However, Compiz is installed but not initialized by default. This means you’ll be able to have some more eye candy available for your desktop with very minimal work.
All in all, this is appears to be a very good version at first glance and I’m fairly hard pressed to find many things that are wrong with it straight out of the box. Then again, I’m fairly easy to get along with as I don’t get into a lot of the eye candy, computer gaming, etc. So, I probably shoul probably say that, according to my review, if you use your computer as an actual tool Ubuntu 7.04 is a good choice and a great job by the folks at Canonical.
Oh, and as it turns out, I’ve managed to find out the new versions name before Feisty came out. For those of you interested in finding out about 7.10 before it gets too public, the name is Gutsy Gibbon, according to Mark Shuttleworth. I don’t know about you, but I tend to believe to person who began the distribution.
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Devin de Gruyl
April 22, 2007 at 11:23 am
One thing about the preinstalled Compiz that new upgraders might want to know about is that it’s only a very basic version of the eye candy. Really, all it does is the wobbly-window thing and the desktop cube. If you want the other features and configuration options, you’ll have to enable the “multiverse” repository and install Beryl, which is slightly less stable than Compiz (but not so much that most users would notice, at least).
Overall I’m very happy with Feisty so far. The system just feels a lot more stable than Edgy or even Dapper, and things that you expect to Just Work, do in fact Just Work. This will be a great opportunity for someone to try and lure his or her Windows-using friends into trying something different.
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