Ubuntu 9.10

The average Linux reviewer is more forgiving of Linux than commercial operating systems. But for this series of reviews, the tin-foil hat has been tossed in the drawer. This isn't a look at dTrace extensions, IP6 support, VPN connectivity, CUPS... none of that. This is a day-to-day machine which needs a day-to-day operating system. Something that works out of the box and lets me use it more than configuring it. To that end performance, software installation, upgrading, usability, simplicity... these are the targets of this prejudice. Today I'm a user, tomorrow... well, we'll see.

Ubuntu 9.10 is known as Karmic Koala and since the Koala is a bear, it's probably appropriate that it takes so long to hibernate and wake. A weird and inappropriate behaviour was the provision of a login box when waking the sleeping bear. It doesn't give me a login box when booting, why when waking? There's probably a setting for this (let's hope) but a sensible default would have been appropriate.

Suspension is another matter. As anyone who has seen a Koala will know, they're lazy creatures and suspending themselves is always a matter of demand rather than desire. But what happened while suspending is a mystery? The drive span about for a couple of minutes, then sat there powered on with a black powered screen, and nothing would bring it back to life. No key, no button, no gesture... I didn't try yelling. After giving up I hit the ubiquitous Ctrl + Alt + Del combination to discover what appeared to be a full boot? This could be my very old, extremely common Intel based P4M Toshiba Satellite? ... but that doesn't matter, if it doesn't work then I don't want to understand it.

When Koala's need to move, they can. Open Office 3.1 is surprisingly snappy, more so than Firefox which should surprise anybody paying attention. The overall performance is pretty sweet. On my ~5 year old Toshiba, OO is faster than on the dual Penryn Windows XP box... which is still slow, but incredibly impressive. My main beef with OO since the StarOffice days has been the really lousy performance.

The system menu is a nice collection of 'what you need' without the more prosaic extensions that have fouled previous Linux experiences. One wierdity is the 'About Gnome' option in the system menu? I can just see Mr J. Average asking 'What do ugly little green men have to do with my internet?'.