Making the Evolutionary Leap from Meerkat to Narwhal

Linux basic command - I’m very happy with Ubuntu as a desktop operating system. I’ve used it for years with no significant issues. In fact, Ubuntu excels where other disributions fail. Even Linux arch rival Windows, is often left in the last century compared to the innovations perpetrated by the Canonical group. But what about Natty Narwhal? Is the hype worth the effort? I’d have to say, “Yes.” Although, I’m not 100 percent sold on Unity, I’m impressed with its boot speed, shutdown speed, and snappy performance. Oh, and there’s that little matter of The Launcher.
This article describes my personal experiences with upgrading Ubuntu 10.10 to Ubuntu 11.04 via the Ubuntu automatic notification and online update method.
The Upgrade Process

Last week, upon logging into my faithful workstation, I found what I thought was the standard applications upgrade screen. Thanks to this column, I have dozens more applications on my workstation than the normal Linux geek and therefore see, on what seems like a daily basis, notifications that one or more applications need an upgrade. And, of course, I comply with no complaint*.

But, this day was different. This time the prompt read, “Welcome to Ubuntu 11.04 ‘Natty Narwhal.’ See Figure 1. I have never seen this type of notification before that notified me of a possible version upgrade**.

Figure 1: The Natty Narwhal Upgrade Announcement

Fedora 14 review

Fedora 14 review - Fedora is a traditionalist distribution. That means its packages and desktop are as close to the default as you might expect from a distribution that isn't Gentoo.

Its KDE desktop is particularly interesting, because there are none of the niceties like a customised menu or re-themed panel that you'd expect from a more KDE-centric distribution. You get the original KDE experience, which isn't always a great thing.

If you're coming from the world of Windows, KDE isn't all that easy to pick up. It may look familiar, with a launch menu, widgets and virtual desktops, but it takes some serious re-adjustments.

The system control panel, for example, is a mess of OS X backwards/forwards panels, hidden windows and dozens of checkboxes. Fedora makes no attempt to tame this complexity, whereas openSUSE brushes over some of these cracks with its own configuration panels.

The default desktop environment is equally uncompromising. Most users will only persevere with this desktop if they know what to expect.

Default values

On the desktop, Plasma is unadulterated – you get just the basic file widget. This is the virtual representation of what's in your 'Desktop' folder, or any other folder you'd like it to point at.

This is one of the big ideas behind what KDE used to call the Plasma desktop – a brave attempt to tie the internet and the world of social networking to your OS.

10 best Linux distros for 2011

Linux Mint 11: The best distro for your desktop

Hardware compatibility, ease of use, the size of a software repository. These three attributes are unique to each Linux distribution. But at the same time, each Linux distribution is at liberty to take and mix whatever it wants from any other.

This creates a rather unique situation, where good ideas quickly spread, and bad ones fail. And as a result, there are dozens of distribution updates each month, hundreds each year, in a race to leap-frog each other in the race to the top of the DistroWatch.com charts.

This is why the answer to the question of which distribution is best for you changes with the tides, and why we're keen to keep on top of distribution developments.

What follows are our recommendations, updated for this year, and split by typical users. Try them yourself. They're all free.