I have just decided to install Intrepid Ibex, the new version of Ubuntu. I am not sure what determined to do that. Probably because I had too much time :)
Given that it is an alpha version, I expected to find lots of bugs. Surprisingly enough, I had very few problems. On the down side there seem to be only a few new features for the desktop version … but I may be wrong and the features are well hidden and will become obvious later.
One of the first things I noticed in Evolution is that I can finally have my Exchange account enabled and the program does not freeze as soon as I try to compose an email. A few months ago, after a security upgrade, I was no longer able to keep my Exchange account enabled when I wanted to compose emails (from any type of account) and I found no workaround. Strangely enough the same version on the same distribution worked perfectly on a different computer. The sad news is that the current composer seems to have some kind of major bug which makes email writing a pain. See the images below:
The composer keeps going from one state to another every time when you press a key regardless whether you compose a plain text email or an HTML one. Being such an obvious bug, I would be surprised if it is not fixed in the next release.
A new feature of Evolution is the move to sqlite database for folder summaries. I did not notice big improvements in the search speed, but I did not have time to test it properly. During the initial migration I had problems due to the fact that I have over 2G of emails. Every time when I started the migration, Evolution allocated more and more memory till it crashed. The only way to complete the migration and access my emails was to move a big chunk of emails from .evolution folder and then after migration put them back. After that everything was fine, as evolution seems to build the missing summaries on fly.
Booting the system does not seem to be free of bugs. At times my computer refuses to start with the current kernel (2.6.26.5), but on the second or third attempt it does. A nice addition at booting time is the fact that now you know for which encrypted disk you have to enter the password. I have two encrypted disks in my computer, each with its own password, and in the past I had to know the order in which I have to enter the passwords. Now a clear message is displayed.
Currently it doesn’t seem to be possible to shut down the computer from Gnome. The only solution I found is to type halt in a terminal. I know that linux machines are well know for their massive uptimes, but removing the restart/halt option does not seem to be a good way to combat global warming (just kidding, there are shutdown and reboot buttons, it just that they don’t work yet).
The hyped new darker theme did not appeal to me at all so I switched back to my customised theme. There seem to be a new set of desktop icons which looks quite nice (but maybe I did not pay attention to them before). The flash plugin seems to bring down my Firefox more rarely, but it may be too early to know for sure. However, the other day I accessed a page with Flash (cannot remember which) and the plugin seemed ridiculously slow.
It’s too early to say whether Ubuntu Intrepid is a step forward, but I have to admit that for an alpha version is surprisingly robust. There are four days to go till the next alpha version is released. Let’s see what that version will bring.
Tags: installation, Ubuntu
