Of Ubuntu, ATi and GUI…
Posted by Prashanth | Filed under General, Headshot, Technology
Finally it has arrived. I am not talking about Ubuntu’s new version(that thing is a regular event…) but ATi’s new open source driver for Linux.
You people owning Nvidia cards were thinking too much of yourselves after using reverse engineered chipset drivers. It ain’t ATi’s fault if no one attempted reverse engineering on their drivers. Now when those dìçkhëádš finally realized that there is another GPU manufacturer as well, AMD/ATi made life easy for them!
AMD, since long has been a supporter of Open Source Technology. Now, it brings its tentacles of influence on ATi and finally ATi drivers are open sourced! Take that, you Nvidians..!! 
Now not only do I have a chipset with a higher price to performance ratio, but I also have cross platform support which is completely official.
Now what should that mean in the Language for Human Beings? Compiz Fusion runs on Linux machines running on ATi chipsets.Now roughly around the same day when the ATi guys released their driver, there was this new distro named Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon, which coincidentially supported that particular driver and even gave a GUI to download it. So since things couldn’t get any easier for me, I clicked on the download button. 8hrs later, I booted up the Ubuntu 7.10 Live CD to merrily perform the installation that apparently should have been fun and done in no time… Now let me get started with the Ubuntu 7.10 review…
Installation
23:30:00 - Popped in the installation-çûm-live cd and booted the PC
23:30:42 - Ubuntu splash screen appeared and the OS began to load.
23:42:00 - OS still loading (Is it installing itself or what..??)
23:50:42 - Finally stopped loading… Oops, it got stuck!
00:00:42 - (After some more waiting) Finally the desktop…
00:01:42 - Clicked on the install button after getting a feel of the mouse cursor.
00:02:42 - An install window finally opens… Forward > Forward > Waiting starts…
00:05:42 - Select your partitions menu comes up… (WTF! HTF am I supposed to resize my partitions..??)
00:06:42 - Idea! Perhaps in the system administration menu, there would be Gparted, Yes there is… now lemme get my partitions resized.
00:07:42 - “Your partition table has been altered, please restart the installation to load the new table, otherwise, the installer may cause errors.” A dialogue box said something in these lines… Grr…
00:15:42 - Finally started the installation after re-choosing the right partition.
00:20:42 - 30% done… (I use an AMD 64 3200+ with a gigabyte of RAM dammit..!!)
00:25:42 - 85% done… (Talk about consistency!)
00:30:42 - After failing to load the APT repositories, the installation is finally complete with me popping the cd out to look at my new installation…
The installation would take an average AMD 64 user with a gigabyte of RAM an hour to finish. Thats actually slower than Windows Vista, which (from a DVD) installed in 30 flat minutes. Compared to Ubuntu’s previous release, this installation was 42 minutes slower.
The New OS, Features, Interface, Thoughts and Rants…
After having a pathetic time during the installation, I expected more out of Freespire 1.0 than I expected out of this one… Anyway, I booted it up, closed my eyes, took a quick deep breath and I was asked to enter in the username and password. 15secs flat! This is the fastest speed any OS has clocked previously in the past… (I love using recursive descriptions, gives users a clearer view of the gravity of my thoughts!)
Ubuntu 7.10 is more responsive than I could ever think of anything to be… Now comes the slightly geeky part, installing proprietary drivers and codecs. Its dámn easy, just enable the repositories, reload the sources and then select the restricted drivers management option in the administrative menu. Although the repositories are supposed to load in by default during installation using APT, some configuration mish-mash didn’t allow it to happen.
As for the codecs, just click on any mp3 file and a dialogue box would prompt you to download a pack full of multimedia codecs for any kind of media that is in use…
Some people would want to have them installed by default, not a problem, there are other Ubuntu based distros for them, namely Ubuntu Studio and Linux Mint.
Gnome 2.2 is slicker than it previously was… Its uber-fast, extremely responsive, supports Compiz Fusion better. Unlike KDE, Gnome gets faster and faster with each new release. So upgrading your software would also speed up your system. Although it is a little more than plain vanilla when it comes to eye candy, but then what’s Compiz Fusion for..??
For the uninitiated, Compiz Fusion is a window manager that uses the rendering power of the graphics card to make windows do neat stuff… Now the catch here is, although Compiz Fusion is installed by default along with its plugins, XGL or AIXGL isn’t. Downloading that using APT is again a piece of cake.
After a small selection drive of themes, and enabling a few plugins, my desktop turns into an elegantly cool Vista Killer. With Flip, Expose, Coverflow, and Linux’s very own Expo, and cube switcher, Compiz Fusion is GUI redefined. Even after enabling transparency, and a bundle of 3D effects, I don’t feel sick of my PC the way I felt after using Vista for sometime… It feels as if my PC is built for such stuff and Ubuntu doesn’t regularly remind me that my PC’s base score is 2.5… That way, I continue to love my PC and get whatever I want out of it without any complaints!
Down below is a gallery of screenshots taken from my camera. I couldn’t figure out taking screenshots of the thing by software methods, neither did I have the time to research well for it… Also see the FPS benchmarker… Help would be appreciated. How did they take screenshots? By using a VM..??
Other Features
- NTFS and FAT32 writing is finally stable and safe to for multi-booters like me.
- Quick user switching is another Nifty feature which people owning cyber-cafes would love…
- Support for Printers and Wireless cards is said to be enhanced although I still have my Printer (HP Laserjet 1100) detected.
- The inbuilt searching and indexing system is very very cool… it completely indexed my 530GB disk space consisting of zillions of files.
- Support for KDElib files, to run KDE programs on Gnome is enhanced. It doesn’t get slow as it used to earlier. KDE proggies run just as fast as the native Gnome ones do…
Final Thoughts
A very good release indeed. With a few tweaks here and there especially in the installation part, Ubuntu would be one wild cat Leopard has to watch out for. I would be looking forward to its next release - Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Hardy Heron. 
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One Response to “Of Ubuntu, ATi and GUI…”
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Prashanth Says:
October 31st, 2007 at 1:08 amCorrection…
Nvidia is back up with its new 8800GT which released just yesterday…
Here …
