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Gutsy Gibbon is declared and its about to hit the road in couple of weeks. I was excited by the news of new Ubuntu. Breezy was good but I was having few issues with it. Many of those got fixed in Feisty. To quote a few issues were wireless connectivity, widescreen monitor drivers for specific nVidia chipsets etc.

Finally another version is on the verge of a release and I'm quite sure that, this release must be better than ever. Ubuntu 7.10 is declared and its code name is 'Gutsy Gibbon'. For the developers and geeks who can't wait for couple of weeks, there is a beta version download available which can be upgraded later on. Those can't wait another second on the post please proceed here for download.

So what's new in this release? (Features I liked the most are listed here)

• GNOME 2.20
  GNOME is coming reloaded with lots of features. A detailed description of all the features which will be improved / introduced can be found here.
• Dynamic screen configuration for nVidia, ATI etc. chipsets. This was one of the features where Linux lacks a lot than Windows. I hate to compare Linux features with Windows yard-stick but sometimes it becomes necessary.
• Automatic printer configuration! I remember spending about an hour in just getting one printout on Kubuntu. This seems to be pretty nice if this works as expected.

Apart from the tiny list mentioned above there are loads of features available in GNOME new release. Go checkout all of them and start writing your precious reviews about the improvements or bugs in the system. I would be hunting blogosphere for reviews related to gutsy.

Thank you very much Ubuntu team for the hard work and prompt releases. Please keep the good work going as you always did!

I have been using Kubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) from past month and it was unbelievable experience. I have used Windows for using Lotus Notes and Google Talk only. KDE is becoming better day by day. WPA integration in Kubuntu with support for latest drivers for NVidia was a great plus in Feisty release.
I think, if I could run Google Talk somehow in Linux then that will be last nail in my Windows installation and the next day I will format my hard drive to have only one OS. (No need to mention that will be Kubuntu!)

Before that happens, I have one more feature request for Kubuntu / Ubuntu. I have spent lots of time in customizing my installation. Drivers, Beryl, Themes, Development programs and other small stuff. All the programs were installed on ad-hoc basis or when I needed them. I don't want to go through the same cycle again. It will be great to have installation persistence utility. This utility should do following:

• Remember all the package names which I installed using apt. This should be fairly small file having hundreds of entries of softwares.
• I don't want to take backup of installed packages /usr or /opt on my external hard drives etc. because if next time I go for 64 bit installation (currently I have 32 bit installation) then all my backup won't work.
• When next time, I install a fresh system, I should be able to give this configuration file generated by installation persistence utility. The utility should be intelligent enough to pull all the packages to their latest version and make my installation up-to-date. This way, I don't need to repeat the same exercise I did in the last installation.

I know that, with few shell scripts that would have been easily possible, but I don't want to write a custom shell script for that. I want this should be part of my Ubuntu installation. This way, I don't need to port my shell scripts.

Once the basic infrastructure is in place, I would love to see more features like migration of documents and data files. Applying desktop and theme settings on fresh desktop etc. This way, the distribution installation and switches will become very simple.

Thank you Kubuntu!

The second huddle in the way to enjoy Kubuntu and my Laptop, WPA support for my home wireless LAN. Finally, I could get a workaround with it by installing the proper driver. You can find the drivers here. There is a great Install guide which helps to get most out of it.

Enjoy Wi-Fi on Kubuntu.

Yesterday, on first day of vacation, I installed Kubuntu Feisty Fawn release. This time, I wanted to try something else than Ubuntu. I faced lots of usability issues with Ubuntu. It had some problems in auto detecting my network settings. I use my laptop in various network environments, office, home and public places. I had to every time select the proper network adapter to get running. I never figured out whether there is some other way to do things but out-of-box configuration didn't allow that. There were similar problem on other grounds too.

Kubuntu was amazing in these regards, I plugged my WD passport drive and immediately it shown me the dialog (like windows ) to open or view pictures. I liked the way they picked up good features of windows. When I plugged in my network cable, it automatically configured itself to proper device and I had to do nothing except waiting for couple of seconds! So my first impressions of Kubuntu are really good!

I faced only one issue with Kubuntu, getting 1440x990 resolution my Dell Latitude D620. Laptop configuration is as follows:
* Core 2 Duo T7200 CPU (2 64-bit 2.00 GHz processors)
* WXGA+ screen, 1440*900
* NVidia Quadro 110M Turbo Cache
* 1GB RAM
* Integrated bluetooth, usual ports and networking (Wi-Fi etc.)

The problem I faced was, NVidia Quadro 110M has 64 MB onboard memory and it can use shared memory upto 256 MB. Somehow the out-of-box driver with Kubuntu was not able to allocated shared memory which was forcing me to use lower resolution than 1440x900. I hate that resolution as there comes some weird shadow effect around text characters and even the desktop seems to be skewed a little bit.

I was also facing problem in having widescreen display and was forced to use 4:3 display. I tried to google for the problem but no luck there too. I searched for Adept Installer for "nvidia" and I could see two packages in the "System" category.

I selected the second binary driver (as shown in the image) and applied the changes. Later, I restarted the X-Server by (Ctrl+Alt+Bksp) and I could see the NVidia logo which was sign that the driver is in action. After login, I could go to "System Settings" and in administrator mode, I set my monitor to be "16:9". Then I restarted the X server again. Later I could set the proper resolution to 1440x900 and it needed another restart of X server.

There might be some optimal way of doing that in one restart (e.g. editing the xorg.conf file manually) but I prefer to use wizards whenever possible to avoid syntax errors in the configuration files.

Finally I can use my laptop in 1440x900 resolution.