We’re only Human after all: a review of Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon

Visual effects

Ubuntu 7.10 is the first version of Ubuntu that ships with Compiz Fusion enabled by default on supported hardware. Compiz Fusion, which combines Compiz with certain components developed by the Beryl community, is a compositing window manager that adds a wide range of visual effects to Ubuntu's desktop environment. The default settings for Compiz enable basic effects—like window shadows and fading menus—that are subtle and unobtrusive. For more elaborate Compiz features, like wobbling windows, users can select the Extra option on the Visual Effects tab of the Appearance Preferences dialog.

Although the Visual Effects configuration tab allows users to select a general range of effects, it doesn't provide access to detailed configuration options. In order to get more control over Compiz settings, users will have to install the Advanced Desktop Effects Settings Utility from Ubuntu's package management system. When that utility is installed, a Custom option will appear on the Visual Effects tab of the Appearance Preferences Dialog along with a Preferences button. The user can customize Compiz effects by selecting Custom and clicking the Preferences dialog to launch the settings utility. The settings utility provides access to an assortment of additional Compiz plugins, including window tabbing, virtual desktop cubes, the shift and ring switchers, and transparency blurring. The settings utility can also be used to configure keyboard shortcuts and adjust effect settings.

Compiz can provide basic effects with decent performance even on mediocre embedded graphics hardware. When Compiz is disabled or not available, Ubuntu will use GNOME's Metacity window manager instead.

Compiz generally requires proprietary graphics drivers when used with ATI and NVidia cards. Those drivers can be installed automatically with Ubuntu's Restricted Driver Manager. On my primary test machine, a Dell 1420n with an Intel X3100 graphics component, Compiz does not work by default. The X3100 is apparently blacklisted by Compiz because compositing breaks video playback with the Intel driver used for the X3100.

I was able to circumvent the blacklist status by putting the text "SKIP_CHECKS=yes" in the file ~/.config/compiz/compiz-manager. Enabling Compiz on the 1420n causes video playback to fail consistently in Ubuntu's Totem video player. To work around that problem and make videos play while Compiz is running, I had to open the Multimedia Systems Selector (gstreamer-properties) tool and select "X Windows System (No Xv)" from the video output plugin list. Note that this extra step was only required because my graphics hardware is blacklisted by Compiz. Most users won't have video playback problems.

Bundled software

Ubuntu 7.10 uses the GNOME 2.20 desktop environment, which comes with a number of useful tools and utilities. File management is conducted with Nautilus, which comes close to feature parity with the file management capabilities of Windows, but is still lacking compared to the more feature-rich KDE file managers included in Kubuntu. Evolution, the GNOME e-mail program, includes extensive support for calendaring and task management, but is often criticized for poor IMAP performance. Evolution is the default e-mail client in Ubuntu 7.10, but the Thunderbird e-mail client is also available through Ubuntu's software repositories.

For instant messaging, Ubuntu 7.10 ships with Pidgin 2.2.1, which supports a multitude of popular protocols including AIM, MSN, Yahoo, IRC, and Jabber. Ubuntu does not come with a full-fledged IRC client, but the popular XChat IRC client is available from the software repositories.

Ubuntu provides adequate multimedia functionality and comes with Totem and Rhythmbox for video and audio playback. Although codecs for mainstream formats like MP3 and Xvid aren't included by default, Ubuntu's automated codec installer makes it easy to get support for most popular formats. DVD playback is still problematic, since the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it impossible to ship open source DVD decoding software in some regions. Ubuntu's libdvdread3 package comes with a shell script that the user can run to obtain DVD decoding software, assuming that the user is in a region where doing so is legal.

Ubuntu 7.10 comes with OpenOffice.org 2.3, a fully functional open source office suite with a word processing program, spreadsheet program, presentation program, and database program. OpenOffice.org uses the OpenDocument Format by default, but is largely interoperable with Microsoft Office because it provides adequate support for Microsoft's proprietary document formats. Although OpenOffice.org is probably the most feature-complete open source office suite for the Linux platform, it suffers from performance problems; many users will probably prefer GNOME's Abiword word processing program and the Gnumeric spreadsheet program, which are available from the repositories and also largely compatible with Microsoft Office formats.

Firefox customizations in Ubuntu

Ubuntu 7.10 includes a modified version of Firefox 2.0.0.8 which has some unique new improvements that increase integration with the Ubuntu platform. In Ubuntu 7.10, Firefox now has a Flash installation utility that will allow users to install Flash from Ubuntu's software repository. It also gives users the ability to choose between Adobe's closed-source Flash implementation or the new open-source Gnash plugin that replicates much of the functionality found in Flash. The Flash installer will only install Flash for the current user, so each user can individually choose whether to use Gnash or Adobe's Flash player.

Ubuntu 7.10 also includes an integrated Firefox extension installer. The new extension installer can be launched by clicking the Get Ubuntu Addons link on the Extensions page of the Firefox Addons dialog (right next to the Get Extensions link). The Install/Remove Extensions dialog looks identical to Ubuntu's Add/Remove Programs dialog. Users can select the checkbox next to extensions in the list and then click the Apply Changes button to install those extensions from Ubuntu's repositories. A number of popular extensions are currently available, including the Web Developer Toolbar, the Sage RSS reader, Tab Extensions, Greasemonkey, Beagle web page indexing, and ImageZoom. Ubuntu's software updater will handle updates for extensions that are installed with the new extension installer utility. Extensions that aren't supported by the utility can still be installed manually.

The new extension installer is a useful and effective tool for managing commonly-used extensions, but it still has a few deficiencies. Most notably, it doesn't provide built-in support for uninstalling extensions. An extension installed with the new extension installer cannot be uninstalled directly through Firefox or with the extension installer itself. The only way to remove extension packages added with the extension installer is to use Ubuntu's Add/Remove Software tool. The lack of support for uninstalling extensions directly through the extension installer is a bit inconvenient.

In Ubuntu 7.10, Firefox ships with its default theme, which means that it generally looks out of place with the rest of the environment. In the future, the visual appearance of Firefox 3 will be more consistent with the look and feel of the rest of the system, but the default theme of Firefox 2 fits poorly on most Linux systems. One of the packages offered by the new Firefox extension installer is an Ubuntu themes add-on, which installs several themes that improve Firefox's visual integration. The themes included in this package are the Human theme—which is designed to match Ubuntu's default icon theme—the Tangerine theme, and the Tango theme.