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Ubuntu 7.10 - Gutsy Gibbon

Posted by ePlus on 23 October, 2007 at 22:21 pm

So I have finally jumped on the Ubuntu bandwagon and what can I say, I am happy!

I have had *nix experience in the past so this isn’t a new thing for me, I have used FreeBSD, SuSE, Fedora and a couple of other nix based operating systems, but I can say that I am very pleased and impressed by the latest release of Ubuntu. It is more stable, much more refined and looks good in small details too and a lot of things work!

As I am a perfectionist and nitpick at everything and I like to tweak and optimize whatever piece of software and hardware I have I have some high standards, but this is what has impressed me in Ubuntu this time compared to the last release I tried which was 6.something:

  • Fonts look natural. Maybe it was just me that didn’t got used to this “ClearType” technology but now the fonts on the system look good and there is no need to go hacking at them trying to find the alternatives that are used in Windows
  • My USB headset works! A not so well known headset USB brand works straight off by just plugging it in and selecting which device to output the sound in the preferences on Ubuntu and that’s that! Very pleased and impressed
  • Which brings me to the next step, Skype works too! So there is no need to have two different clients as I used to have on Windows (MSN and Yahoo) I now have Pidgin for IM and Skype for chatting! All good so far
  • All the hardware got detected automatically nothing to hack and no config files to play around with this time
  • Nvidia card got noticed without a glitch and Ubuntu recommended that it is best to download the (latest) drivers for it and enable the nice and impressive visual effects. I now have windows flying around from all over the place.
  • No slowdown what so ever! I am here 20 tabs open in Firefox, installing something via apt-get in console, listening to music on a different desk and STILL no slow down, it’s all good!

    • In conclusion is a very good stable release which I am pleased with. To be honest, as long as you don’t play games and all you do is just browse the net, chat with friends etc then give it a try.

    For me now it remains to install Wine (as I never installed it before) as the latest version is said to be pretty good as many bugs have been fixed and see how some of the software I used on Windows works on here. Though you don’t really need to install the software which you had on Windows to burn CDs/DVDs or listen to music as there are better alternatives available on Ubuntu.

    Finally I couldn’t have achieved and further tweaked Ubuntu if it wasn’t for Google, you just type in what you want to do and it finds it for you! Below are some sites that have helped me out perfect my installation of Ubuntu, hope they help you too! :lol:

    Comprehensive Ubuntu Guide
    Download and Install Skype Guide
    Firefox Backspace to Previous Page Fix

    How To Install Flash

    $ apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
    $ sudo update-flashplugin

    Comparison of Media Players
    How To Burn A CD/DVD in Ubuntu

    How To Extract Multi-Part RAR Archives (those .r00 etc)

    sudo apt-get install unrar

    Alternative Windows Software For Ubuntu
    Configure GMail with Evolution Mail
    How To Get MP3 And Other Codec Support
    The Perfect Desktop - Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”

    How To Join Two Video Files Together
    1. Download the tools:

    sudo apt-get install mencoder mplayer

    2. Make sure you are in the folder where both parts are and run:

    mencoder -forceidx -ovc copy -oac copy -o file.avi part1.avi part2.avi

    If I find any more useful sites I will be sure to add the links here as it will be a good reference in the future if I ever need to get back at them

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    This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 10:21 pm by ePlus and is filed under General, Linux, Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

    2 Responses to “Ubuntu 7.10 - Gutsy Gibbon”

    1. Tom Says:
      October 23rd, 2007 at 10:40 pm

      In the previous versions of Ubuntu if you wanted to access files on another partition such as your NTFS windows one with all your music and documents on, you had to manually mount the partition using the console :???: , but now it’s all done automatically in the installation process. +1 for Ubuntu :lol:

    2. X-Fedora-usr Says:
      October 24th, 2007 at 12:50 am

      With 7.10 I too was converted to Ubuntu…I used to be a Fedora Freak…now I am a Ubuntu Fanboy :eek: