Waiting for:
- [?] big theme surprise,
- [√] as far as I can tell for now, no pulseaudio issues,
- [√] full support for my webcam,
- [X] my tablet pressure sensitivity fixed,
- [√] finally working 64bit flash!,
- [X] better oxygen and gg support,
- [X] google talk hidden status support,
- [?] give me a fucking break command!
This is beta for now but one went official a week ago (see my note at the end of this post) and I have to say something just to prevent myself from jumping off the roof.
Unity sucks!
As soon as I installed proprietary NVIDIA driver Ubuntu rebooted and logged me in… Into Unity session. How many wtfs per minute now? Well, many. To go back to the classic GNOME session log out and in login manager, on the bottom of the screen select Ubuntu Classic. Login manager will automatically remember your choice.
Pulseaudio seems to be finally working! I guess. At least it doesn’t cause unnecessary LAN traffic and the sound seems cleaner. It used to break after a month or so of listening to the music on the full volume so may update this one later.
Music player
Changing from Rhythmbox to Banshee? Pretty good idea. Good thinking there, Ubuntu devs! Unfortunately, no, for 64bit systems it isn’t. It crashes a lot (I mean a lot) and it’s media library is pretty buggy.
Come on, proper audiobooks support is described as a feature for how long now? Sorry, audiobooks land in “Music” library even if banshee listens for them in different directory so I had to drag’n'drop all audiobooks to the proper section and then another surprise – there’s only a gallery view. No way to sort them by author, track number or the whole book title – only disc number, length and track’s title here.
When editing an audiobook’s (or any album’s for that matter) tracks list you have to manually provide each track number because automatic counting (which is, of course present and once again listed as a feature) doesn’t work properly and more than often assigns track number that doesn’t correspond to the file’s name or order in the book’s directory. I’ve actually found a workaround. When it’s still in the music section of the media library you can sort tracks by file location and then use the tracks-counting functionality. However, when you’ve already moved your audiobook to the Audiobooks library section… no way to delete it or move it back to Music. Bad devs, bad! Rhythmbox was good only for music, true dat, but it was convenient.
The only good thing I can see about this change is merging videos into the media library which seems a good thing, however, I couldn’t find a way to edit video’s meta data like a genre or a director so it’s pretty useless for now. I hope it will improve.
Tablet
Yeah, about that. I’m starting to think it’s more driver dependant but the only one that works with my cheap Pentagram doesn’t obey pressure sensitivity settings at all. Besides, I can move the cursor and write on the screen in the same time only as long as the pen tip is pressed against the tablet. As soon as I lift the pen the cursor freezes in place regardless of pen being in range for regular (without writing) movement. Then I have to lift it up higher to get it out of tablet range and then put it closer again. Very very very inconvenient.
Peer2peer
This is the funny one! Default BitTorrent client initiates a very high CPU usage soon after it’s launched and it freezes somewhere in the meantime. Well, as far as I can tell it’s because of the fact this time Transmission comes without the URL to the list of blocked IP addresses and the default value (which is a link directing to something under the example.com domain) makes it hang when it tries to update. So you would want to replace it as soon as possible with something more proper. When I managed to finally find the reason behind 100% CPU usage, I discovered proxy settings tab disappeared.
Preferred applications
This small applet lets you select default applications for checking your e-mail, browsing the web, playing multimedia, terminal emulation and accessibility. It used to work better.
The problem is you cannot override any of the preconfigured entries in an intuitive manner, e.g. you can’t just add –full-screen to your GNOME Terminal session because whenever you select custom command and put in gnome-terminal it will switch immediately to the predefined entry (replacing all flags from Execute flag field with -x). Workaround! Put in your flags in the Command field, then put the actual command in front of them.
Also, there’s no way to set custom e-mail client or browser. Once again, workaround! You can prepare custom .desktop file and place it in preferred-applications directory.
Summary
OK, after you switch to classic GNOME session instead of Unity, install Compiz Config Settings Manager and configure everything, it’s pretty usable but several applications crash now and then so remember to save your work frequently. Also, Adobe released new native 64bit Flash (10.3b experimental, I believe) so it’s pretty neat. Let’s wait for final release to see what improved.
2011-05-06 00:58:03
And sideways it is. If not regression. I think I’m unhappy with this release. It went official a weak ago and it doesn’t crash so much any more but still, I wouldn’t call it a successful one. Banshee lacks as a video player (no display control, no convenient keyboard short-cuts, not even a double click for full-screen, no way to stop playback after finishing one clip or no timer shut down). It takes a lot to get familiar with Unity (and it seems like they go this way from now on and what is now called a Classic Gnome Session will soon be forgotten). Still no proxy in Transmission. Preferred applications selector remains non-intuitive. Polish IMs don’t work with Empathy (only basic messages exchange does and nothing else – not even a buddy list). Skype has some new troubles with web-cam (system or Cheese can use it, Skype can’t). Installing Audacity (which, of course, by default uses ALSA!) breaks Pulseaudio microphone settings – in order to use a microphone (e.g. with Skype) I have to run Audacity first and leave it in the background as long as I need a mic (e.g. throughout the whole conversation). And I can’t sync with my Sony Ericsson via BT any more, only cable. So… Yeah, I’m pretty unhappy.
I’m glad someone else thinks the sound has become clearer. I mainly use my computer for music and web-surfing and have a decent hifi hooked up to it and immediately thought there was a difference – then I thought I was imagining it
I had never used Banshee before, but on my 64-bit system is certainly ahsn’;t crashed yet. I do agree with you, though, about the Audiobooks library – I can’t get it to work at all.
It claims to be ‘watching’ my Audiobooks folder – but it isn’t. I can’t even drag and drop into it. I’ve had to create smart playlists to keep my audiobooks apart from my music.
It’s a shame, because that would be a really good feature for me. The Last FM plugin also leaves a lot to be desired.
I don’t particularly mind Unity – but I don’t think it adds anything and takes a bit of getting used to (the maximise,minimise,close buttons being in the notify bar?!?!).
All in all I don’t think the upgrade is an improvement – more of a sideways move.
Hi, Roswell!
In regards to your Banshee problem: try to right-click the Audiobooks section of the library and select Import Media, then select folder where your audiobooks are stored. Just have in mind – this won’t put anything into your Audiobooks listing, whatever is found goes to the Music section instead. After that (and this is what I was referring to when sharing my impressions of Natty) you can open Music section of the library, right-click on the first row stating columns names and add a new column called File location. Then you can sort by path and drag&drop all your audiobooks to the designated library section. Once again: when put in Audiobooks, file can be no longer removed from library or dragged back to its other sections.
Sound works heavenly better. I’m not sure if its really cleaner. From the very first usage of Pulseaudio in Ubuntu it is known to malfunction in many ways – one I’ve become especially familiar with is uncontrolled variation of frequency ranges. Sometimes a one particular pitch can change default Pulseaudio settings and not even complete reinstall can reset them back. Therefore it is possible your audio (as did mine) degraded slightly from the moment of the first time you installed Ubuntu with Pulseaudio and fresh reinstall from Natty restored proper default values (Pulseaudio package installed with Natty beta forced all default audio server settings, at least in my case).
I don’t listen to the on-line radios so no discussion here.
Cheers,
Cyp