Ubuntu 14.10 Preview, Wallen Walkback, and the Pantheon
Today in Linux news, Terry Relph-Knight takes the new Ubuntu 14.10 Beta 1 for a test-drive and wrote up his opinion. Jack Wallen today said, "Linux on the desktop isn't dead." In other news, Bryan Lunduke spent his last week running the Pantheon desktop environment and shared his thoughts today. And finally today, Bruce Byfield explains why Linux "isn't a desktop alternative."
ZDNet's Terry Relph-Knight recently tested the new Ubuntu 14.10 Beta and said there doesn't seem to be any big changes in store despite early predictions of "a fully converged cross-platform OS running Mir and UnityNext (8) by 2014." Relph-Knight leads with the observation that Ubuntu is clearly designed for smartphones and "if you've been following Ubuntu 14.10's progress by installing the alpha releases, you'll have noticed... very little." He runs down the default applications and such and never really gives a solid conclusion. I guess it's still too early.
Jack Wallen today said, "Linux is, in fact, desktop ready... it just hasn't found an inroad to the average consumer desktop." He says while desktop Linux will never die because it has too many industries and users depending on it. But then he says, "Linux developers need to stop developing for the average Linux user and start developing for the average user." He describes such a desktop as having:
* A modern browser (no, Midori will not do)
* A user-friendly UI with a modern look and feel
* A standards-based office suite
* Touch-screen capability
While Wallen doesn't believe desktop Linux is going away any time soon, he does think it needs to be more like ChromeOS or Ubuntu Unity. See his full story at TechRepublic.com.
Speaking of desktops, Linux Tycoon Bryan Lunduke added another entry to his desktop-a-week series with Elementary OS' Pantheon desktop. He starts out with, "Pantheon is awesome." He said, "It has the same standard layout that Mac OS X but that's really about where the similarities end." He likes the simple features and high performance saying, "Pantheon is free from distractions. It feels simple. It feels clean. It feels... focused." The main drawback seems to be the difficulty in customizing. Lunduke likes Pantheon a lot although he's not willing to give up his everyday comfortable openSUSE desktop for it.
In other Linux news: