Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail Review | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail Review

theregister.co.uk

38 pointsdaoudc21 comments

Just wondering how many people have actually installed Bing Desktop, Google Desktop or any other desktop search on Windows. Why does Ubuntu think their more discriminating user base need these SMART search features when the common John and Jane shunned it?

It's all about privacy and companies trying to get you to buy more things are the worst offenders of viruses and invasion of privacy on the web.

>"Why does Ubuntu think their more discriminating user base need these" //

I assume that's because Bing and Google are paying them to think that (or inducing them to think [hope!] that via the promise of money)?

Don't personally care to check this assumption at the moment.

I suspect Ubuntu's user base isn't more discriminating. Ubuntu targets people who want to switch from Windows, and most of those people want to switch because "it's free."

If Ubuntu's target market was more sophisticated they wouldn't be reviving the old "sponsored computer" model of fifteen years ago.

That's what people say, and probably what Ubuntu says as well, but I'd wonder if their actual user base is really composed of a significant percentage of ex-Windows non-power-users.

I put Ubuntu on just about everything, so do several other devs I know, but we don't use Unity, we have our own preferred environments... so while there is that angle to Ubuntu, I'm not sure how well that actually represents the reality of their installation base.

I agree, I think the claimed Ubuntu target audience / core base of users is a complete fantasy. In reality the bulk of their users seem to be standard Linux users who don't care a ton about the particulars of their distro so they just pick the one perceived as the default choice because they don't have any reason to put more thought into it (damn near everything is the same between distros these days, the only big choice for most people is how often you want releases, or if you want rolling releases). If the claimed sort of Ubuntu user actually exists, they are rare enough that I have never encountered them.

I think that the bulk of the people currently using Ubuntu are moderately sophisticated technically.

However, I also believe that Canonical is pivoting Ubuntu toward non-technical users because a) it differentiates Ubuntu; b) it offers room for growth; c)it allows them to pursue more diverse revenue streams.

Isn't the smart search good? We won't need to leave the desktop now to search for a movie on IMDB etc.

Well this review helped me determine there is really nothing worth an upgrade to me. Some of the features sound great but are at least another release from becoming really useful. All things being equal I prefer to be on the current LTS release as that is all I'm going to run on my servers and its nice knowing all the native libraries are the same version between my desktop and server.

"Perhaps the best part of Unity in 13.04 is not new features, but the noticeable speed improvement. Like GNOME Shell, Unity has taken its fair share of (deserved) abuse for its high-end hardware requirements and sluggish performance. You're still not going to make Unity scream on an old machine, but provided you've got newer hardware, 13.04 is definitely snappier than its predecessors."

Not even this ? If it's true, it would be worth upgrading just for a snappier interface in my opinion.

Is this just for Unity or is it an across the board speedup that I'll notice even if I'm using something like Cinnamon/xfce?

I guess I'd have to see it. Unity has never struck me as slow. I run it on a pretty modern desktop; maybe in a laptop it would be more of a benefit.

half of this review is about photo-lens search and the online accounts settings page, both of which existed in the previous release.

for what it's worth, my feelings about the photo lens are similar to the reviewer's: it's a really cool idea that makes a lot of sense, and validates the "web search" concept of the unity dash. unfortunately, in 12.10 at least it has a number of issues. the biggest for me stems from the fact that when you add an online account you get all of the services or none. in other words, if you want the dash to search your facebook photos, empathy (the im client) will do facebook chat. there's no way (that i've figured out) to have one on without the other.

on the other hand, i'm not super-bothered by the amazon thing because i just uninstalled unity-lens-shopping. would be nice for them to have some UI for disabling individual lenses though.

That concern is addressed in 13.04. Now you can separately enable or disable applications' integration with an online account (e.g. disable facebook integration for Empathy only).

I feel the title is inaccurate and misleading. This is not a full review of the new release, but rather of the search options of the dash and the music player.

I agree. The actual title is: "Ubuntu 13.04: No privacy controls as promised, but hey - photo search!" It doesn't seem like the website is even claiming it to be a review of the OS.

You're right, but I can't seem to change it now.

I realize a lot has changed so that it wouldn't be possible, but Ubuntu 13.04 would be a lot better for me if it was just Ubuntu 5.04 with the version updates for all the packages. I guess that's kind of what Mint is going for.

  | I realize a lot has changed

There are a lot of non-UI changes that have happened since Ubuntu 5.04. E.g. pulseaudio, evdev, etc.

I know it's not really a solution for the masses, but

  sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping

Should remove the results from Amazon, while keeping all the other online lens.

You can also turn online search reults off in the privacy settings

Download the ubuntu server image instead, and after install just run `sudo apt-get install gnome-shell gnome-terminal` to get a fast and clean desktop experience.

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