Your Daily Dose Of Ubuntu Linux
The upcoming Gnome 2.18 (and hence the upcoming Ubuntu which always includes the latest Gnome) features a new way of displaying the volume control when the X server supports the Composite extension, otherwise it falls back to the traditional GTK widget.
Here is a little preview:
Canonical (the company behing Ubuntu) and Linspire announced a formal partnership today.
The press release confirms that Ubuntu will be the first distribution to be supported by the previously announced CNR service. This service will provide an easy and convenient way to install software, including proprietary products like support for DVD playback.
Right now there is no information about what the CNR repository will offer, neither is known which piece of software will be available for free and for which Linspire will charge a fee, but in my opinion it is a step forward that there will be an option for users who want certain features and are willing to pay.
The CNR service will be optionally available for Feisty users (to be released in April) and might be available in the following Ubuntu release by default.
Additionally the announcement states that future versions of Linspire will be based on Kubuntu, the version of Ubuntu with KDE as desktop environment.
Read more in Linspire’s FAQ and the press release.
The upcoming Ubuntu Feisty will have a new feature that will make the installation of multimedia codecs very easy, especially for novice users.
See how the system works in the following screenshots.
The user clicks on a multimedia file that needs a proprietary codec, in the example a simple MP3 file
A status message pops up informing the user that “applications” are being searched (it’s still alpha, maybe they change the wording)
After a few seconds a dialog pops up that presents a list of software that supports the playback of the file format he clicked on
I think this is a great feature and again the Ubuntu developers managed to improve the out-of-the-box experience. Codec installation won’t be a thing that will be problematic even for people new to Ubuntu.
Let’s all hope a similar feature will be implemented for DVD playback.
Linspire’s user-friendly way of installing software is called CNR (Click and Run). Basically it’s a categorised directory of software with a summary of a software title and a rating system for the users.
Linspire itself puts it as following:
CNR.com will be a free on-line digital software warehouse and one-click delivery service designed to solve the complexity of finding, installing and managing software applications on your Linux desktop computer.
It has recently been announced that Linspire plans to make the CNR service available on all major Linux distributions, which of course includes Ubuntu.
Read more on Cnr.com