Oct 26, 2010

The Unity Interface in Ubuntu 10.10

My Nephew Mathew came over with his Dell Inspiron mini 10 so I thought I would upgrade him to Ubuntu 10.10. By default, the netbook edition installs the Unity interface, so I set about to teaching him and educating me on how to use the Unity interface.
The first thing you will notice is the Unity Launcher -- on the left side of your desktop.  It shows a stack of applications icons, one for every application that is running or the applications you want to have quick access to. It replaces the Start/Applications menu and the bottom panel / task manager. It seems to be easy to get used to, at least Matthew was up and running without an issue.

The Good:

  • The Unity dash can be access using the Ubuntu button in the top left
  • The Software Center recommends software you should buy or just get for free.
  • You just need to install Mediubuntu and Flash and 99% of the Internet works.
  • Google video chat works with just a couple of clicks (Matthew likes phoning with his laptop, I am hoping I didn't teach him a bad thing)
The Bad:
  • Clicking on the "File Manager" doesn't launch Nautilus, but a rather a simple file browser which isn't as useful, but one more click on the top right side makes it okay by loading Nautilus.
  • Firefox and OpenOffice don't put their menus in the top global menu bar (top panel)
The Ugly:
  • I can't figure out how to add stuff to the Unity Launcher (I am trying to add the Educational submenu)
  • The Broadcom wifi chipset crashes when I installed the B43 proprietary driver. It reminds me of 9.10 when the Huwai 3g radio didn't work.


    Oct 15, 2010

    Fanbox is learn from Facebook -- Web marketing 101 -- Spam

    I got 3 emails this week that looked like this.  All had a name of a close friend in the from area.  Like this one has the name of Gerry Beckett.  But if you hover your mouse over the friend's name you will see that it is not from your friend at all in fact he doesn't even know that he has sent you this email. If you click reply it will not even go to him.  If you want your friend to know that www.fanbox.com has trick him in giving up his friends forward the email to him. I get upset with people when they intentionally do this to people who are just innocently clicking links to see what the computer will do next. This is how facebook got their user base not too long ago. Remember getting his email? Here is hoping you delete your facebook and your fanbox account.  Or better yet never click on the email you got from @yourfanbox.