Currently the chatter surrounding Ubuntu is obviously focused on its next upcoming release 10.04 Lucid Lynx. However, most blog posts and news articles are all talking about the new artwork rather than any technological advances. Discussion (as ever with Ubuntu users and critics alike) seems to focus almost solely on colour. Yes that’s right. I said colour. This release will bring about quite a few changes in not only the colour scheme of the default desktop, it’s wallpaper and themes but also the ubuntu website, online shop, documentation cd covers (just mockups currently) and more besides. Which is nice. But how important is it?

The key word that so many people seem to miss here is default. It’s what the desktop arrives on your computer looking like after a fresh install or while trying out the livecd. I would happily agree that first impressions do mean a lot. Having a slick polished-looking desktop is seldom a bad thing. However, it really is the easiest thing to change whether you’ve never used Ubuntu or Linux before or you are a hoary old hedgehog like me.

What gets my goat is the extent to which the debate surrounding this tiny aspect of the OS takes such focus. The default theme released with Ubuntu has become more polished with each release but it never looked bad. As much as so many bemoan the brown, it made Ubuntu as successful as it has been. No other popular distro used quite such a distinctive and memorable scheme – most default to blues or greens and look entirely unexceptional. The proposed new colours, aubergine being amongst them (fantastic colour, shame about the taste) will hopefully still remain fairly unique to Ubuntu but time will tell.

If I were to point you in the direction of omgubuntu.co.uk and their recent post about the new wallpaper (thanks for the link mesanna!) you need only scroll down the page a few hundred lines to see all the same old arguements coming out about OS aesthetics (obviously being linked to anything even remotely OSX related as often as possible – grr macs..) Why is it impossible to create a nice looking system without being accused of stealing elements of its design from commercial alternatives? Sometimes there genuinely are only a few ways of accomplishing a particular UI successfully and once the best way has been tried and tested enough it is adopted. This is not theft. This is common sense.

Anyway.. what I’m slowly getting round to saying is that yes, re-style your site’s look, give the documentation a face-lift even create more themes and wallpapers. But don’t expect to be able to create a set of themes and wallpapers that will capture the hearts and minds of everyone. It can’t be done.

In my opinion, rather than spending all this time on the look of the thing just make is as obvious as is humanly possible that you can change how everything looks. Perhaps a notification bubble at boot with the words “You can change how I look! Click here to choose a style and find out more”. Shouldn’t be hard right? I’m thinking of adding a filter in firefox for the words “ubuntu + brown + ugly” I’m that tired of reading about this. Proof can be found again by looking at the post linked above and skimming through the comments. I will leave you with one comment which made me laugh, not because it’s right or bold or clever but because it is so fantastically idiotic.

are you serious? What the hell is wrong with ubuntu. I mean, I had a little sympathy for the whole brown thing, but honestly, you should have known everyone hates brown. Ask any girl with brown eyes and they go “eww! they look like poop!”

So, to further expand on your theory, do girls with blue eyes hate Fedora? Green eyes can’t stand openSUSE? Is this something limited only to the female of the species? Thank you Zach for sharing and bringing a smile back to my face!

Playing with the size and orientation of my mug is now a lot easier. Wish I could alter said mug with this too

I for one am fairly keen on the new in post image editor, I think WP has been needing this for some time and I’m very glad we now have one! It is a little basic, allowing you to crop, rotate or flip your image as well as change it’s size. While true, this does cover the basics I would still like to have seen a few slightly more interesting features.

Whilst on the subject of images I also really like the fact that your posts can now have images assigned to them. This has been possible through plugins for some time but never built in. I like the fact that I can add some extra colour to a post now, having chosen while making the theme where the posts image will go, not sat there tinkering for half an hour with css in the post editor.

From the development blog:

Custom post types have been upgraded with better API support so you can juggle more types than just post, page, and attachment. (More of this planned for 3.0.)

I really like the sound of this, utterly custom content types could open up a swathe of opportunity for creativity and allow wordpress to be the muscle behind even more types of website – not just your average blog.

This release brings with it far too many new changes for me to simply list here. Suffice to say you seem to be able to do more with WordPress every release and 2.9 brings more great features than I’ve seen added in a while. I’m looking forward to seeing how I can push their new template tags, hooks and filters to create some of the most interesting themes yet.  Now with the ability to create custom themes bundled with plugins, surely the sky is just not a high enough limit!

But I think I’m just grumbling. So many people criticize ubuntu for the fact it’s brown and orange.. but so what. The easiest thing to do on a Linux computer (for me personally, in Gnome) is change the theme and general appearance of your desktop.

Everything can be customized. Don’t like the brown? Fine, it takes seconds to change it. If, like me, you prefer a simple, sensible desktop and just want to make the odd few changes here and there – you can.

But sorry I’ll stop now. Rant over. I guess that’s why the forum phenomenon “flame-wars” are called as such, the battles are often over but the war carries on..

More wallpapers can only really do good for Ubuntu and the huge community that enjoys and supports it, maybe I’ll do a couple of my own..

webdesignbooth.com/wordpress-28-and-10-things…

The article covers most of the improvements/updates succinctly so I won’t go into too much detail here but I will say the wordpress team have put ever more work into simplifying many of a blog owners functions and tasks.

The widgets configurations screen is a vast improvement, no fiddly save settings – everything is accomplished through seamless AJAX. I also really like the new html/css editor for your themes; now with functions lookup and syntax highlighting, making editing template files online now much quicker.I tinker with my layout too much for this not to be a great addition.

After all, who can keep all the functions in their head at one time? The wordpress codex has become my most visited site in the last few months according to firefox..

Anyway, to sum up: thumbs up; fantastic new additions to the wp backend and overall productivity within the blog.

It’s improvements thus far, while occasionally quite good, are obvious userbility tweaks which should have been present in Vista.

I’ve never been one for Microsoft and have argued against its use and policies before. But just as I often can’t stop trying out distros of Linux I thought I’d try this. Hey, I got into the beta program for free and downloaded it for free. Up to that point – what difference is there between this and Linux? Well, quite a few actually but to that justice I need to delve a little deeper to form a more complete opinion.

Until then, enjoy these screenshots of my currently running system and tell me what you think. It definitely looks good. That much I can say!

Despite the opinions of others I welcome this revival. I too have very fond memories of watching the films as a child but I don’t feel those memories will be sullied by a third film revival. How very silly!

I hope truly it gets made and made well, of course. I might not be queing for hours to see it but I’ll certainly see it.