Gutsy Gibbon
The installer was straight forward as is always the case with Ubuntu. About 20 minutes later I was staring are the GDM login screen and logged on. I was immediately greeted by the "restricted driver" dialog that told me my hardware would perform better if I used the restricted Nvida drivers, which I did. It worked great, right away. Compiz Fusion is enabled by default and gives you lots of desktop visual effects (see video below). Before configuring Beryl or some other 3D desktop was a pain in the ass and way to geeky. But with 7.10 it will become mainstream. I also noticed that it does NOT make your PC slower as all effects are handled by your GPU.
So what makes 7.10 so interesting? To me it represents a step forward in the development of Linux for regular users that want a good alternative to winblows. It is easier in use and it is getting more mainstream with each release. 7.10 will have the latest version of the Gnome desktop (2.20), has better drivers, better laptop support, easier installation of printers (supposedly automagically), better graphics (including dynamic resizing of your desktop and support for beamers etc..), and loads of other cool things.
However, after I installed the KDE desktop as well, I couldn't get Gnome (or better Compiz) to work properly anymore so I better wait for the final release and stick with Gnome. You can still run KDE apps anyway. For now I reverted to Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn).
Yep folks, Ubuntu is here to stay and rock your world... Uh.. your PC...
Gutsy Gibbon Goodness
