Ubuntu 10.10 released!

Ubuntu 10.10 released yesterday(Oct. 10, 2010). I wanted to upgrade Ubuntu yesterday, but the release note annoucing itself as release candidate let me hold down my desire of upgrading. Until today, I decided to use the whole day to upgrade and to deal with every accidence. Upgrading is smooth, except some questions requiring me to decide whether I want to keep the old configuration and old packages. I decided to remove them all. Then after rebooting, I found I only had one background picture on the screen. There is nothing else like UI. I tried to restart GDM, but nothing happened. Then I figured out that I don't have netbook desktop version. I checked the Ubuntu website. It introduced something like Mutter. I installed it, but still didn't work. I searched the keyword, netbook and I installed ubuntu-netbook packages. Then I have the pretty sharp Unity interface. But I have to admit at first I am not used to the new design while I used the previous version happily. The big difference between two versions to me is that new version has the useful bar of buttons in the left of screen. I thought it just split my screen and sacrificed my screen size. But after I get familiar with the new design, I think it's quite convenient. The Mutter as introduced is new wonderful windows manager. But I don't know how Mutter have effects on Gnome.

I also tried ipod access and sync. I can access the photos in ipod but songs and podcasts are still unavailable.

I like the new evolution mail client combined with evolution contact and calendar. Although the gm-notify and gamil web interface are good enough to me.

I shifted my windows theme to "highly revert contrast." Nice theme especailly when I lost my glasses.

I shifted the "ScribeFire next" to original ScribeFire blog editor.

Overall, Ubuntu 10.10 is trustworthy computer system or obstructive version. I am glad Ubuntu gets better every day.

Set Gamil as Default Mail Client

After using Thunderbird as my mail client for a whlile, thunderbird isn't as useful as gmail web interface to me. But the search engine of mails is truly useful to me. I love to use the powerful search engine of thunderbird. Yesterday I read an article about setting gmail as default mail client. Then I thought using simply the gmail or webmail as email tool may be better than using by thunderbird. Today Ubuntu will release its latest stable version 10.10. There are new features in the upcoming version, including new designs of interface of netbook version and evolution. I don't think evolution mail client is useful to me. It's probably because I don't use email frequently. Nonetheless, I would tweak my system a little for switching thunderbird to gmail web interface. This is the link. And I have to modify my gnome indicator applet configuration. According to this, I modified the names of file and execution path. (thunderbird-mailto.desktop to firefox-mailto.desktop, exec path: Exec=firefox -remote "openurl(https://mail.google.com/mail?view=cm&tf=0&to=&fs=1,new-tab)")

updated: because I still can't figure out how to modify the gnome indicator applet configuration for "Compose New Message", I decide not to use the functionality. Delete the firefox-mailto.desktop file in /usr/share/applications/ and /usr/share/indicator/messages/ (By the way, the update is edited by firefox addon, Scribefire next. Good addon!) And I also found a useful notification application in Linux, called specto. Looks good! But I would try this application after upgrading to Ubuntu 10.10.