Gutsy Gibbon swinging along

Sam Varghese
Monday, 10 September 2007 23:22

Opinion and Analysis

Shuttleworth also said the X Windowing System in Gibbon would be more rugged. "We depend heavily on a working X (our installer is just another X app, for example) and so a failed X config has been an Achilles heel. Gutsy takes some big steps towards ruggedizing the X config. This is the first cut of that work, so it's not perfect but we've already had lots of reports of folks being able to get up and running who previously would have been staring at a console."

However, the X in the build which is running on my test PC was unable to pick up the test monitor - a 22-inch LCD (FP222W) which is recognised without any fuss by the Debian X setup. On a monitor which needs a 1680 x 1050 resolution to look its best, all that Gibbon provides is 1280 x 1024. You wouldn't want to date a girl with such looks.

Gibbon includes AppArmor, which provides a method of isolating network-facing processes from the remainder of the system. "For server users... it offers SE Linux-like levels of security without the headaches. This is our first integration of AppArmor but upstream is very happy with the way we've done it," Shuttleworth said.

(SE Linux or security enhanced Linux is a a kernel patch to add security features, and patches to applications to allow them to determine the security domain in which to run processes. It was developed by the American National Security Agency.)

Gibbon is also reaching out to more categories of users. "Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE as the desktop environment) will have a one-command install of KDE4 (you'll need to select it at login). This is I think a nice preview of what's coming down the pike from the Krowd," Shuttleworth said.

Given the change in the deadlines for release of KDE 4 , with December 11 now set as a target date, this option may be further away than initially anticipated.

One area of weakness appears to be the graphical utility which is used for updates. I had a couple of shots at using it but finally had to settle for the terminal and the standard apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade which one uses on Debian. The command-line is generally a safe refuge and this was no exception.

One suggestion to the Ubuntu designers: it would be a good idea for Gibbon to have a cheerful desktop colour as the default. Ubuntu has always had a dusty brown as its default and the best word one can use to describe it is mournful. A nice shade of blue would do wonders for its appearance.