At first, the Unity desktop is clunky compared to Gnome's menu set up of Applications, Places, and System.  Having used the Gnome menu system, not having that, initially in Unity, made me feel lost.  How do I find that little used application that you need just when you need it?  With the Gnome menu system, you know exactly where to look for it, for example, Inkscape, for me, with the mouse, was always at Applications>Graphics>Inkscape, quick, easy.  If I'm using GnomeDo, it's Super-space-in.

And here's where things start getting interesting.  If you switched from the Gnome desktop with GnomeDo, you'll find that GnomeDo is still on Unity, but only at start-up.  If you hit Super-space in Unity, you get the Launcher.  You can still use GnomeDo, but you have to change the launch key to another key in GnomeDo preferences at start-up.  Ctrl-space, will do the trick.  GnomeDo now works in Unity.

What about the Unity Desktop navigation?  Unity took over the Super key for starting the Dash and Launcher.  If you press Super key and hold it down, you get the Launcher with numbered icons, hit a number, and the application starts.  If you press the super key once quickly, you get the Dash, press it again, the Dash goes away.  Press the Super key for the Dash, and start typing "ink," hit enter, you start Inkscape.

Applications can be added, or removed, from the Launcher from the right mouse click menu.  You can rearrange icons in the Launcher by dragging them to the desktop and then dragging them back to where you want them.

The Dash

If you bring up the Dash, the screen that takes up half the desktop, and start typing in the search window, applications come up divided into various, but not consistent, rows.  The most used applications are in the top row.  But rows change as you click around, and are not always laid out the same, which is confusing.

If you want to customize Unity, you'll want to install, via the Ubuntu Software Center, CompizConfig, the Compiz Configurations Settings Manager, which can be brought up either through the Dash or in Systems Settings.  After installation, the size of the Launcher icons can be adjusted by going to System Settings from the upper right icon, then CompizConfig Setting Manager under Personal, then clicking on Ubuntu Unity Plugin, and then clicking on the Experimental tab.  But that's only one setting and it seems like settings are all over the place, instead of in one place.

When your in the new Firefox 4, Ubuntu's standard browser, and you go to hit the back key, but go a little too far to the edge with your mouse, the Launcher will appear over top of the back button, which is frustrating.  You have to back away from the edge, wait for the Launcher to go away, and then carefully go to the back button.

The Dash doesn't need to take over that much screen real estate, there should be a way to adjust the Dash size.  My monitor is rather far a way from where I sit in my recliner, so I use large font sizes for better visibility.  When I first saw the Dash, some icons were off screen to the right.  I had to reduce the system font size to get the entire Dash in the window.

And now to the Super key, too much functionality in one key.  If I hold it down steady, the Dash appears, sometimes after an annoying delay, if I don't want the Dash, I wanted to tap the super key and get the Launcher instead, you have to wait for the Dash to disappear to try again.  Of course, you can use Alt-F1 for the Launcher, and by the way Alt-F2 gives you a Command Window, but in general, the Super key is flaky, sometimes it works properly and sometimes, you either key it wrong, or somehow the expected outcome is different and always annoying.

By design, the top menu bar is not there, including in applications.  I can think of one application, the Gimp, where this is downright onerous.  There should be a way to allow the top menu to stay on screen.  There probably is, but I haven't found it yet.

Then there's the difficulty, and lack of configurability of the interface.  I can change some items, but not others.  Canonical needs to have an easier way to configure Unity, with more configuration options, all in one location.

Given I can customize the Launcher, I can see where this would be an easier interface for the mouse user, but for the keyboard user, usually the person doing development, and users that don't like using the mouse, the interface is still too clunky for my liking.  By clunky, I mean the above mentioned quirks.

For the person, and especially heavy keyboard users, who are use to Ubuntu Gnome, who have followed Ubuntu through many releases, to ask these users to stay with the Unity Desktop, to stay with it and stick with Unity, this is a frustrating learning curve.  With GnomeDo installed in Unity with a new start key, it would seem folks would just go ahead and keep using GnomeDo as their Launcher, as they always have.  And if that's the case, why not just stay with Gnome.  Canonical has its work cut out for it, by next release date, if it plans not to give users the ability to switch back to Gnome.

Gratefully Canonical, the maker of the Ubuntu distro, left us the ability to switch the desktop back to the Gnome desktop, and back to Unity if you prefer.  I've done this a couple of times now, in testing out the new Unity desktop. I thought it would help to document how to switch desktops in pictures.

Here's the new Unity desktop:

The new Unity Desktop with Vertical Icons

From the Unity Desktop if you click on the icon all the way over on the upper right toolbar to the right of "dale" in the above image,  you get this:

System Dropdown Menu

Now if we click on the System Settings menu choice, we get this:

The Control Center

The Control Center has many icons, and you'll need to move down the Control Center screen with the scroll bar until you come to the "Login Screen".  If you click the Login Screen,  you get this:

Login Screen Settings

We need to Unlock this screen with our root password to change anything.  After we unlock the screen we will click on the "Select Ubuntu" drop down, but I'm getting ahead of myself.  Here's the Unlock password screen.

Authenticate Screen

And here's what happens after you authenticate your right to change the desktop, and then click the drop down menu of the "Select" box at the bottom of the Login Screen.  Here's what the Drop down looks like:

The Select Dropdown Menu

Ok, here's where you make the switch.  If you click "Ubuntu Classic" you'll get the Gnome Desktop, if later you want to go back to Unity, you'll repeat this procedure and then click "Ubuntu".

We have one more thing to do after Closing the menu.  We need to restart our system, by clicking the upper right icon that we used when we started this process, like so:

Restart the System

And presto the Gnome Desktop appears when the system boots up.  Here's the Gnome desktop:

The Gnome Desktop

Some words of wisdom, Canonical has stated that they may not give you the option to switch desktops in future releases.  They would standardize on Unity.

Because of that, I think you owe it to yourself to give Unity a fair shake before returning to Gnome, so you have a good opinion on what desktop you'd like to use, and why.   If that desktop turns out to be Gnome, and Canonical does not allow you to switch desktops in future releases, there are other Linux distros available, like Mint, that would provide similar drivers and functionality to Ubuntu, and use the Gnome Desktop as their standard.

First, the time it takes to do the upgrade.  This is highly dependent on how fast your Internet connection is and whether the Ubunutu download sites are overloaded.  I have a fairly fast connection of about 20Mbps, however I downloaded on April 28th, the day Natty Narwhal was released. I started the upgrade process at 7:50 pm and Natty Narwhal came up and running at 1:07 am.  So the first thing you should be aware of is the upgrade can easily take over 5 hours.  I actually got all the data down at 12:16.  It then took another 51 minutes to finish the install.

What takes so long?  Well, all the files for the new version have to be downloaded.  There are 1,653 files to download, consisting of the new Unity Desktop and the new LibreOffice, which comes to about 1 Gb of data.  You'll need at least that much disk space to do the upgrade.

One thing to ignore is the estimated time to completion that seems to change with each file downloaded.  At one point, it estimated that it would take 14 days and 20 hours to complete the upgrade.  Since the "Cancel" button is right next to that message, it was mighty tempting to say the heck with it, but I persisted and the next message said 4 hours.  I don't know why they even bothered to put the estimated time, just ignore it.

The Upgrade window for the upgrade does a good job of letting you know what's going on in the overall process by walking you through a vertical list of menu choices.  The choices were:

Preparing to Upgrade
Setting New Software Channels
Getting New Packages
Installing the Upgrades
Cleaning Up
Restarting the Computer

Seems simple enough and for the most part it was, just time consumming.

Some things to be aware of.  When you first confirm that you want to do the upgrade a scare message comes up saying something to the effect that packages will be added and removed, and that this is a one way process, you can not go back, do you want to proceed.  Although my upgrade went flawlessly, I would recommend, as always, to back up your data before doing the upgrade.

As mentioned above, the time consumming part was "Getting New Packages."  Cleaning up the system consists of removing 31 packages.

When you restart the system, the first time the computer restarts will take a little bit of time as the new packages are loaded up, but it's not too long.  After the initial install, you'll find your boot times are faster.

You will come up in the Unity Desktop that we've heard so much about.  This takes  getting use to and figuring out.  Some quick hints, to shut the system down, go to the upper right menu, like you did with the Gnome desktop in the last release.

What distinguishes the Unity Desktop from the Gnome desktop is the vertical icons along the left side of the screen.  You can scroll down these icons to find all your favorite applications.  Click on an  icon and your application will start.  In case you don't like this, your desktop icons are still there.  Also there is a laucher application if you click on the upper left Ubuntu icon.  This will alow you to quickly search for any application on your sytem.  What's missing is the bottom status bar, which allows for more vertical space for browsers and searching the web.

The Unity desktops takes some getting use to, and I'll talk about that in another post.

The new and some existing features for this release include:

The Unity desktop with a new application launcher.  The new launcher appears when you move the mouse to the left edge of the screen.

Unity, like Windows 7, gives you a universal search of your computer when you click on the upper left Ubuntu logo.

A switch of the office application suite was made from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice.  This should not amount to a lot of change, except a move away from Oracle's control of the office application.

Automatic security updates,

Fast boot up,

Easy integration with your computer hardware,

Firefox 4,

Empathy integrated messaging and Pidgin chat,

Evolution Mail,

Banshee music application replaces Rythmbox,

Streaming music,

A music store,

Shotwell picture organizer and importer,

Video editing,

Integrated Device compatibility,

Ubuntu Software Center to find and load thousands of free applications.

==============================================

I listed all of the above so you could see that, indeed, Ubuntu is a free and worthy Windows 7  replacement.

Canonical took a risk with this release by switching to the Unity desktop, and away from the Gnome 3 desktop.  Why did they do this?

A couple of reasons.

1. Complete control of the Unity interface.  This is their interface. They now have complete control of the underlying distro, and the desktop look and feel.

2. If Ubuntu wants to increase it's user base they need to attract Windows users away from Microsoft.  People have a preconceived fear of Linux as a command line, non-friendly, environment where you need to be tech savvy to use it.  Canonical is trying to dumb down the tech, and get away from the command line to attract new users.  The Unity desktop does this.

3. By doing this, Canonical takes a closer step toward owning the "easiest to convert from Windows for a new user" segment of the Linux distro market.

What is Cononical's risk, well, in order to gain Windows users, they may lose the more tech savvy Linux user, who enjoy using the command line, or wants to stay with the Gnome desktop environment.

There are over 4000 different distros or versions of Linux in the world that you can download.  If you like to see the current top 10 check out the Distro Watch.com web site.

For example, if you want all the benefits of Ubuntu, but you want to use the Gnome desktop instead, I'd recommend the Linux Mint distro.  In all fairness to Ubuntu, since the underneath engine for Unity is Gnome, you can still use the Gnome desktop with this release.

The reality is that Ubuntu has made Linux no longer as scary as it used to be. There is no real reason people need to pay Microsoft for an operating system or any of its overpriced applications any longer,  when they can get Ubuntu for free.  The best hope Microsoft has of not eroding its market share is to offer Windows on all new computer purchases, of course, you also can order Ubuntu with your new computer.

For those of you with old computers that for some reason Microsoft will not let you reload the operating system without buying it again, give Ubuntu a try, you'll still be able to read all your Windows files, and who knows, you might be pleasantly surprised when you find out, you don't need Microsoft at all.

There is a another change, to the shell desktop interface. Instead of using the Gnome desktop, that's been a standard in Ubuntu for a number of years, a new Unity User Interface will come with the next release of Ubuntu.

Why the change, when the users have been looking forward to using the new Gnome 3.0 release, which was not ready for prime time in Ubuntu's last release?  Well, as always, there's a little politics in play.

In 2010 Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu, started working on creating a consistent user desktop interface experience.   Canonical wanted application menus to be consistent through out the desktop, despite the differences in installed applications, a consistent way to search for applications on the system, and how to present favorite applications to the user with icons. Unity employs a vertical icon application switcher.

The Unity Desktop

In discussing the move to Unity, the founder of Canonical, Mark Shuttleworth, cited philosophical differences with the Gnome design team over the user experience. From Canonical's perspective, they presented what they'd like to see in the Gnome interface to the Gnome design team, and the Gnome team ignored their input.  Sounds like a little hurt feelings here. I can certainly see a desire on Canonical's part to want to control their user's experience, and the look of their product.  On the other hand, the Gnome team did not want to be dictated to by probably their biggest supporter.  This is beginning to sound like a family feud with Canonical saying that the Gnome team was inflexible.

The Unity Desktop

Unity first appeared in the Netbook version of Ubuntu 10.10. The design helped increase the screen real estate available to users on the small Netbook screens by making use of vertical side icons.

Canonical was quick to point out that Unity is a shell on top of Gnome desktop environment, so in effect Ubuntu will still use the Gnome drivers, it just won't look or act the same as the Gnome interface.

The Gnome Desktop

If we're just going by the look of the desktop, from the images in the article, I'd have to give the nod to Gnome 3.0.  Probably, because I'm not use to vertical icons in a toolbar.  They might work out just fine after some use.  However, an early review of the Unity interface has not been glowing with criticism coming from Canonical's lack of user input in the creation of Unity.

The Gnome Desktop

If these early versions of the Unity interface turn out not to be the polished gem that, I'm sure, Canonical wants to eventually get to, it may drive Linux users to another distro with a different desktop environment, and turn off potential new Window's users from adopting Ubuntu.

The Gnome Desktop

Certainly, the Ubuntu distro, in the last couple of releases, has come into its own as a viable competitor to Windows.  After all, who can argue with free.  Even so, we would hate to see Canonical stub its toe after having achieved so much over the last couple of years.  There is some risk here.  Let's wait and see. The new release of Ubuntu 11.04, Natty Narwhal, is due out on April 28th.

OpenOffice.org was originally created by a German company,  StarDivision, which was then purchased by Sun in August 1999.  Sun, in an effort for the most part, to put a dent in Microsoft's Office marketshare, gave the source code to the world in July, 2000, and continued to develop it, and lead, in creating a robust office suite.  It was released as OpenOffice.org in April, 2002.  Since then several major corporatations, like Google and IBM, have partnered with the OpenOffice.org Community Council to distribute and develop OpenOffice.

And my, has OpenOffice grown over the years.  It has a word processor, spreadsheet, slide presentation program, a draw graphics program, and a database that matches up well with all the applications in Microsoft Office.  It writes and reads Microsoft Office files, is available on Windows, Mac, OS2, and Linux, and supports over 110 languages to give you an idea of its popularity.

However, suddenly, all is not right in the house of OpenOffice.  The catalyst for this unsettling was caused by Oracle's purchase of Sun in April, 2009.

The purchase of Sun by Oracle has caused a number of issues.  Sun previously controlled the licenses for MySQL, Java, and OpenOffice. Oracle wanted MySQL, because of its large users base, and as an entry into their proprietary and expensive database products.  Although Oracle, as part of the Sun agreement, must maintain MySQL as open source until 2015, Oracle has already made changes in the MySQL  functionality available for free, and its licensing, see my article on The Decline of MySQL.

For a number of years, Oracle has despertly wanted an office application to compete with Microsoft, so another key reason for the purchase of Sun was to acquire OpenOffice. Naturally, what worried the OpenOffice.org Community Council was Oracle might take OpenOffice private, and start charging for it.  Just as with MYSQL, a fork, or non-proprietary copy, was made of OpenOffice before Oracle's purchase, in case this might happen, though in the hopes that it would not.

The new fork was called LibreOffice, and the community that will develop and maintain LibreOffice named itself the Document Foundation. As a test of Oracle's intentions, Oracle was invited to become a charter member, donate the OpenOffice brand, and support the Document Foundation to promote LibreOffice as a true open source application.  In essence, Oracle was asked to give up any claims to licensing the software as a product.

Oracle rejected the proposal, and demanded, with a deadline, the resignation of all OpenOffice.org Community Council members, who were members of the new Document Foundation, claiming it was a conflict of interest, thus setting the two camps at odds with one another, instead of joined in a common interest.

With that fell swoop, OpenOffice went proprietary, in my mind, and in the minds of many members of the community.
The only conflict of interest that I see is that Oracle wants to turn OpenOffice into a money making product, which is their right.  However, who in the community of developers wants to spend time writing and improving code for Oracle. In essence OpenOffice is now proprietary.

Like a true fork, we now have two products, OpenOffice and LibreOffice, which started out the same product, but  like the CodeIgniter and Kohana fork, have already started to diverge.

The new 3.3 release of LibreOffice has some features not in OpenOffice: SVG image edit and import, Lotus Word Pro, and MS Works import, an improved WordPerfect import, a dialog box for title pages, document navigator, presenter view in Impress, and color-coded document icons.

What prompted this article is the community has already started to move toward LibreOffice.   OpenOffice will be replaced by LibreOffice in the next Ubuntu desktop release due next month.   Bye, bye, OpenOffice, hello, LibreOffice.

If you read my earlier post, you know I recently upgraded my work laptop from XP to Ubuntu (although I am sticking to the 10.4 LTS on my work laptop; 10.10 is working fine on one of my personal machines). I am still planning a more inclusive update that details all the subtle changes I ended up making and a review of how the transition has been, but I thought this deserved its own post.

After installing Ubuntu, I knew I needed a launcher of some type. I love Quicksilver for OS X, and one of my two primary Windows complaints is the lack of a decent launcher (the other is no workspaces - the commercial and free options don't tend to play well with all applications). Even with all the conveniences of Gnome Do, I still found myself occasionally slipping to the Windows + E and Windows + R keyboard shortcuts from time to time. I initially tried to train myself to Windows + Space (my Gnome Do shortcut), followed by "n" (all I need to get Nautilus), followed by enter. I could not ignore that this was quite blatently TWICE the keystrokes that the event should require.

I knew Metacity had good options for keybindings, and I initially tried to use the GUI in System - Preferences - Keyboard Shortcuts. Note that this interface is excellent for actions that are already in the list, or actions that are limited in scope (confined to a particular application, for example). However, I ran into some questionable functionality when attempting a global keyboard shortcut binding in this interface. Instead, use the gconf-editor. Don't see that anywhere? That's right, sorry but this is one of those tutorials that involves the always-frightening "Terminal". But it's easy, just launch the Terminal (Applications - Accessories - Terminal, for the unfamiliar), type the text "gconf-editor" and press the Enter key.

In the gconf-editor window:

Using the left side of the window, navigate to Apps - Metacity - keybinding_commands:

1. Enter the value "nautilus" (no quotes) for command_1 (or whatever command you want...).
2. While we are here, enter the value "gnome-terminal --geometry 110x32" for command_2.

Still in the gconf-editor, navigate to Apps - Metacity - global_keybindings:

1. Enter "E" for run_command_1 (or whatever keyboard shortcut you want. Mod4 is the Windows key on my Dell Latitude.).
2. Enter "T" for run_command_2

These worked for me immediately, but I have read cases where restarting your window manager is necessary for these to function properly. If you see strange behavior, I recommend a window manager restart. And there you have it, Windows + E to launch Nautilus in Ubuntu. That's two fewer keystrokes than Windows + Space, N, Enter. And don't get me started on how much nicer Nautilus is than Windows Explorer.

Long Term Support releases, like the last release, Lucid Lynx, indicate the release is stable and will be supported over several years.  It makes You feel like, what else is there to do, the operating system is done, but interim releases give you an opportunity to experiment, and put new features into the operating system, which brings us to what's new with this release.

For the last Ubuntu release, Gnome 3, the graphical user interface used in Ubuntu, was not finished, and was not included.  For this Ubuntu release, unfortunately, Gnome 3 is still not ready with its release being pushed back to March 2011, so it did not make it into the new Ubuntu release this time.  In all fairness to the Gnome community this next release has some significant architecture changes, and the Gnome folks want to make sure its stable before pushing it to the public. They are to be commended for this.

In the meantime, Gnome has put out interim releases and Ubuntu 10.10 will include the latest Gnome 2.32 version, which is the last planned release in the 2 series besides minor maintenance releases.  Gnome has fixed many bugs and put in some additional user requested features.  More specifically, one of the features is an improved Nautilus, the file manager, to manage copy and move file conflicts, and files you move to the Wastebasket.

Ubuntu has made improvements in the instant messaging manager, Empathy, with better grouping of contacts and services.  A live contact search was added.  There are improvements in PDF reading with improved zooming.

Ubuntu has officially released a font they want to use going forward, dubbed the Ubuntu font, they are leaning on making it the default font in Ubuntu.  They worked with graphic designers and built a full font family. It looks nice.

They have replaced the f-spot photo manager with a improved photo manager called Shotwell, which allows you to import any photos you previously had in f-spot.

For multimedia, Ubuntu Studio, the multimedia creation suite, has improvements with better integration of pulse Audio and JACK, for importing and outputting audio. Sound Indicator had been improved to include music player controls. Mythbuntu, digital video recorder, has a new backup and restore tool.

Ubuntu One for storing and synching files between other networked computers, and the Intenet cloud, including the music store, has been improved with an easier interface and sign-on.

Ubuntu has added a "Featured" and "What's New" section to the Ubuntu Software Centre where you browse, install, and remove software applications.  They have also included a new application called "Rick's Wallpapers" that cost $1 with profits donated to the Ubuntu Project.

There are other minor tweaks here and there.  Ubuntu keeps improving their software distro, and for me, there is no reason not to use Ubuntu for your main desktop computer's operating system, it's that good.

Updating from the previous 10.04 version is easy and can be done from your current desktop through the Update Manager.

For those that would like to try out Ubuntu for the first time you can do that by booting directly from the Ubuntu CD. This will not mess up your Windows installation.  Please follow my previous post on   "Creating an Ubuntu CD."  The instructions are still valid with this version.  Cut yourself a CD.

If you have a Ubuntu CD, and are still running the exasperating Microsoft Windows, you can always use the Ubuntu CD to recover Windows files when the Windows operating system won't let you into the system.  Your computer will boot directly from the Ubuntu CD, and view your Windows files.  See my article on "Saving your Windows Data with an Ubuntu CD".   I suggest you give Ubuntu a try, you may not go back to Windows.

The point of this is to highlight the software that I needed to load to be able to function comfortably in a work environment. I should disclose that I work in the tech group, and things are pretty laid back. However, this is not a machine I use for independent consulting, nor am I employed by an organization that is entirely 'techie', or using Linux as a standard.

Some additional disclosure: I use Linux daily on one of my personal machines (currently an Ubuntu distro, also due to driver issues - it's a 10 year old, hand-me-down, Sony Vaio laptop). For reference, I am officially a DBA, but I dabble in System Administration, Java, and Web development (mostly PHP). With that in mind, here is what I added/updated after the OS install. I am not going to list aesthetics (themes/backgrounds/etc.), but I did change my theme to something with window controls on the top right. I can't explain why I like this better, but I do.

The short list:

Pre-installed and necessary for my work machine:

1. Empathy
2. Evolution
3. Firefox
4. OpenOffice
5. Terminal (although I use both Terminal and Terminator)

Apps I installed:

1. Sun JDK
2. Chromium
3. MySQL
4. PostgreSQL
5. BlueFish (probably will shell out the cash for the recently ported UltraEdit very soon)
6. Eclipse
7. Git
8. GIMP
9. Apache HTTP Server
10. Apache Tomcat
11. PHP
12. KeepassX
13. Terminator
14. Gnome Do

Configuration changes:

1. Sounds off.
2. Startup/Login sounds off.
3. OpenOffice – Change default save file types to be Microsoft-friendly.
4. Chromium – Default launch should be incognito
5. Install flash plugins
6. Chromium/Firefox – Default search engine should be duckduckgo.com

So far, all is well. I am up and running, and getting projects imported and making successful edits. There are several bugs that are annoying in MySQL GUI Tools and PGAdmin3 for Linux, but those are minor in comparison to all the issues I dealt with in XP.

Since I am already using a unique distribution, as compared to our servers, I did not go through the trouble of installing apache and tomcat in a custom location. I think I will regret this, and probably will end up manually installing those at a later time. The only really frustrating behavior I encountered to date, is that when I use my laptop's volume keys (these are dedicated volume keys on the Dell Latitude E6500) my monitor configuration changes to mirrored 1280x960. My usual set up is 1920x1200 on the laptop, with a 1920x1080 external monitor (22” Dell). Closing the laptop for long enough to logout and then reopening fixes the resolutions and reverts the mirrored setting, but doesn't reset the monitor's relative positions. I haven't spent a lot of time investigating solutions for this, and I will probably resolve this issue with the old Dr's recommendation for painful activities - “Don't do that”.

A clean, simple work space.

I'll check back in a few weeks with any changes I ended up making, and additional feedback about the move. And for the lazy, here are the actual installation steps I used (note that there is a hyphen-hyphen-config and a hyphen-hyphen-incognito that shows as dash-config and dash-incognito below. Use hyphen-hyphen.):

First, add the partner source for software (necessary for Sun JDK):

1. System – Administration – Software Sources:
2. Other Software tab – check the “[distro version url] partner” option

Install some stuff (Terminal):

• 
sudo aptitude update
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk
#if multiple jdks or jdes exist, use the following to select the sun version.
#sudo update-alternatives –config java
#DATABASE SERVERS
#Mysql
#mysql will automatically ask for a root password entry
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
sudo apt-get install mysql-query-browser
#PostgreSQL
sudo apt-get install postgresql
sudo apt-get install pgadmin3
#Eclipse
sudo apt-get install eclipse
#Git
sudo apt-get install git-core
#Apache HTTP Server
sudo apt-get install apache2
#Apache Tomcat6
sudo apt-get install tomcat6
#PHP support in apache http server
sudo apt-get install php5
#Restart the apache server with php support.
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart


Install some more stuff (Ubuntu Software Center):

1. Bluefish
2. KeepassX
3. Terminator
4. GIMP
5. Gnome Do

Finishing Touches:

1. Gnome Do was throwing a few strange errors – disabling the Tomboy plugin 'fixed' these.
2. Firefox (pre-installed) – change default search engine to duckduckgo.com
3. Firefox/Chromium - install flash plugins. Must be a non-incognito Chromium window.
4. Chromium - change default search engine to duckduckgo.com (take that google).
5. Chromium – make incognito the default launch window. Right click the Ubuntu logo in the top left, Select “Edit Menus”. Choose “Internet” in the “Menus” list, then select “Chromium Web Browser” in the “Items” list. Select properties and add “--incognito” to the command. Note that you can't install plugins from an incognito window.
6. Change your default Postgres password:
   
#postgresql - update the postgres user password
sudo -u postgres psql postgres
\password postgres
\q

I hope others find this list useful, feel free to add your Ubuntu (or linux) must haves for the workplace in the comments.

UPDATE: I noted that I was not covering aesthetics, but since I included a screenshot with the background, I thought I would highlight it's from lethal2 and available here.

I covered what was projected for the new release months ago, but now that its here, let's do a quick review of the new features.

Lucid Lynx has three versions a Netbook Edition for browsing the web, a  Server Edition, and of course, the Desktop or Laptop Edition.

Number one on the list is the LTS in the name, standing for Long Term Support.  Commercial customers have been reluctant to move to Ubuntu in the past, because there was limited support offered from one version to the next, notably 18 months.  With this version Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu, have committed to supporting this release for five years for the server, and three years for the other versions.  This make 10.04, Lucid Lynx, a major Ubuntu release.

Lucid Lynx comes installed with "Firefox," and "OpenOffice.org"  It has a Software Centre application that simplifies finding, and installing software for Ubuntu. There's an instant messaging application called "Empathy" that integrates all your instant messaging accounts, and a email application to keep track of your emails.  There is an application called, "Me" that integrates your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

This version has an improved Nvidia video driver, so your gaming and heavy graphic applications should run smoother, for all those Nvidia graphic card users.  Most Ubuntu systems by the way use Nvidia graphic cards.

For multimedia we have a new Music application that integrates playing your music with an online store.  "F-Spot" integrates all your pictures and videos along with Flickr, Facebook, and Picassa.  There is a video playback application, called "Movie Player," and an application called "Pitivi" to edit your videos.  There's hundreds of free games available, all free.

For sharing accounts, all Ubuntu users get an online file saving account, called "Ubuntu One," that allows you to share files from anywhere on the Internet.

Both Microsoft and Apple may have some competition here.  None of them come with this much software installed with the operating system.  Oh, did I mention, all of this is free.

Top this off with an easy, quick install, and the fastest loading operating system in the industry measured at 10 seconds in one test.  Although, this could be a drawback, I'm so used to Microsoft's long loads, that I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have enough time to get my morning cup of coffee, but I'd think I'd manage.

That's it for now.  More on doing the upgrade and my general impressions from 9.1 to 10.4 later.