Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) Review: Solid, stable and could have been the LTS release as well

I guess this is my first review after a gap of a couple of months. Actually I was busy with interesting developments in my professional career and right now, more busy with packing my and my family's stuff. We are shifting our base to Chicago, IL from Bangalore, India. Hence, I didn't find adequate time to actually pen down a review. Further, my Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon is running absolutely stable to the point of boredom that I didn't feel to try out any other distro. Even practically I gave Debian 8 and Ubuntu 15.04 release nearly a miss. I guess this will continue till end of month May. I am hoping in June I'll be able to get back to my schedule of 2-3 reviews a month.

Anyway, back to the review. I downloaded the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 15.04 ISO, about 1.1 GB in size. The release note from Distrowatch mentions the following changes:
The new release, which will be supported for nine months, features LibreOffice 4.4, version 3.19 of the Linux kernel and a switch from Canonical's Upstart init to systemd. "systemd has replaced Upstart as the standard boot and service manager on all Ubuntu flavors except Touch. At the time of the 15.04 release there are no known major problems which prevent booting. The only service which does not currently start is Juju, which will be fixed in a post-release update soon; all other packaged Ubuntu services are expected to work. Upstart continues to control user sessions... You can boot with Upstart once by selecting `Advanced options for Ubuntu' in the GRUB boot menu and starting the `Ubuntu, with Linux ... (upstart)' entry. To switch back permanently, install the upstart-sysv package (this will remove systemd-sysv and ubuntu-standard)."

From Ubuntu 15.04 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

I used Linux Mint Image Writer to create a Live USB on a 4 GB USB drive and booted it up on my Asus K55VM laptop.

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Ubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" Review: Solid, stable but no radical element this time

Final release of Ubuntu Trusty Tahr is out on 17th April 2014. So, here is my first bit on the much awaited Ubuntu Trusty Tahr and I am reviewing here the 64-bit final release. For the uninitiated, this is the long term support (LTS) release of the most popular Linux distro in the world, Ubuntu. Trusty Tahr is the code name of the release and has support till April 2019.

From Ubuntu 14.04 LTS http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

Like all previous releases of Ubuntu over last 3 years, even I expected a surprise or some radical change in the way we use Linux in this version as well. I recall Ubuntu 12.04 LTS had the HUD among others. However, here is a spoiler - Ubuntu 14.04 LTS has some really good functional innovation but nothing radical.

In this review, I'll cover the incremental features and overall performance of the distro. Trusty ships with Unity 7.2.0, similar Unity as you would have experienced with Ubuntu 13.10 release. Right now it ships with Linux kernel 3.13.0 and has Files 3.10.1 as the file manager. The 64 bit ISO I downloaded was about 960 MB in size.

I created a live USB using Linux Mint Image Writer on a 4 GB pendrive and booted it up on my Asus K55VM laptop with 2.3 Ghz Core i7 processor, 8 GB DDR3 RAM and 2 GB NVIDIA GeForce 630M graphics. Post live boot I installed it on a 50 GB partition.

From Ubuntu 14.04 LTS http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

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Ubuntu 13.10 "Saucy Salamander" Review and comparison: Ubuntu 13.10 vs Kubuntu 13.10 vs Xubuntu 13.10 vs Lubuntu 13.10 vs Ubuntu GNOME 13.10

Someone asked me yesterday that why I didn't review Ubuntu 13.10, the flagship OS of Canonical, though I reviewed all the other flavors. Well, there are a couple of reasons:

1. Except for Smart scopes and Nvidia support, there is not much difference with Ubuntu Raring
2. A lot of Linux experts wrote some high quality reviews of Ubuntu and I guess, I didn't have much to add.

So I thought of writing a different kind of review - a brief discussion about my experience with the new Ubuntu and a detailed comparison with Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu and Ubuntu GNOME. I used a couple of machines for testing Ubuntu and other distros:

• Asus K54C laptop (2.2 Ghz Core i3 processor, 2 GB DDR3 RAM, Intel HD 3000 graphics 128 MB)
• Asus K55VM laptop (2.9 Ghz Core i7 processor, 8 GB DDR3 RAM, NVIDIA GEFORCE 630M 2 GB graphics

From Ubuntu 13.10 http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.in

I generally prefer using my Asus K54C for Linux testing. But, of late, given the importance of Nvidia graphics (which generally comes with most of the modern systems), I am thinking to make my Asus K55VM as the primary machine to test Linux distros. Hence, I start with Ubuntu 13.10 with the new laptop. Though still I'll be using 32-bit OS but in 2014 I have decided to totally shift to 64-bit OS, keeping with the changing times.

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