A week with Gutsy
Have been running the Gutsy beta at work for about a week now. So far so good. From an end-user perspective the main change really is just the default use of Compiz, and while that is disabled on my machine — it has an Intel X3000 GPU which is blacklisted — it does mostly work if you remove it from the blacklist. Just don’t use any of the 3D screensavers or the water effects.
And I now find myself missing Compiz when I do stuff at home, specifically the Expo and Scale modes. Having set those to trigger on the bottom corners of the screen, I find myself using them constantly for window and desktop switching. As I typically have a lot more windows open at home I can see it being very very useful.
I’ve tried the Gutsy beta at home but something somewhere is making sound from Rhythmbox distort on bass. Have done a little poking, Totem and Exaile both play the same material just fine, so it’s clearly something specific to Rhythmbox and this machine, as it works fine at work. At least I have a very simple test case: play “Electronic Performers” by Air and the distortion comes through pretty much right away.
This is a pity as I quite like where they’re going with Rhythmbox.
The other question will be how full-screen Wine stuff (i.e., Warcrack) copes. The machine at work is behind the sort of corporate firewalls that mean there is absolutely no point even trying so I haven’t checked this out recently, but last time I tried there was that whole annoying business where the Gnome panels would sit over the top of the Wine window.
The timing of the Gutsy beta is unfortunate in terms of my personal ability to properly test and debug — life has been a bit hectic and draining of late — but I’m sure it’ll be a fairly solid release.
Popularity: 56% [?]
[...] to my last post, after further mucking about with Gutsy on the home [...]