Ho-hum.
That seems to be the response from desktop users and reviewers of Ubuntu’s latest and greatest, 15.04 or Vivid Vervet. The server and cloud crowd are all abuzz, tearing this baby down to see what it can do. But for the desktop folks — not so much. About all you read is that the new desktop is mainly cosmetic changes: that Unity’s color scheme is now purple, which isn’t quite true — to my eyes, there’s some orange in there too — and that a few things have been moved back to where they used to be. Other than that, everyone complains that this vervet is nothing more than lipstick on a unicorn, as Utopic Unicorn was Ubuntu’s last release.
A couple of days ago, I downloaded the newborn Ubuntu primate to evaluate all the fuss. I figured that since I have no practical experience with Ubuntu, I’d bring no expectations and fresh eyes to the release. I did the installation on our Symple PC, which came preinstalled with Ubuntu 14.04, my only other experience with the distro-that-Shuttleworth-built, and has a 2.8 GHz dual core processor and 2 GB RAM. Since many home users install Linux on old metal, I figured these specs would be perfect for seeing how the operating system handles under real world situations.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
Late last week, Rachel Roumeliotis reported in a 
This would definitely describe Ubuntu. From it’s exchange of GNOME for Unity to it’s dropping Wayland for Mir, Canonical doesn’t seem to march to anyone’s orders but its own, something that’s been true since day one.
The best news of the week, of course, is that we’re everywhere. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols wrote a 
Late last year, I was told that the area treated for throat cancer in 2012 was exhibiting pre-cancerous activity. I was told that it could remain “pre-cancerous” for twenty years, or it could again form into the cancer that tried to kill me in 2012. If that happened and it remained unattended, it would kill me in a matter of months. My options ranged from doing nothing and taking my chances, all the way to having my larynx removed to be done with this throat cancer monster once and for all. I picked door number two.
