Review of Ubuntu 14.04: The Trusty Tahr is out

I must admit, this was the most anticipated release of Ubuntu so far for me. I had been using 12.04 for a while on my main machine and I was eager to get my hands on this shiny new version of my favorite Linux distro.

After downloading the iso via torrent I installed it and here are my initial comments:

I very much like the aesthetic changes done, including the login screen, the colours and particularly the window resizing overhaul. I thought these would be barely noticeable for me but coming from 12.04 I definitely feel that the overall package looks shinier and more pleasant to look at.

I find it unfortunate that Ubuntu One is closing down but I do believe this doesn't really reflect on the health of canonical in general. One aspect of Ubuntu I think needs an overhaul is the software centre. It has pretty much looked the same for a while and if anything I think it may have looked better a few years ago than it looks now. I personally feel that while the rest of the OS has been evolving into a beautiful piece of software, the software centre still looks the same and it is already looking pretty dated.

*Before I continue, let me say that I have already adopted 14.04 to be my desktop OS for the next while. That's because I really really do like it. However I do have some criticism as well, so I wish that anyone reading this does not get discouraged from trying this distro based on the rest of my post.*

While I was very excited to use the latest HUD from Unity, I felt slightly disappointed so far because while the HUD idea is brilliant to the point of being almost revolutionary to me, it is still not doing what I believe it should be doing. I love the idea of having the HUD where I can not only use to open files and applications in my own computer, I would love to be able to easily pick filters and search engines that can be integrated to Unity that way. From my limited experience so far, it looks interesting but it is far from being what it should be. Part of the problem is that I did not find the HUD to be very user friendly and perhaps having a tutorial would be useful or some other way to really make the HUD intuitive and customizable. Once Ubuntu can do that effectively I would not be surprised if other OSs copied the idea because it is simply brilliant.

Some of the issues I had in the past with Ubuntu such as difficulty installing supported software like "Steam" are still there. I don't know why but when I try to install steam from the Ubuntu Software Centre it doesn't offer me an option to just "install", instead it says "Buy" which eventually leads me to errors.  I really hope little glitches like that are taken care of soon because I strongly believe having an OS that works as it is intended all the time is vital if Ubuntu is ever to be a true competitor of Apple and Microsoft.

I've also encountered some problems with my sounds settings. For some reason my earphones only produce sounds from the left side. I know it's not a harware issue since Windows plays sounds fine on my machine. After doing some research I haven't been able to find an easy solution yet and it is a bit frustrating. So often Linux advocates bash new users because they say Linux is too hard to use consistently and this exemplifies what I mean exactly. I know that it is often a result of hardware manufacturers not paying as much attention to Linux, however, in order for Linux to really become popular accross the board, it needs to have issues like this addressed.

While Ubuntu still offers all the customization that it has offered in the past, I don't like that Canonical has disabled a lot of the options that use to be out of the box such as multiple workspaces and things like that. I also think they have made some of the settings a bit harder to access now which is likely an attempt to "dumb down" the OS to make it more user friendly. Unfortunately I do not like having to spend so much time tweaking my distro just so it could run like my Ubuntu 11.10 use to run. But if doing things like this helps to get more users I can forgive Canonical for it, but maybe offer an option during install for "new user" vs "seasoned user".

Overall though, I am extremely excited to be finally running Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr. I have been waiting for this version for a while and I am very impressed with what I have seen so far. After attempting to use quite a few other distros like Xubuntu, Mint 16, Kali, Debian and Ubuntu Gnome, I still feel that Ubuntu continues to deliver the best experience of all of these. Mint has climbed significantly in popularity, but to be perfectly frank I don't think it offers any more user friendliness than Ubuntu does. I strongly recommend Ubuntu to anyone wanting to try Linux for the first time as it is a great system, and I would love to see some of the more persistent problems with the distro disappear so that Ubuntu can really make an impact on the desktop market. Unity may be a source of a lot of differences of opinion, but in my opinion Unity is the most inovative, the most attractive and the desktop environment with the most potential to become the new standard in the future. Keep up the good work Canonical.