11.04 Beta Experiance

[Chris]

I downloaded the more recent Beta (?) release of Naty a few days back
and last night opted to install.

After backing up my 10.10 system with Clonezilla, I rebooted into 10.10.
>From there I put the DVD in and allowed the auto-run update feature.
This was a nice surprise! I wasn't sure how that was going to play out
but figured, why not.

The upgrade seemed straight to the point and only prompted me twice to
overwrite some files (I do recall one being the sudoers file - sorry, I
don't recall the other). It was nice to see the diffs and that allows
someone with a highly tweaked system to determine if they really want to
or need to over write with the version being installed. I don't know if
you would have the option merge the custom with the new or not - if not,
that might be a nice feature.

Anyways - the whole upgrade took a bit over 2 hours (on my Sony Vaio
desktop - 2.4 Ghz, 2 gig ram and all SATA drives).

Seemed long compared to a fresh install but still. Anyways, after first
boot I was seeing the Unity desktop. Not something I prefer (tried to
live with it but after 24 hours I knew I wasn't going to like it) but I
tried to give it a fair shake.

During the Unity trial, I did google what I needed to do to "go back" to
my beloved Gnome.

For those that may not know, simply setting that at the login screen
does it for you - no need to worry about removing anything. Anyways, the
new Evolution has some things fixed (in my mind) but more pointed, the
ability to simply mark all messages read within a folder without being
prompted something like "just this folder", "this folder and all folders
below" etc.

I'm not a big fan of Evo but I wanted to give it a chance from a few
years ago. for the record, I prefer Claws-Mail. I would opt for
Thunderbird IF I could have the same benefit I have with Claws for the
storage. I really like maildir (afaik, using T-Bird as a pop client
won't allow local storage in maildir format, only mbox).

Firefox 4 seems Ok, need to get used to the change in the layout but
seems Ok. As for my music playability - Amarok is version 2.4.0 and
seems tighter that the version in 10.10 (for me, after I would go to
Cover Manager, it was really really sluggish and I would close it down
and re launch).

Everything else seems pretty tight (I have kicked the tires but not
taker her out on the freeway yet) so far and I'm happy with it so far.

Good job Dev-Folks! Love your work!

-- 
Keep well,

Chris