Ubuntu How To

Lucid Lynx comes with window buttons on the left by default, similar to the ones on Macs. As a previous Ubuntu and Windows user, I find them easier on the right hand side. Luckily, it is really easy to change and it took me less than a few minutes to find the solution.

All you have to do is:

Step 1: Go to Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal

Step 2: Type “gconf-editor” with no quotes

Step 3: You will see “Configuration Editor” window now. Go to apps -> metacity -> general.

Step 4: Find “Button Layout” key and change it. It is “close, minimize, maximize:” by default. To have it on the right hand side, type in “menu:minimize,maximize,close”. This will add the menu button on the left hand side, which I find useful. If you don’t need the menu, just type “:minimize,maximize,close”.

This was very simple, yet made the whole lot of difference for me.

Ubuntu 10.04, codenamed “Lucid Lynx” was released on April 29, 2010 almost as scheduled (a little delay due to the bug in a boot loader) and includes the 2.6.32-21.32 kernel which has quite a few performance updates. The next version, Ubuntu 10.10 (“Maverick Meerkat”), scheduled for  October 10 2010.

Talking about performance, they removed HAL from the boot process, which makes Lucid boot quite a bit faster.

Lucid Lynx is now available in 29 languages: Spanish, English (United Kingdom), Brazilian Portuguese, German, French, Italian, Hungarian, Swedish, Russian, Chinese (Simplified), Dutch, Portuguese, Finnish, Danish, Japanese, Greek, Korean, Czech, Catalan, Polish, Galician, Chinese (Traditional), Slovenian, Bulgarian, Asturian, Vietnamese, Basque, Turkish and Serbian.

Likewise-open package got updated. It is version 5.4 now. nVidia drivers got updated as well and run on Nouveau by default. Ubuntu 10.04 comes with Gnome 2.30, which has just a few extra features. Wonder what upcoming Gnome 3 would be like… 🙂

Lucid featured 2 new themes, Ambiance (Dark) and Radiance (Light), which have quite a few changes. They got new wallpapers and icons as well. We will probably have to put it into a different post.

New Ubuntu has a few new social features. MeMenu, which is built on the Gwibber provides easy access to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and a few other social platforms and allows to see several feeds at the same time.

OS has a new feature to purchase favorite songs right from the desktop. Not sure if you need it, but it is there now and works well with Rhythmbox player. It has improved sync features for easier file sharing.

You can download Lucid Lynx here, which list the most popular downloaded images.

We are not sure if a lot of Mac users get hurt by the economy and switch to Linux, but what catches the attention right away is the placement of the window buttons. They are on the left-side now. While it can be changed, many users seem to like it. As for me, I still run Windows at work and on my laptop, so I think I will be looking into changing it shortly.