Ubuntu's Saucy Salamander is a Slick but Spiritless Upgrade

Ubuntu 13.10's new Scopes feature is fed by heuristics to offer matches to your accumulated browsing and search requests gleaned from Github, reddit, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google News, The Weather Channel and Yelp. I find this level of search invasion too intrusive. If I wanted that approach to marketing, I would just bypass Ubuntu completely and grab a Kindle or rely more fully on the Google search engine.

Ubuntu 13.10: A desktop tour (Slideshow)

The most new-user friendly of all Linux desktop distributions, Ubuntu has a new, better release: Ubuntu 13.10, Saucy Salamander.

Mark Shuttleworth Apologizes for the Trademark Infringement Letter Sent to Fixubuntu.com

Mark Shuttleworth Regrets the “Tea Party” Remarks and Other Canonical Mistakes

Mark Shuttleworth Sends Out Apologies

Ubuntu 13.10 - meeting the Saucy Salamander

Looking back on my time with Kubuntu 13.10 the thing which stood out the most was that not much stood out. Apart from having some network issues which slowed things down during my first installation attempt, my time with the distribution was quite good. The installer is nicely laid out, the KDE 4.11 desktop is quite polished, providing a clean, feature-rich environment. I like that Kubuntu comes with a guest account for those odd times people wish to borrow my computer. I'm also happy to see there is an option in the KDE System Settings panel to turn off the guest account for people who see the guest account as a security concern. The new user account manager is slick and easy to use, I'm quite happy to see it included in this release. So far I'm tentatively happy with the new Discover software manager. It looks pretty and it seems to work well enough. The software manager's interface is a little busy for my taste, but otherwise I have no complaints. I think most people will take to it and those who don't can fall back on the older package manager. Overall, Kubuntu 13.10 feels like a stable, mature release that has some nice new features, but nothing ground shaking that would put off existing users. I'm actually sorry this version is not a long-term support release and will only receive security updates for nine months, the short support cycle seems to be the only weak point in an otherwise excellent desktop operating system.

A review of "Instant Ubuntu"

I try to write articles for the readers on this site that I hope they will find useful and so I agreed to write the review on the basis that if it is a great book then I can share that knowledge and if it isn't then I can also share that knowledge.

Install Everpad 2.5.6 in Ubuntu 13.10

Install Cairo Dock 3.3.2 in Ubuntu 13.10

Valve's SteamOS will not be based on Ubuntu

Today in Open Source: SteamOS will not be based on Ubuntu. Plus: Metro Last Light out for Linux, and the Tuxmachines site has been sold

[...]

Tuxmachines Site Sold Foss Force is reporting that the Tuxmachines site has been sold. Here it is in case you missed it last month.

One of the most popular Linux sites, Tuxmachines.org, announced on October 28th that it has been tentatively sold for $1,000.

When Ms. Linton, who has also been involved with DistroWatch, started Tuxmachines it quickly grew to be an important destination on news about Linux and other open source projects.

More at Foss Force

It's sad that the site is changing hands, but hopefully the new owner will keep it going for a long, long time.

Installation and disk partitioning guide for Ubuntu 13.10

How-to configure keyboard layouts in Ubuntu Unity (video)

Install Ubuntu 13.10 using a USB key from Window or another Linux distribution

A USB key or thumb drive or USB stick is the best device to use in installing your favorite Linux distribution. It’s not just because it’s reusable forever (unless you mess it up), but the system runs much faster than if you used a CD or DVD disc for installation.

Grsync : Graphical rsync backup tool on Ubuntu ( 12.10 / 13.04 / 13.10)

grsync is a graphical rsync tool in ubuntu linux. It provides a graphical user interface to backup or sync important files & directories to remote machine or in local machine using rsync. It currently supports only a limited set of the most important rsync features, but can be used effectively for local directory synchronization.

Flavours and Variants

• Pear OS 8 Has Been Officially Released

  The highly anticipated Pear OS 8 Linux distribution has been officially released today, November 9, by David Tavares, the father of the Pear Linux Project.
  
  There's no official announcement for Pear OS 8, but we can tell you that the distribution boasts a new iOS 7 design, created by Ivan Matias Suarez. Moreover, the brand-new Pear OS 8 distribution features a set of pre-installed applications, including Pear Cloud, Clean My Pear 2, MyPear 6, as well as more than 3,000 downloadable packages from its generous software repository.





• Pear OS 8 Could Arrive for Microsoft Surface Tablet

  David Tavares, father of the Pear Linux project, has just announced that he started a crowdfunding campaign for a new project, called Pear OS 8 Tablet Edition, a version of the Pear OS 8 Linux operating system for the Microsoft Surface tablet.

• Taming The Iguana.....

  So we found ourselves on unsure footing. While I am sure that the developers of Mint and Zorin are confident in their longevity within the the community.....
  
  It's simply a risk we cannot take. They are both some of the best examples of what Linux is and should be on the desktop. Both of these distributions will be used in our Reglue computers, as each of them has a specified purpose, depending on the power and size of the computer being installed.