Ubuntu 8.10 arrives

The improved networking is especially important to owners of netbooks - small laptop computers that are increasing in popularity, such as the Dell Mini or Acer Aspire One. Additionally, the improvements in the kernel of Intrepid mean these devices are much better supported in general.

Intrepid has not been designed specifically to run on netbooks, but many of them will install with most of, if not all, the hardware working fully. The kernel improvements have also led to better support for Wifi devices, making wireless internet access easier and more reliable.

TV and radio streaming
One final addition, although still in a fairly early development stage, is a plug-in for the media player Totem that enables you to view streamed BBC content. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has worked with the BBC to provide certain radio and television content freely available.

At the time of the release, only radio programming was working, although this should change in the coming months. George Wright, a developer for the BBC, said: “This clearly is not a competitor to BBC iPlayer. It has a lot of BBC content that is already available, but you won’t see Doctor Who or Dragons’ Den on there any time soon. What you will see is an increasing list of content, in both audio and video formats, that we can share with you in an experimental way, allowing us to explore and test new ways of viewing and listening to some of our TV and radio shows.”

Overall, Intrepid adds a sprinkling of minor changes and enhancements, but is a very safe and conservative release. A fully updated version of Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) is still a good choice next to Intrepid, and is by no means inadequate.

One particular disappointment is the lack of Openoffice 3, which was released shortly before Intrepid. As a major component of the desktop, an upgrade to this new version of Openoffice would have been a compelling reason to upgrade, which, on the whole, is somewhat lacking. However, if you have a netbook, or a laptop with mobile broadband, Intrepid may be much more appealing.

Setting up
The installation routine doesn’t really differ from previous releases. The partitioning screen in the graphical installer has had a redesign and looks more pleasant but otherwise retains the same functionality. Once installation is complete, there is a little left to do before the desktop is ready for use.

As with earlier versions of Ubuntu, there are no codecs installed for patented multimedia formats. One difference with Intrepid is that you can purchase these codecs from Canonical. When you click on a file that cannot currently be played, such as an MP3 audio file or an MPEG-4 video file, Totem will prompt you to either install freely available open-source codecs or purchase them. For people in Europe, and most parts of the world outside the US, there is no need to purchase any codecs as the patents are not recognised, so let Totem go ahead and install the freely available versions.