Ubuntu 7.04 and GNOME 2.17: Visible Changes

  • January 15, 2007
  • Avatar for jacob
    Jacob
    Peddicord

The release of Ubuntu 7.04, named Feisty Fawn, is scheduled for release in April. Herd (Alpha) 2 was recently released, but no one seems to know what has changed. I took a look into the system and found some very interesting changes relating to the GUI and GNOME 2.17. (GNOME 2.17 will be released as GNOME 2.18.)

The first change I found was the addition of a Control Center. This new application replaces the long, sometimes overflowing System Preferences and Administration menu with a simple dialog.

Feisty Control Center

The next, and my personal favorite change, is the addition of color changing functionality to themes. I like green a lot, so I chose it for my menus and window border.

Feisty Theme Colors
Another change related to themes is the new Clearlooks theme. The only major change here is the new, more defined menu style:

Feisty: New Clearlooks engine

New to Feisty is the addition of a Power History dialog for laptop users. Since I don't own a laptop, I'm unable to show it in action, but here you go anyway:

Feisty Power History

Next up is a minor, but very handy change: The addition of a bug reporting menu item. On Canonical-supported applications, there has always been a menu to get support and help translate applications. Now, there is an item to report a bug should one arise.

Feisty Canonical Bug Menu

Other changes include the usual bug fixes, an updated GNOME System Monitor that shows system specs, a new kernel, and ZeroConf networking. ZeroConf is a project to try to make configuring a network connection require as little user-intervention as possible.

Stay tuned as we follow the development of GNOME 2.17/18 and Ubuntu 7.04!

Avatar for jacob Jacob Peddicord

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