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Canonical Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" is yet another release of their Linux distribution, which is widely regarded as the standard.
10.04 is marketed as a "Long term support" version as well, meaning users will continue to get important security updates for years to come, without introducing instability from new features.
Note that some of these screenshots are new and updated, some are not.
This is the Ubuntu installer. Hasn't changed much from previous versions.
This is the default desktop as seen from the Live CD. The main desktop is identical, except there are no icons on the desktop by default (unless you have USB devices plugged in).
The default desktop consists of a "panel" on both the top and the bottom.
The top panel contains an Applications menu filled with programs (which are sorted into submenus based on genre (ex. Games, Accessories)), a Places menu, which displays a list of drives, folders, and other locations, and a System menu containing control panel applets among other system items.
The top menu also contains the following items (at present):
- Networks
- Volume
- The "indicator applet", which displays various indicators from mail, chat, and "social broadcasts" from services like Flickr, Twitter and Facebook
- Time and date, which also doubles as a scheduler
- A session indicator applet which lists items for the user's account properties, chat accounts, and "Ubuntu One", which is a cloud storage space.
- Power options, to which the function should be obvious.
The bottom panel has a show desktop button, a list of open windows, the Workplace Switcher, and an icon for the trash.
By default, Ubuntu recognized most of the hardware of this machine (which BTW is not a VM). However, because it has one of those "evil" ATI 3D video chipsets on it, it requires you to download a "restricted driver".
With Linux, most drivers are built-in to the operating system and cannot be directly added or updated by the end user. Nvidia and ATI/AMD are the exception, and they do not permit this. There are advantages and disadvantages with this method, and the program makes a big note that Ubuntu developers cannot fix these drivers.
From an end user's standpoint, this means that you don't have to go searching for billions of drivers, however you couldn't take advantage of new hardware until the necessary drivers were added to the Linux libraries, which usually required an OS upgrade anyways.
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