

Ubuntu Saner Defaults Remix beta, freshly installed A beta of an unofficial remix of Ubuntu 10.04.1, the "Saner Defaults Remix", which offers "better default choices" and a Mono-free experience, has been released. The developer also hopes that the saner configuration will be better for newcomers.

The "Saner Defaults Remix" release replaces Evolution with Mozilla's Thunderbird 2.0 and the Lightning calendar add-on, Nautilus file manager with the simplified nautilus-elementary and Empathy with Pidgin as it is "a more stable and mature application". Mono applications are also swapped out with FSpot replaced by gthumb and Gnote standing in for Tomboy; the presence of Mono based applications has been controversial with some and the Saner Defaults Remix looks to avoid that issue.

Other changes include the addition of the Gufw firewall manager with the ufw firewall activated by default to deny incoming connections. The desktop itself is set to the clearlooks theme with the window buttons returned to the upper right of windows. By default, an unlocked, random screensaver is used to avoid startling new users with a blacked out locked desktop and the update manager is returned to only notifying of the availability of updates rather than launching when it things is appropriate. The Medibuntu repository is installed and enabled by default. The DVD images also include Cheese, Inkscape, GIMP and other packages and a "restricted extras" package with codecs, fonts, Flash Player and other non-free packages.

The developer says that although the four images he has made available are "production ready" the beta tag has been placed on the release because of very limited testing. The aim is to release an update to the Saner Defaults Remix every month. CD and DVD ISO images for 32 and 64-bit x86 systems are available to download from the project's SourceForge pages.

(djwm)