During a keynote at the OSCON conference in 2008, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth urged the Linux development community to improve its focus on usability. He vowed that Canonical would contribute financial and technical resources to help make Linux more beautiful and functional. He aimed to raise the bar and set a whole new standard—not just for Linux, but for the entire desktop computing industry.

"The great task ahead of us over the next two years is to lift the experience of the Linux desktop from something that is stable and robust and not so pretty, to something which is art," he said in 2008. "Not emulate, but blow right past Apple in the user experience we deliver to our end users."

The Linux platform has evolved considerably in the two years that have passed since he set that goal, and Ubuntu 10.04, which was officially released last week, offers us an opportunity to evaluate the progress that Canonical and the Ubuntu community have made in their collaborative pursuit of Shuttleworth's ambitious vision.

The new version of Ubuntu is codenamed Lucid Lynx, and is a long-term support (LTS) release, which means that package updates will be available for an extended duration. Typical Ubuntu versions get 18 months of updates, but LTS releases are supported for three years on desktop computers and five years on servers. The LTS releases are important because the longer support cycle tends to attract the interest of hardware vendors and business users.

This is Ubuntu's chance to prove itself as a worthy contender for the mainstream desktop. In this in-depth review, we will take a close look at some of the new features and attempt to determine if Lucid Lynx purrs or growls.

Theme update

One of the most significant changes in Lucid is the introduction of a new default theme. Ubuntu has shed its previous style in favor of a new look that features black trim, orange highlighting, and an aubergine wallpaper. The new theme is part of a broader branding overhaul that will redefine Ubuntu's visual identity.

When the first release of Ubuntu was launched in 2004, it had a distinctive brown theme that was intended to reflect the spirit of "humanity" that defined the distribution's brand. Although orange and other colors were introduced in subsequent releases, the predominantly brown color palette has persisted for the past five years, becoming a common target of criticism among Ubuntu's users.

During the development of Ubuntu 8.04, the previous long-term support release, Canonical's artists began to contemplate the possibility of making sweeping changes to the default theme. A black and orange color scheme was one of the concepts that was discussed at the Ubuntu Developer Summit for 8.04 in 2007. The redesign was deferred and reconsidered in later development cycles but did not become a serious undertaking until work began on Lucid.

Lucid's updated themes were first made public at the beginning of March when Canonical announced its plans to revise Ubuntu's branding. The new default theme, called Ambiance, uses the popular Murrine Gtk+ theme engine. Window menus, titlebars, and panels are black, with a slight gradient at the top that gives them the appearance of depth and roundness. The color of the window background and scrollbar is light beige, but the buttons are shaded darker with a vertical gradient. The selection highlighting, progress bars, checkboxes, and radiobuttons have a salmon color that stands out strongly against the rest of the color scheme.

The Ambiance theme

Ambiance is enabled by default, but there is also a variant called Radiance that is included in the standard Ubuntu installation. Radiance looks nearly identical, but has a different color palette—slightly lighter widget colors and a cream-colored gradient for the menus, window titlebars, and panels.

The Radiance theme

The new default wallpaper is a simple blend of black, purple, and white with a radial gradient and a lens flare. Although the wallpaper's colors are visually appealing and contrast well with the dark panels, its simplicity instills a sense of incompleteness. It seems very empty, an effect that is exacerbated by Ubuntu's practice of not displaying standard icons on the desktop.

Ubuntu's new default desktop wallpaper

Users who are easily distracted by a busy wallpaper will likely appreciate Ubuntu's default, but I personally favor a more vibrant look. OMG!Ubuntu, a popular Ubuntu enthusiast blog that often showcases high-quality community theming projects, recently highlighted some impressive alternative Ubuntu wallpapers designed by Pr09studio. Among the gems is an especially stunning piece that serves as a perfect replacement for the default wallpaper.

The style of the default icon theme has largely been retained from the previous version, but with an updated palette. Some icons are more pronounced, with stronger gradients and richer colors. The folders, for example, have gone from a very light orange to bright salmon. Purple highlighting has been added to many icons, particularly those that display the desktop.

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