After the customary six months of incubation, Ubuntu 13.10—codenamed Saucy Salamander—has hatched. The new version of the popular Linux distribution brings updated applications and several new features, including augmented search capabilities in the Unity desktop shell.

Although Saucy Salamander offers some useful improvements, it’s a relatively thin update. XMir, the most noteworthy item on the 13.10 roadmap, was ultimately deferred for inclusion in a future release. Canonical’s efforts during the Saucy development cycle were largely focused on the company’s new display server and upcoming Unity overhaul, but neither is yet ready for the desktop.

Due to the unusual nature of this Ubuntu update, this review is going to diverge a bit from the usual formula. The first half will include a hands-on look at the new Unity features. The second half will take a close look at the Ubuntu roadmap and some of the major changes that we can expect to see over the course of the next several releases.

Smart Scopes

One of the key components of the Unity desktop shell is the Dash, the desktop overlay that enables the user to browse and search applications, files, and multimedia. The Dash can be expanded with custom views, called Scopes (formerly Lenses), that extend it with additional information. Since the initial introduction of the Dash, the search system has gradually evolved to operate like a kind of virtual storefront. In response to certain queries, it will recommend music from the Ubuntu One Music Store and products from Amazon, generating affiliate revenue for Canonical.

The Unity Dash got an overhaul under the hood for Ubuntu 13.10. Canonical wanted to extend the built-in search system so that it can access data from a wide range of Internet sources. For the new version of the Dash, the Web search functionality is now handled by a remote backend service that is hosted by Canonical.

As the user types a search query in the Dash, the partial query is transmitted to Canonical’s servers, which will analyze the input and decide what to present. The new backend uses a number of heuristics to attempt to find the most relevant results to send back to the user. Some of the Internet sources that the new backend can tap include Github, reddit, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google News, The Weather Channel, and Yelp.

Testing the new Dash

While testing Ubuntu 13.10 for this review, I typed in a number of different queries so that I could see how the Dash would respond. When I typed in the name of my city, it displayed weather information and Wikipedia entries about it. When I typed in the name of a popular Logitech gaming mouse, the Dash displayed Amazon product listings. When I typed in the name of my favorite musician, it offered albums, a Wikipedia entry, the musician’s Twitch.tv profile, and a link to a reddit post about the musician.

The filtering mechanism on the side of the Dash allows you to toggle the sources, giving you some control over where the results are originating. You can also tell the search mechanism to only return results from a specific source by using a prefix. For example, you can type “news:ubuntu” if all you are looking for is Google News stories about Ubuntu.

The new Dash concept is intriguing, but its usefulness is a bit limited. The results are hit and miss and tend to be organized in a really haphazard way. Another issue is that all results are displayed the same way: a rectangular icon with some text underneath. The whole system would be a lot more powerful and practical if it could tailor the presentation to the specific type of content.

When you click a search result in the Dash, it will display an expanded version of that item with a bigger icon and more text. The expanded result will also display a button that you can click to view more information on the Internet. For example, you can read an excerpt of a Wikipedia page by clicking its result item and then click the button to open the actual Wikipedia page in your browser.

It’s worth noting that the Dash still does “local” system searches, displaying installed applications and recently used files from the filesystem. These items are given priority—they are displayed first and in the most easily accessible position. The new remote search system is designed so that the results can be appended to the Dash as they trickle in, which means that it typically isn’t going to pose any inconvenience when simply launching applications, for example.

Privacy issues

Canonical faced considerable criticism last year when it first introduced the built-in Amazon search feature. The newly expanded search system, and the manner in which it is implemented, will likely raise additional concerns.

When a user opens the Dash, the underlying software will initiate a search session with Canonical’s servers. During the session, each keypress will be transmitted over the wire. It will also send platform and version information, the user’s country, the user’s locale, and information about which search sources and scopes the user has added or removed.

Canonical says that it doesn’t save any identifiable information. The user's IP address is retained in standard server logs, but is not correlated with search behavior for tracking purposes. The company does keep track of certain usage data that it can analyze to improve search results.

Although I think that a universal Web search has the potential to be useful, I’m not really comfortable with the way Canonical tacks it on to local system searches. I would be a lot happier with the feature if Canonical broke it out into a separate mechanism, activated by selecting a specific section of the Dash or using a particular shortcut. In its current form, it strikes me as a bit too invasive.

Fortunately, the Internet search feature is very easy to disable. Ubuntu 12.04 introduced a dedicated privacy control panel in the built-in System Settings tool. To disable Dash Internet searches in 13.10, all you have to do is open the privacy panel, navigate to the search tab, and flip off the toggle switch.