Camera Labs

Those of you who don't know much about this baby, all I can say is that this operating system looks WAY better than any MS OS you've ever used. This is of course my personal opinion, and obviously not everybody will agree. But I suggest you give it a try and decide for yourself if it indeed is something everybody should have. You can also use XP, Vista, and 7 along with this OS. You don't even have to install it to use it - you can run the entire OS right from the CD. And if you do install it in a system which already has a bunch of other OSes, including any version of windows, your boot-records won't get screwed. GRUB2 (which is the default boot loader in v9.10 of Ubuntu) will present you with a neat menu including the option to start your Microsoft boot loader. Have a look at the features of this FREE gem here. And get the ISO to get started here.

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SX10IS
Flickr Picasa

Finally out is it? Been checking throughout the day and still wasn't available after lunch. Download speeds are not great by torrent.

I downloaded the RC previously but never got round to trying it. Based on 9.04 I'd only say it was generally on a par with modern OSes like Windows and MacOS, with its own set of strengths and weaknesses. It is my first non-MS OS of choice.

The live CD is a great way to check it out without installing, but load performance is rather horrible as you can imagine. It also has an "install in Windows" dual boot option so you don't have to repartition your hard disk to test it out installed. That creates a virtual HD file on the Windows file system.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

The "install on windows" option is targeted primarily to let users see what it's like before actually installing it in a separate space on HDD. It's obviously faster than the live cd. But there's a LOT more to the live cd than just trying out the os. It is an excellent tool to fix all your boot/partition/internet problems etc. It saved me a lot of trouble many times. When there's something wrong with windows, you can even restore/tweak many system files to actually fix that from the live cd/ubuntu. I have the 9.04 installed, but I think I'm gonna delete it and make a fresh install of this one. Upgrading won't do anything to the existing legacy GRUB.

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SX10IS
Flickr Picasa

I've been using Ubuntu since 4.10 Warty and Debian (Sarge I believe) before that. I've not been tempted by 9.10 since installing Windows 7. I've gained about 1 hour in battery life by switching to W7 and I'm able Lightroom natively instead of via a VM or Wine.

Ubuntu is alright for most things, but as it stands Linux has very little appeal for photographers.

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PhilipGoh.com

Installing it now, on some challenging hardware. The original Eee that started the netbook category, specifically the 701 with 4GB SSD and now upgraded to 1GB ram. Biggest limit is the display resolution (800x480), but the install is going on now.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Unfortunate it is that Photoshop/Lightroom isn't natively supported in Linux. But GIMP is not entirely useless - it supports layers and has quite useful plugins/addons to suit the needs of many who don't want to spend a fortune just to touch up their photos a bit. Uploading to Flickr/Picasa etc is a breeze. I can see thumbnails of even my CHDK DNGs in Ubuntu. And I never had a failed disk-write with Ubuntu. Everything simply works out-of-the-box. My only complaint about it is the inferior quality of sound - even with top-notch hardware and proper tweaking. Ubuntu may not be a replacement for windows for everybody, but I think it makes sense to dedicate a small portion of a huge HDD for it. Like I said, it saved me a number of times.

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SX10IS
Flickr Picasa

I need to be able to run all Windows programs in Ubuntu before it goes on my desktop. Also, I need X-Fi sound card support in Ubuntu. Till then, my main PC will be running Windows. My laptop is running Ubuntu 9.10 RC right now. I've been using Ubuntu since 7.04, on my secondary laptops/PCs.

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ALSA should work.

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SX10IS
Flickr Picasa

They've been saying that X-Fi would work for awhile now but I just can't get it to go. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

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Install is done. Not stressed it much yet, but everything that should be there seems to be detected. Will try it on the work wireless network tomorrow I think. Performance is ok. Boot time seems to be improved from previous versions.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Shagrath,
Install the pulse audio volume control GUI and ALSA mixer GUI and do some fiddling. Sometimes just a quick toggle of a few check-boxes is all that needs to be done. Mute/Unmute some of the stuff and see what happens. Also, you might wanna give the final 9.10 a try.

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SX10IS
Flickr Picasa

I'll try it out, see what happens.

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upgrading on my laptop as we speak

Allright, I just upgraded. Due to my custom grub configuration, the newer kernel wasn't loaded at boot, and I lost mouse support. A simple virtual terminal session, and some Vim-work later I changed my grub and everything works fine now

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I take pictures so quickly, my highschool was "Continuous High".

I've got it running on my laptop right now. I love the new icon theme, especially on the panel for the wifi, sound, etc. They are all gray and less distracting. I've also got Gnome Do running as a dock. Here's a screenshot. I think it looks really nice.

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Downloading now and hoping it works in VMware Fusion as I don't want to waste a partition on what will be a "fun" OS for me. Jackelope refused to installed vmware tools so the usage experience was just rubbish without drivers.

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Graham
Flickr