What's new in Ubuntu 13.04

From issue 17 / 2013

Raring About Ringtail

Paul C. Brown

So Raring Ringtail is here. As usual, expectations are high, and the claims of Canonical's marketing team are gushing. But does Raring Ringtail live up to the hype?

Ubuntu 13.04 comes with the usual bug fixes and performance improvements. That given, I look at what is really, really new in Raring Ringtail.

On the Desktop

Not mentioning the performance enhancements would be unfair. Unity seems to be a much more stable environment, and everything, HUD included, works as expected and is much faster. The desktop in general definitely feels snappier and more solid.

The new icon set in the launcher, without going so far as being "a thing of beauty," is nicer than that of previous releases. The system icons are prettier, and the background is the same for all of them. Gone are the garish Ludo-like colors used for LibreOffice applications and other non-native applications on prior releases. All buttons sport the same semi-transparent background. Now, if they could just get rid of that default livery-purple wallpaper.

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