The Ambiance theme seems a little half-baked, and doesn’t work well with some applications such as OpenOffice (where it becomes impossible to see the menu text). I’m sure that the Ubuntu team will work out all these bugs before the final release. Hopefully it will be fixed sooner, so that people can start writing documentation for the upcoming release with proper screenshots and videos.

One other disturbing change is the order of the window controls. For some reason, they’ve switched the position of the minimize and maximize buttons. I can’t imagine why they’d do such a thing, and if left in the final release, this will likely cause problems for millions of Ubuntu users. Please don’t mess with the window controls, please!

Here are some screenshots of the dark and light themes. Overall, I think they are pretty nice. There’s still a lot of brown and earth tones mixed in with the orange and new Ubuntu purple. I think it’s a fine start, and I look forward to seeing these themes develop over the next few months and years.

What do you think of the new Ubuntu look? Leave your comments below!

Ambiance

Radiance

Related posts:

1. 4 Cool New Features in Ubuntu Lucid Lynx Alpha 3
2. Install Ubuntu 7.04 on Your Intel Mac with VMware Fusion
3. CrossOver 9.0 Improves Windows Application Support on Linux

One new feature in Ubuntu 10.04 that caught my attention is the “Desktop in the Cloud” project. Until now, most of the attention on cloud technologies has been focused on servers in the cloud. If you wanted to use a desktop environment on EC2, you needed to do quite a bit of tweaking and installing of packages yourself. With the Lucid release, the Ubuntu team is making desktop in the cloud much easier.

You can now find daily testing images for Ubuntu Lucid desktop in EC2.  These images include a full Ubuntu desktop environment as well as Google’s Neatx open source NX server for connecting remotely to the desktop. Here’s what you need to know to get started (note: This is not a full tutorial, and meant for people who already are familiar with EC2 and have their systems configured for working with EC2. Information for setting up EC2 on Ubuntu can be found here. Perhaps I’ll make a full tutorial for beginners after Lucid’s official release).

To find the latest Lucid daily build, simply search for an AMI in the AWS Management Console with the current date, like “20100302.” You should find daily desktop builds for either today’s or yesterday’s date. Make sure to choose the 32-bit version if you want to launch a small instance.

Once you find the AMI, launch it like you normally would. Make sure that port 22 for SSH is open in the security group that you choose. You will connect to this EC2 instance just like to any other instance with only one difference. The official Ubuntu EC2 images do not allow you to connect via SSH as the root user. Instead, you need to connect with your private key as the user “ubuntu”, like this:

ssh -i /path/to/ec2-keypair.pem ubuntu@external-host-name

You should create a new user and give them a password (a password is required by NX). Now you can connect as this new user to your new cloud Desktop instance with NX Client. If you don’t have an NX client, download a free one from NoMachine. Use your NX client to connect to your EC2 instance via its public DNS address on port 22. If all goes well, you should see your newly spawned desktop.

So, we have a desktop in the cloud … but what is it good for?

Right now, it’s a very quick and easy way to test Lucid daily builds. Instead of downloading a new ISO and installing in a virtual machine, you can test on EC2 and save a lot of time.  In the future, I can see this being useful for those who would like to have their own personal desktop that’s accessible from anywhere. It might also be useful for organizations who want to provide desktop work environments for employees who work from home.

What ideas do you have for using an Ubuntu desktop in the cloud? Share your ideas in the comments below!

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The first thing you’ll notice about version 9 of CrossOver is the greatly improved user interface. The entire interface has been rewritten in GTK and fits in much better with a GNOME desktop. The interface also seems much more intuitive. Installing a supported Windows application only takes a few clicks. CrossOver takes care of setting up a new “bottle” (or fake Windows environment) for your application and also downloads and installs any needed frameworks, fonts, and plugins that might be needed by the application you’re trying to install. Installing Office 2007 in CrossOver only requires a few more clicks than installing on Windows.

The other big feature of CrossOver 9.0 is the ability for users to share “recipes” for installing (officially) unsupported Windows apps. If someone figures out all the special steps needed to install their favorite Windows program, they can uploaded it to CodeWeavers site and share it with other CrossOver users. At this early stage, there are very few “Community Supported Applications” available for installing, and they seem a little flaky (IE 8 didn’t work at all), but hopefully this database will grow over time. If the amount of community supported apps grows, it could be a real boom for CodeWeavers.

CrossOver costs $39.95 for the standard version, or $69.95 for the pro version. While it’s possible to install just about anything you can install with CrossOver with standard Wine, I believe the ease and convenience that CrossOver provides is well worth the money – I feel fine about supporting CodeWeavers, who in turn support the Wine project.

What are your views on CrossOver, Wine, and Windows application support on Linux? Leave your comments below!

Now for some more screenshots:

Windows Applications Menu

CrossOver Bottle Manager

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Simple Scan makes scanning, emailing, printing and saving documents much less complicated. Sure, many of us geeks might want something like XSane that offers much more control over our scans, but for beginners, Simple Scan should take all the mystery out of scanning. Scanning documents and attaching them to an email in Evolution is now just a few-click process.

Simple Scan offers only the most basic of controls. It lets you choose the type of document you are scanning (photo or text), lets you do basic cropping, then lets you save the scan as a file, email your scans via Evolution or just print.  It also handles multi-page documents, allowing you to save them as a PDF file or as a series of JPG images. That’s about all there is to it – it’s simple!

Have you had a chance to give Simple Scan a try? Is it too simple, or just right for beginners and for making quick scans? Leave your comments below!

Related posts:

1. 4 Cool New Features in Ubuntu Lucid Lynx Alpha 3
2. Ubuntu Desktop in the Cloud
3. Ubuntu Switches to Yahoo! Search … Kinda

Just last week, I was complaining about Ubuntu’s lack of built-in support for iPhones and newer iPods. Personally, I think this functionality is important if Ubuntu wants to grow in the consumer market. With the release of Lucid Alpha 3, I saw a couple of reports saying that iPhone and iPod Touch support was included out of the box. So, I plugged in my iPod Touch and was amazed to see it not only show up on my desktop, but also working inside Rhythmbox!

Rhythmbox now allows you to drag and drop music to and from your iPhone or iPod Touch. Now, the only time you would need iTunes is to do a firmware upgrade on your iPhone or iPod Touch.  So, how long will it be before Apple moves to block Rhythmbox with an update?

Gwibber and the MeMenu

Ubuntu 10.04 brings social networking to the default desktop with Gwibber and the new MeMenu. This is part of Canonical’s “Social By Default” initiative for Lucid. Gwibber allows you to connect to multiple social networking sites and  interact with them in a unified window within Ubuntu. Gwibber currently supports Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Digg, Status.net, Identi.ca, Qaiku, and FriendFeed. The MeMenu takes things even further, giving you an overview of all your social networks and chat accounts, even allowing you to set your status and post to your social networks right from the top panel.

There is still quite a bit of work to do on the MeMenu if it’s going to meet the blueprints that have been made for it, but it’s coming along nicely. Gwibber also seems to be quite buggy, but a quick look at Launchpad shows that the developers are busy fixing bugs and adding features.  When 10.04 final hits the net in April, I think the “Social By Default” initiative will prove to be a huge success.

Facebook Chat

It’s only been two weeks since Facebook announced support for the XMPP/Jabber protocol, and Facebook chat support is already supported in Lucid Alpha 3. Empathy now includes Facebook chat along with the multitude of other chat protocols that it supports. With support for Facebook chat in Empathy and Facebook updates in Gwibber, you can now keep in touch with your Facebook contacts without ever visiting the site.

Improved Sound Controls

One thing that has really bugged me about the last two releases of Ubuntu is Pulse Audio. Ever since Ubuntu switched to Pulse Audio, I’ve had nothing but trouble with sound. Things seem a bit better in 9.10, but to get good control over sound you have to install the Pulse Audio Volume Control. Lucid Alpha 3 includes a new sound preference panel that’s available by default and right from the sound widget in the top panel.

This sound preferences panel is a unified place for controlling everything sound related in Ubuntu. You can set your sound theme, configure your sound hardware, choose and configure input and output devices, and also see and control how individual programs are interacting with your sound devices. This is especially useful for configuring applications like Skype.

Conclusion

Ubuntu 10.04 is shaping up to be a fine release. Alpha 3 is pretty stable and brings some great new features with it. There are still more features to come, such as the Ubuntu One Music Store and possibly a new theme. I look forward to tracking Lucid’s progress and installing it on all of my workstations when it is released in April.

Have you tried Ubuntu Lucid Lynx yet? What are your favorite new features? Leave  your comments below!

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To install Chromium web browser, just search for “chromium” in the Ubuntu Software Center and click “Install” – it’s really that easy!

Are you using Chromium, Firefox or some other browser with Ubuntu? Leave your comments below!

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3. Ubuntu: Just how popular is it?

The Urban Dictionary defines a fanboy as “a person who is completely loyal to a game or company regardless of if they suck or not.” In the past, I’ve been exactly that, and I think that a lot of other people in the Ubuntu community have been too. We’ve been loyal fans of Ubuntu, telling all our friends, blogging the praises of Ubuntu and Open Source Software, being quick to point out the faults of the evil Microsoft, and all this time overlooking whenever there’s a problem with our favorite operating system.

Let me be clear, I’m still a huge fan of Ubuntu. I still think Linux is the best operating system on the market today, and that Ubuntu is a great choice for most people’s desktop computers. What I’m saying today is that I no longer want to be a fanboy!

Below are some of the things I’ve said in the past, thing that we’ve all said, things that Canonical sometimes says … things that are not completely true.

Ubuntu is easy to learn

In the past, I’ve been guilty of installing Ubuntu on a new computer and leaving the poor user with words like “don’t worry, Ubuntu easy to learn, it’s really not that different from Windows.” While this is true for geeks and people who love experimenting with computers, I’ve learned that it’s simply not true for most users. Computers are difficult!

Photo by: baking_in_pearls

But it’s true, right? Yes, Ubuntu IS easy to learn. In many ways, it’s easier than Windows. The Linux community and the Ubuntu team have made amazing progress in the past few years and I can honestly say that Ubuntu is now easier to use than Windows or OS X. So what’s the problem?

The real problem is that people are accustomed to Windows, it’s the only system that most people have ever used, they know nothing else. Very few people have had formal training in computers and just had to figure things out by muddling through. They’ve found ways to do the things they want in Windows (even if those ways make us geeks cringe).

Without some guidance on how to do things in Ubuntu, they soon realize that they’re going to have to muddle through an entirely new system, learning everything from scratch. This can be terrifying. If we want people to use Ubuntu, we need to help them make the transition. There should be video guides to using Ubuntu right on the default desktop. I know that the Ubuntu team is working on new documentation for version 10.04, but this is not enough – we need to show people the basics right on their screens.

Also, as fanboys who help people install Ubuntu, we need to be understanding and helpful. We need to take time to help people understand Ubuntu and how to accomplish the things they want to do. Our instructions need to be simple, understandable and honest.

You can get support from the community

New Ubuntu users often ask where they can get support for their new system. They realize that most people around them are not using Ubuntu and wonder who they’ll ask for help when things go wrong. One answer I’ve given in the past is “you can get support from the Ubuntu community.” Sure, there are support forums, IRC channels, and you can find the answer to just about anything by googling for “Ubuntu + problem.” But is it practical to ask people to search forums, or ask for support in IRC?

Photo by: Olancho Aid

Most of the support forums and tutorials you’ll find on google are full of technical details that make no sense to the average computer user. There’s talk of terminals, of “sudo”, “vim”, “nano”, “apt-get” and so on. I rarely see instructions for Ubuntu online that don’t include using the Terminal.

As Ubuntu fanboys, we need to realize that this stuff is hard for new users, when we’re posting on our blogs or showing our friends how to do something, we need to explain to them the easiest way to do something (preferably without a Terminal) and explain what we’re doing. We should be trying to help new users, not putting them down or getting angry with them in forums. This is a difficult task, but adding new users to the Ubuntu community depends on it.

You don’t need Microsoft Office

Ubuntu’s website says that “OpenOffice.org is compatible with all office applications including Microsoft Office.” I’ve told lots of people the same thing – I’ve told them that all they need is OpenOffice. After all, why should they pay hundreds of dollars just to write letters in Word?

While OpenOffice is perfectly fine for me, and great for people who just want to write letters and make simple presentations, it is often not a good fit for business professionals who have spent most of their adult lives working inside Microsoft Office. These people have spent their whole professional lives learning Microsoft Office, they understand it and can get their work done quickly. To many, the operating system is just the “thing that helps me get the computer going so that I can open Office.” Putting OpenOffice in front of someone like this can be frightening and frustrating for them.

Then there’s the issue of compatibility. OpenOffice’s compatibility with other office suites is amazing, and things will work most of the time. The problem comes when the new Ubuntu user sends their first document to their boss and it’s an ODF document instead of a Word DOC. The boss doesn’t have OpenOffice, so she calls the person and says she can’t open the file. About 90% of the time, the new user’s confidence in Ubuntu is now lost. They’re now convinced that this new system of theirs is not compatible with the Windows world and it’s already starting to cause them trouble. Soon enough, someone from accounting will send them an Excel spreadsheet with lots of formulas and it won’t open or save right in OpenOffice. The user is now sick of this “Linux thing” and ready to reinstall Windows. As the most important program for most users, if OpenOffice fails, Ubuntu fails.

What’s the solution to this problem? For starters, we could be more open about the issues that people could face with OpenOffice. If someone does most of their work in Microsoft Office 2007, they’re most likely not going to be happy with OpenOffice. We need to warn them about incompatibilities and show them how to save documents in DOC format. If they really need Microsoft Office, we should tell them about the many ways you can install Microsoft Office on Ubuntu. As a free software advocate and former Ubuntu fanboy, I don’t like the idea of running Microsoft Office on Ubuntu, but I have to admit that it’s better than people running Microsoft Office on Windows – baby steps.

You don’t need iTunes

I have to confess, moving away from iTunes was a problem for me. I started my move away from Windows almost 6 years ago, and because I had so much music in the iTunes DRM format and several iPods, I just couldn’t do without iTunes. Media players on Ubuntu have come a long way, and with the upcoming 10.04 release, Ubuntu will even have its own music store. This is great, but it doesn’t solve the problem for many people.

Photo by: The Rocketeer

Ubuntu’s website advertises that you can just plug in your iPod and use it with Rhythmbox. If you have an older iPod, you might be able to use it with Ubuntu. Unfortunately, for those users of modern iPods, Apple has completely locked them down to iTunes … you simply can’t access them in Ubuntu! So what’s a person supposed to do, throw away their iPods just so the can use a new operating system that they’re not really sure about in the first place? This just isn’t going to happen.

If Canonical wants to gain ground on the desktop, they need to put a lot of resources behind making a world-class competitor to iTunes, and it needs to support iPods. Period.

You don’t need Adobe

One of the first questions that people ask me when I’m trying to convince them to try Ubuntu is “can it run Adobe?” Usually, they want run Photoshop or Acrobat. I used to tell them that Ubuntu has “a program that is like Photoshop.” Unfortunately, I’ve never had anyone try GIMP and actually like it or agree with me that it’s “like Photoshop.” The GIMP is hard for people to use (as is Photoshop) and if you grew up on Photoshop, nothing will easily replace it. Direct replacements for other Adobe products like Acrobat, Dreamweaver and inDesign either don’t exist or are not very mature.

Again, what can be done about this? Personally, I’ve stopped telling people to use the GIMP and started telling people who want the Adobe Suite that they can install it right inside Ubuntu with the help of something like Crossover. Why not just use the applications they’re used to, especially if they already have a license?

I really believe that Canonical should partner with a company like CodeWeavers to bring Adobe support directly into Ubuntu. If someone wants to install Adobe CS4, let’s help them. We can be Free Software fanboys and push people away, or we can help them transition to the world of Ubuntu and bring their legacy applications with them. It’s a choice between fanaticism and being practical.

Conclusion

From now on, I want to be more practical about Ubuntu and the world of Open Source. I want to be more helpful to those who are looking for answers. I want to be a productive member of the Ubuntu and Linux community and be more respectful and helpful to those computer users around me. I don’t want to be a fanboy anymore. Who will join me?

What do you think about these topics? Leave your comments below!

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3. Goodbye Windows (Sorta)

While sociologists are studying the effects of this social network phenomenon and what it means for society, there’s no doubt that social networks are big, really big!  Not to be left out of the bit “ME” craze, the upcoming Ubuntu 10.04 release will include the “MeMenu.” The MeMenu will be your one-stop spot for sending out all your social media broadcasts right from within Ubuntu.

Plans for the MeMenu have been posted on Ubuntu’s wiki. According to the wiki, the MeMenu should “let you broadcast to social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, set your status for instant messaging, and access settings for instant messaging, microblogging, and Ubuntu One.” They include mockups of the interface, which honestly, looks pretty cool.

The latest daily builds of Ubuntu 10.04 show that substancial progress is being made on the MeMenu. It seems that Canonical and the Ubuntu community are serious about getting this done before the final release. Currently, you need to install the Gwibber package manually before the MeMenu “Broadcast Accounts” work.  Once Gwibber is installed, you can post directly to Facebook, Twitter or Identi.ca from the MeMenu.

From a technical standpoint, this seems like a great idea. It also appears rather risky. Who will people blame when Facebook or Twitter change their APIs and the MeMenu stops working? They’ll blame Ubuntu, of course, even if it’s not their fault. If Canonical is going to include these social features as part of the core Ubuntu LTS release, I hope they’re ready to quickly fix bugs as social networks change APIs and break Gwibber and the MeMenu.

If executed well, these plans could turn into a great addition to the Ubuntu desktop. Perhaps Ubuntu will benefit by helping its users to become “Social Broadcasters” … hopefully they’ll be broadcasting about how great Ubuntu is and not posting things like “stupid MeMenu is not working again” or “No audio again in Ubuntu, need to reboot!”

What do you think about the MeMenu? Will you be using it? Leave your comments below.

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Today, I want to revisit the article I wrote 2 years ago about 10 things I missed when switching from OS X to Ubuntu. There have been 5 major Ubuntu upgrades since I wrote my original article, have things changed that much? Do I still miss the things I missed back then? Let’s look at each point again, and see how things have changed.

1. Dashboard – No longer missed

When I first switched to Ubuntu, I really missed the OS X Dashboard feature. Most of all, I missed being able to open the Dashboard and quickly check the weather, see the calendar, and check the time in multiple time zones. I tried many different widget systems on Ubuntu, but found them all clumsy and unusable. Perhaps there are some out there now that are great, I don’t know, because I don’t even want a Dashboard any more!

At some point, Gnome added the weather and multiple time zones to the standard clock panel widget. This allows me to always see the full date, time, and weather conditions in the top-right corner of my desktop. If I click on the date, I’m presented with a calendar, events from Evolution or Google Galendar, and the time and weather conditions in any city that I’ve added to my list. This is far more convenient than pushing F12 all the time on the Mac and waiting for the Dashboard to appear. Of course, the dashboard can do much more than this, but for my needs, Gnome panel widgets do everything I want.

2. Quicksilver – No longer missed

I still love Quicksilver on the Mac for quickly launching apps and doing repetitive tasks. I can’t use OS X without Quicksilver because digging through the Finder to launch something like the Activity Monitor drives me nuts.

Since I wrote my original article, we’ve seen the major improvements in Gnome Do. It’s now a great replacement for Quicksilver. The thing I find most interesting, however, is that I almost never find myself using Gnome Do. I think this is because it’s so much easier to launch programs from the Applications menu or the Gnome Panel that I simply do not need another application launcher for Ubuntu.

3. Adium – No longer missed

I still think that Adium is one of the best chat clients I’ve ever used. It’s functional, beautiful and the best chat client on OS X.  But I no longer miss Adium when using Ubuntu. Not long after I wrote my first article, GAIM was renamed to Pidgin and along with the renaming came a load of improvements, including a much better looking interface. Today’s Pidgin and Adium aren’t really that different form each other, they look different, but act basically the same.  Unfortunately, Ubuntu no longer includes Pidgin by default, but it’s super easy to install.

4. Professional Graphics Software – Still very much missed!

The lack of professional grade graphics software for Linux is still a huge problem. I’m even more convinced of this today than I was 2 years ago. I actually forced myself to use only Ubuntu and open source graphics programs when working on 2 major projects. Did I succeed, yes! … but the process was extremely painful.

First, there was the pain of learning GIMP. From a technical point of view, the GIMP might be just fine, but from an end user point of view, it’s simply horrible. I was able to make it work, and I was able to complete my work, but the end result left me feeling disgruntled and I feel that my projects suffered as well. I used other programs too, such as Inkscape, and generally found them acceptable, but I still kept wishing that I had access to Adobe Fireworks or Photoshop.

5. TextMate – No longer missed

Vim: The Free Man’s TextMate

I still spend a lot of time working in a text editor. I got hooked on using TextMate for my web and Ruby on Rails work. It seems like all the cool Rails developers use TextMate exclusively, but we’re starting to see a shift from that. I see more and more people talking about using Vim for their coding projects.

Thanks to this great article, I discovered that I could do almost everything I want right in Vim and a Terminal window. I now have a set of Vim configuration files that I can use on any system (even on Mac and Windows) that have everything set up just how I want it. I love it and I’d never go back to TextMate!

6. Dictionary – Still missed

Mac OS has a great built-in dictionary application. I used to find myself using it all the time. It has high quality entries are from the Oxford American Dictionary.

On Ubuntu, there is a dictionary application installed by default, but it can only look up words in free dictionaries (results and quality vary). This means that you must be online to look up a word, which can be a real bummer.

I’ve also played around with other dictionary programs like StarDict. Unfortunately, I found them rather unusable and they generally don’t “just work.” I personally think that a high-quality dictionary program for Ubuntu is needed. I’d even be willing to pay for something, especially if it can give me multi-language translations.

7. Quicktime – No longer missed

When I was first moving to Ubuntu, playing media files was a really big problem. The codecs and players that were available at the time were very unreliable, they often crashed, didn’t work properly and sometimes didn’t work at all. I found this extremely annoying. It was also difficult to install the necessary codecs.

All this has changed now. Playing media files on Ubuntu is a breeze. The media player will automatically find and install any needed codecs, and it plays just about any file you throw at it. In fact, I can’t remember the last time that a media file didn’t “just work” in Ubuntu. The Linux community and the Ubuntu team have done a superb job of making media files work – way to go guys!

8. Bluetooth Support and Syncing – No longer missed

Much like the situation with media files, Ubuntu 7.04 did not do a good job with Bluetooth. The latest versions of Ubuntu, however, are pretty good at working with Bluetooth devices. It’s now trivial to connect a Bluetooth enabled phone to your computer, transfer files, etc. There may still be some ways to make Bluetooth better on Ubuntu, but I can’t think of any, it just works now, and I think that’s great!

9. System-wide spell checking – Still would be nice, but not missed

I can’t say that I miss this feature on a daily basis, but it still would be nice to have.

Mac OS X has system-wide spell checking for all Cocoa based apps. This means you can have just about everything you type into your Mac spell checked. This unified system means that you only have to train one dictionary with your new words.

Of course there is spell checking in almost every Ubuntu application, but each one has its own system. You need to train the dictionaries for each app and get used to each system’s little quirks. Hopefully, someone out there is working on a system-wide spell checking framework for Linux.

10. Smart Trackpad – Still would be nice, but not missed

When making the switch to Ubuntu, the trackpad settings (from 7.04) really drove me nuts. I had all kinds of problems with the trackpad not being shut off when typing, and missed some of the fancy trackpad features in OS X. In general, I don’t like using trackpads and prefer using a mouse, but when using a trackpad on Ubuntu, I can say for sure that things have gotten better.  Things have also changed in the OS X world of trackpads (multi touch, etc). I still consider Linux to be behind Apple in trackpad technology, but I don’t miss any of those features any more.

Conclusion

I have to say that over the last couple of years, I’ve really come to love Ubuntu. Until recently, I rarely felt the need to go back to Windows or OS X (I’ll tell you more about that in another blog post). I’ve been generally pleased with each new release of Ubuntu and enjoy seeing the incremental improvements. Ubuntu has come an unbelievable way since I first tried it almost 5 years ago.  I think the future is bright for Ubuntu and Linux in general … but there’s still a long way to go!

What are some things that you miss from Windows or Mac when you’re using Ubuntu? Share your ideas in the comments below!

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Personally, I think it’s a good move. It’s actually kind of refreshing to see results from a different search engine now and then. Besides, it only takes two clicks to get you back to using Google.  This is where things get interesting. You see, if you chose Google as your search engine in the search bar at the top of Firefox, you also will get a new default home page … featuring Google.  A closer look seems to show that Canonical has not abandoned their partnership with Google at all and still sends a partner ID along with your search results.

Is Canonical partnering with any search engine that’s willing to pay, and selling the default to the highest bidder? I sure hope so! It makes great business sense. Bring on Bing! If it makes Canonical cash that they can use to fund Linux development, I’m all for them taking MS money too.  As long as they give you a choice, people will have their favorite search engine, and Canonical makes money – win win.

Here’s screenshots of the new Firefox home page and search fields showing the partner IDs.

Yahoo! Search, the default:

Google, the default after 2 clicks:

What do you think about these search engine changes? Leave your comments below!

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