Linux Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander review - the star didn't show up, but the show must go on (part 1)

Ubuntu 13.10 was released on October 17, 2013. The immediate impression about this new distro is comparable to a show whose big expected guest star cancels at the eleventh hour. In fact, the most expected update should have been the release of Xmir but, because of faults with multiple monitor support, Xmir has been taken off and has been pushed back to the coming 14.04 version.

Note: For non-IT experts or non-Linux fanboys, Xmir is a computer display server for Linux being developed by Canonical Ltd. to replace the current X Window System for Ubuntu (Source: Wikipedia). I'll analyze in more detail the aftermath of its planned introduction for Linux systems with the coming second part of this post.

Major new features 

Smart Scopes is probably the most relevant feature of 13.10. It improves the search functionality by updating the so-called Dash, the desktop feature allowing users to search for files, applications and multimedia (see Fig. 2).

Fig. 1  (click to enlarge)

The Dash can be expanded with custom views, called Scopes, that supply additional information. Thanks to this structure, the search system has gradually evolved into a virtual store because, according to the type of search performed, it can return music from the Ubuntu One Music Store and products from Amazon, generating affiliate revenue for Canonical. Like the new Smart search in Windows 8.1, Smart Scopes returns suggestions based on the user preferences and browser history and the search options include all hard drives and storage units, other than the web.  With Ubuntu 13.10 the search system can access data from a wide range of Internet sources (Github, Reddit, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google News, The Weather Channel, Yelp, etc.) and, to get this result, it's supported by a remote backend service. Every search query entered by the user is submitted to Canonical's servers which, following a heuristic trial-and-error approach, return the most relevant ones to the users. For non-techie readers, think of Smart Scopes as Tivo for your computer. Just as TIVO tracks what TV shows you watch or records and then makes recommendations to you on other shows on TV you might enjoy watching, Smart Scopes does that with your search queries. During the session with the server, each key press will be submitted to it. For this reason, some have suggested that Smart Scopes is a potential privacy threat. I'm not personally very big on the idea of companies having an X-ray of what I do and like but, as a matter of fact, this is already done by any internet browser (unless you utilize the private browsing functionality or tools like Tor).  It's being done all the time. For more details, I 'll refer you to this article.  The major plus of Smart Scopes is users can find what they’re looking for faster and customize their search much more efficiently. Figure 1 shows a sample search I've made on the word LinkedIn.  Results are interactive, too, and by clicking on them you can open up related web pages for more information. They can be filtered; for example, the search string “news:technology” will return only Google News results about technology.

Fig. 2 - The Dash 

Fig. 3

How to disable Smart Scopes

From System Settings open Security and Privacy, then navigate to the Search tab, and move the switch from ON to OFF (Fig. 3).

In the coming post, I'll delve deeper into the changes planned for the coming Linux versions and their impact on the average user.

Stick around for the following part, the best is yet to come.


Go to part 2 of the review