Ubuntu 8.10 Beta Video – Changes to Nautilus

While using Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex Beta i was able to use the new features in the Nautilus file manager. The first change to Nautilus that i noticed while using Ubuntu 8.10 Beta was the large Eject icon that appears next to mounted devices in the Places window to the left side of Nautilus. Clicking on the Eject icon unmounts the device while clicking on the device will mount it again. I found this to be quite useful and a quickway to mount and unmount devices in Ubuntu 8.10.

The Natutilus file manager also includes easy to add, tabbed browsing. Now you can have multiple folders open in separate tabs. Create a new tab in Nautilus file manager y selecting File — New Tab or pressing (Ctrl + T). By right clicking on the tabs you can move them left and right or close the tab.

Here’s a short video depicting these new features for the Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex desktop.

Ubuntu 8.10 Beta Features

Ubuntu 8.10 beta desktop and server versions have been released. I Download the .ISO file and looked at some of the new desktop features which turned out to be impressive. Some of the Ubuntu 8.10 beta features include Gnome 2.24, X.org 7.4, Linux Kernel 2.6.27, an encrypted private directory, guest session, Network Manager 0.7, Samba 3.2, and more.

I was particularly impressed with:

Guest Session
I’ve experienced a need for a feature like guest session many times in both student and work environments. When starting a Guest Session you create a temporary password-less user account with restricted privileges. This allows other people to use you computer but restricts them from doing things like accessing the home folder or saving a bunch of files permanently.

Encrypted Private Directory
The Encrypted Private directors comes to us from the ecryptfs-utils package recently promoted to Ubuntu “main”. This gives Ubuntu support for a secret encrypted folder withing the home folder.

Gnome 2.24
Gnome 2.24 has some new fixes and features of it’s own. Now in Gnome 2.24 Nautilus file manager includes tab support and a few other features. The File Roller archive manager now support ALZ, RZIP, CAB, and TAR.7Z file types.