Once logged in, one feature you will notice, if you click on the session indicator, is that there is also a guest session account accessible from an active user session. If the idea of a guest account on the login screen and active session does not appeal to you, you might want to read how to disable guest session and Ayatana scrollbar in Ubuntu 11.10.

Aside from access to a guest account, more features are now just one-click away from the session indicator. This makes the system a lot easier to use, and if you are familiar with the built-in shortcuts, you can really make the system a joy to use. I am not a regular user of Ubuntu, but my favorite shortcut is the Superkey. That is the keyboard key with a Microsoft Windows logo on it. Pressing it brings the Dash in focus, which gives you more access to the user-land innards of the system. Another keyboard shortcut is the ALT+Tab key combination, used to switch between open application windows. You may view two screenshots of it in action here. Feel free to share any shortcuts that you know with us.
Ubuntu 11.10 Dash

The system ships with a set of applications that most user would need for their daily computing tasks. Firefox 7.0.1 is the lone Web browser installed. Chromium 14 is in the repository, as are a host of lesser known Web browsers. However, Opera is not. Mozilla Thunderbird, Transmission BitTorrent Client, Empathy instant messenger, and Gwibber microblogging client, are other Internet-related applications installed by default. LibreOffice 3.4.3 is the installed office suite. There are a few games installed and many more available for installation. If you are new to Linux and to Ubuntu, I think you get the picture; most applications you will need are pre-installed. The rest are just two or three mouse clicks away.

Due to copyright restrictions, Ubuntu does not ship with certain media applications and codecs by default. Those can be installed by pulling in one umbrella package – ubuntu-restricted-extras. Once that is installed, Java JRE, Adobe Flash plugin, and other multimedia packages will be installed and usable by other applications that depend on them.

For managing those applications that are installed, and for installing those that are available, Software Center, the graphical package manager, has been tweaked. It still performs the same functions that it used to, but the interface looks a little bit more user-friendly and more visually appealing.

As spiffy as it looks, it lacks the ability to queue applications for installation, and because starting it is not password-protected, every application that you need to install requires authentication. Imagine having to install multiple applications in one session. Synaptic, the old package manager, is no longer installed by default, but is available for installation. Also available, is Muon Package Manager, the new graphical package manager for Kubuntu. Muon, like Synaptic, is capable of queuing applications for installation. This screenshot shows the main interface of Software Center.
Ubuntu 11.10 Software Center

Out of the box, the system is configured to check for updates as soon as the system has booted completely and once a day afterwards. The updates interval, unlike that of Sabayon, is configurable, so if daily updates (checking) is too aggressive for you, other available options are once every two days, once per week or every couple of weeks, or never. For the safety of your system, and that of others on the Internet, that last option is one that should not be used. Keeping your system updated is one way to maintain a good security profile.
Ubuntu 11.10 Update Manager

On the test installations I used for this review, device notification worked perfectly. The default device notification is configured to “Ask what to do.” Plugin in a digital camera, for example, and this window will pop up. The available options when a digital camera is plugged in are to use Brasero, a media burner, or to open the photos in Shotwell, the installed (digital) photo manager. The problem with Shotwell is that it could only download one photo from the camera. Installing digiKam, a photo manager for KDE, did not help because it would not even “see” any photos in the camera.
Ubuntu 11.10 Device Notification

For playing audio CDs, Banshee was the only option, and it worked as expected. Attempting to play a video DVD was a different matter. For an encryption-free video DVD, the following error message popped up:
Totem Video Player Error

And this one, when attempting to play an encrypted video DVD. The cause of this error message and the one above, is that Ubuntu does not install copyright-encumbered packages by default. Installing the ubuntu-restricted-extras package will take care of the error message above, and running sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh from the command line will take care of this one.
Encrypted DVD Error Ubuntu 11.10

Continuing with device notification, printers with a driver in the driver’s database are automatically configured. My HP Deskjet F4280 All-in-One, for example, was auto-configured. However, a Canon i960, which was not in the drivers database, was not. That required manual configuration, but because this was a printer that I had configured on another Linux distribution, and I knew the closest Canon printer whose driver was compatible with it, the manual configuration took just a few mouse clicks, and it worked.

One aspect of Ubuntu that is more of a nuisance than a feature is the overlay or Ayatana scrollbar. As I wrote in how to disable guest session and Ayatana scrollbar in Ubuntu 11.10, it is a “feature designed to solve a non-existent problem,” and one that most users will likely want to disable.
Ubuntu 11.10 Overlay Scrollbar

Most of the graphical administrative applications that you will need to manage the system are located in System Settings, which is easily accessible from the session indicator. The rest are in the System menu category.
Ubuntu 11.10 System Settings