Ubuntu Gnome 14.04 Beta 2

I’m sitting here waiting for my backup to finish so I can install Ubuntu Gnome 14.04 Beta 2. I’m actually booted into it and testing it out while I’m doing my backup. So far I really want it on my system. I want to really put it through the test with all my daily software.

The main reason I want to use it is the improvements for high DPI screens. My laptop is somewhere around 350 DPI. 13.10 was awful at this resolution and I kept trying to figure out how to get everything to look right. I use my system mostly for work and I don’t do much if any gaming or graphics. I spend most of my time in a text editor and web browser.

The web browser is where it all goes wrong. I have to zoom up to 150% so I can read most web sites. If you are one of those web developers that force 10 point font on everyone then get stuffed. The problem with zooming is that borders and columns stop lining up right. Pixels from one element to another are out of whack. Padding is different. So before I push the web sites out I have to set my zoom to 100% so I can see if the pixels are lining up right. Then I tweak for an hour before I can ship it.

So far with the improved resolution of 14.04 I haven’t had that issue. I am zooming sites to see if I can find any issues with the alignments and so far it’s been fine. By the way, Google Chrome is the worst offender of the problem.

Squirrel… Why is Google Chrome getting worse at rendering sites? Chrome was the best for a long time. I’ve been using Firefox to test things, because people have reported rendering bugs in Firefox, and I’m finding a lot of sites just work better in Firefox. eBay is one of them. Try to post an item on eBay in Chrome. I don’t know if it’s just my setup but it’s impossible. Half the posting screen doesn’t render. Works great in Firefox. Same problems with the BofA home banking site. There are things that just don’t work in Chrome anymore, and I’m using the latest “stable” version. Digress…

I really like the new version with the high res screen improvements. It was one of the few things that bugged me about Gnome Shell. I can’t think of anything else that I would change at the moment.

Thumbs up to the Gnome dev team!