Ever since I began using the Linux distro, Ubuntu (and this was v. 8.04), I’ve never been disappointed with their updates. That is until now.

I updated to v. 11.10, the latest, code-named, “Oneric Ocelot.” And, boy, am I disappointed!

For one thing, the developers removed the option of two interfaces, the classic interface and what they call the “Unity” interface (view the entry, The 2 Interfaces of Ubuntu 11.04. Now it’s just the Unity interface, which lets the user click too many times to get to and fro an application. There are even applications that I have installed but need to search for before using them.

Why the developers have insisted on using this interface when users have complained about it, I’ll never know.

Secondly, and this is a major disappointment, I can no longer use RecordMyDesktop, which is the best screencast app for Linux/Ubuntu. As you have already known, I have been creating videos about using Ubuntu. This was when I had earlier versions of this OS.

With v. 11.10, however, RecordMyDesktop loads, but when I click on the record button, I get this message: “recordmydesktop has exited with status: 3328.” And RecordMyDesktop won’t record. It shuts down.

I’ve gone to the Ubuntu and other Linux forums and posted my problem, but no one seems to have a solution. Another user complained that he tried to contact the developer of RecordMyDesktop, but never received a response.

So now I’m stumped. I can no longer screen cast until some good soul tries to do something about this problem because I’m not the only one who has it.

A third albeit minor disappointment is I could no longer use Kmail, which is an email app. With the latest version of Ubuntu, I also get an error message when I try to load Kmail. I didn’t bother posting this in forums as I just placed all my email inboxes in Thunderbird. But I still had to configure Thunderbird to receive the added inboxes.

So the Ubuntu developers are about to release a new version. I’m in a wait-and-see mode. If the new version will still carry the problems I have with this current version, I’m going to look for a new Linux distro.

Any recommendations?

Oh, by the way, Linux still hasn’t come up with a speech recognition software, open source or proprietary. So I still have an old desktop with Windows XP and installed within are Camtasia and Dragon Naturally Speaking, the former a screen cast app and the latter a speech recognition app.

So I’m using them again. Ironically, the only one preventing me from discarding Windows altogether is Linux.