'Natty Narwhal' Alpha Offers Peek at Ubuntu 11.04

[sourceninja]

So 11.04 is not going to have wayland? The way the article reads it looked like it was set to be replacing X.

 

[lxskllr]

So 11.04 is not going to have wayland? The way the article reads it looked like it was set to be replacing X.

No, definitely not. It MAY be ready for 12.10, but that's a big maybe, and a lot can change in that time.

 

[H54]

No, definitely not. It MAY be ready for 12.10, but that's a big maybe, and a lot can change in that time.

11.10 or 12.10?

 

[lxskllr]

11.10 or 12.10?

12.10. I'm sure they wouldn't put in the LTS release, so that'll make it 12.10 at the earliest.

edit:

Progress on the two-year-old Wayland project, meanwhile, "is sufficient for me to be confident that no other initiative could outrun it, especially if we deliver things like Unity and uTouch with it," he added. The change will probably show up in about a year, though it could take as long as four or more years "to really move the ecosystem," Shuttleworth predicted.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/210018/ubuntu_will_adopt_wayland_graphics_system.html

Edit2:
Wayland is in the Natty repos, but it's not for use by the end user. It's for development and testing.

 

[MGMorden]

11.10 or 12.10?

I'd say 12.10, possibly even 13.04 - at least for it to be the default option. I'm sure it'll appear much earlier sufficiently tucked away that you really need to go dig it up if you want to play around with it.

Wayland is a long term goal. A worthwhile one IMHO, but still something that's going to be a gradual shift. Still, once we get there we could really see Mac OS X level desktop graphical smoothness from Ubuntu (and if Ubuntu pulls this off I'd wager most of the desktop Linux community won't be far behind - Wayland just needs the momentum that a major distro can give).

Also, as to ATI and Nvidia supporting it, right now their position will obviously be to say they aren't supporting it because Wayland is currently a niche project that isn't heavily supported. If it becomes the primary Linux display system I'm sure they'd put at least as much effort behind it as their X.org drivers.

I will admit that I am dissappointed with SOME of the direction of Ubuntu (and really Gnome - Gnome Shell is like fingers on a chalkboard for me), but it's still better than Windows. I was considering going back to Windows recently and then someone brought by a Windows desktop for me to work on. Turns out it was spyware infected and that reminded me of that whole concept. In the last 2 years or so since I went to Linux exclusively for desktop use, I'd completely forgotten that there was such a thing as spyware.

Either way, if I don't end up liking the interface they go with in a worst case scenario I'll just fall back to XFCE, or cobble something together with Docky and another window manager.

 

[SickBeast]

I really think that Ubuntu should have gone with a fork in the distribution. Perhaps they figured that most people would just use Linux Mint rather than their ugly rendition, so they said screw it and decided to completely revamp things.

The more I use Linux Mint, the more I like it. I'm glad they're sticking with a gnome interface.

Ubuntu is the best thing that has ever happened to the Linux community, don't get me wrong (aside from Linus, I digress). I tried Mint Debian and I found it much harder to find support online. It was also much more challenging to get things set up the way I wanted. What Ubuntu has done is bring Linux to the masses.

Really what they need to be doing is making the system more rock solid and bug free than Apple's MacOS. I know that's a tall task given the open hardware configurations, but really it's what they need to do. Even if they want to go so far as to develop only for certain "Ubuntu certified" hardware, I'm fine with that so long as they can iron out all the bugs. Perhaps have a super stable edition where you have to purchase certain components.

 

[Sylvanas]

I really think that Ubuntu should have gone with a fork in the distribution. Perhaps they figured that most people would just use Linux Mint rather than their ugly rendition, so they said screw it and decided to completely revamp things.

The more I use Linux Mint, the more I like it. I'm glad they're sticking with a gnome interface.

Ubuntu is the best thing that has ever happened to the Linux community, don't get me wrong (aside from Linus, I digress). I tried Mint Debian and I found it much harder to find support online. It was also much more challenging to get things set up the way I wanted. What Ubuntu has done is bring Linux to the masses.

Really what they need to be doing is making the system more rock solid and bug free than Apple's MacOS. I know that's a tall task given the open hardware configurations, but really it's what they need to do. Even if they want to go so far as to develop only for certain "Ubuntu certified" hardware, I'm fine with that so long as they can iron out all the bugs. Perhaps have a super stable edition where you have to purchase certain components.

+1 After trying out Natty on my laptop which has been running 10.04 since release, I could not stand and the new UI. Things just took longer to do and usability was not where it was previously. Obviously, opinions may vary but this is what I found.

After the disappointment with 11.04 I decided to try Mint again and downloaded Mint 10 'Julia'. So far it's excellent and 'just works' for my usage. The UI is standard and doesn't get in the way of what I want to do. Will be sticking with Mint for the foreseeable future.

 

[Plugers]

I'm rebuilding my 8.04 server soon (Via C7 based mITX) any reason to upgrade to 11.04 on a headless server?

Anyone have a link to a good tutorial on booting from a CF-IDE adaptor so I can use all my SATA ports for storage?

 

[sourceninja]

I'm rebuilding my 8.04 server soon (Via C7 based mITX) any reason to upgrade to 11.04 on a headless server?

Anyone have a link to a good tutorial on booting from a CF-IDE adaptor so I can use all my SATA ports for storage?

You could at least upgrade to 10.04...

 

[H54]

Unity is starting to grow on me. One think I don't is the buried menus. I guess I got used to having 'Applications,' 'Places,' and 'System' right there and ready to go. I'm also curious as to how battery life will be affected by Unity. I only tried one of the Alpha builds on my desktop.

 

[SickBeast]

I just installed the latest daily build of Natty and I actually like it way more than I thought I would. They've added subtle features, like dragging a window to the side of the screen to have it fill that half. I really like the interface.

 

[SickBeast]

I put Gnome 3 onto the Natty build and it hosed my installation. Not only that, but IMO it was ugly and way less functional than Unity.

 

[lxskllr]

Ok I got impatient, and installed the Natty daily. It's a lovely desktop, but I'm having trouble finding everything. The first real piss off is the side scroll bar. On my netbook I like putting the pointer in the scrollbar space, and tapping for page down/up. It doesn't look like that can be done anymore with the silly popup scroller you have to chase around the desktop. Testing continues...

Edit:
No panel apps, major fail. I'm not sure I should even try Gnome3. It looks like more of the same :^/

Edit2:
Will classic Ubuntu always be available? If so, that's perfectly acceptable to me. Hopefully it'll still be in there for 12.04 :^/

Edit3:
Looks like I hosed Unity and Ubuntu Classic after installing Gnome3. Gnome3 is as bad as Unity. Different, but as bad.

This minimalism meme that's Google started with Chrome is really getting on my nerves. Everybody's pulling functionality at the expense of usability, all to gain a couple extra pixels. It gets really ridiculous with Gnome3, and them removing the minimize/maximize buttons. Yea, those were taking up so much room on the windows border. Now that they're gone I have an extra 10 pixels of color to look at :^S

There's a reason the "taskbar" style of desktop has lasted so long in computing; it's efficient, and it works. Having shit appear, and disappear from the screen is a distracting time waster and inefficient. It's also confusing to people who aren't familiar with the O/S. You have to put your cursor over the "magic" part of the screen to get computer to tell you something. If you don't know where that "magic" part is, it sucks to be you :^S

 

[VinDSL]

I'm still plugging away -- loving Unity, actually!

Ubuntu 11.04 / 2.6.39rc3 kernel / Unity DE / Faenza Icon Set / Conky

​

The "Classic" DE (so called) will be dropped in Ubu 11.10.

Reading the threads, Xbuntu is the disto of choice, for Unity haters, not "Classic" Gnome.

 

[H54]

I thought 11.04 was launching with 2.6.38?

 

[lxskllr]

The "Classic" DE (so called) will be dropped in Ubu 11.10.

Reading the threads, Xbuntu is the disto of choice, for Unity haters, not "Classic" Gnome.

That may be the route I take. I did find that Gnome3 has a classic fallback...

http://www.vuntz.net/journal/post/2011/04/13/gnome-panel-is-dead,-long-live-gnome-panel! (copy/paste link, including the "!" to work. Who the fsck uses "!" in a url?! :^S)

...but it wouldn't work for me. I broke something installing Gnome3, and it was easier to just reinstall. I'm running Xfce now, and it's /alright/. Not as good as Gnome 2.x, but better than the new shells imo. I still have at least a year, and a lot can change in that time. Having nonfunctional panels is a deal breaker for me though. Anything I use will have to approximate Gnome 2.x in functionality.

Now the question is *buntu, or Debian... What I liked about Ubuntu is it was Debian the way I liked it, out of the box. Pretty much just install, and run. Now that I'm changing a bunch of crap, I'm finding less use For Ubuntu, and with Debian I'd get a rolling release....

 

[wheresmybacon]

I'm still plugging away -- loving Unity, actually!

Ubuntu 11.04 / 2.6.39rc3 kernel / Unity DE / Faenza Icon Set / Conky

​

The "Classic" DE (so called) will be dropped in Ubu 11.10.

Reading the threads, Xbuntu is the disto of choice, for Unity haters, not "Classic" Gnome.

Did you resize your launcher? Or do you just have a massive resolution so it looks relatively small. I haven't looked terribly hard, but so far making it smaller hasn't proven to be intuitive...

 

[VinDSL]

Did you resize your launcher?

Yes, I did. BTW, I'm running a 19" Dell monitor @ 1280x1024 (native res).

You need to install CCSM (it's in the repos).

Then go to: Ubuntu Unity Plugin -> Experimental

I set the "Launcher icon size" to the minimum (32).

 

[wheresmybacon]

Yes, I did. BTW, I'm running a 19" Dell monitor @ 1280x1024 (native res).

You need to install CMMS (it's in the repos).

Then go to: Ubuntu Unity Plugin -> Experimental

I set the "Launcher icon size" to the minimum (32).

Nice. I'm doing that when I get home tonight. Thanks!

 

[Justinian]

Has anyone tried running 11.04 on their netbook? Impressions? I'm already comfortable with using the Unity desktop from the 10.10 netbook edition. Plan to do a fresh install when this version goes public.

 

[lxskllr]

Has anyone tried running 11.04 on their netbook? Impressions? I'm already comfortable with using the Unity desktop from the 10.10 netbook edition. Plan to do a fresh install when this version goes public.

I did briefly. My experience above is from my netbook. It seemed to run about as well as 10.04. My negative experience is due to the core features, and not performance, or anything like that.

 

[SickBeast]

So we're down to one week until the final release. I'm debating whether or not I should replace Mint 10 with Ubuntu 11.04.

 

[jmagg]

I am having trouble finding CMMS in the repos in 11.04. Resizing the sidebar is a must in order to stay with the build. Little help?

 

[VinDSL]

I am having trouble finding CMMS in the repos in 11.04. Resizing the sidebar is a must in order to stay with the build. Little help?

Oops! My bad!

It's CCSM, not CMMS.

The full name is:

compizconfig-settings-manager

If you want to install it from CLI:

sudo aptitude install compizconfig-settings-manager

 

[jmagg]

Great, thanks.