Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal), Reviewed In Depth

[adamovera]

Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) has arrived, and we have the scoop on everything you need to know about Canonical's latest Linux, along with the usual review and benchmarks. Is this the change we've been waiting for, or is the Natty Narwhal a fail whale?

Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal), Reviewed In Depth : Read more

 

[jryan388]

One problem I faced with the standard unity desktop is the horrible performance even on my Athlon II @ 3.6 and Radeon 5750. I upgraded on launch day, so maybe canonical fixed it by now, but the performance was absolutely abysmal. The easiest fix is the unity-2d package. Great performance, doesn't look any worse.

 

[ksa-_-jed]

U should add more distros to the benchmarks like Debian, Fedora, and open SUSE.

 

[shiftmx112]

Meh is exactly how I described 10.10 Still gonna try Unity.

 

[-Fran-]

11.04 sucks; plain and simple.

Power users can do little to nothing to fix things between gnome3 and the buggy Unity.

I wouldn't even bother with 11.04 when 10.04 is rock solid.

Cheers!

 

[davewolfgang]

I tried the upgrade, but unity is blech. I am still using the upgrade, but doing the classic.

But I may go back to 10.10 for my EeePC.

 

[adamovera]

[citation][nom]jryan388[/nom]One problem I faced with the standard unity desktop is the horrible performance even on my Athlon II @ 3.6 and Radeon 5750. I upgraded on launch day, so maybe canonical fixed it by now, but the performance was absolutely abysmal. The easiest fix is the unity-2d package. Great performance, doesn't look any worse.[/citation]
Wow, that isn't right, the old X2 test system which has a considerably older Nvidia card runs it great. What's the full specs?

 

[adamovera]

[citation][nom]ksa-_-jed[/nom]U should add more distros to the benchmarks like Debian, Fedora, and open SUSE.[/citation]
Fedora 15/GNOME 3 coming up next. I have never had any luck whatsoever with openSUSE, will keep trying new versions as they come out though.

 

[bellman80]

I tried 11.04. Unity was more annoying than useful. I installed the new Linux Mint instead, I'm a happy camper now.

 

[Tamz_msc]

I'm going to stick with 10.04, because it has been running rock-solid without a glitch for almost a year. It was able to find drivers for my on-board audio which even Windows 7 could not find.

Unity is not my cup of tea., though I'm looking forward to GNOME 3.0.

Till then Lucid Lynx FTW!

 

[RogueKitsune]

Unity is a nice idea, but not my cup of tea. Overall I am happy with the changes in 11.04. Right now i have my laptop(AMD Turion x2, radeon x1200)running it with no problems(everything worked out of the box)

 

[Filiprino]

Well, Unity is a plug-in of Compiz so if you install Compiz-config GUI you can configure more options and a bunch of effects, window management utilites and shortcuts.

 

[3ul]

I think the performance issue in unity 3d is due to the vsync(not sure the name right or wrong) is on by default in compiz setting. Turning this off should fix the performance problem. This issue mostly affected by AMD card.

BTW unity imo have bright future. This is 1st public release so expect some bugs. By the time unity matured, its going to be a great shell for gnome..

 

[antemon]

I'm still waiting for better games for linux

hope the big names in the industry follow suit with indie devs on this...

 

[haplo602]

running the xubuntu variant so not bothered by unity. however ubuntu in general is a bloated mess. the only thing I like is automounter works out of the box.

However I switched graphics cards and getting it to run again was not automatic. I expected a bit more

 

[razor512]

the os is good but the UI sucks.

The unity crap bar makes it hard to launch multiple windows of a program, requiring you to basically use options built into the program to open another window

the side bar is annoying, when ever you go to click on something on the left side of the window, you can easily accidentally bring out that annoying menu

the search bar is annoying and will at most drive new users away from ubuntu. Since it requires you to search for things, for a novice user if you don't know what specific option you are looking for but want to discover the options, this makes it hard to do.

while hardware support has been getting better, the Os has also been getting slower overall. They need to shift their focus from bloat to speed.

they need to take a lesson from professional software makers. Most new professional apps, eg check out the latest adobe audition or photoshop or maya 3d or the mental ray render engine
Performance is always improved on the same hardware

An upgrade is not really a upgrade if you are losing performance.

Would you "upgrade" from a GTX480 to a GTX460?

 

[killerclick]

Linux shouldn't try to be a desktop OS for grandma.

It's strong in the server segment, it's nearly ubiquitous in the supercomputer segment and Android is now a force in the mobile market. It should build on that and leave the desktop market to Windows and OSX.

 

[DSpider]

[citation][nom]killerclick[/nom]Linux shouldn't try to be a desktop OS for grandma.It's strong in the server segment, it's nearly ubiquitous in the supercomputer segment and Android is now a force in the mobile market. It should build on that and leave the desktop market to Windows and OSX.[/citation]
Why ? Linux can look like both of them and can do much more. OS for grandma ? Hahahaha. Don't compare Ubuntu to Linux in general. You think grandma can install Arch Linux or Gentoo ?

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

I made the mistake of trying Ubuntu 11.04 a few weeks ago when I needed a Linux distro for my CUDA development machine. Can't believe the joke of a GUI that they're using now, Unity is one of the worst user experiences I've ever had. Took me ages to just find where to change the screen resolution - the search terms I put into the search box didn't bring it up. After a few hours I uninstalled it. I gave Fedora a try too but Gnome 3 wasn't much better in terms of usability. In the end I went back to good old Scientific Linux with it's 'traditional' Linux GUI.

I don't know what these Linux folk are thinking. It seems they're trying to force GUIs that are only useful on Netbooks on everyone. Trust me, a Netbook GUI is a pile of poo on a 2560x1600 display - let alone a 3 monitor setup.

I don't really understand the point in the whole oversimplification thing either. There is no way in hell that I would ever recommend Linux to any non 'pro' user. Not because of how complicated it may be, which they're trying to do away with here, but because a non 'pro' user would struggle to get support and would struggle to get the software they want. Windows is hardly a big premium on computer costs these days and besides which, if it were for a grandma who'd never used a computer before then I'd get her an iPad instead.

It really looks like the movers and shakers behind these big Linux distros are disillusioned as to who their customers or potential customers are and they're messing up the GUI for the people that know and love Linux in a vain attempt to encourage a tiny tiny minority of new users. Linux as a whole just went seriously down in my regard.

 

[winco]

Still no "shutdown when idle" power management? A big big drawback for me adopting Linux.

 

[burnley14]

This should be the desktop background on a loop:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykwqXuMPsoc

 

[Guest]

I installed Ubuntu 11.04 on my old Lenovo 3000 N200 just to get away from Windows.
It is free, simple to install, outperforms Windows, easier to configure than Fedora and works for me. Credits for the Ubuntu developers!

 

[reggieray]

[citation][nom]winco[/nom]Still no "shutdown when idle" power management? A big big drawback for me adopting Linux.[/citation]
Get online and get someone who knows how to write script and you can have that or learn yourself.

 

[Supermuncher85]

[citation][nom]jryan388[/nom]One problem I faced with the standard unity desktop is the horrible performance even on my Athlon II @ 3.6 and Radeon 5750. I upgraded on launch day, so maybe canonical fixed it by now, but the performance was absolutely abysmal. The easiest fix is the unity-2d package. Great performance, doesn't look any worse.[/citation]
That is great tip by the way. Unity 2d is pretty much the only way you can enjoy it on a vm.

 

[killerclick]

[citation][nom]DSpider[/nom]Why ? Linux can look like both of them and can do much more. OS for grandma ? Hahahaha. Don't compare Ubuntu to Linux in general. You think grandma can install Arch Linux or Gentoo ?[/citation]

Because developing desktop versions of Linux takes resources (developers) away from other, more viable applications like the server and mobile markets. All desktop Linux has show for it after almost 20 years is a less than 2% usage share. All those distros, still less than 2% despite it being free. What would need to happen to declare desktop Linux a failure?