Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal), Reviewed In Depth

[Guest]

Unity, Gnome Shell - what is this? Why on earth do I want my DESKTOP to look like a mobile phone? Multitasking - as I do - with many different applications up and running on many different desktops - what are the devs and "corporate directors" thinking in this? Sorry - Unity and Gnome Shell are both huge "fails" for me here - and especially on the point of "forcing" a paradigm on a huge group of folks that are looking to convert from Microsoft or Mac. Sorry, I truly believe the point has been missed - not by a bit, but by a huge amount.

If I really want my "desktop" system to look like a mobile phone, well, I'll download and install Android x86.

Truly disappointed in the turn on this release...

 

[Guest]

Linux Mint > Ubuntu by every metric. Linux Mint is the future. Come in, the waters fine!

 

[jimav]

This review failed to mention a huge, glaring problem -- session saving has been permanently disabled in 11.04 (this is the ability to automatically save & restore windows over reboots). It makes 11.04 a non-starter for many.

Session-saving has been a core feature of Linux (and Unix before it) since the dawn of the X Window System. Canonical disabled session saving because it ran into compatibility problems when a session was saved in Unity and restored in Gnome Classic (or maybe vice-versa). And they have no plans to fix the problem.

The worst part is that the feature was removed, but not the documentation of it! So you are tricked into "upgrading" from 10.10 and then can't restore your session.

For details, see
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-session/+bug/705123
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-session/+bug/771896
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-desktop/2011-January/002734.html

 

[Guest]

@Adam Overa

Debian might be worth trying.

I'm using it right now with fluxbox, but KDE should work fine too.
Before you try it take a look if you'd prefer 'stable' 'testing' or 'unstable' branch. Each has its purpose, which I won't go into lenghts here. Lets just say that 'testing' is often the sweet spot for desktops and when using it the very bleeding edge software can be fetched from the 'unstable' and 'experimental' repositories when needed.

Smallest ISO image is about 40MB in size and contains full installer, so it's a quick download.

 

[mryanmarkryan]

I"ve used 11.04 for a month or so. I just went back to the prior release today. The biggest issue I had was terrible network performance. Web sites would just hang and wait and wait and eventually show up. Or as was happening in the last few days, the wireless would get dropped and i would have to authenticate and it would just spin and not connect. I did find an article claiming the issue was due to power saving features cutting power to the wireless. I applied the fix and it made things worse. For now I'll be using a different release or may go take a look at Linux Mint.

 

[Guest]

The word "Natty" is an adjective, not a abbreviative nickname as you incorrectly stated. Ubuntu's historical naming convention ought to have made that clear to you.

 

[Guest]

In Unity, open Firefox and then switch to a 2nd desktop. Now try to open a 2nd instance of Firefox. It flips back to the first instance on the first desktop. Not everyone works like that. Some people like to organize their desktops for specific tasks. Tasks that depend on having multiple instances of apps open on multiple desktops.

I had been using and supporting Ubuntu since 2005.

 

[Guest]

@winco (6/10/11 12:00pm)

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

The power manager in KDE does this fine. So really your power complaint is about Unity

 

[Guest]

I think the problem is that somewhere along the line, the thought process of Desktop Linux GUI design shifted to Netbooks and Smart Phones as being the predominant market to cater towards. I'm sure this has a lot to do with market trends and money making. Traditional desktops are dominated by OSX and Windows and the timid powers that be within the Linux world are too afraid to challenge the status quo for fear of slim to no profit margins. It defies logic that Canonical would dump buckets of money into developing a new UI clearly catering to mobile device users with the idea in mind that traditional Desktop users would welcome it with open arms. If this is what they were indeed thinking, then they better think again, for never the twain shall meet. The GNOME folks have also abandoned the traditional flock as well. Given the nature of the FOSS movement, I think this is an extraordinarily shortsighted and silly move coming from the GNOME foundation which I can't imagine RMS backing.. Force all GNOME users to adapt to a mobile type interface, like it or not, does not seem to align well with software freedom principles to me..

Desktops are here to stay. Market trends do not definitively indicate otherwise, despite a concerted marketing effort to corral people away from them into the more potentially lucrative mobile/cloud market that has the goal of restricting computing freedoms and, worse yet, threatening personal privacy and data security given the rampant compromise of global IT systems by alleged Chinese and Russian hackers, to which there is no defense given the widespread ignorance of even the most basic of security principles.

 

[Guest]

For what it's worth, these days, 'grandma' is in her late 50's or early 60's. As a 58 year old longtime Linux user who's dealt with every distro in the book, I'd say don't count grandma out so quick. Maybe great-grandma.

 

[Guest]

You guys stated in your review that your look at GNOME Shell is going to be on Fedora. There has been some people complaining that the latest Fedora release doesn't have a very slick implementation of GNOME 3, so you may want to look around at some of the other major distros that have put out a release before putting your entire opinion of GNOME on theirs.

Not that I mean any offense to Fedora - it does wonders for the Linux community - but those are the brakes.

 

[Guest]

I upgraded to the new 11.04 Ubuntu and was absolutely disgusted with the interface. It was the worst user experience I've ever had with Linux. Seriously, why is Ubuntu trying to mimic Apple? If I wanted Apple, I'd use OS X. The Unity interface is the worst thing I've ever seen, its bloated, its slow and it is annoying and user-unfriendly. After attempting to get used to Unity for a month, I switched to Linux Mint and have been happy ever since.

 

[eddieroolz]

I made the mistake of upgrading my virtual machine to 11.04. Now the well-configured machine is broken, and I'm left with a virtual machine that can't be used for anything useful.

I've decided to part ways with Linux for now as a result.

 

[Guest]

11.04 sucks way too slow......all browsers FF, Seamonkey & Chromium all slow Flashplayer does not install properly. Acts like M$ windoze after they have stopped supporting it with monthly patches..... Fedora and Centos head and shoulder above this ubuntu release.....

 

[dmarney]

Unity is pretty close, there are just a few really bad UI conventions that spoil the whole apple cart. For me, it was the splintering of application menus into multiple panels on which only 4-5 things are shown until one either clicks the show-me-more links, or is forced to start typing into the search bar. A really bad experience, it made me feel I didn't know where ANYTHING was, anymore.

My alternate desktop: Classic Gnome, no bottom panel, Gnome Main Menu + Indicator Applet Appmenu in the top panel, and Docky for desktop shortcuts. All the nice things of Unity without the Applications menu fail.

 

[kriminal]

i have ubuntu 11.04 on my (very old) ibm t40 laptop, only saw performance issues when i enable wobbly windows under compiz settings... other than i love it

 

[jilseego]

The last time I tried Ubuntu was 2008. It was ugly as hell. Now it has come a long way apparently.

I tried it for a week. I like Unity shell it's very minimalistic and the maximize state of windows makes browsing the internet really smooth and distraction free! But it's broken on some areas. Maybe a couple of releases this will be awesome so I will stick with windows 7 for now. The try was worth it though! I can go back to it from time to time because I am dual booting, yay!

 

[newbie_mcnoob]

[citation][nom]adamovera[/nom]KDE gets at least half of my attention, behind the scenes anyway. The problem with KDE is which distro do I look at? I have NEVER had any luck with openSUSE, won't run properly (or at all) on the test systems we use for the Linux articles. I would very much like to get into KDE here at Tom's, but with what distro? Maybe we should do a poll? Is your vote for Kubuntu? TBH I'm leaning toward Kubuntu/MintKDE, but looking at the DistroWatch charts, I may be off base. Any thoughts on other ways to introduce KDE to the TH audience in the feature article format?[/citation]
My vote would go for Kubuntu. Maybe have an article benchmarking Kubuntu, Mandriva, openSuSe, and Fedora all running KDE to see if there are any speed differences?
Another idea is to have an introductory article like you did with Unity where you talk about some of KDE's features and applications compared to GNOME or Unity.

 

[Doom3klr]

Linux lacks game support and easy install support. As long as it does windows will be king followed by apple

 

[Guest]

Personally I am enjoying using Unity. I think the interface has a lot going for it and guess what in six months the issues with Unity will be resolved. How long did it take MS to release Windows 7 to solve all of Vistas problems?

 

[Guest]

Outside the USA, "Natty" means 'dapper' or 'dandy' as in sharp-dressed or Fly (as in Super Fly).

 

[bhtechmech]

I use Ubuntu for work and need it to work flawlessly for retrieving Data. I find that i go back to 9.10 Ubuntu for this constantly because it is just more reliable.

 

[infyrno917]

Unity is too buggy to be included in a release version. The performance sucks, it has some serious hardware-specific issues with changing windows or using the mouse, and the browsing capability is horrid. It may just be personal preference, but I would rather see a list of installed programs vs being forced to use a search tool. I don't even like the look and feel of Unity, it seems too much like a Mac. Just put Gnome back on default.

For the distribution itself, they still need to fix key bindings for background programs, or programs that are not in focus in the GUI. Getting tired of writing python scripts for every program that I need key bindings for.

 

[Guest]

I use unity everyday on my work PC and it's much more efficient than the old style. I heard just as much complaining when MS swapped to ribbons. People learn how to use it and the complaints disappear.

 

[Guest]

The new radeon drivers really pissed me off. 2D Performance on Radeon HD3200 was so poor, that I raged and installed Windows 7, at least until the drivers are fixed.

This "new version every six months" policy is ruining many good ideas. Pushing them on to market too soon and as buggy as hell doesn't do any good for Ubuntu. Upgrading once a year would be much more pleasant, for consumer and for the developement team. Hey fellas, its not a race for the largest version number, but for user experience!

As razor512 said "An upgrade is not really a upgrade if you are losing performance."