Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty"

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I'm surprised there isn't a thread yet...what does everyone think of the new Ubuntu? Do you love Unity, or did you switch back to regular GNOME in the first few minutes? Did the upgrade wreck anything? Any other tweaks to comment on?

Personally, I like Unity because it frees up so much screen space and basically looks like GNOME. There's a bug that makes dropbox not show up, but the workaround is opening a terminal and typing "dropbox stop", then "dropbox start". Otherwise a great release.

I actually installed it earlier today, took all night (because it prompted me a question half way through). Then of course I woke up to blinking keyboard lights, and I rebooted after I confirmed the install was frozen. I came to the same problem as it booted and tryed to load kernel (kernel panic). Brought out a couple older laptops and tried to get a older distro of linux up and running so I could load unetbootin up. Got a 11.04 sd card working and backed up my photography after regaining permission to access it....

*cough* .. Completely clean install and no issues, but the standard basic 11.04 live cd won't load up firefox through unity for some reason. I have to open a terminal and sudo firefox - but perhaps this is a problem with just the laptop I'm using.

Thus far I've noticed slight problems with graphics, although less than when unity was first released for netbooks. But I have all ATI cards so I tend to have quite a few graphic issues. I've also loaded it up on my touchscreen netbook but haven't noticed any "out of the box" easiness with using the touch features, and multi-touch wasn't responsive. I may of course just have been overly hopeful in thinking that would be part of the upgrade... (Yes, I'm sure with some research I'd get more functionality, but I set it for long tap = right click, and it still doesn't work right, so I gave up on it right about then....)

But the issues I have with unity - well, it tends to feel as if its running OVER gnome, as if its just a prettied up gnome desktop that takes extra clicks to get where you need to go. I'm going to keep it for a while but having nice drop down menu's works exceptionally well and reduces load times.... With unity I have to find the right icon, then it pops up a window, which I have to click more in, then look for the app I'm looking for.. or use the drop down menu to select a category.. Perhaps all these problems will be fixed when I learn unity better. Until then my general thinking is Unity = "KDE 7".

I like Gnome, easy to switch desktops... easy to customize, feel at home with it. So I'm going to vote, "meh". Which is really a overstatement because my response is more of a "undecided". If unity had the workspace switcher in the top bar, and the right click showed all open windows/the names of each window for lets say firefox in unity, I'd be pretty happy. Along with the possibility of shortcuts across the top bar, and perhaps the the cpu temp..

Any good then?
Nims experiences sounds awful!
I dont want to land in the same boat..
I dont think It will be worth installing.

I wouldn't worry about the issue. Just back everything up before you upgrade...

I seem to have a problem with upgrading every time, lol. It only takes a few clicks and then... crashhhhh.... burnnn... reinstall.

I mean, I have a few hangups on unity, but you can switch back to gnome - and it does seem a bit faster/there are a few things that seem fully integrated now. Rather than being half-built slightly buggy incompatible programs. I have no real complaints, nor crashes. Perhaps some tweaks are all that need to be done. More to the point, loading up 11.04 has been the most hassle free dist I've loaded. Besides the obvious problems with a kernel panic, etc.

Once I actually got to a login prompt after the fresh install I was OK! The extra repository's I believe where already enabled, I just had to do a sudo apt-get update, and a sudo apt-get install of all the programs I needed. And anything I couldn't remember the name of - well, the ubuntu software center was actually HELPFUL .. for once. I also wasn't prompted to install graphic drivers like usual, nor network drivers. As far as my desktop goes everything is "out of the box" working. I've noticed from the jump from 9 to 10 to 11 its been getting less problematic. On previous versions I usually backed up my marking in synaptic, I wasn't able to do that this time due to the kernel issue. But it wasn't as troublesome to reinstall all those programs from a fresh install manually as it had been before.

So install it.

Update : THIS version of unity, is growing on me... a little...

Update # 2 : Major sound issues, I wonder why? And I've frozen momentarily twice now (in a 2 hour period)..

I clicked on the upgrade, went well until I restarted, the hardware I have is old (Dell dem 3000).

It took me about an hour of really odd screen flipping to work around it. Figured
out the classic option at login screen. Still getting some odd graphics on the top
and bottom panels but other than that I'm happy to continue with using it. I'm
not a heavy user, just web stuff. I think it's amazing that its free, well done to all.

gad, I'm still on 4.9 because Einstein here forgot to write down the logon password for the su account...what a n00b thing to do...

Let me put it this way, i loved Ubuntu, then i installed Natty, i am now using Linux Mint.

Heh, I made the switch back to gnome. Problems with the launcher launching programs. Problem with having programs running in su and some not. Problems with the terminal showing up in the bar as not running and not showing multiple screens... Problems with overscroll... Problems opening multiple windows of firefox....

Can I change my vote to nay? I mean, I want to like unity and be like all the other scene kids, but really.. until it can handle all the capabilities of the ubuntu, screw it.

I lost faith in Ubuntu since the 8.04 release.

For me the updater conveniently upgraded the kernel on one partition and reconfigured GRUB to boot to a different partition, dropping me into a grub_rescue prompt. Although I had the same problem with my update to 10.10, and it is a known problem with certain partition setups.

After I got the OS to boot there are just a whole host of little problems, just a few:

It reset all of the compiz settings, while setting up unity
Disabled basic necessary compiz features like move/resize window and application switcher
Unity has a tendency to crash/not draw window borders
The launcher goes unresponsive to mouse clicks, randomly
the launcher can't really deal with multiple windows
It reset the command line resolution to some resolution not compatible with my TV
some full screen applications fail to hide the main system bar

The most annoying by far is that the new UI offers so few reconfiguration options. I really want to disable the Unity launcher without taking out the dashboard, but that doesn't seem possible without a hack. I have to install dconf_editor to even remove launcher icons I don't want, and there are still icons on the launcher that are impossible to remove, you cannot relocate the launcher, even changing the icon size is considered experimental. There are so many well made launcher applications out there, why did they ever choose this.

Who makes a Linux interface you cannot reconfigure? The whole reason I use Linux was to have an OS that is flexible without it being a constant fight against what the developer thinks is best. I like parts of how it works, I want to be able to modify it to the point everything actually works, but it's becoming quickly clear what good that exists is not worth the fight to get the rest functional.

I'm very glad I upgraded my media PC and not my main work computer

I have yet to understand why everyone is going so crazy over unity. Can someone explain why you like it? What do you use linux for exactly?

i don't like it, seams like it belongs on a smartphone not a desktop.

GNOME 3 is supposedly much more configurable if you want a Unity-type shell with more options; I'll try it out soon. I noticed last night that Unity really fails when you have lots of stuff open at once, since my Saturday night usually involves a large amount of browsers, terminals, and text editors. Constant power users should probably stick with GNOME, although that raises the question of why you're on Ubuntu (my excuse is laziness) .

I liked Unitity initially, because I associated the top dash/search part of unity with a program I love called gnome Do (Link). With Do, it indexes everything from your programs, contacts, music collection, bookmarks ect, then ranks them by the frequency of use. For the programs, music or contacts i use most often I can launch them within 5 keystrokes. I like that, especially for a media centre pc were i use a wireless keyboard allot but almost never the mouse.

I thought unity would be good because it is similar, yet better integrated into the OS. Although it turns out the features are pretty watered down. Do can link a file to an action like finding a folder and moving it to a new drive, controlling music playback, creating new playlists, search the internet for a torrent-then add it to transmission all <20 keystrokes, without creating a new window. There is a really large list of plug-ins/functions, but because it ranks it all by frequency of use, it all becomes really efficient as you use it, only suggesting what you want.

That's the kind of thing I expected of Unity, but it turns out it can only find and launch files. I've actually given up on Unity (only lasted 4h), which basically leaves me with 10.10 minus some stability.

in terms of usage, other than the basics I use linux mostly for simulation/test measurement programming. I've compiled packages that could not be used without it, but avoid it generally, and wouldn't modify a part of the kernel again (well probably will, but you know what i mean). Maybe it is time to leave Ubuntu but I'm pretty lazy as well. [edited to avoid sidetrack]

Last edited by huntedman on 02 May 2011, 10:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

Dito.

Someone make a new post on fav distro.

I will never upgrade to 11.04, I might just go with GNOME SlackBuild or Debian, maybe Mint if I am in the mood

Unity made me cry. I cannot stand it, they are making it too noob friendly.