Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) • Hacker News Board

Re: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

#11

Post by chao- » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 11:01 AM UTC

When last I used the Unity shell, it was clearly not ready for prime time. I'll spend some time later today, cross my fingers, and discover if that has changed or not. There's much more in a new release than just that, but the supposedly-cleaned up Unity will probably get most of the press.

Some concerns aside, I respect a lot of the chutzpah that Canonical is showing: Unity, Wayland, trying to force KDE/GNOME to work together on a notification API. They want to see the Linux desktop improve, and even if people fight against them and they lose, to me it feels better than the inertia of the status quo. Stasis gets no one anywhere.

Re: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

#12

Post by thenduks » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 11:03 AM UTC

lwhi wrote: post #6

As I use my Ubuntu desktop to actually get work done, I'm quite terrified about installing this release. I'm not sure I'll upgrade for a while yet, I want to find out what the general consensus is first.

As a fellow day-job-using Ubuntu user, I'm with you. In fact, it's not just this release, I always wait a bit to upgrade, since the general consensus seems to be that fresh Ubuntu's are often a bit touchy :)

Re: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

#13

Post by unwind » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 11:08 AM UTC

johkra wrote: post #8

unwind wrote: post #5

Of course, this is the release that changes the desktop interface around quite a lot. I'm a bit hesitant, although this answer in the FAQ was soothing: No problem at all. You can choose to launch the classic desktop experience when you log in to your computer. Not sure if this really means that the choice has to be re-made on every login, or if is remembered. Anyone?

It's remembered. (I have been running it since beta 2 on my work computer.)

Great to hear, thanks. Now I'll be more likely to do the update.

Re: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

#14

Post by helium » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 11:09 AM UTC

lwhi wrote: post #6

As I use my Ubuntu desktop to actually get work done, I'm quite terrified about installing this release. I'm not sure I'll upgrade for a while yet, I want to find out what the general consensus is first.

I'm going to run it in a VM for a while first

Re: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

#15

Post by meric » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 11:19 AM UTC

Ubuntu's website shows of its Dash "Spotlight", Launcher "Dock", Status Icons "Menu bar with status", Workspace "Spaces", Ubuntu Store "Mac App Store".

It's almost like they're trying to directly compete with Mac OS X, with "killer features" that match exactly with what apple regularly shows off with Mac OS X.

Re: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

#16

Post by fingerprinter » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 11:20 AM UTC

I've had it installed on my main machine since late December. There were some rough patches as things were landing during the beta period, but right now this is easily the best desktop I've ever used.

My workflow adapted to some of the additions in Unity so quickly that it was absurd. At this point I could never go back to something without Super+#, Super+w, Super+s and the other keybindings found here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/unity-keyboard-mouse-sh...

Just be sure to install compizconfigSettingsManager from the software center and you can tweak Unity to some degree.

Just an FYI, what I tend to dev on is Ruby/Rails, Python, Javascript (Node/etc), some Erlang (not as much anymore) and Android dev. This system is so freakin' fantastic for all of those...really quite happy.

Re: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

#17

Post by Canopy » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 11:27 AM UTC

jsvaughan wrote: post #9

unwind wrote: post #5

Of course, this is the release that changes the desktop interface around quite a lot. I'm a bit hesitant, although this answer in the FAQ was soothing: No problem at all. You can choose to launch the classic desktop experience when you log in to your computer. Not sure if this really means that the choice has to be re-made on every login, or if is remembered. Anyone?

It remembers. My laptop can't run Unity so I've been running the beta in classic mode, only needed to select it once.

Do you mean that Unity requires more resources ?

Re: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

#18

Post by selectnull » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 11:32 AM UTC

Since I've been using Ubuntu (year and a half now), upgrade was always easy, and always resulted in a month of little annoyances afterwards. But I look forward to it nonetheless.

Upgrading now and feel like a kid on a christmas morning :)

Re: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

#19

Post by drivingmenuts » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 11:34 AM UTC

unwind wrote: post #5

Of course, this is the release that changes the desktop interface around quite a lot. I'm a bit hesitant, although this answer in the FAQ was soothing: No problem at all. You can choose to launch the classic desktop experience when you log in to your computer. Not sure if this really means that the choice has to be re-made on every login, or if is remembered. Anyone?

You don't get a choice if you run it in a VM, btw.

It's classic or aught.

Re: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

#20

Post by enterneo » Thu, Apr 28, 2011, 11:40 AM UTC

aargh! I just installed it in Vmware Fusion on Snow Leopard only to realize it does not support OpenGL for Linux OS. Ubuntu went into a fallback mode and disabled Unity. Seems like I need to switch to a different Virtual Machine Software, any suggestions?