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Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

releases.ubuntu.com

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Re: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

#191

Post by BasDirks »

krat0sprakhar wrote: post #113

Ok... this seems pretty much out of place but I dont suppose I can get a better answer anywhere else, so here it goes. I'm a student in India and in a dilemma about buying a Mac or buying a windows machine (dual booting with Ubuntu 11.04 ). At about 3/4th the price of a Mac I can purchase a more powerful windows laptop and boot up Ubuntu ( and thus avoid windows altogether ). I need a workstation for Ruby on Rails/ N…

I own a Mac(Book Pro), and I dual boot Mac OSX and Ubuntu 11.04 on it.

I spend 90% of my time in Ubuntu (mainly developing).

I honestly think that if you're tight on cash and you just need a machine for development, get as much CPU-cycles and stability for your money as you can, and run a linux distro.

Re: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

#192

Post by nolite »

regularfry wrote: post #57
thenduks wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Not only are fresh Ubuntus a bit touchy, but upgrading in-place has bitten me badly in the past. It's always a clean-slate install for me now.

I have never NOT been bitten badly by an in-place upgrade

Re: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

#193

Post by nitrogen »

kevindication wrote: post #87
regularfry wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only are fresh Ubuntus a bit touchy, but upgrading in-place has bitten me badly in the past. It's always a clean-slate install for me now.

Apt is the only system I've ever felt fully comfortable with when doing upgrades. It was neither a problem under Debian nor Ubuntu. Do you have a tendency to make system changes that get in the way of the upgrades? (i.e., where has it gotten stuck for you before?)

I'm not the OP, but on my in-place upgrade to Natty today I had the nspluginwrapper installer die with a segfault. As a result, the update "failed" (only nspluginwrapper failed, really). I had to remove google-talkplugin to fix it (so really, the bug was in Google Talk, but apparently nobody at Canonical has Google Talk 64-bit installed to encounter this). So yes, seemingly-inconsequential system changes can interfere with upgrades.

Re: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

#194

Post by nitrogen »

postfuturist wrote: post #109
reitzensteinm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said processes accessing more than 4 gb, not total memory - aren't individual processes are still limited to 4 gb of memory with PAE?

I don't know the technical reason, but most 32 bit apps on Linux are limited to 2GB (2^31 bytes).

As jsprinkles alluded to in his post, the 2GB limit (or 1GB or 3GB, depending on kernel configuration) is to allow space for the kernel.

Re: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

#195

Post by daemin »

jamesgeck0 wrote: post #60
curtin wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those keybindings look awesome and make me want to upgrade. Guess I will try it out in a VM first though.

Unity is built using Compiz and requires 3D acceleration; a lot of people have issues running it in a VM. There's a Unity2D project built using Qt, but I don't know if it was mature enough at the time of release to make it in as a fallback.

I've just tried it within the latest VirtualBox today and it works wondefully well. The install was simple and efficient, and it integrated nicely from the get go (with being able to use mouse and keyboard seamlessly).

I only had to install the guest extensions to get 3D acceleration and Unity to work.

Re: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

#196

Post by nitrogen »

davidw wrote: post #50
mjs wrote: post #43

I find the description of which image to choose confusing. You need the a 64-bit image to handle processes over 4GB, right? Why is the x86 version recommended for "most machines with Intel/AMD/etc type processors and almost all computers that run Microsoft Windows." (That's from the server description, too.)

32 bit "wastes less memory": http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/11/24/slicehost-vs-linode At least for some things, in my experience.

Hypothetically a 64-bit application could be designed to save space by hacking together a sort of "near pointer/far pointer" system by using native 64-bit reference pointers and 16-bit or 32-bit offsets from them. This would save on a lot of the space used for storing pointers to nearby data.

Re: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

#197

Post by nitrogen »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #117
meric wrote: post #15

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.

Linux has had those things for longer that Mac has with the exception of the global menu. Docks have been around before Finder adopted a dock. Beagle predates Spotlight. Workspaces have existed for as long as GUIs have for Linux and Apt has been around for over a decade, with the Ubuntu Software Center in its present form predating the Mac App Store.

Not to mention the infamous Click-N-Run store in LindowsOS from the early 2000s.

Re: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

#198

Post by cageface »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #180
king_jester wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For consumers that can afford it, tablets may replace a lot of what a desktop computer does for those people, but there are many people who are lower income who will still depend on very inexpensive desktop computers, either ones the own individually or (more likely) ones that they can access at their local library. I think Ubuntu is heading in a direction where it will replace Windows for users that only need an off…

I think it's much more likely lower income people will use a smartphone as their primary computer than a desktop machine. Cell phones already have incredible penetration, and the cell companies (not to mention Google) are going to push smartphones into that population in short order.

A second thought: Linux might be able to compete on the basis of security. Every single Windows machine I've used here has been riddled with trojans and viruses. I have a feeling this is common in a lot of the developing world.

Re: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

#199

Post by nakkiel »

gcr wrote: post #139
technomancy wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like that's a big theme with the latest Unity changes. Huge improvements over the default desktop, but nobody I know was using the default desktop; they all heavily modified it with devilspie, xmonad, and friends, which are far beyond what Unity offers. So while it seems like a good development in the abstract, it's hard for me to get excited about it personally.

One reason I used wmii instead of the default is because the default stunk. Unity is raising the bar on the default desktop now; I'll definitely give it another look.

I second this. I read some information on Unity and it all sounded so common to me that I thought WMII and the likes actually had an impact on how people making window manager think about window managers.

I'll stick with WMII though as it never gets in my way.

Re: Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

#200

Post by lloeki »

te_chris wrote: post #159
krat0sprakhar wrote: post #113

Ok... this seems pretty much out of place but I dont suppose I can get a better answer anywhere else, so here it goes. I'm a student in India and in a dilemma about buying a Mac or buying a windows machine (dual booting with Ubuntu 11.04 ). At about 3/4th the price of a Mac I can purchase a more powerful windows laptop and boot up Ubuntu ( and thus avoid windows altogether ). I need a workstation for Ruby on Rails/ N…

I use a macbook pro and it truly is a better laptop than anything else, but if you're looking at a desktop then the argument becomes a lot murkier if you're not doing iOS development. If cost is an issue, I'd build a windows desktop from parts that are OSx86 (Hackintosh) compliant so if you need the osx experience you can get it. That gives you the best of most worlds' I'd say without having to pay the mac premium -…

Why wouldn't a Mac workstation not be worth it? My iMac 27" is worth every penny for the huge hi-res IPC screen alone.
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