New Ubuntu in 9 days, 18 hours, 51 minutes and 29 seconds • Hacker News Board

Re: New Ubuntu in 9 days, 18 hours, 51 minutes and 29 seconds

#31

Post by kiwidrew » Sun, Oct 02, 2011, 4:06 PM UTC

I've just updated to the 11.10 beta2, and my experience so far has not been promising. My main gripe (as expected) is that the Unity desktop is the only option now; while it is possible to install GNOME 3 and use that, it lacks the polish of 11.04's GNOME desktop and is clearly in an unfinished state.

As a developer, Unity's handling of multiple terminal windows is extraordinarily ham-fisted. Say you have a web browser and three terminal windows; when you Alt-Tab from the browser, only one of the terminals appears in the list. And when you switch to it, all of the open terminals gain focus. So when I want to have one terminal open on top of my browser (e.g. so I can see part of the page underneath) I have to minimize all of the other terminals. If I don't, as soon as I focus the one terminal, the others also pop up over top of my work.

And on top of that, much of the (desktop) system is still very unreliable. Unity crashes, Compiz crashes, the battery status applet crashes, etc. (Yes, all have been reported on Launchpad, some for well over a month now.)

I'm unfortunately committed at this point, but perhaps my words of warning will save others who think "it's almost done, so I'll help out the community by installing and testing the beta". There's only 9 days left to go, and I don't see how they're going to deliver a reliable and robust release on time.

Re: New Ubuntu in 9 days, 18 hours, 51 minutes and 29 seconds

#32

Post by pnathan » Sun, Oct 02, 2011, 4:08 PM UTC

I am looking forward to the new Ubuntu. I plan to customize it quite heartily of course. There are more window managers than just Unity. Gnome is pretty 'fat' these days.

I like not having to spend the time keeping packages up to date, and to know that my system is approximately a 2011 vintage.

Of course I install my most frequently used programs from source.

Re: New Ubuntu in 9 days, 18 hours, 51 minutes and 29 seconds

#33

Post by pnathan » Sun, Oct 02, 2011, 4:09 PM UTC

kiwidrew wrote: post #31

I've just updated to the 11.10 beta2, and my experience so far has not been promising. My main gripe (as expected) is that the Unity desktop is the only option now; while it is possible to install GNOME 3 and use that, it lacks the polish of 11.04's GNOME desktop and is clearly in an unfinished state. As a developer, Unity's handling of multiple terminal windows is extraordinarily ham-fisted. Say you have a web brows…

You can, of course, install Gnome 2, yes?

Re: New Ubuntu in 9 days, 18 hours, 51 minutes and 29 seconds

#34

Post by pinwale » Sun, Oct 02, 2011, 4:33 PM UTC

The site doesn't even say anything about 11.10 & try counting the days on the timer. :)

It looks like it's a countdown for something else.

Re: New Ubuntu in 9 days, 18 hours, 51 minutes and 29 seconds

#35

Post by pasbesoin » Sun, Oct 02, 2011, 4:35 PM UTC

kiwidrew wrote: post #31

I've just updated to the 11.10 beta2, and my experience so far has not been promising. My main gripe (as expected) is that the Unity desktop is the only option now; while it is possible to install GNOME 3 and use that, it lacks the polish of 11.04's GNOME desktop and is clearly in an unfinished state. As a developer, Unity's handling of multiple terminal windows is extraordinarily ham-fisted. Say you have a web brows…

I have a hard time understanding some of these recent UI changes. This one strikes me as being akin to not having MRU tab order in Chrome. Do none of the people making these decisions do actual work in the tools they're affecting?

That seems incomprehensible: They're (presumably) developers. But they make these choices or changes, and instantly and persistently I am stumbling over the results of those decisions.

Re: New Ubuntu in 9 days, 18 hours, 51 minutes and 29 seconds

#36

Post by snowwindwaves » Sun, Oct 02, 2011, 4:46 PM UTC

I'm still on 8.04. Ubuntu moves too fast for me, and seems to always break something that used to work. The next time I visit any of the machines for which I am responsible for care & feeding I am installing red hat or centos. 7 year support cycle!

Re: New Ubuntu in 9 days, 18 hours, 51 minutes and 29 seconds

#37

Post by sixtofour » Sun, Oct 02, 2011, 5:16 PM UTC

kiwidrew wrote: post #31

I've just updated to the 11.10 beta2, and my experience so far has not been promising. My main gripe (as expected) is that the Unity desktop is the only option now; while it is possible to install GNOME 3 and use that, it lacks the polish of 11.04's GNOME desktop and is clearly in an unfinished state. As a developer, Unity's handling of multiple terminal windows is extraordinarily ham-fisted. Say you have a web brows…

Would (wouldn't?) KDE or XFCE be viable alternatives?

Re: New Ubuntu in 9 days, 18 hours, 51 minutes and 29 seconds

#38

Post by lhnn » Sun, Oct 02, 2011, 5:22 PM UTC

I installed 11.10 B2 on my desktop. It definitely looks more polished (especially the login screen), but that's where the improvements end for basic usage. Unity drives me up the wall, for the most part. I could tolerate all the BS of Unity if ONLY I had a taskbar at the bottom of the screen. I want to see my windows down there, not constantly alt-tab to see what's open.

When I tried to have gnome-panel overlaid on Unity, I wasn't able to right-click the panel to configure it... there went my idea.

Another major hit: I noticed they officially brought in a central control-panel concept for user settings. Great! Except that to change 'obscure' things like your system fonts or your SCREENSAVER, you need to manually download the 'gnome-tweak-tool' package. That's right, most people won't even be able to change their screensaver settings.

Ubuntu seems to be doing some really neat stuff on the server side, so my interest is still piqued there. On the desktop, though, I might be going with Linux mint Debian Edition or straight-up Debian very soon.

Re: New Ubuntu in 9 days, 18 hours, 51 minutes and 29 seconds

#39

Post by trafficlight » Sun, Oct 02, 2011, 5:46 PM UTC

kiwidrew wrote: post #31

I've just updated to the 11.10 beta2, and my experience so far has not been promising. My main gripe (as expected) is that the Unity desktop is the only option now; while it is possible to install GNOME 3 and use that, it lacks the polish of 11.04's GNOME desktop and is clearly in an unfinished state. As a developer, Unity's handling of multiple terminal windows is extraordinarily ham-fisted. Say you have a web brows…

I tried out Beta 2 (64 bit) yesterday. I think I lasted 30 minutes with it. Unity and Compiz crashed constantly. The machine just seemed generally unresponsive. I feel like these things should've been a lot more stable by now.

Re: New Ubuntu in 9 days, 18 hours, 51 minutes and 29 seconds

#40

Post by davidcuddeback » Sun, Oct 02, 2011, 6:07 PM UTC

kiwidrew wrote: post #31

I've just updated to the 11.10 beta2, and my experience so far has not been promising. My main gripe (as expected) is that the Unity desktop is the only option now; while it is possible to install GNOME 3 and use that, it lacks the polish of 11.04's GNOME desktop and is clearly in an unfinished state. As a developer, Unity's handling of multiple terminal windows is extraordinarily ham-fisted. Say you have a web brows…

> As a developer, Unity's handling of multiple terminal windows is extraordinarily ham-fisted. Say you have a web browser and three terminal windows; when you Alt-Tab from the browser, only one of the terminals appears in the list. And when you switch to it, all of the open terminals gain focus.

I often run into that exact problem with OSX. That is partially why I'm considering trying out Xmonad.