I decided to try Ubuntu 11.10 and make my own judgement. I have to admit that I was loathe to do so, but felt it only fair. So, I downloaded Ubuntu 11.10 Desktop 64. I burned it to a disc. I put in my DVD drive. I rebooted, hit f8, chose the DVD drive, and off I went. Soon, I was at a menu telling me to choose "Try" or "Install". I was feeling risky so I chose to install.
The installation process was easy enough for even the most noobish individual to successfully install Ubuntu. As I am wont to do, I made one giant ext4 partition and once the install was finished did my
dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1M count=2048followed by
chmod 600 /swapfile; mkswap /swapfile;Then opening vim, I added the swapfile to the fstab on my HDD. To be honest, making one large partition used to result in better performance. This isn't really applicable with modern machines, but it is now a force of habit.
Upon rebooting, I was greeted with the same desktop everyone now recognizes as Unity. Honestly, pressing the "Windows key" and typing the name of a program, and pressing enter isn't all that awful. Having launchers on a dock isn't all that bad either. Likewise, hotkeys for menus are still operable. Nothing changed all that much in my opinion. I am now at a loss as to why everyone (including myself) was so angry with Unity. It's stable. It's easy. Whatever. It works. The only thing I really do find annoying is that alt+right-mouse-button no longer resizes windows. I suppose that for the mouse bound there could be an issue. Navigating the new menu system thinger is a bit of a nightmare.
Outside of the GUI, hardware detection is excellent. look and feel consistency is excellent, and in my admittedly short use of the distro so far, it seems plenty reliable. I will give the distribution a solid 8/10 for the general purpose desktop crowd. I will say that until I have the chance to review the next Ubuntu and the next Slackware, I will be using Ubuntu 11.10. That is unless GoboLinux 15 ever comes out and has a 64 bit spin, but I doubt that that will ever happen.
there are many bugs with unity.... to name a few try installing virtualbox and then launching it.. chances are it will crash... also there is a terrible ongoing bug with flash and not allowing you to click on allow or select mic or camera settings.... this is due to the unity interface and compiz... there is not fix and this doesn't occur in other gui's
ReplyDeleteHere's a series of screen shots of my desktop. Does that look anything like OSX?
ReplyDeletehttp://freethinkerspub.yuku.com/topic/10027/My-Current-Desktop
signed
A. Ubuntu-Hater
@ronnie, yeah. those bugs will get hammered out. I use kvm not vbox, and i don't use flash... so i am not sure i would ever have noticed those bugs.
ReplyDelete@tracyanne, reminds me of vista actually.
Except Vista doesn't have half the functionality.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, and this is the bit you people seems unable to comprehend. It's not that people hate Ubuntu (well I suppose some do), it's that Unity is the wrong paradigm. Sure some people use the words hate Unity, but that is just another way of saying "Wrong Paradigm"
Time after time we tell you that, but you continue to frame the debate as Ubuntu Haters. If I hated Ubuntu I wouldn't bother using it.
That said, I'm rapidly running out of choices, because the next upgrade forces me to use either Unity or GNOME 3 Shell, neither of which works well for me. So unless Cinnamon ot MATE mature enough, I'm pretty much stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The new Unity HUD looks pretty cool. Is Ubuntu going to be LCARS? Heh. I'll likely stick to Xubuntu. No matter how much distro-hopping I do, I always come back to Xubuntu.
ReplyDelete@tracyanne, I think you underestimate that little software company in Redmond. I very much dislike Windows, but it is a capable OS. I would dare say that your interface is every bit as usable as Windows and the same in reverse. Your shell is surely more powerful. Your applications are surely more powerful, but your interface? I am not so sure. Next, I would very much like to know what "paradigm" it is against which you are rallying. I find the search features of the Unity menu thinger to be quite useful. I think the dock is "ok". It isn't good or bad, but it's usable. Unity has also gone a long way in standardizing UI features between toolkits, which I find very nice.
ReplyDelete@likeminded, haha. uzw... I typically end up going back to Slackware, but 13.37 is having some hardware issues for me, and I took the opportunity to test some distributions again before starting a kernel recompile and ISO remaster. In the process, I tested the newest Ubuntu... and it's nice. I never recommend hardcore distro hopping, but between installs I find it kind of fun and exciting. Xubuntu was a good distribution for me. I always ended up making it look and feel like BeOS (even down to having all but my icons in the top right corner).
@Ford, I use Windows XP AND Windows 7 every day, so no I don't underestimate Windows, when I compare it to my Linux Desktops. It's the little things, particularly, that make the difference, not the big flashy things you can see in the screenshots. Well, at least up until today, I used it every day. Today marks the moment in time when I will never ever have to use Windows again.
DeleteFrom today I will be removing Windows from my computers.
@tracyanne, It is liberating isn't it? I have been using Linux exclusively for some time now. I often forget about the hassles of doing things in Winders. My desktop at work is running Ubuntu 11.10 as is my home desktop. My home server is running Arch. The only things I have yet to install Linux on are my iTrinkets.
Delete@Ford, I've been using Linux since 2000, when I first installed Mandrake (8.2 I think it was). I have however also been during that time a Windows programmer (I have to eat).
ReplyDeleteThe reason I no longer need Windows, is that from February 1 2012 I will no longer be a Windows programmer. I finished up the last of my contracts.
I am going into business with a friend building Guitar Amplifiers (using Valve or Tube technology, because the sound is better) - Before I was a computer programmer I was an Electronics Engineer.
Since my friend and business partner also uses Linux, our office will be fully Linux and Free Software.
In answer to your question
quote:: Next, I would very much like to know what "paradigm" it is against which you are rallying. ::quote
The paradigm that everything HAS to be search, from application discovery to locating the latest fashion accessory on the Web. The fact that one is more and more being required to type in the command or somesearch parameter just to launch one's favourite application.
I'm currently typing this in from KDE 4.7.4 running on a VM on top of the desktop shown in those screen shots. I will most likely replace my desktop with KDE 4.7.x or 4.8 or 4.9, when I upgrade to Linux Mint 13 from my current LM 9. KDE 4 now gives me everything I need, and the little annoyances I had are now gone.
I very much like KDE4, and I was a KDE4 user for quite some time. I enjoy KDE4 as presented on Slackware 13.37 but I disliked it on Kubuntu. Chakra and openSUSE were great KDE distributions the last I tried them.
ReplyDeleteI can see what you mean about hating that everything is search based. I can sympathize with your point. For me, the fact that I can keep my hands on the keyboard is wonderful. I can simply type a thing or two, and use a few keybindings, and everything I need is available. For me, that's wonderful.