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Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) Makes a First Appearance
srimadman writes "The Alpha 1 Release of Ubuntu 11.04, often known as 'Natty Narwhal,' is intended as a developer snapshot of the next major Ubuntu version, which is due in April."
So, if you want to try Unity and Wayland before your neighbors do, this is the time.
I don't think so...
I so hoped they would go with the suggestion from the guy over at LinuxHaters blog: Ubuntu 11 - "Naughty Nutgoblin". Seriously, who comes up with those naming schemes?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
I'm pretty happy with my current version.
Installer crashes and burns, at least when run under VirtualBox, it complains one of the packages is malformed and then crashes.
Not sure if the installed OS is runnable after this, it might be but I didn't want to mess around with it, I'll wait for Alpha 2.
But at least in the current setup unity is garbage. They say it was initially designed for netbooks,yet the ui is really laggy on a low end processor and the menu bar takes up around 10% of the left side, on a machine with an already small real estate. Gnome however runs smoothly and takes up almost no real estate. They also chose for some reason to make the settings and properties menus completely disappear. This is linux, not iOS! Oh and this is typed from an eee pc with ubuntu 10.10 on it, with unity, but currently using gnome.
http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/natty/alpha1
Ugh, I'm still trying to fix my broken DVD playback from upgrading to 10.10 last week.
This alpha does sound fascinating. Will this be an Ubuntu without X-windows sitting under a GNOME? An Updated GNOME?
Can someone explain to me why Ubuntu uses .04 instead of .0 for the first release of a new major version?
In addition to poxy written English and problem with summary pointed out above, I get to this, third paragraph:
four more alpha releases of Ubuntu 11.04 are planned for after this one, followed by a beta version due roughly a month before Natty Narwhal's scheduled official release on April 28.
I then stopped reading.
Is it really that hard to include a link to Ubuntu's official Alpha 1 page, http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/maverick/alpha1 ?
Oh wait, guess there's not enough annoying ads and popups on that page..
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
You mean the same fundamental way in which windows moved the close button to the top right with 95?
By your reckoning, you should just use a mac since macos has always kept the close button in the top left.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Maybe Granny wasn't a grandmother in 1995... did you consider that, you insensitive clod?
Beware of the Leopard.
You mean the same fundamental way in which windows moved the close button to the top right with 95?
They didn't move the close button they added it.
I've got an eeePC netbook with WinXP, and am not impressed by this Unity interface being offered. The description of it looks like Ubuntu's trying to be as much like Apple as possible. "We made the desktop look like someone spilled colorful pills all over it and hid everything but your favorite "apps", which we want you to get from our walled garden. We put everything into a "Me Menu" which you probably can't even rename, and you can, like, totally use Twitter and Facebook because everybody who's anybody uses those."
I might try the Aurora version if it ever actually comes out. Since I'd be investigating Ubuntu without a strong reason to do so, I'd need some hand-holding to avoid exhausting my patience. Haven't yet seen an edition that has a big default button saying "click here for a tutorial about where everything is and how to do stuff". And is there a way to dual-install in such a way that I don't need to wait an extra beat or use a menu when turning the computer on, to pick an OS?
Revive the Constitution.
Ubuntu isn't for your granny. It's an alternative OS for "practical power users" like most other distros.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Bottom right - a) So you can hover over it quickly and easily, b) so you can click it easier with your finger in a touch screen/convertible tablet situation
Have they probably fixed the close / minimize / restore position f*up? I mean I could not have marketed a OS to my granny if such a fundamentals keep changing, I know that one can set them back to top right, but this requires knowhow to do that.
Ubuntu isn't marketed at your granny. I doubt anyone who is bitching about this is really concerned about that. More likely they just don't like such a minimal-but-noticable change and don't want to admit (either publicly or to themselves) that they are just as prone to an ingrained, but entirely subjective, sense of feel in a UI, especially over something so trivial. It also belies the credo of "Linux is completely configurable", because like you said, it is easy to alter, but it's just the default that offends some people.
The idea that the average person (or even "average granny") is going to see the buttons missing on the right, but then see the exact same buttons on the left and somehow not make the connection is laughable. Millions of people go from Windows to Macs every year and haven't become nearly as confused by this as a handful of vocal Linux geeks seem to be, and on Macs the buttons actually do look different, are in a different order, and one of them even acts notably different!
Why leave Quick Launch on the left then? Both Show Desktop and Quick Launch are essential for management of applications cluttering desktop... and now I need to jump left-right-left-right to find stuff. It's like the ribbon interface - good premise, terrible execution.
Regards,
Ruemere
My favorites for 11.10:
Oatiest Ogre
Orgasmic Okapi
Organic Oyster
Orthogonal Ocelot
Osculating Octopus
Ornery Otter
Ogling Owl
Obedient Orc
Opulent Ogre
And so on...
Does having a witty signature really indicate normality?
Linux does not exist as an OS, what you are talking about here is a distro which uses Linux for its kernel that is making some choices.
Are they the right choices? That is irrelevant. It is their choice. There are already plenty of Linux distro's including ones based on Ubuntu, that any choice you don't like, you can easily switch.
Any choice is bad in somebodies eyes. I can make X work, so to replace it is to me unneeded because it only means I have to learn something new. But others can't make X do what they want, what ever that is. Are they wrong? No, it is a different choice.
The software culture that is "Linux" thrives on anyone being able to take the existing code and packages and making his own product of it. This is its strength but it also means it will never have the finesse of an OSX or even a Windows. You can't have an open system AND thight control.
Yes, I don't like the new Unity interface either. Or the plasma desktop of KDE. Both seem simply not to get that a desktop should be both flexible AND out of the way. Especially on the small screen of a netbook, the desktop as such should be to the edges. Unity tries this but KDE completly fails at this. That is party because there are TWO netbooks. The social one and the working machine. KDE Plasma Desktop goes the meego route and tries to make the desktop the application.
Unity tries to give you max space for running regular apps and it does it remarkably well. BUT it takes the gnome style to extreme and removes ANY control over it from the user. You can't even add any applets. But people have used these to make their desktop give them information they feel is necessary. Unity is therefor NOT regonized for its excellent use of the small screen but for stopping you from using long established applets.
The left dock is just horrible, but again its horridness comes less from the things it does right but from its complete failure to follow basic known dock designs that work. There are a dozen docks for linux. Why re-invent the wheel? Why the horrid icons, color choices and lack of clear division?
Frankly, Ubuntu has a goal and its goal is going further and further away from hard core linux users. It remains to be seen if this is good enough to instead attract the newbies. But newbies can't be handed what is essentially beta code in constant development. You need a finished product. Ubuntu might simply not have the resources to target the market its want.
But this is no problem. Other distro's exist. Just as Ubuntu arose on the ashes of Red Hat Desktop, another will arise to take over from Ubuntu. PCLinuxOS, Mint and others. Even perhaps some of the oldies, Mandrive or Suse or Fedora.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I actually think they are better in the left corner as they are in Ubuntu now. Especially with a large widescreen screen it previously took some mouse miles to move over to the buttons.
What comes after "Zany Zebra?" Inquisitive minds demand to know.
Quick Launch? What are you talking about? You have used Windows 7 haven't you?
From my experiance, granny's and grandpa's like linux in general (my in-laws) since I'm not having to wipe their machines every 2 weeks from virus infections or worms or malwares. With linux they really don't have to be as careful when loading up websites or installing software (they know how to use synaptic) so now they can trust that they can really use their computer to the full potential of their needs. They can put their family photos on the hard drive, backup the family movies (rip the dvd's the camcorder makes), and not worry if it will all be lost in a couple weeks to 3 months. They can use ubuntu cloud service to backup these things aswell or dropbox since it is integrated. I mean, these people might be a little more open minded after suffering from windows viruses and such for so long and dealing with the fallout several times. But it's reasurring to know that I am not getting called every couple weeks or couple months to fix things. And they act rather content. So all is well.
"From my experiance, granny's and grandpa's like linux in general (my in-laws) since I'm..." managing the computer for them.
I wouldn't call it managing, since all I did was install linux (ubuntu and pclinuxos) on a couple of their machines, teach them basic use (installing software, updating, general use) and they then flew with it. I haven't had to give them support now minus a couple questions within the first month for about 2 years. They feel confident enough to do their own maintenance like updates or trying out new software. Far from managing their computers. Every so often I might use their desktop or laptop at their place while we are visiting to show them a new website or funny video on youtube, and the machines are always up to date and working flawlessly. They tell me of a problem they had with an update once that they googled and found the answer on the ubuntu forums, they opened their terminal and did a couple commands and it worked. People need to stop thinking that older people are all morons with computers.
What are you running?
I just tried out the scenario above in Ubuntu Lucid (10.04).
Ctrl+C copy text from Chromium. Ctrl+V pasted it in gedit. Works.
Then close Chromium. Ctrl+V in gedit again. Nothing.
Usually this doesn't matter because you have the source app still open, but still.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
X has no drawing API!
Do you even know what Xlib provides in the way of drawing? 1980's-style graphics primitives, pixel-based, non-anti-aliased polylines, circles and arcs.
Nobody is seriously using X for drawing anything anymore. You say in another post that "the fundamentals of drawing haven't changed" - Yes, they have.
X was designed entirely around raster graphics. It had no support for bitmap fonts, and no support for device-independent graphics. That hasn't been the right way to do things since at least the early 90's, and with PostScript debuting in 1983, it was arguably an obsolete device model even when X was created. Nobody uses X for "drawing", all they use it for is pushing pixels out to the screen.
Today, either you're doing explicitly raster graphics (read: 3D stuff, which is device-dependent), or you should be doing device-independent rendering. Bitmap fonts are the exception, not the rule. It's insane to expect people to write separate drawing routines for printing, or generating a PDF or whatever. (And X of course never had any kind of real printing support to begin with)
If you think we need X for drawing, then you simply have no clue.
"no support for bitmap fonts" should of course have read "no support for vector fonts".
People need to stop thinking that older people are all morons with computers.
I don't recall anyone making this claim.
As for your specific example, I don't see how some reasonably competent grandparents refutes the notion that Linux isn't a good choice for "granny". Some grannies, sure. But "granny" in general? Hell no.
This is suboptimal. The .iso is 717Mb, and Brasero on my Ubuntu 10.4 won't let me burn it to an 80min CD because it's too big. So just how am I expected to test this gizmo?
Before Windows95 the top-left button, if double-clicked, closed the window. Clicking it once popped up a menu of window actions. Almost everybody called that the "close button" because that was the only useful thing to do with it.
Before Windows95 the top-left button, if double-clicked, closed the window.
And it's still there in Windows XP, and Vista and 7 as far as I know. The 'x' close button was added to the top right with Windows 95. Nothing was moved unless you count the min and max buttons moving over a little to accommodate the close button.
Don't have it to try here, but that does seem likely. I was completely unaware that it still was anything other than an icon in Windows95. They may have removed the popup menu but preserved the double click?
I do however agree with others that Windows made a GUI change of as much significance as Ubuntu.
My mistake. Taskbar, obviously. I'm sorry to admit that I am not that well versed in Windows 7 terminology yet... I keep using Windows Xp terms :)
Regards,
Ruemere
It still has the popup and everything. Nothing about the top left box changed except it looks like a tiny icon versus a minus sign. While I agree that Windows has made some GUI changes, changing the position of the buttons in the title bar fights 20 years of my muscle memory.
I really hate it because I'm always trying to sell Ubuntu to family and friends. Moving something so used for no reason is very frustrating.
but he provided a view that no one else was offering. A blog by a Linux programmer who hates Linux.
I suppose that the new taskbar is supposed to reduce clutter when lots of applications are open. I think it's better but YMMV I suppose, old productive habits die a slow and painful death when OS-switching...
Precisely. Besides, I like my desktops to be quiet, peaceful, snappy - calming colors/graphics, zero animations, important elements grouped thematically together and available via a single click or key combination.
Regards,
Ruemere