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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.

37 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. Natty uses Wayland? by KugelKurt · · Score: 2

    I don't think so...

    1. Re:Natty uses Wayland? by SaidinUnleashed · · Score: 5, Informative

      As an option, yes, but not as the default X server. You can expect it to be really buggy right now, though.

      --
      Shiny. Let's be bad guys.
    2. Re:Natty uses Wayland? by walshy007 · · Score: 3, Informative

      The main point is that even if you run wayland, you will still have to run X on top of it.

      Wayland has no drawing api, and it's scope is extremely limited compared to x, x will still be needed on top of it for the forseeable future.

      I have no idea why there are all these stories that are implying wayland is more than what it is. It sasy specifically on the website that it is not a replacement for x and will need something like X to draw on it *sigh*

    3. Re:Natty uses Wayland? by Daengbo · · Score: 2

      The goal is to write a GTK+ backend for Wayland.

    4. Re:Natty uses Wayland? by walshy007 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And they would be reimplementing large portions of X's job by doing so. So instead of a known common protocol that is consistent with a few implementation problems, you have a whole new untested drawing system that is GTK specific too... great.

    5. Re:Natty uses Wayland? by Daengbo · · Score: 2

      I wasn't defending it: you sounded like you didn't know.

    6. Re:Natty uses Wayland? by Kjella · · Score: 4, Informative

      And they would be reimplementing large portions of X's job by doing so. So instead of a known common protocol that is consistent with a few implementation problems, you have a whole new untested drawing system that is GTK specific too... great.

      Well it's not like DRI is untested, it's being used by drivers today to provide hardware acceleration for OpenGL. It's more that now everyone talks OpenGL rather than the X protocol. The upside is a greatly simplified display server, the hardware (or the software fallback) does all the rendering and compositing. This makes Linux work like a modern desktop same as OS X or Win7 with every application a hardware accelerated 3D client. The downside is that what works locally - send everything to the graphics card and let the hardware work it out - works terribly over the network as you go from an extremely wide pipe (PCIe x16 mostly) to whatever the network/internet speed is.

      To be honest I think remote applications need a simpler rendering protocol, it's just not realistic to have an application look the same across a 56k dial-up link as it does locally where a thousand shaders can process 1 GB of textures to render something. Either you go down the VNC route and display the output our you need a simplified protocol which is better covered by web applications or some more "real" remote application protocol. X is neither, from what I gather most rendering toolkits no longer use the X primitives because they're too primitive, so they render it and send it as pixmaps anyway.

      --
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    7. Re:Natty uses Wayland? by node+3 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      After suffering X for years, then using a Unix that uses another windowing system while still allowing for X compatibility, all I can say is that this is a very good move on Canonical's part. At least in terms of their motivations. Execution is very important and remains to be seen.

      X11 is the single worst thing about Linux systems. They've got a great kernel, great filesystems, great command line shells, great non-GUI scripting tools, great non-GUI libraries all hobbled by an ancient windowing system and sometimes not completely awful window managers.

      When you keep things simple, X can be alright. It's kind of like DOS. If you don't get too fancy, it's simple and solid. It's great for some tasks, but not something that belongs on the desktop. If the term "this is the year of Linux on the desktop" is going to ever be said out of anything other than irony/sarcasm or delusion, some distro is going to have to replace X with something better.

    8. Re:Natty uses Wayland? by walshy007 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The known protocol is decades old, the people that originally wrote them is retired or dead or too old to work hard on it full time like a 20-30something.

      FTP is decades old, and the original spec developers are likely reaching retiring age, same with tcp/ip v4, so should we drop all of that too? this argument is silly.

      2)This code is so complex, and very very difficult to maintain.

      With a project of this size and with this much use, there is constant adaptation going on to new circumstances (3d graphics cards etc) after the new functionality is stable it all tends to get cleaned up. X of today is not the X of 20 years ago, maintainers aren't masochists they do do cleanups etc.

      3)The X system is not designed for current desktops, 3d graphic cards, low latency and personal computers, it is designed for mainframes, corporate, boring stuff, making Linux obsolete compared to MacOSX, iOS, or Windows 7 that redesigned their graphic systems.

      Bullshit, the fundamentals of drawing have not changed at all, whether 3d acceleration is used for rendering or not is an implementation detail not a flaw with the protocol itself. If you can explain how the fundamentals of drawing things to a screen are different for professional use as opposed to home use, I'd like to hear it.

      Again by your logic everything should be reimplemented every five years just because even if it works perfectly reinventing it would make it 'more awesome' this is idiotic.

    9. Re:Natty uses Wayland? by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      FTP is decades old, and the original spec developers are likely reaching retiring age, same with tcp/ip v4, so should we drop all of that too?

      You could not have picked worse examples to prove your point.

      --
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  2. Ah man... by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.
    1. Re:Ah man... by David+Gerard · · Score: 2

      I can't see them ever beating 8.04 "Hairy Hardon."

      --
      http://rocknerd.co.uk
    2. Re:Ah man... by Nerdfest · · Score: 3, Informative

      They actually take suggestions

    3. Re:Ah man... by tao · · Score: 3, Informative

      First of all, Aron isn't spell with double-A in Swedish, second of all Andersen is a Norwegian/Danish name (the Swedish counterpart would be Anderson) and again, not spelled with double-A. Oh, and you've gotta let your imagination run -- remember, there's (almost) the whole Unicode space to choose from :) Of course, as far as English goes, Z is the end (Zonky Zebra?). But there's more to poetry than just alliteration. Maybe some neat haiku-based code names? :P

    4. Re:Ah man... by Nimatek · · Score: 2, Funny

      I was hoping for Nocturnal Neckbeard.

    5. Re:Ah man... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      +1 for 15.10 Wanking Walrus

    6. Re:Ah man... by rawler · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Seriously, who comes up with those naming schemes?

      The guy who pays for it.

    7. Re:Ah man... by Cougar+Town · · Score: 2

      I was hoping for Naughty Nymph myself.

    8. Re:Ah man... by M.+Baranczak · · Score: 3, Funny

      After "Aa" we'd go to "Ab" (Aborted Abalone?). By the time we need to deal with "Bb", Hurd should be a viable competitor to Linux.

    9. Re:Ah man... by TeknoHog · · Score: 3, Funny

      13.04 Rolling Release?

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    10. Re:Ah man... by Bacon+Bits · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Slashdot: We'll nit-pick the funny out of any joke.

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      The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
    11. Re:Ah man... by electrosoccertux · · Score: 2

      I was hoping for Nocturnal Neckbeard.

      how dare you defame Stallman's beard.

  3. Don't bother... by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Don't bother... by IronSight · · Score: 2

      Doing an upgrade at this moment from 10.10 with the upgrade-manager -d option... hopefully it will be a little better. Did you check the bug site to see if your bug was on that list? It would help the dev team a lot for you to report it.

    2. Re:Don't bother... by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Actually, I'd try it out on my main machine on a flash drive. I have a tolerably speedy 16GB OCZ Diesel2. If I thought there was any point, that is. I wait for the beta, IMO alphas are for people who want to actually write code. I mean, run what you want, but no thanks. (I've been known to do packaging and such but I'm no programmer)

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:Don't bother... by IronSight · · Score: 2

      The upgrade process was pretty flawless so far... Though I notice that google chrome doesn't play well with their unity setup (dual window controls and the top menu only closes it). The ubuntu button now opens a nautilus folder and all your apps are just crammed in there. No sorting. Something they might want to work on. Performance isn't too bad on my gaming laptop (nvidia gtx 260m 1gb dedicated, 4 gigs of ram, 2.1 ghz core2duo). Missing my favorite keyboard shortcut (alt+f2). This is going to take some getting used to. It's a little more "macish" than I am used to.

    4. Re:Don't bother... by PhrstBrn · · Score: 2

      The same problem exists with Chrome on Ubuntu 10.10 with Unity. If you turn off the borderless option in chrome, it works as a workaround for the double window controls. The setting is in the chrome options on the first or 2nd page, I don't have it open right now. It's no longer "borderless" but the extra window controls are gone.

  4. I'm sorry by knightsbore · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:I'm sorry by TheLink · · Score: 2

      I mentioned "every now and then" - so not talking about the bugs, or specifically this particular alpha release. I'm talking about the direction/design/"dream". They keep moving widgets around for not good enough reasons.

      And some time ago, when I looked at 9.10 apparently there was no built-in GUI unified sound mixer: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/10964/how-to-fix-sound-issues-in-ubuntu-9.10/

      That's very far from "Steve Jobs insanely great" right? In fact that situation is TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE for a desktop OS. How many years of Ubuntu till 9.10 came out?

      Yes the CLI alsamixer is bundled by default in the desktop 9.10 distro, but we're talking _desktop_ OS right? So you can end up with a situation where the mixer is somehow set to zero, you try the default sound volume control via the GUI and it doesn't help - the volume levels are way too low. Turns out you need to run alsamixer and push up the main mixer volume etc. IIRC 10.04 wasn't that great with sound either. Anyone have good news to report for 10.10? Sound "finally works"?

      Fact is, stuff like "sound working" should be pretty basic for a "Desktop OS". I don't even recall people having the degree of stupid problems with sound on the Amiga or classic Mac or IIGS or ST. And XP certainly works better than Ubuntu in this area.

      Then there's the clipboard: http://art.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1571237

      When you copy stuff to a clipboard, it should not vanish just because the original does. Otherwise it is NOT a clipboard. If the current batch of Desktop Linux designers do not think a working clipboard is a core feature for a Desktop GUI then they're sabotaging Desktop Linux as I said.

      Lastly, how many of you use their GUIs to run a browser, and "screen" for window management for other stuff. How good really is your GUI if it can't do much better than screen in task management of many tasks? How old is screen.

      I do use Ubuntu Linux, but as CLI machines/servers. Works well for that.

      But anyone impressed by Ubuntu as a "Desktop Linux", has pretty low standards.

      --
    2. Re:I'm sorry by Fallingcow · · Score: 2

      One of those releases--I think it was 9.4--was like stepping in to a time machine, as far as sound was concerned. They switched to the PulseAudio sound system for reasons that I still don't understand, which it turns out was developed only to late alpha levels at best.

      That release gave me more trouble with sound than I've seen since back when you had to have OSS compatibility installed because not everything had switched over to ALSA yet. Sound was a thing that was "just working" in Ubuntu and most other Distros, and they broke it for no damn reason.

  5. ubuntu.com link, with known issues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative
  6. Re:Why .04? by tolan-b · · Score: 4, Informative

    The release numbers are "year.month".

  7. Re:I'll wait by IronSight · · Score: 2

    Did you try vlc? I have tested dvd's in mplayer, vlc and "movie player" which I think is totem, and all seem to work (10.10 x86_64). Though I used to ultimate edition dvd from distrowatch that came preloaded with all codecs and such pre-installed. Though I think VLC does not need any additional codecs installed. Good luck.

  8. Re:Link to Ubuntu's actual Alpha 1 page.. by Shimbo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Is it really that hard to include a link to Ubuntu's official Alpha 1 page, http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/maverick/alpha1 ?

    Yes, apparently. Natty Narwhal Alpha 1

  9. Re:Link to Ubuntu's actual Alpha 1 page.. by jginspace · · Score: 2

    Or this: http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=06383 or this: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2010-December/000793.html

    From the www.ubuntu.com announcement:
    "Unity is now the default in the Ubuntu Desktop session. This is partially implement ..."
    "It support Quick lists on context menu ..."

    Not wanting to sound like a chauvinist, but I prefer my announcements written by native speakers.

  10. Re:Link to Ubuntu's actual Alpha 1 page.. by Terrasque · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is it really that hard to include a link to Ubuntu's official Alpha 1 page, http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/maverick/alpha1 ?

    Yes, apparently. Natty Narwhal Alpha 1

    You make a compelling point there.

    Maybe I should become a /. editor, since I already seem to have the vital skills :D

    --
    It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
  11. Eh no, this is Ubuntu. Not linux by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    --

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