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9 Features We May See In Ubuntu 11.10
splitenz writes "Canonical's Ubuntu 11.04 'Natty Narwhal' may still be occupying much of the Linux world's attention, but at last week's Ubuntu Developer Summit in Budapest, the next version of the free and open source Linux distribution began to take form. A number of decisions were reportedly made about Ubuntu 11.10, or 'Oneiric Ocelot,' at the conference, while numerous other questions are still being debated. ... Here's a roundup of what's been reported so far."
Because end users hate it when they upgrade their OS only to find it doesn't look completely different
.. Porny Playboy or Horny Hustler going to come out?
Ubuntu has gone soft. Its recent changes pushed me back to Debian. Why does it have to be targeted at social media, online music sales, etc.? Unless it has something to give that isn't better-known on another platform, there's no incentive for users to switch.
TFA is slashdotted or I'd cross my fingers hoping for just that feature.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
boo I say, boo
at least it didn't work here, yes I installed a theme
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't understand the idea to replace Firefox with Chromium. How anyone can surf the web without NoScript?
Man, I can't believe I waited longer for the ads to load than to read the so-called article.
Ad sponsored fluff piece. This was worth mentioning on Slashdot?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Fix Unity. If you're not going to have GNOME 2 as a selectable option in future distros, at least work to make Unity a bug-free and far more configurable experience. Provide an easy to find and select option (i.e. not a shell command) to disable the global menu for those of us who prefer a traditional menuing system.
Oh who am I kidding. Mark has gone on record stating how he doesn't like having too options because it increases the number of permutations in which something could go wrong, plus he wants Unity to look the same on all desktops (a consistent look). But hell, Windows 7 has the ability to dock the superbar on any side of the desktop, and Unity doesn't. How did they miss that feature?
Unless... they decide to stop forcing Unity down everyone's throats.
Quit fucking up flash every other upgrade. Youtube no longer works after this last upgrade. Youtube! It's only one of the biggest users of flash on the web. Maybe you might have heard of it. And this isn't the first time. 2 upgrades ago it was broken, then they fixed it 1 upgrade ago. Now it's broken again. How about dropping some of the cutting edge shit and going back to the days when Ubuntu Just Worked.
What a bunch of disorganized crap Ubuntu is becoming. On one hand, they're moving away from Evolution toward Mozilla Thunderbird (which I support), but on the other hand, they're moving away from Mozilla Firefox toward Google Chrome. They still haven't figured out what it's going to look like and, from the people I talk to, Unity has driven many away. Uncomplicate things and use the standard GNOME shell, dummies. Stop worrying about NIH. Swapping GDM for LightDM and justifying it by saying it has a smaller memory footprint? Has anyone verified this? I mean, loading up a full html engine is lighter than using a toolkit that will need to be loaded anyway? Seems like more NIH and arrogance. Everyone I know uses LibreOffice, whether on Windows or Linux, but Cononical wants to dump it? Morons, I say. Ubuntu seems to have no vision anymore. They throw everything at the wall to see what sticks. The determining factors in sticking are convoluted and nonsensical. As fast as they gained in market share, they can lose. And with these sorts of craptastic, random changes, they aren't going to get much business support. Yay.
...9 super models I may sleep with this year.
It's 2011. There's no reason they shouldn't switch to a DVD release. TFA said they might have to drop LibreOffice, or go with 2 CDs, or a DVD. I say stick with a single DVD image. That doesn't mean they have to fill up the full 4 GB, but it gives them quite a bit more room to play with. 2 CDs would be inconvenient. Also, who doesn't have a DVD burner these days.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
All you need do is select the Ubuntu Classic desktop when you log in. Worked like a charm, No more Unity.
..but, considering that Linux distros offer the quickest, easiest ways to install software, we sure spend a lot of time talking about what's included out-of-the-box.
I can tell you right now that, no matter what they include, my first installation of any OS is always going to be followed by choosing the software that I personally want. Who are these people who use Ubuntu & don't know how to use the package manager?
9 Features and/or functions that were working in the previous version but aren't working now. I kid, I kid! But really, raise your hand if you remember the pain of Pulse Audio.
Just to avoid being consumed by flames, I have to say that use Linux every day at work and for play. I think it's the best OS for me.
I'm sure I am in the minority here, but I don't mind unity all that much. It even works well with my magic trackpad.
All my machines are Arch or Gentoo, except two I leave home for my parents to use, which run Ubuntu. I recently upgraded to Nauty remotely for them, forgetting to tell them that the default desktop is now Unity. So far, besides slightly slower start up after login (the machines could use more RAM anyway), they like the new Desktop. Their commonly used apps' are automatically set up as big and visible icon on the left-edge dock. (I used to put AWN, a bottom-screen dock, up for them, but they always find it obstructing even with auto-hide). They also like that menu item for all apps consistently appears when the cursor hovers over the top edge. I am ambivalent myself toward Unity, but if it pass their test. I would say it can't be all that bad.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
Let's hope that WiFi using the ath5k driver is no longer broken (at least half-broken using the options nohwcrypt=1 trick in modprobe.d/ath5k-workaround.conf )
Year of the Linux Desktop will be 2011. Count on it!
Where would they be without the subjunctive...
1. A Refined Unity
>"icons in the launcher will be able to display count badges or progress meters to reflect the state of the underlying application"
2. GNOME 3
Will people now stop posting "you can just choose class Gnome before login!"? Prediction: Neither Unity nor Gnome3 will have the functionality that Just Worked fine before, and was letting people get their work done.
3. Evolution -- or Thunderbird?
Even though I use Thunderbird (I prefer to have the same client across computers, plus it has great dynamic folders), I don't agree with switching applications on a whim every few releases.
Pitivi to be dropped
F-Spot => Shotwell
Evolution => Thunderbird
Firefox => Chromium
4. No LibreOffice?
First they drop GIMP, now the OpenOffice clone, too? So what exactly will you be able to do with a live CD? I guess they had to make space for Unity chrome.
5. Chromium Instead of Firefox?
See #3. Also, it's not as if there's actual functionality missing from Firefox (unlike, say with the move from Pidgin to Empathy). Gratuitous changes. The Ubuntu trademark. "Ubuntu is safe, intuitive and stable " haha.
6. No Computer Janitor or PiTiVi
They just added it (Pitivi) a few releases ago!
7. LightDM Instead of GDM
Good if it works. But Ubuntu has a history of messing these things up.
8. Deja Dup by Default
It's a backup utility. Could be good, depends on integration. Does it work with Ubuntu One?
9. Ubuntu Software Center
>"the Ubuntu Software Center is also slated to get a number of enhancements, including improved integration with Unity and a simplified user interface."
How much simpler could it get?
>"I don't know about you, but I'm already champing at the bit to test it out."
Dreading it already.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
...when they went with the wimpy sounding Maverick Meerkat instead of Masturbating Monkey. That's when I knew I could not take them seriously anymore.
I'm sufficiently unimpressed with 11.04 (and especially Unity) that I'm tempted to reinstall with LTS and keep at least until next year.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I don't run Ubuntu. I don't quite like it. I do however recommend it to my friends/family who want to experience Linux and have only used Windows so far. It's by far the easiest and most complete distro available to newbies. And if you want more (or less, depends how you look at it) you use Fedora or Debian.
...Orgasming Octupussy.
"Unstable" (IMHO) has always been 'more' stable and newer than any Ubuntu release. ... By time stuff makes it into Stable, it's that STABLE
So if I switch from Ubuntu to Debian I could run Unstable to get something more stable? Or run Squeeze and wait for it to become stable, or Sid which would be stable, but will be frozen and could become quite unstable once I break it with newer packages. Testing would be unstable, but more stable than a new ubuntu release, which becomes stable over time, and as long as you stay with an LTS will be updated quite some time. Except when software you use goes to new versions, ubuntu LTS tends to have dependency problems and then it would be more stable to mix debian stable with unstable or even go with unstable and add the cutting edge you need from testing. Adding software from testing would make the traditionally stable debian-unstable quite unstable. But maybe less unstable than staying with ubuntu LTS and adding an untested ppa. Which could make your whole system unstable, and makes you wish you went with unstable to begin with so at least you would have a stable system.
Right?
for quite a few releases now, ubuntu server has had an issue where if the OS was running on a USB drive, any activity on any drive (even SATA attached ones) would drive load averages over 5 or 6. it's crazy and doesn't exist in any debian release.
that is what I ended up doing
small annoyances in U8 started to grate at me in U9 and 10 was just too much fiddle dicking to get back the way I liked it, but whatever time to "move on"!
the problem is I do not know where I could ever find a debian/ubuntu/ remix (cough mint)
Yup, that's Ubuntu before the suckage added.
Or Unbuntu with the suck massaged out: http://www.linuxmint.com/
Too light to contain suck: http://www.archlinux.org/
Too tiny to hold suck: http://puppylinux.com/
Got their suck fixed a few releases ago, it's all good now: http://www.fedoraproject.org/
fixed their suck a while ago too, lookin' good: http://www.freebsd.org/
supports all kinds of desktops that don't suck: http://www.mandriva.com/
roll your own without the suck: http://www.gentoo.org/
Ubuntu has a special status for me, because it's what I learned the basics of Linux on. These days I use a mix of Arch (for bleeding edge) and Slackware (for stability), and I doubt I would have ever delved in to learning Linux as deeply as I have if it weren't for Ubuntu. Although these days I really don't like the direction they're heading in. Too much re-inventing the wheel, not enough refining.
The last time I played around with Ubuntu I actually found it had more quirks, bugs, and stability problems than my Arch Linux install, which is a rolling release. I think these days, if I was going to set up a Linux box for someone, that only wanted to use it and not tinker with it under the hood, I'd just put Slackware on it and configure it for them.
Odd. Have you tried changing the I/O scheduler?
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
Some people don't have Internet access, you insensitive clod, or might only have very limited 3G without the possibility to download LibreOffice, which is quite heavy. For them, asking for a mailed CD might be their only option.
Dilbert RSS feed
Big Fucking Whoopee! Sick of Gnome 3 or Unity? Use Xubuntu or Kubuntu. Don't have Libreoffice on the CD? Get the DVD or use 'apt-get install libreoffice'.
It bothers me when Canonical states it can't fit features and programs into Ubuntu because of disk space limits on a CD. Who doesn't have a DVD Drive? More importantly, who uses physical media to install things anymore? I use a USB DVD-Drive that just collects dust...
I hope this time when I upgrade my box, find something new
Well, lots of people? People use the various tools (arrow keys, space key, PageUp/Dn, scrollbar, scroll wheel) in various ways; I dislike the new fad of telling people that they have to use a specific, hipster-approved method of manipulating their computer anymore.
Four things the scrollbar do are:
-tell you how big the document is (depending on the GUI)
-tell you where you are in the document
-let you go up/down by pages instead of by lines (scrollwheel)
-let you go to a specific point in the document
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
...they break with the animal tradition and go with Quivering Quim.
Ditto to that. Also to the fact that if Office was included with Windows or anything else, it would be considered "Bloat".
Its not like they're removing it from the repository.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Ubuntu was a perfect Linux-newbie distro
There, I fixed that for you.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Should be roughly the same thing.
1. Unity: don't care, won't use. I'll apt-get install xubuntu-desktop.
2. Gnome 3: same as above.
3. Thunderbird: good, so they're going to fix that four years old bug preventing people from dragging attachments from a message to a folder?
4. LibreOffice: no problem for me, I'll apt-get it but I think most people would appreciate to be able to open .doc and .xls files in the initial installation. Maybe a small program could handle office files and prompt to install the office suite. Nevertheless people is more willing to wait some more minutes when installing the OS than when they have some work to do, maybe quickly. I believe that this decision is detrimental to the user experience.
5. Chromium: don't care as I install Chrome, Firefox and Opera. I'm using Firefox mostly because of Firebug.
6. Computer Janitor and PiTiVi: Computer What!? I use OpenShot as video editor.
7. LightDM: seems a good idea for a functionality I use for 5 seconds when I boot my notebook, which doesn't happen often as I suspend it at night.
8. Déjà Dup: very good idea. I'm using a combination of rsnapshot and duplicity and I don't think DD has the same functionality (it doesn't pull files from remote servers or runs scripts on them to dump DBs, right?) but it's good to offer a good backup functionality for the general public. However they should implement something like Time Machine to backup the whole system.
9. Ubuntu Software Center: don't care much. I find more convenient to use apt-get and apt-cache than using the GUI and what I usually see of the USC is only the updates window. However I'm sure that many people find more convenient using the GUI so those changes will be appreciated.
Summing up, I started reading TFA expecting some more stupid changes from Canonical but I'm surprised to see that they either don't affect me or they might improve my experience. It's a good change after at least one year of invisible changes that made my notebook perform better (i.e.: suspend always work, ext4 is fast) and too visible ones that I had to work around to be able to work the way I like (all the GUI changes).
Please don't recommend Debian Sid for those that aren't ready for it. There is a reason it's called "unstable"; packages uploaded to Sid are "bleeding edge" and there is occasionally breakage, and the person running the box needs to be ready to handle that and know what to do and how to fix it. This isn't for everybody. Running Testing (currently named Wheezy) is a relatively safe bet.
Sid is not even a complete distribution -- Stable and Testing are, but Sid and Experimental aren't. I didn't realize this about Sid/Unstable either until I attended DebConf10 and was told so by a developer from Australia.
And if you continue to recommend running Sid, at least also tell people about installing 'apt-listbugs' so that they at least if someone else has reported grave or critical bugs on packages that they're about to install that they get warned about that. I.e. this is your "Debian Unstable condom".
The only downside to running Testing is that there are some source packages in Sid that you might need that aren't in Testing. For those situations I think it's fine to install JUST those packages from Sid onto your Testing box. That generally works fine.
Would it be too tough to simply ask during installation what UI is desired? Those that like Unity can pick that, and those of us who don't, can stay with Gnome.
I hate to go into grumpy old man mode (or perhaps grumpy middle-aged man, since I'm not demanding ditching the GUI), but I'm with the folks who dislike Unity. If I want an OS that tries to look like Vista/7 or OSX, I'll run one of those. In particular, the "search box to find things in the menu" feature is a step backward rather than forward relative to Gnome. The reason Windows needs that sort of thing is because of its horrible standard for arranging new items in the Start menu -- the "Start -> Company -> App" or "Start -> Company App" patterns. Because of course the most important thing about a program is who wrote it, not what it does. Only a crazy person like me would want Photoshop sharing a menu with Inkscape and SketchUp because they're drawing programs and Flex Builder grouped with Eclipse and VStudio because they're development apps, rather than together because they're both from Adobe. Combine that with Windows install programs' tendency to throw in a link to the product homepage, a link to the company homepage, and a shortcut to the uninstaller -- sometimes even if the program isn't an app per se (fx. drivers) and thus has no business adding anything to the Start menu at all -- and I can see how a "search the menu" capability would be nice to sort through the resulting morass. But Gnome never did that. When I started using Ubuntu that was one of the things I loved about it -- that it maintained the main menu more or less the way I'd always had to rearrange the Start menu to anytime I installed something new under Windows. You don't need a search capability for that sparse a structure; it only gets in the way.
As to Libre Office, if space is marginal they could keep everything except Base. It's probably less-used than Writer or Calc, and anyone intending to do database work is going to be able to figure out how to install new things anyway.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
I can't believe I waited longer for the ads to load than to read the called article.
Natty 11.04 is just out and is an incredible bunch of bugs and issue with an overly odd and obscure new interface, offending the intelligence of pretty much anyone except Apple users.
Yet people already need to speculate about a new version?
Fix it, before throwing it away and leaving it behind.
Do one thing good instead of 1000 partial things all crap then thrown away.
Or in other words (and worlds, too): Go get a life.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
not being a beta version?
I am using 11.04 and i ham honestly a little disappointed.
Replacing Evolution with Thunderbird is a good idea, though they should also include Lightning. Shame Spicebird died a long time ago, that would have been a brilliant app.
Firefox to Chrome? I doubt it as Chrome can't really block ads.
Switching to LightDM is good, not that most of us will really notice much.
Déjà Dup? Why not. Removing Computer Janitor and PiTiVi because they are buggy? Again why not. OpenShot sounds a better default video editor anyway. Dropping LibreOffice? Probably a bad idea as a poster above pointed out, beginners will want to be able to click on a .doc and have it open.
The key thing is getting Unity debugged and polished. Very exciting new interface. Love the idea of the progress meters and notifications on the task bar, plus being able to drag files onto it. Hopefully it will eventually make it up to the usability level of Kubuntu.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Anyone else experiencing problems with nvidia gpus under 11.04? Especially when you try to hook up a second monitor...
I find Kubuntu works for me just fine. Why not consider life outside of Gnome?
How about a thread on features we want to see:
Permissions upon mounting USB disks:
I myself would like to hook in an external drive with an ext files system and be able to use it (or at least get a popup to verify I want permission to use it) It is so infrequent I usually end up hacing to google what I need to do to set the user rights (and of course there is more than one way to do it), I consider this a big speed bump to general user acceptance.
Audio that just works:
It WAS working great with ALSA, then Pulse audio switch made things complicated again. Lets get sound stable, please?
ATI Video support
Could we get a good generic driver that works with ATI, and also has a good fall back method if we bork the video drivers trying something newer.
Install Partitioning
Sometime around Ubuntu 9 the installer's partitioning tool started to suck, what up with that? Also I like the encrypt partition install option, too bad its only in alternate install CD.
That's a start.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
And that hope I offer is called Linux Mint:
http://blog.linuxmint.com/
If you are still stuck in the ridiculousness that is the Ubuntu development process, give it a whirl.
Sensible default app choices, sensible OS structural decisions, sensible layout and design. Try it. If you are anything like me, you will not use Ubuntu again.
And for the hardcore geek, Linux Mint Debian Edition is awesome.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I will keep a copy of Fedora 14 because it uses Gnome 2 for my php/python web environment from VirtualBox inside Windows.
Gnome-Shell is truly truly aweful. Not even a minimize button!? Oh just drag the window title bar? Well Windows 7 has both. I can't find anything and one of the strengths of Gnome 2 was its simplicity and menus. They did a KDE and killed it!
Unity is ok for netbooks I guess. But it takes longer like 3x as long to do the same task and the interface gets in the way. My only question is why? What purpose does it serve?
Maybe for a iPAD tablet with a million little applets, but Linux doesn't have applets ... infact all the gnome 2 ones are gone. I tried KDE 4 and I was ready to lose my mind! Linux has jumped back 10 years in my opinion and it is such a shame. I am going back to Windows. It is stable, more consistent, and does what I need with less effort. You can take that Linux back to the server room.
Sun donated large amounts of R&D and usability studies and the gnome folks just threw it out without thinking.
http://saveie6.com/
I have Acer eMachine G725 laptop.
After I had upgraded, afted repeated suggestions, into 11.04,
lcd-display adapter became dead. Heading now to blank re-install.
I have found no way to report this incompatibility to Canonical.
Dropping LibreOffice is not a feature...
I am not devoid of humor.