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Preliminary Benchmarks: Unity vs. Gnome-Shell
fatalGlory writes "Despite some initial reservations about Gnome-shell, it appears to be coming out very nicely. In some preliminary benchmarking tests I've been conducting, Ubuntu's Unity desktop on 11.04 Natty uses roughly double the memory that Gnome-shell uses."
The only gnome comparison is on Fedora. Why not compare with Gnome 2 on Natty? All it takes is a different selection on GDM. For that matter why not Gnome 3 from a PPA on Natty?
I feel the urge to troll because I loved using ubuntu until 11.04, but now have switched to kubuntu 11.04. Instead I will say I look forward to the continual improvements that will be made to both unity and gnome shell.
What more do you need to know? I installed (and fully updated) Natty this weekend, and crashed it 3 times in 20 minutes with different Unity bugs. Then, I hit up the goog, and found out how to get my classic gnome interface back (it's in a dropdown at the login prompt). Waste of 22 minutes, if you ask me. I can't imagine how much time the Unity devs wasted on that crap.
It's really not that big a deal these days, you want to use memory, because memory is FAST, and in comparison to the old days, dirt cheap. Loading things into memory is not an automatic sign of bloat, sometimes it is a sign of doing what you should, putting memory into use.
Absolutely worthless comparison, as it compares vastly different distributions. He isnt even comparing 2 debian based distros, or trying to control for different running services; why is there not even an attempt to isolate the memory usage of the DE / WM?
Perhaps this could have been useful as a comparison of distro memory usage, but even in that it fails-- its comparing an installed Debian distro to live-CD based Fedora; why wasnt fedora installed and compared (perhaps using VMs?), or Ubuntu run from LiveCD?
just saying
It's as if someone designed that "benchmark" to be criticisable in every possible way!
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Worthless shit written by a christfag.
What the hell is with this obvious blog spam? This "benchmark" is even worse than the shit being pooped out by Phoronix.
they were probably both bought at walmart
everyone knows that! it's built on a solid, stable unix foundation, with a 'keep it simple' philosophy that guarantees performance and stability! with 12 overhead cams and a dual plated stainless steel cooking surface, your family will be sure to love the new Unity.
He says Gnome-Shell uses software rendering.. It's not true, fedora ships free 3D drivers for Intel, AMD/ATI and NVidia now.
Also, why use VLC when he could use Totem on all 3.And Why does he use apt-get in his test ?
Even though I like the result, it seems like a pretty lame test.
I don't know why /. has it in for Unity, but I suspect the only reason this irrelevant piece is being posted is to get in their digs.
A proper usability study would be very interesting to see.
You do realize it will be Gnome 3 though, right?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Yes, because the best use of memory is it never being used.
Pointless benchmarks. How about more commentary on usability speed? My fairly typical 2008-spec desktop rig has 4gb of RAM and my aging monitor is 1920x1080. My slightly battered old notebook is not even far behind this. So why do developers insist on making using as little memory as possible even if you happen to have an ass-load of it?
Why do they have to waste my time making me click extra, hiding things away just to save another 50px of screen real estate?
Since Natty, Linux usabilty seems to be is taking backwards steps.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Others have correctly pointed out that comparing memory usage on two different distros is pointless. On top of that, comparing total memory usage is stupid.
Look, you have memory in your system to be used. If you dug into it and found out that most of that memory consisted of massive, unused libraries, duplicate code, empty datastructures, or garbage that wasn't getting cleaned up, then sure, you could give it a hard time. But if it's full of cached images and icons so that the interface can be quicker and more responsive, well, isn't that why you have all that RAM?
A perfect program/OS would very quickly gobble up all available memory by storing and caching useful stuff...and then free it up the instant it was needed elsewhere. That turns out to be harder than it sounds, since procs generally don't know or care about totally memory usage, but still, the ideal should not be the opposite extreme.
Windows XP also uses more memory than Windows 3.1. Going on memory alone isn't enough to compare the two.
And hey, big surprise, comments disabled on that article. "You must log in to post a comment." And even if I did want yet another account just for commenting on a single blog, I don't see anywhere to register.
Just for fun, I'll respond here. I might even try to email it to him, if that works.
There are three fundamental entities that make up our universe, matter, energy and information.
I'm not sure information is an "entity" in any relevant sense. It's a phenomenon. More in a moment...
Now, creating and communicating information is demonstrably a mental process, requiring an intelligent mind to create and to receive the information.
Actually, it's demonstrably a physical process, one which can be performed entirely by machines, unless you are willing to describe my laptop as an "intelligent mind." But it depends what you mean by "information", in this case, as you point out:
In this way, information is distinct from data, which Shannon unfortunately referred to as "information" in his work on statistical-level information-theory, leading to the present ambiguity.
If that is the way in which information is distinct from data, then I work with a hell of a lot more data than information. My computer creates, interprets, communicates, and manipulates all sorts of data that no "intelligent mind" will ever touch, unless, again, you're willing to allow that my cell phone is an "intelligent mind."
This reality has been demonstrated amply in the book by Gitt and is expressed in a streamlined form in this lecture by Wilder-Smith.
I'm not willing to buy and read a book, but maybe I'll listen to the lecture.
Yet, so many software engineers remain evolutionists.
...what? Unless you're referring to the arguments you referenced via an amazon link and an mp3 file, I see nothing in your argument which requires intelligent design or negates evolution. Even if I accepted your premise that information must have an intelligent designer -- sorry, a god -- as its originator, as a "software engineer," I'd hope you understand that humans can and have written programs which simulate the genetic process at various levels -- why, then, could this god not design evolution as part of the "program" of the universe, fire it off and let it run, exactly as human beings do all the time?
Despite interpreting and often designing language conventions every day, very few software engineers seem to have considered the implications of language and information-theory for genetics, biology and metaphysics.
Again, out of the blue, you're introducing a new topic -- languages -- along with committing a stupidly trivial fallacy. Just guessing here, because you didn't actually deliver an argument, but if you did, I imagine it would look like this:
1. Humans can create languages.
2. Humans have intelligent minds.
3. Given 1 and 2, intelligent minds can create languages.
4. DNA is a language.
5. Given 3 and 4, an intelligent mind can create DNA (the language).
Therefore, only an intelligent mind could have created DNA.
Both 5 and the conclusion are absurd on their face, and I hope you can see that. 5 is fallacious because 3 asserts only that intelligent minds can create languages, not that they can create all languages. Even if 5 were sound, the conclusion is fallacious because 5 asserts only that an intelligent mind can create DNA, and not that only an intelligent mind can create (or could have created) DNA.
And again, what about this falsifies evolution? If it worked, it would falsify abiogenesis. Evolution can happen without intervention once we have DNA, just as a program can run without human intervention once we start it running.
Why is this? Well that's a discussion for another post.
If you're going to m
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
both gnome 3.0 and unity look like they were designed for smartphones and tablets.
The reason why the devs did this is because users are familiar with the smartphone interface, so putting the same interface on the linux desktop would make transition easier.
But - a 1900x1200 pixel pc desktop is not the same as a tiny 100x100 pixel smartphone screen. pc desktop users with a normal size keyboard and big sized monitor have very different requirements.
Is this just self promotion?
Unity still has some quirky behavior, and frankly I'm just not a fan in general.
Gnome-shell is close, yet far away. It's more extensible seems like, which is promising. I just want two things:
-When I highlight an 'application icon' in the activities view, automatically show only the windows for that application in the window previews.
-Provide a means by which I can start typing and search window title bar contents (like KDE and Compiz Window Title Filter).
You have me sold on those two capabilities, which don't seem to exist. The gnome-shell-extensions have most of my other main requests covered.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Ever since I upgraded to Ubuntu 11.04 my Desktop doesn't redraw. Whatever was the last app on the screen leaves its last bitmap up when I close the last app. And switching between apps takes about 700ms, even when there's not much going on.
My PC is an old P4/2.4GHz/2GB with Intel 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE integrated graphics, so Ubuntu refused to install Unity and left GNOME. Yeah, it's old, but one reason I prefer Linux to Windows (or Mac) is that I expect to get the full performance out of the old stuff, not the planned obsolescence of bloatware commercial OS'es. But am I stuck with a crappy desktop now? Forced to buy new HW to keep using my "free" OS?
--
make install -not war
If you can't tell principals from principles, maybe a field that requires attention to detail and correct use of logic, grammar, and syntax isn't for you.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Maybe they're doing a great job of caching some things, but they're mostly hiding the applications I use and making me wait for the animated graphics to pop up different parts of the menu system so I can get at them, so I don't count that as a win.
So far, Unity has gotten me interested in taking the time to learn Lubuntu or Xubuntu, so it may end up having been useful, but I don't think that was how they intended it,
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Hey, Admins, can you make that spammer go away?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I started using Unity a few weeks ago. Now just taking a glance at the new features in Gnome3 seems like the same new features are offered... The sidebar, new window management, quick search to launch applications. Am I missing something? Are these 2 totally different projects that are delivering practically the same features to the end user?
I guess I said it Unity is a Compiz plug in. I Yeah ad to brake it to figure that one out. So its a Plugin....... So.... It going to use more system resources, simple because its not a native to Gnome, it is native to Compiz. So... Just change your session to "the classic Ubuntu" done.
So I just killed about an hour listening to the mp3 and thinking about how I'd respond... not much new there.
Starts with a few intelligence-insulting analogies, like "Bricks don't build houses." Yeah, bricks also don't reproduce.
"We ought to be able to put the contents of life into a test tube and see that it would build life." In other words, if we can't put something in a test tube and get something out of it, we require an intelligent agency for that process? Seriously? If we assume this guy isn't as dumb as he seems to be, and that by "test tube" he meant "any artificial apparatus", then we have experiments which show that things like amino acids can be formed through entirely natural, mechanical processes.
He then goes on to describe intelligence as the "third column of the universe" -- that is, matter, energy, and information -- and also that "nobody knows how to define it." Actually, we can define information, and we can do so quite precisely. If you can't, then maybe you shouldn't be claiming it's a fundamental property of the universe. When we do use precise definitions, we find that either DNA is not information, or that information does not require a designer, but this argument is almost deliberately vague.
He then goes on to talk about codes, pointing out that SOS is only a code by convention, and that if we didn't have that convention, SOS wouldn't communicate "distress" or, really, anything at all -- that sequences of syllables, or letters, or nucleotides, are meaningless unless some meaning is assigned to them -- that in this case, without the ribosomes, a particular sequence of DNA wouldn't correspond to a particular sequence of DNA into a protein. So he's already given up his premise, which he's repeated constantly, that a convention can only be established when two intelligences come together and agree on something, unless he's willing to call ribosomes "intelligent".
So why couldn't ribosomes be what assigns the "meaning"? Why is an additional entity required? Well, he says, ribosomes are needed to decode DNA, but ribosomes are themselves encoded in DNA, so there's a chicken-and-egg problem. Sounds a bit to me like irreducible complexity, and we know how well that's worked out. It's exactly the same argument -- "Half an eye is useless, so the eye couldn't evolve by steps!" It turns out that half an eye is useful, just not for quite the same things a whole eye is -- and in this case, there are entirely plausible ideas for how this mechanism could itself have evolved piecewise. (Yes, evolution can happen without DNA, it's just that DNA is the mechanism that won.)
Finally, and this is where I'm really disappointed in the supposed "software engineer" who linked to this -- the lecturer starts talking about the information that's encoded in DNA, and how much work we've had to put into just finding out what the sequence is -- that "our best computers can scarcely..." what, assemble DNA sequences? Takes some pretty heavy hardware (you want at least 24 gigs of RAM), but it's far from our best. Yes, the Human Genome Project was massive, but these days, it's fast and cheap to sequence stuff -- you could almost do it as a hobby, it's that cheap. On top of all of this, when he says that the amount of information in DNA is "almost infinite" -- there are a number of things I could nitpick, but really? It's not only finite, it's trivial by modern standards -- the entire genome is, according to Wikipedia, just over 3 billion base pairs. If each can be A, T, G, or C, that's 4 options, so you can store it in 2 bits, or 4 of them to a byte, so about 750 million bytes -- just barely doesn't fit on a single CD-R.
None of the above paragraph really affects his argument, but it shows just how little he knows about information in the modern age.
Is there anything about this argument that is worth the time I just put into it?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Hate to say it but they both suck anyway. Updated to 11.4 and unity. Took about 30 minutes to decide to try out Gnome 3. I should also mention I love(d) Gnome 2 with Cairo Dock and Compiz. Now Im back to KDE. Running 4.x. I persoally hate both Unity and Gnome 3. The interface is just pain awkwrd, and yes I took the tie to customize a bit hoping it would be usable by setting up my own task bars, icons etc....
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Cute story. Bad analogy.
I have a nice new laptop now, W510 (thanks to my brother), and I have Ubuntu 11.04 on it.
In the 3 weeks that I have it, it crashed on me about 5-6 times. It gets stuck, the keyboard/mouse stop responding. I can't ssh into it either, so I have to shut it down with the power button (ouch).
Also this is my first experience with 11.04 and I am hating it. Except for Unity (which I don't use, to me the benchmark is like this: switch to classic), I am finding all sorts of real problems with this distro.
It is amazing that ssh crashes so often now. Yes, the ssh client stops responding 1 in 3 times that I use it, it is an embarrassment for a GNU/Linux distro. I switched to Debian on another machine already and it looks more and more now that I won't be able to keep Ubuntu on this one either.
You can't handle the truth.
yeah except the usage heuristics fall short almost all the time, leaving the machine bloated and clunky as each app assumes it is the center of your universe on that machine.. how about using what's needed, and dumping what's not? I don't mind a bit of caching, but this relatively new trend of caching almost everything whether it's really needed or not is fucking stupid.
but since when has memory footprint been a "benchmark?" Really, we're talking roughly half a gig here, and who's running these on a system without at least 2?
Most netbooks are 1GB. half a gig is a lot just to run the desktop on a machine like that.
My Acer Aspire One only has 512mb.
If one should test desktop performance, XFCE, Gnome, LXDE, KDE and at least one more should be standard. Besides, I think Gnome and KDE should be merged.
Windowmaker
No. The best use of memory is holding large user data (like huge images; or substantial parts of the video you're watching). The next best use of memory is caching files. Only then comes internal application data, and at the end executable code.
Also note that while memory is fast compared to the disk, it is slow compared to the cache. The less you have to reload data from main memory, the better.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Don't you think its bad when your desktop shell needs FOUR TIMES MORE RAM than Windows XP minimum requirements? Is that not truly a definition of bloatware? I thought one argument the Linux mob use is that Linux distributions aren't as bloated as Windows. Sorry but if the above is the case, thats clearly now bullshit.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
Never tried Sabayon, but I might check it out. I tried Mint, hated the menu, but otherwise thought it quite nice. Tried PCLinuxOS and liked it quite a lot, but am wary of its over-reliance on TexStar.
We moved our old laptop to Lubuntu 10.04 (=Ubuntu 10.04 with LXDE), which is not officially supported but nonetheless considered an LTS release. The laptop now uses less than 200MB RAM when it's running with a number of applications (Thunderbird, Chromium, Pidgin, some shells and file managers) and almost a dozen network mounts. The services have not been optimized, so there's probably a few which could be dropped.
The desktops have 8GB each, and relatively recent quad core processors, so they're adequately provisioned. However, I dislike the idea of devoting ever more resources to doing nothing (desktop environment), so I'm biding my time before deciding which way to go with them. They're on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, so we still have a couple of years with Gnome 2. From what I've seen so far, both Unity and Gnome 3 are unappealing. KDE4 is a bit better. LXDE rocks, if you change a few of its default applications. However, it needs a graphical menu editor to be acceptable to the masses.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Since gnome shell nowadays is just nothing more than an extended window manager :-(
Gone are the days of a desktop. I just wonder what they thought about sacrificing all the desktop space.
I am glad that there are alternatives to Gnome. It was nice knowing you but Gnome 3 in many areas is a step in the wrong direction
in some in the right.
I think something is wrong somewhere. Windows XP SP3 can run very comfortably in 512MB virtual machine. And the 512MB virtual machine doesn't even have to use all 512MB of the host machine's RAM.
So what does the GUI give you for all that memory use? Or is it mostly bloat?
I doubt it provides "faster performance". Seems to me most GUI designers either don't really care about performance or are clueless about it. They keep creating extra steps to do common stuff. Or insert artificial delays so that they can show flashy animations (e.g. click, pause for flashy animation, then only click to launch/activate). OSX's expose is actually slower than just clicking on the taskbar button representing the window you want to "raise". And moving your hand to click on the task button is often slower than "alt+<number>".
By the way, to the GUI designers out there, if "GNU screen" manages windows/tasks faster/better than your GUI, you are doing something wrong. A GUI that is friendly to new users does not have to be slower than "screen" in the hands of expert users.
I always hate it when Windows fanbois pulled that kind of switch in debate tactics: First they claimed that switching to Linux and OpenOffice would entail all kinds of expensive training costs. Then after Office 2007 came out, suddenly retraining costs weren't a problem.
So, similarly, I don't feel like brooking people who seem to feel a need to engage in apologetics for Gnome. First: Switch to Linux from bloated Windows. Then: Bloat? So what?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
...is this (linked) site? But irony has it that it is not trustworthy.
Yeah, and there isn't even a car in it... This is /. For F*ck Sake!
(\__/) This is Lapinator
(='.'=) copy it in your sig
(")_(") so it can take over the world
I was under the impression that the point of Unity was to be useful on small form-factor devices. I have a little ARM-based machine, with a 10" screen, which shipped with Ubuntu. GNOME sucks on it - most of the dialog boxes don't fit on the screen - so I was interested to see if Unity was an improvement. Turns out? It won't even start Unity, because it claims my system is not up to it. Designing a UI for small devices that requires a high-end machine to run seems a bit silly. Even when we've all got quad-core Cortex A9 chips in our netbooks, no one is going to want to use the environment that reduces your battery life...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You have a fair point. Really this is the same thing MS got blasted for for loading to much of Windows in memory that people didn't like.
Memory is fast, HD is slow (especially on low memory devices like cheap Intel netbooks (AMD delivers netbooks without artificial memory limits)) so load up the memory.
But people are used to thinking of memory as a precious resource and want to have a nice big un-used chunk all the time... some have a point in that they then will use it later, most don't. I seen people rant about a computer using all their memory when all they do is browse the net... So? It is using your resources fully. What exactly is the issue?
I think Unity and Gnome3 have issues in basic usability and stability. Memory usage? I could care less.
But for some it matters. A few of them are right, most are wrong or should simply buy their PC's a little smarter.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Almost a year ago now I installed Ubuntu for a neighbor who is nice enough but whose IQ is below average. And she had NO problem with it. Icons switched? Not an issue. She just dealt with it rather then throw a hissy fit like most of Slashdot.
She managed her updates nicely, just clicking them BUT unfortunately that also included the 11.04 upgrade... and since then she can't find anything. Yes, she is stupid but wasn't Unity supposed to be easier for people like her? The average Jean? The people who clean for a living? Well, I now have to install something else this weekend because of Unity. Probably use xubuntu.
The switch to Linux from Windows just meant no more viruses and spy-ware. Everything else she needs, which is just IM and the web, worked the same.
Unity broke that. There is your usability test right there.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Wow, I thought, somebody did a descend evaluation of GnomeShell and Unity. So I followed the link. Some may think, this was my first mistake. but then I read the article and the first words were "This morning I decided to play with the Fedora based Gnome3". Well super this is news? I played with Gnome3 on Ubuntu weeks ago. Oh yes I didn't post results of that playing and so nobody considered this news.
To be honest the memory figures look strange to say the least. He compares different applications in combination with different desktop shells and oh wonder he gets arbitrary memory usage results. The best is, the author points out some of the flaws of his approach. So there is no information in the article, beside that "nick" fiddled around with Gnome3.
For a real test you have first define a set of goals, questions and metrics and then perform tests according to the test method. You could test productivity. But to do so, you need people to play around with it for a week or two to learn the new UI and adapt to it. You could check how the memory usage of the application changes over a longer period of time. And then you can only check if the use increases over time which implies a memory leak. Other things can be difficult, as unity is a Compiz plugin and GnomeShell runs separate which implies a different architecture and therefor different usage results in ps or top.
You could also test the responsiveness of the system under load (as this is a important property for users). Or you can start up the system and check how much memory is already in use (free). But the desktop should be configured completely the same. And when nautilus is running in configuration A then it must also run in configuration B. If you use a desktop image, it has to be the same image on all machines/test sets, same resolution, color depth etc. The kernel version, X11 version all should be the same. In short you have to test it on Ubuntu X.Y and use all three desktop variants. You also should test this with other distributions and of course you should test it on different hardware. but always you have to start with an installation without desktop environment, then add the designated thing to the system make the tests and then go to the next version.
> Just saying. People didn't pick Ubunutu for the G, they picked it because it is the easiest, most "stable" (it just works), most friendly out there.
and a few lines later
> Debian(...)If you want software versions everyone has been using for a decade, try "experimental" branch. Cat is still under review for inclusion in stable.
Decide: either stable + just works (in my experience, that's debian stable), or fresh, with the latest packages. New users should prefer the former.
I like newer packages and personally prefer aptosid over ubuntu with its 6 month cycle + less focus on kde.
Finally, for some hyperbolic sarcasm in your reviews just like you did with debian (firefox, that is iceweasel, is 4.0.1 on website and 4.0.1 on debian experimental):
"Ubuntu: finger tightly crossed on updates, new functionality you didn't ask for, deprecation of old ways of doing stuff that you were comfortable with, works better on powerful hardware. That is, exactly like windows but with a tighter release cycle. Possibly the most successful linux distro ever, in the niche market of troll distros. Beats linpus for sure."
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Don't you think it's bad when your Win XP system needs 16 times more RAM than the Mac OS 7 minimum requirements? Or that Mac OS 7 needs more than 256 times more RAM than MS-DOS, or that MS-DOS needs 16 times more RAM than a KIM-1 running Microchess?
Now, GET OFF MY LAWN!
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Most of those underprovisioned netbooks shouldn't run this, then. Hell, my phone has 768 MiB of RAM. Can't afford the ~$30 for a 2 GiB DIMM?
Of course, if this "benchmark" is supposed to be so you can figure out what's best for your netbook, then it shouldn't have been run on a machine with 3 GiB of RAM. How much of the footprint is in active use, and how much can be put into swap? What's the performance difference when running on a low end device? Perhaps one pulls more code into memory when more memory is available for performance reasons.
It all goes back to a simple "this 'benchmark' sucks."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
It does not "need" it. My system has 1GB of RAM, and is only using 512MB of that right now with Ubuntu 11.04 (in "Ubuntu Classic" mode) with 5 tabs open in Chrome, as well as Spotify and a text editor. Everything is running smoothly even with the single core Atom processor at 1920x1080, even though the netbook has crappy integrated graphics (ie I got it before ION was introduced).
As others have indirectly pointed out though, XP is old. Look at the requirements for previous versions of Gnome and you will see they're far lower than XP requirements. In fact I found this comment about Gnome 2.0 on the Gnome website:
Bradley Shuttleworth
Just installed it smoothly on a P2-233 with 96 Mb RAM. Nautilus fires up a new window in under 5 seconds (which, given that Nautilus took longer than that in 1.4 on my Gigahertz laptop, is a pleasant change).
(And to brag, its faster than Windows XP on my laptop, too... XP takes a shine longer to fire up Explorer, and various other tasks are slightly faster.)
which is totally what she said
Debian... the official base for Ubuntu, as the T-ford is the basis of all modern mass produced cars. If you want software versions everyone has been using for a decade, try "experimental" branch. Cat is still under review for inclusion in stable.
Unstable is a rolling release with very recent versions of the packages and, by my anecdotal experience and despite the name, it's more stable than Ubuntu.
Say bye bye to the default Google search page and instead get some crappy branded version with all usefull options misisng (quick how often do you use the "more search options" to restrict a tech question from giving you answers from the previous century?
Seriously? You don't use a distro because of its default search engine?
By the way, it's spelled Ubuntu. U. B. U. N. T. U. Not Ubunutu.
Dilbert RSS feed
Unity is stable, though yes the Win 7 style search menu is really slow to appear on my netbook (probably around 5 seconds).
I switched to the Ubuntu Classic session (just click which session type you want after you click your username on the login screen).
No need to spread so much FUD. Unity doesn't cause RAM problems (I have 1GB of RAM). I think the problem in my case is my single core 1.6Ghz Atom processor.
I think I'm probably going to switch from Ubuntu to Mint or something if they don't improve Unity. I am looking forward to trying out Wayland when it's ready though.
which is totally what she said
All the following benchmarks were done with Ubuntu 11.04 32 bits on a Dell Latitude D510 Intel Pentium M 1.60 GHz with 768 MB RAM, Intel Graphics, no proprietary drivers. Gnome Shell comes from the Ubuntu Gnome 3Team PPA. Unity and Gnome Classic uses Gnome 2.32. Gnome Classic uses metacity; compiz is disabled. I used the same applications for each : Firefox, Gnome Terminal, Nautilus. After Clean Boot Unity : 155.18 MB Gnome Shell : 125.09 MB Gnome Classic : 143.86 MB Application set 1 (as seen in the original article) : Unity : 254.69 MB Gnome Shell : 232.78 MB Gnome Classic : 245.26 MB
Mountains of technical data can sometimes not answer the obvious question. Does the distro work for you? Is it responsive? Is the UI comfortable an intuitive? My personal experience with Natty is that I love it. But then again, I'm an Ubuntu head, so that's probably biased. Would XFCE run faster? Sure. Would I like it as well? Probably not, although I don't dislike XFCE at all. Like some of the other testers mentioned, the test seems to be a bit "apples to oranges", and ignores the fact that if you don't like Unity, or even Ubuntu for that matter, you can just use something else. I really understand why some people wouldn't like Unity. Heck, I was skeptical too, having really enjoyed the old default Ubuntu interface. Do I really care that the Unity bar can't be moved around? No. There are some minor glitchy annoyances with the way Unity opens and closes, but on the whole it's been a positive experience for me. I'd say try it and make your own conclusions.
Posting to undo accidental mod.
For the record, I took the parent post as a joke. I think responding with humorous summaries of Ubuntu would be better than modding it Troll.
Just another proletarian malcontent.
Doesn't Unity seem to be made for computers with small screens and a lot of memory? Which doesn't exactly market it to a majority of computer owners, right?
I have a 4 year old laptop that Im trying to upgrade, but it will not accept 1GB sticks, and its starting to look like it wont accept 512 MB sticks. It may very well be restricted to ~490 MB of RAM (after accounting for AGP aperature, which cannot be lowered further).
Do you know how much of a PITA it is to run recent OSes on this laptop, which is otherwise fine? It has a brand new battery ($40), and does everything I need.
Ive tried OpenOffice in corporate environments, when we were short on Office 2003 licenses. The end users eventually just went out and bought Office. Their reason? OpenOffice is terrible, looks terrible, doesnt have the functions they need, and they dont know where anything is.
Somehow not many have had issue with the Office2007 upgrade-- perhaps its perception that "its microsoft", but if you think you can argue a VP out of wanting Office, you are sadly mistaken.
If netbooks are not supposed to run GNOME3, why has it been simplified to better fit tablets and netbooks but screwing desktops?
I tried Unity a while back with 11.04, originally thought it had promise, but was really really rough, but looked like a huge improvement over Gnome 2. Now, back then, the Gnome shell prototypes looked pretty bad so I could sort of see why they wanted to split.
Now that Gnome 3 is out, well its IMO pretty awesome, this is the first fully usable Linux desktop where I think I can completely ditch OSX. Gnome 3 and Unity have a lot of similar features, but the thing is that Gnome3 actually works, AND it is thoroughly thought out.
Sure, Gnome 3 is certainly missing some important bits, like theme / ui control panel and other system control panels.
I'm sure its a huge effort on Canonical's part to develop Unity, but with it so similar to Gnome 3, I think their efforts would make a lot more sense adding the missing bits to Gnome 3, and possibly having their own changes.
In any case, what Linux desperately needs is a unified way to deploy applications. Not sure how exactly Gnome 3 and Unity know what applications to display, i.e what apps to display in their respective application views, but I suspect they are not compatible.
I'd like to be able to develop an app, and have it just plain work with any LInux desktop, like I develop and OSX app, and it just works with any OSX (well ok, just Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard) .
What does Gnome 2.0 do that XP does not? that is the more relevant stat, not age.
I doubt it provides "faster performance". Seems to me most GUI designers either don't really care about performance or are clueless about it. They keep creating extra steps to do common stuff. Or insert artificial delays so that they can show flashy animations (e.g. click, pause for flashy animation, then only click to launch/activate). OSX's expose is actually slower than just clicking on the taskbar button representing the window you want to "raise". And moving your hand to click on the task button is often slower than "alt+<number>".
I use Compiz's scale feature (essentially the same as OSX's expose) on a fairly regular basis. I do have the task bar there as well. But there are times when I want to find a particular terminal window among several other similarly named terminal windows that's sitting on some desktop that I forget where I put it. Scale.... visual recognition... select... and I'm there. Granted - this could probably be done more efficiently if I were paying more attention to what I was doing and not multitasking as much. But this feature is more than flash and I miss it when it's not available. YMMV.
By the way, to the GUI designers out there, if "GNU screen" manages windows/tasks faster/better than your GUI, you are doing something wrong. A GUI that is friendly to new users does not have to be slower than "screen" in the hands of expert users.
Love screen. Use it daily. But I'm never handling the same number of applications within screen as I do my desktop. I could certainly emulate screen's window / task management in my desktop environment. But I have absolutely no desire to do that.
several other similarly named terminal windows that's sitting on some desktop that I forget where I put it. Scale.... visual recognition... select... and I'm there
So far I find it easier to distinguish window titles than windows - they often look too similar (a terminal with hostname1 often looks like hostname2 - I do colour code hostnames for live, staging, etc but I don't do different colours for each host ;) ) . So stuff ilke Scale or Windows 7's preview isn't as helpful to me. Windows 7's textual window title preview is helpful (esp when I often have about 30 task buttons (email, IM, explorer, putty, cmd, rxvt, remote desktop, editor, etc * multiple instances of each and it starts to add up!), So far it still is faster for me to switch windows than to keep closing and relaunching/reopening them later.
But I'm never handling the same number of applications within screen as I do my desktop. I could certainly emulate screen's window / task management in my desktop environment.
Just curious how would you do that on GNOME/KDE or whatever your desktop environment is (I think "awesome" or something can probably do it)?
On Win XP/7 I do that with a program I wrote: http://sourceforge.net/projects/linkkey/
It works as long as you do not need to switch rapidly amongst more than 9 windows at a time. There is actually support for bank switching but I think only a few would be able to use that well (I don't use it ).
To work with a new set of up to 9 windows, "raise" them in the reverse order you want and then press winkey+0 or alt+0 (I prefer alt).
Handy if you don't have access to big/multi screens, or need to copy and paste amongst more than two windows (I can never do alt-tab fast for three or more windows).
Not trying to be an asshole, but what brand is your computer? My laptop can handle 1 GB sticks (although it is only outfitted with 512 MB) and it was built circa 2002.
Why not try a flavor or Ubuntu using LXDE - Lubuntu (which I use), LinuxMint or Peppermint? They are all growing in popularity - Lubuntu is ranked number 17 on Distrowatch, beating every other *buntu except Ubuntu itself. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Xubuntu was depreciated in favor or Lubuntu.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
What era are we talking at this point with your story? Circa 2006 I would 100% agree with you but currently LibreOffice is pretty good. The syntax in Calc is my trip up although given time I could get used to it.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
The minimum requirement of XP are actually below the amount of memory needed. To run it with 128 MB of ram, you need quite a bit of swap space, and it runs like molasses. To get any sort of real responsiveness you need at least 512 MB of RAM. It is very well possible to run some Linux distros entirely within the 128 MB, without any swap space. Swap helps when running a browser, but it's not strictly necessary like it is for XP. The increase you are seeing with unity is due mostly due to compositing. To prove it turn on compositing for the Xfce or Compiz for the gnome LiveCD and watch the gap close. XP doesn't actually do true 3-D compositing, Vista with aero on is a better comparison.
It is a compaq that someone gave me. Being the resident Geek for a lot of my friends, I get old laptops from families all the time and so havent felt a compelling desire to purchase my own. I just fix them up, give them away, and use whatever's left (all I care about is remote access software and a web browser).
So it does matter to me which OS uses how much memory, because I never know what POS laptop i will be using next.
I did a deployment on thinclients in a public computer "cafe" for low-income housing folks. They apparently cannot tolerate OpenOffice either, and so we are doing an upgrade. This was 2 years ago, and the "replace openoffice" order came in a few months ago. This is with the most recent LibreOffice.
So far I find it easier to distinguish window titles than windows - they often look too similar (a terminal with hostname1 often looks like hostname2 - I do colour code hostnames for live, staging, etc but I don't do different colours for each host ;) ) . So stuff ilke Scale or Windows 7's preview isn't as helpful to me. Windows 7's textual window title preview is helpful (esp when I often have about 30 task buttons (email, IM, explorer, putty, cmd, rxvt, remote desktop, editor, etc * multiple instances of each and it starts to add up!), So far it still is faster for me to switch windows than to keep closing and relaunching/reopening them later.
I find that I end up with a lot of window tittles that are similar enough to make them a usually poor choice for distinction. Oddly enough, I have an easier time looking at all my terminal windows and going "oh - that looks like what I was doing" even if the text is too small to read well. Although it doesn't always work. And there are times where my window tittle has changed to a directory path that makes it stand out. So there's no set rule I go by. Which is why I keep a task bar as well as scale (and I have a "everything on this desktop" and a "everything on all desktops" key combos).
Just curious how would you do that on GNOME/KDE or whatever your desktop environment is (I think "awesome" or something can probably do it)?
Off the top of my head, I'd run one app per virtual desktop and use keybindings to switch desktops. Of course, that pales in comparison to something like awesome wm. And honestly - I haven't really given it much thought as I've never been using screen and thought to myself "I need this sort of thing for my entire desktop environment." :)
> Why does shit like this "article" even get posted?
To serve as a warning to others.
Geez... "low-income housing folks", AKA "tax-dollar-subsidized folks" run out and by MS Office? Maybe that kind of decision-making is why they need government assistance to pay the rent.
In Reason We Trust
Some of us can remember having X11R6 running on 8MiB machines. Now get off my lawn!
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Then I definitely recommend one of the three I suggested. I would also suggest if you do Lubuntu to add the Launchpad PPA - You get the newest stuff and the developers tend to make sure stuff is rock solid before publishing to it.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'