Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin Beta 1 Released

donadony writes with news about what will become the next LTS release of Ubuntu. From the article: "It's time to take another look at what is happening with the development of Ubuntu 12.04. As it stands, the first Beta of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin has been released. I just updated my own system. What changed since Alpha? Not much, really. In fact, there's really nothing groundbreaking or any new features added. Unity has been updated to version 5.4.0 which also sees the introduction of the new HUD feature. HUD still apparently has many outstanding bugs, but developers maintain that all bugs will be ironed out before Ubuntu 12.04 goes gold. Also added were recommendations to Ubuntu software center, and a new tool called 'privacy' and other small new features."

Comments

All bugs?

[busyqth]

developers maintain that all bugs will be ironed out before Ubuntu 12.04 goes gold

Good luck with that.

Re:All bugs?

[The MAZZTer]

I assume they are talking about all major outstanding bugs in their HUD feature.

Re:All bugs?

[Anonymous Coward]

And this will be accomplished by re-designating all "Major" bugs to "Minor" 48 hours before Gold Date.

We cut out the hard part and pass the savings on to us!

Re:All bugs?

[mcgrew]

I just updated to kubuntu 11.10 a couple of months ago, and am annoyed that it's now almost impossible to highlight more than one item in Dolphin to move to and from the notebook over the network. It's problematic because I'm using that computer as a media center and the keyboard is usually on a shelf.

I wonder if that's fixed? Probably not, but then it's not a Linux or Ubuntu issue, but a KDE issue.

As to the kernel itself, I've never experienced any bugs in it at all (not that there may be some, of course).

Re:All bugs?

[mug funky]

well, the price is right.

Re:All bugs?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Probably not, but then it's not a Linux or Ubuntu issue, but a KDE issue." [citation needed]

Kubuntu is a buggy POS, always was. Get over it, get a better KDE dist.

Re:All bugs?

[pecosdave]

I'm frustrated with Dolphin - regardless of distro. It's almost right but then it always has one little frustrating annoyance or another. I've switched to using Krusader on my non-Kubuntu systems (there's a back end bug that fails to copy some files properly on really big large number of files moves, like when I drag and drop my music collection but only on Kubuntu). It took me a while to warm up to it, but Krusader really makes file management easy for me, especially after I start setting bookmarks and I got used to sliding tabs from one side to the other.

Re:All bugs?

[Beardo the Bearded]

I spent a year waiting for the kernel dev team to realize that Elan touchpads weren't on their list of magic knock responses. A year with the touchpad acting like a PS/2 mouse -- every slight tap was a click, no typing / palm detection, no scrolling. There were a lot of other bugs, but those were mostly driver bugs.

(Still better than Win7)

And thank you, person responding, to say that I should have spend $500 more to get a Linux-powered laptop. I appreciate that.

Re:All bugs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love a better KDE distro, but it has to use the Debian package management system and have huge respositories.
Any suggestions?

Re:All bugs?

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

Unity is a bug if you ask me.

Re:All bugs?

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

Why do you need apt? I'm not arguing that it's bad-- no, it's elegant and works great, but OpenSUSE has the best KDE experience going, and zypper does everything apt does. SUSE isn't perfect by a longshot. It's slower than most distros, but you'll find most everything you need in it.

Re:All bugs?

[amiga3D]

I moved to Mepis after throwing it the towel on Unity. It's based on Debian and it's my favorite KDE distro. Ubuntu used to be my favorite in the Gnome camp but that's gone now.

Re:All bugs?

[devphaeton]

I would love a better KDE distro, but it has to use the Debian package management system and have huge respositories.
Any suggestions?

How about Debian? It uses the Debian package management system and has huge repositories.

Re:All bugs?

[rubycodez]

no, $0 is too much, you'd have to pay me to use that vile HUD and Unity

Re:All bugs?

[ryanov]

I have the same problem with ALPS touchpads. Apparently a developer has written a patch for 11.04... but Dell's latest version is 10.10 that I've seen (I just tripped over a Dell-branded ISO for 11.04 possibly, but I've not checked it out yet).

Re:All bugs?

[petman]

That's not a bug, it's a feature.

Seriously.

Re:All bugs?

[Zemran]

and Mr. Obama maintained that he would provide a new style of government (I guess he did)...

Re:All bugs?

[GoingDown]

Even with Ubuntu, you can easily switch to different desktop. It is not hardcoded you know?

Re:All bugs?

[MichaelSmith]

I like it. I don't miss gnome 2, Unity is a new desktop environments and it has a few bugs, but I will persist with it.

Re:All bugs?

[RubberMallet]

I second this.

I seriously do not understand the whole DEB vs RPM hatred. I use both Ubuntu and openSUSE (among other distros) and apt-get vs zypper... I see ZERO difference in usability for the user from the Command Line. They are so close as to be identical. If you look to the GUI side... Ubuntu uses Synaptic and/or the Software Centre... and while they are different than YaST (with its different QT and GTK interfaces), they do the same task equally well.

openSUSE repos are VERY complete. It's a rare app you can find in the Ubuntu repos that isn't in the openSUSE (either official or community repos)... I can think of... 2 and average user might want... Skype (but a download from the website is available) and SopCast (but you can get it from a user repo).

openSUSE's KDE4 release is rock solid. It's very close to upstream, and the openSUSE devs work directly with the KDE guys. You can add the KDE upstream repo (for example) and have access to the latest stable upstream builds of KDE... I'm running KDE4.8.0 right now and plan on moving to 4.8.1 soon... and updating is a couple of clicks in the software manager.

As someone who uses Linux in many variations at home and at the office, as a desktop OS, a server OS, and even playing with it on my tablet... openSUSE comes out on top almost all the time... it's fast, reliable and an excellent blend of high end server and desktop config.

Re:All bugs?

[mcgrew]

I haven't tried Suse in almost a decade, I may give it another shot. Back then I had driver issues with it, but I would imagine that may be a thing of the past. Being slower may be problematic, I guess I 'll see.

Re:All bugs?

[Sepodati]

I like it, too. It may not be the best interface (what is?) but it's no hinderance to me.

Re:All bugs?

[mcgrew]

I had the same problem (I think) on an Acer notebook, but it was worse in Windows. It took me a month to find out where to shut off the "tap to click" bug that they call a feature. It took less than 5 minutes in KDE.

Re:All bugs?

[pecosdave]

The issue itself appears to be in KIO, which KDE apps depend on. It's a nice process in theory but when I find myself going back to old skool Midnight Commander because it doesn't work maybe it's time to look at the problem.

Re:All bugs?

[Karzz1]

I agree 100%

I view man pages in Konqueror (man:command in the URL bar). I love having a nice pointy-clicky file browser with a konsole window attached ( settings -> Show Terminal Emulator ).

I never understood the push to Dolphin. I use Dolphin occasionally, but generally prefer Konqueror the features of Konqueror.

Re:All bugs?

[CSMoran]

Why can't you highlight more than one item? Either of the following works perfectly:
- Click an item, hold shift and use arrow keys to select a range
- Click an item, hold shift and click another item to select a range
- Click anywhere except but an item and drag a selection box
- Click first item, ctrl+click every other item to be highlighted
- Hover item and click '+'-overlay on every item to be highlighted
- Ctrl+a to select all
- A plethora of combinations of the above as well as other methods I've probably missed

How this can present a problem to you is beyond me...

You probably missed this bit:

the keyboard is usually on a shelf.

Re:All bugs?

[Nimey]

The unmentioned part of that is "and isn't over a year obsolete".

Re:All bugs?

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

Thanks for the props. I'd still argue it's pretty slow because the kitchen sink gets installed by default (but you can remove that). I love YaST. It may be a pig, but everything you need's right there. Someone else had mentioned have trouble with drivers a while back-- I have a printer (Samsung CLP-310 color laser) that is a nightmare to get installed but other than that it does as well or as not well with drivers as any other distro of the same age/vintage. Hopefully the CLP-310 will be autodetected in 12.2. Another thing I don't like is having to hand-edit fstab every time I install it to get proper write support on NTFS drives, and I'm having some problems with hard lockups in the 3.x kernel (that are not limited to just OpenSUSE; other distros are affected too from what I understand). All in all, I've had a love/hate relationship with it since I started using it as my primary OS in 2004.

Re:All bugs?

[BigLonn]

ahh how the mighty have started the long slip to no where

Re:All bugs?

[devphaeton]

The unmentioned part of that is "and isn't over a year obsolete".

Debian Stable is behind the times, yes. But there is also Testing and Unstable branches.

Don't let the "Unstable" namesake fool you- I've run it for over a decade and have only had the same amount of trouble that I've gotten from other 'mature' distros. Ubuntu and Mint are both based on the Unstable branch, as most of the other "Debian derived" systems are.

Debian still happens to be "oldschool" enough to where you can start with the base install and build whatever system you want. It's not as "prepackaged" as something like Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu.

It's worth a look.

Re:All bugs?

[Nimey]

Debian is also brain-damaged enough to not do a graphical-sudo when you need admin privs for something and instead wants the root password.

That's easy to take care of if you're mostly in text-mode (just install sudo and run visudo to adjust permissions) but it doesn't seem so easy to change when you're running Gnome or KDE.

Debian is nice (it's what I cut my teeth on & what I used near-exclusively from early '99 until late '05) but I don't recommend it for desktop use unless you're willing to get dirty.

Re:All bugs?

[allo]

the new menu button in dolphin is such a bad idea. The menubar was just okay, now there is a lot of unused space, with this button in the middle.

Re:All bugs?

[unixisc]

Mint now comes w/ KDE as well, in addition to MGSE and MATE. Right now, this is based on Ubuntu, but Mint has also released a Mint Debian Edition, currently offered w/ Gnome (they were unclear on whether it was Gnome3 or MGSE/MATE/Cinnamon) and XFCE, but which will be coming out w/ KDE in the near future. For now, one can use the Mint that comes w/ KDE 4.7.4.

Re:All bugs?

[rubycodez]

no that is myth, it is NOT easy to switch as I have pointed out in other posts. GNOME3 .g* files fuck up xfce4, and a proper removal of all gnome package crap is not trivial. Sure can use Xubuntu, but it's a little heavy by default. I'd rather use a distro that puts in something sane in the first place.

Precise Pangolin

[NonSequor]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaqqV--rnGY

If I'm going to have a pangolin related song from a cartoon i watched 25 years ago stuck in my head, then I'm taking all of you down with me.

Re:Precise Pangolin

[madhi19]

Cartoon were funnier when the writers and animators were clearly on some sort of hallucinogenic drug.

Re:Precise Pangolin

[Reservoir Penguin]

Yeap, especially Soviet cartoons from the 70's. I'm convinced it's LSD. Here, I present two cases:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeAuGrvgc2w&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FdljGx_7u8

AND it's no longer relevant.

[pecosdave]

Thanks to dropping Kubuntu funding makes them irrelevant to me, I've moved on to Linux Mint for my netbook and everything else will soon follow. The fact they're feeding Unity to their Gnome people like parent makes a three year old take nasty tasting medicine doesn't help much either.

Ubuntu is a turd spinning on it's way down post-flush.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm...why?

Unity was pretty buggy when it was first released but you could say that about practically every piece of OSS that's ever been released. It's since matured quite a bit, and if you like a tablet-style interface for your desktop (or just something a bit different from whatever version of Windows is popular at the time), what's wrong with it?

Kubuntu doesn't need funding to continue on existing, that's up to the community and the package maintainers. If they dry up and disappear than maybe it's a lack of interest for KDE on Ubuntu that's the real problem.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[emblemparade]

The funding amounted to paying one single Canonical employee to work specifically on Kubuntu.

Kubuntu is remaining an official Ubuntu variant and will continue to be updated by the community. Moreover, bugs to the KDE package (which is part of the main repository) will continue to be fixed by anyone at Canonical, and patches will continue to be sent upstream.

The "drop funding" issue has been blown out of proportion.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[JRiddell]

Please stay with us. I will be making an announcement soon which will explain how Kubuntu will continue after 12.04 just as it did for 11.10 (when Canonical also did not fund anyone to work on it).

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[scrib]

Does it matter that Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu?

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[Rik Sweeney]

You know that Mint is based on Ubuntu, don't you?

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

You sure showed them! You dropped Kubuntu because it would only be maintained by the community in favor of a distro that would only be maintained by the community .

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[gshegosh]

Also, Ubuntu is base on Debian. What's your point?

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[David Gerard]

I'm on 11.10 but with Xubuntu. It's nice.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[Threni]

I can't speak for the OP. But I also left Ubuntu because of Unity, which I found to be annoying, inconfigurable and unintuitive. Ubuntu itself is fine. There are a few graphs on Distrowatch suggesting (it's difficult to get accurate figures about Linux distro usage) something of an exodus of Ubuntu users exactly when Unity was imposed upon Ubuntu users, corresponding exactly with the rise of Linux Mint.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[PraiseBob]

I think that is the point. Mint is almost Ubuntu, but based on Gnome3 instead of Unity. The guys behind Mint care about making Gnome3 work, and Canonical doesn't.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[grimmjeeper]

The bugs in unity are not the biggest problem people have with Ubuntu and Unity. Linux users of all types are used to buggy code.

No, the problem is Unity itself. It's a UI that just doesn't appeal to many Linux users. Some people love it. Sure. But a lot of us can't stand all of the crap and bloat that has infected user interfaces over the years. A lot of us want a simple and clean interface that stays out of the way. I want to be able to fire up a browser or three, my IDE, my email, a file manager, and once in a while a terminal or two. I want simple buttons and menus and a UI that lets me move windows around without all sorts of flashy special effects that get in the way. I want a couple of "desktops" so that I can leave my development area as it is while I type up a document on a word processor.

I'm not running a tablet. I don't need my UI to act like one. I have a full keyboard and mouse and I'm doing real work with real programs. I want a simple interface that lets me do that. For me, Linux Mint gives me all of what was great about Ubuntu but with a UI that I can tailor to my liking. I fire up my desktop with MATE, which is still a little buggy, and I get things done.

If you like Unity, go ahead and use it. But for people who like KDE and the old GNOME 2.x UI, Ubuntu has driven itself into irrelevance.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with it?

You said so yourself. Tablet interface. I DONT USE A FUCKING TABLET

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[mcgrew]

if you like a tablet-style interface for your desktop (or just something a bit different from whatever version of Windows is popular at the time), what's wrong with it?

Well, that's the thing -- I don't want a tablet style interface and don't care if it's anything like Windows or not. I've been using KDE for almost a decade

That's one thing I love about Linux and hate about Windows -- I don't have to relearn a new interface every time it's upgraded. And I never did like Gnome.

I have a Mint installation ISO, I may try it. Not sure what desktop it uses, change for the sake of change is counterproductive. I need a damned good reason to learn a new interface, there are far more interesting things to learn.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[hugh nicks]

I did exactly the same thing. Once I heard that KDE was done, I grabbed the RC for Linux Mint (KDE) and haven't looked back. I even burnt my dad an ISO and told him how to backup his data, and install Mint instead of Kubuntu. And he's been using Kubuntu since '08. I won't recommend Ubuntu for anyone's systems anymore, and I used to do it *a lot*.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[g2devi]

I'm on 11.10 now after stalling at 10.10 until about a month ago. I figured GNOME 2.0 is on the way out so I'd eventually have to get used to some other environment.

I gave Unity a shot, but it was too slow. Unity 2D is pretty snappy and not too bad, but it's really meant only for people who run one application at a time. I don't so it was always getting in my way. I couldn't stand Kubuntu and Lubuntu felt awkward.

But Xubuntu is most definitely a viable option even if it is a step down from GNOME 2.x.

I would have settled on XFCE, but discovered to my surprise that GNOME Shell with extensions gives you 95% of everything GNOME 2.0 did and has almost the same look and feel. It's what I'm using now and I'd rather move to Debian than give it up (if Ubuntu stopped supporting it).

So I'd suggest to take the plunge and upgrade. You have at least two viable options awaiting you.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[mug funky]

all due respect, i am running 10.10 netbook remix (first test of unity), and i currently have 3 browsers open, 3 terminals, a photo-editing app (darktable is pretty damn good these days) which i compile myself, plus skype, and occasionally dosbox'd doom2 and carmageddon.

the interface will get out of your way if you hit f11.

just sayin'. unity is certainly not perfect, but i use the sidebar more often than not. some stuff i'll launch from a terminal.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[Vellmont]

Yup. I've done exactly the same thing, and also switched to Mint. As of the latest release, Unity became the only UI supported without having to hack the shit out of the thing. I gave up, and I'm not going back. I tried unity for a while, but decided it was a terrible UI for a desktop. Linux Mint seems a good alternative, so why not?

So goodbye Ubuntu, it's been a good 6 years or so, but this is where I get off the bus. I really great improvement over Redhat many years ago, but if it's Unity or the Highway, then the highway is an easy choice.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[mug funky]

and the 4 desktop button thingy is still there, but coming from windows i'm an alt+tab man myself. i use it when i need it.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[grimmjeeper]

all due respect, i am running 10.10 netbook remix (first test of unity), and i currently have 3 browsers open, 3 terminals, a photo-editing app (darktable is pretty damn good these days) which i compile myself, plus skype, and occasionally dosbox'd doom2 and carmageddon.

the interface will get out of your way if you hit f11.

just sayin'. unity is certainly not perfect, but i use the sidebar more often than not. some stuff i'll launch from a terminal.

If you like Unity, great. Use it. But for a lot of us, we don't want to have a side bar. We don't want all of these tablet like "features". We don't want to have to hit F11 for the UI to get out of the way. We want the UI to be out of the way as a matter of design. So for us, Ubuntu is irrelevant. But that doesn't mean you have to do what we do.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[pecosdave]

Well, I have Kubuntu on my main system that I'm using now and on two laptops rarely used, but still relevant. I have Mythbuntu on my daughters netbook with MythTV stripped out since it frustrated me and XBMC in its place. Sounds silly but it works great. Currently the only thing I have running Linux Mint is my netbook, which I actually use all the time when I'm on the go, I got a buggy KDE issue I had trouble resolving and instead of just deleting my config files and starting over on KDE only (my usual shotgun fix when I can't isolate the problem) I switched to Mint since the bug appeared quite close to the de-funding announcement.

My staying with you depends on my motivation to re-install my other systems.

Re-installing from scratch isn't particularly difficult, I always start fresh to prevent buggy little issues I have to chase down, the type that can happen by migrating and trying to save a massive number of configs.

I'm staying with you on the other systems as long as you don't motivate me to leave and I don't find some other reason to re-install, such as a failed hard disk. I switched to Kubuntu from Debian due to Debian motivating me through "stable" issues. Keeping me from switching out of frustration is up to you keeping things working with a minimum of frustrating troubleshooting. Keeping me when I get the next new system or the next hard disk failure depends not only keeping the frustration down but also making me feel like my choice of desktops is something you respect.

BTW - fixing krename and making SNES work on AMD 64 wouldn't hurt either.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[IronHalik]

How come you refer to single people who like Unity, and you say 'we' when referring to those who don't? As far as I can tell, from Ubuntu IRC channels, people who are so troubled by Unity are in minority. Very loud minority.

If you don't like it, there's XFCE for you - it has been branded as the 'proper' DE by Torvalds himself.

For me, Unity allows for less clutter, faster access to files and software, more real estate. What it could do, is use Mutter instead of Compiz - it's faster and less bloated. (Gnome-shell uses it)

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[pecosdave]

And I'm still not using Gnome.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[hawguy]

I'm sorry what is the 2nd person plural?

I believe that would be you'uns (sometimes pronounced "yens" or "yins"). For example: "Are you'uns going to the store?"

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Doom 2 in dosbox? You're doing it wrong. Check out a modern source port like GZDoom / ZDoom or even Skulltag.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[Lincolnshire Poacher]

Linux Mint gives me all of what was great about Ubuntu but with a UI that I can tailor to my liking.

But you had that in Ubuntu:

apt-get install xfce4

or whatever. GDM would even add it as a login option automatically for you.

Why go to all the trouble of installing another distro when the functionality to change UI was five minutes away?

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[Skapare]

Better yet, just install Xubuntu from the start and save the bother. Or Linux Mint when it updates.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[scrib]

I can speak for myself and agree with you, mostly. I used Ubuntu 10.04 for a long time (mostly with Gnome, a little bit with KDE) and kept a partition available to try out the latest and greatest Ubuntu. They were never as good as 10.04. I figured they introduced Unity right after the LTS edition because they wanted a couple years to get it right before the next LTS (12.04). Unity always struck me as pretty slick and simple, but not quite "done" as far as usability was concerned. I was (and still am ever so slightly) optimistic that they'll get most of that sorted out for 12.04. It was tough to maintain any hope when Alpha 2 flat-out would not boot on my system (which is built with all big name, off the shelf, common parts, with no OC). The glimmer of hope came back when one of the daily builds started working...

As for Unity, I know Ubuntu dropped KDE, but Gnome 3 is still an option they support and I think that is promising.
Will Linux Mint keep using the latest Ubuntu and adding KDE in themselves, or is that going to be too much to ask of them?

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[luther349]

you should give 12 a try then. unity is shaping up to be a halfway decent ui. i hated the early version myself.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[CalcProgrammer1]

I get why people are upset with Ubuntu (Unity is abhorrent, it is a disaster and Ubuntu's forcing it upon its users was uncalled for) but the fact remains that you're in no way restricted to Unity on Ubuntu. I got mad and switched to Linux Mint Debian Edition after Ubuntu 11.10's release. I soon discovered that Mint's quirks were annoying and that I didn't like what I saw. The ugly hideous Linux Mint Google page was the big one, after searching for hours and hacking through system files I finally undid their changes, but every time the packages updated the changes would be undone. There wasn't much help for this on LMDE, and the packages were a little different from stock Mint. I gave up and went to straight-up Debian Testing which is what LMDE was based on. That went well until I discovered that things I used in Ubuntu weren't supported. First, I do some work with ROS (Robot Operating System) which was Ubuntu-only and I couldn't download their Debian version due to a bug (that remains to this day in Debian and Ubuntu). I had issues with getting some embedded compilers as well. To top it all off, the GNOME 3 switch over ruined my desktop even worse than Unity did. Upon searching for refuge back to a usable GUI, the majority of my findings were directed at Ubuntu. In the end, I've reinstalled 11.10 and now happily run Cinnamon via the nightly PPA. I want to get MATE running as well, but it still has some issues with certain Ubuntu themes.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[ZorinLynx]

>I have Mythbuntu on my daughters netbook with MythTV stripped out since it frustrated me and XBMC in its place.

Holy shit, I'm not the only one doing this! I also have a Mythbuntu install that I re-molded into an XBMC system because myth was becoming an unreliable pain in the arse, and I didn't need any of the PVR features.

I thought I was the only one running such a weird XBMC system, yet I have a fellow crazy out there doing the same thing! *BROFIST*

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[Billly Gates]

"The bugs in unity are not the biggest problem people have with Ubuntu and Unity. Linux users of all types are used to buggy code."

... and this is why users will never switch to Linux from Windows. I keep saying the same thing and get modded down to -1 when some moronic comment about how your average person with a stable Windows system should migrate to Linux, even if Windows comes with their computer. Why wont JoeSix Pack use Linux?!

I disliked Ubuntu for the bugs when I used to run Linux. I prefered Fedora as it did not have nearly as many issues as Ubuntu had. Unfortunately all the non Ubuntu distros are treated like second class citizens in terms of software and support. Has this changed since 2010?

I for one refused to get used to the bugs and switched to Windows 7. Couldn't be happier. This is especially true since Chrome and FF update rapidly and those are always issues in Linux with some old libC library if you use a more stable RHES or Debian stable.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[MichaelSmith]

I use a similar setup to you and I have never seen this happen, even before I set the window manager to focus-follows-mouse.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[xyzzyman]

Was he happy using what he already had? Why change OS's if what he had was working?

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[tbird81]

I hate Unity too.

It's ugly, it takes up space, it's barely customisable, it doesn't react how you'd expect it to (dragging, right-clicking etc).

No-one is going to put it on a tablet! Why the big buttons?! They wouldn't work on a tablet anyway! They don't seem to have thought how normal people actually use their computers.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[MichaelSmith]

Its distros all the way down.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[Threni]

> As for Unity, I know Ubuntu dropped KDE, but Gnome 3 is still an option they support
> and I think that is promising.

I didn't like Gnome 3 any more than I liked Unity.

> Will Linux Mint keep using the latest Ubuntu and adding KDE in themselves, or is that
> going to be too much to ask of them?

Dunno. If they screw up I'll leave them too. Currently, though, they seem to provide a KDE, LXDE and Mate (sort of Gnome 2) versions; they also seem to use both Debian and Ubuntu as base OSes.

I tried using Ubuntu with XFCE but I had problems with backdrops or something - I can't remember the details but I did spend a fair amount of time avoiding leaving Ubuntu as it was the first Linux I ever used successfully.

Even if you actually like Unity, why rush it out when it's not done?

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[sqldr]

Why is the 1000th iteration of this same complaint still being marked as "insightful"? Surely, by definition, it's "redundant" by now.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[sqldr]

We want the UI to be out of the way as a matter of design

Well they got the windows 95-style taskbar out of the way. Good riddance.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[pecosdave]

I used MythTV years ago and I loved it. It's back when having an NTSC tuner and cable was still a useful setup.

I put MythTV on my own netbook as a dry run with a few movies and games, it worked great! I couldn't remember how to remove the unneeded menu options, but I figured it would come back to me before I was done with my daughters system.

Long story short - the scrapper SUCKED. Big time. I rip my own DVDs, I'm not a pirate, one of the things I had on her system was Jim Henson's The Storyteller. It kept coming up as some sort of Alicia Keys concert, I didn't even know who that was, I had to look it up. So I would fix things, easier said than done, but I would fix things. All of the sudden, all my work would get undone! I would have everything working for three days, then the scrapper would go through and undo all my manual settings by putting crap like Alicia Keys back. There was no "don't fuck with this!" option.

The way I used to remove menu entries no longer worked and I couldn't figure out how to remove them.

Video playback constantly re-scaled during playback when there was a large amount of black on the screen.

Every time I went to message boards and did searches on how to fix particular issues I always found the answer. For the previous version, or three version ago but never one that still worked.

Long story short, MythTV is "lighter" on the system than XBMC, which is why I went to it being a netbook and all. XBMC runs just fine anyways, I'm sure it runs the battery down faster than MythTV, but it's the difference between having a good working system and utter frustration, I'm going with the battery hog.

On another note the game/ROM manager on both sort of sucked, and often for the same reason. However I see the XBMC one as new an immature and I have confidence in a version or two most of my complaints will go away. I'm pretty sure the MythTV issues are there to stay.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[metalgamer84]

Personally I like Doomsday. http://dengine.net/

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[grimmjeeper]

Because it's still a valid complaint. I haven't met a single person IRL that likes Unity. There are a few vocal people on here that really push it but everyone I know in person doesn't like it.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[grimmjeeper]

I've already migrated and found something that is exactly what I want. Linux Mint with MATE is perfect for me. There's no reason to go back and fight with a UI that I may or may not like.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[sqldr]

I'm not a huge fan of unity, but I can cope with it. Gnome 3 on the other hand - I switched from KDE to use it. I wouldn't use it on a tablet though. It wouldn't work on a tablet, contrary to the regular sideswipe from people who tried it for about ten minutes expecting it to follow the windows 95 task-bar style approach that everything else uses.

Re:AND it's no longer relevant.

[mug funky]

different.

the gameplay is very different. for a start, collision detection is over the 64x64 sprite in old doom, where it's done on the alpha channel in doomsday et al. this means i can pick off baddies hiding round corners and they wont see me until their centre can see my centre.

also, you can save game, reload, and the baddies are asleep again.

yes, i know this is cheating, kinda. more like gaming the game.

i'm not a gamer, and play doom2 on the train on the way to work.

not saying my way is better, just that's the way doom was when i was a dumb kid.

Right

[TheSpoom]

All I know is, I'm waiting for the reviews before updating this time. Most likely I'll be on Mint pretty soon anyway. Unity gave me a severe distaste for anything Canonical.

Re:Right

[__Paul__]

Yes, Unity sucks, but why can't you use one of the other desktop environments that are still in Ubuntu?

It didn't take me long to make the Gnome 3 Classic environment look and work the same as Gnome 2 had.

Re:Right

[TheSpoom]

Currently I am. The main problem I have now is that they also messed with Compiz (or rather, updated it to an unstable version), causing it to randomly crash on me if I'm using it outside of Unity. (Plus Gnome 3 imitating Gnome 2 isn't quite the same thing as Gnome 2... doesn't show all the notification icons I used to have, for example.)

Re:Right

[PraiseBob]

Just about everyone agrees that Unity is awful. Personally I like Gnome3 a lot, but Ubuntu's implementation suffers badly because they put all their resources into Unity. Mint 12 has a somewhat better implementation, which is what drove me from Ubuntu after using it for 6 years.

Re:Right

[cr_nucleus]

There is a "simple" workaround for the notification area problem :
http://ubuntugenius.wordpress.com/2011/06/25/ubuntu-11-04-fix-show-all-iconsindicators-in-unity-panels-notification-area/

I'll grant you that it can be kind of annoying but nothing a small script can't fix.

Re:Right

[busyqth]

There is a "simple" workaround for the notification area problem...
I'll grant you that it can be kind of annoying but nothing a small script can't fix.

I remember when I used to think this kind of stuff was normal.

Re:Right

[CalcProgrammer1]

None of the other DE's that are "still in Ubuntu" are quite as good as GNOME 2 ever was, at least that's my opinion. GNOME 3's fallback mode is close, but it manages to kludge all the system applets into random categories including "System", "Applications", and the most unorganized of all, "Other". Other options are put in the new System Settings menu. It's unorganized and lacks uniformity. The menu bar uses an annoying alt-click context menu system. It lacks most of the applets I used in GNOME 2 (system monitor, CPU frequency, etc).

A closer choice is XFCE, which I did use for a while. It supported Compiz well, but still wasn't quite as nice as GNOME 2. MATE (a proper GNOME 2 fork) can be added but is still in development and has some pretty big bugs last I checked, some theme related and some Compiz incompatibilities. Finally, we have Cinnamon which is fairly mature on Ubuntu and available through an easy-to-install PPA. It isn't quite perfectly customizable yet, but it is showing that we still have a viable option for a classic desktop interface with extensions and applets.

Re:Right

[bubkus_jones]

I keep wanting to try Mint, but I can't get my wireless card in my netbook to work. I've read several instructionals (usually from googling the problem with my netbook model and seeing others supposedly working solutions) and nothing. Ubuntu (every version since 8 or something) automatically detected and configured the card during the initial install, I didn't have to do anything, just click on the icon and "Connect to " and I'm online.

I can install the driver in Mint and it says it's installed, but I get no "Available Wireless Networks" list.

Re:Right

[TheSpoom]

Excellent. I was kinda waiting for LMDE to mature. Right now all that's holding me to Ubuntu is laziness and lack of time.

Re:Right

[__Paul__]

p.s. "Yes, Unity sucks, but why can't you use one of the other desktop environments that are still in Ubuntu?
It didn't take me long to make the Gnome 3 Classic environment look and work the same as Gnome 2 had." fuck you, just fuck you It shouldn't be the case that we install something, and its like, oh dopde do its shite, now I have to spend time to reconfigure it so it sort of resembles a twisted road kill impresion of how it used to be.

So, what's easier; reconfiguring a few things, or installing a completely different distribution?

I really don't understand this attitude of "oh, Ubuntu's default desktop environment sucks, let's completely reinstall", which has become so prevalent of late.

When Microsoft fucked up their desktop environment with XP's crayon-like GUI, then Vista's Aero and then whatever that atrocity in Windows 7 is, do people change operating systems? No. They switch classic mode on and configure the settings so that the environment meets their needs.

fglrx

[Herbster]

I hope the fricking fglrx packages are a bit less retarded than in Oneiric!!!

Re:fglrx

[armanox]

That's on AMD, not Ubuntu.

Re:fglrx

[Herbster]

Still was "tested" by Ubuntu. If it's crap, stick with the previous version...

Re:fglrx

[armanox]

Problem is the previous versions are crap too. I've got better support on my laptop (Radeon HD 3200) with the open source driver then with fglrx (regardless of distro).

10.10 updates will expire

[mounthood]

10.10 updates will expire when 12.04 is released, and I'll finally be forced to use Gnome3 or switch distros. I'm thinking Arch or Fedora with XFCE.

Re:10.10 updates will expire

[isorox]

10.10 updates will expire when 12.04 is released, and I'll finally be forced to use Gnome3 or switch distros. I'm thinking Arch or Fedora with XFCE.

$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=10.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=lucid
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS"

Supported another year on the desktop, 3 more on the server (I've still got some 8.04 servers there that I'll be bringing up to 12.04 over the next 6 months)

Re:10.10 updates will expire

[sdnoob]

if you don't like gnome 3 or unity, you don't have to jump ship simply to change desktop environments. the ubuntu community produces decent xfce (xubuntu) and lxde (lubuntu) variants we use xubuntu instead of ubuntu now.. and since lubuntu's release, lower-end hardware has been getting that instead of xubuntu. either variant's desktop can be installed on an existing ubuntu install without reinstalling the whole thing.

Re:10.10 updates will expire

[David Gerard]

ALWAYS INSTALL XUBUNTU CLEANLY, not over an existing GNOME3/Unity infestation. Unity messes with various GTK+ settings in your config and shit won't work right.

Re:10.10 updates will expire

[Jethro]

Like others have been saying, you don't have to use anything you don't want to. I've been using Ubuntu for years and I still use Window Maker.

Re:10.10 updates will expire

[Beardo the Bearded]

Yep, the only way to get my machine working after trying to install Xubuntu over Ubuntu was a rebuild.

Re:10.10 updates will expire

[Skapare]

Also, KDE causes some troubles by sticking its menus into Xfce. I just installed a pure Xubuntu machine and it works great. I plan to do the same for 12.04 when the Xubuntu image comes out. I also do Slackware, and installing Slackware without any KDE gave me a clean Xfce, too (I call it Xlackware).

Re:10.10 updates will expire

[rubycodez]

bullshit, it's a pain in the ass.

remove the .gconf* and .gnome directories in your home directories or your xfce stuff will be partially fucked by GNOME3

then

sudo apt-get remove adium-theme-ubuntu apg appmenu-gtk appmenu-gtk3 appmenu-qt at-spi2-core bamfdaemon banshee banshee-extension-soundmenu banshee-extension-ubuntuonemusicstore baobab binfmt-support bluez-gstreamer branding-ubuntu brasero brasero-cdrkit brasero-common checkbox checkbox-gtk cli-common compiz compiz-core compiz-gnome compiz-plugins-default compiz-plugins-main-default compizconfig-backend-gconf deja-dup duplicity dvd+rw-tools empathy empathy-common eog evolution-data-server evolution-data-server-common example-content gbrainy gedit gedit-common geoclue geoclue-ubuntu-geoip ginn gir1.2-atspi-2.0 gir1.2-gnomebluetooth-1.0 gir1.2-gtksource-3.0 gir1.2-indicate-0.6 gir1.2-peas-1.0 gir1.2-totem-1.0 gir1.2-totem-plparser-1.0 gir1.2-wnck-3.0 gnome-bluetooth gnome-control-center gnome-control-center-data gnome-desktop3-data gnome-disk-utility gnome-font-viewer gnome-icon-theme-symbolic gnome-media gnome-nettool gnome-online-accounts gnome-orca gnome-power-manager gnome-screensaver gnome-screenshot gnome-search-tool gnome-session gnome-session-bin gnome-session-canberra gnome-session-common gnome-settings-daemon gnome-system-log gnome-system-monitor gnome-terminal gnome-terminal-data gnome-user-share gnome-utils-common growisofs gstreamer0.10-gconf gvfs-backends gwibber gwibber-service gwibber-service-facebook gwibber-service-identica gwibber-service-twitter hwdata ibus-gtk3 indicator-appmenu indicator-datetime indicator-power indicator-session intel-gpu-tools libappindicator0.1-cil libarchive1 libatk-adaptor libatspi2.0-0 libaudio2 libbamf0 libbamf3-0 libboost-serialization1.46.1 libbrasero-media3-1 libcamel-1.2-29 libcanberra-pulse libcdio-cdda0 libcdio-paranoia0 libcdio10 libcompizconfig0 libdbus-glib1.0-cil libdbus1.0-cil libdbusmenu-qt2 libdconf-dbus-1-0 libdconf-qt0 libdconf0 libdecoration0 libebackend-1.2-1 libebook1.2-12 libecal1.2-10 libedata-book-1.2-11 libedata-cal-1.2-13 libedataserver1.2-15 libedataserverui-3.0-1 libexempi3 libfolks-telepathy25 libfolks25 libgail-3-common libgail-common libgconf2.0-cil libgdata-common libgdata1.7-cil libgdata13 libgdiplus libgdu-gtk0 libgeoclue0 libgexiv2-0 libgif4 libgkeyfile1.0-cil libglew1.5 libglewmx1.5 libglib2.0-bin libglib2.0-cil libglib2.0-data libgmime-2.4-2 libgmime2.4-cil libgnome-control-center1 libgnome-desktop-3-2 libgnome-media-profiles-3.0-0 libgnome-menu2 libgnome2-common libgnomekbd-common libgnomekbd7 libgoa-1.0-0 libgpgme11 libgpod-common libgpod4 libgtk-sharp-beans-cil libgtk2.0-cil libgtkmm-3.0-1 libgtksourceview-3.0-0 libgtksourceview-3.0-common libgtkspell3-0 libgudev1.0-cil libgweather-3-0 libgweather-common libgwibber-gtk2 libgwibber2 libhyphen0 libidl0 liblaunchpad-integration1.0-cil liblircclient0 liblouis-data liblouis2 libmetacity-private0 libmhash2 libmission-control-plugins0 libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo4.0-cil libmono-corlib4.0-cil libmono-csharp4.0-cil libmono-i18n-west4.0-cil libmono-i18n4.0-cil libmono-posix4.0-cil libmono-security4.0-cil libmono-sharpzip4.84-cil libmono-system-configuration4.0-cil libmono-system-core4.0-cil libmono-system-drawing4.0-cil libmono-system-security4.0-cil libmono-system-xml4.0-cil libmono-system4.0-cil libmono-zeroconf1.0-cil libmtp-common libmtp-runtime libmtp9 libmysqlclient16 libmythes-1.2-0 libneon27-gnutls libnotify0.4-cil libnux-1.0-0 libnux-1.0-common liboauth0 liborbit2 liboverlay-scrollbar-0.2-0 liboverlay-scrollbar3-0.2-0 libpeas-1.0-0 libpeas-common libprotobuf7 libprotoc7 libpth20 libqt4-dbus libqt4-declarative libqt4-network libqt4-opengl libqt4-script libqt4-sql libqt4-sql-mysql libqt4-svg libqt4-xml libqt4-xmlpatterns libqtbamf1 libqtcore4 libqtdee2 libqtgconf1 libqtgui4 libquvi0 libraptor2-0 librasqal3 librdf0 libreoffice-base-core libreoffice-calc libreoffice-common libreoffice-core libreoffice-draw libreoffice-emailmerge libreoffice-gn

Re:10.10 updates will expire

[ryanov]

Yes, but he said 10.10 not 10.04. Yes, he could go backwards, but...

Re:10.10 updates will expire

[Larryish]

I want 8.04.4 interface but with current version numbers.

Anybody?

Buehler?

Buehler?

Buehler?

Re:10.10 updates will expire

[fnj]

I don't have any problem with you switching distros for any reason, but wouldn't it be a little more constructive to at least have a LOGICAL and VALID reason? In 12.04, as for any version since a long time ago, you can just install the xubuntu variant, or (not QUITE as clean) just apt-get install the xfce desktop environment. It just isn't so that with the release of 12.04 you will be "forced" to either use gnome3 or switch distros.

PS - I'm not a ubuntu guy myself (I don't particularly like any of the debian camp), and I realize you can readily construct a logical and valid reason to abandon it - but you didn't mention such a reason.

PPS - what I am using is an RHEL6 free repackaging - PUIAS in my case, but CentOS or Scientific Linux is just as good - and I am good with Gnome2 until 2017. Or I could just as well be running Xfce or KDE on it. I really cannot recommend this set of distros enough.

Re:10.10 updates will expire

[mounthood]

Thanks, and can I ask why RHEL6 rather then Fedora? I would like to be familiar with RHEL professionally, but I was under the impression it wasn't used as a desktop (I'm a dev.)

As for switching distros, I'd just say that it's more about a culture of decisions and attitude I don't like. Debian is great; I just want to work with something new.

Re:10.10 updates will expire

[Culture20]

Thanks, and can I ask why RHEL6 rather then Fedora? I would like to be familiar with RHEL professionally, but I was under the impression it wasn't used as a desktop (I'm a dev.)

It's used as a desktop by people who want a stable desktop environment similar to Fedora but without the frantic upgrade cycle (and worse, package manager updates within a version that rename or totally replace commands). RHEL is like Ubuntu LTS with a longer lifecycle, Fedora is like Ubuntu Alpha Release. Of course, if you run Fedora, and liked a specific version, you can always run it again as RHEL or CentOS/Scientific Linux because Fedora version/2 is roughly identicall to RHEL version. As long as a new feature has stuck around in multiple versions of Fedora, they'll put it into the next version of RHEL.

Too early, wrong server

[JRiddell]

Hi, I'm the release driver for Beta 1.

Ubuntu Beta 1 is not released yet and will not be released until posted to ubuntu-announce. Until then we might pull the images if we find problems.

This slashdot story is also weirdly linking to the wrong server for Ubuntu, cdimage has only DVDs and other obscure images for Ubuntu, almost everyone will want the CDs. You can find the link to those on the release announcement when it is posted.

Re:Too early, wrong server

[Anonymous Coward]

cdimage has only DVDs and other obscure images for Ubuntu, almost everyone will want the CDs.

Really? It's 2012. I find most people don't even want DVDs any more. :p

Re:Too early, wrong server

[data2]

Really, slashdot is _early_?

Re:Too early, wrong server

[busyqth]

CDs sound better.
Ubuntu at 44.1 kHz is sweeeeet.

Re:Too early, wrong server

[Skapare]

cdimage has only DVDs and other obscure images for Ubuntu, almost everyone will want the CDs.

Really? It's 2012. I find most people don't even want DVDs any more. :p

USB memory sticks FTW!

Re:Too early, wrong server

[MichaelSmith]

When an anti-unity flamefest is expected, yes.

Thanks for the laugh BTW.

Re:Too early, wrong server

[crt]

You mean this one?

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2012-March/000156.html

Is that really the name?

[Lawrence_Bird]

as Linus is on the warpath this week, I think he should shoot whomever came up with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin Beta 1
So tenths aren't enough we must go to hundreds then have abbreviatiations and silly names and then Beta (isnt that what the 0.0X is for?) and the cheery on top, "1". Ubuntu has jumped the naming shark

Re:Is that really the name?

[Spykk]

Pedantic Penguin was the obvious choice. I don't know what they were thinking.

Re:Is that really the name?

[firewrought]

as Linus is on the warpath this week, I think he should shoot whomever came up with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin Beta 1 So tenths aren't enough we must go to hundreds then have abbreviatiations and silly names and then Beta (isnt that what the 0.0X is for?) and the cheery on top, "1". Ubuntu has jumped the naming shark

Ubuntu releases are named after date. The "04" represents the fourth month of the year. You have to zero-pad it to get things to sort correctly. The "1" on the end is to distinguish this beta from the next one leading up to the official release. So the naming shark is happy. Trust me, I am the naming shark, and I like naming conventions that pay attention to the lexical sort and avoid ambiguity (which is the whole point of names, after all).

(The naming shark always uses YYYY-MM-DD format when writing dates, and you should too.)

Re:Is that really the name?

[MLCT]

A great deal of OSS has this problem. And the more it is pointed out the more smug all of the developers get at coming up with ridiculous names.

And before anyone says it is just a bit of fun - it isn't when you are trying to search for support documents and have to letter-by-letter- the release name (not everyone uses the numbers all of the time) or type in silly random names to get things up from the terminal (sudo nautilus - which I have to letter-by-letter every time I want it because it is so unmemorable and tongue tied). "Its complicated deal with it", "it is for people who know tech" - fine - but that isn't supposed to be Ubuntu's *own* raison d'etre.

Anyway, with the absolute 10 mile long car crash that is Unity (a PC interface clearly designed for tablets but needs extensive use of keyboard shortcuts to be usable!) Ubuntu has many bigger problems to worry about. I am on 10.10 and when support ends I will be moving away as well. If they wanted to build a tablet OS then they should have just built it - not tried to pretend to the x86 community that they have an OS for them when they so very clearly don't.

Re:Is that really the name?

[tlhIngan]

as Linus is on the warpath this week, I think he should shoot whomever came up with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin Beta 1
So tenths aren't enough we must go to hundreds then have abbreviatiations and silly names and then Beta (isnt that what the 0.0X is for?) and the cheery on top, "1". Ubuntu has jumped the naming shark

Actually, Ubuntu naming is pretty easy.

12 - the last two digits of the year, 2012.
04 - the month to which it is to be/was released (in this case, April).

So 12.04 will be released in April 2012. LTS means that it's a "long term" version with support until 15.04 comes out (14.04 will probably be LTS). Non-LTS versions go up, so if you installed 10.10 (Octoer 2010), you will have to upgrade to 11.04, 11.10, and 12.04, at which point you can decide if you want to stay with 12.04, or go to 12.10.

And it's beta because well, it's March!

Re:Is that really the name?

[cr_nucleus]

as Linus is on the warpath this week, I think he should shoot whomever came up with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin Beta 1

I believe Shuttleworth wouldn't be too happy about that (being shot)...

Re:Is that really the name?

[ppanon]

Panda would have been another acceptable animal. They may have thought Penguin was too obvious. For the adjective, I would have preferred Proselitizing.

Re:Is that really the name?

[Skapare]

Based on some people's complaints, maybe it should have been Pooping Pachyderm.

Re:Is that really the name?

[rubycodez]

yeah, it now stands for Long Term Suckage, because that's what 12.04 will be doing for years

Re:Is that really the name?

[Lawrence_Bird]

yes I stand corrected on the 12.04

What of the LTS Precise Pangolin Beta 1? Nobody comments on that? I assume this is some variant of stock Ubuntu? Is there a problem with Ubuntu b# (or a# for alpha)? Is all that other stuff necessary or just an attempt at being funny or cute?

Re:Is that really the name?

[Culture20]

What of the LTS Precise Pangolin Beta 1? Nobody comments on that? I assume this is some variant of stock Ubuntu? Is there a problem with Ubuntu b# (or a# for alpha)? Is all that other stuff necessary or just an attempt at being funny or cute?

It is stock Ubuntu, not a variant.
LTS=Long Term Support ...This is one of the special versions of Ubuntu, like 8.04 and 10.04 that receive support for three(?) years.
Precise Pangolin=OSX Lion=Fedora Zod=Microsoft Windows 7 (6.1) ...It's just a name
Beta 1=This is the first Beta release. Sorry, but b1 is less readable than Beta 1.
Only the "Precise Pangolin" is an attempt at being funny or cute, but frankly, it's extremely common for most OSes/distros to have human-centric (code)names.

Ubuntu Formula

[rullywowr]

1 Scrap current Ubuntu GUI
2 Enrage current Ubuntu user base
3 Create 'new' GUI nobody has seen before
4 GOTO 1

Re:Ubuntu Formula

[bargainsale]

Somebody has to say it ....

I *like* Unity (even though I've been using Ubuntu since Feisty.)

Am I alone? Guys? Guys ....?

Re:Ubuntu Formula

[JanneM]

I mostly like it too. Especially love the top menu bar; gives me extra vertical space in every app almost for free. I haven't met anybody in real life who thought Unity was a bad idea either.

Suspect this is a "greasy wheel" kind of thing, where those who are dissatisfied are loud and visible on places like slashdot, while most users have nothing much to complain about and keep silent. And most complaints really are about configurability, not basic functionality. A decent tool to do all the typical config changes people want would go a long way towards solving the issues for many of those people.

My only complaint really is Compiz, not Unity. Should use something more stable and less resource intensive.

Re:Ubuntu Formula

[Beardo the Bearded]

I quite like Unity, I was using it since it was on the "netbook remix".

See, the OS isn't a program, and that's what people keep forgetting. It's just a tool for running your applications.

Re:Ubuntu Formula

[NonEvil Twin]

I was really scared by all the stuff I read about it, and switched back to XFCE, which I have used on and off since back in the day. I did some distro hopping, even though I've used Ubuntu since Warty, and I first tried Gnome Shell, since Gnome 2 was going away anyway. I tried really hard, but I just don't like Gnome Shell. Even adding extensions, it just doesn't feel right. I finally gave up and re-installed 11.04 on my laptop and dove into Unity, and I don't see what the big deal is. It doesn't seem like a tablet interface, it's just different. It got better in 11.10, and I'm happy. I'd like some tweaks to the Dash, but overall, it stays out of the way and lets me focus on whatever program I'm running.

Re:Ubuntu Formula

[jones_supa]

Sure, I like Unity too. Though it was a bit sluggish on a low-end N270.

Re:Ubuntu Formula

[Sepodati]

You know how it goes; squeaky wheels get heard. I have no problems with Unity.

Pfft! Preposterous!

[grahamd0]

Canonical has lost all respect from me by passing on the opportunity to call their release "Pretty Pony".

Some people just have no class.

Re:Pfft! Preposterous!

[Teun]

Your friends thought you were going for Pink Pony.

Re:Pfft! Preposterous!

[rubycodez]

even Gaybuntu isn't doing that since they already had the Mauve Mare.

Re:Pfft! Preposterous!

[Gaygirlie]

even Gaybuntu isn't doing that since they already had the Mauve Mare.

I am deeply disturbed to know that there has actually been something called 'Gaybuntu' for real o_o I have no issue with sexual minorities as I belong in them myself, too, but... that's like a hipster vegetarian only eating non-green products just so she can claim to be minority in a minority.

Re:Pfft! Preposterous!

[rubycodez]

there wasn't really that much to it other than Jaunty+Linux mint with addition of colorful screen backgrounds, no compiz, and gnumeric and abiword rather than LibreOffice (the creator had older machine and took away things that were considered performance drains)

Re:"Pingolin" in Portuguese

[David Gerard]

Dude. 8.04 was called "Hairy Hardon."

Xubuntu or PCLinuxOS

[AliasMarlowe]

Yup, Unity is the reason I'm still running 10.10

Version 11+ seems to be dumbing down the OS much like Windows exists today. I understand they want to appeal to a greater number of users but, in my opinion, it's a step in the wrong direction for Ubuntu.

I'm running 10.04 LTS, and will continue to do so for a while. Most likely, the two PCs with the gnome interface will be upgraded to use xfce (i.e. Ubuntu 10.04 will become Xubuntu 12.04 LTS). One of our PCs already uses Xubuntu 10.04 LTS, so it will be a straight upgrade. I have installed Ubuntu 11.10 on a VM, and it sucks; I've also installed Linux Mint (menu sucks and can't be avoided), Suse (menu and other stuff sucks), etc. on VMs, and the only one which has a chance of supplanting Ubuntu is one of the flavors of PCLinuxOS.

Re:Alternatives please?

[DCFusor]

Agree - have been running the unity releases in virtual box under 10.04 - but very little. They suck and so do all the alternatives I've seen so far. Sticking with 10.04 for as long as possible - when new versions of things I need won't run on the old one, not sure what I'll do.

Please, please, app guys - don't break things for the old desktop! It's not broken, please don't fix it.

I understand what unity is for - dumb people who need to "explore where I want to go today" when they walk up to their computer. I already know. I run applications, trade stocks, and I want every friggin pixel and other resource I paid for to do it. I already *know* what my computer can do, and what I want it to do now. I'm not stupid, and unity thinks I'm stupid enough to need handholding to use a desktop for a fondleslab. None of this is true, and it's damn insulting.

Re:Alternatives please?

[present_arms]

Pclinuxos gnome edition

Wake me up when...

[JustNiz]

Color me disinterested in Ubuntu until Canonical finally get a clue and kill off Unity.

Re:Wake me up when...

[Nerdfest]

I don't know if it's because of Unity, in spite of it, or unrelated to it, but according to this source , Linux desktop usage is up 64% in the last hear. I really hope Unity isn''t driving people away.

Re:Wake me up when...

[JustNiz]

Its a shame they dont cite their sources for the statistic, or at least mention which distros are experiencing the biggest growth.

Re:"Pingolin" in Portuguese

[mug funky]

cock jokes are always funny, you humourless clod!

Kubuntu and KDE

[JRiddell]

Here is the announcement from Kubuntu that confirms we will carry on for 12.04 and thereafter just as we did before. There are other sponsors of Kubuntu besides Canonical and a thriving contributor community.

Re:Kubuntu and KDE

[pecosdave]

Congratulations. If you fix the file copy truncation errors that only happens with the KDE back end - and then at unpredictable intervals, you fix the fact krename got broke a couple of versions back and stayed that way even through the next package update (AMD 64), and as a nice touch make ZSNES work I might stick around.

As it stands I'm using the good old fashioned Midnight Commander to manage large file copies now because Dolphin, Krusader and Konqueror can't be trusted to do them properly. That's fine locally, but it becomes a pain when dealing with fish:// and some other newer ways of doing things.

Re:Kubuntu and KDE

[pecosdave]

The file copy issue:
Filed by multiple people with slightly different descriptions multiple times (they were all copying differently, partitions, devices, etc). That particular bug is usually closed with "unable to duplicate", despite the fact multiple people have it. High I/O is usually one of the bug descriptions, I concur. I consider this one very serious as file loss is usually involved. Fortunately for me it's been music and movies, but I could easily lose my photos also and those are original works I can't just re-rip a disk for.

One interesting tidbit about this bug. When I copy to a USB device when the copy is done I can click on every file, it works, it shows up as the correct size and everything. Unmount, move to a different, or even the same system 0-Byte and truncated files everywhere!

It's not hard to prove, look at the bug list, there's many KIO bugs complaining about this and many related issues. If I were to complain through regular channels like you're suggesting my complaint would be closed as "unable to duplicate" just like all the others. Feel free to browse the already closed ones, it won't take long to validate my words. Look for high I/O, truncated, zero byte and for all different manners of connection methods, USB, network etc.. It's a major bug in Kubuntu's implementation of KIO, it may be a KDE issue, I'm not certain.

The krename thing is just a "you broke it, updated it, and left it broke" pointer. ZSNES is just arm waving.

Bug reports that are systematically swept under the rug are like arbitration clauses in contracts. Making noise on Slashdot is putting it on the news.

Re:Kubuntu and KDE

[assertation]

That is sort of what I thought would happen.

Kubuntu integrates the KDE and Ubuntu, both things built by other people, so they can't have had a very big staff aka a lot of costs. Plus a lot of people like Kunbuntu, which will likely become more important until the Unity thing becomes resolved. So, I didn't think Kubuntu would be going anywhere.

Gnome and Ubuntu are losing to other distros

[Anonymous Coward]

people who are so troubled by Unity are in minority.

Have you noticed that Unbuntu has been overtaken by other distros? End users are speaking, and Gnome developers are not listening. I am not the first to notice.

Why Isn't GNOME Listening?

What has GNOME learned from user reactions to GNOME 3? Apparently, only how to ignore feedback. ...

In fact, GNOME appears so little interested in feedback that Day simply turned off comments after 115 had been posted. The comments were not particularly hostile -- some were favorable and almost all of them polite and informed -- but the comments were cut off, despite the obvious eagerness for discussion.

http://www.datamation.com/open-source/why-isnt-gnome-listening-1.html

Re:Gnome and Ubuntu are losing to other distros

[js_sebastian]

people who are so troubled by Unity are in minority.

Have you noticed that Unbuntu has been overtaken by other distros?

No, because it hasn't. On distrowatch, mint has caught up with ubuntu, but Distrowatch has a niche public of linux geeks. For the general public, ubuntu is more well known than all other linux distros combined. Try google trends "linux ubuntu" versus "linux mint". Or take a look at this article: http://www.starryhope.com/ubuntu-most-popular-linux-distro/. ubuntu gets twice as much google queries as the other top 9 distributions *combined*.

Re:Gnome and Ubuntu are losing to other distros

[amiga3D]

You're right that it hasn't been overtaken but it has lost a lot of ground. It will most likely lose more as people like myself will not be installing it for family and friends anymore. The last few installs I have done are linux mint.

Re:Gnome and Ubuntu are losing to other distros

[unixisc]

On distrowatch - which is by no means the sole place that people go to get downloads of their favorite distro - Ubuntu has lost ground to Mint, but it's still #2. Fedora is still a distanat 3rd, followed by OpenSuse, Arch, Debian, Centos and so on. But I do agree w/ you that it will lose more ground, as it has abandoned not only Gnome2 but KDE as well, and is likely to drop support for Xubuntu and Lubuntu in future, going by their trends. Also, if they have decided that their only future is on servers and tablets, it may well be that they've thrown in the towel as far as the desktop goes.

There's always an alternative....

[couchslug]

http://www.debian.org/

I think it's a fork of Ubuntu or something.

Re:There's always an alternative....

[steveha]

I never stopped using Debian on my servers. Debian Stable for the win.

For desktops and especially for laptops, I'm still (sigh) on Ubuntu. To think that I used to look forward to each release!

I recently had to set up a laptop. First I tried Linux Mint, because I like their attitude toward the users. (You liked GNOME 2.x? Here's MGSE, here's Mate, and here's Cinnamon.) However, I was unable to build using Clang, because the linker would fail (something not quite set up right with the C library). Second I tried Debian 6.0, and I smiled when the GNOME 2.x desktop came up. But then I realized that my WiFi hardware wasn't working at all. I'm spoiled by good job Ubuntu has done of making WiFi "Just Work". So in the end I put Ubuntu 11.10 on there, and installed the PPA to get Cinnamon.

Cinnamon has rough edges, but it's good enough to get me working on the laptop, and I have hopes that it will be refined and polished to the point where it will match GNOME 2.x.

Another possibility is to just run GNOME Shell, but install about two dozen extensions to make it look and work more like GNOME 2.x.

Or you could just let the GNOME guys tell you how to use your own computer, and use GNOME Shell; that's a bit more tolerable than Unity.

steveha

Re:There's always an alternative....

[aembleton]

Or install Linux Mint Debian edition with XFCE: http://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php

This gives you the benefit of Debian rolling releases and I found that my wifi worked out of the box just as it does on Ubuntu based distros. XFCE uses GTK 2, and should eventually move to GTK 3 when that API stabilises. This seems to be the best option for me for now, although I'm keeping an eye on Cinnamon.

Re:There's always an alternative....

[sqldr]

Debian Stable for the win

I wish they would do something somewhere between "stable" and "testing". I eventually switched to ubuntu server because it seemed to find the right balance between rock solid and providing reasonably up to date stuff. They need "tested everywhere except some weird guy who can't DHCP" or something.

Re:There's always an alternative....

[steveha]

I wish they would do something somewhere between "stable" and "testing".

There used to be a project like that. It was called "Ubuntu".

Originally, Ubuntu was pretty much Debian with a 6-month release cycle. Over time, Ubuntu kept making things better and feeding back the changes upstream.

But these days Ubuntu is setting policy. Window buttons on the left! "Unity" on the desktop!

But they haven't egregiously broken the Debian underpinnings of Ubuntu, and it is still possible to swap things out and have what you want. That's why I did, in the end, go back to Ubuntu.

Sounds like I could have gone for Linux Mint Debian, too, but done is done. I'll look at Linux Mint Debian sometime later.

steveha

Re:There's always an alternative....

[sqldr]

There used to be a project like that. It was called "Ubuntu". Originally, Ubuntu was pretty much Debian with a 6-month release cycle.

This is why I'm a massive fan of ubuntu server. It's got just the right sweet spot between stability and functionality, as opposed to redhat where I ended up compiling and packaging PHP 5.3 to deploy to about 200 machines, let alone the fact that when a machine forkbombed, you couldn't ssh to it because the scheduler improvements in 2.6.22 weren't in the 2.6.18 that redhat 5 made is put up with for umpteen years. Redhat 6 was like going from 2002 to 2009 in one go.. in 2011.

Window buttons on the left! "Unity" on the desktop!

As someone who dodged unity, and actually switched from KDE to gnome 3 as one of the few people on earth who like it, I was talking to a guy in the office who really likes unity, and having watched him use it, I'm half tempted to give it another try, apart from the whole "unity/gnome 3" fork thing. And bringing windows up*.

Anyway, i did ask about the buttons on the left thing, so he demonstrated. When you maximise a window, the menu becomes part of the top bar, and the close buttons also. On the right, they would get in the way of the "me menu" and all that stuff. There was nowhere else to put it. I guess it's just different, not "wrong". And as a left handed person who HATES playstation games which don't let you swap the sticks, I can sort of see that there isn't a "right" in that.

*Open 2 terminals. Then open something full screen like firefox. Then try to bring ONE of the windows to the front. The only way to do it is via the "alt-`" shortcut. You can't do it with the mouse - it brings up both. I'm a sysadmin, I have terminals EVERYWHERE. If they all came to the front it would be like an explosion.

Re:There's always an alternative....

[steveha]

As someone who dodged unity, and actually switched from KDE to gnome 3 as one of the few people on earth who like it, I was talking to a guy in the office who really likes unity, and having watched him use it, I'm half tempted to give it another try, apart from the whole "unity/gnome 3" fork thing. And bringing windows up*.

I'm annoyed by Unity, partly on principle. By design, Unity is docked on the left side of the screen; you are not permitted to move it somewhere else. That's just petty. I got used to the cool feature of quick-zoom with the mouse wheel and the "logo" key; Canonical ripped that out because it didn't work with Unity. I use a giant, high-resolution monitor, and I don't want a single global menu bar; I like a menu bar per window, and I have the space for it.

So many changes, most of them I don't like, and most of them baked in with no option to change them. GNOME Shell likewise has many changes, most of which I don't like and are baked in.

Not the way to win me over.

steveha

Xubuntu

[tepples]

For me, Linux Mint gives me all of what was great about Ubuntu but with a UI that I can tailor to my liking.

And I've found that Xubuntu does the same for me, except with a minor niggle about Samba folder sharing.

Xubuntu

[tepples]

Unity gave me a severe distaste

At which point I promptly did sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop and didn't look back.

Re:Ubuntu's stupid branding

[Skapare]

Won't happen until 2017 when they run out of letters after Zany Zebra.

Re:AND it's no SNES works finelonger relevant.

[mister_playboy]

-making SNES work on AMD 64 wouldn't hurt either.

Are you trying to use ZSNES? Don't bother. Use snes9x or bsnes instead.

I hung in as long as I could...

[bunhed]

I really did! Just switched over to mint yesterday. I can't take it anymore. I gotta eat therefore I gotta get some work done dammit!!

I don't understand

[TheInternetGuy]

Whether you like the HUD or not, I cannot understand why new untested stuff like this shows up first in a LTS release of ubuntu.

XFCE

[Artemis3]

I'm using Xubuntu just fine, thank you very much...

I need Kubuntu

[batistuta]

I hope you are serious, because I really need Kubuntu. I'm not kidding, it is the only distro that satisfies my needs. I'll explain because I'm sure other people are on the same boat:

- Want KDE, of course
- Easy to install. Must work out of the box
- Installer must work. When I gave OpenSuse a shot, the installer messed up my truecrypt MBR that I use for Windows 7, although I told it to install GRUB on the /root partition. So much for OpenSuse
- Up-to-date Software. I also like the ability to give new KDE releases a try without waiting for 3 months for them. KDE PPA is awesome
- Easy upgrade every six months. An upgrade must work without backup/restore. I respect Clement's work on Mint very much, but for me, I don't want to backup and restore my system every six months.
- Repository for Skype, proprietary drivers, etc.

Have a laptop, and it is sometimes used by different people at my home. This means:
- Need encryption in case it gets stolen when I travel with it. Don't want full disc encryption, because that means typing two passwords. I want one single password.
- Don't want container-based encryption, because that means preallocating space for each user. I want something that grows dynamically, based on whatever a user needs. Ubuntu's approach for home encryption using individual files is just what I want. I know is not good for sparse files, but that's not my use-case.
- I have nvidia-optimus. So I need an easy way to install Bumbebee. Kubuntu gives you that. And nope, no BIOS switch so I need it in software

As far as I could tell, Kubuntu is the only distro that does what I need. So please don't let it die. Thanks

Re:I need Kubuntu

[flyingfsck]

Fedora has every DE. You can install it any which way you want. The missus and I are both happy users of Fedora 16 with XFCE with encrypted disks and she had absolutely no problems moving from Windows Vista.

Re:I need Kubuntu

[batistuta]

thanks but Fedora doesn't fullfill my requirements. Please take a look at my list above again.

No, it's not

[batistuta]

Mint can be upgraded between releases. This makes them drastically different, up to the point that Mint is not an option for me. Their target users are as a result different.

And I don't mean to troll with that. I really like Mint and respect Clement's work. But I can't recommend Mint to everyone as much as Ubuntu.

Re:"Pingolin" in Portuguese

[sqldr]

Well, they were going to call it "prodigious penis", but grandma objected

Re:"Pingolin" in Portuguese

[silverglade00]

To be fair, it wasn't all that prodigious to her after all the ones she's seen.

Re:"Pingolin" in Portuguese

[sqldr]

well, she is 93..

Mint Linux?

[phorm]

How about Mint?

I haven't used it myself, but I know many people who have moved to Mint as a nice midpoint between 'buntu and Debian. It'll likely be my next choice when I do a fresh install.

Re:Mint Linux?

[Nimey]

Mint has indeed released a KDE install DVD. I'm downloading this right now to try in a VM.

Re:"Pingolin" in Portuguese

[vbraga]

I never heard of it and I've been living in Rio since 91.

Re:And in other news....

[iceaxe]

WTF is wrong with you morons? Install whatever WM or DE you like and run it. I'm running LXDE myself. Works great. If you're too stupid to figure out how to change desktop environments go away, you aren't wanted here, you aren't a nerd, this site is not for you. And get off my lawn.

This ain't Windows!

[gottabeme]

$ sudo aptitude purge ~ngnome ~nunity xubuntu-desktop+
$ for i in gconf gtk; do mv ~/.$i{,.old}; done

Those two commands ought to take care of most of it. If you still have trouble, run $(aptitude purge ~ngtk) and then install the xubuntu-desktop package again.

Really, reinstalling from scratch?

Simpler...

[gottabeme]

$ sudo aptitude purge ~ngnome ~nunity xubuntu-desktop+
$ for i in gconf gtk gnome; do mv ~/.$i{,.old}; done