Ubuntu 11.10 ('Oneiric Ocelot') Released 455
Cue the Ubuntu release parties — Ubuntu 11.10 has arrived. Ars Technica has a very positive summary of the changes in 11.10; Joe Brockmeier's piece of a few weeks back explains the return to Xen to Ubuntu and the introduction of Juju (formerly Ensemble). Asks an anonymous reader: "Any outstanding reasons why I shouldn't upgrade?" YMMV, but as a long-time Ubuntu user, and like many other users, I have mixed feelings about the concerted (and now complete) move away from a conventional WIMP interface to the new Unity. With previous versions, it was possible to choose a "classic" look rather than the default of Unity; now, for good or ill, the left-hand vertical menu is a permanent desktop element. It looks great to me, in the way the Canonical developers intend: as a consistent, replicable, supportable interface to recommend to (for instance) my parents — but I'm used to (and prefer!) more traditional WIMP environments, so at least for now have switched to Linux Mint's Debian Edition.
The end of Ubuntu for me? (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow.... its been a good run but, Unity just doesn't cut it for me.
I like where they are going with it, its cool, It was a fun toy, but, it was also klunky for me. Now, I know I am going to get roasted, but, sorry I used Unity for all of 3 days, so my memory may be fuzzy but....
I use multiple firefox profiles...at the same time. Often I have one that is a proxy into an internal net, and another that is public. Often i am doing things on the public one that I wouldn't want going over the private net. Think of this scenario... I have to proxy into work at night to fix a server, but, just before I was paged I was browsing porn. I don't want to be browsing porn through the proxy, and setting up foxy proxy with rules is just asking for an embarassing mistake. Actually, this is a rare scenario, but theres multiple networks I need to work in, and several of them I wouldn't want associated with my blog postings or slashdot rants.
Unity just failed to manage this at all. Part of this is, indeed, that firefox profile handling is brain damaged (if I specify a profile on the command line, why do I need "-no-remote"? shouldn't it be able to tell that the open window is a different profile and no I don't want to just connect to that?) but it would totally ignore the second profile. No way to get a second firefox dock icon, no way to deal with this, now rogue, application.
That was the real nail in the coffin for Unity, but beyond that....
I am an advanced user. I have things setup in GNOME the way _I_ want. Sure, I can rip out the unity stuff, it wouldn't be the first time that I went to down on an X Session config...but I chose ubuntu because it allowed me to minimize that shit. I like the defaults and found them easy to customize to be what I wanted. I like my setup and that Ubuntu has been fairly good about not stomping on my setup since I started using it around 6 or 7.
I will likely choose a new distribution if there isn't an easy way to not use unity.
Re:What distribution left for developers? (Score:3, Interesting)
As a power user and a developer, I switched from Ubuntu to Fedora after I discovered how awful Unity was in 11.04. I'm very happy with it. YMMV (I'm a Gnome 3 fan -- but if you don't like it, there's XFCE, LXDE, xmonad, etc etc).
Re:This is still WIMP (Score:5, Interesting)
until I open the command line and my life gets happier
Of course, this is the case for every GUI, excepting platforms that don't come with a decent CLI (windows). You're never going to find a GUI that makes your life happier than the CLI because CLIs are fundamentally superior.
So my advice is to give up. Embrace the CLI for everything, and use the absolute minimum GUI you need. There's a shit ton of tiling window managers out there for people who know what they want from a UI.
Re:apt-get install gnome? (Score:5, Interesting)
You can, but it's symptomatic of the way that Ubuntu is being run. I remember awhile back upgrading to the next release, only to find that they had decided to include Unity. At that point, unity was at best a polished turd, it didn't behave consistantly, sometimes the menu would stay open and other times it would close. They insisted upon it being put on the left side, which meant that those using it in a VM had to have a monitor edge there, otherwise it was really annoying.
I'm curious what you're planning to do when Wayland is prematurely included, by the time you remove that an install something else, you might as well install a sane distro.
Longstanding multiple monitor issues not fixed (Score:4, Interesting)
They still haven't made any progress on the issue with multiple monitors whereby the left panel goes in a shitty place depending upon which screen is your main monitor. Mark Shuttleworth weighed in and basically said fuck you we're not fixing it. Even though ~50% of multiple monitor configurations are affected by this.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/668415 [launchpad.net]
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ayatana-design/+bug/742544 [launchpad.net]
Re:I should probably upgrade my netbook (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a dual-screen setup with my main monitor on the right, so the left-handed, fixed menu really is a pain: either I make it collapse, and then have to target a very slim pixel-wide bar to un-collapse it, or I have to leave it there and waste screen space. They could at least allow us to switch left and right, and if make it as flexible as (gasp !) Windows, that lets us put the start bar on any border.
Also, grub2 has issues: couldn't handle handle a... blank HD for whole-disk installation ? I got a blinking cursor and hard reset on that one. And on my netbook, grub2 listed more than 1 entry per partition (!?), many of which non-bootable or system restore, with no way to clean, re-order... that monstrosity.
And finally, the way that start works is a pain, especially trying to put several folders on there.
To me, this sounds that developer arrogance: unfriendly stuff nobody wants (except the devs for bragging rights), that doesn't even work right. Ar users consulted at all, or is the Ubuntu dev process a giant nerd wank-fest ? In the end, this is making me lose confidence in Ubuntu in the long term. Long-term being, to them, 3yrs (LTS desktop), which also worries me.
Re:Here we go... (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that you can go too stable.
PPAs are your friend. After trying 11.04 Natty and discovering that after 6 months Canonical still hasn't solved a jerky window problem between Compiz and the nvidia driver, I "upgraded" to 10.10 Maverick.
Add in a bunch of PPAs and I've got up-to-date versions of all the software that I really care about,
Re:What distribution left for developers? (Score:5, Interesting)
The way Unity auto-hides the top menu (File, Edit, etc) really interferes how I interact with my programs. Instead of looking at the menu target (say Tools), then moving the mouse pointer there, I have to move my pointer to the top, then find my menu target, then move my mouse again to get to Tools. On my 24" monitor, I have many windows open, and having to move all the way to the top just to *see* where my Tools menu just drives me nuts. No thank you.