Ubuntu 11.04 Beta released, reviewed

By Joey Sneddon, Published March 31, 2011

The first beta release of Ubuntu 11.04 is available to download and test.A look at the beta and its feature follows, but chances are you want the download to start whilst you wait.You will find a variety of images - 32bit, 64bit, server, etc - at the link below. Where possible try to use the .torrent provided. This way not only will you get it faster, but in doing so so will someone else.Ubuntu 11.04: Game-changer? Ubuntu 11.04 is a game changer. There's a new desktop shell (Unity), global menu bar for application menus, new scrollbars and the traditional notification area/icon stew has been bid a not-so-found adieu, too.With so much change up front it's natural to feel intimidated or apprehensive about trying it. The good news is that you can relax: Ubuntu 11.04 may have a new interface but as with every release of Ubuntu the improvement in usability more than speaks for itself. Installation If you have installed Ubuntu during the last year or so then you'll be familiar with the helpful, straight-forward nature of Ubuntu's installer. This hasn't changed too much, although there are new installation options presented - including a "safe" upgrade from 10.10 to 11.04 that promises to leave your files in tact, as well as bringing many of your installed applications over, too.Features The main components of Unity comprise of a Launcher, a set of 'Lenses' for viewing and finding specific things, and a global menu applet that frees up vertical space by taking menus out of applications and putting them in the top panel. The Launcher The Unity launcher may look like a fancy Dock bolted to the left-hand side, but, as if to prove the adage 'looks can be deceiving', it is rather different..You can pin applications to it for easy access; switch between open applications; right-click some applications for handy 'quick lists' of action items; and, on applications such as Empathy or Evolution, see unread message counts, transfer progress dialogues and more.The launcher auto-hides when an application 'touches' it or is maximized. This way it's never obstructing the task in hand. Should any application require attention whilst the launcher is hidden its icon pop out and shake to let you know.Accessing the launcher when it is hidden is easy too, just poke the upper-left hand corner with your mouse. Drag and drop One brilliant feature that's worth mentioning is the file type aware drag-and-drop. Drag a picture on to the launcher and only the applications that support opening the file type remain lit and other app icons dim.See the video further down for a demonstration of this. Lenses So how do you find or launch applications that aren't on the launcher? This, along with file searching, is done via the use of 'Lenses' - visually slick task-orientated overlays that use Zeitgeist' - a semantic search and tracking engine - to display relevant results such as most recently used, favourites, etc.Two 'lenses' are included on the launcher by default: 'File Lens' and 'Applications Lens'.The Panel Ubuntu 11.04 uses a single desktop panel with a Global Menu applet for displaying applications menus. Anyone who has ever used OS X will adapt to this change quickly. For others it may take some time - unlearning habits isn't supposed to be easy.If when launching an application you wonder where you menus are then note that, by default, they are hidden, only appearing when mouse-ing over the 'menu area' of the panel. This looks neater, but can be confusing.Maximized windows have their window buttons embedded into the panel to save even more vertical space. The Dash Clicking on the Ubuntu icon to the left of the screen (or hitting your super/windows key) will reveal the Dash. This is a 'one stop shop' for finding or launching applications and files. Just start typing to see results begin to filter in.You can see many of the above features mentioned above demoed in this video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkFv5jwbNq8 Sound Menu The Ubuntu Sound Menu has been improved. Alongside support for music playerback, playlist selection and volume control comes support for the adjusting of Microphone levels during voice calls.Fire up Skype (or another supported VoIP application) to see the Microphone entry appear in the Sound Menu. Look Ignoring the obvious difference that an entirely new shell brings looks wise, it is pretty much business as usual for Ubuntu in the theme department. The boot screen is the same, the default wallpaper is only subtly different from the previous, and the default Ambiance GTK theme and mono icon set have received the most minor of changes.Despite the new 'shell' Unity is still themeable for the most part, although some themes work better with the new panel than others.Applications The default application set has been updated and upgraded, including:Firefox 4 Banshee media player LibreOffice Shotwell photo manager - greater file support Empathy - now with user blocking Ubuntu Software Centre - now with ratings and reviewsBeta stability With this being a beta release stability is not guaranteed. Whilst I encountered no major issues using it it is still not uncommon for Compiz to crash, leaving Ubuntu in varying states of uselessness.The trick is to be prepared: create a Compiz launcher on your desktop to enable a quick re-launch. Don't Miss These Features: Trying it out? Make sure you check out: -Test Drive - a neat way of trying out the top 30 applications without installing them. Not enabled by default, but switching it on only takes on package. Unity Love Handles - Resizing windows just got sexy! Regardless of whether you're on a touch-enabled device or still using Mr mouse and Mrs Keyboard you can use this insanely slick feature.Unity 2D - don't have the grunt for the full Unity 3D experience but don't want to miss out? Install the 2D version from the Software Centre. Indicator-Network - Another not-in-default but if you're keen for connection to look good check otu the visually stunning successor-in-development to the current Network applet -Indicator-Network. VolleyBrawl - There's currently only one game for sale in the Ubuntu Software Centre and it happens to belong to us! $2.99 + some time to kill = fun fun fun! (to quote Rebecca black)

The first beta release of Ubuntu 11.04 is available to download and test.

desktop-r90

A look at the beta and its feature follows, but chances are you want the download to start whilst you wait.

You will find a variety of images – 32bit, 64bit, server, etc – at the link below. Where possible try to use the .torrent provided. This way not only will you get it faster, but in doing so so will someone else.

Ubuntu 11.04: Game-changer?

Ubuntu 11.04 is a game changer. There’s a new desktop shell (Unity), global menu bar for application menus, new scrollbars and the traditional notification area/icon stew has been bid a not-so-found adieu, too.

With so much change up front it’s natural to feel intimidated or apprehensive about trying it. The good news is that you can relax: Ubuntu 11.04 may have a new interface but as with every release of Ubuntu the improvement in usability more than speaks for itself.

Installation

If you have installed Ubuntu during the last year or so then you’ll be familiar with the helpful, straight-forward nature of Ubuntu’s installer. This hasn’t changed too much, although there are new installation options presented – including a “safe” upgrade from 10.10 to 11.04 that promises to leave your files in tact, as well as bringing many of your installed applications over, too.

Features

The main components of Unity comprise of a Launcher, a set of ‘Lenses’ for viewing and finding specific things, and a global menu applet that frees up vertical space by taking menus out of applications and putting them in the top panel.

The Launcher

The Unity launcher may look like a fancy Dock bolted to the left-hand side, but, as if to prove the adage ‘looks can be deceiving’, it is rather different..

You can pin applications to it for easy access; switch between open applications; right-click some applications for handy ‘quick lists’ of action items; and, on applications such as Empathy or Evolution, see unread message counts, transfer progress dialogues and more.

The launcher auto-hides when an application ‘touches’ it or is maximized. This way it’s never obstructing the task in hand. Should any application require attention whilst the launcher is hidden its icon pop out and shake to let you know.

Accessing the launcher when it is hidden is easy too, just poke the upper-left hand corner with your mouse.

Drag and drop

One brilliant feature that’s worth mentioning is the file type aware drag-and-drop. Drag a picture on to the launcher and only the applications that support opening the file type remain lit and other app icons dim.

See the video further down for a demonstration of this.

Lenses

So how do you find or launch applications that aren’t on the launcher? This, along with file searching, is done via the use of ‘Lenses’ – visually slick task-orientated overlays that use Zeitgeist’ - a semantic search and tracking engine – to display relevant results such as most recently used, favourites, etc.

Two ‘lenses’ are included on the launcher by default: ‘File Lens’ and ‘Applications Lens’.

The Panel

Ubuntu 11.04 uses a single desktop panel with a Global Menu applet for displaying applications menus. Anyone who has ever used OS X will adapt to this change quickly. For others it may take some time – unlearning habits isn’t supposed to be easy.

If when launching an application you wonder where you menus are then note that, by default, they are hidden, only appearing when mouse-ing over the ‘menu area’ of the panel. This looks neater, but can be confusing.

Maximized windows have their window buttons embedded into the panel to save even more vertical space.

The Dash

Clicking on the Ubuntu icon to the left of the screen (or hitting your super/windows key) will reveal the Dash. This is a ‘one stop shop’ for finding or launching applications and files. Just start typing to see results begin to filter in.

You can see many of the above features mentioned above demoed in this video:

Sound Menu

The Ubuntu Sound Menu has been improved. Alongside support for music playerback, playlist selection and volume control comes support for the adjusting of Microphone levels during voice calls.

Fire up Skype (or another supported VoIP application) to see the Microphone entry appear in the Sound Menu.

Look

Ignoring the obvious difference that an entirely new shell brings looks wise, it is pretty much business as usual for Ubuntu in the theme department. The boot screen is the same, the default wallpaper is only subtly different from the previous, and the default Ambiance GTK theme and mono icon set have received the most minor of changes.

ubuntu 11.04 new icons

Despite the new ‘shell’ Unity is still themeable for the most part, although some themes work better with the new panel than others.

Applications

The default application set has been updated and upgraded, including:

Firefox 4
Banshee media player
LibreOffice
Shotwell photo manager – greater file support
Empathy – now with user blocking
Ubuntu Software Centre – now with ratings and reviews

Beta stability

With this being a beta release stability is not guaranteed. Whilst I encountered no major issues using it it is still not uncommon for Compiz to crash, leaving Ubuntu in varying states of uselessness.

The trick is to be prepared: create a Compiz launcher on your desktop to enable a quick re-launch.

Don’t Miss These Features:

Trying it out? Make sure you check out: -

Test Drive - a neat way of trying out the top 30 applications without installing them. Not enabled by default, but switching it on only takes on package.
Unity Love Handles - Resizing windows just got sexy! Regardless of whether you’re on a touch-enabled device or still using Mr mouse and Mrs Keyboard you can use this insanely slick feature.

Unity 2D - don’t have the grunt for the full Unity 3D experience but don’t want to miss out? Install the 2D version from the Software Centre.
Indicator-Network - Another not-in-default but if you’re keen for connection to look good check otu the visually stunning successor-in-development to the current Network applet -Indicator-Network.
VolleyBrawl - There’s currently only one game for sale in the Ubuntu Software Centre and it happens to belong to us! $2.99 + some time to kill = fun fun fun! (to quote Rebecca black)

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http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FX5ITOLLHVNOY673XBRGCKF3DI Freddi
Awesome!!!
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FX5ITOLLHVNOY673XBRGCKF3DI Freddi
Awesome!!!
http://twitter.com/vanysha95 Ivan
Natty is just COOL!!!

http://twitter.com/d2kx Dennis MH
It’s amazing. No other OS on my notebook for the next 7 months. Then Ubuntu 11.10.

http://twitter.com/vanysha95 Ivan
Natty is just COOL!!!
http://adnan.quaium.com Adnan Quaium
Great! Thanks for the heads up… Joey! I’ve been waiting all day when this post will come… :D

Anonymous
DEJA VU EFFECT ;)

http://twitter.com/appleseedhuman Appleseed Humanity
Didn’t you already say that? ;)

http://twitter.com/rafabr4 Rafael Boy
With Two Betas I’m sure it will be pretty stable.

Craig Barnes
Maybe they can release a new beta every day for a month. With Thirty Betas I’m sure it will be really, REALLY stable.

http://twitter.com/tomdwright Tom Wright
Well it worked for Firefox 4 :-)

Anonymous
omg, i really gotta invest some time to plan my migration from osx sl to natty.
sadly plex isn’t available for linux yet and xbmc has not all the kewl features.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1405292335 Tom Ankcorn
just duel boot and take it gradually. found its always the quickest overall and usually the best experiance
http://alaukik.myopenid.com/ Alaukik
try boxee .

Anonymous
omg, i really gotta invest some time to plan my migration from osx sl to natty.
sadly plex isn’t available for linux yet and xbmc has not all the kewl features.
Anonymous
omg, i really gotta invest some time to plan my migration from osx sl to natty.
sadly plex isn’t available for linux yet and xbmc has not all the kewl features.
Anonymous
omg, i really gotta invest some time to plan my migration from osx sl to natty.
sadly plex isn’t available for linux yet and xbmc has not all the kewl features.
http://twitter.com/babai101 Soumyadeep Chanda
From now its squashing bugs all the way………
http://twitter.com/babai101 Soumyadeep Chanda
From now its squashing bugs all the way………
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FVKXZ324JEQQI4C6XCFTQSUUBQ Andrei Sun
i remember how naive i was to install natty alpha 1, without backing my system last winter :D now i’ll be a good boy and wait for the 28 of april!

http://twitter.com/DarthScape Kyle B
you should still backup your data though… especially because today is world backup day

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1405292335 Tom Ankcorn
ubuntu one is awesome for backing stuff up :P
i have 20gb’s of space and i have used about 8 gb with music and films and work. definatly worth the Â£20 for a years space
http://anaershadowynomaly.deviantart.com Farran Lee
Would be nice if ubuntu one worked properly (for me?) today then -.-

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FVKXZ324JEQQI4C6XCFTQSUUBQ Andrei Sun
i remember how naive i was to install natty alpha 1, without backing my system last winter :D now i’ll be a good boy and wait for the 28 of april!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000563114009 Oliver Brian
good work!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000563114009 Oliver Brian
good work!
http://www.twm-kd.com/ BigWhale
Will it install and work in Virtualbox? I had nothing but trouble with Alpha and daily builds. :/

http://twitter.com/Magnesus Magnesus
Probably not. I tried some version in Virtualbox but Unity was not showing and window manager kept crashing. I’ll wait for 11.10.
http://openid-provider.appspot.com/TheMerkinman Merk
Worked for me. Granted at first you won’t have Unity due to requiring 3D. So after installing Natty do NOT install the Virtualbox Guest Addtions. Instead, install the package virtualbox-ose-guest-x11 in the Natty guest, restart, and you should have Unity.

http://twitter.com/kalifriki Kalifriki
Thanks!!
http://www.twm-kd.com/ BigWhale
Thanks for the info. I’ll try that. These things should be documented. Hrmpf! *sigh*
But it will have to wair, I just found a show stopper bug in ubiquity… Rats!
http://openid-provider.appspot.com/Seth.Kriticos@googlemail.com Seth Kriticos
Thanks.
Oh, and as a sidenote, the host Virtualbox has to be version 4.0.4 too, so if you want to test from Maverick, you have to fetch it from a ppa firts, or the 3d driver crashes:
% sudo add-apt-repository ppa:debfx/virtualbox
% sudo apt-get update
% sudo apt-get upgrade
restart
% sudo init 6
http://openid-provider.appspot.com/Seth.Kriticos@googlemail.com Seth Kriticos
Thanks.
Oh, and as a sidenote, the host Virtualbox has to be version 4.0.4 too, so if you want to test from Maverick, you have to fetch it from a ppa firts, or the 3d driver crashes:
% sudo add-apt-repository ppa:debfx/virtualbox
% sudo apt-get update
% sudo apt-get upgrade
restart
% sudo init 6
http://openid-provider.appspot.com/Seth.Kriticos@googlemail.com Seth Kriticos
Thanks.
Oh, and as a sidenote, the host Virtualbox has to be version 4.0.4 too, so if you want to test from Maverick, you have to fetch it from a ppa firts, or the 3d driver crashes:
% sudo add-apt-repository ppa:debfx/virtualbox
% sudo apt-get update
% sudo apt-get upgrade
restart
% sudo init 6
http://openid-provider.appspot.com/Seth.Kriticos@googlemail.com Seth Kriticos
Thanks.
Oh, and as a sidenote, the host Virtualbox has to be version 4.0.4 too, so if you want to test from Maverick, you have to fetch it from a ppa firts, or the 3d driver crashes:
% sudo add-apt-repository ppa:debfx/virtualbox
% sudo apt-get update
% sudo apt-get upgrade
restart
% sudo init 6

http://www.twm-kd.com/ BigWhale
Will it install and work in Virtualbox? I had nothing but trouble with Alpha and daily builds. :/
http://twitter.com/TeaPartyUpdate Tea Party Update
download link broken

http://anaershadowynomaly.deviantart.com Farran Lee
I think it’s just a heavy load on the server, refresh it every so often and it’ll work
http://anaershadowynomaly.deviantart.com Farran Lee
I think it’s just a heavy load on the server, refresh it every so often and it’ll work

http://twitter.com/TeaPartyUpdate Tea Party Update
download link broken
http://twitter.com/Sandeep_Kr_FOSS Sandeep Pilakhnawal
It’s really AWESOME ;)
http://twitter.com/Sandeep_Kr_FOSS Sandeep Pilakhnawal
It’s really AWESOME ;)
Anonymous
Can’t wait to install it
Anonymous
Can’t wait to install it
http://twitter.com/DarthScape Kyle B
DO WANT!
http://twitter.com/DarthScape Kyle B
DO WANT!
http://profiles.google.com/andmieritz Andreas Mieritz
Is it possible to unhide menu’s by default? I like seeing the menu’s, and I find it rather confusing that they’re hidden.
Anonymous
What about the ayatana scrollbars, are they making an appearance?

http://twitter.com/d2kx Dennis MH
Yeah they’re not in yet but I would love to have them :-)

Anonymous
You can install them from a ppa:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/03/ubuntus-new-overlay-scrollbars-for-natty/

http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/C6S22ANL35LHAH27EX43XFQKTQ Klau3
I like the new scrollbars, but there are still alpha software (IMHO)
Bilal Akhtar
They’ll surely get in before release. When Mark wants something to happen, it always happens!

http://openid-provider.appspot.com/TheMerkinman Merk
Like Windicators?

https://launchpad.net/~sabdfl Mark Shuttleworth
Patches welcome :-)
Scrollbars landing this week for testing before beta2 and a final decision on their inclusion.

Anonymous
Cool, I’ve never seen Shuttleworth post here before
http://twitter.com/humphreybc Benjamin Humphrey
Mark reads pretty much every article I believe and comments fairly regularly. Pretty nice :)
http://twitter.com/humphreybc Benjamin Humphrey
The scrollbars are nice, Mark. Go for it.
http://twitter.com/humphreybc Benjamin Humphrey
The scrollbars are nice, Mark. Go for it.
http://alaukik.myopenid.com/ Alaukik
OMG!!!!!!!!!!!MARK SHUTTLEWORTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
https://launchpad.net/~rafalcieslak256 rc
You can meet him really often on the IRC channel :)

Anonymous
Mark never said those would make it to a particular release

http://mark-y-a.myopenid.com/ Mark
Excited to test it! :D I’m not even 3 months into Meerkat and already Narwhal is coming out to poke it aside with its big and long and hard tusk(?). LOL!

http://twitter.com/me4oslav Georgi Karavasilev
:D And than the ocelot is gonna scratch the narwhal do death :D

http://w1ngnut.myopenid.com/ w1ngnut
Unity getting better at every release. Hope it’s robust enough till release date. Also hope they still have time to revamp themes, fonts and icon set.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1405292335 Tom Ankcorn
its so easy to customise (pretty much like 10.10)
but i do wish they would include faenza by default

http://twitter.com/holyjihadbatman Callum Saunders
well next release is when were gettin a totally new icon and sound theme yes? looking forward to thatt

http://joajimenez.tumblr.com Joan Jimenez
How to upgrade from Alpha 3?

http://twitter.com/holyjihadbatman Callum Saunders
as long as its up to date you’ll have the beta

http://joajimenez.tumblr.com Joan Jimenez
And thanks. This it’ some kind of info that must be a little more clear: “If you are using/upgrading the Alpha. You dont need to download the beta”.

Anonymous
stay upto date with update manager…datz all.i am doing the same since alpha2.on evry update i got new features or stability or speed.
UBUNTU AN ANCIENT HUMANATARIAN word meaning makes technolife little easier ;)

http://joajimenez.tumblr.com Joan Jimenez
Thanks.

Anonymous
stay upto date with update manager…datz all.i am doing the same since alpha2.on evry update i got new features or stability or speed.
UBUNTU AN ANCIENT HUMANATARIAN word meaning makes technolife little easier ;)
http://openid-provider.appspot.com/TheMerkinman Merk
If you’re doing your normal upgrades, then you normally have beta 1. Keep doing it over time and you’ll have Beta 2, keep doing it and you’ll have the final version.

http://facebook.com/adammartin1989 Adam Martin
Unity has certainly improved a great deal since the netbook remix. Looking forward to the stable release.
http://blog.mohdisa.com/ mohdisa
damn cool, i really like this. how to upgrade from ubuntu 10.10 without iso?

Anonymous
Alt-F2, type “update-manager -d” (without quotes), press Upgrade. Follow instructions (if any)

http://profiles.google.com/ndr.mor Andrea Mor
Unity is the most beatiful desktop ever!! =)

http://twitter.com/Magnesus Magnesus
You are joking right?

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_HZILZGJ4PKNN67IK7JYXIKHLSM DjznBR
What in heaven’s name did you just eat? I am utterly distressed with the changes! I can’t use a MacOSX based interface. It breaks my logic. App menus should be where are supposed to be: the Application Windows themselves! Furthermore, the Classic Desktop was changed to look like MacOSX too. I quit using Ubuntu by the end of 2010… and had been looking around to see what would come next, but *THAT IS IT*…. it’s the end for me…. Bye Bye Ubby…. (Using Fedora since January)

http://twitter.com/saioke saioke
You do realize it’s just an optional thing right? You can continue to use the regular gnome interface. Unity is just going to be default on this release. That don’t mean you HAVE to use it. I’ll continue using Ubuntu as my primary OS, and I’m not going to let Unity stop me from doing so. Though, I do look forward to using it… It’s something new.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_AVOOEY6RYIWI3FXAP2DP7FZNWQ N.K.Ramnanthan
I know rite, unity is completely optional and I dont see why users are fussed about ubuntu because of that. If you don’t like Unity you can always choose the classic gnome desktop. I for myself am waiting for the official release of ubuntu natty. Inspite of all the negative reviews, I think natty is going to rock with unity.
And give it time, I’m sure unity will mature over the coming cycles.
Anonymous
Have to admit, it is going to put more “clear blue water” between Windows and Linux – or in this case, “clear orange and purple water”
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_6DFXBTPUHJTVGS6DSFCNX35IG4 Joe
It is my understanding that the “Classic” panel interface will no longer be developed after GNOME3 goes to the Shell. An orphaned system is not an option over the long term.
http://www.khattam.info _khAttAm_
You do realize there are other distros, right?
http://www.khattam.info _khAttAm_
You do realize there are other distros, right?

Akshat Jain
Bye.
http://alaukik.myopenid.com/ Alaukik
if you ever use osx yu would know the differences between unity and osx.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Marcelo-Martinez/100001745360837 Marcelo MartÃnez
I don’t understand why unity 2D is no installed by default…

Anonymous
Unity 2D is Qt-based, and as Qt is not on the CD (perhaps next cycle), Unity 2D cannot be installed by default.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Marcelo-Martinez/100001745360837 Marcelo MartÃnez
hopefully the next version already have QT installed and that everyone can use UNITY, to unify the desktop in the same style, with 3D support or not.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Marcelo-Martinez/100001745360837 Marcelo MartÃnez
I don’t understand why unity 2D is no installed by default…
http://gbutola.wordpress.com Gaurav Butola
What? “Pretending to install” :-/

Anonymous
lol, I noticed that too.
http://dylanmccall.blogspot.com/ dylan-m
:) That’s a screenshot I stuck on Twitter.
This thought went through my head when I saw the article:
â€œOh, excellent, now I can see if my slideshow update actually works in the real installer.â€
Suffice it to say, my hopes were thoroughly dashed when I realized Joey was using my test screenshot. I had to tear myself away from finding wolves in Minecraft (!!!!) and check for myself.

http://gbutola.wordpress.com Gaurav Butola
What? “Pretending to install” :-/
http://twitter.com/tancrackers John C
How come ubuntu releases a server edition with every release? Wouldn’t it be better (and easier) to only release a server edition with long term releases?
Question 2: Why don’t long term releases get backports of the new desktops (eg 10.04 getting let’s say kde 4.6)? Can’t there be a simple ppa?
http://twitter.com/tancrackers John C
How come ubuntu releases a server edition with every release? Wouldn’t it be better (and easier) to only release a server edition with long term releases?
Question 2: Why don’t long term releases get backports of the new desktops (eg 10.04 getting let’s say kde 4.6)? Can’t there be a simple ppa?
Anonymous
hello joey,
can somehow we can use avatars/smileys in disqus??miss it thoroughly …specialy in a moment of happienes like today :(

Anonymous
That’s not something in his control.

Anonymous
hello joey,
can somehow we can use avatars/smileys in disqus??miss it thoroughly …specialy in a moment of happienes like today :(
https://profiles.google.com/harveycabaguio Harvey
Too bad I switched to elementaryOS.

http://twitter.com/holyjihadbatman Callum Saunders
how did u get it?

Akshat Jain
That’s secret :P

http://twitter.com/holyjihadbatman Callum Saunders
how did u get it?
http://twitter.com/holyjihadbatman Callum Saunders
how did u get it?
http://twitter.com/saioke saioke
And you’re still browsing a Ubuntu news content site?

Akshat Jain
Its based on ubuntu -.-
http://www.khattam.info _khAttAm_
I stopped using Ubuntu back in Oct 2010 and moved to Debian testing, then to LMDE and now am using Fedora KDE Spin since December 2010.
Still I read this blog coz it is interesting.

http://alaukik.myopenid.com/ Alaukik
how about switching osx ? why go half the way ?

Anonymous
What if osx is half the way to elementary?

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_3WB7KLM5PIZ5KDIIAVW5Q2LTG4 Michael De
I doubt the competition with Gnome 3 is a good thing…since Gnome 3 is so much FRESHER!

http://twitter.com/me4oslav Georgi Karavasilev
Oh no please not the GS vs Unity thing, this is like Megadeth vs Metallica or sth simular, it will never end

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_3WB7KLM5PIZ5KDIIAVW5Q2LTG4 Michael De
All I have to say regarding the issue is that I would rather use distribution that uses a STANDARD (and DEFAULT) desktop environment than it’s own “proprietary shell”. (I know there’s a good sense in which Unity isn’t proprietary.) Sure, I can run Natty with Gnome 3, but I would prefer it like that by default just like every other gnome distribution. We’ll see, we’ll see…

ean5533
All I know is that this topic has been beat to death and definitely doesn’t need to be discussed any more in this article.
http://alaukik.myopenid.com/ Alaukik
WTF propritary shell??

http://www.khattam.info _khAttAm_
Canonical’s agreement allows them to release it under different license.
https://launchpad.net/~sabdfl Mark Shuttleworth
And yet, you get it under the GPLv3.
http://alaukik.myopenid.com/ Alaukik
you do realise that every free software has a copyright holder who can release the software in any license (including proprietary) except the public domain software in which anyone can do proprietary fork of it
so by your logic all software is proprietary ?
Bilal Akhtar
He was just trolling. Ignore him.

Anonymous
wat
Bilal Akhtar
Proprietary? I know about Canonical’s contributor agreement, but they are not going to make Unity proprietary! Deleting comment, highly derogatory.

http://alaukik.myopenid.com/ Alaukik
you cannot tell what canonical is going or not going to do but you do know that unity currently is GPLv3 .

http://twitter.com/me4oslav Georgi Karavasilev
Oh no please not the GS vs Unity thing, this is like Megadeth vs Metallica or sth simular, it will never end
http://twitter.com/me4oslav Georgi Karavasilev
Oh no please not the GS vs Unity thing, this is like Megadeth vs Metallica or sth simular, it will never end
Anonymous
Well, Gnome shell didn’t get that fresh before canonical launched Unity. It was messy before that and I think the competition changed gnome shell pretty much.
Anonymous
“It’s a matter of taste!” said the rabbit and licked his butt.. I bet he thought it’s fresher..
Craig Barnes
What does that even mean? It’s the attack of the bad-graphic-design-client again.

Anonymous
what about stability of Unity?

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1405292335 Tom Ankcorn
depends on your hardware I am having afew problems because of my really old graphics card (its only 124MB)

https://launchpad.net/~shnatsel Shnatsel
Blur in Dash now works!
Anonymous
Other than the ridiculous mouseover for menus, I like it. Nice Volleybrawl plug there, too.

Anonymous
It’s not a mouseover.

Anonymous
Whatever it is, I don’t dig it. Hopefully there’s an option to change that.

Anonymous
It’s not a mouseover.
http://twitter.com/holyjihadbatman Callum Saunders
??

Anonymous
do the new amd drivers work for anybody?
i cant launch compiz or unity if i have them installed.

Anonymous
Yeap, it does for me
Anonymous
Yeap, it does for me

Anonymous
How easy is it to go back to gnome panel, and does that get rid of global menu?

http://twitter.com/me4oslav Georgi Karavasilev
Very easy:
1) Log out and then log in in “Ubuntu Classic”
2) Remove the appmenu applet from the panel with right click on it
http://nicoburns.com/myopenid Nico Burns
Very easy (luckily) – simply select “Ubuntu Classic” from the login screen. It does not get rid of the global menu, but you can do that by right clicking it and selecting remove from panel (this only works with gnome-panel, not unity)
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1471563763 Putu Wiramaswara Widya
right click on the desktop, and click properties. on the theme selection, choose “windows classic”..
waakaakakakakakakakakaka, noo..noo.. dont punch me! (LOL)

Anonymous
How easy is it to go back to gnome panel, and does that get rid of global menu?
http://hector-macias.blogspot.com Hector Macias Ayala
So far so good, but still very inflexible when it comes down to customization. Both upper panel and launcher wont respond to righ-clicks, so theres no context menu, pretty bad since switching between apps may not be that intuitive as it used to be in gnome, simply theres no easy way to switch other than pressing alt-tab. Given that launcher autohides and I cant find applet of any kind to change that, once you fill it with icons you will find yourself in trouble very often looking for open apps, or pres alt-tab as I said before.
Another thing is panel not allowing to add applets as before, Im really missing “show desktop” and “force close”.
The lack of a main menu is to be noticed too.
But one thing you really will thank Canonical for is the extra little space in your screen, mostly if running it in a Laptop/Netbook.

Anonymous
You can disable the launcher autohide in compizconfig-settings-manager under the unity plugin options.
http://twitter.com/JR0cket John Stevenson
There are several ways to switch between applications other than alt-tab (now my least used method) in the unity desktop
Super + w
Shows all the active windows across all your desktops
Super + s
Displays your virtual desktops, allows you to select a desktop or an application window on that desktop
Super + [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9]
Pressing the super button plus a number will either launch an application or take you to the last active window of a currently running application.
Super
Pressing the super key shows the Unity launcher with the dash. When you select the icon for your application (you need to click once to hide the dash and a second to show you application window) it will take you to your application – or show you all the application windows if there are multiple windows open
Using the compiz configuration tool (ccsm) you can map these actions to other things if you so wish. I use ccsm to map Super + E to show me the windows just on the current desktop.
Desktop toggle – Super + d
To toggle between the desktop an your applications, use Super + d key, once to hide all your applications and again to show those applications that were hidden.
I appreciate that someone who has not used Unity and Compiz will not be aware of these keyboard short cuts.
http://twitter.com/JR0cket John Stevenson
There are several ways to switch between applications other than alt-tab (now my least used method) in the unity desktop
Super + w
Shows all the active windows across all your desktops
Super + s
Displays your virtual desktops, allows you to select a desktop or an application window on that desktop
Super + [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9]
Pressing the super button plus a number will either launch an application or take you to the last active window of a currently running application.
Super
Pressing the super key shows the Unity launcher with the dash. When you select the icon for your application (you need to click once to hide the dash and a second to show you application window) it will take you to your application – or show you all the application windows if there are multiple windows open
Using the compiz configuration tool (ccsm) you can map these actions to other things if you so wish. I use ccsm to map Super + E to show me the windows just on the current desktop.
Desktop toggle – Super + d
To toggle between the desktop an your applications, use Super + d key, once to hide all your applications and again to show those applications that were hidden.
I appreciate that someone who has not used Unity and Compiz will not be aware of these keyboard short cuts.

http://hector-macias.blogspot.com Hector Macias Ayala
So far so good, but still very inflexible when it comes down to customization. Both upper panel and launcher wont respond to righ-clicks, so theres no context menu, pretty bad since switching between apps may not be that intuitive as it used to be in gnome, simply theres no easy way to switch other than pressing alt-tab. Given that launcher autohides and I cant find applet of any kind to change that, once you fill it with icons you will find yourself in trouble very often looking for open apps, or pres alt-tab as I said before.
Another thing is panel not allowing to add applets as before, Im really missing “show desktop” and “force close”.
The lack of a main menu is to be noticed too.
But one thing you really will thank Canonical for is the extra little space in your screen, mostly if running it in a Laptop/Netbook.
Anonymous
kubuntu 11.04 review ?
http://gudulin.ru Alexandr
I’m wanna update ubuntu 10.10, but new gnome is not so beautiful instead like in 10.10 in my view.
So when my friends will do it and I tested on their laptops some things, then I’ll do it :)
Anonymous
“Whilst I encountered no major issues using it it is still not uncommon for Compiz to crash, leaving Ubuntu in varying states of uselessness.”
– I hope canonical will have a different point of view. This is a major issue.
http://twitter.com/muhalifsirin muhalif sirin
Does anybody know how to preserve repo list? My biggest problem is my huge repo list, that accumulates overtime.

http://www.facebook.com/jonassvarvaa Jonas Svarvaa
Not quite sure what you mean, but you could just do a backup of /etc/apt/sources.list
Anonymous
backup all /etc/apt and also change all lucid to natty (or whatever applies to you) in all text files you find there. Easier though is to copy all ppa lines from synaptic and research those ppa’s and re-add them. And for future whenever you add a ppa also copy the line in a txt file
Anonymous
Honestly, i have not gone through a single ubuntu release without reformatting and reinstalling from scratch. Every single time i make it a habit to install only a few must-have applications such as gnome-do. Everything else is ditched. (Of course home folder is backed up in case i need something suddenly). Maybe you should give it a try. Its nice working on a clean install of ubuntu every once in awhile. XD

http://twitter.com/sionek Guilherme Sionek
is it worth installing or its not so stable yet?
Anonymous
If someone has Ubuntu 11.04 beta installed, can you check if this bug is fixed for Firefox 4?
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.5/+bug/438868
Basically just open firefox and leave it the focused application, put your computer into sleep then wake it up. Without minimizing and maximizing, immediately start typing in the URL bar and see if the Awesome bar gives you drop-down options.
If it does it would appear that it is fixed, if not, the current workaround is to minimize then maximize then the awesome bar should work.
Thanks a bunch!
Anonymous
If someone has Ubuntu 11.04 beta installed, can you check if this bug is fixed for Firefox 4?
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.5/+bug/438868
Basically just open firefox and leave it the focused application, put your computer into sleep then wake it up. Without minimizing and maximizing, immediately start typing in the URL bar and see if the Awesome bar gives you drop-down options.
If it does it would appear that it is fixed, if not, the current workaround is to minimize then maximize then the awesome bar should work.
Thanks a bunch!
http://profiles.google.com/jonathan.almeida942 Jonathan Almeida
I upgraded from Alpha 3 (or so it says) but absolutely nothing has changed. It asked me to do a partial upgrade and the only difference I can see is that it removed empathy for me…

Bilal Akhtar
Don’t do partial upgrades. If you get a Partial Upgrade notification, wait for 2-3 days for the archive to stabilize before upgrading.

http://twitter.com/pecisk PÄ“teris KriÅ¡jÄnis
Sorry, but I will go with GNOME Shell. Not that I don’t respect Canonical and Unity and everything they done with it, but GNOME Shell seems much simpler and easier to use. Unity is poweruser shell on steroids and very much stands in the way for lot of actions I want to do.
From positive side in latest betas Unity is more stable and much faster, and notification indicator idea with dock seems niffy.
As someone said, I think it is not a bad thing that there is competition now between these two shells. I know power users will *love* Unity. I know that lot of casual users will like very simple and effective GS design. So that’s not a problem as long as utility apps for each enviroment looks similar and main apps works the same.
However, I would like to see revitalized freedesktop.org as standard institution. I know there are lot of disagreements, but lot of things can be kept in balance and crosscompatible.
One thing I strongly dislike in Unity though – menu separated from windows. I works in OS X because they have designed apps so all stuff is in window, and secondary stuff (like config) is in menu. Dropping LibreOffice in such environment won’t work so well as it could be.

http://openid-provider.appspot.com/TheMerkinman Merk
I don’t see why “power” users would love Unity and “casual” users would love GNOME Shell. (unless you were saying that both UIs have “power user” and “casual user” fans)
Let’s just agree that they’ll both have their audiences.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Daniel-Weitner/607605851 Daniel Weitner
Honestly, I find both of them to be a bit over the heads of casual users, and a bit alienating to power users like me. I don’t know, maybe I am just stuck in my ways, but both Unity and GS seem to be so far out of the box that I can’t get comfortable in either environment.

http://twitter.com/pecisk PÄ“teris KriÅ¡jÄnis
Well, what I liked about GNOME 3, that they actually ported gnome-panel to GNOME 3, and simplified it’s configuration and inner details, so if you want to stick to legacy mode aka GNOME 2, using GNOME 3 you could force it to use it. And I’m quite sure that lot of people will continue to use panel systems.

Anonymous
Globalmenu worked for the Mac when it sported 10 inch screens. With today’s big screens is a PITA no matter the OS. There was a great idea for Natty -globalmenu for maximised windows, regular menu for the rest- and I don’t know why it’s been deprecated.
http://twitter.com/dtechsoftware D-TECH software
You’re totally right. Gnome Shell is just simpel!

http://twitter.com/pecisk PÄ“teris KriÅ¡jÄnis
Sorry, but I will go with GNOME Shell. Not that I don’t respect Canonical and Unity and everything they done with it, but GNOME Shell seems much simpler and easier to use. Unity is poweruser shell on steroids and very much stands in the way for lot of actions I want to do.
From positive side in latest betas Unity is more stable and much faster, and notification indicator idea with dock seems niffy.
As someone said, I think it is not a bad thing that there is competition now between these two shells. I know power users will *love* Unity. I know that lot of casual users will like very simple and effective GS design. So that’s not a problem as long as utility apps for each enviroment looks similar and main apps works the same.
However, I would like to see revitalized freedesktop.org as standard institution. I know there are lot of disagreements, but lot of things can be kept in balance and crosscompatible.
One thing I strongly dislike in Unity though – menu separated from windows. I works in OS X because they have designed apps so all stuff is in window, and secondary stuff (like config) is in menu. Dropping LibreOffice in such environment won’t work so well as it could be.
Anonymous
I wanted to see new tweaks on the light themes :( but it will be an awesome release.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_DMPAXD4UJ34MDIDZGS5X5XTH7A dead
Well, Unity is improved, that’s for sure. But on my installation, neither the language selector nor the “software sources” is working. They just crash. Any open bug reports about these two?
http://mezclaconfusa.blogspot.com/ Felipe Alvarez
Name on panel will appear with uppercase and with our last name?
Anonymous
can i ask you why are u using chrome in nearly all screenshots i thought u linux users like opensource and freedom so u will use chromium instead….
http://twitter.com/thatnickjones Nick Jones
Does the “upgrade” feature keep your installed applications?

http://www.facebook.com/people/Chasson-Higdon/750221060 Chasson Higdon
Yes.

http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/DATA6WDNBSCFJL6JSP5OP3AADQ asedsa
Wow. Totem has always been a fugly app, but it stands out even more so when it is surrounded by pretty Unity.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_43QWMHEO2T24W5ONPMHAADTMOY alex
The last two screenshots were awesome. Now i can use firefox to read omgubuntu about firefox and omgubuntu, “yo dogg”.
Anonymous
Sorry to say this, but this beta1 is still the same buggy crap like alpha3. Also it’s ugly. I simply don’t like it, even if i want to…

http://twitter.com/saioke saioke
There’s a reason why it’s called a beta release and that’s to iron out the bugs. The fact that there’s going to be two beta releases just shows they want the launch of Unity to be as stable as possible. I for one don’t hate the changes and look forward to using Unity.
http://twitter.com/dtechsoftware D-TECH software
I want to like it so much. The installer is super user friendly and unity looks amazing. That’s before you open the Dash. Which is the most confusing option to open apps I have ever seen.
The Dash from 10.10 Unity was better!
Anonymous
Laco HorvÃ¡th? why are you hiding as 6205?

Anonymous
Sorry to say this, but this beta1 is still the same buggy crap like alpha3. Also it’s ugly. I simply don’t like it, even if i want to…
Anonymous
Sorry to say this, but this beta1 is still the same buggy crap like alpha3. Also it’s ugly. I simply don’t like it, even if i want to…
Anonymous
Sorry to say this, but this beta1 is still the same buggy crap like alpha3. Also it’s ugly. I simply don’t like it, even if i want to…
http://www.facebook.com/MeanEYE ãƒŸãƒ¤ãƒˆãƒ´ ãƒ ãƒ©ãƒ‡ãƒ³
Gah, download site is forcing some stupid mirror on which I have 1kB/s download speed.
http://twitter.com/holyjihadbatman Callum Saunders
its bad that within a week of natty im going to be eagerly awaiting ocelot alpha 1
http://twitter.com/holyjihadbatman Callum Saunders
its bad that within a week of natty im going to be eagerly awaiting ocelot alpha 1
Anonymous
Gonna take this one slow… install and run from USB just to get used to the changes
Anonymous
Gonna take this one slow… install and run from USB just to get used to the changes
http://johannpopper.myopenid.com/ Johann Popper
It’s not that great, truth be told.
Firstly, it just doesn’t have a pleasing visual style. Subjectivity has to do with particular things; in general, most people like the same things, and there are just way too many abnormal bright colors here, especially the icons. They just flat out don’t match the Dash at all.
Firefox global menu keeps disappearing randomly. One moment it’s there, the next I have no menu. Very annoying, especially since it’s hidden in the first place, which is frustrating in itself.
The more icons you have in the launcher, the less useful the launcher becomes, as you have to scroll a mile to get to Apps and Files and Trash, which are fixed for some reason. There’s no Show Desktop or Kill App, etc. It’s difficult to find open programs in the icon column. Keyboard commands like Atl-Tab are therefore now necessary which defeats the purpose of touchscreen, really.
The category menu in on the right side of Dash or Lens or whatever is not themed or something (maybe by inflexible design it can’t be themed), the font of which doesn’t respect user font settings, so kiss usability for people with visual impairments goodbye. It’s just a weird white and black somewhat useless menu displayed with tiny unreadable font, and strikingly does not match the rest of the theme. Very very odd.
Since there is no main menu, most people will be totally lost or at least frustrated by the ridiculous amount of clicks and scrolling it takes to get to all the programs buried in the “lenses,” even to get them from there to the launcher is a huge pain.
And it often crashes, but that’s to be expected at this stage, so I’m not very concerned about it.

Anonymous
When I started using an 11.04 snapshot a couple days ago, I decided to start typing up some of the usability issues that I encountered into a tomboy note. To my surprise, I’m at over 1300 words now– and I tried to be brief.
I want to try to put some of the issues up as bugs when I get some time but it seems a bit daunting to go through that process for everything in the list.
Overall, I found that I enjoy the Unity interface more than I expected, to the point of wanting to continue using 11.04 after I tried those couple of days ago. But the Unity interface in particular and Ubuntu 11.04 in general is just so rough around the edges–a mess of “papercuts”.
I hope the biggest usability issues will be resolved before Ubuntu begins to make many new first impressions at the start of May. The Natty release will likely generate more significant media attention than last releases, and its usability must surely not be allowed to be any less solid than previous releases.
I hope that Unity will be released as an overall improvement over current UI usability, not as an inconsistent interface with only a potential for overall improvement.
Anonymous
When I started using an 11.04 snapshot a couple days ago, I decided to start typing up some of the usability issues that I encountered into a tomboy note. To my surprise, I’m at over 1300 words now– and I tried to be brief.
I want to try to put some of the issues up as bugs when I get some time but it seems a bit daunting to go through that process for everything in the list.
Overall, I found that I enjoy the Unity interface more than I expected, to the point of wanting to continue using 11.04 after I tried those couple of days ago. But the Unity interface in particular and Ubuntu 11.04 in general is just so rough around the edges–a mess of “papercuts”.
I hope the biggest usability issues will be resolved before Ubuntu begins to make many new first impressions at the start of May. The Natty release will likely generate more significant media attention than last releases, and its usability must surely not be allowed to be any less solid than previous releases.
I hope that Unity will be released as an overall improvement over current UI usability, not as an inconsistent interface with only a potential for overall improvement.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_EY5T3DSC3HTBHTV5Z3GCD4TLVA Angelo
Well, I don’t like the purple-and-orange default colour scheme, but it is fairily customisable. I’ve changed the set of icons and the colour scheme and that’s it, it looks great great now ! I do prefer chromium browser instead of firefox, so I’ve set it as my default browser.
I’ve dropped Maverick about one month ago and I’ve been only using Natty since then. I would say that despite some minor compiz’s crashes (which restores itself automatically in no more than 3 seconds) Natty is already trustworthy, and didn’t let me down at any moment so far. However, I would be very pleased to see improvements in three particular things:
1. Global Menu without showing the “apps available for download” and with smaller icons showing a lot more of them, in order to save some clicks and scrolling;
2. Workspace Switcher showing all the opened windows in each workspace, as it is in Maverick;
3. The launcher’s colour and translucence following the configurations of colour and translucence of the panel, in order to provide a uniform look. (At the moment, even if I try to configure the panel to match the colour and translucence of the launcher the best that I can achieve is an “almost there” result.
About the rest, I have to say that Natty is the best desktop experience I ever had so far, and I’m relying on it for my productivity (I know it’s not recommended and I’m something between courageous and stupid, but the fact is that I’ve been lucky enough and had no problems yet – and yes, I backup everything regularly – not so stupid nor so brave !). Of course there’s still some minor bugs, but they are been fixed all the time.

http://johannpopper.myopenid.com/ Johann Popper
I didn’t mean to sound hopelessly negative. I just want the user experience to improve, and I’m not sure the above mentioned issues I listed will be resolved by release because they have received little to no attention, which is why I communicated them here on this popular community site to see if anybody else agreed with with me. Like Grapeseed said, there are still a lot of papercuts.

http://twitter.com/dernierrecours Serge-Ã‰tienne Parent
Can someone explain me why the global menu appears only on mouse over? I mean, I don’t need the global menu to tell me what application I’m currently using, but viewing the menu while using the app is quite useful…
http://www.facebook.com/hpis2cool David Moraes
I’m probably waiting for the next Ubuntu release to update my flawlessly working Maverick. But I am quite impressed with Unity’s growth during this release cycle. So I wish Natty users all the best and look forward to what we’ll see in the future!
http://twitter.com/danizmax Daniel
So there is no simple option that would just reinstall root partition and leave everything else alone? Over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that upgrade is never as clean as a new install. Also I don’t see the point in upgrade option when upgrade happens in the same way as update.
I have only 3 more complains:
- adding application to “startup applications” does not work with drag&drop (bad for lazy and new users)
- the unity dash should be wide as whole screen (the panel is not a menu anymore)
- I still believe panel should be movable around edges, when used on one side of 4:3 screen it makes it look smaller
Also please make things optional so we can make it as we like.
Keep the good work!

Armitage
You could put your /home folder on its own partition. It’s pretty easy to do and (as long as you do it right) your /home data is never touched. I’ve been doing it for years with good results. There’s lots of guides online.
See http://www.unruhdesigns.com/news/2010/08/reinstalling-ubuntu-with-separate-home-partition-without-losing-data.-tutorial-with-screenshots
http://castrojo.tumblr.com Jorge Castro
You’ve been able to reinstall over the root partition for like two years. I keep trying to spread the word but people never believe me, so people (like the guy replying to you) think that you have to have a separate partition:
http://castrojo.tumblr.com/post/1093664654/no-need-to-complicate-your-life
(Plymouth started working for me with nvidia’s drivers a while ago, don’t know any specifics though)

Anonymous
i have the / and home in the same partition. and i didn’t know that.
just to be sure, you say that if i put in an iso of ubuntu 11.04 and choose to use the hole disk space, i will find the home folder untouched???
even if currently i’m dual booting?
(i want to get rid of windows to give ubuntu the hole playing park)
Anonymous
i have the / and home in the same partition. and i didn’t know that.
just to be sure, you say that if i put in an iso of ubuntu 11.04 and choose to use the hole disk space, i will find the home folder untouched???
even if currently i’m dual booting?
(i want to get rid of windows to give ubuntu the hole playing park)
http://twitter.com/danizmax Daniel
Jorge thanks for reply, but what he recommends is what I’m doing like 5 years now, with all other distros I’ve been using. What I meant is to have a one click option. The closest to what I want is “Erase Ubuntu and reinstall” but it still says that it will erase all my documents….
He did say on askubuntu.org that it should arrive in 11.04, but it looks like it didn’t.

https://launchpad.net/~mpt mpt
Did you see the one-click option â€œUpgrade Ubuntu to 11.04 â€” No files will be deleted. Installed software will be kept where possible.â€?
If so, what did you think it meant?

http://torturedutopian.myopenid.com/ T_U
It’s a different thing.
Sure, you can upgrade. But the result will be the same as upgrading from the already installed OS. (every package is updated, everything else is kept)
What Daniel was looking for, is a way to keep the Ubuntu partition, wipe the entire system, keep the home directory.
This is what I usually do to get a clean OS without losing the home directory and without using a dedicated /home partition. –> you have to uncheck “format” –> then the installer will delete all system directories but NOT the home directory.
https://launchpad.net/~mpt mpt
If you want to reinstall the current version of Ubuntu, keeping your documents and any extra software youâ€™ve installed, the installer has a one-click option for that.
If you want to reinstall the current version of Ubuntu, discarding your documents and any extra software youâ€™ve installed, the installer has a one-click option for that.
If you want to upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu, keeping your documents and any extra software youâ€™ve installed, the installer has a one-click option for that.
And if you want to upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu, discarding your documents and any extra software youâ€™ve installed, the installer has a one-click option for that.
But we have to draw a line somewhere. If you want to upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu, keeping your documents BUT discarding any extra software youâ€™ve installed, youâ€™re an edge case. Sorry. If there was a one-click option for that, some measurable percentage of people would choose it by mistake, lose the software theyâ€™d bought, and not understand why.
If you really wanted to do that, though, you could run the normal upgrade process, and then use the installerâ€™s one-click reinstall. Naturally, that would take longer.
https://launchpad.net/~mpt mpt
If you want to reinstall the current version of Ubuntu, keeping your documents and any extra software youâ€™ve installed, the installer has a one-click option for that.
If you want to reinstall the current version of Ubuntu, discarding your documents and any extra software youâ€™ve installed, the installer has a one-click option for that.
If you want to upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu, keeping your documents and any extra software youâ€™ve installed, the installer has a one-click option for that.
And if you want to upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu, discarding your documents and any extra software youâ€™ve installed, the installer has a one-click option for that.
But we have to draw a line somewhere. If you want to upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu, keeping your documents BUT discarding any extra software youâ€™ve installed, youâ€™re an edge case. Sorry. If there was a one-click option for that, some measurable percentage of people would choose it by mistake, lose the software theyâ€™d bought, and not understand why.
If you really wanted to do that, though, you could run the normal upgrade process, and then use the installerâ€™s one-click reinstall. Naturally, that would take longer.

http://twitter.com/danizmax Daniel
Jorge thanks for reply, but what he recommends is what I’m doing like 5 years now, with all other distros I’ve been using. What I meant is to have a one click option. The closest to what I want is “Erase Ubuntu and reinstall” but it still says that it will erase all my documents….
He did say on askubuntu.org that it should arrive in 11.04, but it looks like it didn’t.

http://twitter.com/mimurrayy J. H.
Oh dear. Now its first Beta and the thing still dies every 30 seconds….hope they don’t screw this one up….
http://www.cerebrux.net/ Salih Emin
This is the most crucial time for Ubuntu. It’s something unique that a Linux distribution, has its own desktop environment. It’s a marketing momentum… if the big tech “websites” don’t write something about the new ubuntu, then nothing will change. This version need a big marketing push. Everybody must talk about it. There should be an official commercial video on YouTube when its out in the same quality as this one : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i940n5H0iU&sns=tw
Anonymous
Menu border still to FAT! More ELEGANT guys..
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1631005089 Rayan Boulares
Hats off to the designers ;)
http://profiles.google.com/a.nico.ramos Abel Nicolas Ramos
jk
Anonymous
Its still not standing out for me, it needs some real hooks but I don’t see any. I do hope there that there are still some surprises to come.
Anonymous
I used the ubuntu-11.04-beta1-desktop-i386.iso in Virtualbox in 10.10. The unity thing on the left isn’t there and the colors are weird. I can change the theme. Updates do not change anything. After rebooting everything is back to black and suddenly its grey again.

http://twitter.com/JR0cket John Stevenson
Unity requires 3D support, so unless you have installed the Virtualbox guest editions on your virtual machine and enabled 3D via the virtual machine settings, you will only get access to the “Ubuntu Classic” desktop.

Anonymous
Thank you for responding. I did enable 3d in the settings. But after logging in i can’t see the top and bottom bars. Just the background and rightmouseclick work.
Anonymous
Thank you for responding. I did enable 3d in the settings. But after logging in i can’t see the top and bottom bars. Just the background and rightmouseclick work.
Anonymous
Thank you for responding. I did enable 3d in the settings. But after logging in i can’t see the top and bottom bars. Just the background and rightmouseclick work.
Anonymous
Thank you for responding. I did enable 3d in the settings. But after logging in i can’t see the top and bottom bars. Just the background and rightmouseclick work.

http://twitter.com/JR0cket John Stevenson
Unity requires 3D support, so unless you have installed the Virtualbox guest editions on your virtual machine and enabled 3D via the virtual machine settings, you will only get access to the “Ubuntu Classic” desktop.
http://twitter.com/JR0cket John Stevenson
Unity requires 3D support, so unless you have installed the Virtualbox guest editions on your virtual machine and enabled 3D via the virtual machine settings, you will only get access to the “Ubuntu Classic” desktop.

Anonymous
In the final version, will the network indicator be installed by default instead of the network applet?

http://www.paul.sladen.org/ Paul Sladen
l4linux: a white-listed version of `nm-applet` is being used for Ubuntu 11.04. Though, as you’ve noticed, `indicator-network` is waiting in the wings and hopefully ready for future refinements of the default indicator arrangements.

http://castrojo.tumblr.com Jorge Castro
Nope, that’s nm-applet, ported by Mat Trudel to appindicators this cycle.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1407031490 Travis Allan Hoeffel
I hate unity so much now. Back in early development I thought they were going to do the dash way differently. I also thought gnome-shell would end up as a piece of crap. Then it all changed. A few month ago unity > gnome-shell.
Now Gnome-shell > Unity =(
http://twitter.com/tjgillis Thomas
Can’t get it to install. Tried first using a bootable usb. no dice. When tried update-manager -d and this is what I get :
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.
Any idea’s?

Anonymous
I don’t know, but I had trouble too trying to get a persistent usb to boot. Had to drop the persistent part to get it to work, which makes it useless for extended testing.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_4LXTMAC7KVMD7JBKWBCCBU4HSU inner_turbulence
1)download the iso.
2)take usb with no important data on it, that’s because next step will delete every bit on it.
3) open a terminal, now be extra careful, the path after “of” must be the usb or your data over that path will completely be deleted:
sudo dd if=/path/to/natty.iso of=/dev/sdx
where x denotes usb
example:
sudo dd if=/home/user/Downloads/natty.iso of=/dev/sdb
4)make the usb your first boot device and try

http://profiles.google.com/mx.joaoo JoÃ£o Guilherme Moraes Amendola
What about this:
-non maximized windows have menus;
-maximized windows have global menus.

http://twitter.com/davbren David Gross
I do like this idea but I reckon the reason it isn’t like that is for continuity reasons.
I get that from a usability point of view if sorta makes sense especially for a bunch of geeks with huge screens. But for new users, having one location for the menus makes sense.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_HZILZGJ4PKNN67IK7JYXIKHLSM DjznBR
HOLY CRAP!!! MAC RIP OFF!!! Even Ubuntu classic places menus on the bar!!! Well, Ubuntu, THAT IS IT… it’s the end for me….

Anonymous
Jeez… you don’t have to kill yourself over an OS :)
http://twitter.com/JR0cket John Stevenson
I am happy that people that over-react like this are leaving Ubuntu, it makes for a saner Ubuntu world. More plus points for Unity in my book

Anonymous
When I read this sentence: “Menus are an essentially awkward way of presenting functionality and options to the user of an application” my jaws dropped, then I felt just appalled. (Read it here yourself: https://docs.google.com/View?id=dfkkjjcj_1776g5ztgbc3)
How can a serious UI designer call “awkward” the best known UI idiom there is? Maybe one day this very same designer will call the Window and the Mouse (the other two pillars of the WIMP paradigm) “awkward” too. Yes, there are phones and tablets which aren’t based on WIMP (mostly), but Ubuntu is not a tablet or phone operating system, it’s a desktop and almost every newbie, poweruser, geek or simple regular user out there will use it as a WIMP based system. Someone has forgotten that.
All this anti-menu stance comes down to Chrome and a few other apps removing the menu (mostly browsers), but the “designers” who wrote the document about the unity menu didn’t hesitate to hide this fundamental feature in 99% of the available applications for Ubuntu.
You would think the design team had made a thorough research to come to this conclusion, but there’s no evidence anywhere pointing to this. No user testing mentioned, no new paradigm explained, no other scientific research at all. Not even a simple explanation of why whoever wrote that sentence has that opinion. The design team just called the menu “awkward” and were done with the research.
Next, you would think a design team finding menus “awkward”, would come with a real solution to the problem, proposing alternatives for developers to ditch the menu and start “the no-menu revolution”. But no, they found a better solution: just hide the menu and force users to hunt for it. Astounding.
Maybe they plan to start “the no-menu revolution” by provoking anger and hate in users trying to use their good old menus in 99% of their apps. Making it so difficult -or should I say awkward?- to use the menu will definitely make users angry about it. Maybe that’s the plan…
When I think the team that made this decision is the same team handling every other aspect of the Ubuntu user interface, I feel chills going down my spine.
I had high hopes when Shuttleworth promised, some time ago, he’d hire real usability professionals. Where are they?

http://johannpopper.myopenid.com/ Johann Popper
I have to agree completely. But I must emphasize that I do not think menus are just a useful convention, either; they are a very good way, if not the best way, to interact with programs, primarily because they provide unified controls and a universal paradigm. I really can’t think of another way to unify and universalize controls.
http://twitter.com/davbren David Gross
Say wert?!
Menus are most definitely awkward.
I don’t deny that in applications where there are too many functions to display elegantly menus are useful (IDE’s and the like) but for most day-to-day applications like those aimed at the general consumer, there just *isn’t* a need for them.
If I can get a web browser, file manager, word processor and email client with no/hidden menus then its a job well done. None of these applications for the average user need hundreds of visible functions.
The idea behind Ubuntu is to make it as accessible as possible. Having lots of menu items at the top of every window adds confusion and thus raises the barrier for entry. Besides, how many functions in a word processor (for example), do you actually use? maybe 20% at most?
All this transition takes time. If we didn’t bother trying new things and getting them wrong, our cars would be coal steam powered because petrol would have been seen as too ‘out-there’

Anonymous
If you really believe menus must go, then do what the Elementary team is doing: design applications that do not need a menu. But while 99% of the apps have menus in them, it’s Canonical’s duty to make them usable for its users/customers, not bother them hiding a piece of design that is still central to the apps it includes by default.
In other words, you’re confusing two different playing fields: applications themselves and the desktop environment. The DE must acknowledge how the available applications work and make them easy to use, not hinder their use by forcing users to find essential features in those applications. Let alone doing so in the name of some unproved supposition.
Besides, you -as every single one anti-menu guy out there- have not explained or show us a link explaining why menus are wrong. When you decide to change a conventional feature, you better have good reasons to do so. There’s none on the table. None but personal opinions and preferences, that is. While menu goodness can be found in countless studies about the WIMP paradigm I have yet to find one single study showing menus are bad.

http://twitter.com/davbren David Gross
Menus aren’t bad in the right circumstances. I do like what the elementary team is doing. But it isn’t just them. Microsoft, Apple and Google are all doing it and it is for good reason. By hiding settings and configuration tools you increase the screen real estate for the application you are running. Also, you minimise the amount of immediate information displayed to the end user.
As computer literate people we have to acknowledge that the average joe user doesn’t want to change the character encoding in firefox. So if the majority of users don’t use the majority of items in the menus, why have them?
If a developer can display the items they *do* use more elegantly, why stop them?
There’s a lot to be said for keeping it simple. No one will deny that its a lot of work to come up with a new desktop paradigm, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. Currently there is a transition from WIMP to something new. A similar comparison could be made with virtual workspaces. Years ago I said ‘whats the point, just minimise the application you don’t want’. Now I can’t get enough of virtual workspaces.
I first learned about the WIMP paradigm when I was 11, 13 years ago. Things change, and in computing, things change really fast. People aren’t *just* taking away menus, they’re trying to improve usability by giving the same information in a more concise, easier to understand fashion. This is extremely important for the future of Linux.

Anonymous
“Currently there is a transition from WIMP to something new.”
Proofs please. And don’t get tablets and touch into the argument: this is a DESKTOP OPERATING SYSTEM we’re talking about here and 99,99% of the users will use it with a mouse.
“People aren’t *just* taking away menus”
Sorry but Ubuntu is doing exactly that: they’re just hiding the menus, not getting rid of them for a better paradigm (because it’s not their job). That’s why I introduced the distinction between applications and desktop environments you seem to want to ignore.
Agreed to the KISS argument, but it’s just not good enough to remove menus everywhere (as you also accept).

Anonymous
Besides, you -as every single one pro-menu guy out there- have not explained or shown us a link why menus are right.

Anonymous
I don’t have to. History is on my side. The libraries are full of books and papers showing why the WIMP paradigm exists and explaining its foundations (I have read most of them, Mark Shuttleworth seems to have not…). We haven’t seen anything but simple opinions on why menus must go. While this is acceptable for an informal discussion like this, it’s plain amateurish as the basis for a desktop environment that wants to replace OS X or Windows (Mark’s stated goals).

Anonymous
When I read this sentence: “Menus are an essentially awkward way of presenting functionality and options to the user of an application” my jaws dropped, then I felt just appalled. (Read it here yourself: https://docs.google.com/View?id=dfkkjjcj_1776g5ztgbc3)
How can a serious UI designer call “awkward” the best known UI idiom there is? Maybe one day this very same designer will call the Window and the Mouse (the other two pillars of the WIMP paradigm) “awkward” too. Yes, there are phones and tablets which aren’t based on WIMP (mostly), but Ubuntu is not a tablet or phone operating system, it’s a desktop and almost every newbie, poweruser, geek or simple regular user out there will use it as a WIMP based system. Someone has forgotten that.
All this anti-menu stance comes down to Chrome and a few other apps removing the menu (mostly browsers), but the “designers” who wrote the document about the unity menu didn’t hesitate to hide this fundamental feature in 99% of the available applications for Ubuntu.
You would think the design team had made a thorough research to come to this conclusion, but there’s no evidence anywhere pointing to this. No user testing mentioned, no new paradigm explained, no other scientific research at all. Not even a simple explanation of why whoever wrote that sentence has that opinion. The design team just called the menu “awkward” and were done with the research.
Next, you would think a design team finding menus “awkward”, would come with a real solution to the problem, proposing alternatives for developers to ditch the menu and start “the no-menu revolution”. But no, they found a better solution: just hide the menu and force users to hunt for it. Astounding.
Maybe they plan to start “the no-menu revolution” by provoking anger and hate in users trying to use their good old menus in 99% of their apps. Making it so difficult -or should I say awkward?- to use the menu will definitely make users angry about it. Maybe that’s the plan…
When I think the team that made this decision is the same team handling every other aspect of the Ubuntu user interface, I feel chills going down my spine.
I had high hopes when Shuttleworth promised, some time ago, he’d hire real usability professionals. Where are they?
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1515045307 Doug Wilson
I am typing from Ubuntu 11.04 beta and I must say I really like it. All the negative things I heard about the new Ubuntu shell I shied away from it and was going to go with Xubuntu.
I am glad I tried it, it is good and I may switch to Ubuntu from Mint in 27 days. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea but it is mine :)
http://nosheep.org.ua ÐÐ»ÐµÐºÑÐµÐ¹ Ð Ð°ÑŽ
Cool. “Love Handlers” – is that how they are actually called?
Love those icons in notification area. Love good icons! Now go the apps and folders icons right?
http://nosheep.org.ua ÐÐ»ÐµÐºÑÐµÐ¹ Ð Ð°ÑŽ
Cool. “Love Handlers” – is that how they are actually called?
Love those icons in notification area. Love good icons! Now go the apps and folders icons right?
Anonymous
Liking Unity a lot more than I thought I would based on the earlier iterations. After a couple of weeks on the last alpha and now beta, I’m used the nuances and it’s impressive to see the usability built into the default install.
What I’m most impressed by was the speed that Unity evolved through. It’s still buggy unfortunately, but I haven’t seen Ubuntu make such large changes and improvements in such a short amount of time before. Definitely looking forward to 11.10.
Anonymous
Unity keeps looking better and better the more I see it being used.
http://nosheep.org.ua ÐÐ»ÐµÐºÑÐµÐ¹ Ð Ð°ÑŽ
I found just recently, that Unity does not have a setting to put it elsewhere. There are edited versions for it – but completely 3rd party http://dl.dropbox.com/u/566323/temp/unity-df_0.2.47-0ubuntu5_i386.deb
http://nosheep.org.ua ÐÐ»ÐµÐºÑÐµÐ¹ Ð Ð°ÑŽ
I found just recently, that Unity does not have a setting to put it elsewhere. There are edited versions for it – but completely 3rd party http://dl.dropbox.com/u/566323/temp/unity-df_0.2.47-0ubuntu5_i386.deb
http://nosheep.org.ua ÐÐ»ÐµÐºÑÐµÐ¹ Ð Ð°ÑŽ
I found just recently, that Unity does not have a setting to put it elsewhere. There are edited versions for it – but completely 3rd party http://dl.dropbox.com/u/566323/temp/unity-df_0.2.47-0ubuntu5_i386.deb
Anonymous
“Drag and drop
One brilliant feature thatâ€™s worth mentioning is the file type aware drag-and-drop. Drag a picture on to the launcher and only the applications that support opening the file type remain â€˜litâ€™, everything else dims.”
its not workin for me, i have all updates…how is that ?
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_GA32SCFSZWMMPVRDWRVVLXONYQ CRC3
I just saw “installing moonlight” while upgrading, why does 11.04 needs moonlight?
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_GA32SCFSZWMMPVRDWRVVLXONYQ CRC3
I just saw “installing moonlight” while upgrading, why does 11.04 needs moonlight?
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_GA32SCFSZWMMPVRDWRVVLXONYQ CRC3
I just saw “installing moonlight” while upgrading, why does 11.04 needs moonlight?
Anonymous
I really don’t like the way all the apps are in one big pile. Yuk.
..and when I did find the familiar categories it shows me 4 of my currently installed apps then I have to click to see the rest. pointless and annoying. but what is more annoying is that it specifically shows me apps (pretty much always useless) that I haven’t got installed: what on earth is that about??? It’s really irritating. most of these apps are ancient and even have ugly icons, they feel like unwanted adverts on a web page. Please tell me I can get rid of them???
and as for those huge icons on the shortcut menu, what am I? a six year old?
horrible.
I like my interfaces to be slick and elegant with me in control, this feels a lot like the Ipads poor brother: and I don’t like the Ipad either
Anonymous
That elementary Jupiter project is looking good. I think I’ll put that on my Laptop and Natty on my desktop and see which one myself and the family get on with best..
http://torturedutopian.myopenid.com/ T_U
They should definitely postpone Natty (one more month ?). There are far too many rough edges & things to fix…
But it’s very promising, keep up the good work guys !

Anonymous
I had the same thoughts. It feel so close to being done.
Anonymous
people have said that about every single ubuntu release for years.

http://torturedutopian.myopenid.com/ T_U
Maybe they should switch to a 8-months release model, as OpenSUSE. Or hire more developers :)

Anonymous
you’re missing my point. people have said that about every release and it’s not necessary. what is the point of changing their release schedule? stuff is available the same more or less either way. they develop and push and release the same regardless of the time they’re on.

http://torturedutopian.myopenid.com/ T_U
Well, I don’t know. There are so many little bugs in each Ubuntu release. I thought making them more spaced could help, but it might not be the case.
Anonymous
there is and always will be bugs. it’s just the nature of linux. adding more time to releases does little except increase the attempted features for each release, which in turn will add the same amount of bugs as prolonging the release schedule dismissed.
i think the idea of having long term supported releases is great in terms of giving solid versions, and the 6 month versions are really not meant to be used by those not willing to deal with the bugs.

http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/KME6NDF3KTWK6NNPG5SF36PLBI Ambleston
I’ve dumped 11.04 as Compiz crashed soo many times I got bored of restarting it. That doesn’t mean I’ve kicked Ubuntu into the long grass, just going to give it a bit of space for a while so they can iron out the bugs and make Compiz stable, again. In the meantime, I think I’ll check out Elementary and see if their OS is as good as their theme. See you Natty for beta 2 :)
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/KME6NDF3KTWK6NNPG5SF36PLBI Ambleston
I’ve dumped 11.04 as Compiz crashed soo many times I got bored of restarting it. That doesn’t mean I’ve kicked Ubuntu into the long grass, just going to give it a bit of space for a while so they can iron out the bugs and make Compiz stable, again. In the meantime, I think I’ll check out Elementary and see if their OS is as good as their theme. See you Natty for beta 2 :)
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=732826490 Ray Boyer
Within the first minute of running this beta I was presented with this error: http://db.tt/dPVDbwa
What a joke.

Anonymous
(thats why it’s beta)

daniel.hutchinson
Downloaded the ISO and updated from 10.10, I know it’s a beta but I’m a bit disappointed.
1. I had to create a new account. Everything was copied in ok, but unfortunately the other user accounts were not reinstated?
2. Dropbox was removed by the installer and I’ve not managed to reinstall as yet :-(
3. I find unity at tad fiddly and difficult to find anything with, especially stuff that used to live in the ‘System’ menu. It just seems a bit clunky and awkward to me.
4. The unity dock is not ‘easy on the eye’ in my opinion and doesn’t seem to give much in the way of visual feedback, i.e. icons lighting up as you move over them or showing that a app is actually loading (mouse pointer doesn’t even seem to change?).
5. Menus for applications work in a similar fashion to AmigaOS with the title bar changing to the application menu, which I think is a good move. However the execution is dodgy at present, I frequently can’t get menus to show up at all and need to restart applications (especially Firefox).
In general the whole Ubuntu experience feels more sluggish and somehow ‘restrictive’. Can see myself installing Debian in a few days or going back to 10.10 in a few days.

daniel.hutchinson
Seems Dropbox is a non-starter for the time being, from what I’ve read elsewhere.
Starting to get more used to the unity launcher now, miss the old menus but will give unity a go for a bit. Old habits die hard!
Bilal Akhtar
Beta release, dude! All those points are being looked at, and being worked upon.

http://twitter.com/leogladkov Leo Gladkov
the win7 like taskbar is a good idea, but itd be even better if they copied it more closely
http://openid-provider.appspot.com/zzarko zzarko
Well, I just tried 11.04 beta live CD, and first thing I encoutered were two VERY annoying glitches:
First, upon starting Nautilus, and after that Firefox, launcher just wouldn’t move from the screen, it stayed on screen on top of both windows (no matter if maximized, moved to the left or maximized on left part of the screen). After some time (few minutes), it dissapeared to the left, as it should be, but after some more time, it wouldn’t dodge again. This change of behaviour continued for the whole testing time (about an hour), and I couldn’t figure out what triggers one behaviour or another.
Second, the global menu was flickering so much that it was hard to do anything with menus. If I position the mouse over the menu and don’t move it (Tools, for example), it shows like it should. Every time I move it (even for just a pixel or two), some other menu (File for example) is displayed for a fraction of a second, and then back to Tools menu. The result is terrible flickering while moving mouse over global menus.
HW: Asus P5B Deluxe, E6750, 2GB RAM, Radeon 4870
P.S. Where should I report bugs like this?
http://www.raivogalleria.net Janne Heinikangas
Tested this beta but I have huge problems with alternative install method when it goes to GRUB-install stage I get red error screen. Unable to install grub.
http://twitter.com/neologist_ L.A.A.
“3. The launcher’s colour and translucence following the panel’s configuration of colour and translucence, in order to provide a more uniform look. (At the moment, even if I try to configure the panel to match the colour and translucence of the launcher the best that I can achieve is an “almost there” result.” – by Angelo
That’s really frustrating. I can’t get it to be homogeneous.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_J4TUCZASTZB2R3A6SMAM42YL7Y Guillaume Racicot
…cuz they are so awesome. Narwhals Nar…
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_J4TUCZASTZB2R3A6SMAM42YL7Y Guillaume Racicot
…cuz they are so awesome. Narwhals Nar…
http://www.facebook.com/aronhoneybun Aaron Taylor Honeycutt
My install disc was a really ugly installer with no pretty UI and then the DHPC or whatever with wireless did not work in the install but I got it on later after the install. But even with the not so great installer I still got partitioning good. So thats a plus.
http://twitter.com/nepalsites Roshan Joshi
Awesome looks & Feel
http://www.facebook.com/GlennDCitrix Glenn Dobson
Anyone know how to get Broadcom drivers working in Natty?
http://twitter.com/appleseedhuman Appleseed Humanity
Unity is causing some ulcers but you can see where it’s going — Touchscreen PC’s are the new buzz and Unity + an on-screen keyboard could run the entire PC experience without ever fitting a mouse. The overall goal is admirable but Unity could prove to be a flat-footed first step.

Anonymous
Good luck designing a “unified” interface for tablets and ordinary desktops. It won’t happen. Moreover: it will fail at both ends. You can’t simply translate mouse to touch and viceversa. Huge screens to very small screens. Physical keyboards to virtual on-screen keyboards. You need a new paradigm. Apple (and probably anyone who has read two or three books about user interaction design) knows that. Canonical doesn’t.
Maybe this goal is why Canonical decided to hide the menus, but hiding them makes not them go away. Unless you’re an ostrich (or a Canonical Design team member), you will understand that immediately.

http://twitter.com/GamePad64 Alexander GamePad
Oh, crap! You are just making me to upgrade to beta release, it’s so tasty =].
Is it stable enough to use it on production machine? (Laptop w/touchscreen)
Is it comfortable to use it with multitouch touchscreen?
http://www.facebook.com/danielegiorgis Daniele Giorgis
Hi, I want to install Ubuntu 11.04 on my macbook white Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz 2gb Ram.
The problem is..what version I have to download? I mean on the website there’re 4 version.
PC (Intel x86) alternate install CD
64-bit PC (AMD64) alternate install CD
64-bit Mac (AMD64) alternate install CD
Mac (PowerPC) and IBM-PPC (POWER5) alternate install CD
I want the 64Bit version but the 64-bit Mac (AMD64) says
“Choose this to take full advantage of computers based on the AMD64 or EM64T architecture (e.g., Athlon64, Opteron, EM64T Xeon). If you have a non-64-bit processor made by AMD, or if you need full support for 32-bit code, use the Intel x86 images instead. This image is adjusted to work properly on Mac systems.”
Can you help me?

Anonymous
I can’t say I really know what I’m talking about in this instance, but as a rule, I’d use x86 instead of 64-bit for the simple reason that I’ve experienced more stability and compatibility issues with graphics drivers on 64 bit Ubuntu than on x86 Ubuntu. For this reason, I’m going to be using x86 until such time as 64 bit is really widely adopted and such. You can’t always find 64 bit debs for more obscure programs, either, which is a bummer. That and the fact that I rather detest compiling them from source, and…you probably see my point.
!Noah!
http://twitter.com/jonathanmoerman Jonathan Moerman
core 2 Duo can usually handle 64-bit, and as far I used it on a intel system it’s just as stable as x86…

Anonymous
I can’t even try out Unity in 11.04 because I am one of the (evidently) few people with a PC with an nVidia graphics chipset. The beta release of 11.04 does not offer one the option to install the proprietary driver, so Unity does NOT work out of the box. If one downloads the driver within the live CD, one must re-boot in order for it to work, but the live CD would of course forget everything, so there’s no point in doing that. This is just really senseless. If Mark refuses to even give one an option to install proprietary drivers in live CD mode, he should at least offer an open source driver that would enable Unity!

http://twitter.com/GamePad64 Alexander GamePad
After you reboot, you can login into classic gnome, then you can install nvidia driver (or nouveau with 3d!)

Anonymous
No, you can’t. You must reboot after installing the nVidia driver, and if you do, the live CD won’t remember anything. I can’t even try out 11.04 on my IBM business laptop because it hangs on the “Try out Ubuntu” screen. This beta is more like an alpha for all practical purposes. The nVidia proprietary driver needs to be installed by default, PERIOD. Otherwise, there’s no point in having a live CD!

Anonymous
This release isn’t a game changer. It is lacking LTS status, commercial apps, and polish. I think 12.04 will be the game changer, better yet if it also provides easy packaging and distribution of software and a stable, well defined platform with a guarantee of backwards compatibility for it in future releases.
Anonymous
This release isn’t a game changer. It is lacking LTS status, commercial apps, and polish. I think 12.04 will be the game changer, better yet if it also provides easy packaging and distribution of software and a stable, well defined platform with a guarantee of backwards compatibility for it in future releases.

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