Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3 Released

By Joey Sneddon, Published August 4, 2011

The third alpha release of the Ubuntu 11.10 development cycle has been made available for download.

As Ubuntu 11.10 is still in active development you are not advised to install this alpha on your Mom’s laptop, your Brother’s nettop or even your own desktop.

What’s new since Alpha 2?

The latest experimental snapshots of Compiz and Unity are provided in Alpha 3, with notable new features, options and changes including visual feedback on the trash icon when dropping files into it, improved launcher reveal logic, and a newly coloured ‘Grid’ highlight.

Revamped ALT+TAB

Note: The new look Alt+Tab is is currently bound to CTRL+TAB during testing.

Gwibber

An all new Gwibber is present, boasting a brand new look, slick animated transitions and massively improved performance.

We were given a sneak peek of this just before it landed and it’s come on leaps and bounds since then.

Indicators

It’s all change on the Indicator front with the removal of the Me Menu; a rejigged ‘Messaging Menu’; a new-look session indicator and the arrival of a brand new power indicator (that, joy of joys, is able to actually report you battery life!).

Support for middle-clicking on indicators has also been introduced, but until developers get chance to play around with it don’t expect too much from this just yet.

For further information refer to: wiki.ubuntu.com/OneiricOcelot/TechnicalOverview/Alpha3

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http://twitter.com/DJSubterrain Billy Reynolds
No mention for submitting the tip….again. Don’t bother posting tips for these guys, you don’t get any sort of thanks at all.
http://twitter.com/DJSubterrain Billy Reynolds
No mention for submitting the tip….again. Don’t bother posting tips for these guys, you don’t get any sort of thanks at all.
http://twitter.com/DJSubterrain Billy Reynolds
No mention for submitting the tip….again. Don’t bother posting tips for these guys, you don’t get any sort of thanks at all.

Anonymous
Aww
http://twitter.com/tehhanz Hans Heintze
the whole point of opensource is helping people regardless of recognition etc.
So we Will keep posting tips.

http://twitter.com/abeisgreat Abe Haskins
Well… kind of. I think “public domain” is more about doing things regardless of recognition more than opensource. Notice how OSS still have copyrights on them. But that is really neither here nor there. I would imagine Billy didn’t get thanked because this wasn’t “tip worthy”. A tip would be something more obscure and unexpected like “tigers can now fly” not “today is the day after yesterday”, if you see what I mean.
Anonymous
No, it’s not. Not giving credit for contributions is strongly frowned upon by open source developers.
In fact, giving proper credit is one of the few things that restrictive licenses like GPL and permissive licenses like BSD have in common.

cbodendein
It’s not that big of a tip when everyone knew alpha 3 was coming out today since the schedule was released in mid March.
http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ Joey-Elijah Sneddon
I’m sorry you feel that way dude. As the Ubuntu 11.10 development cycle has scheduled releases we tend to write release posts in advance, and, because of issues in the past, we only publish them once Canonical have sent their announcement mail to the mailing lists.
To be a pedant: at the time of writing this our post was published 18 minutes ago, the canonical announcement was sent 19 mins ago.
Anonymous
The alphas are scheduled in advance and the OMG editors follow dozens of Ubuntu-related sources of news, from developer blogs to mailing lists. Your complaint is unreasonable and unrealistic.
And for being unreasonable and unrealistic, it’s not valid in any way as proof of your accusation that the editors do not give credits for the tips.
Long story short: you are making an accusation without proof. This is so blatantly rude and offensive that I am wondering if you are not simply trolling.
Anonymous
XD You speak mah language!
http://twitter.com/humphreybc Benjamin Humphrey
You do realize that we don’t only get “one” tip from “one” person when big news breaks? We also are in contact with the Canonical PR team, so don’t just assume that you are the only person who submits a story, therefore you should get recognition/attribution.

http://twitter.com/DJSubterrain Billy Reynolds
I also tipped about BumbleBee when it first started and wasn’t credited for that either and I don’t remember any info about it on this site prior to that. So it’s not an isolated incident. No matter, I won’t be bothering to tip again.

Anonymous
Ok, let me get this straight.
You seriously believe that if a site with:
a) editors who are constantly searching for Linux-related news all the time
b) 30000+ readers who can send tips
publishes an article about two subjects you tipped about, the source *had* to be your tips? Without doubt? Without *any* doubt?
Before answering, read the question again. And again. Three times to be sure.
If you still answer “yes”, I think the only way you can be more out of touch with reality is starting to complain about not receiving credit for your tip about the release of VolleyBrawl.
http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ Joey-Elijah Sneddon
At the bottom it says “hat tip to Billy R.” (Not everyone is happy to have their surname put on the internets)
‘Hat tip’ is a (admittedly) odd way of saying thanks in some cultures.

http://www.facebook.com/adrian.wechner Adrian Wechner
what I am wondering is why there is no news telling everybody that Novacut was founded successfully!!… after so much novacut news, a final “success” one would be good as well. don’t you think?
http://www.facebook.com/adrian.wechner Adrian Wechner
what I am wondering is why there is no news telling everybody that Novacut was founded successfully!!… after so much novacut news, a final “success” one would be good as well. don’t you think?

http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ Joey-Elijah Sneddon
Haha. I’m to blame for that, and it’s a longwinded story.
Basically, I wrote an article on it ahead of time, and duly submitted some questions to the novacut team about what they’d do with the money, etc.
I received nothing back, but with Novacut having been always so keen to get their word out on OMG! i assumed they were just busy so waited… and waited… and waited… and, well, am still waiting.

http://twitter.com/tehhanz Hans Heintze
YUSH!
Anonymous
sounds all good to me =D Honestly, all I want from Ubuntu these days is:
1. Drivers
2. Adobe
3. Games – although less of a priority for me than the others because I use Ubuntu on my business laptop.

http://twitter.com/toxicbits toxicbits
It would be awesome if Gnome and Unity developers finally came to senses and merged both projects. The AppIndicators and the Activities view are awesome, sad I have to decide between both

Anonymous
Just wish they’d show off what they’re doing with Gnome 3 instead of concentrating on the Laptop desktop (Unity) so professional users get some love too.

http://twitter.com/toxicbits toxicbits
Unity in 11.10 is based on Gnome 3, do you mean the Shell? I like some of their design decisions, but I think it’s a waste of resources to do something similar as the Gnome team. But dumbing down the system by removing the option to change settings is exactly how they will be losing pro users, at least in my opinion.

Anonymous
No I mean the Gnome desktop. Unity is awful on a two monitor set up. As far as I’m concerned it’s for lap top users, not professionals using desktops.
Anonymous
No I mean the Gnome desktop. Unity is awful on a two monitor set up. As far as I’m concerned it’s for lap top users, not professionals using desktops.
http://twitter.com/toxicbits toxicbits
Thats makes it even worse. I’ve only used it on a laptop so far, thus the global menu bar and other way to save space seemed reasonable. If you aren’t referring to bugs but rather design decisions Unity would probably be usable on a desktop, too if only they provided good presets for both and the ability to change them.
http://twitter.com/gentakojima Jorge Suárez de Lis
Multimonitor support is aimed for 11.10, the last time I looked at some kind of roadmap.
Anonymous
That’s my point exactly. Most people use desktops. WHY take a NETBOOK system and plop it onto a desktop. I don’t mind them having a desktop and a laptop front end switch, it’s the lack of development effort for the majority of users that puzzles me. Unity looks and behaves badly from a UI and UX perspective INMO. Do we all have to suffer with RSI’s just so they don’t lose face? I feel a move to Kubuntu coming on, which will be a major step, like going back to Windows!

http://twitter.com/toxicbits toxicbits
Unity in 11.10 is based on Gnome 3, do you mean the Shell? I like some of their design decisions, but I think it’s a waste of resources to do something similar as the Gnome team. But dumbing down the system by removing the option to change settings is exactly how they will be losing pro users, at least in my opinion.
http://twitter.com/toxicbits toxicbits
Unity in 11.10 is based on Gnome 3, do you mean the Shell? I like some of their design decisions, but I think it’s a waste of resources to do something similar as the Gnome team. But dumbing down the system by removing the option to change settings is exactly how they will be losing pro users, at least in my opinion.
http://www.facebook.com/denis.cheremisov Denis Cheremisov
Dude, professionals don’t use Gnome Shell ;)

Anonymous
Just wish they’d show off what they’re doing with Gnome 3 instead of concentrating on the Laptop desktop (Unity) so professional users get some love too.
http://www.facebook.com/denis.cheremisov Denis Cheremisov
> The AppIndicators and the Activities view are awesome
The appindicators is a piece of sh1t. It shows how fool the canonical devs are. They just failed. The activities is a usability nightmare.

http://profiles.google.com/danteashton Danté Ashton
Your right. Your completely right. Let’s go back to the good ol’ systray which had no consistency between entries. Let’s ignore all the cross-desktop work letting GTK and Qt apps play nice in each others playground. I want the fun and joy of not knowing if systray entry 2 requires a left click, right click, middle click, button combination, slapping of elbows or the licking of a leprechauns foot in order to operate.
Life was better that way.

http://profiles.google.com/patrickscott52 Patrick Scott
Well said!

Anonymous
Even if that were logistically possible, I don’t think many GNOME 3 users really care to have Ayatana stuff included in GNOME 3. We have a growing community that can take care of themselves without merging their project together.
It is becoming quite clear however that Unity could have been built on top of Mutter and the Shell, but the logistics would be ridiculous to perceive. From a developer point of view, this is a few years work to get to where they are now- I doubt this would ever happen.
What could happen is Ubuntu’s jump list feature and GNOME 3′s being compatible in some way. In fact, Unity already uses GTK+3′s feature of menu exporting to get the appmenu working, which GNOME 3 will use in the future for its new menu layout.
I think this will be a good opportunity for us to make some concrete specifications that allow us to further integrate discordant technologies that do the same thing, so we can all work together and anticipate user interface changes.
Ironically, these days it seems like when you make an application for Linux, you’re making it for three different platforms. Only a year or so ago all you really had to worry about was theme integration in KDE or something simple like that.
Anonymous
Even if that were logistically possible, I don’t think many GNOME 3 users really care to have Ayatana stuff included in GNOME 3. We have a growing community that can take care of themselves without merging their project together.
It is becoming quite clear however that Unity could have been built on top of Mutter and the Shell, but the logistics would be ridiculous to perceive. From a developer point of view, this is a few years work to get to where they are now- I doubt this would ever happen.
What could happen is Ubuntu’s jump list feature and GNOME 3′s being compatible in some way. In fact, Unity already uses GTK+3′s feature of menu exporting to get the appmenu working, which GNOME 3 will use in the future for its new menu layout.
I think this will be a good opportunity for us to make some concrete specifications that allow us to further integrate discordant technologies that do the same thing, so we can all work together and anticipate user interface changes.
Ironically, these days it seems like when you make an application for Linux, you’re making it for three different platforms. Only a year or so ago all you really had to worry about was theme integration in KDE or something simple like that.
Anonymous
Even if that were logistically possible, I don’t think many GNOME 3 users really care to have Ayatana stuff included in GNOME 3. We have a growing community that can take care of themselves without merging their project together.
It is becoming quite clear however that Unity could have been built on top of Mutter and the Shell, but the logistics would be ridiculous to perceive. From a developer point of view, this is a few years work to get to where they are now- I doubt this would ever happen.
What could happen is Ubuntu’s jump list feature and GNOME 3′s being compatible in some way. In fact, Unity already uses GTK+3′s feature of menu exporting to get the appmenu working, which GNOME 3 will use in the future for its new menu layout.
I think this will be a good opportunity for us to make some concrete specifications that allow us to further integrate discordant technologies that do the same thing, so we can all work together and anticipate user interface changes.
Ironically, these days it seems like when you make an application for Linux, you’re making it for three different platforms. Only a year or so ago all you really had to worry about was theme integration in KDE or something simple like that.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Vladimir-Kooznetsov/1660704458 Vladimir Kooznetsov
Heh, I wish there were some good professional tools for musicians as well…

Antoon Stessels
You mean, like Guitar Pro and Renoise? Both commercial programs run fantastically on Ubuntu 11.04. Renoise is great!

http://www.therealneo.com JohnDoe
thanks for pointing me in Renoise’s direction I been looking for something like FL Studio/Cubase in Linux now to sort out recording. :D, i know of ardour but I find it easier to record in windows low latency and all.

Anonymous
Tried LMMS?
http://www.therealneo.com JohnDoe
been there, went our seperate ways when we came to a crossroad,

http://www.facebook.com/people/Vladimir-Kooznetsov/1660704458 Vladimir Kooznetsov
Hey, thanks for the tip! Renoise looks like the most complete and solid music editor I’ve ever seen on Linux, although it’s way too far from what I am used to work with. Still, i’m intrigued.

Anonymous
Give me good VST instrument compatibility and I could move my studio to Ubuntu. Right now they are the main problem. I don’t know what were the people who created VST thinking though – they should have used Java or anything that is 1) OS independ, 2) doesn’t have memory leaks, 3) won’t crash the whole OS and main application when crashing.
Right now it’s a mess – we have VSTi, RTAS, VSTi ( and gods know what else) and all of them come in versions for Windows and Mac and VSTi very rarely also for Linux.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_S7GZSLCX2ELU2UXUHS5OK2APL4 Davorin
VST sucks. Jack is way better. And Java wouldn’t do. Too slow for real time audio.

lenooh :-)
1. is not such a big problem. Hardware often works better in Linux out-of-the-box than in windows. But anyway, you can search the web for compatibility before buying, and buy only stuff that works with linux
2. and 3. are actually being solved by wine. It’s moving in the right direction, but slowly. Of course you can also use virtualization, it works great.

http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/C6S22ANL35LHAH27EX43XFQKTQ Klau3
Virtualization for games? Maybe for 20 year old games but not for upcoming Battlefield 3.
Wine sucks also, you never know what you will get.
Better use native Linux programs.

lenooh :-)
I know how wine works. Like I said, it’s moving slowly in the right direction.
Virtualization is great for apps, never had any problems with it. Even copy paste works, and then there is also the “seamless” mode, that hides everything but the opened windows.
If you want to get rid of windows AND play games, then just play them on consoles. All new “big” games are usualy available on consoles.

fatriff
I use StreamGames, you can stream your own games between between machines, so I am using my main computer to play resource hungry games on my linux netbook.
http://streammygame.com

Will Fellipe
Ow, man.. Wine isn’t perfect and everybody now that, but is a great advance for compatibility windows/linux and remember: wine is the result of an intense collaborative work!!

http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/C6S22ANL35LHAH27EX43XFQKTQ Klau3
Virtualization for games? Maybe for 20 year old games but not for upcoming Battlefield 3.
Wine sucks also, you never know what you will get.
Better use native Linux programs.

Ethan Adams
I’ve had horrible problems with my graphics card drivers sense I started using Linux. They have gotten much worse in the last few months in fact. All adobe products run fine for me in wine so that really doesn’t bother me. Games and the only reason i still have windows installed on a spare hard drive.

https://launchpad.net/~rafalcieslak256 rc
I’ve had enormous problem too. Luckily for me, they all have been fixed in the last year or two, so I believe there is good progress.

Ethan Adams
I tried the ubuntu 11.10 alpha for a few weeks and the only problems i had were with the graphics drivers causing everything to crash.

http://oimon.wordpress.com mungojerry
if an alpha version is not crashing, you aren’t using it properly.
http://profiles.google.com/danteashton Danté Ashton
I agree! The whole purpose of Alphas are to make dear Mr. Shuttleworth laugh as he sees broken windows with broken computers lying outside them! :P
https://launchpad.net/~rafalcieslak256 rc
The 11.10 does not work properly for me too, but that’s ALPHA! And things WILL get fixed before release.

http://profiles.google.com/danteashton Danté Ashton
That’s weird, because mine have been getting better…due to a lovely bug with my hardware, if I needed to reinstall, I had to go from 8.10 and upgrade…and upgrade…and upgrade. 11.04 is the first OS I can install without spending 12 hours hunched over a half-inch ethernet cable. :P
http://profiles.google.com/danteashton Danté Ashton
That’s weird, because mine have been getting better…due to a lovely bug with my hardware, if I needed to reinstall, I had to go from 8.10 and upgrade…and upgrade…and upgrade. 11.04 is the first OS I can install without spending 12 hours hunched over a half-inch ethernet cable. :P

Ethan Adams
I’ve had horrible problems with my graphics card drivers sense I started using Linux. They have gotten much worse in the last few months in fact. All adobe products run fine for me in wine so that really doesn’t bother me. Games and the only reason i still have windows installed on a spare hard drive.

cbodendein
-deleted by me-
http://tomslominski.net/ Tom Slominski
I don’t think middle clicking on the indicators should be used. Many of us are on laptops, and we’d miss out on that.

http://jakubrusinek.pl/ Jakub Rusinek
Ask manufacturers why they’ve been so dumb that they produce mice featuring three buttons and forget about that one in touchpads.
Either way, plenty of you’ve got gestures and multi-touch touchpads.

http://tomslominski.net/ Tom Slominski
Haha, I don’t know how using a gesture on an indicator would work ;) It would have to be a pretty small gesture ;) –
Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

http://jakubrusinek.pl/ Jakub Rusinek
Just how it does that in your web browser? Two or three fingers to tap?

http://tomslominski.net/ Tom Slominski
Yeah, but indicators are much smaller than my web browser.
–
Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
http://jakubrusinek.pl/ Jakub Rusinek
So what? You can still move your pointer and target the same as you do with links on websites…
http://tomslominski.net/ Tom Slominski
But doesn’t the pointer have to remain on the icon?
Cheers,
Tom Slominski
http://jakubrusinek.pl/ Jakub Rusinek
Then it’s your problem. Or something wrong with Synaptics driver (or whatever you’re using).

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FX5ITOLLHVNOY673XBRGCKF3DI Freddi
Only the cursor arrow has to be small – like it always is. You just move the cursor over the indicator and two-finger-scroll or three-finger-tap on it. Works fine and smoothly.

Anonymous
On my lappy, clicking both buttons at the same time to simulate middle-click it’s not that uncomfortable. Took me a while but nowadays it’s completely natural.

http://tomslominski.net/ Tom Slominski
Hmm, I haven’t thought of that. Its quite a good idea actually, but I’m not sure whether it would work on my laptop. –
Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

Anonymous
This works out-of-the-box in Ubuntu. Try for a while and see how it works out.
https://launchpad.net/~rafalcieslak256 rc
It must. It’s not a feature of laptop, the system cares about simulating the middle click.

http://profiles.google.com/patrickscott52 Patrick Scott
I read earlier that middle click would only be used as providing a secondary quick method of achieving something that would otherwise take more clicks (think keyboard shortcuts). For example, middle-clicking the sound indicator will act as a one click mute/unmute button. Laptop users can simply make do with making an extra click by going into the menu or using middle click emulation (left+right click at the same time on my machine)

http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/C6S22ANL35LHAH27EX43XFQKTQ Klau3
Sounds like computer heaven to me:
Easy, fast, useful

http://profiles.google.com/patrickscott52 Patrick Scott
I’m afraid not, the article only mentioned the sound indicator – the change was more about adding the ability to use middle-click, it is up to the individual indicator developers to implement it if they choose

https://launchpad.net/~davidroth9 Videl
Use ‘em two-button clicks as a substitude ? There’s already quite much you can do with middle clicks namely opening new instances of stuff on the launcher so I’ve been using the two buttons as middle clicks for a while and it works out well for me
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/C6S22ANL35LHAH27EX43XFQKTQ Klau3
Middle click should never be the primary way for an action but it is often very useful. To bad that we will possible never see middle click to close/open tabs in GNOME programs (Gedit, Nautilus).
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=445402
As times pass I can better understand why Canonical walks they own road and rejected to use the GNOME Shell.

Anonymous
I’ve been testing the daily images and they’ve all booted fine, but for some reason Alpha 3 leaves me staring at a terminal prompt :(
http://www.facebook.com/ElroyJ11 Elroy Jones
Will there an option to change themes or enable compositing?

http://twitter.com/toxicbits toxicbits
Thanks to the geniuses at Gnome, that option has been removed from the system settings. Canonical would have to re-implement that if they don’t wanna use gnome-tweak-tool

Mikko Kumara
What’s with the way oversized images?
The “64-bit PC (AMD64) desktop CD” image seems to be 4.1 GB… That doesn’t even fit in my USB memory stick, much less a CD. (By the way, why is the 64-bit alternate image “only” 727 MB?)

http://jeremy.bicha.net/ Jeremy Bicha
The 64-bit desktop CD is 709 MB, you must have been looking at the desktop DVD which is completely different. The DVD images are virtually useless for most people.

http://chrisbuchholz.me/ chrisbuchholz
Naah, the ISO is 709MB, but when you burn it to a CD, where it will get unpackaged, it takes up 743,7MB, which is more space than is available on a CD, thus it cannot be burned to a CD.
http://chrisbuchholz.me/ chrisbuchholz
Naah, the ISO is 709MB, but when you burn it to a CD, where it will get unpackaged, it takes up 743,7MB, which is more space than is available on a CD, thus it cannot be burned to a CD.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_DWSOTHNJWUCFFCL5XJPX6CNABQ Renan
They could left the apps and programs to their developers and focus a bit more on the system as a whole.
Rd05
I cant wait for 11.10 to finally come out. All the progress is making it look really good. I’ll just add some faenza icons of course, I really don’t like the stock ones.
Brian Oswald
Seems to be moving along nicely. Unity has come a long way (in my opinion) since launch. I have a few minor gripes with 11.10 but I’m still eager to get my hands on it.

http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/DATA6WDNBSCFJL6JSP5OP3AADQ asedsa
I disagree, really all they have done is polished and refined the GUI they already had from the last cycle. They have done nothing to address the real problems of needed too many clicks to get to apps and things like that which came up in just about every review of 10.04. I’m hoping we will see a big code drop in the coming weeks but I’m beginning to suspect that we wont.

Anonymous
This.
Anonymous
This.
http://www.facebook.com/denis.cheremisov Denis Cheremisov
Exactly. It’s especially annoying to see all these fanboys who uses Unity / Gnome Shell / Linux in general once a month only at their homes and trying to argue that this stuff is usable. I’m tired of them. I’m looking for replacement right now. I hate KDE as well as XFCE (details, details matters). The Mac OSX has it’s own flaws too, I don’t particularly like it. The windows isn’t a choice at all, of course.

Anonymous
I’ve been using linux based desktops since Slackware 3 and have no issues at all with Unity. I find it rather refreshing actually. People who can accept change are usually more willing to adapt to new things,

Denis Cheremisov
I’m using linux desktop at my job. Unity didn’t bring any improvement over the gnome 2 + synapse, as well as gnome shell. But both brought many regressions (especially Unity).
Denis Cheremisov
I’m using linux desktop at my job. Unity didn’t bring any improvement over the gnome 2 + synapse, as well as gnome shell. But both brought many regressions (especially Unity).

Akshat Jain
Can I use my neighbors’ desktop?

http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ Joey-Elijah Sneddon
Let me check my guide book…
…..yes! and your aunties! :D

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000499056417 Robert Sederholm
That’s one thing I’d like to never see again, after this release cycle.
“Battery Life Estimating…”

edu ard
+1!, wtf, I run it on my pc! -..-
edu ard
+1!, wtf, I run it on my pc! -..-
Patrick Lewis
There is an indicator called “battery status”. It’s quite good, and I’ve replaced the default with it. It actually shows the battery charge percentage like it’s supposed to! Go to http://www.techdrivein.com/2011/05/10-useful-application-indicators-for.html and look for “battery status indicator” among the rest. It has directions.
But I agree, that “battery estimating” was quite annoying, and it should not be an issue for two straight releases. I need to learn code so that I don’t merely complain about bugs… Someday.

Anonymous
I’ve only been using Linux since 09.10 and every release is amazing. I’ve decided to build a new pc myself and will install ubuntu. I know it will support everything out of the box and if I have a glitch LTS is wonderful fallback. I can’t wait to not buy a mac and continue to refuse to use windows.
http://www.facebook.com/Digital.Patchiu Ricardo Mostafa
Things I like to see in Ubuntu 11.10:
- Include default themes and icons known to all geeks but not known for novice users or first used Ubuntu. As the pack of icons “Faenza” and “awoken” and themes “Orta” and “Equinox” (just to give 2 examples of each). But it is annoying (and innentendible for me) that these things are not included in the installation disk.
- Animations soft in many programs. For example, in the global menu to move from the title menu options show a smooth and not abrupt. And this happens in many programs. Giving the end user these little details make Ubuntu much more polished.
- Integrate on the “get more themes online” gnome-look.org site to download new skins and that is completely outdated http://art.gnome.org/themes/.But it has to be renewed, like KDE, which is perfect for the novice user to see all the icons and themes ordered, and all you have to click on and off (not browse thousands of pages).
- Improve Empathy icons and create an option to download and easy way to change the icons downloaded.
- Quality Center software programs and a filter alphas, betas and programs are not 100%.
- Working with ATI and NVIDIA to improve their drivers. As you may have more performance in Windows than Linux? There are things I do not understand, such as, for example, Open Arena for Windows through Wine works just like the native linux version? Unfortunately, OpenGL is far from DirectX. You have to work in a graphical environment to attract and convince developers that have better performance in Linux than in Windows.If Ubuntu (and Linux in general) are able to perform better in games than AAA Windows, there would be an incredible emigration from Windows to Linux. In my view, to use Linux for a massive, missing games, nothing else (also polishing errors, but most people use Windows and not Linux, because Linux has no games AAA).
Sorry for my horrible English, but use the google translator …xD

Kenneth Fossum
I can’t tell you how much I agree with this post. Especially the part about graphics performance. For several years my Win7 install has outperformed my Ubuntu install (dual boot on Dell E6500 – before that Lenovo T63, same thing). I know I can blame the Nvidia drivers, but it is driving me crazy …everything about interacting with the Ubuntu desktop is just slower. Rendering, opening apps, scrolling …you get the idea. Add two or three virtual machines I have to run because of my job (sysadmin), and you can easily understand that 9 of 10 times I have to boot into Windows. The 10th time is just me being curious – you know; maybe they released something that fixed something …but no….
I think they should put some lipstick on the boot process too.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7MOKQBK44A5AY4IZP4HNHY4V4M Bob
Its out of testing now and its still got the dang Nvidia crashing issue. Its insane.

http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/DATA6WDNBSCFJL6JSP5OP3AADQ asedsa
Don’t agree with the idea of them moving to a DVD release. What they need to do instead is making Software Centre not suck, so a newbie can easily find it and feels confident about downloading a bunch of the apps.
Anonymous
I agree. I think Radiance, Dust and New Wave should be scrapped in favour of Orta and Equinox Evolution. Faenza should replace Humanity as the default icon set. I said a while ago that themes, icon sets and other things should be included in the USC and made easy to install for users (with a preview function).
Anonymous
I agree. I think Radiance, Dust and New Wave should be scrapped in favour of Orta and Equinox Evolution. Faenza should replace Humanity as the default icon set. I said a while ago that themes, icon sets and other things should be included in the USC and made easy to install for users (with a preview function).

http://profiles.google.com/lilianftp Moraru Lilian
Windows on snap don’t resize to be just on the half of the screen and Scroll bars got smaller or what, I find it harder to scroll using them, they disappear a lot of times when I try to click on them. When u open the Messaging Menu from top, special actions(Ctrl+Alt+Delete, Ctrl+Alt+L, Ctrl+Alt+D…) don’t work but that was happening since MeMenu.
The rest are pretty good, no crash at all for about 1 hour considering that it’s Alpha.
http://profiles.google.com/lilianftp Moraru Lilian
Windows on snap don’t resize to be just on the half of the screen and Scroll bars got smaller or what, I find it harder to scroll using them, they disappear a lot of times when I try to click on them. When u open the Messaging Menu from top, special actions(Ctrl+Alt+Delete, Ctrl+Alt+L, Ctrl+Alt+D…) don’t work but that was happening since MeMenu.
The rest are pretty good, no crash at all for about 1 hour considering that it’s Alpha.
http://profiles.google.com/houdas.rodolphe Rodolphe Houdas
For myself, I don’t like Unity : it’s cluttered, useless and ugly.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/DATA6WDNBSCFJL6JSP5OP3AADQ asedsa
To the guy who said he wishes Shell and Unity would work together. My guess is as Gnome 3 becomes more easily customised and more mature Unity will eventually port more and more things over until the point that Unity is actually a highly customised version of Shell.
Remember for example that Unity originally started off as being Clutter based until they ported it to Compiz. My guess is once Clutter becomes mature the guys at Canonical will want to make good on their original plans and will port Unity back to Clutter.
http://profiles.google.com/laurynas.ragaisis Laurynas Ragaisis
That’s it, I’m going to Kubuntu:))
http://profiles.google.com/laurynas.ragaisis Laurynas Ragaisis
That’s it, I’m going to Kubuntu:))
Anonymous
So is the menu bar in the top panel already always viewable?
http://www.facebook.com/denis.cheremisov Denis Cheremisov
Unity is an DE that makes for the audience that will never use Ubuntu at regular bases (they usually start it once a month for half of an hour to play). Most of us who uses Ubuntu for our jobs usually immediately wipes it out since we have particular workflow (it’s easily reproducable in KDE and Mac OSX though, but details matter in this case, Gnome 2 is near perfect). Both Unity and GS brought regressions here (well, the GS has an improvement — notification system, but not Unity). In other areas they usually adds complexity. I feel the same with Linus Torvalds.
Anonymous
I’ve just done an update to Oneiric and wonder why can’t I restart my computer now? There’s no option for restarting it at all. Does anyone know?

Bilal Akhtar
We’re dealing with it. Gnome-session 3 doesn’t have a direct restart option anymore, we’ll have to patch it for things to work.

http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/KME6NDF3KTWK6NNPG5SF36PLBI Ambleston
Ah, I just posted a question about this. Why are the Gnome devs so intend on stupid decisions. No way to change themes, can’t reboot. Heck, what next, no DE just Bash after log in!

Anonymous
It’s normally around this time I start giving the testing version of ubuntu a proper go at but I am finding at crashing far too much to even want to use (mainly compiz related it seems).
Nevertheless, I am settling into using it and finding less faults with the interface than I did.
With the latest KDE being a little flaky, maybe THIS time I will make the switch.
One thing though, with the latest round of updates the panel shadow has gone. Is this unique to me or new behaviour/bug?
I miss it :(

fatriff
I’m tired of making the switch, I want familiarity, I want to know that the distro i’m using today will look exactly as it does in 2 years from now with all the changes being behind the scenes.. I don’t need to develop a method of working with Unity, Unity should work the way I need to work.

Anonymous
And that is how I have always felt but over time, the way I use my computer has changed which means certain things no longer suit me.
I was always a fiddler, I used KDE because I could spend hours MAKING it work my way and I used distros like gentoo, debian Sid, slackware and arch because I liked tinkering.
These days it’s more about time and convenience.
Now I have a family, I have disabled son and just cannot find time to fiddle.
I can no longer make an interface work for me, I have to find the one that is closest to my needs with the least amount of effort and setup and unity is probably the closest in most ways.

Anonymous
I’ve got one wish for the next release:
Please fix the ugly bootscreen by default!
There is only one chance to make a first impression.
Joe Brown
Call me crazy, but I think the UI looks a lot like the WP7 interface. With the hole sliding panes thing. Which is a good thing!
Joe Brown
Call me crazy, but I think the UI looks a lot like the WP7 interface. With the hole sliding panes thing. Which is a good thing!
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_3BEMYXZR3QTBZF676TUAEKATHM syncdram
To put unity and gnome 3 into perspective when Linus Torvalds comes out and openly says Unity and Gnome 3 are Crap and it doesn’t matter what they add to these interfaces there still Crap. Quote, Unqote. The founder of Linux has the need to openly utter these words for the very first time. There is a moment in your life when your heart just stops beating. Even he as smart as he is, realizes the mistake ubuntu and gnome have made. Also in his article he mentioned forking gnome off to continue the way it was if Linux is to survive. He also goes on and talks about the Large amount of limitations for each interface for the desktop user that developers will never fix. This says Volumes to those in the Linux world.

Anonymous
It may be crap and useless for HIS needs. Does that mean everyone should take note and say “oh, I quite like it but if Linus says it crap I’d better stop using it and cling on to gnome legacy for the rest of my life”?
I have always hated the “classic” gnome, even when I used it full-time.
Anonymous
It may be crap and useless for HIS needs. Does that mean everyone should take note and say “oh, I quite like it but if Linus says it crap I’d better stop using it and cling on to gnome legacy for the rest of my life”?
I have always hated the “classic” gnome, even when I used it full-time.
Anonymous
Hence the reason that Linus is a kernel developer and not a UI designer.
Bilal Akhtar
I might be wrong, but Linus just thrashed GNOME3 and NOT Ubuntu Unity. And yes, I know he moved to Xfce.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/KME6NDF3KTWK6NNPG5SF36PLBI Ambleston
Linus also but the boot into KDE4 when it came out and Fedora forced it onto him. At least KDE SC is getting better with maturity. KDE 4.0 shouldn’t have gone anyway near Joe public it was a technology preview, but with every distro wanting the latest and greatest they forced a unready DE on the public.
I’m not 100% enamoured with Unity or Gnome-Shell, KDE4.7 is OK, but I can’t settle on a KDE centric distro at the moment (currently putting Chakra Linux through its paces on a test PC).
I ain’t no great mover or shaker, but if the Gnome devs keep on making stupid decisions, like no way to change the theme or to reboot/shutdown, they will end up a laughing stock.
I know, I know one size doesn’t fit all, but Gnome2.x worked and surely the whole point of making Gnome3 was to improve on all what Gnome2.x gave us, not remove bits that the devs feel isn’t needed.
Mac OSX Lion is also moving in this direction, there seems to be a lot more grumbling about Lion than with any other release of the OSX series.

Anonymous
There is always lots of grumbling with every OS X release, people complained about the transparent menubar, about the 3D dock, about the size of the shadows etc, unity and gnome shell certainly aren’t unique there.
And of course there was lots of grumbles about KDE 4 and I was one of the people who hated it and actually switched to gnome.
Nowadays KDE has improved a lot (but still many, many problems) and I am back with KDE.
I will be interested to see the state of things in a years time.
KDE will keep improving, unity should be or at least close to it’s final vision and shell should have evolved some more.
Then we once again we may be spoiled for choice :)

Anonymous
You have misquoted him. He never mentions Ubuntu or Unity, and he does not mention the “survival of Linux” being dependent on forking GNOME.
http://twitter.com/Hexual Ian ‘IZO’ Hex
Linus is a power user with highly specialised skills. GNOME3 was not designed for his use case. End of discussion. Now can we, as a community, move on?

http://www.facebook.com/people/Igor-Rakocevic/1237819526 Igor Rakocevic
Unity seems to have polished up since 11.04
unity was not all that great in 10.10 though,
since it was a gray slab with icons that did not go away
Anonymous
So guys is it stable enough, for me to test it without hacking every day?
Mohan
Looking forward to trying it out.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/KME6NDF3KTWK6NNPG5SF36PLBI Ambleston
Has anyone else noticed that there is no longer a Reboot option? I don’t know if this is a Gnome3 issue or not as when I installed Fedora15 a few weeks back I had no Shutdown option. The only way I could shutdown Fedora was to log out and choose it from GDM. The only way I can reboot in Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha3 is to logout and choose Reboot from LightDM.

Anonymous
It has been that way a while and it has been noticed.
I hate the way gnome shell only offers a logout option too.
I would assume the reboot option will return, though I would prefer having a single option to bring up a dialog to logout, reboot or shutdown, the way KDE does.
That would also reduce some of the ridiculous clutter in the “system” indicator.

http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/KME6NDF3KTWK6NNPG5SF36PLBI Ambleston
Whew! I thought it was just me ;)
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/KME6NDF3KTWK6NNPG5SF36PLBI Ambleston
Whew! I thought it was just me ;)

Anonymous
I have to laugh at new gwibber.
A couple of releases ago when gwibber was released I was quite vocal as to how completely buggy and awful this app was.
So with alpha 3 I finally decided to give it another try and see how the “new” gwibber shapes up.
Well I can’t really say, it crashes every time I try to open the account manager so I can’t even use it (rolls eyes)

Anonymous
OMG! Gwibber!!
Got around the problem mentioned above and finally had a chance to try new gwibber (with facebook).
Slick new interface?
All I can see is when I open the new window to see the new messages it hangs for ages before it does anything and won’t let me scroll properly.
If I have 15 messages it lets me scroll down maybe 7 before just stopping.
If I try to drag the slider down it just pops to the top again.
Maybe I’ll try again next time the redesign the interface. But probably not.
Actually that was probably a bit nasty sounding. I know someone has been labouring over this app for free but it gets frustrating when something is so buggy for so long :(

Anonymous
I have to laugh at new gwibber.
A couple of releases ago when gwibber was released I was quite vocal as to how completely buggy and awful this app was.
So with alpha 3 I finally decided to give it another try and see how the “new” gwibber shapes up.
Well I can’t really say, it crashes every time I try to open the account manager so I can’t even use it (rolls eyes)
http://nickjones.me Nick Jones
Looks like my new favorite feature is going to be the updated Gwibber! I have been waiting for a good “native” Twitter client!
http://nickjones.me Nick Jones
Looks like my new favorite feature is going to be the updated Gwibber! I have been waiting for a good “native” Twitter client!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Igor-Rakocevic/1237819526 Igor Rakocevic
Unity is just right now like a seed waiting to grow into a flower
compare unity 10.10 and unity 11.04, much better, way better

http://twitter.com/zc456 Squeaks
I consider Unity’s evolution like Mac OS X. Sucked in the beginning and just got better with each new release.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_3XZQVVTM6XFEIDBYMG2EPZVQHU Valérie Dzierza
I’ve found a complete review there : http://discoverlinux-clemi46.blogspot.com/2011/08/ubuntu-oneiric-alpha-et-de-trois.html
It looks more fast than version 11.04 no ?
João Guerreiro
piece a shi….
http://twitter.com/qweqwe_art Козаев Артём
The translation of post on Russian on site
http://qweqwe.su/ubuntu-11-10-alpha-3

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Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3 Released