If you are looking for something to do before the Royal Wedding gets under way, Canonical has officially released Ubuntu "Natty Narwhal". The company opened up the mirror floodgates at 11:36 am Greenwich Mean Time for Ubuntu 11.04 for desktops, notebooks, and netbooks and its server companion, Ubuntu Server 11.04. Last week, …

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Thursday 28th April 2011 17:31 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward

Desktop is surprisingly good

Have been running it on a netbook for a week - it's excellent for small screens.

Annoying as hell for a workstation - but if you are using a big hairy Linux workstation with big screens you are using KDE anyway ;-)

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1. Thursday 28th April 2011 19:45 GMT K. Adams
  
  "... if you are using a big hairy Linux workstation with big screens you are using KDE anyway ;-)"
  
  Or XFCE...
  
  Or LXDE...
  
  Or Fluxbox...
  
  Or Openbox...
  
  Or even GNOME 2.3x "classic"
  
  :-)
  
  Personally, I think KDE SC 4.x has made a lot of great strides (especially with regard to stability), but it's still a bit too resource-heavy for my tastes.
  
  For now, I'll stick with my Lucid (10.04 LTS) installation, then make a decision as to whether I'm going Unity or XFCE when the next LTS arrives. I may even take another look at KDE SC.
  
  All I know is that my next desktop will NOT be contaminated by Gnome Shell, unless something radically changes.
  
  Besides, with LaunchPad PPAs, I'm not missing out on the latest-greatest; for example, I have installed the "official" Firefox 4 package provided by the Ubuntu Mozilla team PPA, for example. Works great...!
  
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  1. Friday 29th April 2011 00:21 GMT alun phillips
    
    Contaminated with gnome shell you will be
    
    Unity sits on top of gnome shell.
    
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    1. Friday 29th April 2011 16:37 GMT K. Adams
      
      "Unity sits on top of gnome shell." Huh?
      
      No, it does not.
      
      It sits on top of the GNOME library framework, which is provided by GTK+ 2.x and 3.x.
      
      Unity, however, avoids using many of the specific components upon which Gnome Shell relies, like Mutter (the GNOME 3 Window Manager) and Clutter (the JavaScript-like graphics library used by Mutter to render its effects).
      
      Unity 3D relies on Compiz for Window Management, and interacts with Compiz through the Compiz plugin framework. I am not sure what Unity 2D (the version for systems where OpenGL acceleration is not supported) is (or will be) using for its Window Management, but old-school Metacity might be an option.
      
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Thursday 28th April 2011 17:33 GMT Ian 55

Not Found

Click on link on the download page and...

The requested URL /11.04/ubuntu-11.04-netbook-i386.iso.torrent was not found on this server.

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Thursday 28th April 2011 19:45 GMT K. Adams

Not fishing...

I like Ubuntu, but I'm steering clear of this one, mostly because of these issues:

-- Ubuntu Wiki: Natty Narwhal Release Notes:

-- https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NattyNarwhal/ReleaseNotes#Known%20Issues

-- -- The swap partition appears become unusable during some installations (UUID not set). This issue is under investigation. (709363)

-- -- The return_to_partitioning function executes and returns as normal, but seemingly fails to properly clean up after partman-commit and initialize partman. (740903)

-- -- During boot, on the cryptsetup passphrase prompt, every character typed causes a repeat of the prompt. (566818)

-- -- When installing the amd64+mac version, please do not use LVM. Also avoid using multiple linux instances at this time. (745960)

I need 64-bit address space AND the ability to use encrypted logical volumes, so installing an operating system with a broken partitioner and storage volume management system isn't an option for me.

Not to mention that, IMHO, Unity isn't quite ready for "prime time." Probably be OK after two more releases, though...

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Thursday 28th April 2011 19:45 GMT Anonymous Coward

To be honest,

who outside the Ubuntu fanbois really cares.

The same goes for other OS releases including Windows & OS-X.

Mines the one with a copy of RT-11 on DECtape in the pocket.

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1. Thursday 28th April 2011 19:49 GMT AlexH
  
  wrong website?
  
  You might be on the wrong website mate...
  
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Thursday 28th April 2011 19:45 GMT jake

During the meanwhile ...

I'm running the latest version of Slackware, released this last Monday.

Works like Slackware ... In other words, I never even notice the OS unless I'm talking to someone else about it, which is pretty much all I want in an OS.

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Thursday 28th April 2011 20:18 GMT Andus McCoatover

Virtualbox!! Works a treat!

Ubuntu 11.04 and VirtualBox (VB) and Windows -XP. Dual-boot.

'Native' XP had problem accessing my 3G modem, which is my only connectivity. Worked on install, but when I put all the XP updates (downloaded with same dongle), and rebooted, couldn't get dongle - either (E220 or E160) working, no matter what I tried. In desperation, I tried VB.

Installed Windows - a breeze! Ran XP under VB - worked a treat! Modem accessed via Ubuntu, but connection accessable with XP.

Goddammit, I swear the windows in 'guest mode' is niftier than native. Apart from having to hit the 'guest key' (Right-shift), it's seamless.

Forget Royal Wedding, I'm hosing my ancient T30 to remove native Win-XP completely and go this way. The installation was as simple as calling Elop a ****.

First time in my life-of-messing-with-computers, nothing, bar Nothing has worked as seamlessly as this.

Gobsmacked!

Well done, folks.

(H/W? IBM T30 lappie, 512Meg ram, 30G HDD.)

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1. Thursday 28th April 2011 20:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Well me too...
  
  WinXP in VirtualBox under Ubuntu 10.04. Definitely snappier than my XP Dual Boot native --- but frankly, if it wasn't for some weird quirks of my bank's internet service, I wouldn't have Windows on the machine at al.
  
  Downsides (noticed so far) of using V'Boxed WinXP for anything else: the disk access is pretty slow, and the sound qualty is poor.
  
  While we're offtopic (well, a bit ;)) --- the latest Wine seems excellent. I now have Cool Edit Pro and FastStone Image viewer working just fine in Ubuntu. The former was considered a lost cause under previous Wine versions.
  
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2. Thursday 28th April 2011 20:47 GMT Peter Gathercole
  
  T30
  
  Does suspend and resume work OK on the T30?
  
  I have serious issues with 10.04, with the state of the ATI graphics card not being restored correctly after resume, leading to corrupted screen.
  
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  1. Friday 29th April 2011 21:47 GMT Andus McCoatover
    
    T30 resume
    
    Had massive problems with Kubuntu. Default screen res. was something I needed a microscope to see. Tried different res., always ended up with scrambled screen. Found a fix, which was to open a terminal, with "sudo reboot" ready (as root) but not hit return, and size to the left-half of the screen. Change screen res. to what I wanted, (screen scrambled) but before timeout move cursor to where I estimated the terminal was, click and hit return. It worked, a hell of a cluge, but....
    
    I dumbped KDE not just for that, but the flakiness of handling my wifi modem. Forums said use nm-applet, but I decided to go back to 'vanilla' 10.10, thence upgrade to 11.04.
    
    I digressed. Suspend seems to work OK, haven't tried 'hibernate'.
    
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3. Thursday 28th April 2011 23:49 GMT MountfordD
  
  Look forward to it
  
  Tried going Windows-free for a while but had to succumb to the might of Redmond and had to run XP under VirtualBox, so I am looking forward to a non-Royal Wedding day too. Thanks for the info.
  
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Thursday 28th April 2011 20:47 GMT lomuk

Narwhal sunk

Updated 10.10 to 11.04.

Crashed.

Will not boot.

Luckily, got XP on dual boot.

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1. Friday 29th April 2011 02:02 GMT Mark 65
  
  Never upgrade
  
  I know it generally works with Linux but I've always found it much more reliable to reinstall. Now if anyone knows of a program that will take note of all I have installed in terms of non-base apps and either list package and source or allow for simpler reinstallation that'd be great.
  
  I've had at least one Ubuntu upgrade balls-up (I'm thinking it was a 9 to 10) and similarly for OSX my Snow Leopard upgrade died a death after a while.
  
  Although it's better these days it's still far less effort long run to reinstall unless you have some real bespoke installation that you have a cloned backup of so can justify the upgrade attempt.
  
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  1. Friday 29th April 2011 08:02 GMT Manas Straw
    
    Rajah of Dungarpur - This is today's title
    
    HOWTO Reinstall all of your current packages if you do a fresh Ubuntu install
    
    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1057608
    
    Please also ensure the point made by pepemosca in post #13 on Page 2:
    
    http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6696192&postcount=13
    
    <Quote>
    
    I might add that you need to check on the bottom: "Save full state, not only changes"
    
    </Quote>
    
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Thursday 28th April 2011 20:47 GMT Anonymous Coward

We've done the inteligent talk last time

So this time, I'll just say that Unity is rubbish, and Ubuntu must have taken on some designers that failed at Fisher Price. It's a toytown mess, with lots of ideas, all missing the word "good".

Speaking of Toytown, Mr Grouser said it all: "It ought not to be allowed!"

Never fear: First step is to log in to a "Ubuntu Classic" session, and you'll be greeted with the desktop you know and love. Second is to remove that ridiculous global menu app. With a few more tweaks: Voila!

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1. Friday 29th April 2011 00:21 GMT Charles Manning
  
  11.04's "killer app"
  
  is definitely Ubuntu Classic
  
  What the hell is it with these UI people? KDE3 was easy to use. KDE4 introduced a whole lot of abstractions that might make sense to UI theoreticians but make no sense to Joe and Jane Punter.
  
  Unity seems like the Ubuntu attempt to to KDE4.
  
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Thursday 28th April 2011 23:49 GMT marky_boi

I won't be a BETA tester on this one ! !

Seen a release candidate and read heaps of reviews. I have converted the family from the darkside BUT this new interface is something else.....like something I stepped in .... |;-O>

Xubuntu; Lubuntu even Kubuntu (if pressed) will chosen before unity ! ! I'm even looking at Fedora if this rot continues.

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Friday 29th April 2011 15:03 GMT /dev/null

Just in the nick of time!

Otherwise, they would have had to rename it Ubuntu 11.05!

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Friday 29th April 2011 19:00 GMT Marco van de Voort

1024 MB required.

Pity it requires a one GB. My test machines are using still relatively expensive DDR-1, and the one that is free is only 512MB.

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Friday 29th April 2011 20:39 GMT Eldnah

The great thing about FOSS is choice ...

... and once the semester is over (< 1 week), it'll be time to exercise it. Debian? Fedora? Slack? Maybe even Gentoo, the distro that lured me over from FreeBSD in the first place. Or maybe back to OpenSUSE, which I ditched when Novell had its fling with M$ ... but only if OpenSUSE is sufficiently detached from Novell and Novell's new overlord (can anyone comment?).

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Friday 29th April 2011 23:50 GMT Mike Lovell

Since alpha, all good

I moved over to 11.04 while it was in early alpha but I can't really deal with Unity.

But fortunately you can just put the gnome3 PPA back in and put gnome-shell on (which is what I do).

It's been pretty rock solid for the last couple of months, both the underline kernel, packages and gnome-shell. The Open Source ATI driver finally does 3D out the box without messing about, which is nice (fgrlx always gave the ugly text based boot - Not the end of the world but not impressive when people look over your shoulder).

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