Almost walked out on Ubuntu...

[Baldrick_NZ]

My wife and I both had 13.04 (Unity with Gnome Shell 3.6) installed on our fairly new laptops. Both of us were experiencing several issues, but mainly pertaining to slowness and freezing.

So, as the computer admin of our family, I decided to upgrade my puter to 13.10 to see what was new, also with the hope that our issues would be resolved during the upgrade process. The upgrade process went pretty smoothly, as did the upgrade to Gnome Shell 3.8. After a couple of days, I decided to upgrade my wife's PC as well, as mine seemed pretty stable, and we're only a couple of weeks from final release.

About then I discovered that while some of our issues had been resolved, a few had also been introduced. The abilty to not use my CD/DVD drive was annoying, but my wife's internet speed also joined the slowness/sluggishness she experienced with 13.04.

As I've been with Ubuntu since 7.10, I decided to embark on a mission to find an Ubuntu replacement. I settled on Fedora 20 (cuurently also in development). I like the way Fedora uses cutting edge technology, in the case of Fedora 20, Gnome Shell 3.10. The problem wasn't that I would have to learn some new commands, like su & yum, but more like Unetbootin wouldn't install on my flash drive properly to test it first. It wouldn't fit on a DVD either - 5.2Gb is a bit big for a standard DVD.

Enter Ubuntu Gnome 13.10, the former remix version now supported by Canonical. This version is also in development, and is without Unity. We don't use Unity at all, so not having it as part of any install was no loss.

Infact, it would appear that following the successful installation of Ubuntu Gnome 13.10, not having Unity has improved the performance of my PC no end! Maybe it was the complete re-installation rather than upgrade, maybe its no longer having Unity's extra bloat, who knows. All I know is that, so far, my PC hasn't run better than it is at this moment. My CD/DVD writer works, on-demand videos no longer freeze causing a refresh of the browser, and I now have a faster running and seemingly more stable PC (to name a few), and it's set up the way I like it.

After a few more days of testing, I'll relieve my wife's angst and do a fresh install on her PC too. I'll post here again regarding how her experience goes once my testing has concluded.

In summary, I'm glad that I found Ubuntu Gnome. I would recommend it to anyone in a heartbeat, particularly if the user wants a system that doesn't appear to hog resourses on a fairly new PC. A system that looks good, and has more desktop configuration options to make it look and feel like it's yours.
Conversely, I'm a bit dissapointed that for now, I didn't get to try Fedora 20. I was looking forward to learning new stuff. But, hey, perhaps once it's been released officially in late November I can install it along side of Ubuntu Gnome on another partition. But, I think it'll take sometime for me to move permanently away from my Ubuntu home.

[buzzingrobot]

13.10 and Fedora 20 both look to be very nice releases.

I found Ubuntu Gnome to be a bit sluggish when I tried it on an alpha, but haven't tried it recently. I typically find it runs a bit faster than Unity on my hardware.

The CD/DVD problem certainly shouldn't happen. And hasn't here on 13.10.

Fedora 20 is shaping up to be a very nice release. It's not yet to beta but it's smooth and usable. The DVD image contains several desktop environments. That's why it's so large. There are Live images of about one gig available. Go to http://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/stage/20-Beta-TC4/ for the latest images (beta test candidate 4). Under "Live" you can find the smaller install images broken out by DE. The "Live-Desktop" is Gnome.

Expect lots of updates with Fedora, even after the official release. Including frequent kernel bumps, by design. An update immediately after an install is called for. (If you install now and update, you should, cross your fingers, move to the release version transparently.) F20 is unusually stable for a Fedora development release. Major breakage before the final seems unlikely, but obviously possible.

[ventrical]

I got dumped on a few years back and so decided to test the Fedora waters. F12,13 worked just great on older PCs with all the bells and whistles. Then came Maveric Meerkat (10.10) and I haven't been able to pull myself away since.

Unity is right up my alley. I can't say enough good things about it. I did make my concerns known about the discontinuance of Unity 2D and the introduction of llvmpipe but I have adjusted accordingly. nVidia graphic hardware is super cheap as well as Intel boards .. and the older , the better. It keeps getting better - the things we can do with Ubuntu, Gnome and Unity.

Regards...

[Baldrick_NZ]

Thanks for the link, buzzingrobot, I'll be sure to check it out.

Ventrical, I like Unity too, but GS serves my needs better. I think Unity really came into it's own with the release of 12.04, up to then it was more of a testing phase. I love the global menu in Unity - it's probably the thing I miss most about it.

I hear xMir is looking good, but probably won't be introduced unti 14.10 now.

[hhWnd8K]

I agree "baldrick_NZ", Ubuntu GNOME13.10 is a wonderful release. My PC also has not worked better, I don't think since I built it. Ubuntu 13.10 with unity was slow and sluggish animations were not smooth and it crashed a number of times. The Gnome 13.10 runs very smooth and is lighting fast on my PC.

[w-andre]

I love Ubuntu as well yet it almost seems to be a taboo for a GNU/Linux user. However I'm not using it at the moment because I'm waiting for the whole Mir vs. Wayland thing to be resolved.

[Johan De Cauwer]

Cutting edge and stability are often mutually exclusive. That's why I use 12.04 LTS, but I got curious and downloaded 13.10 (release) and installed it in a seperate partition. After a rather slow installation the system rebooted normally but there seem to be some issues with video full screen. Two solutions: revert to a LTS (Debian or Centos are alternatives that are also utltra stable) or... wait till someone figures out what the problem is and fixes it. Personally I had problems with Mint 15 Mate and replaced it with 13.10. Not a solution. And I guess these problems are strongly hardware related. That's why they invented YMMV...