My opinion of Ubuntu 11.10.

[galacticaboy]

I know that there are a lot of people posting about how they hate 11.10 or how they love it. But I just wanted to get my 2 cents in.

So far, everything is working like it should. I do have to run Unity 2D or Gnome-Fallback-Mode though, but that does not bother me. I am running this on an old Pentium 4, 2.50GHz, Intel 82865G Onboard Graphics Controller, 756MB of RAM, and a 6.5GB HDD, YES 6GB! I have all of the basic programs up and running fast. Unity, well Unity is nothing short of breath taking. It works very well and is stunningly beautiful. I love the Adwaita theme. I love Thunderbird way more than I did Evolution. Empathy is a great alternative to Pidgin, although I prefer Pidgin. Ubuntu-One is great. It is very very fast. I love the new "shutdown" menu at the top, I really like how it tells me that my system is up to date right there in the menu, and I also have access to my system settings and more. Workspace switching is a little slow, but I think that may be due to my hardware, and I have this problem with my mouse pointer where when I more it, it flickers across my screen. Bug reporting is as easy as ever, and in my opinion, the best new feature is the addition of LightDM, the login screen is sheer beautiful. I believe that Canonical did one heck of a job with this release and it can only get better from here. 12.04, I believe, will be the best release of them all. Look out Windows, you may end up loosing the race!

Your opinions?

[Roasted]

I too am really liking 11.10. I'm using Gnome Shell though, however Unity in 11.10 seems far more refined than 11.04's variant of Unity was. It makes me think Unity is to be taken seriously now, whereas in 11.04 it was more of a "LOL, nice try."

Bottom line is, I acknowledge they are very solid. Aside from the desktop environments, things snap into place nicely. I honestly haven't ran into anything that made me have a "what the?!" moment.

The only semi ehh thing was the printing menus. I would like to add my own printer via IP address with the old menu, but that menu (at least in Gnome Shell) seems to be done. There are far less options. But it's all good, because CUPS is a beautiful thing. Just a localhost:631 and I'm there.

Problem is, grandma wouldn't know how to do that. Then again, I doubt grandma would know how to add an IP printer to begin with. Nonetheless, I was put off slightly by that. Other than that, super happy with 11.10.

[cariboo]

I too am really liking 11.10. I'm using Gnome Shell though, however Unity in 11.10 seems far more refined than 11.04's variant of Unity was. It makes me think Unity is to be taken seriously now, whereas in 11.04 it was more of a "LOL, nice try."

Bottom line is, I acknowledge they are very solid. Aside from the desktop environments, things snap into place nicely. I honestly haven't ran into anything that made me have a "what the?!" moment.

The only semi ehh thing was the printing menus. I would like to add my own printer via IP address with the old menu, but that menu (at least in Gnome Shell) seems to be done. There are far less options. But it's all good, because CUPS is a beautiful thing. Just a localhost:631 and I'm there.

Problem is, grandma wouldn't know how to do that. Then again, I doubt grandma would know how to add an IP printer to begin with. Nonetheless, I was put off slightly by that. Other than that, super happy with 11.10.

The Ubuntu devs found the printer installation dialogue lacking in gnome-shell, so they brought the printer installation app forward in Unity, although through some weirdness, it isn't available in gnome-shell.

[whiskeylover]

When my update manager opens up, it still asks me to upgrade to 11.04. I thought 11.10 got released today.

I'm running 10.10.

[retchid]

I hated 11.04 slow buggy plain awful (so bad installed opensuse kde on all my machines)

11.10 fast,noticeably slicker no bugs, reasonably easy to fathom

Only irritation firefox is slower but installed cromium and that is super fast

Like the half screen window snap but will probably never use it

Acer Aspire one ssd version
(this machine hated 11.04 more than I did and refused to boot it 9 times out of 10)

Can use xubuntu, gnome or kde so no real issues (software centre)

Don't like the look of nautilus though so installed Thunar file manager

[retchid]

upgrade to 11.04 then upgrade to 11.10
makes sense - I had no problems upgrading from 11.04 to 11.10 (although did take more than 2 hours)

you wont like the 11.04 experience one bit though

[beew]

Only irritation firefox is slower but installed cromium and that is super fast

Like the half screen window snap but will probably never use it


Strange, I tested in on two laptops and Firefox in 11.10 is supernaturally fast.

[retchid]

By slow I mean slower than opensuse and slower than it was when using 11.04 - slower start slower cache - chromium faster start faster cache

It's all relative when you get used to a certain speed you expect it to remain the same or faster when it goes slower it's very noticeable - the only thing that changed was 11.04 to 11.10 Conclusion 11.10 makes firefox slower not by much but noticeable

Correlation =1
Perhaps you should test the hypothosis by installing Chomium and check if its faster rather than just saying Firefox is fast (I like firefox but chrome is faster after 11.10 install)

Test 1
Firefox 10 seconds to load
Chromium 5 seconds to load

Acer aspire one ssd version - not the fastest anyway

Test 2
Firefox 4 seconds to load
Chromium 2 seconds to load

Sony vio

Conclusion chromium is twice as fast as firefox in 11.10

Does not mean chromium is faster than firefox just that on those machines in 11.10 chromium is faster than firefox

[Flymo]

Interesting post, David.

I don't get on well with Unity, find it obstructive and counter-intuitive. Wish I could understand how you're making it work for you! <sigh>

Natty did not help by freezing and crashing so often that I wiped it. Do hope you are right about 12.04!

Am about to try our shiny newly-burned Oneiric CDs, wish me luck!;)

[beew]

By slow I mean slower than opensuse and slower than it was when using 11.04 - slower start slower cache - chromium faster start faster cache

It's all relative when you get used to a certain speed you expect it to remain the same or faster when it goes slower it's very noticeable - the only thing that changed was 11.04 to 11.10 Conclusion 11.10 makes firefox slower not by much but noticeable

Correlation =1
Perhaps you should test the hypothosis by installing Chomium and check if its faster rather than just saying Firefox is fast (I like firefox but chrome is faster after 11.10 install)

Test 1
Firefox 10 seconds to load
Chromium 5 seconds to load

Acer aspire one ssd version - not the fastest anyway

Test 2
Firefox 4 seconds to load
Chromium 2 seconds to load

Sony vio

Conclusion chromium is twice as fast as firefox in 11.10

Does not mean chromium is faster than firefox just that on those machines in 11.10 chromium is faster than firefox

By fast I mean faster than 11.04 and much faster than 10.10 (same version of Firefox) Startup is almost instanteous and is almost as fast as Opera, same with loading pages. I use Opera and Firefox instead of Chromium except in Lubuntu where Chromium is the default. Chromium may be a little faster still but wouldn't be even noticable,--I don't find it faster than Opera, not in a noticiable way anyway,-- but problem with chroium is it is not nearly as extendable as firefox and it doesn't integrate well with the DE (i.e ugly)

[vicshrike]

Upgraded from natty yesterday and everything seems to work so far, feels a little bit slow and clunky, but thats probably me being used to more lightweight stuff, funny though how intuitive unity feels, awkward but intuitive, so far so good with a little bit of so what.

[Gremlinzzz]

When you change a system it should be for the better,using Mint:popcorn:

[ubupirate]

When you change a system it should be for the better,using Mint:popcorn:

How's Mint going along?

[Gremlinzzz]

How's Mint going along?

Just installed today seems nice,:popcorn:

[ubupirate]

Just installed today seems nice,:popcorn:
Are you using LM11 or LMDE? Not used Mint since early 2010 (which was first distro I used, then switched over to Ubuntu and never looked back).

[Roasted]

The Ubuntu devs found the printer installation dialogue lacking in gnome-shell, so they brought the printer installation app forward in Unity, although through some weirdness, it isn't available in gnome-shell.

Yeah. The printer dialogue is severely lacking in Gnome Shell. Surely I hope they add an advanced menu to it or something with the other features that are missing...

My frustration is this. My network printer wasn't discovered through that menu, so I had to add it manually. OH WAIT. I couldn't unless I went to localhost:631. Sure, that's easy for me since I work on systems all the time, but what about my aunt or grandma who's using Ubuntu/Gnome Shell? Where is the "oh just go to localhost:631" notification to tell them what to do if their network printer isn't discovered either?

[Gremlinzzz]

Are you using LM11 or LMDE? Not used Mint since early 2010 (which was first distro I used, then switched over to Ubuntu and never looked back).

I.m using XFCE version/ Linux Mint 201109 "Debian GNOME", "Debian Xfce"

Two new releases of the Debian-based editions of Linux Mint were announced earlier today. Featuring the rolling-release update mechanism with updated software pulled from Debian's "testing" repository, these releases offer the following highlights: "Available in both 32-bit and 64-bit variants as live DVDs with GNOME or Xfce; the purpose is to look identical to the main edition and to provide the same functionality while using Debian as a base; all Linux Mint 11 features; installer improvements (keyboard variants, locale, bug fixes, UUID in fstab); update packs, dedicated Update Manager and staged repositories; GTK+ 2/3 theme compatibility; updated software and packages.:popcorn: I like not having to install any Java, everything works out the box.so far:popcorn:

[galacticaboy]

I don't really have a problem with Unity. I loved Gnome 2, but I realize that things are changing and we better get used to it, or change it. I actually really like Unity, I thought I would hate it, but I actually like it. And as for 11.04, it was a great release, I had very few problems with it at all. I have in 11.10 ran into a few bugs, but nothing major. It will be great in due time my friends.

[el_koraco]

By slow I mean slower than opensuse and slower than it was when using 11.04 - slower start slower cache - chromium faster start faster cache


That's just because you didn't tweak Firefox. Firefox is kinda like a Linux distro, slow and clunky by defaults, but with a bunch of options for speeding it up.

[ubupirate]

That's just because you didn't tweak Firefox. Firefox is kinda like a Linux distro, slow and clunky by defaults, but with a bunch of options for speeding it up.

Only tweak I make to Firefox is enabling pipelining and setting max requests to 8. :P

[djevans3]

I'm running 11.10 on a similar system (P4 2.8 w/ same Intel onboard processor and 512MB of Ram). My question is I keep having some games such as Supertuxkart crash when trying to load and I believe it is graphics related. Did you have to tweak your intel driver? It shows loaded in Synaptics but under "Graphics" in system settings is says "Driver: Unknown".

FYI - This is my first venture into Linux so I'm trying to feel my way around

[galacticaboy]

I'm running 11.10 on a similar system (P4 2.8 w/ same Intel onboard processor and 512MB of Ram). My question is I keep having some games such as Supertuxkart crash when trying to load and I believe it is graphics related. Did you have to tweak your intel driver? It shows loaded in Synaptics but under "Graphics" in system settings is says "Driver: Unknown".

FYI - This is my first venture into Linux so I'm trying to feel my way around

Nope, I did not tweak a thing. What graphics card do you have, Ubuntu auto recognized mine, but you may have to open the dash (the windows key on your keyboard) and type in Additional Drivers, and see if it will find it there. I did not tweak it at all, but my graphics suck, its some integrated Intel 82865G graphics crap that is just one big joke. I am actually surprised I can run AssaultCube and a PS1 emulator on it. For that matter, I am actually surprised I can actually run Unity 2D, I find it to still be kinda blingy, but not bad. I cannot run Gnome Shell... =-[ Just keep trying and keep asking. Try making a thread about it on here and see if you can get some help. Good luck! and Welcome to Linux!

[Stigmata13]

Personally I am not a fan of Ubuntu 11.10, and it was in fact the final straw that caused me to switch to Linux Mint, and drop pure Ubuntu altogether.

I really appreciate all the work that the Ubuntu team does, which is why I still use an Ubuntu-based distro, but I absolutely loathe Unity. I found it highly annoying that I had to re-install the classic gnome desktop environment after updating from 11.04, and after doing so finding out that the panel was bugged out (Couldn't edit it, 80% of it was used to display the time, the notification panel was cut off, etc.)

While these may have been problems caused by the upgrade, I still found it highly annoying because I have been a long time fan of gnome and Unity just seems to be too much of a change. In the future I may mitigate to another completely different DE such as xfce as I can only imagine Ubuntu's support for gnome is going to become even worse as they spend more time on Unity, and I'm not really liking Gnome Shell much either.

[PC_load_letter]

Your opinions?

As I probably mentioned in several posts before, I'm an easy guy to please :D As long as I can install Synapse, I'm a happy camper. I use keyboard shortcuts ALL the time and I rarely use the mouse. So, I guess I'm biased towards Unity. I tried the 11.10 live CD and I was very impressed with how snappy it was.

My only gripe was that you need to install additional software to be able to change the icon theme, no biggie but I think that should be done from the appearance menu as was in Gnome 2.

I plan on installing 11.10 this weekend, I'll come back for more feedback.

[Rodney9]

I use keyboard shortcuts ALL the time and I rarely use the mouse.

I think that's it, if you're a keyboard lover, you'll like Unity, if you're a mouse lover , you'll dislike Unity.