Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot review - Damn good

[Dedoimedo]

Hi guys,

For those interested ... Brace yourselves!

This is a super uber extremely long and enthusiastic review of Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot with the Unity desktop interface; topics include testing on two systems, with 64-bit processor and a new Nvidia card and 32-bit processor with an old ATI card, live session use, installation to local disk and external USB disk in multi-boot configurations with Windows 7, Windows 8 and other Linux distros, Wireless, Bluetooth, Samba sharing, additional proprietary drivers including Broadcom and Nvidia, Nouveau replacement, web camera, look and feel, Unity 3D and 2D, applications, new features, user picture, account imports, Ubuntu One cloud storage, backup, Ubuntu Software Center, Music Store, multimedia playback - MP3 and Flash 11 with native 64-bit support, games and software for purchases, system menu and settings, performance, responsiveness, system resource usage, stability, suspend and resume, battery life, virtualization support, proxy support, fonts, icons, printing, kernel version 3.0, upgrade from previous version, interactive tour, and more. Take a deep breath, commence reading.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/ubuntu-ocelot.html


Cheers,
Dedoimedo

[mamamia88]

Glad it's not all doom and gloom. I think if people gave unity a fair shake some of the haters would come around. I used to be one until i used it for a week straight

[Dedoimedo]

Not designed for me (geek), but it works well.
Even I'm not that zeal-blind to fail to see it.
Dedoimedo

[Mikeb85]

Glad it's not all doom and gloom. I think if people gave unity a fair shake some of the haters would come around. I used to be one until i used it for a week straight

When I first came to Linux I was scared away from Ubuntu by all the Unity haters, so I tried Linux Mint, and a bunch of other distros. Then I realized everything that made Mint easy to use was actually the Ubuntu base, so I tried 11.04 again, and actually tried to learn it, and sure enough Unity is IMO the most usable DE (I tried Gnome 2 and Gnome 3 shell, XFCE, KDE as well). It might not be the prettiest (I have it set to full transparency and autohide), but it works.

[Swagman]

No-one seems to have mentioned that you can't tell if you have unread (mail) messages in your inbox. My missus whinges like crazy about that since the upgrade and she's actually correct.

You'd think they'd have at least coded it so the envelope icon on the top bar changes colour.

[dandnsmith]

The install experience seemed to have had some quite different bits for me. I got a set of choices for type of install, and had to pick 'none of these' to get the install with several installations an Windows7.
I agree with the inability to NOT install the bootloader, which infuriated me, as I had twice as much to do to get back to my desired boot config.
I cannot, for the life of me see why SAMBA is mentioned in the initial posting - as it doesn't seem to occur at all in the review, and I was reading it to find out how to get the stuff in.
I'm unimpressed with the Unity presentation, and had to find a posting on how to install ClassicMenu Indicator to get to something presenting choices in what i would consider a sane fashion.
Why, oh why didn't the stick with Synaptic package Manager?

[wolfen69]

Why, oh why didn't the stick with Synaptic package Manager?


sudo apt-get install synaptic

[dandnsmith]

Yes, I agree, but that doesn't invalidate the comment.
Thanks for the thought.

[Wiebelhaus]

Awesome write up , good work.