

Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot Beta 1, Released - hotice
http://www.webupd8.org/2011/09/ubuntu-1110-beta-1-has-been-released.html

======
dave1010uk
OMGUbuntu have a (fairly similar) review:
[http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/09/ubuntu-11-10-beta-
release...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/09/ubuntu-11-10-beta-released-
reviewed/)

The offical Ubuntu site has more juicy details:
[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OneiricOcelot/TechnicalOverview/Beta...](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OneiricOcelot/TechnicalOverview/Beta1#New_features_in_Oneiric)

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rubinelli
Looks like most of this release is about tweaking Unity. I was really excited
about it at first, but I switched back to classic Gnome after three months.
The extra screen space is nice, but it was too easy to lose my bearings.

~~~
rbanffy
I got used to it after a couple days. My home computer runs Unity while my
desktop at work runs classic Gnome (with 10.10 - I'm waiting for 11.10)

My biggest complaint is that Unity took all my super bindings from Emacs. I
had to do a lot of remapping for it to work on both machines.

~~~
ajarmoniuk
Just change the hotkey for the Unity panel - in the compiz plugin
configuration, the Unity plugin.

~~~
rbanffy
But then I'd have to manage custom bindings for both Emacs _and_ Unity. It was
easier to avoid collisions in Emacs and let Unity use Super for whatever it
wants (which is useful, BTW)

~~~
ajarmoniuk
I found that Unity doesn't like Super+R or whatever other combination you
enter. It doesn't always seem to "catch" the combination.

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hasenj
> We had to revert from unity-window-decorator to gtk-window-decorator for
> performance reasons. This means that the "1 px border" for resizing window
> is back temporarily.

I hope "temporarily" doesn't mean until 12.04

~~~
mike-cardwell
I hope this means my brand new laptop with a Core i5, 8GB of Ram and an SSD
will now have the performance to run the standard bloody desktop. I'm
currently using the classic desktop on 11.04 because my laptop starts crawling
on Unity after short periods.

~~~
sandGorgon
if you have got the sandy bridge processor, do NOT give into increased-
graphics-performance temptation and upgrade to the 3.1 kernel.

There is a 76% power regression vs 2.6.3x kernels
[http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_31_power_regress&num=1)

~~~
jwingy
You can always download and install the latest kernels while keeping the older
versions as backup. No need to worry about GRUB settings either as that's all
handled when you install the kernel debian packages.

Only caveat to this is you might have to reinstall your graphics driver for
the new kernel.

------
kajsadfksdfkl
Does anyone know if it will do any good for the dual gfx card laptops? These
new acer series laptops have two graphics cards on them. One is the intel on
board and one is the nVidia G-Force. It uses a technology called nvidia
optimus to select one of them according to need. But Linux seems plain
confused and always uses both the cards I think. Thus on windows laptops run
for 4:30hr with everything turned on and it is just under 2 hours for linux.

~~~
fader
Optimus requires driver support to perform the switching, which so far nVidia
has refused to even think of adding for Linux. Since their drivers are closed,
there's not much more that can be done. It's possible that support might
eventually make it into nouveau, the open-source NV driver, but it's not there
now.

(On top of that there are some bits of X that need to be rewritten to be able
to fully take advantage of card switching conveniently, but last I heard
people were working on it.)

If power is your concern, most BIOSes will let you disable the nVidia card and
force everything through the Intel hardware. But the obvious downside to this
is you never get to use your fancy graphics hardware.

~~~
protopete
In an nVidia Optimus configuration, there is no actual switching between the
IGP and GPU. The LCD display is connected only to the IGP. The discrete GPU is
connected only to the PCIe bus. Therefore to display anything from the GPU,
the contents of the GPU framebuffer RAM need to be copied over the PCIe bus to
the main RAM and displayed using the IGP. The Windows drivers use "Microsoft
detours" in the Display Driver Interposer to seamlessly direct graphics API
calls from applications to the IGP or discrete GPU.

<http://www.nvidia.com/object/LO_optimus_whitepapers.html>

------
lurker19
No sign of fixes for the various bugs that cause Sandy Bridge systems to crash
on suspend/hibernate and at random times, and adds an extra power regression:
the self-destruct button has been expanded to more systems:
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/837266>

~~~
bostonvaulter2
Isn't that a kernel bug and not a Ubuntu bug?

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mithaler
Can someone explain to me exactly what the advantage is of hiding the menu bar
contents behind mouseover?

~~~
bretthoerner
Something like 28800 pixels on typical monitors these days?

~~~
algorias
Putting it that way without mentioning that it's only 1.4% of the 2073600
pixels available on those same displays is a bit misleading, don't you think?

~~~
ajross
It's a much higher fraction of the _vertical_ space available though, which is
terribly underprovisioned on modern displays. We're all trying to scroll
vertical text content on a screen intended for watching movies, and it sucks.

I haven't had a chance to actually try this yet, but it looks great from the
shots. Gnome 3 is doing similar things with hot corners and I like that too.

------
RocknRolla
Seems to be lots of love for Unity here. Where are my haters at?

I'd rather punch myself in the eye than use Unity. First thing I did was
switch back to classic Gnome.

I think Linux Mint is heading in the right direction with Gnome. Also been
thinking about switching to Xfce since I've been using the CL a lot more.

~~~
joe_the_user
I'm using an embarassingly old Ubuntu release on my main machine and Unity on
a test machine.

I've really tried to like Unity but I simply hate it. The machine I'm using
doesn't show that many bugs. I'm patient with bugs - they'll fix them, they
fixed them in the older release. It's not that.

The bar side is OK-to-mediocre but the lack of a main-menu/start-menu
completely crocks the thing. WTF. I can't find my apps, the apps I have
installed. I've looked quite a bit. WTF were they thinking? Their particular
search thingy sucks but that's not the point - even if it was great, I'd
_also_ need to know the stuff that is "just there". Sure, maybe I am an idiot
for not knowing the names of the obscure graphics program I just installed and
want to use but I don't think I'm the only idiot with this problem and other
interfaces are forgiving for us idiots.

It seems like there are two kinds of users that wouldn't be bothered by Unity.
Those who only use the browser or about two-three GUIs and those who only use
the command line.

For all I know, these might a majority but as a former Windows power user, I
suspect that there's an important minority of Ubuntu users and potential
Ubuntu who'd like to use a wide variety the existing Linux GUI. Ubuntu has
essentially excluded us.

And its not just that Windows/GUI "power users" are a fair share of Ubuntu
users but that I think we'd be the best ambassadors/evangelists if Ubuntu is
to get off the ground - those who use the OS as only a launchpad to start a
browser won't have a strong opinion and the average person isn't going emulate
those ten terminals to get their work done.

I can see the "everything slightly confusing must be destroyed" ethos leading
to an "OS" consisting of a brightly color candy-machine interface with two
buttons, "browser" and "off". No one will be confused but it will still suck.

~~~
RocknRolla
I agree with everything you said. The whole point behind technology should be
accessibility for everyone. Geeks (guilty myself) tend to get into a bubble
where we forget about the rest of the world. And there's just something about
the Hacker mindset (which most people on HN have) where there more complicated
it is, the cooler it seems. Instead of having the mindset of "If it ain't
broke, don't fix it.", Geeks/Hackers tend to think "If it ain't broke, lets
break it!!!"

Linux Mint is based upon Ubuntu/Debian. Give it a try. If you're a Windows
power user you'll probably really like it. And all the commands you learned in
Boontoo will work in Mint.

------
ddon
I was a big fun of ubuntu, and used it on my desktops and laptops, but in last
few years Skype became a major tool for me, to communicate with my team, and
since there is still no good Skype for Linux, I no longer use ubuntu. On a
desktop I use Mac OS, laptop is no longer my central tool, and most of the
work from the road I do on my iPad. Thinking to get a book air for long trips,
where iPad just can't cut it yet :)

also, unity so far has been a disaster... I know about 5 friends who still use
ubuntu, they couldn't use it with unity, and I helped them to get old gnome
back. Hopefully unity will gets better, but this change I think was too big
and wasn't optional. I think they lost a lot of users because of it.

But I still use ubuntu on some servers of mine.

~~~
sandGorgon
Use skype (w/ video) on android.

I fully expect Microsoft to drop Skype support for Linux .. or atleast give a
seriously stunted binary to get around anti-trust, that I am using Android as
my full-on communication tool, including video conferencing.

I see skype-video on the S5PV210 Samsung chipset android tablets already
(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfwI1c93KqA>). Atleast in Asia, you can get
resistive 8 inchers with Gingerbread for sub-$200.

------
ajarmoniuk
I tried it today morning (by doing an upgrade from 11.04) and the unity panel
kept restarting every two seconds.

Don't try it without a backup yet.

~~~
jetbean
Upgrading like that may cause some issues (I had issues upgrading from 10.10
to 11.04) so maybe doing a fresh install would make it work better.

~~~
ajarmoniuk
Well I had very similar (or worse) problems when upgrading from 10.10 to
11.04, but when they released the Narwhal, the update went smoothly.

It's quite a difficult task to provide the update facility, last time I
checked, Linux Mint recommended doing a full reinstall.

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viraptor
It's interesting how much they want to include Openstack at the moment. On one
hand side it is trivial to add the Openstack PPAs and install the new version
yourself. On the other current upstream versions are quite far from being
usable in a real environment and major redesigns are planned...

Why are they pushing for inclusion out of the box so hard?

------
alinajaf
Unity stamped over a bunch of my keyboard shortcuts, so I took the opportunity
to learn xmonad (with gnome classic) and haven't looked back.

~~~
chrishenn
XMonad is great. For anyone who finds it a bit daunting I recommend
Bluetile[1]. It's a great introduction to the best window management system
I've used (I really miss XMonad on OS X.)

[1] <http://www.bluetile.org/>

~~~
mcpherrinm
I have a Linux, OS X, and Windows machines on my desk (for doing cross-
platform development of Firefox). XMonad is definitely my preferred WM for
getting things done. OS X and Windows both have attempts at nice features, but
they feel so frustrating to use in comparison.

Lion actually improved that a lot: Fullscreen apps integrated with Spaces
gives a large part of what I use X<onad for. If they'd combined that with
Windows 7's snapping of windows to half-screen, that would cover 75% of my
XMonad usage. It's really a shame that XMonad is Linux-only. (Or that Firefox
users expect Windows&OSX ports, depending on your perspective).

~~~
angrycoder
I use Sizeup under osx to get window snapping via keyboard shortcuts. It also
gives you a set of shortcuts to throw the current window to different
desktops.

------
gcb
unity is cancer. I loved it when it was just maximus for better screen state
on netbooks and a few dashboards... but now, that's a travesty.

it's so wrong that they are adding feature and features to try to 'fix' it.
tabs in the bottom, filters on the right... it will became a full window
manager on the dashboard soon. just kill it.

i'm happy back to good old debian.

~~~
keithpeter
Oddly enough that is what I have done as well. Squeeze is nice and stable with
backports for Firefox/Iceweasel and LibreOffice and Gnome.

Then I started fiddling with dwm as a window manager and dmenu as application
menu and have not looked back...

~~~
gcb
i went back to ion3. i missed it and didn't know :)

i'm impressed how much debian and ubuntu are the same after you install the
non-free firmware package.

now i'm wondering if ubuntu is giving a lot back to debian or just doing
minimal changes. but i promised myself to stay out of distro politics a long
time ago

