

Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal released - shared4you
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/10/ubuntu-12-10-quantal-quetzal-takes-flight-with-a-bag-full-of-juju/

======
trotsky
I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but I actually like the innovations
canonical keeps bringing to unity (although I'm not in love with the amazon
searches). My problem with it is execution - run gnome shell on the identical
hardware and it will always run circles* around unity especially in terms ui
responsiveness. Just press the super key after you've been doing something
else for a while and start typing - in my experience gnome shell seems to
respond almost instantaneously while unity can take as long as several seconds
to bring up the default lens on decent hardware.

I like a lot of their design decisions like the global menu, dechroming
maximized windows, easy custom lenses etc. But the compiz/custom code base
just isn't up to the task. Worse, unity is so tied to their non-mainline gui
stack that it is a herculean effort to get it to run on anything besides
ubuntu, preventing them from getting fixes from outside their ecosystem.

I know there is a lot of bad blood these days between gnome and canonical but
they really need to bite the bullet and rebase on mutter, gtk3 & gnome shell.
Canonical is great at a lot of things, but core performance oriented software
just isn't one of them. Let somebody else do the heavy lifting.

I haven't gotten a chance to try the gnome shell spin that they're producing
this cycle. Can anyone comment on how well its working? My experience trying
to go vanilla gnome 3 on ubuntu in the past has been less than stellar, but I
really appreciate the ubuntu community and things like launchpad ppas.

*250ms-2000ms lag

~~~
listic
How do I switch from Unity to Gnome Shell in Ubuntu? (12.04)

~~~
sandGorgon
Make sure you also check out Gnome Shell's killer feature :
extensions.gnome.org

~~~
tbrock
I wish there were an amazing guide for building these shell extensions
somewhere. I tried to look for some and couldn't find any that really got into
the details.

------
yason
_[Unity] has received a number of additions, all built around the idea of
demolishing the walls between local applications and web applications_

Here's the thing why Ubuntu is on shaky ground these days.

The above idea is grand but like everything that tries to be the future of
something—in this case computing—it leaks. And leaky things will never take
off for real much like leaky abstractions will not hold because the truth will
leak out sooner or later, and then the abstraction isn't worth much since you
can only trust it superficially.

The early Ubuntu and Windows 95 and XP had something in common: they all were
built mostly on how the computer worked. These operating systems tried to make
the underlying computer available to the user, give or take a few sugar-
coatings. And they all pretty much succeeded.

Conversely, I think most systems that try to pretend to be something that they
aren't will not succeed. Web applications won't become local applications just
like that: the user will just see some visible glue that holds some parts
together. You've seen it so many times: something comes with great features
that only work till you really want some things done, and then it turns out
the system doesn't do its magic all the way through. You just see the one kind
of magic that has been preprogrammed into it and you've already observed that
besides an initial impression, that one kind of magic can't deal with
everything you need from the system. Then you can't trust the system anymore
since you know there's more available than the system can agree to offer you.

Ubuntu is still basically a local installation: some stuff can originate from
the cloud but it can not be a grand computing environment that unifies web and
local services because it matters that the user has his own local
installation. You can't boot Ubuntu from a USB stick and have your environment
seamlessly load from the cloud.

Something like Android or iOS are much better positioned for seamlessly
integrating local and web applications and local and cloud services. Using a
tablet interface you don't really have the sense of local vs. web at all: you
just have apps and once you sign up another device your apps will be available
automatically. This is maybe what Shuttleworth is envisioning with the Unity
and his current plans for Ubuntu, but the downside is that the regular Ubuntu
desktop will suffer.

Ubuntu suffers because it doesn't pay respect to its natural, physical
environment that is a local computer. It can be a highly tuned system that
takes the most out of your hardware or it can be an ethereal, ubiquitous cloud
service that's available regardless of hardware. But not both.

~~~
ChuckMcM
This is pretty insightful, this bit in particular:

"Ubuntu suffers because it doesn't pay respect to its natural, physical
environment that is a local computer. It can be a highly tuned system that
takes the most out of your hardware or it can be an ethereal, ubiquitous cloud
service that's available regardless of hardware. _But not both._ "

Emphasis added there at the end.

My claim is that "we", folks who engineer software and create products, have
made those software products indispensable to folks who never used to care
about computers much less shell out money to own one. They never did want to
buy a computer, they don't want to buy one now, what they want is the
_function_ that is provided by some app or collection of apps. These people
want to follow tweets, or facebook, or chat, or see cat pictures, they buy
computers to do that because they have to, not because they want to. What is
worse, the 'computerness' of computers, their re-programability, their
flexibility, causes more problems for these people than it solves. They want
turn-key, instant on, instant off, tools.

And folks are making these tools for them, Chromebooks, and iPhones, and
iPads, and Slates and Surfaces. They are marketed as tools that get a
particular job done, not a universal tool. Can you imagine a power drill where
you take the motor off and use it in your mixer, then take it off and use it
in your desk fan, and then take it off and use it to pump water and wash your
deck? No you get separate tools for those tasks, and they all have a motor in
them but the motor isn't universal, its optimized for the tool. We are moving
that way with processors. No more 'boot whatever you want' no more manuals
describing the instruction set or peripherals, no more general purpose tool
chains or operating systems. Processors designed to do one thing well like be
a 'phone' with proprietary value added parts (like a GPU) and special
instructions (like Jazelle) which you only get to know about if you agree to
buy a million a month and design it into your specialized product.

The needs of an operating system for one of those devices is very much
different than the needs for a programmer or developer's operating system.
Sure they share some things in common (both render to a screen) but how or
when they do that, and what API they use, those things are important to a
developer but not to a tool/appliance user.

Yason is exactly correct that Ubuntu is standing astride this crevice while it
widens underneath them. Soon, unless steps are taken, it may find itself
neither fish nor fowl, an unacceptable environment to developers (too closed
off) and to appliance users (too technical). Personally I'd love to see two
distros in Desktop one is "End user" and one is "Developer" with very
different design targets.

------
vibrunazo
One word of advice, don't do the automatic upgrade, do a full reinstall
instead. After trying that for the last 5 or so releases. Always thinking that
_this_ time they fixed it. I'm not falling for that again. You'll see, as
always, some reports of people saying they tried and it worked. But be
careful, it's a trap!

~~~
tresta
I really don't understand why the upgrade seems to be so hit and miss between
people. My current laptop has been on the same ubuntu install since (at least)
10.04. I've even upgraded to beta versions a couple of times and the only
problem I've ever had was when I upgraded to the 12.10 beta and it ran out of
disk space in the middle of the install. But that was recoverable.

Of course, this comment might be a trap. There's only one way to find out...

~~~
strictfp
Me too, upgraded from 7.04 to 12.04 without major problems.

------
rlpb
As of 0842 UTC, it's not actually released yet. The link still refers to
12.04. Ars appear to have jumped the gun a little.

~~~
blaze33
1500 UTC, the ubuntu.com homepage isn't updated but the 12.10 release is now
available for download at <http://releases.ubuntu.com/quantal/>

------
nnq
How are people's experiences with using Juju based setups on real production
servers? Was anyone "lazy" enough to try this?

\-- EDIT (adding context): the article says about the use-case for Juju
"configuring and setting up complex services with lots of application
components can still be a bit tricky"... then goes on to give a basic LAMP
WordPress setup... the thing is that a LAMP WP setup is neither complex nor it
has lots of components, it's basically the "drop dead simplest" case of web
app deployment, so they are clearly missing the point using this as an example
:|

------
pajju
What I loved the most - the integration of webapps as native desktop apps.
Awesome addition. This changes the whole game. The HUD will be a search bar
for that webapp. Mind = Blown!

Worth mentioning, I've used many Linux boxes before, but after using Ubuntu
12.04 from the past 5 months, its the most Productive System I've ever used.
And It's only getting better over time.

Many thanks for the team that's behind this change.

------
RyanMcGreal
In the past month or two, I've come around on Unity after hiding out in gnome-
session-fallback and then cinnamon. With the launch bar icons shrunk to their
smallest size and Docky on the bottom, the Unity interface has gotten to the
point where it's smooth and usable. Call me a convert, but I decided Unity has
gotten to the point where it's easier to work with it than to keep trying to
work against it.

~~~
trhtrsh
Well, not quite the level of praise that "it's worth the hassle of
installing", but "not worth the hassle of uninstalling" is worth something, I
guess.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
I'm interested to experience what changes 12.10 brings to Unity. I have a
hunch that sooner or later, Unity will improve to the point where it meets
your former criterion as well as your latter.

------
knotz
For those who prefer Gnome3 on the desktop instead of Unity, there's the Gnome
Ubuntu Remix: <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGNOME/>

------
thomaslutz
Switched to Mint with MATE (Gnome2 Fork) and am not looking back. Give it a
try, it's worth it.

~~~
rquirk
So I use Ubuntu 12.04 on my laptop and Linux Mint Debian Edition on the
desktop. LMDE is OK, but I'm not sure Mate is a long-term solution. On the one
hand it is great that they have maintained the old look and feel of Gnome 2,
but forking so much "crap" seems like a huge wasted effort.

For example the configuration changes - instead of gconf, you now have
mateconf, which uses a whole other set of files that are not compatible with
gnome. So switching from an old Gnome desktop (say) to Mint+Mate means your
settings are all lost, even though the forked code between gnome2 and mate is
really close.

On a default LMDE install it adds gnome-terminal and mate-terminal, so on the
menus you have 2 "Terminal" entries. Ditto for a load of other core
applications that are in Gnome and Mate - stuff like Archive Manager,
screenshot, and document viewer. Was there really a need to fork file-roller?

Debian have already pretty much said "no" to including Mate - the reason being
that the duplication and resuscitation of crufty old code is not a good idea.
It would be better, the say, to work with Gnome upstream to get a more
Gnome2-ish feel in Gnome3. I think Cinnamon is in Debian or will be shortly,
which probably has a brighter future.

Anyway, for now I'm happy with Mate - it works fine and didn't need any
tweaking to get to a usable state, compare that to Gnome3 classic-session on
Ubuntu 12.04 which I spent weeks tweaking and patching (!) to get back to a
state that worked like 10.04 - but I think its days are numbered. The Mint
devs alone can't keep a full-on Gnome2-fork alive forever, it has too many
duplicated applications that are already fine in base Gnome, and eventually I
think Cinnamon will be the only viable option for Mint.

------
digisign
It's not yet released and ars didn't say it was released, rather:

    
    
        Ars has its hands on 12.10 and we'll be bringing you a
        full review within the next couple of weeks.

~~~
regularfry
Maybe we are reading a different article:

    
    
        Today, Canonical has released version 12.10 of its Ubuntu Linux
        distribution, code-named "Quantal Quetzal" after a ridiculously 
        awesome-looking bird.

~~~
aes256
Yet it hasn't actually been released. The download links on the website all
point to 12.04, and 12.10 is not available through the update manager yet
either.

Looks like Ars jumped the gun.

~~~
EwanToo
It's in the update manager, I ran the upgrade a couple of hours ago on a VM on
my work PC, worked fine.

~~~
aes256
I can only get it to show up in update manager as a developer release, with a
warning that it is still in beta.

This is using both the main and my local archive...

------
jjm
I question whether it is more profitable to move forward and have what amounts
to really good devs build mashups than to go back and focus on OS stability
and core functionality (the thing which you arm sales people with when selling
to corp, and that provides for greater general user loyalty _).

The immediate rebuttals for my comment will be (1) user studies, (2) the os is
fine, (3) were making money, (4) customers told us.

The not so obvious rebuttals will be: (1) someone told us to do these, (2)
we've reached user and customer saturation, (3) desktops aren't the rage, (4)
core customer/users moved to using server only and were reeling them in to
desktop, (5) corporate entities cannot perceive enough value thus all the new
mashups.

It is this second set which I want to hear discussed and why they are or
aren't the case.

Basically my guess is that core users are moving away from where these guys
are spending money and they think spending more in the area will bring them
back.

_take with a grain of salt but the marketing theory is people when obtaining
something (convinced or otherwise) will benefit if product in context serves
all their needs and more if possible. That grey area or boundry of core->nice
to have is what is in question here. The more they use it, and the more it
serves them, the more likely they will return to it (product context). Take
with a grain of salt.

------
meaty
Have they turned the Amazon stuff off by default or are they giving an option
to do so at install time?

If not, I will not be downloading this.

~~~
rk0567
`sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping`

~~~
takluyver
There's now a proper option in the privacy settings to disable remote
searches.

~~~
trhtrsh
It really should be part of the installation questionnaire.

------
fiveliterstang
Been using it a couple weeks now, it's actually not too bad. Trying to get
used to Unity as it's obviously not going anywhere. I'm still not a fan but it
is improving.

~~~
chousuke
How's the performace? I tried a beta of Quantal a couple weeks ago and Unity
was so slow compared to vanilla Gnome that it wasn't really usable (I have a
Radeon HD 3000 card, using the FOSS driver). I hope it's not that bad in the
actual release.

~~~
rk0567
I had the same experience until I enabled the proprietary driver for NVIDIA
graphics card.

------
pimentel
"includes Python 3.2.3 as standard"

Won't this have any impact on existing python installers, designed to be used
with python 2.x?

~~~
pajju
If its only coming with 3.2.3 it will break many existing tools.(think django)

If you see MAC, it does come with lower versions of python too, so it supports
older python projects.(python2.7, python2.5 based and doesn't break the
system)

Latest Ubuntu might well come even with lower versions of python too - as many
Ubuntu apps and tools itself use the lower versions of python. But the default
python will be 3.2.3

To use the right version of python we have to -

Manually install older versions if it doesn't have one.

And do symbolic Linking the installed versions to /usr/bin and set $PATH
appropriately for the correct Python version we need. Just use them as
python2.7 python2.5 python2.6 while calling your scripts.

Also see virtualenv.

~~~
vilgax
I run a django based website, and this upgrade didn't break anything.
"/usr/bin/python" still refers to Python 2.X instead of Python 3.X.

------
pimeys
I've been using 12.10 for several weeks now. The only difference I notice is
the new kernel, otherwise my xmonad desktop looks just the same as in 12.04.

Although the installation was a bliss. The fastest OS installation I've ever
done. Even the boot time is pretty fast, around 6 seconds with my workstation.

------
jcjmcclean
What is likely to be quicker/easier and the best decision in the long term ...
Upgrading to 12.10 from 11.10 or moving to Linux Mint?

This is for my work machine which I run PHPStorm for web development,
virtualbox for CS5 and Chrome and various other apps.

------
Florin_Andrei
Getting Ubuntu to work reliably on a laptop that is sometimes docked to a
dual-screen setup is a pain. It used to work very well. But recent releases -
not so much.

I'll give this one a try again (sigh).

~~~
mayneack
No problems here with lenovo t500.

------
timmillwood
Might have to go and work from another computer as 12.10 installs on this one.
Clean install really overdue as this machine started as Xubuntu 11.04 and is
now Ubuntu 12.10 Beta.

~~~
tresta
If you have kept the beta up to date you're already on 12.10.

~~~
timmillwood
Right, but it's a little buggy due to being a mashup of Xubuntu 11.04 and
Ubuntu 12.10.

------
dschiptsov
fglrx xserver module segfaults (at least for me).

Without hardware OpenGL it is just a crap.

unity-2d-shell eats tons of memory, more than chrome. No wonder when

    
    
      ldd `which unity-2d-shell` |wc -l
      93
    

including Qt _and_ Gtk-3.. idiots.

but without running X11 it is nice and fast.) gcc-4.7, linux-3.5.0, python3.2,
etc.

------
leeoniya
Juju reminds me of Linode's StackScripts, no?

------
BUGHUNTER
what is the Java situation here?

~~~
dignan
Perhaps you could be a bit more clear. What Java situation?

~~~
nobleach
I'm guessing he/she's asking what JDK/JRE is installed. Since 1.6 still seems
to be the default for other OSes.

------
lhnn
Everyone has their own preferred setup, and that's great! It's part of what
makes FOSS great: Your choice.

My choice is Xubuntu. I've been using Xubuntu on my laptop for the past 6
months, and the 12.10 beta for the past two.

The link below is my tasklist after install to really make Xubuntu shine. Oh!
And now with updates to the Ubiquity installer, FDE can be done with the GUI
instead of fiddling with the debian-installer text partitioner!

[http://wiki.cyberfoxfire.com/wiki/doku.php?id=tech:xubuntu_t...](http://wiki.cyberfoxfire.com/wiki/doku.php?id=tech:xubuntu_tips)

~~~
arocks
Thanks for this. I have been on the lookout for a lightweight OS like
Crunchbag to upgrade my desktop from Ubuntu 10.10. Being a intermediate user,
I do not want a lot of bells and whistles but appreciate a more responsive
system. I manage a lot of Ubuntu servers so I would prefer an Ubuntu
development environment as well. In fact, I am seriously considering using a
virtual machine for this purpose.

~~~
autotravis
If you want responsiveness, check out openbox. For intermediate users, the
setup isn't difficult.

