

Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) - SandB0x
http://releases.ubuntu.com/releases/11.04/

======
fingerprinter
I've had it installed on my main machine since late December. There were some
rough patches as things were landing during the beta period, but right now
this is easily the best desktop I've ever used.

My workflow adapted to some of the additions in Unity so quickly that it was
absurd. At this point I could never go back to something without Super+#,
Super+w, Super+s and the other keybindings found here:
[http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/unity-keyboard-mouse-
sh...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/unity-keyboard-mouse-
shortcuts/28087#28087)

Just be sure to install compizconfigSettingsManager from the software center
and you can tweak Unity to some degree.

Just an FYI, what I tend to dev on is Ruby/Rails, Python, Javascript
(Node/etc), some Erlang (not as much anymore) and Android dev. This system is
so freakin' fantastic for all of those...really quite happy.

~~~
SkyMarshal
_> Just be sure to install compizconfigSettingsManager from the software
center_

That's great to hear, I had just assumed Compiz wouldn't be available on
Unity. I don't think I could live without Compiz Grid and Compiz Negative.

Edit: I see Unity is actually _built_ with Compiz. Somehow I missed that on
the Ubuntu Unity website way back when I started reading about it to evaluate
it.

~~~
sciurus
Unity is a plugin for compiz and relies on other parts of compiz for some of
its functionality.

<https://lwn.net/Articles/430686/>

------
chao-
When last I used the Unity shell, it was clearly not ready for prime time.
I'll spend some time later today, cross my fingers, and discover if that has
changed or not. There's much more in a new release than just that, but the
supposedly-cleaned up Unity will probably get most of the press.

Some concerns aside, I respect a lot of the chutzpah that Canonical is
showing: Unity, Wayland, trying to force KDE/GNOME to work together on a
notification API. They want to see the Linux desktop improve, and even if
people fight against them and they lose, to me it feels better than the
inertia of the status quo. Stasis gets no one anywhere.

~~~
jdub
Canonical have nothing to do with Wayland. Mark Shuttleworth wrote a blog post
saying they wanted to use it (in a ridiculously unrealistic timeframe), but
they've contributed nothing to meeting that goal.

They haven't tried to "force KDE/GNOME to work together on a notification
API". They did their own thing, then later on adopted and modified a KDE
protocol (which in the first place didn't even do the primary thing they were
aiming for -> menus), then complained about GNOME not adopting their code
(which is a separate issue to the protocol).

They're basically doing their own thing now, not paying a lot of attention
(let alone contributing) to upstream projects.

~~~
chrismsnz
For those playing along, Jeff is heavily involved in the GNOME project and
thus have a strong opinion on all these things.

Much has been written on the indicator spat and the tension between GNOME and
Canonical, and it seems that's there's not and end to be seen of it.

Mark Shuttleworth has some thoughts (from the other side of the coin) on his
blog here: <http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/654>

I'm not going to join in, but I have trouble reconciling the arguments "GNOME
not adopting their code/protocol" and "not contributing to upstream projects".

~~~
jdub
GNOME rejected the libappindicator code and approach (largely because it was
irrelevant and badly timed), but not the StatusNotifier protocol (as defined
mostly by KDE, then once modified, the basis for libappindicator).

The "not contributing to upstream" comment has a much broader context than
that particular issue though. One late attempt to push something fairly
irrelevant upstream does not define the entire context for their engagement.
:-)

------
Garbage
A short list of whats new in Ubuntu 11.04 -
<http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/whats-new>

And features - <http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/features>

~~~
mhw
Also worth a quick look through the release notes -
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NattyNarwhal/ReleaseNotes>

------
scrrr
This is exactly the right direction for Ubuntu. I'm installing this remotely
on my dad's computer as I type this.

The shortcut keys (using the Windows-button) are very useful and the dock-like
launcher is a good replacement for the old task-bar.

It might take a couple more years but somehow I have the feeling that Ubuntu
might be heading for the mainstream. Rightfully so.

~~~
cageface
_It might take a couple more years but somehow I have the feeling that Ubuntu
might be heading for the mainstream. Rightfully so._

I'd like to think so, and they're doing a great job, but I can't help but feel
they're a few years too late. I suspect general email & browsing is going to
happen more and more on tablets and phones and people will only want full-
blown computers to run specialized native apps, most of which will probably
never be ported to Linux.

Of course, thanks to Android, Linux will be more relevant than ever in this
scenario.

~~~
king_jester
For consumers that can afford it, tablets may replace a lot of what a desktop
computer does for those people, but there are many people who are lower income
who will still depend on very inexpensive desktop computers, either ones the
own individually or (more likely) ones that they can access at their local
library. I think Ubuntu is heading in a direction where it will replace
Windows for users that only need an office suite and a web browser but need to
use a cheaper desktop machine.

~~~
erikpukinskis
I think it's much more likely lower income people will use a smartphone as
their primary computer than a desktop machine. Cell phones already have
incredible penetration, and the cell companies (not to mention Google) are
going to push smartphones into that population in short order.

~~~
cageface
I agree. Everybody will have a smart phone because they're so useful and for a
lot of people that will be all they need, particularly if money is tight. I'm
in Vietnam now and most people here make next to nothing but they still have
smart phones and I even see a lot of iPhones, even though they cost a fortune
by Vietnamese standards.

I see a fair number of cheap desktop computers too but they're all running
bootleg copies of Windows. People aren't paying for their software anyway so
the price advantage of Linux is negated.

------
lwhi
As I use my Ubuntu desktop to actually get work done, I'm quite terrified
about installing this release.

I'm not sure I'll upgrade for a while yet, I want to find out what the general
consensus is first.

~~~
thenduks
As a fellow day-job-using Ubuntu user, I'm with you. In fact, it's not just
this release, I _always_ wait a bit to upgrade, since the general consensus
seems to be that fresh Ubuntu's are often a bit touchy :)

~~~
regularfry
Not only are fresh Ubuntus a bit touchy, but upgrading in-place has bitten me
badly in the past. It's always a clean-slate install for me now.

~~~
kevindication
Apt is the only system I've ever felt fully comfortable with when doing
upgrades. It was neither a problem under Debian nor Ubuntu.

Do you have a tendency to make system changes that get in the way of the
upgrades? (i.e., where has it gotten stuck for you before?)

~~~
mnutt
In the past I've found that if I installed packages that weren't in the main
release I would sometimes run into gigantic dependency issues that I couldn't
resolve without a clean reinstall.

------
JonnieCache
I'd like to point out that this is a good time to really test your connection.
I've never downloaded anything faster than a torrent of a fresh ubuntu
release.

~~~
javanix
Though unfortunately upddate files are still distributed through centralized
repositories.

I wonder whether there'd be major security concerns if a torrent layer was
stuck over the main centralized backbone? It could probably reduce bandwidth
costs for hosting and provide better speeds to people, though keeping the
"swarm" updated might be kind of tricky.

~~~
ZoFreX
Security concerns can be dealt with via the pre-existing public/private key
crypto that's going on in apt already.

The problem with torrents is they don't work well for lots and lots of
(relatively) small "file groups" where each user has a lot of the files, but
each user has completely different files. Something based on tiger tree
hashing or some other mechanism like that might be more suitable, perhaps?

~~~
javanix
True, in order to provide consistent benefit to users you'd need some sort of
mechanism to determine whether it'd be faster to "grab from the swarm" or
"grab from the repo".

Perhaps even setting up each already-existing mirror as its own seed-center
would help - there are plenty of them around, and by definition they all have
the same data. Worst case you end up getting only one connection, and you have
the same performance as now, but in the best case you can download from
multiple locations at once and get some rudimentary load balancing.

------
unwind
Of course, this is the release that changes the desktop interface around quite
a lot. I'm a bit hesitant, although this answer in the FAQ was soothing:

 _No problem at all. You can choose to launch the classic desktop experience
when you log in to your computer._

Not sure if this really means that the choice has to be re-made on every
login, or if is remembered. Anyone?

~~~
drivingmenuts
You don't get a choice if you run it in a VM, btw.

It's classic or aught.

~~~
wbond
What virtualization program are you running?

If you are using VirtualBox you can run apt-get install virtualbox-ose-guest-
utils. You'll also need to enable 3D support under Settings > Display.

~~~
sunsu
Though Unity works as expected (awesome!), there still seems to be some other
bugs with VirtualBox integration. A big one for me is that seamless mode
doesn't work when running 11.04.

~~~
windsurfer
Well it would work if you disabled unity - since unity is rendering everything
as 1 display and not multiple windows the way X Windows wants.

------
selectnull
Since I've been using Ubuntu (year and a half now), upgrade was always easy,
and always resulted in a month of little annoyances afterwards. But I look
forward to it nonetheless.

Upgrading now and feel like a kid on a christmas morning :)

------
krat0sprakhar
Ok... this seems pretty much out of place but I dont suppose I can get a
better answer anywhere else, so here it goes.

I'm a student in India and in a dilemma about buying a Mac or buying a windows
machine (dual booting with Ubuntu 11.04 ). At about 3/4th the price of a Mac I
can purchase a more powerful windows laptop and boot up Ubuntu ( and thus
avoid windows altogether ).

I need a workstation for Ruby on Rails/ Node development. Since my parents
will be the one paying, I want to be sure if Mac is worth it. I've never
worked on a Mac before but since I've read that most startups that are hiring
offer Mac to developers, I'm guessing owning a Mac would really make
development more enjoyable. Would love to hear your guys' thoughts on this.

Thanks a lot.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Preface: I develop on a Mac.

There is no easy way to answer this question. You can definitely get a more
powerful PC for the price. With the Mac, you are buying some brand, some
better construction, and a lot of better customer service. You are also buying
OS X, which may or may not be attractive.

I used Linux for many years as a primary development machine, and it was
great. Ubuntu is doing a good job solving the "there is no good desktop for
Linux" that was pretty true five years ago.

That said, I prefer my Mac because I get almost the same ability to play at
the command line (I spend most of my day in Emacs right now, including running
my shells there), but I also get a refined experience when I'm interacting
with applications outside of development (e.g. Garage Band, Pages, Keynote,
etc).

In the end, I didn't switch for development, I switched for all the time I use
my laptop when I'm not developing. For me, it was worth it, but YMMV.

~~~
abstractfactory
Thread hijack...

If you use Emacs all day on a Mac, what do you use for the Meta key? I find
I'm not really happy no matter what I do. If I make Option into Meta, I have
to bend my thumb way under my palm to hit Meta. If I make Command into Meta,
then I lose access to lots of global Mac UI shortcuts. I guess I could
experiment with swapping Option and Command and then using Option as Meta,
although I'll have to retrain a lot of muscle memory.

And then there's the fact that one Emacs window in a terminal is still not as
productive as five Emacs windows under X11, and X11.app still sucks, and the
various native Mac Emacs ports still don't feel right to me.

Overall I find using Emacs on Linux X11 still provides the best Emacs
experience. This alone will probably keep me on Linux as my primary work
environment for the foreseeable future.

~~~
pnathan
For me-

* Meta is mapped to the Command key (and the option key). * Control is mapped to control. * I suppose I should try to remap the Fn key to be Control to really make it work right instead of the weird curve that currently has to happen.

When I really am interested in getting typing done I hook up a MS Natural 4K.
It's a much more pleasant experience. My keybindings are customized for
maximum ease there (and believe me, my hands/wrists do not hurt after a long-
term coding session there). Laptops are fine for messing around for a while,
but after a period of typing my hands hurt.

------
2mur
I'm not going back to linux on the desktop until it can sleep my laptop
reliably. OSX is so nice for that. Just close the lid and go... I can't
imagine working any other way now.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
It isn't that sleep works reliable on OSX, it's that sleep works reliably on a
_Mac_.

You see, when you buy a Mac you know every feature (including sleep) has been
tested thoroughly. When you decide to install an OS on a computer you already
own, _you put the onus to test on yourself_. I don't understand why people
continue to make this unfair comparison. If you want a linux computer where
sleep just works, by a preinstalled linux computer. System76 makes fantastic
ones. They thoroughly test every feature. They test when new versions of
Ubuntu get released. You'll have the same experience you have when buying a
Mac or when buying an HP.

~~~
huherto
That makes a lot of sense.

Are there any major PC manufacturers that ship with Ubuntu? I imagine the day
you go to Sams and buy an Ubuntu system will be a big milestone for Linux.

~~~
rfugger
Dell did ship Ubuntu awhile back. Not sure if they still do.

~~~
kleiba
Not for laptops anymore, as far as I know. They still sell their Inspiron
netbooks with ubuntu, though (8.04).

~~~
mlinksva
I see 4 laptops and 1 netbook at
[http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/laptops#facets=80770~0~179...](http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/laptops#facets=80770~0~1791343&p=1)
(use OS filter if link doesn't apply) different models running 9.10, 10.04,
10.10. For some reason the link on dell.com/ubuntu only shows the two
Latitudes, not the three Inspirons.

Not major manufacturers, but also see Zareason and System76.

------
urza
Are there any up-to-date statistics how many people uses ubuntu? Ideally also
compared to other linux distributions, windows, osx.. Google gives me only few
years old numbers or estimates, I guess its not easy to do these kind of
stats?

------
larrik
Serious question: Do any of you use Avant Window Navigator? How does Unity
compare with it?

------
cgoddard
Been using Unity and natty for a few weeks now. The only feature I really miss
from the gnome interface right now is the ability to add / move / remove
toolbar widgets. Has anyone figured out if it's possible / how to do this in
Unity?

Overall I feel a lot more productive with Unity. The numerous super- functions
are really helpful and nifty. I especially like the super- 1-9 for
positioning/resizing windows on the current monitor.

------
mjs
I find the description of which image to choose confusing. You need the a
64-bit image to handle processes over 4GB, right? Why is the x86 version
recommended for "most machines with Intel/AMD/etc type processors and almost
all computers that run Microsoft Windows." (That's from the server
description, too.)

~~~
ra
No. Memory > 4GB is not a reason to use 64bit.

If you want to address > 4GB of RAM on 32bit, install the PAE kernel. I think
the meta package is called linux-generic-pae.

Use 64bit if you want to run applications that will benefit from it.

EDIT: If in doubt, use the 32 bit one as it will give you less friction for
general purpose desktop use.

~~~
reitzensteinm
He said _processes_ accessing more than 4 gb, not total memory - aren't
individual processes are still limited to 4 gb of memory with PAE?

~~~
postfuturist
I don't know the technical reason, but most 32 bit apps on Linux are limited
to 2GB (2^31 bytes).

~~~
nitrogen
As jsprinkles alluded to in his post, the 2GB limit (or 1GB or 3GB, depending
on kernel configuration) is to allow space for the kernel.

------
BasDirks
Both the launcher and the dash are awesome. Takes very little time to get used
to.

------
paulkoer
WARNING: Installing Natty may brick your Macbook Pro

<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/774089>
[http://old.nabble.com/Ubuntu-11.04-broke-my-MacBook-Pro-
td31...](http://old.nabble.com/Ubuntu-11.04-broke-my-MacBook-Pro-
td31505951.html)

I really love ubuntu, but if you have a macbook pro be careful! I may have to
have my logic board replaced!

------
lurker19
On Sandy Bridge graphics,X server freezes or flickers everytime anything
interesting happens, like screensaver or suspend or console switching. New
graphics bugs are reported daily. My X has frozen hard 6 times in 2 days.
Nvidia drivers have some trouble also. In short, 2011 hardware is not
compatible with Unity or Compiz at all. Legacy Metacity is slightly better,
and disable all power management to get a mostly stable system..

------
stuartcw
I have upgraded and a all of the CPU hogging problems I have been suffering
recently have gone away. I am very happy with the upgrade so far.

------
bergie
I've been running this on my MacBook Air for a couple of weeks now. Some rough
edges, especially with GNOME3 from a PPA.

~~~
olsonjeffery
FYI for other users: installing Gnome3 via UGR (<http://ugr.teampr0xy.net/>)
will _break_ your unity install.

Ubuntu (and Unity) is still Gnome2-based (I haven't heard anything, yet,
concerning a move to Gnome3 for a future release).

So upgrading to Gnome3 is a one-way upgrade and will break your
Gnome2-dependent environments. Although I've done a ppa-purge to uninstall the
UGR packages and things seemed to have gone back to normal, pretty much.

------
meric
Ubuntu's website shows of its Dash "Spotlight", Launcher "Dock", Status Icons
"Menu bar with status", Workspace "Spaces", Ubuntu Store "Mac App Store".

It's almost like they're trying to directly compete with Mac OS X, with
"killer features" that match exactly with what apple regularly shows off with
Mac OS X.

~~~
Tichy
I think most of these things were actually on Unix/Linux first, just maybe not
as pretty as on OS X.

~~~
krakensden
Lets go through the list:

* Spotlight - OS X

* Dock - NeXT

* Spaces - X11

* Software Repositories - Debian [1994]

~~~
jcastro
Desktop search predates OSX with Beagle (unfortunately now defunct)

~~~
krakensden
The first pitch I ever heard for Beagle was 'it's like searchlight', so I
always assumed it came later- but I looked it up, and it's hard to tell.
inotify 0.8 was announced about a month after Steve Jobs started advertising
spotlight, and Beagle grew out of Dashboard which certainly has design
documents that indicate they wanted to do that. So... I think you might be
right.

On a related note, are you Ubuntu's jcastro?

------
taken11
upgrade failed, unity/compiz does not work with my graphic card. none of that
detected, worst ubuntu upgrade so far.

------
lurker19
Networking is extremely flaky in my home LAN. Since I set up a new box with
natty, my box had been crashing my actontec DSL modem. There are some
workarohbds online for disabling ipv6 and restarting wifi when he module
crashes and the indicator Applet loses its connection to he network-manager
service.

------
alienfluid
The upgrade's going - another 40 minutes or so.

Pro-tip for people with laptops that have switchable graphics - Go into your
BIOS and set the default to "Discrete graphics" and not "Switchable".
Otherwise Ubuntu will default to integrated and you'll miss out on all the
fancy animations.

------
enterneo
aargh! I just installed it in Vmware Fusion on Snow Leopard only to realize it
does not support OpenGL for Linux OS. Ubuntu went into a fallback mode and
disabled Unity. Seems like I need to switch to a different Virtual Machine
Software, any suggestions?

~~~
mattdeboard
I really love Oracle's VirtualBox and use it daily for my dev environment.

~~~
vijaydev
Oracle's VirtualBox. Sad remembering the day Sun set.

------
ra
I got nervous with Ubuntu releases when 9.10 came out, and it was really
buggy; definitely shouldn't have been released in that state.

This time round I upgraded a couple of nights ago from the repos, and I'm
pleased to say there have been no dramas.

~~~
cgoddard
I've had the 11.04 beta installed for a few weeks now, and though there have
definitely been some bugs that have come up, even the beta of natty has been
really stable overall, much more so than some of the previous Ubuntu releases.

------
enterneo
I am wondering, if Unity isn't supported due to lack of hardware acceleration,
does it fallback to Gnome2? (does it mean it still bundles Gnome along with
Unity?). This is essential to make a choice between Xubuntu and Ubuntu when
running in a VM

~~~
LeonidasXIV
Yes, it does fall back to "Ubuntu Classic", how it is called.

------
SergeyHack
I'm so regretting upgrading to 11.04.

There are a lot of small but annoying bugs. It has just lost my custom
keyboard shortcuts.

It installs privacy-questionable program and don't give any warning about that
(zeitgeist package).

------
buster
Just in time for my new laptop, perfect. I am eager to see the Unity
interface! :)

------
aashu_dwivedi
I always was a little skeptical about unity , and thought I'd rather go with
the gnome3 , but consider it a peer pressure or whatever i am upgrading to
unity as I type this :) [and yeah i'm every bit excited] , cheers .

------
malkia
Heh, just installed ubuntu-10.10-dekstop-amd64 on my EverRunNote notebook.

Now this came out :)

Btw, there is no ubuntu-10.10-notebook-amd64 - probably because there are not
many 64-bit notebooks?

~~~
sciurus
You should install ubuntu-11.04-dekstop-amd64. There was never a notebook
version of Ubuntu. For a while, they had a separate "netbook remix" that you
could download and install, but that has been discontinued.

------
jhawk28
Updated our server. Only issue was that I needed to reinstall Mercurial.

~~~
joshfinnie
What benefits over the 10.04 LTS does this release have for the server? All I
am hearing about it Unity, have you seen an improvement?

~~~
SkyMarshal
I'd like to know this too. Ubuntu Server is headless. I tend to stick with the
LTS versions even for my desktop unless something really amazing is introduced
in a subsequent non-LTS version.

------
Symmetry
I was very impressed by Unity, I'd been using a tiling window manager for a
while but after rebinding some miscellaneous shortcuts to Super+(right hand
key) I'm totally happy with it.

------
hartror
12 hours later I think I have everything working as I intend . . though my
productivity is still taking a hit trying to find various things.

------
zenocon
i'm shopping for a new laptop to put this on. i'm looking for something maybe
like the samsung series 9. ideally, i'd like it to be as slim as that, but
have a 15" screen. anyway, looking for laptop HW recommendations from others
here. i've run ubuntu on a number of thinkpads before, but i want to buy a new
laptop to replace my MBP.

~~~
zenocon
just ordered the samsung series 9 from costco 1549 free shipping. read some
ubuntu forum pages that said natty works great on it.

------
mmaunder
Why is it so hard to find a changelog for the server edition of 11.04?

------
T_S_
Can I upgrade a Ubuntu 10.10 machine in-place? Don't worry its a VM.

~~~
moreati
Yes, Update Manager should prompt you. If it doesn't then run: update-manager
-c

~~~
T_S_
Thanks. Right you are, right after a reboot the prompt appeared. Maybe that's
why my question was gathering (-1, Moron) downvotes. Remember people, there
are no stupid questions only stupid users.

------
mise
Dare you?

~~~
mise
I did dare. I'm in, but it took getting very scared looking at a black command
prompt with no gui. Doing "sudo apt-get remove flgrx" (to reset the graphics
settings) did the trick. After a couple of restarts I was in.

------
lhnn
I've had it for a little bit, but I went back to Ubuntu Classic when I saw I
couldn't add a "Show Desktop" to the panel... Between gnome-do and the window
snapping feature a-la Windows 7, "Ubuntu Classic" works well for me.

Besides, I'm experimenting with moving all my servers to Debian Stable. It's
interesting how much Ubuntu does for you automatically...

------
leon_
So, I'm running Ubuntu 10.10 - but I use awesome-wm instead of gnome. Is it
worth to upgrade to 11? After reading the comments here it seems like the big
thing about 11.04 was the new gnome shell.

------
ioSami
Already downloading.

