Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal

[pixel]

Ubuntu 11.04 is released!

Just a few words from my experience so far. If you are not fairly tech-savy and/or bold enough to go exploring, I wouldn't recommend an upgrade just yet. I've had repeated Unity freezes/lockups on my brand spanking-new netbook with 11.04 loaded from a clean install. I am suspecting with all the changes that there were things that slipped. I do expect that those things will be cleaned up as they are discovered and sorted out. There are a lot of people who did a ton of work on this without getting paid a cent, please do not think that I am not absolutely grateful for their hard work, I respect the fact that things are going in a new direction and with a fixed release schedule there is only so much time to do work, so something has to give.

Initial impression: I expected to be disappointed by Unity, having run the 10.10 version on my old netbook for the past six months, I am not disappointed, but I am not blown away either. This feels like a good interface for my netbook, I am just not convinced yet that this is what I want on my desktop.

Anyone else? Experiences? Thoughts?

Comments

[seekingferret]

Haven't upgraded yet, but I'm curious if anyone has experience with Kubuntu 11.04 yet. I've been using a number of things out of -backports recently, and would like to get back on a stable release.

[snakeling]

I installed it fresh last night on my desktop, and so far I'm not too impressed with Unity. Mostly because I'm used to quickly switch from one app to another, and the dock isn't suited to that. I'll keep it up for a week or so to make a real attempt at using it, but if it still annoys, I'll go back to Gnome.

For the netbook, I'm going to do a minimal install of one of the really light windows manager, maybe OpenBox.

[draigwen]

I've only just had a netbook the past week or two, and first thing I did was put Ubuntu on it. I fell in love with Unity and found myself wishing my desktop was so nice. So when I logged into it yesterday (for the first time in months) and found the new version of Ubuntu available and using Unity, I jumped at the chance to install it. I don't like the mac-like menu bar at the top, and will probably change that in the future (it works well for a netbook where screen real estate is at a minimum).

I've not had any problems with Unity since the install (well, at first it didn't run, but that's because I have a stupid system that I've tweaked over the years and never works perfectly).

At least you've always got the option of classic (or Unity 2D) if you aren't happy with Unity...

[z_vet]

Exactly. Ubuntu has a long history of broken dist-upgrades…

[vlion]

well x.0 releases are usually a bit sketchy in whatever system you use.

//waiting a few weeks.

[pixel]

Ubuntu doesn't follow a 'proper' (semantic style) versioning scheme, which makes it all the more confusing. The numbers refer to the dates of release actually, but I find the releases follow the same basic trends anyway, 'big major changes' followed by a few point type releases that smooth things out, and then the next few releases polish the whole system.

[siliconshaman]

Upgraded my desktop already, it works ok but I intensely dislike the sidebar and icons. It's badly laid out and hard to switch between apps. Already switched to 'classic'.

unity also does something to the mouse pointer in some programs, throwing off the calibration so you have to aim under the buttons to select them.

meh, it's a new kernel, there's always bugs and tweaks at first.

[pixel]

I am finding I don't much like the sidebar either, I really need to figure out the keyboard shortcuts to get at all that. I do like the top bar and the global menu thing on my netbook. It looks nice and saves some space. I have gone through a lot of effort to de-clutter my desktop, and use the keyboard a lot, Gnome Do is my go-to app launcher, which is just a meta-space keystroke away. I find that the Unity just feels cluttered compared to my normal workspace.

I'm making myself take a week with Unity before I give up. (Partly because giving up means moving away from Ubuntu, the Classic option is going away next release I have heard.)

[dragonwolf]

I just upgraded this morning and have mixed feelings about Unity. I like the idea, but what is up with OS makers deciding that icons need to be huge by default? Microsoft did it with Vista/7, Apple sort of did it with Snow Leopard, and now Canonical did it with the side bar and menu. I have a 22" widescreen and the menu to get to "everything else" takes up 2/3 of it.

I think it has potential, but I didn't find a quick way to add stuff to the panel. I might just need to spend a little more time with it, but if it takes some time to figure out how to add stuff, that is definitely points against usability. If stuff's not on that bar, it takes quite a bit to get to programs that aren't on that bar, thanks to some mystery meat navigation.

Like the others, I'm going to give it some time before I go back to basic Gnome. I'd rather not have to manually install another desktop/window manager or switch to a different distro when I upgrade in the future.