I installed Ubuntu 12.04 at the weekend and I am very happy with it. The installation was flawless as usual and Unity is much more mature now. It seems so much more stable (I know that's expected from an LTS) and it's snappier and easy to use. It still lacks the ability to minimise windows by clicking the active launcher icon but that is such a small complaint and my understanding is that it is in the pipeline anyway.

Mint Devs trying to decide what desktop to run with, results so far

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopi...f=143&t=100787

Cinnamon seems very popular

Poor Unity is still the red headed step child despite being massively improved

I don't think a poll on any specific distros forums are particularly representative of anything factual.

I've found some 'interface' issues with Unity:

1 - would prefer launcher at bottom of screen, but that won't be possible from now on
2 - larger close/minimize/maximise buttons, and to the right instead of the left, neither of which is possible.
3 - not sure about the panel, sometimes interferes with firefox menu/other menus
4 - folder backgrounds, used to be easy to do, that facility has been removed from the panel menu. Don't say it's trivial, I like it

My problem I think is I spent a long time with XP which by the end was highly customizable.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17916879

A very interesting article and interview with Mark Shuttleworth. I love his drive and ambition and he has some excellent ideas for the future of Ubuntu.

Interesting story re Microsoft deploying Linux :

full story: Microsoft uses Linux for Skype supernodes

Good article. He definitely has the personality to win people over.

I'm using Ubuntu now, and it's been great. Had to do a couple of fixes (fix Plymouth boot reolution with Nvidia, change the swappiness, etc), but they're only the same stuff I have to do with any other distro. And actually despite my reservations the performance has been excellent. There's a couple of minor visual bugs that most people won't even notice, but otherwise it is indeed a compelling release so far. I'll keep it around a while and see how I feel. I'm getting into the app search in Unity now too.

Upgraded from 11.10 to 12.04 without any problems.
Very little difference that I can see, except that the unity bar doesn't get out of the way of windows now, and seemingly no way of making it? Only 'always there' or auto-hide in the options. (auto-hide it only appears on mouse-over)

Interestingly I was using the Nvidia 173 driver previously. It had been one of three versions offered by the hardware drivers in 11.10.
Before I upgraded I uninstalled the Nvidia driver. After install I went into hardware drivers only to find that it had automatically installed, and was using, the latest Nvidia driver, and it was the only option offered.
However I haven't had any video problems so far.

I notice that the version of VLC player offered from synaptic will now play .wtv files, so that'll save me having to convert all the TV files recorded by Windows Media Center into MP4s for my Linux installs.

I also notice that the Ubuntu grub now correctly labels my Windows 8 partition. Previously it had called it 'Windows Recovery Environment'

I much prefer the bar always being visible now. In fact I started using it that way during 11.10 (I may have already mentioned that here - apologies). I like the dodge windows function, but accidentally triggering the bar just mousing near it got very old very quickly, and I can see why the decsion to remove it was made. I think there's a way of reactivating it should you want it.

Apparently the new Nvidia driver is out now, so it probably won't be long before it gets updated in 12.04. It fixes all the problems by all accounts, so that's great. Though I will add I'm having an easy time of it at the moment so I'm not too worried. All is running smoothly.

Wonder if Nvidia have fixed that annoying blue hint on Youtube videos with VDPAU enabled, Adobe don't seem to care.

Oddly I am yet to see that on 12.04. I gather that it is an Nvidia fault, not Adobe, so I hope that's the end of it when the new driver arrives.

Funnily enough, i didnt like Ubuntu because you couldn't move the side bar to the top\bottom\right.
I Still think users should have the option
But im using Xfce with a side bar that stays showing all the time, and must admit i do now like the bar at the side even though i used to be dead against it
I see it as ive got a widescreen monitor, as most people have, so having the bar at the side doesnt take any noticable size from viewing page
http://i45.tinypic.com/313smfq.png

I Think in a few years we will be wondering what all the fuss was about with unity\Gnome3, once they let the end user mess with it a bit, then i may like it

Yes I agree, but I do think that given time this will happen. I think the idea is to get things stable and consistent, then step from there. But you're right, it's an important addition.


I can already feel the storm of negativity passing over, and people are beginning to see how good they are. It's inevitable.

Latest Slacko Puppy Linux (version 5.3.3) now released and looking good.

More details and download:-
http://01micko.com/slacko.html

Remember also that Puppy Linux originator Barry Kauler's own Wary Puppy Linux (brilliant for older hardware) and Racy Puppy Linux (looks the same as Wary but "on steroids" for newer machines) were also recently released (version 5.3)

http://puppylinux.com

If it's NVidia 295.49 as is currently in Ubuntu Quantal Quetzal, then you're going to be disappointed. That driver landed in the Arch extra repository a couple or so days ago and it hasn't fixed the problems, if anything, things have got worse and more bugs have been induced from what I can tell.

Worse still, even enabling HTML5 on YouTube, all the users I follow force Flash on you so they can cash in from advertising which HTML5 does not support.

I'd recommend using VLC to watch YouTube videos, by copying the video URL and placing it into the Open Network Streams window and playing it from there.

I agree . There used to be an (unofficial) way of repositioning the launcher (side bar) but not with 12.04. For the time being Unity is going to become more standardized, not more configurable, unfortunately. That intention goes back some way:

I think the report actually meant that the launcher should be movable to other edges of the screen. I'm afraid that won't work with our broader design goals, so we won't implement that. We want the launcher always close to the Ubuntu button.

status wontfix

Hmmm. It looks lime there is still some fixing to be done on Adobe's side of things. Whether they'll do it is another question. Flash is OK for me at the moment, and I don't know why! I'll keep an eye on it. I don't get the direction of Flash at the moment. Making it Windows only seems like suicide to me. I think we're all pretty much agreed we need something to replace it, but there doesn't seem to be anything that's stepping up. Can HTML5 do the same things?


To be fair that was a couple of years ago. If they don't implement it officially, I'm sure someone will create a way to do it unofficially in the community.

And thats the beauty of Linux

i've actually switched back to windows 3 times over the past fortnight because i found some games i wanted to play, all of which turned out to be rubbish.

anyway, just finished re-installing suse again and setting everything up so i thought "hhmm.. i've got a disk image of windows saved, so why not save one of suse?".

so i did .. so it'll now be as simple as chips to switch backwards and forwards if i so wish .. which, knowing me, i will

As I say it's a longstanding policy. With Ubuntu 11.04 (I think it was) the workaround was only for 32-bit and one version of Unity. It doesn't seem to be straightforward to do.

It's a long thread and I seem to recall you explained previously why you don't dual (or as many as you like) boot, but I've had nothing but success recently and changed my partition layout at least a couple of times. Probably used Grub2 at least 4 times and every time it got everything right.

If you've ever installed older versions of MS Windows and encountered the fdisk partitioning tool there, then I recommend just trying Linux cfdisk, maybe on an old small hdd, just to see how much more intuitive it is. As far as can be in ncurses at least.

If you've ever tried using Linux partitioning tools and then tried and failed to install any MS OS, it's because (allegedly) it looks at the first 512 bytes of the partition it's installing on, instead of the MBR, for its own copy of the partition table and uses that in preference to the real MBR - unless it finds all zeros in the 1st 0.5kB.

Sorry to go on about it, but it made a lot of difference (dd-ing them to zero) and does sound like something MS might do.

i know i probably could dual boot. 've got a 400gb hard drive so i've got plenty of space but it's just me really - i'm just that anal it has to be all or nothing

http://omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/05/ubunt...old-next-year/

Ubuntu to ship on 5% of all PCs next year. I love to see stories like this and would love to see growth in the Open Source sector.

I've only got 320Gb but up until last week I had three operating systems running! I've now only got the two, and I would really recommend dual booting. It's a lot easier going when you always have at least one to fall back on.