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Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 2 out and looking good!


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Old 24-09-2011, 10:55
Kal_El
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Out now.

Downloaded it yesterday and have been playing with it Live on the USB. Have to say it really is looking lovely and working extremely well. Massively impressed with Unity. Much more coherent and easy to get around. A lot of my gripes with the last Ubuntu's version of Unity have been fixed, and this has been polished to a great shine imho. I'm definitely going to install it when it's released. Even though I've praised Gnome 3 shell, there's no doubt that Unity is much more desktop oriented. I like the global menu thing, the left dock bar is as easy to use as Gnome shell, and the overview dash is a country mile ahead of Gnome shell's applications overview with it's huge icons.

Anyone else tried this? What do you think? I'm am easily being won back round to Ubuntu again, but I just hope it's as solid underneath as the initial glitz would suggest. Only a hard install will tell...
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Old 24-09-2011, 11:28
DerekMcV
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Gave it a go a few weeks ago on my test rig - installed to hard drive rather than a live CD - didn't see a lot of difference.
I had been running ubuntu 11.04 in classic mode as my graphics card is not high spec & as 11.10 did not allow anything
other then the unity option which you either love or hate I replaced it with Kubuntu 11.04 - with the cairo-dock which
I like though KDE differences take a bit of getting used too. But at least you can customise it to what you like.

I also have MintXfce dual booting as a backup and will see how this goes as my main PC & laptop dual boot W7 & Mint11 gnome2 via the
grub customizer Burg which works so well I likely would change unless forced.
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Old 24-09-2011, 11:44
Kal_El
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Well I wasn't the biggest fan of Unity either on the last release, but I could see the potential. I reckon this release could change a few people's perceptions of it. The problems I've had with the past two Ubuntu releases though had more to do with underlying bugs with Nvidia and suchlike than Unity.

If you install it do let us know how you get on. I think if I can find the time this weekend I'm going to backup my current openSUSE install with Clonezilla, and install this over it. Proof of the pudding and all that.
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Old 24-09-2011, 12:45
lettice
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I tried the latest 11.10 on ian IBM t41 and unity now works well, impressed, didnt work on 11.04
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Old 24-09-2011, 13:41
1saintly
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Out now.

Downloaded it yesterday and have been playing with it Live on the USB. Have to say it really is looking lovely and working extremely well. Massively impressed with Unity. Much more coherent and easy to get around. A lot of my gripes with the last Ubuntu's version of Unity have been fixed, and this has been polished to a great shine imho. I'm definitely going to install it when it's released. Even though I've praised Gnome 3 shell, there's no doubt that Unity is much more desktop oriented. I like the global menu thing, the left dock bar is as easy to use as Gnome shell, and the overview dash is a country mile ahead of Gnome shell's applications overview with it's huge icons.

Anyone else tried this? What do you think? I'm am easily being won back round to Ubuntu again, but I just hope it's as solid underneath as the initial glitz would suggest. Only a hard install will tell...
Have you fallen out with the Linux thread
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Old 24-09-2011, 15:10
Kal_El
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Have you fallen out with the Linux thread
Nah course not. Just doesn't hurt to have separate specific threads for releases.
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Old 24-09-2011, 15:28
1saintly
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Will they let us put the side bar at the top or bottom or right yet?
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Old 24-09-2011, 15:31
Kal_El
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No it's still on the left side. I like it there, especially as I've become used to having a dash bar there with Gnome 3, and I think it makes sense. It'd be nice if they allow it to be moved around at the users will, and I expect that will come, but I think they're all on getting it working properly first.
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Old 24-09-2011, 15:49
1saintly
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As TV is rubbish tonight, i'll have a play with it, seems in a few years time this type of interface will be the norm, (re next win8 release) and computers\tablets\phones will all blur into one
So i will have to get used to it
Would be nice in later releases to allow us to customise it a bit.
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Old 24-09-2011, 16:09
Norbert5
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I tried the beta 1 and didn't get any further than the live cd

just got a white screen nothing showing on the left just white but hovering over the toolbar area some of the boxes popped up.
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Old 24-09-2011, 16:33
Kal_El
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Would be nice in later releases to allow us to customise it a bit.
Yes I agree, and both Gnome 3 and Unity are guilty at the moment of offering nothing that the end user can realistically change. With Gnome 3 it's great if you're a programmer, because there's a ton of Javascript you can tinker with, but it's not use to the end user at the moment. At least Unity has the Compiz settings you can play with, but it's fairly limited at the moment.

I think both are very usable though to be getting on with, to be fair. I'm glad we've finally moved on from the old personally.
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Old 24-09-2011, 16:55
1saintly
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I tried the beta 1 and didn't get any further than the live cd

just got a white screen nothing showing on the left just white but hovering over the toolbar area some of the boxes popped up.
It took me a few goes to get it to load, but it is still at beta stage.
Try it a few times, you may be luckier. Or try another download.

Got it loaded and updated (once i had found the update manager )
Tried my quick default tests, re... plugged bluetooth adapter in + run iplayer in HD Full screen + plugged sony walkman in (yes i know its old school ) + plugged external drives in for music\picture\videos, all ok so far
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Old 24-09-2011, 19:13
Kal_El
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Right, have installed 11.10 beta 2 now. Decided to wipe out PCLinuxOS instead, as I have nothing really on that install and it was mostly for fun. I still backed it up first though with Clonezilla.

Thoughts so far are mostly positive. It's not perfect; for some reason the new Ubuntu GRUB menu is still listing PCLinuxOS in spite of the fact that the OS is not there. I know for a fact I have installed to the correct partition, so I can only image that it has picked up the listing from the openSUSE install.

It looks like they have fixed the Jockey bug that showed the driver as not working. I am using Nvidia-current and it seems fine. I have had a couple of occasions when the Unity bar seem to not trigger no matter where I put the mouse, which is odd, but I suspect they'll be fixing this in the run up to the final release. Ubuntu Software Centre has crashed unexpectedly a couple of times too, so I hope they fix this as well.

Otherwise...yes it's pretty good and certainly a massive step up from 11.04. I'll give it a go for a while before deciding whether or not to restore the PCLinuxOS (which I probably will to be fair), which'll be fun in itself as I've never restored a cloned image before. I only hope Clonezilla has backed up the MBR/GRUB as well....
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Old 24-09-2011, 22:02
MrQuike
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I tried the latest 11.10 on an IBM t41 and unity now works well, impressed, didnt work on 11.04
Snap. Useful to know.
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Old 24-09-2011, 23:00
noise747
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Gone back to 10.04, i did not like the new look.

10.04 is doing what I want to be honest
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Old 25-09-2011, 09:29
Kal_El
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Well I decided to revert back to PCLinuxOS, though I knew I would eventually. I like Ubuntu 11.10. It's very nice, but there's still a general feeling that it's not quite ready. Of course it is a beta still, so I'll take another look come the release, but though Unity is really great and feature packed, I still don't find it as easy to use or intuitive as Gnome 3's own desktop shell. I think with the Gnome 3 shell the killer deal for me is the whole workspaces thing. It is so well laid out yet discreet, whereas with Unity it's always vying for your attention with bars and clicky menus. Still, it is very nice and I don't want to diss it.

However the big story for me this morning is the fantastic results with Clonezilla. I simply cannot get my head around how it does it, but I am utterly blown away. I easily restored the cloned PCLOS partition, with no problems or difficulties at all, and I have never used a cloning program in my life before ever! It even restored the original GRUB menu with all the settings, and upon booting into all my OS's I have discovered everything is working as it used to. I am absolutely staggered! It's like it never happened. What a terrific piece of software. I look forward to using it again.
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Old 25-09-2011, 10:39
artnada
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Just downloaded this. Burned, installed alongside Win7....all installed, but no boot menu choice to boot into either Windows 7 or ubnutu. It just boots into Windows 7!

Looked in system proerties of (win7) to alter timing of boot to 10 seconds, only windows 7 is listed.

Oh well. Off it comes until a proper Wubi arrives.
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Old 25-09-2011, 10:53
Kal_El
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Just downloaded this. Burned, installed alongside Win7....all installed, but no boot menu choice to boot into either Windows 7 or ubnutu. It just boots into Windows 7!

Looked in system proerties of (win7) to alter timing of boot to 10 seconds, only windows 7 is listed.

Oh well. Off it comes until a proper Wubi arrives.
That's odd. On mine it listed both Windows 7 and openSUSE, and even listed the removed PCLinuxOS install because it picked it up from the previous openSUSE GRUB. Did you check the MD5SUM of the download? Perhaps it just didn't install properly...?
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Old 25-09-2011, 16:45
1saintly
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Ah well, gave it a go, had a few crashes etc but thats to do with it still being Beta.

I Will be sticking with my Linux Peppermint as i can do things better and quicker with it than Ubuntu.

Why have different workspaces selectable but when you click on firefox icon on a new empty workspace it just takes you to previous workspace that has firefox running
Drag and drop is hopeless, and as previously mentioned you cant customise it, the list goes on!

I appreciate it is early days in its development of both Gnome versions, but whilst there is always a choice i will be sticking to other versions of Linux, LXDE XFCE Even E17 is getting a new lease of life.
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Old 25-09-2011, 16:59
Kal_El
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-1saintly

While I'm happy with Gnome 3 (and Unity too on balance), I do agree that both XFCE and LXDE are fantastic. We have LXDE on our Eee, and XFCE on my mums desktop and they are really impressively fast and nice to use.

I agree with your comments about workspaces on Unity too. This doesn't happen with Gnome 3/shell, and as I mentioned before workspaces are one of the main reasons I think it betters Unity.

Was just watching a video of OS X Lion on YouTube. I've never used a Mac, but was curious to see how different it is to the new Linux desktops. I was quite surprised to see that it's not that different from Gnome 3 in some ways. The PR guy was talking about it being influenced by the iPad a lot, and you can see that. Personally I think these new approaches work just as well with mouse clicks as they do with fingers on a screen, and I'm really glad they're trying something new.
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Old 25-09-2011, 18:46
1saintly
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Was just watching a video of OS X Lion on YouTube. I've never used a Mac, but was curious to see how different it is to the new Linux desktops. I was quite surprised to see that it's not that different from Gnome 3 in some ways. The PR guy was talking about it being influenced by the iPad a lot, and you can see that. Personally I think these new approaches work just as well with mouse clicks as they do with fingers on a screen, and I'm really glad they're trying something new.
Yep, i have commented on that on threads recently as well.

Looking at Gnome3\Unity and up and coming Win8 releases they all seem to be going to this new style of interface or interacting. I can see why as the 'kids' youth' of today will just expect it after using there touch phones, ipads win8 touch screen and even kde touch.

Noticed that new Ubuntu doesn't ask for a root password on installing, reminds me of windows not bothering with dos.

Seems that computers of various forms in the future will just be expected to work by clicking\touching a button. People wont want to 'tincker' with there OS of choice or care whats happening in the backgroud,

Seems im part of a dying breed
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Old 25-09-2011, 19:31
Kal_El
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Yep, i have commented on that on threads recently as well.

Looking at Gnome3\Unity and up and coming Win8 releases they all seem to be going to this new style of interface or interacting. I can see why as the 'kids' youth' of today will just expect it after using there touch phones, ipads win8 touch screen and even kde touch.

Noticed that new Ubuntu doesn't ask for a root password on installing, reminds me of windows not bothering with dos.

Seems that computers of various forms in the future will just be expected to work by clicking\touching a button. People wont want to 'tincker' with there OS of choice or care whats happening in the backgroud,

Seems im part of a dying breed
I'm nearly forty and not a massive mobile phone user tbh, so I don't think that's why I like the new interfaces especially. Plus, I do like to tinker with things and I think they could (and probably will) put more customisation options in there for people like that. However, at the end of the day, I expect it to "just work", and that's the main thing I've taken from Gnome 3 at least. It just works really well for me.

If I remember correctly, the last few Ubuntu's haven't had a prompt during install for a root password. I think this is pretty poor form personally, and have always run sudo passwd root straight after installing. It is indeed a very Windows approach from Ubuntu, sadly.
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