Ubuntu 12.04LTS upgrade ambivalence.

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Originally Posted By: uc50ic4more
Please remember though that no one *has* to use Unity! In the default install I am pretty sure that you get Gnome-shell *and* Gnome-shell's fallback mode, which is very, very similar to Gnome 2; and much, much lighter in the usage of resources.

Even if they're not in the default installation they'd still just be a click away to install.
That's what I did with Natty on my netbook but with the Oneiric install I did on another laptop I never was able to get a usable setup with anything other than Unity. The gnome sessions are there but they don't work 100%.
 
Originally Posted By: calvin1
The gnome sessions are there but they don't work 100%.


I think that having standard Gnome sessions in 11.04 and 11.10 were afterthoughts at best: Canonical was pushing really, really hard to both polish Unity and promote its adoption. For 12.04, though, a LTS or Long Term Support version they are taking the stock Gnome much more seriously. Choosing Gnome Classic or Gnome Classic (no effects) at login results in a desktop that looks and consumes resources almost identically to (legacy) Gnome 2.3x.
 
Unity 3D seems to be sluggish on my Dual core E5200 overclocked 3.1Ghz (2GB mem and 512MB Radeon HD 5450 video card). This is on the latest Ubuntu 12.04 Beta 2 release, so I expect the speediness won't improve.

But regarding what uc50ic4more said above, I'll probably fall back to a Gnome session for my main Ubuntu installation and continue to mess around with Unity elsewhere.
 
This is why I am still running 10.10 as well. 11.04 and 11.10 did nothing for me. But since 10.10 is dropping support I am looking at either falling back to 10.04 or upgrading to 12.04 and I am never upgrading between LTS's again. So I'm thinking of going back to 10.04 and then let them work the bugs out of the Gnome thing and Unity and all that and make a plan for how I want my computer to look and then drop 12.04 when I'm sure I know what the story is.

It's either that or move to another distro and a lot of them are also unremarkable. Fedora 16 is another that moved to a new shell (Gnome 3) and a lot of people don't like it but it's possible to tweak it however you want. I'm tempted to try Fedora if I can't convince myself that I can un-mess-up the newest Ubuntu.
 
occupant -

Fedora is a bleeding-edge distro and will always be on top of whatever is newest. If you want a rock solid (more stable than Ubuntu) Gnome 2-based distro, try Debian. It's what Ubuntu is a derivative of; and its whole schtick is that it is light years behind the technology curve, but ridiculously well-tested.

If you want something akin to Debian in terms of stability but is RPM-based like Fedora, try one of the copies of Red Hat Enterprise Linux: Scientific Linux and CentOS.

Having said that, the 12.04 LTS release is really starting to shape up. Unity is dead simple.
 
Received this from Ubuntu mailing list:
Quote:
This note is just to confirm that the support period for Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) formally ends on April 10, 2012 and Ubuntu Security Notices no longer includes information or updated packages for Ubuntu 10.10.

The supported upgrade path from Ubuntu 10.10 is via Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal). Instructions and caveats for the upgrade may be found at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NattyUpgrades. Note that upgrades to version 11.04 and beyond are only supported in multiple steps, via an upgrade first to 11.04, then to 11.10. Both Ubuntu 11.04 and Ubuntu 11.10 continue to be actively supported with security updates and select high-impact bug fixes. All announcements of official security updates for Ubuntu releases are sent to the ubuntu-security-announce mailing list, information about which may be found at https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-security-announce.

Huh.
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I expected 10.10 support to overlap (or at least meet) the release date of Ubuntu 12.04LTS.
 
Originally Posted By: NJC
Huh.
21.gif
I expected 10.10 support to overlap (or at least meet) the release date of Ubuntu 12.04LTS.


You're thinking of 10.04, the prior LTS version. The LTS versions will overlap but the 3 releases in between will have much shorter support "lives".

EDIT: In fact, I think Canonical is going to begin supporting LTS releases for 5 years now; so they'll actually overlap 2 LTS releases!
 
I've got the install image torrenting right now but I doubt I'll end up using it.

I've got to say that I've been happy with Mint and Gnome shell. For a command-line jockey like me it's really nice to press the Windows key and be able to type the program name or file name I want and have it launch without ever touching the mouse. Also, Mint doesn't have the stalls and swap deep-diving on my old laptop that Natty had.

It's like the distro circle of life. Ubuntu is what Debian should have been; Mint is what Ubuntu should have been.
 
i grudglingly upgraded to 11.04 on my ancient thinpad, and hated unity. switched back to regular (old) Gnome UI and now the 11.04 is much more tolerable...

Banshee doesn't work though...
Meh - i don't care much - getting a new laptop anyway, and the ancient thinkpad might become a ...idk what? internet shopping machine?
 
Originally Posted By: 97tbird
i grudglingly upgraded to 11.04 on my ancient thinpad, and hated unity. switched back to regular (old) Gnome UI and now the 11.04 is much more tolerable...

Banshee doesn't work though...


I also upgrade 10.10 to 11.04, but Unity was still half-baked and awkward. 11.04 Unity is worth a try, and Unity in 12.04 is better still. Feels more refined.

And I've never used any of Ubuntu's default music/video players - always install the excellent VLC.
 
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(2) machines running 12.04 now; One was an distro upgrade (32 bit machine P4) and one was a clean install (64-bit dual Xeon) No issues.

I've been using Unity for a while; I'd agree with NJC; rough at first but improvements were made quickly. Not for everyone.
 
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Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
(2) machines running 12.04 now; One was an distro upgrade (32 bit machine P4) and one was a clean install (64-bit dual Xeon) No issues.

I've been using Unity for a while; I'd agree with NJC; rough at first but improvements were made quickly. Not for everyone.

Its a GUI designed to scale easily to a tablet or netbook. The launcher bar and main menu are designed to be used easily from a touch interface. Likewise it comes with a highly configurable on-screen keyboard.

Shuttleworth has been pretty clear that tablets are his new target for Ubuntu.
 
I made the mistake of upgrading my home desktop to 11.04. Everything else still has 10.10 and Gnome 2. After three days of trying to use Unity and failing I gave Gnome 3 an evening. Gnome classic was a bit of a relief and I stuck with it for about a week before I decided to try xubuntu-desktop. This was better and what I'm still using on this machine, but still isn't nearly as nice as Gnome 2. I sometimes wish the XFCE were less livable so I'd take a weekend to go back to 10.04 and Gnome 2. That was a setup that just shined. Between now and October I'm going to have to make a decision and I think Mint is going to be where I go in search of the old Ubuntu style of "it just works." Debian would make me feel warm and fuzzy, but for the time to set it up?
 
Originally Posted By: yonyon
Between now and October I'm going to have to make a decision and I think Mint is going to be where I go in search of the old Ubuntu style of "it just works." Debian would make me feel warm and fuzzy, but for the time to set it up?


What about your circumstance makes you believe that Debian will be any more difficult to set up than Ubuntu? I know that there are a lot of things involved in setting certain things up in Debian that are not nearly as easy as in Ubuntu; but if you don't need to set those things up (Samba file sharing comes to mind) then you can get a Debian install up and running in just a few minutes. I timed myself a few times and got from CD insert to first boot in ~13 minutes!
 
Setting up a fresh install of Debian on an older fairly mainstream machine like mine isn't necessarily a big deal. It isn't quite as easy as typing "gksudo unetbootin" and pressing enter either is it?

I've been using this computer for a few years now. I haven't kept it organized. It's a giant mess. If you were to try and find an example of how not to keep a computer properly set up an organized, well, here it is. Until I went and borked the whole thing by upgrading to 11.04 it was a very nice mess that pretty much always worked the way I liked it and I'm pretty happy with my [censored] heap.

I assume that if I start with a fresh Mint install, add packages for software that I'm used to, and then dump all my data and cruft onto it then at least half of it will work right away. Most of the things that will be screwed up can be discovered and corrected over a few months time. If I do that with Debian I'm going to run into more issues with Buntuisms that give me more things that require fixing and straightening out before they work.

Is my assumption incorrect?
 
I just finally updated my FC14 install to FC16. That was exciting.... Nothing like Grub2 getting royally borked to turn what should be a straight-forward process into having to boot from a LiveCD and re-configure the bootloader.....
 
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