I'd like to use Linux but...

When you install it it offers to keep your old Ubuntu where it is and create a whole new 11.04 partition. You don't have to nominate partition sizes or anything. In the past I've had to do all that manually. AND, it downloads updates while you're still at the regional settings bit! Very impressive.

Shuttleworth wants to get away from the idea that Ubuntu is a response to other OSes

that's fine but as far as i can see this is just a step towards mac os x away from windows? unity is actually quite nice on my netbook. i suppose due to smart phones people are getting used to a variety of operating systems so the fact that ubuntu has moved away from the windows-style layout isn't such a big deal.

Unity is really really really really fucking horrible.

― it always seems to have dick smith in it (Autumn Almanac), Thursday, 28 April 2011 09:09 (5 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I'm impressed with what Unity is and where it's going.

― it always seems to have dick smith in it (Autumn Almanac), Monday, 2 May 2011 21:46 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

?!

Oh I forgot to mention, since those angry posts at the weekend I've completely come round. Love Unity now.

― it always seems to have dick smith in it (Autumn Almanac), Tuesday, 3 May 2011 08:04 (12 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

!!

oops missed that one :)

haven't tried it yet but it seems like it would be right up my alley, i've long railed against the stupidity of desktop icons and the start button.

> the fact that ubuntu has moved away from the windows-style layout isn't such a big deal

except to the people who are quite happy with gnome...

time to start compiling gentoo, i think...

actually, i ran fluxbox for a couple of years and was quite happy with it. even used it with ubuntu - disabling metacity but keeping the gnome menu bars so i could use Network Manager rather than struggling with ppp for my modem. was a bit of a mongrel though and wasn't worth the effort when upgrading.

that's fine but as far as i can see this is just a step towards mac os x away from windows? unity is actually quite nice on my netbook. i suppose due to smart phones people are getting used to a variety of operating systems so the fact that ubuntu has moved away from the windows-style layout isn't such a big deal.

― tpp, Tuesday, 3 May 2011 19:57 (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yeah, Canonical's been steering toward Mac aesthetics for a while now, but (being as objective as possible) UI has in recent years been heavily split (a) between function and simplicity and (b) between getting in the user's way and getting out of it. Microsoft has been charging full-pelt to the former in both cases (although W7 has pulled back on the invasive UX), and Apple and Ubuntu have been going hard toward the latter in both cases.

reading Linux Format suggests that gnome's moving on as well, so even things that stick with gnome will suffer paradigm shifts.

http://www.gnome3.org/

(i still look for the 'up a directory' button in windows 7 every time i open explorer and am annoyed when i can't find it. 'Back' doesn't do the same thing.)

Up and back are different though.

In W7 you can click on the chunk of the path corresponding to "up" in the address bar, e.g. if you're in c:\animals\mammals\weasels you can click on "mammals" to go up one level, or "animals" to go up two. But yes, that is a bit of a faff. It's surprisingly much slower to have to read the screen to work out where to click.

I thought Unity just sat on top of Gnome, so in theory you should be able to disable Unity and revert to Gnome without too much pain? But I haven't upgraded yet (and I mainly access my Linux box via ssh, so I won't be seeing the GUI much) so I don't know.

(I'm not even very clear on exactly what is so different about it. Screenshots aren't helping me much. Off to youtube with me.)

Unity highlights:

- you run most stuff by typing part of its name (like gnome-do/quicksilver)
- if what you want isn't installed, it suggests what you want and provides a d/l link
- the dock is quite like a dock
- it's sort of hard to find some stuff

(the problem with clicking on the path is that not all of it's shown, only the last few directories and when you are deep and the directories have long names (java source trees, hello!) you have to revert to pressing the even tinier << button and then choosing from the ddlb there. i'd rather just hit 'up' half a dozen times. the alternative is to open the tree in the left hand side of the window, but that isn't as intuitive as it was and i haven'e been able to work out how it scrolls (it jumps when you open directories with lots of directories in them, meaning you lose where you were))

> you run most stuff by typing part of its name (like gnome-do/quicksilver)

i didn't like this moving from mouse to keyboard to mouse again

Nah. Hit win key, type name of app, hit enter.

Microsoft seems to be doing a lot of interface stuff for the sake of change rather than investing any real time/money in research.

Sorry for Windows chat on Linux thead, but:

the alternative is to open the tree in the left hand side of the window, but that isn't as intuitive as it was

YES I hate this! I always turn on the "Folders" view in XP (even get cross that if you spawn explorer from the command prompt, as I do daily, there's no command-line option to open the Folders sidebar) but it's almost bloody unusable in 7. You're right about the other disadvantage too; I'd forgotten about that one.

I thought Win7 changing the Start menu so that you were expected to type part of the program name was a bit of a funny move. Interesting to see that Unity does something similar. I don't mind typing, but if I'm going to type things, I may as well just type the whole thing at a command prompt, rather than fight with the start menu, which is bloody awkward to use without a mouse. Hopefully this is a bit easier in Unity.

(actually the music software I use recently went the same way - instead of looking through Plugins -> Effects -> Distortion -> Bob's Super Distortion Plug-In v1.3 you can now just type "bob" or "dist" and pick from a flat list - and that really is a lot quicker. I wonder where this trend started.)

> Nah. Hit win key, type name of app, hit enter.

until you install audacity and audacious2 and audacious-gtkui at the same time...

and you can't remember the name 'ekiga'

(and 'ti' brings up mahjong, with no explanation as to why)

(a quick google says there are folder options to always expand the folder in win7: Organise > Folder and Search Options > General > Navigation Pane)

what do i have to do to get my gtk widgets to use the ubuntu theme?

uglyhttp://i.imgur.com/v3x65.png

"instead of looking through Plugins -> Effects -> Distortion -> Bob's Super Distortion Plug-In v1.3 you can now just type "bob" or "dist" and pick from a flat list - and that really is a lot quicker. I wonder where this trend started.)"

mac os spotlight, surely? The W7 equivalent to that sucks in comparison though.

> Nah. Hit win key, type name of app, hit enter.

until you install audacity and audacious2 and audacious-gtkui at the same time...

and you can't remember the name 'ekiga'

(and 'ti' brings up mahjong, with no explanation as to why)

― koogs, Tuesday, 3 May 2011 22:24 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Agh yeah, that does suck. I use Launchy on Win XP and Spotlight on this Mac: Launchy will pick up any segment of any word; Spotlight won't. As Unity has pretty much done away with menus, it needs to be better than both.

While I'm at it, I also don't like that the win search and the win+A search bring up two different sets of things. There's no excuse for that.

ummm anyone else finding that windows (or even parts of windows wtf?) seem to suddenly lock up and not respond to mouse clicks? i can't quite pin down what's going on but it's very weeeeeird and happening on both machines i installed natty on.

Not yet. I've heard of people having various issues with the GUI, though. An update will hopefully sort it out.

ummm anyone else finding that windows (or even parts of windows wtf?) seem to suddenly lock up and not respond to mouse clicks? i can't quite pin down what's going on but it's very weeeeeird and happening on both machines i installed natty on.

is your problem is that you'll click somewhere, and then you'll move the mouse and click somewhere else but the interface will act like you're still clicking in the place you originally clicked?

(and refuse to change focus to a different window?)

yeah that sounds like it could be it. not 100% sure though.

it's a really hard problem to describe but we might have had the same one. it happened to me not with the natty update but with a recent update to the x.org display drivers. but i didn't narrow it down to that until after i'd wiped and reinstalled the OS. but that's ok i kinda like reinstalling the OS.

this thread says the problem's fixed in the new version, but i'm just avoiding x.org updates for now (after the OS reinstall rolled back to before the problem). at least until the weekend, when i'll have time to fuck with it and won't have scheduled any of that bourgeois corporate-stooge stuff like "use" my operating system to "do things".

thanks for that info, it sounds similar if not exactly what i'm experiencing. i'm sure after a few more days of trying to "do things" i'll be able to describe the problem much more precisely.

i maintain about 20 machines at the office that are all running various older version of ubuntu. definitely going to wait for these problems to be ironed out before upgrading any of them to natty.

"Fucking with it" is an acceptable and expected solution to problems with Debian and Slackware, not Ubuntu. If Shuttleworth wants to conquer the universe he needs to get on top of the bugs that break the deal. It's better than it used to be (Edgy oh jesus) but it needs to be better.

Oh and Xubuntu is out if you need a reliable Gnomealike.

when i installed natty on my desktop on first boot it presented me with a message "you do not have the hardware required to run unity" and dropped me into a classic-style environment. having just installed it on my netbook i know this is bullshit so try to open the restricted drivers thingy and install the nvidia driver. but having clicked on the restricted drivers tool nothing happens. at this point i start trying a few others things and realise apt isn't managing to connect to the repos, after changing the repo location everything works fine. it's a minor/obvious thought process for someone used to linux/ubuntu but a first-time user is going to give up on the spot.

it's a minor/obvious thought process for someone used to linux/ubuntu but a first-time user is going to give up on the spot.

this is key to the whole Linux Thing and they really really really need to get on it. the community's improved in the past few years, but that thing still happens where well-meaning people switch to ubuntu for whatever reason and then go to a forum and ask how to do such-and-such, and the linux people get bitchy like UM IT'S PRETTY SIMPLE HAVE YOU TRIED TYPING SUDO MOUNT -T NTFS /DEV/SDA1 /MNT/NTFS and it's like no they haven't tried typing that because it's not nineteen eighty-fucking-five.

(i <3 doing things in the terminal though it makes me feel cool)

but whatever, the last wine update randomly made morrowind work again, so i'm happy.

xp the "helpful" Linux community is the exact opposite ime. If someone ever bothers to acknowledge your question the answer always begins with "oh GOD why am i wasting my time with this crap, okay look just go to launchpad and log a bug BUT MAKE SURE IT'S NOT A DUPLICATE" etc etc. Unacceptable even to people like us, and the absolute end of the line for your average nanna.

When I properly installed Natty at the weekend it took nearly two hours to download the updates at 13.7 kbps. That's another major thing they need to sort out, especially with Canonical treating Ubuntu as a trojan horse for paid services these days.

at some point last year i had a c++ problem and i went on irc to see if anyone could help. a guy was so obnoxious to me about asking for help with something "obvious" i called him out for being such a prick and was swiftly banned. honestly had to have a time out from the computer i was FUMING hahaha

wow

buncha neckbeards.

> it's a minor/obvious thought process for someone used to linux/ubuntu but a first-time user is going to give up on the spot.

but i felt the same with windows update problem this morning:

"Failed with error C87923749879238749872934879879.
Click here for more information."

(click)

"Uknown update error C87923749879238749872934879879.
Was this helpful?"

NO

"Why wasn't this helpful?"

...

Yeah, Windows has been creating that false sense of security since Win95, chucking up helpful friendly troubleshooting tools that ask you a load of questions, get you to check obvious things ("IS YR COMPUTER PLUGGED IN Y/N") and in the end just leave you stranded. Never helped me once.

but that's ok i kinda like reinstalling the OS.

so true <3

So, I've got quite a speedy Win7 machine, why should I have a go at Linux? What's the advantages?

I'm hoping for a more measured response than most articles I've seen written by Linux superstans.

haw, feel like on this thread you're more likely to get snark

this is actually a really hard question. i don't know about 'advantages' really it's quite specific to what you use your computer for. for me i can do everything i need to do in linux (except for the odd frustrating thing) so why would i not use it? once you get used to having a vast amount of free software and downloading stuff with one command at the terminal it's hard to go back imo. whenever i try to use a windows machine now i spent hours searching out software to do what i want and then discover i have to pay for it.

i have no experience with this (but am considering it), but isn't another appeal of linux the idea that it can 'rejuvenate' old hardware? i'm thinking that i'll reconfigure my 2008 MBP as a linux box when i get a new computer soon-ish. ideally i could have it as a dedicated 'media' box or something.

that's definitely true. the main distributions themselves probably aren't suitable for this but there are many lightweight linux distros out there. i managed to install linux on my old pc in my childhood bedroom that has like 32MB of RAM :)

Yeah, I have a low-powered atom board in a mini case running linux effectively as a torrent box (something I don't mind leaving running overnight because it uses a tenth of the power of my main machine) and file server (so I can stream mp3s from there instead of downloading them to the desktop and then wanting them on the laptop or whatever)

it's not running a particularly lightweight distro, just an out-of-the-box Debian, but command-line only - there's no monitor attached and all logins are over ssh

before that I was running xubuntu on an 8-year-old laptop which someone else was throwing out because it was too old to run XP, but not too old for me to run Linux and read ILX, tit about with Perl and some basic OpenGL and making music in schismtracker, etc

I'm hoping for a more measured response than most articles I've seen written by Linux superstans.

― Yossarian's sense of humour (NotEnough), Friday, 6 May 2011 05:06 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Until Win7 came along, the main reason was simply and compellingly that Linux was not Windows. Vista was a condescending harassing piece of shit, and everything from WinXP back underperformed against Linux.

Now that Microsoft's slowly getting its shit together and W7 is decent (so I've been told – I've not used it) the main reason to dump it is malware. Yes you can slow down your machine with a security solution, or you can just go with any other OS on the planet and not have to worry. Linux fits the bill here because it's free and because it runs on hardware built for Windows.

If you use Win7 and you're happy with it, then, the two real points of value that Linux can offer you are:

- free stuff
- no malware

Those two points are countered by:

- the loss of some applications you probably rely on (e.g. Office*)
- limited support if things go wrong

* despite what you've been told, OpenOffice/LibreOffice is not a good enough substitute

i.e. i am talking you out of linux