Joe Blog's A Day In The Life Of Your Average Joe

21Mar/112

My Thoughts On Unity: 1 Month On

Well...almost ;)

Since my last post, I have kept up-to-date with the latest development news on 11.04 via both the forums and Planet Ubuntu. I've been doing this, not just because I genuinely think Unity is a good idea, and I think that for me at least it will be a big step forward in productivity/usability, but also because I'm interested in seeing what the next version of Ubuntu will be like. I have some sort of irresistible pull to start installing and trying out Ubuntu+1 about 2 (or sometimes, 3) months before the release.  It's been this way since Intrepid :)

The install process was fine, and once again - as mentioned previously - it crashed far too frequently upon login. Then I managed to install the nvidia drivers, which helped...a little. After I'd ran update-manager, and installed all the latest updates, things seemed to settle down a little, and the crashes were less often, but still present. This did, however, allow me an opportunity to try things out properly, and for the last 5 days or so, I've effectively been running Natty as my main OS (having 2 hard drives is handy...).

I love it, I didn't think unity would be in a very functional state, reading about it the last few months...but having seen some of the improvements, and finally getting to test it properly on my desktop, I do love it. Admittedly, there's still quite a few things to be fixed, and compiz likes to randomly crash, but it's shaping up nicely, and just in time, too!

Unfortunately, however, I tried to boot into Natty yesterday evening, and it just wouldn't boot. It would get to the splash screen, and just stop. I can't figure out what caused it to do this (obviously an update of some kind, but which remains a puzzle), nor can I figure out how to resolve this without going for a fresh install.

With that in mind I think I'll wait until Beta 1, scheduled for March 31st, before trying again. Though knowing me as I do, it's quite likely I'll be drawn into it again before then. One thing's for sure though, and that's that Natty will definitely be getting installed on my Desktop as soon as I get the chance post-release.

Tagged as: , , , , , , 2 Comments
26Feb/117

Ubuntu 11.04 – My Experience So Far

I'm sure people are probably fed up of reading these by now. I know there's several threads on this topic over on the Ubuntu Forums, for example. Nonetheless, what I have experienced so far is this (don't worry, it's short):

Crashing. Lots of it, mainly compiz it seems. Yes, I know we're only on Alpha 2 and yes, I expect alpha releases (of anything) to contain bugs. But still, I don't even have to have done anything for compiz to crash! Admittedly, it could be my video driver (I have an Nvidia 9800GT) that's the cause, I just don't know.

This is the first time I've tried Natty, and I like the the idea of Unity, I really do. From what I gather through reading various blogs on Planet Ubuntu I understand it's come a long way since UDS-N, I just hope it can make it further than it is now in time for the April release. I know April 28th is a good 2 months away, but from experience, those 2 months will go far quicker than people often want them to.

Update: A comment from Jorge tells me why I experienced what I did: "Nvidia is broken on A2+, just waiting for the final Xorg 1.10 and nvidia drivers to land. (I’ve been keeping my Xorg bits held back this whole time)". I'll have to keep an eye out for when these land in Natty, and try it again then. Hopefully I'll have better look then! Thanks for the info Jorge :)

Tagged as: , , , , , 7 Comments
21Mar/0919

Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) – My Thoughts So Far

As I'm sure plenty of you are aware, Ubuntu 9.04 is due to be released in little over a month's time. Testing is in full swing (Alpha 6 at time of writing), and the beta should be coming in 2 or 3 weeks (that's a guess on my part, please don't hold me to it!). I figured it was about time to try and install it, partly because I'm interested to see how well it currently runs on my dual-head setup, partly because I need to write an article on installing it for Linux Identity ;)

So - I popped in the Jaunty Live CD, got to the boot menu. All is going well so far, I expected it to not boot though due to my graphics card (Nvidia 9500GT) and a Dual-Screen setup....ok I'm on the desktop (that was quick!). My dual-screen setup was detected just fine (with both monitors at the correct resolution no less!) I was already impressed just from that. I had a play around, and it took me all of 5 minutes to decide that I wanted to give it a proper try out, and to backup my home and install it properly.

1 reboot later, past the (in my opinion) great new GDM theme and nice new splash screen, I'm logged in, installing my nvidia drivers (180.xx) as recommended by a little pop-up. After that install and reboot, I get compiz effects working great, as well as an extended desktop - awesome!

After a bit more playing, I have the dust theme installed (it's come a long way since I last used it), as well as having emesene using the new notification system (which I have to say looks great!). I'm also running on an ext4 based system, and so far - all is well. Hopefully I'll have more to say when the beta is released, but this is running on my main desktop, so it's getting plenty of use :)

UPDATE:

I've got to say, after using jaunty some more this morning, one thing struck me...it's REALLY quick. Boot is way faster than 8.10 and running general. Shutdown is quicker too :)

Tagged as: , , , , , , , , , 19 Comments
24Aug/089

Ubuntu 8.10 – My Thoughts So Far

I know it's only Alpha 4, but I decided to install it on my laptop last night because I can, and I had nothing else to do.

So far so good, it's got to be said! There's a few issues I've noticed though, these are:

  1. gvfs-trash errored out on first boot, doesn't seem to work
  2. gnome-power-manager did the same
  3. Shutdown from the shutdown menu doesn't work
  4. Keyboard shortcuts don't work

Now I can't really comment on the first 2 because I just sent off the error reports and then I got no more prompts...or running applications ;) Though shutdown is an odd one, I have the button on the far right of my top panel, and under the system menu. Trying to shutdown or restart from either doesn't work at all. I hope this gets fixed soon, until then I may added a launcher to my panel to shutdown instead;)

Keyboard shortcuts is a pain, I have a keyboard shortcut for the terminal, but it doesn't work :( So I tried changing it to a different key combo - still no dice. It's a shame, it's only now that I've realised how much I used it. I hope this also gets fixed really soon, so I can remove the terminal icon from my top panel.

Other than that I'm really enjoying the Intrepid Experience so far. The "newhuman" theme has grown on me quite a bit. I actually quite like it now, I was unsure at first. Also Compiz works great (cube deformation & 3d windows have been added to my features). On Ubuntu 8.04 running 3d Windows made my laptop grind to a halt...smooth as anything now :D I'm happy!

I'll post more thoughts after Alpha 5, Beta & RC etc. :) Until then - have a screenshot or 2

UPDATE: Thanks to this comment I managed to get my terminal shortcut back - so thanks for that :D I still think that'd be classed as a bug though.

Tagged as: , , , , , , , , , 9 Comments
   

Login

OpenDNS


Use OpenDNS

Joeb454 on Twitter

Blogroll

RSS Planet Ubuntu

Categories

Old Stuff

Meta