Let’s get the irritating parts of the distribution out of the way first. First of all, this thing takes a couple of hours to install, including the download over a broadband Internet connection and the expected configuration, obnoxious prompt screens, etc. The download and upgrade takes quite some time, clocking in at over two hours form start to finish. That’s two hours when you can’t use your computer to do much of anything and the prompts you’ll have to answer to keep the process moving along means you can’t just set it, leave it alone and come back to it later.
Still, anyone who’s spent time installing operating systems knows that the process does typically take awhile. A long upgrade time is forgivable, but that blasted Unity desktop bundled with the latest Ubuntu distribution is downright frustrating. Yes, Unity was bad under the last major distribution, but it might have actually gotten worse with Natty Narwhal. It’s slow, clunky and — in spite of the hype — about as revolutionary as an IBM Selectric typewriter.
Unity is, in essence, a strip of icons that sits mockingly on the left side of the screen and makes running and switching between applications very clumsy. Think of the Unity desktop as something similar to those bottom-of-the-screen task bars under Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows 7, only slower and less useful. Apple and Microsoft are years ahead of Ubuntu in that regard.
It’s buggy, too. In order to save space, the Unity icon strip will automatically hide and pop back up when the mouse pointer gets anywhere close to it. The “buggy” part rears its ugly head as the weird, auto hide feature is rather hit or miss — the desktop might pop back up when you want it to or it might not, leaving the impression its either lazy or shy. Scrolling through the icons is a cumbersome process, indeed.
The Unity desktop is the default for Ubuntu 11.04, but the reliable and far more utilitarian Gnome desktop is still available to be used by people who don’t care one whit for Unity. Getting rid of Unity is an easy enough matter — simply click the “shut down” icon in the upper right hand corner of the screen, choose “system settings” from the pull down menu, go to “login screen” and the select “Ubuntu classic” as the default session.
Bear in mind that I’m running Unity on a netbook and it may work better on faster hardware. Regardless, one of the selling points of Linux is that it uses even systems with meager hardware resources efficiently. Unity is a bloated mess that appears to fly right in the face of that philosophy.
Unfortunately, it seems Ubuntu won’t use Gnome as a backup when 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) is released in a few months. Hopefully, some bright soul — or group thereof — will figure out how to kill Unity and replace it with a better desktop and tell other Linux users how to do that.
Another major change is that OpenOffice.org — the default Ubuntu office suite — has been replaced by LibreOffice, which is very similar to OpenOffice.org and based on that suite. It, like OpenOffice.org, is compatible with Microsoft Word and seems to run quite a bit faster than its predecessor.
Another change is that the trusty Rhythmbox music player has been replaced by Banshee. No complaints there as Banshee is a solid player.
The workspaces feature is new, too (or, at least easier to find than in earlier distributions). Users can easily pull up the different workspaces up on the screen at once to allow for side-by-side manipulation. Of course, one of the hallmarks of Linux is that it has traditionally taken multitasking quite far by allowing independent workspaces to handle separate tasks.
And, yes, there’s some more refinement Ubuntu One, which is the developers foray into cloud computing. It’s a bit easier to set up and use than last time around and allows pretty effective sharing of files and media streaming to portable devices.
All in all, 11.04 is a refined release rather than a huge leap forward from the last distribution. Outside of the dreadful Unity interface, there’s really not a whole lot to criticize. One does have to wonder if Unity will improve with the next distribution or just got more bloated and irritating.
The final verdict here is this — if you’re happy with Ubuntu 10.10, you’ve got to ask yourself if you’ll gain that much with 11.04. Once Unity is turned off, the system looks and behaves much like it did running under 10.10 in spite of the upgrade. Again, this is a refined distribution rather than a radical upgrade. Bear that in mind.
source : firstarkansasnews.net
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