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Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Out; Unity Gets a Second Chance 543

An anonymous reader writes with this enthusiastic review of the latest from Canonical: "So how does Ubuntu Precise Pangolin (12.04) fare? I will say exceptionally well. Unity is not the same ugly duckling it was made out to be. In Ubuntu 12.04, it has transformed into a beautiful swan. As Ubuntu 12.04 is a long term release, the Ubuntu team has pulled all stops to make sure the user experience is positive. Ubuntu 12.04 aka Precise Pangolin is definitely worthy of running on your machine."
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Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Out; Unity Gets a Second Chance

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  • Thanks! (Score:5, Funny)

    by busyqth ( 2566075 ) on Thursday April 26, 2012 @12:42PM (#39808555)
    Thanks for the review Mr. Shuttleworth!
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      With every release of ubuntu, I have to add to my long and growing file of fixes to make it work properly.

      First I have to put the buttons back on the right side. Then I have to fix the address bar. This time I will have to spend hours researching how to make the stupid launcher thing on the left side go back to the way it was.

  • by damn_registrars ( 1103043 ) <damn.registrars@gmail.com> on Thursday April 26, 2012 @12:45PM (#39808601) Homepage Journal
    I am disappointed they didn't opt for Platypus. Way more interesting than an anteater. Can a pangolin lay eggs? I think not. Can a pangolin inject venom through its ankle? I don't think so. Does a pangolin have 6 poorly-understood sex chromosomes? No to that as well.

    Pangolin. Puh-leeze. So comparatively boring they might as well have opted for penguin.
  • Too Late! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Vanderhoth ( 1582661 ) on Thursday April 26, 2012 @12:49PM (#39808663)
    Sorry, but cramming an unfinished product down my throat and expecting me to deal with a time consuming buggy interface is the kind of thing that turns me off of a product. After all that's kind of the reason I moved from Windows to Linux in the first place.
    • Re:Too Late! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 26, 2012 @12:51PM (#39808699)

      You don't like buggy, time-consuming products, yet you switched to Linux?

      • Re:Too Late! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Vanderhoth ( 1582661 ) on Thursday April 26, 2012 @12:57PM (#39808795)
        My laptop had problems from day 1 running Windows Vista and I just couldn't deal with it locking up anymore so I switched. When I first installed Ubuntu it worked, I didn't have to do anything to it. I was quite happy until I clicked the update button and ended up with the Unity thing I had read about. I spent the next three days trying to get Gnome running again before coming across Linux Mint. After which everything just worked again.
        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward


          I spent the next three days trying to get Gnome running again before coming across Linux Mint. After which everything just worked again.

          Pretty much exactly the same story here. Ubuntu was great for 5 years or so until they decided Unity was the future. I honestly tried it for a few days, and passed. Then they decided Unity was the ONLY way to go. Hacking the shit out of an OS just to get a UI to work wasn't my idea of fun, so I switched to Mint and haven't looked back.

      • Troll harder.
      • Re:Too Late! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Pausanias ( 681077 ) <pausaniasx@ g m a il.com> on Thursday April 26, 2012 @01:17PM (#39809121)

        Linux IS a very stable, robust, and I dare say amazingly bug-poor kernel. GNOME/KDE is a different question.

        It used to be that windowing systems used to be mostly bug-free on the desktop and it was Windows was the disfunction-infested nightmare.

        With Windows 7, Microsoft cleaned up its act, but GNOME/KDE moved in the opposite direction, neglecting the need to fix serious regressions and important bugs that just got passed on from release to release; instead, they used their manpower to get on the warpath towards innovation at all costs.

        In 1998, I would have modded you flamebait for the above, but sadly, now I'd say it's true, if you s/Linux/GNOME\/KDE/g.

    • by dyingtolive ( 1393037 ) <brad.arnett@NOsPaM.notforhire.org> on Thursday April 26, 2012 @12:51PM (#39808707)
      But if you plug your ears and keep screaming about how Unity DOESN'T suck, it actually gets better!
    • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 26, 2012 @12:55PM (#39808763)

      Yes, and it's a real shame there are no other desktop environments available on Linux. Since Linux changed to the Unity desktop I have been forced to return to using my Amiga.

      • Yeah, I've been stuck running Unity on Arch Linux for months now, I don't even know how it got there. One day "POOF", the developers pushed out a mandatory background update and I haven't even been able to reformat my computer. DAMN YOU CANONICAL!! Also urxvt was replaced with GNOME Term somehow.
  • by sagematt ( 1251956 ) on Thursday April 26, 2012 @12:52PM (#39808709)
    Ubuntu was dead to me since the moment they tried to force Unity down out throats. I'm sticking to Mint from now on.
    • by SolitaryMan ( 538416 ) on Thursday April 26, 2012 @01:15PM (#39809091) Homepage Journal

      The thing that *REALLY* pisses me off is that Gnome followed along with this touch screen UI crap the Unity really is. I thought like, OK, fuck Unity, I'm sticking with Gnome (which I really liked and all), but boom! here goes the dynamite! Gnome is the same crap.

      The worst part is that I switched my wife to Ubuntu a while ago, with a reasoning that I'm maintaining her laptop anyways and for me it is easier to deal with Linux. Now here comes the Unity crap and she's like "Now I have to REMEMBER all the fucking programs names? WTF?". And now, we both stuck with a couple of years old Ubuntu, which won't be supported anymore.

      On serious note: what are the alternatives? Are there any other menu-based window managers, that look nice? I mean, I can tolerate the Fluxbox, but my wife definitely cant

      • by Bill Hayden ( 649193 ) on Thursday April 26, 2012 @01:24PM (#39809211) Homepage
        I just switched to Xubuntu with a simple "sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop", and now I'm perfectly happy. The XFCE environment is very much like the Gnome 2 we all used to love. Cinnamon will also install on Ubuntu, but frankly I like XFCE better than Gnome 2/3/Cinnamon now that I've tried them side-by-side.
      • Have you tried xubuntu? It uses XFCE.

  • by Overunderrated ( 1518503 ) on Thursday April 26, 2012 @12:53PM (#39808737)

    Poster 1) Unity is and always will be an unholy mess.
    Poster 2) Unity is a massive leap forward in modern functionality, and anyone that simply gives it an honest try will agree.
    Poster 1) I have tried. I don't want to learn new things and shouldn't have to. I had to switch to xfce.
    Poster 3) APPLE APPLE APPLE
    Poster 4) Seriously, Windows 8? Really?
    Poster 5) You all should really give gnome3 another chance, it's really almost acceptable to use now.
    Poster 1) Ubuntu is dead to me.
    Poster 6) Remember NeXT?

    • Poster 7) Thanks to multi-core CPUs and vast improvements in modern graphics processors, KDE 4.96 is finally usable on many modern systems

  • Not convinced yet (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 26, 2012 @12:54PM (#39808747)

    I've test-driven Unity in the past but despite being told "the ugly duckling has grown into a beautiful swan" TFA doesn't give any information about what, if anything, they did about those horrible hiding scroll bars, auto-showing side bar, 1-pixel wide window edge focus, so-called "smart" volume control that controls headphone volume on low settings and speaker volume on high settings (instead of allowing me to control them independently).

    I couldn't care less about all the "touch screen friendly" features they've added. I'm not using one. Thus, my most important question still is (and remains unanswered by TFA): how can I *switch off* Unity in 12.04LTS?

    • by anss123 ( 985305 )

      so-called "smart" volume control that controls headphone volume on low settings and speaker volume on high settings

      Is that for real?

      Gave me a laugh at least :)

    • My XFCE4 session still works fine in Ubuntu 12.04 - a bit better since the dragging multiple items bug is fixed.
      The Mint Gnome Extensions repo was disabled, I haven't gotten around to reenabling that and retesting it since I mostly use XFCE4 anyway, but I did log into Gnome Shell and it still works fine too.

      Ditto "Gnome Classic (no effects)" although obviously it isn't Gnome Classic - fare warning for anyone still on Gnome 2 who expects to be able to do simple things like arrange applets on your panel, move

    • Re:Not convinced yet (Score:5, Informative)

      by Cthefuture ( 665326 ) on Thursday April 26, 2012 @01:35PM (#39809393)

      Go here [mate-desktop.org] if you want to switch off Unity and GNOME3.

      Both Unity and GNOME 3 suck. Neither one works correctly with multiple monitors. Try running 4 monitors on two video cards, TwinView'd and Xinerama'd, and you will understand.

      I especially hate the global menu bar in Unity. I can sort of live with the similar design in OS X but Unity does it horribly. I'm not even sure what the difference is but I just couldn't stand Unity even though I'm used to OS X.

  • I'm not particularly hopeful of a functional system given the mouse problems I've had from 10.04.2 onwards, but I'll download it, try to install it, and give it a shot.

    I really do like Debian's APT system a lot better than Fedora's RPM, though both get the job done. But unless that mouse problem isn't present, it doesn't matter which I prefer -- I need to use a distro that works.

    The kicker will be whether they're using a GTK based installer or not. While you can always resort to text/expert mode, it'

  • New Ubuntu release? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    New Ubuntu release? Oh good, that means there should be a new Linux Mint release right around the corner. From what I've heard, they'll now have everything completely back to the way I'm used to (and like!)

    (And so yay! Ubuntu still serves a useful purpose; advance warning for the upcoming Mint release.)

    • Indeed, Maya is expected to be available [linuxmint.com] at the end of May.

      And let's be fair to Ubuntu, it's not just about the advance warning. Just as Debian is relevant on the desktop as the base for Ubuntu, Ubuntu is relevant for providing application repositories for Mint.

  • by kallisti5 ( 1321143 ) on Thursday April 26, 2012 @01:06PM (#39808947)
    "a beautiful swan"... A beautiful swan as long as you don't mind it uncontrollably eating menu bars and crapping on your rug.
  • by Chryana ( 708485 ) on Thursday April 26, 2012 @01:13PM (#39809047)

    When I read in the summary that Unity was now a "beautiful swan", I clicked on the link, hoping to get a review of why this is the case. Instead, I get a long summary of the biggest new features in the latest version. Not very convincing.

  • by addikt10 ( 461932 ) on Thursday April 26, 2012 @01:14PM (#39809085)

    I'm surprised that they still recommend 32-bit for desktop instead of 64.
    Programs probably just not quite ready for LTS on 64, but disappointing nonetheless.

  • Trackpad settings are lost on reboot, extra packages are needed to get sane status displays, but everything else works great.

    Above all, it's not Unity.

  • That's totally the way to get me to take you seriously, Ubuntu team. That's also totally what I want on my screen at work in my open office environment.

  • by Eponymous Coward ( 6097 ) on Thursday April 26, 2012 @01:40PM (#39809491)

    When Unity was first rolled out, there was a lot of complaining about it's poor multi-monitor support. Has this been fixed?

    I have a hard time getting too worked up about UI changes these days. I use only a handful of programs all day and Windows 7, XP, Mac, Unity, KDE, and others are similar enough that one environment is pretty much the same as any other. It seems really odd to me that people have such strong opinions when it comes to their operating system.

    Frankly, I'm more interested in 12.04 supposed improvements in power management and battery life.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 26, 2012 @01:57PM (#39809737)

    I absolutely hated unity with the 11.X platform when I test drove it on an old desktop but as a power user running ubuntu on a laptop with multiple monitors I've always been extremely frustrated with the fact that some things just didn't work right. Last week after they dropped updates to my legacy ubuntu think it was a 9.x version I stumbled upon this Ubuntu multi-monitor design spec: http://bit.ly/IS7SKx read it and loved it. I decided to try out the 12.04 beta and have not looked back. Granted there are a couple of things I would like to change but some of the features are really cool and feel for the first time I have a 1st class linux OS working on my laptop.

  • by jiteo ( 964572 ) on Thursday April 26, 2012 @02:29PM (#39810323)

    For me this was a big irritation and one of the reasons for moving to GNOME Shell.

    Man, this dog turd tastes aweful, let me try this cat turd.

  • by Luthair ( 847766 ) on Thursday April 26, 2012 @03:06PM (#39810847)
    When you can disable global menus and move window controls.

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