Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) released | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) released

releases.ubuntu.com

252 pointsmicrypt82 comments

For me, the most interesting features are:

* 32-bit compatibility on amd64 systems

Ubuntu 11.10 provides "multiarch" support for installing 32-bit library and application packages on 64-bit systems. For all amd64 installs and upgrades, select 32-bit software (like Skype and Flash), will now be installable directly using the same 32-bit packages that are used on i386 installations. You are not required to install the ia32-libs compatibility package. For users, this change means that the 32-bit libraries will always be available at the same time as their 64-bit counterparts, even in the case of security updates, and users will only need to install those 32-bit libraries required by the user's application(s).

* Hybrid CD/USB images supported

All ISO images released with Ubuntu 11.10 are hybrid CD/USB images that can be written directly to a USB disk and booted without the use of special software. Users who wish to enable persistent storage on a USB stick can still use the usb-creator tool to configure the USB stick.

Checkout the online tour http://www.ubuntu.com/tour/ I am curious are there any software/libraries which can build a demo/tour like this for any Desktop application?

Camtasia might have produced something like that, but the last time I used it (years ago) it exported to Flash exclusively.

Camtasia will record a screencap video.. It can't do a full interactive demo like this.

Also it will export the videos to more than Flash.

You are 100% correct. Sorry, I'm on a very bandwidth-constrained connection while I'm on travel. It looked like a full-screen video to me.

Thanks!

Really like that they've done that. A very slick html interface which I'm sure they spent a fair bit of time on. I doubt it was "automated" with any software. Every object is a html element, with "firefox" just opening an iframe for example.

Very nice - even if it's not really a representation of the OS, it shows off the UI very well IMO.

on my android tablet the fancy tour confused me, i felt like i m on my desktop.. Good job, thanks ubuntu for one more version of new goodness.

I wonder if unity can work on my recent laptop. It has a recent nvidia and like most of these, it has the optimus "feature" which for now requires the hackish bumblebee.

It has been years since I had to go in the xorg.conf file, that was the main reason I switched from debian to ubuntu. That is the only feature I wish of any Ubuntu release. Can someone tell me if it has now been implemented ? From the release notes, they don't seem to mention it.

In general, I stay away (and recommend others do the same) from graphic subsystems that require extensive hacking to properly work under Linux. Buying computers with them rewards manufacturers who do half-assed work - they pocketed your money after all.

It's not like notebooks equipped with Intel graphics are more expensive or hard to find. Or that it would be an insane amount of work to provide functional (even if not fully-functional) Linux drivers for their product lines.

Check if Optimus can be disabled in the BIOS. It often can.

It canont on mine, Asus N73S with GT540M

For my T520 I can get by disabling Optimus, but then I can't use external monitors.

I just bought a 570GTX explicitly because Nvidia has always been better on Linux. I'm not familiar with this "feature". What does it entail, and how does it affect linux?

It's basically cpu scaling but for the graphics card. It saves power but its not well supported in linux (apparently - I have no issues).

Nope. This is Optimus: http://www.nvidia.com/object/optimus_technology.html. Nvidia have said they have no plans to support it under Linux officially which really sucks. I ended up returning a laptop because of it.

IIRC, there's an option to compile optimus support into newer linux kernels. I'm just using a intel HD3000 card so i've not tried it myself. unfortunately, Ubuntu doesn't have the friendliest policy towards custom kernel compilation, so you might have to "break the rules" or look elsewhere.

It is a mobile feature : there are two GPUs in the laptop. One is a small one, poor performances, low consumption and the other one is a full-fledged GPU.

When the usage of the small one is two high, the big one is switched on and used. By default, it is switched off and nvidia does not provide a way to switch it on on linux and stated they would not support it under linux.

I was under the impression that nvidia was the most linux-friendly GPU manufacturer and bought one because of that. I should have looked more into details but I was in a kind of hurry.

It was certainly the case that NVidia was the best for Linux until recently. But Intel has been working hard on their open source drivers and ATI has been catching up fast, and recently NVidia threw up their hands and said they had no plans to support Optimus under Linux.

> It has been years since I had to go in the xorg.conf file

You must have a pretty high general satisfaction for how your life is going.

http://xkcd.com/963/

Not anymore :-(

But really, the horizontal axis in my case would be labeled "perceived maturity of the linux distribution I am using"

LOL

I'm running the Live CD in a VMWare Fusion VM, and it just goes to Unity 2D, so I'm guessing that a lot more hardware will see Unity in one form or other with this release.

Tried it on Nvidia 6200, initially all looked well. But something died with the desktop. Also compiz was constantly stealing about 8% of a 2GHZ cpu. So I reverted to 2D. Which was pretty similar - albeit for a few of the transitions. It was missing drag to top - to full screen, but you can double click the window bar instead.

What I was trying to say with the above post. Was you get a little extra gloss with Unity3D, but it's not over the top. And the 2D fallback isn't miles away.

I have noticed that 2D does look uglier in places - like modal popups - that are not at all in keep with the rest of the interface. Which reminds me of the kde shutdown window - which is also fugly.

For the curious, https://github.com/MrMEEE/bumblebee

Bumblebee was a life-saver when I got my Lenovo T520 and first learned about Optimus, but note that link is out of date now. He's forked off that to start again with "Ironhide", while there's another fork that's aiming to maintain bumblebee but fix bugs, etc. Details here: http://www.martin-juhl.dk/2011/08/ironhide-reporting-for-dut...

(If you haven't looked into it, I thought bumblebee was a great hack! As I understand it, it uses the nvidia card for rendering whatever apps you tell it too in a separate X instance -- using the "optirun" command, it doesn't happen automatically automatically -- then uses virtualGL to display the results on your desktop)

Question about the "dash" (menu that appears after clicking the top-left ubuntu logo) - for those who've tried it out - does it let you customize it now? More specifically, does it let you change the main shortcuts like "Browse the web", "View Photos", "Check E-mail", "Listen to music" to other functions? Thanks in advance if anyone's able to help with this.

I couldn't work this out either. Or work out how to edit the dock. How can I add Terminal say to the dock?

Yea it doesn't seem possible to edit the default dash page, even using ccsm - its a shame, I dont think I've ever or will ever use 3/4 of the huge shortcuts there (view photos, check e-mail, listen to music) since I really only use web services for all of those.

I dont think the dock is editable (if you mean the bar along the top) - you can add applications via ubuntu software center (I added weather), but I don't know if you can add application shortcuts like in previous versions.

When I say the dock I mean the big bar down the left hand side.

for that you can right-click an app once launched and select "keep in launcher", or you can define custom ones by hand. I did that last install, haven't tried it yet for this one, but this was the guide I used: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1578379 (not sure if it still works in this version of unity, but it's worth a shot).

Weird. I have a slight bias to the keyboard - so I think I tried right clicking, and didn't find the option. Anyway - it seems that you can drag and drop on to the dock.

Run the app you want. Right click on it in the dash. Select "leave in dash" ..

My experience so far:

* Looks nicer.

* You can't modify the panels. I always had some shortcuts there, now I have to go through the menu.

* You can't even change the default icon theme using the customization app. You have to get gnome-tweak-tool (IIRC).

* ALT+F2 doesn't do anything by default. I guess the key bindings are changed/some are disabled by default.

* It tried to install the new ATI drivers, then miserably failed. Trying to fix it, I purged the old drivers, but it still didn't work. This only caused it to freeze at boot time, so I had to the recovery console to fix it.

* Bottom line: never ever upgrade from an old version. Always do a clean install (or pick up a different distro/OS).

* Note: I'm using Gnome (now not so) classic.

Alt-F2 works for me. What's Gnome (now not so) classic? Gnome 3?

gnome-about says 2.32.1, but I suspect that the Ubuntu version is vanilla

I cannot believe they removed the option to run classic. I literally cancelled my update the moment I learned that (on slashdot). I hear there is a way to bring it back but I am worried about compatibility at this point. So I will have to wait a bit and see whether others can get classic to work for ubuntu 11.10 and look for alternative distros.

This is really annoying because the main reason I run ubuntu is so I do not have to deal with testing and installing distros.

Just use xmonad. That runs fine.

Unfortunately for me I'd been running Xmonad as my Gnome window manager. I can't figure out how to keep doing that at the moment, so I'm sticking with 11.4 for a while at least.

I followed the gnome3 instructions on the XMonad wiki and it went pretty smoothly. Remember to install gnome-panel from the repos.

Or you just abstain from Gnome completely.

I love Xmonad, but I think gnome-panel goes with it way better than xmobar.

Interesting---why do you need it? I don't use either with my xmonad, and I'm happy so far. Am I missing something?

The one thing, and this might have changed, that really annoys me with Gnome, is that the network manager panel applet, doesn't seem to have an equivalent in the menu system. That's the thing that lists your wireless networks etc.

Although I don't use the menu's that often, and I hate digging down into menus - I find they are really useful for reminding myself quickly which programs I have installed. I only really noticed this when I tried out Unity. I had no feeling of what was installed or what was not. For example I went to install transmission - and then found it was already there after I had dug through to the software center. That feels really wrong.

Install the GNOME 3 packages using apt (gnome-shell and gnome-panel should get you most of what you need) and run them in fallback mode. The GNOME 3 fallback mode is pretty close to the GNOME 2 experience, although it is missing a couple of features that some people may want (e.g., panel applets). I've been using Oneiric this way for months and I'm pretty happy with it.

Any reason why Ubuntu just doesn't seem to make the switch to DVD based installation ISOs?

I end up burning the CD images on DVD anyway and would definitely prefer to have a larger selection of available packages on the installation media, even if I didn't end up installing some.

There are DVD ISOs made with exactly that, plus some extra goodies like Inkscape, GIMP, etc.

The limiting factor is really bandwidth. Fitting on a CD is just a nice clear line that can be used to prevent bloat.

Cd are cheaper for people to buy(and cheaper to give away).

If you're on a laptop, and the trackpad stops working after upgrading, try one of these solutions in the terminal:

synclient TouchpadOff = 0

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/touchpad.conf and in that file type "options psmouse proto=imps" (no quotes).

The second solution worked on my Lenovo T510. Credit goes to Hopper122 here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1479286

I ran Ubuntu 11.04 on a netbook and performance was terrible. Switching to Unity 2D helped a bit but it was still struggling. Any indication 11.10 will work better?

Of course I'm gonna give this a try regardless but I'd like to hear from netbook owners if they've noticed better performance.

Have you considered using a window manager that's not so fancy?

A tiling window manager is a great option for a netbook. I would recommend Xmonad.

Yes, I've used alternative window managers. But the menu bar integration with unity is something I enjoy and would like to continue enjoying.

I'm getting great performance on a netbook with 11.04 and sawfish as the window manager. I log in in classic mode, so I get the gnome panels, and then switch over.

It doesn't appear that XMonad works as nicely, at least, I'm unable to get the panel to work. It seems gnome-panel is no longer used, furthermore, right-clicking on the new unity panel to configure it doesn't seem work. XMonad works... I'll just be panel free for a while.

I used the i3 window manager with gnome-settings-daemon and nautilus in Ubuntu 11.04. This stopped working in Ubuntu 11.10, which I blame on the upgrade from GNOME 2.x to 3.x.

The online tour really makes me like Unity, but of course that is too brief an impression. Might have to give it a spin on a home machine.

I used to upgrade religiously every 6 months, from 7.10 to 10.04LTS. Been waiting for next LTS to upgrade work machines.

I've been sticking to 10.04 LTS for quite some time.

I'm finally starting to appreciate the old adage 'If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it'.

LTS works ultra-reliably.

All my VMs run 10.04. Been thinking that when it gets too old due to the packages supported getting to far out of date, I'll just switch to Debian.

I was gutted that my Hardy Heron died two weeks before the release of Lucid. I swapped over to Debian, but use the LTS elsewhere. I treat other Ubuntus as Betas.

I gave Ocelot a whirl this eve, and it's much better than my experience with the 10.04 netbook edition. The window management is more consistent. It feels more cohesive.

Anyway after some initial excitement, I broke it without much effort.

I'd pretty much written off Ubuntu, but think the next LTS could be pretty good - if they iron out all the bugs, and listen to the community.

Check out the new content on their Ubuntu countdown site: http://thisisthecountdown.com/

They released a soundtrack for this release of Ubuntu.

Maybe this isn't the best place to ask, but does anyone know if you can do the 'aero snap' with windows when running unity in 2d (non-accelerated) mode?

Yes, you can. At least in 11.04, I haven't upgraded to 11.10 yet, but I would assume it would be the same/enhanced.

how do you run unity in non-accelerated mode ? It has always refused to run for me unless I had graphical acceleration installed.

> sudo apt-get install unity-2d

You may have to add this PPA first: http://www.ubuntuupdates.org/ppa/unity_2d?dist=oneiric

Then choose Unity 2D in the window manager options from the login manager.

This isn't necessary in Oneiric. Unity 2D is included and is the default fallback if 3D isn't supported.

In 11.10, it should automatically start in 2D mode if 3D acceleration isn't available. Alternately, you can choose it from the login screen. Here is how Unity and Unity 2D are configured on my system.

    $ cat /usr/share/gnome-session/sessions/ubuntu.session 
    [GNOME Session]
    Name=Ubuntu
    Name[eo]=Ubuntuo
    RequiredComponents=gnome-settings-daemon;
    RequiredProviders=windowmanager;panel;
    DefaultProvider-windowmanager=compiz
    DefaultProvider-panel=compiz
    IsRunnableHelper=/usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test
    FallbackSession=ubuntu-2d
    DesktopName=Unity

    $ cat /usr/share/gnome-session/sessions/ubuntu-2d.session 
    [GNOME Session]
    Name=Ubuntu 2D
    RequiredComponents=gnome-settings-daemon;
    RequiredProviders=windowmanager;panel;launcher;
    DefaultProvider-windowmanager=metacity
    DefaultProvider-panel=unity-2d-panel
    DefaultProvider-launcher=unity-2d-launcher
    DesktopName=Unity

Ok, in 11.04, without acceleration, I have to switch back to "classical" mode which I assume to be Gnome.

Perhaps a more informative link: http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/whats-new

Well I certainly hope getting Daft Punk when searching for Radiohead isn't what it normally does...

unity... ability to install and run 32-bit apps along side with 64-bit apps - is what huge! :)

Did the release take down linux.org somehow? 509 Bandwidth Limit Exceeded right now

Ubuntu 11.10 has removed simple configurable items like font size and screensaver into a non-default tool, making them much less accessible to non-hackers.

Combine this with all the usability changes in Unity (alt-tab affects all workspaces, etc.) and you have an environment I'm not too excited to work in.

I have really enjoyed Unity. I think there are a lot of very good UI choices that are better to the normal gnome desktop. I am bummed to hear that alt-tab affects all workspaces. That is one of the things that drove me crazy on OS X.

I just installed compizconfig-settings-manager, and in the Unity plugin, there is a setting where you can tell Compiz to prefer applications in your current viewport. I am no longer as concerned about the alt-tab change now.

This is a symptom of the upgrade to Gnome 3.20.

Thanks for pointing out the alt-tab switch change. That's really annoying - as I use workspaces to group apps, so I can switch between them more efficiently.

I flagged the other 11.10 submission[1] for the reasons in mgunes's comment, and it's dead now. The same should happen here.

1. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3106857

Disregard this. 11.10 is indeed officially released: http://release-blog.ubuntu.com/?p=173

thanks for the flagging!

</sarcasm>

Alternatively, don't jump the gun with your submissions.

And I'm loving the downvotes from future-land, where 11.10 has now been officially released, and we shit on people who posted outside of future-land, before the official release did come to pass.

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