Ubuntu 11.10 Released (Online Tour) | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu 11.10 Released (Online Tour)

ubuntu.com

392 pointsmgunes111 comments

Wow this is one of the cleanest demos of any product i've seen, hats off to the web guys on this they did an amazing job. I only use ubuntu on my servers but this definitely is enticing.

That surprises me a little; I would think that plain Debian would be better for server use.

I would never use plain debian. security updates, support, broader user base, just to start.

And

Juju. Juju is going to be huge. https://juju.ubuntu.com/

"What is juju?"

"Formerly called Ensemble, juju is DevOps DistilledTM. Through the use of charms (renamed from formulas), juju provides you with shareable, re-usable, and repeatable expressions of DevOps best practices. You can use them unmodified, or easily change and connect them to fit your needs. Deploying a charm is similar to installing a package on Ubuntu: ask for it and it’s there, remove it and it’s completely gone."

I have no idea what juju is.

Sounds like puppet or chef with central community-maintained repository for formulas.

juju is service orchestration, not configuration management, we think of it as a level above CM.

Basically instead of configuring machines you say "I want wordpress" or "I want cassandra". People have been using the term "apt for the cloud".

Here's a quick demo (out of date, but the idea is the same): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8IKkWJj7bA

What do you find lacking in Debian security updates and support? This is quite baffling.

The advantage of Ubuntu LTS over Debian is that security updates are provided for five years. Since there is a new LTS update every two years, you have a three year upgrade window, as opposed to the year-long window of Debian.

But the documentation is completely lacking. Debian outlines exactly what can go wrong with upgrades between major versions, what assumptions are made, and so forth. Ubuntu has basically no documentation at all.

Ubuntu is basically Debian with a bunch of extra stuff you neither want or need on a server. Such as X11.

Ubuntu Server does not contain a GUI. There's no X11 unless you ask to install it.

Are there any stats out there on ubuntu receiving faster security updates as compared to debian?

I can speak for myself - I use Ubuntu on my laptop and I'm doing most of my software development on it.

As such, it makes sense to use the same environment in production. You have less surprises that way and you also learn to configure the server just from day to day maintenance of your own laptop. And some things are the same in Debian and Ubuntu, but some things are different.

Regardless, Debian is awesome, and its heritage is one reason why I love Ubuntu.

For me its the packages are very up to date, when your compiling a lot of ruby stuff its very helpful. Also just as a dev machine using several year old packages makes it very difficult to compile stuff. Debian is more stable but ubumtu LTS is a good compromise for me.

It's turtles all the way down http://i.imgur.com/4ba4w.png

It's ocelots all the way down.

Awesome demo. I kinda got scared when I saw that I'm logged in with my google account, inside firefox browser inside the demo...

Until I figured it out: it's an iframe. Brilliant for a demo, kudos to the team for the idea and implementation.

Naturally, I'm posting this from inside the demo. :)

Try opening the Dash (top icon on the left) and you can browse apps. That's a really cool demo!

Edit: You can also read and write (but not send) emails in Thunderbird, and emails you write show up in the "Sent" box.

You can also browse file and open pictures and videos. No terminal app though. :)

I'd suggest adding a possibility to play the first level of World of Goo after installing it. That would make it simply amazing.

This would be going way, way too far.

and browse the web with firefox

Initially I though that they're using Broadway, the GTK3's HTML5 canvas backend [1]. But no, it's all done with CSS3. That's impressive.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1935499

Release Notes: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OneiricOcelot/ReleaseNotes

Did anyone else notice that the webbrowser in the tour works? You can enter new urls, click around - even form submission works.

It's slightly deceptive; the browser is just an embedded frame that uses your browsers rendering engine. Hopefully nobody using IE tries to use this to check site compatibility.

Yes, the illusion was totally broken for me when I saw Windows scroll-bars while browsing.

Even cooler - you can install software in the software centre, and then find it in Unity. Remove it, and it's gone.

You can even enter http://www.ubuntu.com/tour/#surf-the-web in the browser found on http://www.ubuntu.com/tour/#surf-the-web!

Earlier, i would actively anticipate new ubuntu releases. These days, its replaced by dreading what parts they have completely broken this time.

My first experience with 11.10 was that wi-fi no longer worked. After fighting with it for several hours, I'm going back to 11.4.

Very clever idea. Couple of spelling mistakes in Ubuntu One, but pretty slick otherwise.

An OEM laptop with 8 hours of battery life please

Not really OEM, but I'm running 11.04 on an Acer 3810T laptop. I am getting 6 hours on it with wi-fi, and the battery has lost about 10% of its charge capacity. With a brand new battery I could see it getting about 7-7.5 hours.

An OEM with a newer processor and an SSD should be able to hit 8 hours easily.

I have the 3810T too and I can report similar numbers. But still, I get more life when I boot into Windows. Moreover, suspend & hibernate just don't work & the laptop fan always stays on.

It could be a buggy BIOS for all I know but we could still do better. Thus, an OEM option where _everything works_ would definitely be nice.

As far as the suspend/hibernate issue try adding i8042.reset to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT variable in /etc/default/grub

the fan thing is a problem for me too, but it doesn't get crazy loud.

Also check if you have the latest BIOS from Acer. Latest version is 1.28 I think.

I do have the v1.28 BIOS. And I think I did try that and all the other options I possibly could when I first got this laptop. I've just settled for the loud fan. Anyway, I'm going to upgrade to the new release and see what that brings!

I upgraded to 11.10 today and guess what, suspend works! I had to add `i8042.reset` to grub config but finally, working suspend!

Did you try "sudo apt-get install fancontrol"?

Thanks, I just installed it. No immediate results but I will play around with it.

thinkpad x220 with the 19+ slice battery extension gets me 10 hours (real, reported 11/12). That's under arch with some power tweaking.

Too bad the display is terrible.

I have the X220 and I love the display... Did you not get the IPS option?

I did but it has severe image persistence. Lenovo dodged for a while on this issue but finally has stepped up and admitted a problem and is replacing displays (just started). I'm going to be getting mine repaired.

It's a topic for a separate rant but it's a shame no other hw manufacturer has stepped up to offer build quality along the lines of apple's unibodies.

Awesome demo. Best things are the Office and Apps :)

Kubuntu user here. I'm a bit confused on how the left bar in this tour of unity works. I see that if I click home folder, the file manager opens up. However, if the file manager is already opened, clicking home just switches to file manager (even if it is not in the home folder!). So, how do I actually launch multiple instances of a program?

Mainly by using the "new window" function in the program itself; IIRC though, the context menu has a "Open new" option as well.

It's one of the least-discoverable (and, imo, annoying) features of Unity. At least in previous versions, middle-click works to open a new instance rather than going to the current.

Looking great! But unfortunately the unity framework is still no good. And no customization - that's not in the spirit of linux

It looks great! One word of warning is that quite a lot of bugs in each Ubuntu release get fixed in the first month. If you're patient, you can sidestep a lot of stabilisation issues that might not have been found in the RCs.

But in a month's time, this is definitely going on my lappy.

Wow I haven't looked at Ubuntu since Gutsy. This demo certainly makes me want to give it a whirl again. Before I spend hours playing with it, can anyone clue me in on its media performance (playing flash videos, dual screen, music software, etc.)

All are much improved. Flash is now 64-bit stable, Banshee is decent for music, and I had plug and play with my dual screens on an nvidia gtx 550 with dvi and hdmi. The current crop of default apps is decent, albeit not perfect.

flash 11 is an amazing improvement over any previous version of flash. dual screen is seamless, zero-configuration using an ATI card and open-source drivers. if you choose to use the proprietary drivers you get slightly better framerates but you have to use their proprietary dual-screen config panels which generally work, but not as nicely. music production software, no idea. music playback is good, there's tons of options.

Dual screen with Nvidia is plug and play with the nvidia driver too.

Anyone know how to get the old alt-tab behavior back? This is the biggest problem for me since upgrading. I generally move between workspaces often and used alt-tab to access only programs on that workspace.

Wow props to the team.

I'm still on the LTS but would like to give it a spin to a separate partition. Any idea if it can be installed with Lubi or other no-cd/usb method?

This demo is also another indicator that HTML5 has come of age. It is by far the best desktop-like interface I've seen on the browser.

Wow. Hiding the re-size icons on full screen really threw me off. Otherwise looks fantastic.

It seems they fast prototyped unity using web.

There are two things that I can't stand about it on a real laptop:

1)When you maximize files folders, and it seems it is default, the desktop icons occlude the links on the file browser, and is SO UGLY.

2)My laptop hangs when I try to restore compiz with --restore. I really miss the 3d cube.

So I'm downloading fedora or anything that makes it usable again.

> So I'm downloading fedora or anything that makes it usable again.

Good luck with that - Fedora uses GNOME 3 by default.

It seems the only WM I'm personally happy with nowadays is XFCE.

Have you used KDE at all? If so, why do you prefer XFCE? I'm asking because I really can't stand Unity and have made the switch to KDE, but I also looked at XFCE.

I haven't used unity, so I'm curious - what's the problem(s) as you see it?

Still the gamers theme, though :(

The theme is kind of a silly thing to complain about. It's just about the easiest thing to change. It's not like OS X, which is ugly all the time.

Does Ubuntu One still suck?

I haven't had issues for a long time. It's a lot more integrated with the desktop than it was at first realease.

I'm still not sure what I'm suppose to do with it.

The tour doesn't really fit on my 1366x768 screen (running Firefox 7). Not a good first impression.

The tour fits beautifully on my iPad's Safari. Do you just have a ton of tool bars?

I have standard Firefox (plus the bookmarks bar).

You might just be zoomed in. That's a sticky setting on Firefox -- I keep it zoomed one or two steps up on Firefox for comfortable reading, and the demo didn't quite fit on my screen.

Return to default zoom (Ctrl/Cmd+0) and it works fine.

Figures there would be a gripe about an OPERATING SYSTEM demo in a WEB BROWSER. Shame on them.

Install Ubuntu. Let that be your first impression. I'm sure it will fit your screen.

So I go to do a tour of the new Ubuntu release and I can't click the buttons to start the tour because I can't read what's written on them.

What the tour is demoing doesn't come into it.

You can't empathize? You can't give them a little slack? They didn't spend enough time testing the demo of the OS on a browser for your liking? They were probably busy building an operating system. If their core competency was website building, you would have a point. But in this case you're just being pedant.

No, I'm saying I can't do the tour because it doesn't fit in my browser. Most potential users would just go away at that point. Instead of just going away, I mentioned it here so someone can know.

It's the first time they've done this sort of demo. I betcha the next realeses will not have as many issues.

Release early, realease often.

Most potential users don't go through the effort of downloading and running a live cd/usb. The web demo is a major hook, it just needs a couple iterations to be perfected. That is the way of the open source.

>Most potential users would just go away at that point.

Most?

You viewed the demo with the intention of checking out the OS. This isn't the only way to check out an OS. In fact, this method is relatively the first of its kind. The first time you probably ever saw a demo like this. It doesn't work so you give up on any other method? Screenshots? Live CD? Writeups on blogs. You know, all the ways you normally "tour" an OS. And ultimately you give up on the OS entirely? Any SERIOUS potential user will find other ways of checking out the OS. Like we've done with every other OS in the past.

I can't believe you're actually arguing this point.

His complaint is very valid in my opinion. Imagine Granny Smith being sent to that page and opening it on her 1024x768 notebook.

granny smith doesn't install ubuntu. her kid does. no operating system will ever be suitable for installation by grandma, nor should it ever be.

1024x768 is dead. 1366x768 is pretty common actually on lower end laptops.

>His complaint is very valid in my opinion. Imagine Granny Smith being sent to that page and opening it on her 1024x768 notebook.

Why? What's the purpose of sending "Granny Smith" to that demo? She going to be really excited about the new OS and install it herself? Even if you do, she emails you and says it didn't work, so you...do what you did before. Live cd? Have a discussion with her? Let her try yours?

The online demo is not the only method of trying the OS. It's really not even a true method. It's a marketing tool. Not something you would send Granny Smith.

"Here, look. This is what your computer would look and feel like if I installed this free modern system on it."

...and then what? She ends the idea of installing the OS? No, she probably tells you (for whatever reason) she doesn't understand what she's looking at. And your response is what; to just quit? Tell her to use her current OS?

My point? The online demo isn't the end-all of the Ubuntu preview. Stop treating it like it is.

Finally, ask yourself, am I making good points or trying desperately to win an internet argument.

Granny Smith would be pretty used to things looking wrong on her 1024x768 laptop - besides, a resolution that low indicates that the laptop is positively ancient. Would she be really looking to replace the OS on it? Even if she were, is this demographic even remotely large?

(I never said 1024x768)

Christ, give it a rest. Canonical should definitely not be targeting Granny Smith, not yet anyway. Power users dissatisfied with Windows or MacOS are where the action is for now and the foreseeable future.

(Here, I use the term 'power user' to mean e.g. anyone who has looked at the device manager in Windows.)

I'm using FF7 on a XP machine at 1280x1024 and it works fine.

this is one of the coolest demo's i've seen. congrats.

This seems like a lot of effort for something that will be unnecessary and unused in a month. I mean, it's cool, but they already have infrastructure for "demoing" remote apps, they could have demo remote instances with websocketed/vnc (noVNC, very cool).

I imagine that, if they want to do this for Pangolin, it will be of use again.

It got people effortlessly demoing the OS's UI, I think it's spot on.

But it's not REALLY the OS's UI, is it....it's a bunch of HTML made to look like the OS's UI. Sure it might be indicative, but a video and some screen shots would also be indicative.

It's another medium. Interaction makes the experience different from passively watching a video. Plus there's the marketing factor in building this demo.

For any other OS I'd agree with you. But for Linux desktop, which has come so far in the past 5-10 years, this is exactly what they need to show people "Hey, our desktop doesn't suck anymore! You should try us out again."

They actually tried something like that for 11.04, but it was horrible.

This is way cooler, it just works.

Yea, it's a lot of effort, but I think it's worth it.

IMO Ubuntu is poised to make a serious dent in the desktop market share. Maybe next year is finally going to be the year of the Linux desktop :).

Yes... it'll go from 0.5% to 0.5%, just like every other year!

http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/269/90181549.png

Another data point confirms: static at 0.8% since '08 http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-ww-monthly-200807-201110

The problem is distribution. Not many people outside the technical/hacker community are even aware what Linux is, let alone Ubuntu. They need to have more hardware partners that aggressively sell ultracheap laptops/machines. Furthermore these partners need more low entry sales channels like radio shack, walmart, target, or even CVS where more middle class consumers have access to these machines.

I agree. Unless there is a significant push by OEMs, the Linux desktop will never see wide adoption. I wonder what were the reasons for Dell pulling their Ubuntu based options in the US? Inability to provide support, or was it a push by its main OS provider.

Probably when they realized they still had to pay Microsoft to license the OS.

Sorry, not going to happen until someone release something like the Android of desktop Linux, or an actual Android for Desktop(TM).

Preinstalled, with lots of applications, and easy to use.

What does this even mean? As I understand it, Android is just a free phone OS that's easy to write for. In the desktop work, we call that Linux.

I almost orgasmed when I saw open office load.

look again. that's not openoffice, it's just an image of an openoffice (er.. libreoffice) window. if you click on it you get a message that this is just a demo.

that's why I didn't had an orgasm...

Looks a lot like Windows 7

It literally looks nothing like Windows 7. Nothing.

Unfortunately.

wow got down voted on someone's little holy war. How does that "dock" or whatever you want to call it not look like windows 7? Who cares where you put it.

The same way an airplane looks like a duck...

Which one is the duck?

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