Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) Beta 1 Released. | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) Beta 1 Released.

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86 pointsGarbage50 comments

I spun up 12.04 desktop on physical hardware with discreet nvidia graphic card ( I have a lot of experience with server ) and I must say I was hugely impressed by the usability of the system.

Without thinking about it I was clearly able to get work done, navigate the system, access network shares.

If only I could have illustrator, Photoshop and the other graphics apps I use daily I expect I would be more than happy.

Would totally recommend checking 12.04 out.

The Adobe stack is really the only thing that keeps me on OS X. I'd much prefer to code on a system that shares the exact same stack as what I host with.

It's for this reason that I use Vagrant (http://vagrantup.com/) - don't have to care what my development workstation is; I just spin up a virtual machine to hack and test in. :)

So you spin up an instance with Adobe software in?

I think he means he uses a local virtualbox virtual machine for all his development stuff so he doesnt need to care about which OS (win, linux, osx) is running on his physical machine.

I should have been more clear, but this is what I meant.

there's no reason why you can't.

Totally true, though its never quite the same. VMWare, Parallels & VirtualBox are getting there but still don't quite have the performance needed for doing video or intense graphics work.

The need to virtualize graphics drivers, that then go trough standard API on the host adds an extra layer of indirection to already slow pipeline, is probably going to prevent any major gains in that area.

No, you do you CS work in OS X and your other development/web stack etc stuff in a VM.

Best of both worlds. Actually, I'd use a VM for development even if I was running Linux as my primary OS and didn't have a need for the CS suite myself.

I agree with the general notion, but not with the specifics. That is:

It's nice to code on a system that "shares the exact same stack as what I host with", but just running on Linux is not doing it.

Except if you only ever host with one single stack.

Normally, you'd have different stacks for different projects, different technologies (Ruby, PHP, etc), others would have Apache, others NGINX, MySQL or Mongo, different major or minor versions, etc.

So, I find the best way is to setup a VM with each hosting environment and work on that. You get easily reproducible stack, snapshots, isolation, and a cleaner main OS X or Linux install. With one click on the next image, you can completely change your environment.

We try quite hard to keep our stack homogeneous. We're Debian Squeeze from dev through to deployment, except for a very few Lenny services which haven't been upgraded yet (and won't be, until the service itself is replaced).

This means that getting a new service up and running should, by and large, be trivial. There's no discussion over what the best platform for a given service is, it's just a question of how to get it working on Squeeze. If we have to package something up to make it deployable, that's what we do.

Anyone coming to an arbitrary system knows what the tools are, and where to look. It's very, very simple.

I use a VirtualBox VM with Windows on it and have a shared folder between the two.

Looking forward to 12.04. I liked Unity in 11.10 despite the community backlash. They need to move the "dock" horizontal and on bottom though, and let you reorganize the dock even after an app is locked into it. Basically, they should recreate OS X's interface except without the silly widgets. Also, the software download manager is nasty-ish in 11.10. It gets locked up quite a bit without being able to see why, and you have no way to stop download/installs other than killing it or restarting. Finally, the lack of a screensaver in Unity nor the ability to easily change display settings by right-clicking on the desktop is stupid.

Horizontal docks waste a lot of precious vertical space on widescreen monitors.

I agree. While it might take some time to get used to at first, I think it's worth it. In the end, you will be able to use more of your screen, because honestly, most applications are not optimised for 16:9 (/10) screens.

> take some time

I boot Ubuntu almost everyday, and I still happen to position my mouse at the bottom when I want to access the application bar, before realising that nothing comes up and I went in the wrong place.

It's funny how the screen setup has become just like a reflex after years and years of practice. It's really hard to get used to new choices in design.

About how long have you been using Ubuntu with the vertical application bar for? I know it is highly personal, but I am trying to figure out a rough amount of time...

I have never really been a user of Ubuntu myself but when I (mainly) switched to Linux from Windows, it only took a couple of day to get used to it. Then again, I was never clicking the icons in the application bar before (win key -> typing -> enter).

i installed 11.10 in december, so about 3 months ago now. I should add that i use opensuse a lot on another machine, with an horizontal cairo dock, so i am not always on Ubuntu standards. I really like the win key to start programs, though.

I boot Win7 every day and OSX a few times a week. I was on a colleagues PC (winXP) yesterday and couldn't work out why when I moved my mouse to the left-hand-side of the screen there was no dock.

Seriously -- If you have a normal laptop / modern screen -- it's time to switch. It will take some time to adjust -- but it's worth it for the vertical space you reclaim.

Where is the back button in your browser?

On my keyboard.

Auto-hide FTW.

Yup, enabled by default.

It's not enabled by default in 12.04 Beta 1 (at least not on my image that I installed last night). There have been some changes with the behavior of the launcher to make it less likely to open accidentally when hidden, though; maybe the default settings have been moved around some as well.

>Also, the software download manager is nasty-ish in 11.10.

Truth. I still use aptitude, synaptic, and gdebi when possible. Hope they unbloat USC and speed it up in future iterations.

/second everything else, except I don't much care what they do with the dock as long as it can be set to autohide. Launchers like Gnome-do and Synapse > dock imho.

Icons in the launcher can be moved around by clicking and holding them for a second.

When I used OS X I put the dock on the left side to save vertical space.

>The technology that allows GPUs to go into a very low power consumption state when the GPU is idle (RC6) is now enabled by default for Sandy Bridge systems, which should result in considerable power savings when this stage is activated.

Awesome. Now they just need to get Optimus and Switchable Graphics working.

Also, nice of them to list the changes for the other Ubuntu variants as well, even though they're not officially supported. Didn't realize they did this.

> Awesome. Now they just need to get Optimus and Switchable Graphics working.

Would that they could. There is some work going on in bumblebee and its branches, but some of the design decisions made in X Server make it nigh-impossible to actually implement.

Wayland might, though.

It took a year, but Linux graphics finally runs on Sandy Bridge hardware: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel...

> * A new way to quickly search and access any desktop application's > and indicator's menu, called the HUD, can be accessed by taping the > Alt key and entering characters.

I don't tend to be complain alot about updates of Ubuntu, but I really hope that button is customizable. I'd not be happy if I'd have to rebind meta key in emacs.

I don't complain either, but I don't see why its not the super key, as that brings up the dash in Ubunto 11.0[410].

Yes, and having to use tape seems really unhandy :P

I have the same concern but I'm sure a lot of Ubuntu developer are heavy Emacs users, they must have worked out a way to conciliate the two.

It doesn't trigger the HUD if you type a key sequence but it's quite easy to activate it nonetheless.

Anyway, the command below is all that's needed to disable it.

    gconftool-2 -s /apps/compiz-1/plugins/unityshell/screen0/options/show_hud -t string ''

You can also take the scenic route and use CCSM.

Are the application developers supposed to add any functionality to HUD or it just recognizes menu items automagically?

It populates from the menus themselves, using the framework already developed to pull the menu entries into the Unity panel. I believe it is possible to expand beyond this (e.g. having 'synonyms' recognized by the HUD) but it's still early days.

Loaded it on a MacBook. Works well. I really like the UI. It looks like they put a good amount of work into it.

MacBook Pro or Air?

Older, regular MacBook (not Pro or Air). [Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.4GHz].

I upgraded three things at once - OSX Lion, VMWare Fusion 4, and Ubuntu 12.04 - and one or more of those things enabled the fancy graphics, windows fade in and out, the nicer task switcher, all that when you enable 3d graphics in the VM.

Doesn't work on my T500 (Intel i915 graphics). Shows black screen after everything loads. Does anyone else have this?

There was some switch around 9.10, different drivers or kernels or something. Here's what I used to get Lucid working on an old Gateway with a i915, it might work for you. http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2010/05/06/ubuntu-10-04-lucid-bl...

Did you try increasing the screen brightness with the keyboard function? Happens to me too, but it's the brightness getting set to 0.

how stable is it?

Can I upgrade my development environment, or are there still a lot of issues?

If stability is important to you, then I'd suggest waiting for at least the Release Candidate, though the actual release of a LTS version is probably as stable as you can get (considering a new release).

Ubuntu doesn't do Release Candidates anymore (at least for LTS releases...).

There is another Beta scheduled for March 29th, with a final release on April 26th.

In my opinion, if stability is really your top priority, wait until after the first point release (12.04.1) on July 19th. My 10.04 boxen will be staying at 10.04.4 until after 12.04.1 has been out for a little while.

Downloading the Xubuntu release now, hopefully it fixes the few little problems I've had since I switched desktop managers.

Also, I've completely clogged my pipes this morning with OS beta downloads, first Win 8, now this.

Dunno if this is the right place to say it but there's a typo in the very first feature listing "taping" should be "tapping".

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