Thinkpads Forum

Those who haven't "upgraded" yet or installed the newest release of Ubuntu (11.04) here is
a warning I sure wish I had and thousands of other users of Ubuntu wished they had.

11.04 is a MAJOR change. Although its distribution release, something went very wrong with the beta testing process.
Apparently, either team Ubuntu ignored complaints from average users and just paid attention to enthusiasts, or the beta
testers were enthusiasts. Many bugs are reported about the upgrade process! For the first time, users are strongly advised
to use full precautions before either upgrading or installing 11.04... Back up all of you data and be prepared to reinstall
10.XXX

Most important, it is best to skip the upgrade option and instead download 11.04, burn the ISO to disc and boot up and try
out the live DVD version. It is very possible you will not want the new big step backward in user friendliness, the new Unity
Desktop. Team Ubuntu should warn people about this apparant shift to near cryptic MAC wannabe menu system!

There is no way I will be able to convince Windows users to try Linux if they get a taste of the Unity desktop. Even though I have figured out how to get the "Ubuntu Classic" desktop, 11.04 is slower to boot on both of my Thinkspad than Windows 7 !!!
The desktop is also slower than Win 7 desktop

I am certain those of you who see a computer as a tool, a powerful fun tool but a tool will not like the Unity desktop. Ubuntu should include a manual and a desktop map with it!! Have time to waste learning your way around and how to operate an entirely new
desktop? If you do, then Unity may be for you.

Another warning for those who decide to go with Unity anyway. The menu strip on the left side of the desktop is constantly popping out and getting into the way.

11.04 is so slow, I'm installing the newest Puppy (5.25). I was going to opt for LinuxMint but that team seems to have the same disease. It is hard at work getting out a new LinuxMint based on Ubuntu 11.04, especially the Unity desktop. Maybe team PepperMint is containing its sanity...

--Bruised

Are You Part of the Problem or... Victim of the Solution?

Ouch............

I've been running 10.10 on my x40 for sale and it seems pretty fast and easy.. So easy that I was going to download and upgrade to 11.4 but nooooooooooooooooooooooo.......................not now.

I'm only an occasional Linux user anyway and I'm impressed with 10.10.

I guess I'll just wait and see..

Thanks for the info and keep keeping us informed if you can on the plight of 11.4.

Ron

I'm recommending that my Ubuntu-using friends stick with 10.04 (LTS). It's supported for years to come, and it's now in its fully-stable support cycle so I don't expect any breakages.

Everyone else? Well... it's Debian time!

I agree about the new ubuntu, however the newest version of mint is sticking with Gnome 2.3. I'm using it now and it's fast and stable.

ThinkRob wrote:I'm recommending that my Ubuntu-using friends stick with 10.04 (LTS). It's supported for years to come, and it's now in its fully-stable support cycle so I don't expect any breakages.

Everyone else? Well... it's Debian time!

I'm actually recommending users to go for Xubuntu. I've tried both Ubuntu 10.10 and Xubuntu 11.04 and Xfce is really a lot faster, compared to regular GNOME in 10.10. It needs a bit of tuning to behave like GNOME (ie. the "favorite apps" part in the panel, ...), but it's worth it in the end. As a regular user, I wouldn't look back on Ubuntu (gnome/unity).

Advanced users shall, of course, use what they want, be that Debian, Gentoo, Slackware, .. (or anything else) and avoid any *buntu distributions with /* magic, don't touch */ in their config files.

BruisedQuasar wrote:Most important, it is best to skip the upgrade option and instead download 11.04, burn the ISO to disc and boot up and try
out the live DVD version. It is very possible you will not want the new big step backward in user friendliness, the new Unity
Desktop. Team Ubuntu should warn people about this apparant shift to near cryptic MAC wannabe menu system!

No idea what your problems were, but here it went fine on a couple of systems. And since they didn't remove the former GNOME desktop environment either, there was no need to bother about Unity at all. We simply deinstalled it from the affected systems, as it was unused anyway, and everything works just fine. It is nice to have some more recent software versions.

Just because the distributor made some questionable choices regarding the standard desktop, nobody is forced to accept their proposals. Ubuntu is still Linux, and you still have a choice. Said that, i use WindowMaker as my standard desktop since more than ten years, and it is not easy to convince me to try something else.

comps wrote: I'm actually recommending users to go for Xubuntu. I've tried both Ubuntu 10.10 and Xubuntu 11.04 and Xfce is really a lot faster, compared to regular GNOME in 10.10. It needs a bit of tuning to behave like GNOME (ie. the "favorite apps" part in the panel, ...), but it's worth it in the end. As a regular user, I wouldn't look back on Ubuntu (gnome/unity).

Advanced users shall, of course, use what they want, be that Debian, Gentoo, Slackware, .. (or anything else) and avoid any *buntu distributions with /* magic, don't touch */ in their config files.

Debian really isn't complex compared to Ubuntu. They're about on par nowadays. You can even install a fully-configured XFCE-based desktop from the default installer.

I've been running 11.04 on my HP Mini 210, my friend's Acer Aspire One, and my Thinkpad (until it died for unrelated reasons). I've been thoroughly impressed and happy with it. The netbooks were both upgraded from 10.10 Netbook Edition without a hitch. This (and 10.10 UNE previously) is my friend's first experience with Linux, and he's been satisfied with it. The only qualm I have right now is that since upgrading, I have not been able to connect an external monitor to my netbook, and I suspect that is more of a driver issue than ubuntu itself.

I think Unity is a great step in the right direction. It has matured significantly since its debut in 10.10 UNE. My only complaint so far is that in between 10.10 UNE and 11.04, they replaced the software categories as separate buttons in the app menu with a pulldown, and it requires an extra click to list all installed software in a category. These are not detrimental to the use of the OS, but they are annoying extra steps, and I hope they take a different approach with the next release.

That all being said, this is an interim release of Ubuntu so to speak. A new version is released every six months, with every 4th release going through more vetting for their lifespan as an LTS. These interim releases in my eyes serve as stepping stones to their next major LTS release. If you don't like living on the bleeding edge, and would prefer something that you can leave unchanged for 3 years with support, then stick with an LTS release. You can also help by providing constructive feedback to the Ubuntu team. If you don't like how something works, provide a viable alternative solution to be considered. One of the key benefits to an open-source project is that the software is open to revision and refinement from the community that supports it.

I installed 11.04 through wubi (i.e. installs within windows file system), and have found it a huge improvement in ease of use and in speed over previous versions. I really like the Unity desktop manager as well, after enjoying gnome and KDE and Windowmaker etc the past 10 years or so. It obliterates Windows 7 for speed. There are a few rough edges, but overall, a fascinating and adventurous release. As others have said, you don't have to go to the cutting edge of 11.04 - there are more conservative options still fully supported - and if you like 11.04 but don't like Unity, then just switch to Gnome or whatever...

ThinkRob wrote:I'm recommending that my Ubuntu-using friends stick with 10.04 (LTS). It's supported for years to come, and it's now in its fully-stable support cycle so I don't expect any breakages.

Everyone else? Well... it's Debian time!

Good point. I am using the 2011 newest variant of PuppyLinux, its called FatDog64.*. I was planning on re-installing Ubuntu 10.10 but you are correct. 10.04 LTS is the way to go, if I remain with Ubuntu.

--Bruised



*I thought Puppy was lightning fast and unusually complete, all for under 128 megabytes. FatDog is a seriously tweaked Puppy, a 64-bit version of Puppy and unlike Ubuntu and other OpenSource Purist Distros, Puppy comes with the codecs and drivers you need. FatDog is even more complete.

I had FatDog install itself on a 4 gig USB memory drive (probably way more than I'll ever need) and make the Puppy save file so FatDog can auto save all my settings, added software, data, bookmarks, etc.

For those of you unfamiliar with Puppy or its variants, team Puppy's working goals are user friendliness, tiny size, ease of use & high portability. It comes with all the quality software the average computer user needs, has a user friendly desktop, all within 128GB. Its designed to install and work from alternative external media, CD, CDRW, USB Drives, Flash of all forms, etc. To preserve flash life Puppy does not perform constant read-writes. It loads itself entirely into RAM memory (or partially in computers with less than 312 MB RAM) and runs from there, making it very fast.

If you are going to use a Linux Distro from a CD, Puppy is your distro. Once it boots, you will not be slowed down with frequent reads and swaps from the CD. I have Puppy installed on small USB sticks for each of my computers (FatDog for 64-bit) and I have one live CD version on a USB that I can on the fly temporarily install on any computer. Anyone who has used D Small Linux, an abandoned distro, Puppy has far surpassed
DSL.

[/quote] I'm actually recommending users to go for Xubuntu. I've tried both Ubuntu 10.10 and Xubuntu 11.04 and Xfce is really a lot faster, compared to regular GNOME in 10.10. It needs a bit of tuning to behave like GNOME (ie. the "favorite apps" part in the panel, ...), but it's worth it in the end. As a regular user, I wouldn't look back on Ubuntu (gnome/unity).

Advanced users shall, of course, use what they want, be that Debian, Gentoo, Slackware, .. (or anything else) and avoid any *buntu distributions with /* magic, don't touch */ in their config files.[/quote]

I used to run Xubuntu on a few older computers. Thank you for the Xubuntu headsup. I haven't looked over Xubuntu for a few years. Once you bring it up, I realize I sort of assumed, I guess, that the entire Ubuntu family of new releases would be turkeys like Ubuntu 11.04. I'm not stuck on Gnome.

For contrarians who will say "11.04 works fine for me and you can always return to classic easily 'nuff", as I indicated in my warning post, I am
warning about mine and thousands of other Ubuntu user experience with UPGRADE. Many of us find that the simple return choice doesn't exist as it is supposed to. It took me some time to discover a around about way to get 11.04 to return to "classic experience", to the GNOME desktop and that doesn't return you to your pre-upgrade status.

As a few users have pointed out here, there is a much safer and better way to upgrade to the current software and tweaked status, simply continue down the standard upgrade path Ubuntu offers but do not upgrade to 11.04. Stay with 10.04 LTS or stick with 10.10

Many users find after they return to "classic experience" that they slow boot and slow operation they got after the 11.04 auto upgrade remains, even after they rid themselves of turkey "Unity".

Contrarian responses do not discourage worldly realists. When we find a product that has say 2,000 highly positive buyer reviews, for example, the realist feels very uncomfortable until he finds at least two or three highly contrarian "reviewers" that say the extreme opposite, that the item is pure junk, the worst product ever. Without that, we wonder if the extreme positives are fake "reviews" planted by the manufacturer, the retailer, or some other vested interest.

--Bruised

Are You Part of the Problem...OR...Victim of the Solution??

Well, you shouldn't be using Ubuntu in the first place anyway. If you that much want user-friendly appeal, go with Fedora.

My dad has had several problems with Ubuntu 9.xx - 10.xx and good thing he didn't upgrade. Most notably, random crashes and long boot time. I don't even want to get at Ubuntu's policy about installed software and running it on Wine. Basically installed programs from a Windows partition can't be run under Wine and have to be reinstalled under Ubuntu with Wine due to some policy I forgot about, native to Ubuntu.

GNU/Linux in general has become one large bloatware, including the kernel. If FreeBSD was on par with the bluetooth, webcam, Intel GPU etc. drivers, I wouldn't think a second about switching permanently. I always have a Linux partition because I need webcam and bluetooth.

bgalakazam wrote: GNU/Linux in general has become one large bloatware, including the kernel.

Ok, I'm confused. In what way do you think the kernel's bloated? A huge chunk of the code is device drivers, and (almost) all that's modular...

For anyone who want's a custom experience with a Debian based linux.... go with just plain Debian SID... yea, yea, unstable... but in my experience it is very stable, use a net install iso... install only what YOU want to install... fan of Xubuntu... install XFCE, Ubuntu... Gnome, Kubuntu.... KDE. Learn about apt policies to hold onto versions of things you have specific reason to keep and its all good

I do reccomend Xubuntu to friends/family who haven't used linux in the past (but most who have tried it now know howto install a base Debian then add what they want). XFCE is MUCH faster then Gnome (especially on older hardware). I've never been a big fan of the ?buntu's personally, they've always seemed bloated. And quite frankly... since Vista and 7... they prolly are giving a lot of people what they want... a flashy OS that is way over bulked and requires a huge learning curve for those who are used to the older versions (No big deal to a 1st timer from windows, it's all greek anyways).

I guess i could be biased, I cut my Linux teeth on Slackware WAY back in the floppy days. You only got what you specifically installed (although a lot of the time, you needed to install more then what you needed )

Sid is definitely usable for day-to-day stuff, but I wouldn't recommend it to a new user, or really to anyone who's not aware of the security and stability implications and how to address them.

The only problem with Debian I've ever had is their methodicly SLOW updates... SID cures that

And yea, definately not a newbie version of Debian ... But then again, that's what buntu is for

ozzymud wrote: And yea, definately not a newbie version of Debian ... But then again, that's what buntu is for

I'd say that's what stable is for actually. Set it up for a non-techie friend, set up automatic upgrades, and you can be reasonably sure that their system will continue working exactly as you configured it for years to come. Based on my experience, I would not be confident of that with Ubuntu.

And "slow" updates... why are those a problem? I don't really get the whole "OMG I need the latest version!" thing. If it does what you want, who cares if you have the latest version?

Stable is great for "set it and forget it", I know several people that that has worked WELL for. My dad is an example, he doesn't much care for change as long as it works.

Then there are those who like new shiny toys...

Debian stable Iceweasel(Firefox) = v3.5.16-7
Ubuntu 11.04 Firefox = v4.01

Yea, yea, I know I could get 4 on stable, but I'd rather just let them do it in a few clicks in Ubuntu after a much shorter wait. Firefox was just one example, OpenOffice also comes to mind, so backports for one or two such packages would be ok... but there are many other such new shiny toys, and then you might as well just goto Sid... Ubuntu is basically that PLUS a lot of hand holding.

ozzymud wrote: Yea, yea, I know I could get 4 on stable, but I'd rather just let them do it in a few clicks in Ubuntu after a much shorter wait. Firefox was just one example, OpenOffice also comes to mind, so backports for one or two such packages would be ok... but there are many other such new shiny toys, and then you might as well just goto Sid... Ubuntu is basically that PLUS a lot of hand holding.

Well the Debian version numbering for Iceweasel is a *little* misleading, as they do backport patches to it. (That's why xulrunner is separate from iceweasel.) Still, I guess if you wanted the latest shiny Firefox build, yeah, Debian's not the best choice.

Of course, Debian Backports exists for a reason... http://backports.debian.org/

Interesting enough I just upgraded my T43 from 10.04 to 11.x and while I greatly dis-like (okay, loathe) Unity it did lead me to do something I haven't done in a long time.

I installed KDE4. Yep. I figured that if I am going to look at shells that aren't Gnome or FluxBox (my other fav) might as well see what the KDE guys have been up to. I left KDE when they were at 3.5 because Gnome was simply better.

That being said I really like it. It took me a few hours, and some reading to get it setup the way I want it.I still have to figure out a few things (like how to add gnome programs to the plasma bar) and to run KDEWallet at startup without it asking for my credentials every login. Plasma did take a little while for me to wrap my head around, but it's not too bad. Sure I've thought about scrapping it all and logging into good old comfortable fits me like a glove, Gnome 2.3 but where's the fun in that?

If KDE really drives me up a wall maybe i'll slap AfterStep on here for the giggles.

Well I've gone the opposite way. It took me a day or so, but I finally got used to musca (a tiling WM), and -- with the help of a few other utilities -- I'm finally living an entirely keyboard-driven existence.

The other nice thing is that musca runs great on BSD, so my Intellistations now (finally) have the same UI as my laptop.

I gotta say: tiling, keyboard-drive WMs can be phenomenally efficient and productive once you get used to them. I always scoffed at the idea before, as I figured it was just something you did to show off, but now that I've started using one on my main machine I find it much easier to manage my workflow and to stay focused. YMMV, of course, but it might not be a bad idea to give it a go if you're fed up with the whole fancy GUI world.

Well, if one changes the GUI to something else, Ubuntu 11.04 is really nice, technical wise. It usually works out of the box on a Thinkpad T6x(p), so it is a rather good distro choice. But as i never really liked any of the Ubuntu GUI approaches, even not the former Gnome eye candy GUI's, i have decided to roll my own Ubuntu 11.04 Live CD, under the preliminary name of WMLive.

It is basically a mechanism to remaster the standard Ubuntu 11.04 Live CD iso image, making WindowMaker the default GUI. It is also suitable to convert an already up and running Ubuntu 11.04 system with, but i'd rather make sure to have a recent backup available in the unlikely case you don't like the results. You have been warned!

While at it, i ripped out all the eye candy (compiz, unity, etc.) and games stuff, replacing it with lots utilities of interest for sysadmins. So now you can also manage LVM, just as an example. It took quite some time to include and provide a preconfigured environment, to have most Gnome components integrate well with WindowMaker. Thunderbird and Firefox contain already lots of interesting addons out of the box. It still has some unresolved minor issues after installation to hard disk, which are due to some Ubuntu automatisms i didn't find a way to circumvent yet, and would need some help by interested parties. This is not really for newbies, but rather for more experienced Linux people.

I don't provide a ready made Live CD, so you have to roll your own from the standard Ubuntu 11.04 iso image.

Other than that, it is already rather mature and works pretty nice. Check it out at http://www.rumbero.org/wmlive

Nice work on the WM 'Buntu!

If your interested in a distro targeted at sysadmins, have you taken a look at Backtrack?

Tons of pentest tools, most of the eye candy has been reduced and it runs great.

I myself having turned my T43 into a distro testbed am currently installing this right now. I have used Backtrack for the last few years for network troubleshooting and it has been an invaluable tool for me. Check it out.

I know I'm getting to this conversation late, but I didn't have any problems upgrading from 10.10 to 11.04 on my T500. Everything went flawlessly. Unity is definitely a change from standard Gnome, but in general I've come to really like it and use it well.

I upgraded from ubuntu 10.10 to 11.04 on my T60 and the upgrade did fail, however I have everything synchronized on ubuntu one so nothing was lost. I installed 11.04 and was amazed at how well ubuntu one is intergrated into the OS. Now I am a huge fan of ubuntu one. I have also become a huge fan of unity. I love at how fast I can search, just press the super-L key and start typing. My files and applications appear immediately. I also like that all I have to do to launch an application from the dock is to again press the super-L key and the number of the application. It's simple and fast and I love keyboard shortcuts. I thought I would miss gnome but noooooo. Everything works on this thinkpad so far and works better than any previous ubuntu edition.
If you want something like windows go to KDE.

I avoid upgrading until I boot live media to sample the upgrade, or toss it on a spare hard disk for a live trial.

You can also dd your complete system and restore that image if you like. Linux makes these tasks free and convenient.