Anybody tried Ubuntu Natty?

[yello]

I've just updated on of my laptops with Ubuntu's latest release (11.04 Natty Narwahl) and I have to say that I'm not overly impressed. All new things take a bit of getting used to, and 11.04 IS a change, but even allowing for that my initial gut feel is 'bloat'. This new Unity desktop does, I think, break (further?) with traditional of user configurability and enforces a look and feel that isn't to my liking (the upgrade completely borked my cairo-dock set up too, so that didn't please me).

I'll give it some time but I've got this taste in my mouth; if this is the way Ubuntu is going then I may well be looking for another flavour of linux.

 

[terry_gardener]

yes have been 11.04 during the dev phases and i like the unity interface it grows on you.
if you want the gnome shell interface try opensuse or fedora.

if you want to go back to gnome 2 panel view then logout and select ubuntu classic, but bare in mind that this is being replaced to unity 2d in 11.10.

 

[yello]

Google was my friend. Removed Unity and got compositing back (for CairoDock), changed the login screen (to Ubuntu classic as you mentioned Terry) and all was back to my liking. Also stripped out the new stuff that I won't use too. Front end aside, lets now see if Natty Narwahl has benefits under the hood!

 

[Manonabike]

I've just updated on of my laptops with Ubuntu's latest release (11.04 Natty Narwahl) and I have to say that I'm not overly impressed. All new things take a bit of getting used to, and 11.04 IS a change, but even allowing for that my initial gut feel is 'bloat'. This new Unity desktop does, I think, break (further?) with traditional of user configurability and enforces a look and feel that isn't to my liking (the upgrade completely borked my cairo-dock set up too, so that didn't please me).

I'll give it some time but I've got this taste in my mouth; if this is the way Ubuntu is going then I may well be looking for another flavour of linux.

This Ubuntu Natty, does it come in the form of an update or one has to upgrade Ubuntu? I certainly would not like to upgrade for a while and I wish there was an easy way to prevent and update that I don't wish to install.

 

[Ghost Donkey]

It is an option to upgrade at the top of the updates window. You can continue with your current version and keep getting updates while it is supported or upgrade to the new version. I've updated my ubuntu VM but haven't had time to have a play yet.

 

[Manonabike]

It is an option to upgrade at the top of the updates window. You can continue with your current version and keep getting updates while it is supported or upgrade to the new version. I've updated my ubuntu VM but haven't had time to have a play yet.

Thanks for that.

 

[Deleted member 1258]

I'm still running 10.04, its working well and I see no reason to upgrade so I'm just ignoring the upgrade option and installing updates as they come round.

 

[terry_gardener]

I'm still running 10.04, its working well and I see no reason to upgrade so I'm just ignoring the upgrade option and installing updates as they come round.

if you are using the 10.04 LTS release and youi don't want the option of upgrade at the top of update manager open synaptic package manager and then goto settings - repositories. then go to the updates tab and at the bottom change it from normal releases to LTS releases then you only get the upgrade option on LTS release which the next is 12.04.

if you do decide to upgrade at some point before the LTS release you will have to do by version ie 10.04 to 10.10 then 10.10 to 11.04 you can't skip releases, only exception to this rule it going from LTS to LTS.

 

[Deleted member 1258]

if you are using the 10.04 LTS release and youi don't want the option of upgrade at the top of update manager open synaptic package manager and then goto settings - repositories. then go to the updates tab and at the bottom change it from normal releases to LTS releases then you only get the upgrade option on LTS release which the next is 12.04.

if you do decide to upgrade at some point before the LTS release you will have to do by version ie 10.04 to 10.10 then 10.10 to 11.04 you can't skip releases, only exception to this rule it going from LTS to LTS.

Thanks for that, I hadn't thought about changing settings, I must admit that if I did decide to move on I would do it as a clean install rather than an upgrade

 

[yello]

A clean install definitely has its advantages. It's also quicker! That said, you do then have to spend some time getting your machine back to your preferred state. That is, reloading and/or reconfiguring apps etc, re-setting up the look and feel. That can be quite a pain sometimes and take some time in it's own right. And (if you're like me and don't write things down!) a bit of reinventing the wheel sometimes too!

I'm up and running again (haven't quite got my compiz settings back to as they were but close enough) so I can hopefully be a little more objective of this new release now.

 

[terry_gardener]

i prefer to have a separate home partition so i can reinstall without losing all my settings so all i have to do is reinstall the software i had. makes things much easier and faster.

 

[yello]

i prefer to have a separate home partition so i can reinstall without losing all my settings so all i have to do is reinstall the software i had.

I do that as well, plus separate data partitions (for documents, photos, music, etc).

But I do mess around with software like garmintools, writing my own scripts, tweaking environment variables etc... that sort of stuff gets splatted by clean installs. If I go the upgrade route, I just leave my machine on over night and clean up the mess the following day!

My wife wonders why I do it when the old version works but I'm a geek at heart. I enjoy messing about!

 

[JamesAC]

I had three goes at upgrading to 11.04. On the first couple of tries, several rather serious error messages popped up, and the upgrade stalled. However, Ubunto still worked ok!

On the third go, it all went smoothly, though very slowly! I left it running all night.

But I was not too thrilled when I rebooted my machine to see that my tried, tested and trusted gnome desktop had been replaced by something else (Unity?? never heard of it!!), and my shortcuts and so on had all vanished.

A quick google revealed how to get gnome back, and I sorted the shortcuts (libre office for open office, for example).

The most serious thing is that the grub.cfg that's been configured does not recognise my second hard disk (running Debian) - so I have to start that using a usb key thingy. I dare say I'll get it sorted eventually.

But really, when you do an upgrade, you expect things to be better, not worse!

 

[terry_gardener]

But really, when you do an upgrade, you expect things to be better, not worse!

i don't tend to upgrade any OS i always do a fresh install. i have always found upgrades always breaks something.