I've had it installed on my main machine since late December. There were some rough patches as things were landing during the beta period, but right now this is easily the best desktop I've ever used.
My workflow adapted to some of the additions in Unity so quickly that it was absurd. At this point I could never go back to something without Super+#, Super+w, Super+s and the other keybindings found here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/unity-keyboard-mouse-sh...
Just be sure to install compizconfigSettingsManager from the software center and you can tweak Unity to some degree.
Just an FYI, what I tend to dev on is Ruby/Rails, Python, Javascript (Node/etc), some Erlang (not as much anymore) and Android dev. This system is so freakin' fantastic for all of those...really quite happy.
When last I used the Unity shell, it was clearly not ready for prime time. I'll spend some time later today, cross my fingers, and discover if that has changed or not. There's much more in a new release than just that, but the supposedly-cleaned up Unity will probably get most of the press.
Some concerns aside, I respect a lot of the chutzpah that Canonical is showing: Unity, Wayland, trying to force KDE/GNOME to work together on a notification API. They want to see the Linux desktop improve, and even if people fight against them and they lose, to me it feels better than the inertia of the status quo. Stasis gets no one anywhere.
Man, Ubuntu's changed a lot since I used it last (8.0 days). They've taken a lot of UI cues from the mobile space (app stores, launchers) and adapted it to the desktop.
It might take a couple more years but somehow I have the feeling that Ubuntu might be heading for the mainstream. Rightfully so.
I'd like to think so, and they're doing a great job, but I can't help but feel they're a few years too late. I suspect general email & browsing is going to happen more and more on tablets and phones and people will only want full-blown computers to run specialized native apps, most of which will probably never be ported to Linux.
Of course, thanks to Android, Linux will be more relevant than ever in this scenario.
I hope so... I could easily have a dozen family members switched over in a heartbeat - if only iTunes were readily available (and not having to use vmware or such...).
It is never a good idea to install a brand new release on a production system unless you have to (i.e. if it is the only easy way to fix a show-stopping usability/security/compatibility issue) - this goes for any software. Play safe and let the pioneers get scalped, and/or try it out on a less critical machine first.
I recently bought a new netbook and rather than waiting a couple of days or installing the beta to upgrade later I put an older release on. 10.04 in fact, rather than 10.10, as that is an LTS release and I was in a cautious mood.
For this reason, I rather conservatively remain with my LTS, no system crashes since the .1 release and I'm extremely happy with it, although I do miss the excitement of these new releases and its clear that there is a lot to look forward to in this release, especially if Unity is as good as some of the comments here suggest.
As a fellow day-job-using Ubuntu user, I'm with you. In fact, it's not just this release, I always wait a bit to upgrade, since the general consensus seems to be that fresh Ubuntu's are often a bit touchy :)
It's no big deal if you don't mind having a few partitions on your system. Personally I have a large partition for my /home directory, and smaller partitions for testing out new releases, distributions and such. If one of the releases is/becomes unstable, you can just select your old reliable release in the boot loader and get work done on that. It has worked out really nicely for me.
This sounds like you do not have a working backup plan. Instead of installing the new Ubuntu, make sure you have a backup plan, test it and automate it to secure you against a random massive computer failure that would make you unable to get work done.
I'd like to point out that this is a good time to really test your connection. I've never downloaded anything faster than a torrent of a fresh ubuntu release.
Though unfortunately upddate files are still distributed through centralized repositories.
I wonder whether there'd be major security concerns if a torrent layer was stuck over the main centralized backbone? It could probably reduce bandwidth costs for hosting and provide better speeds to people, though keeping the "swarm" updated might be kind of tricky.
BitTorrent download speed has a lot less to do with bandwidth than with how many peers you can connect to, and downloading these things fresh there is often a lack of them.
I BitTorrented the 64-bit Desktop edition it as soon as OMGUbuntu broke the news on Twitter and it took me around half an hour (for 700 MiB).
Of course, this is the release that changes the desktop interface around quite a lot. I'm a bit hesitant, although this answer in the FAQ was soothing:
No problem at all. You can choose to launch the classic desktop experience when you log in to your computer.
Not sure if this really means that the choice has to be re-made on every login, or if is remembered. Anyone?
IIRC it's just using the standard GDM "Choose an X Session" functionality. The same thing tha allows you to havea KDE and GNOME installed at once and switch between them. Last time I was using it, it prompted when you were choosing a different setting than your last login with a "Do you want this choice to be one-time or remembered?"
Since I've been using Ubuntu (year and a half now), upgrade was always easy, and always resulted in a month of little annoyances afterwards. But I look forward to it nonetheless.
Upgrading now and feel like a kid on a christmas morning :)
Ok... this seems pretty much out of place but I dont suppose I can get a better answer anywhere else, so here it goes.
I'm a student in India and in a dilemma about buying a Mac or buying a windows machine (dual booting with Ubuntu 11.04 ). At about 3/4th the price of a Mac I can purchase a more powerful windows laptop and boot up Ubuntu ( and thus avoid windows altogether ).
I need a workstation for Ruby on Rails/ Node development. Since my parents will be the one paying, I want to be sure if Mac is worth it. I've never worked on a Mac before but since I've read that most startups that are hiring offer Mac to developers, I'm guessing owning a Mac would really make development more enjoyable. Would love to hear your guys' thoughts on this.
There is no easy way to answer this question. You can definitely get a more powerful PC for the price. With the Mac, you are buying some brand, some better construction, and a lot of better customer service. You are also buying OS X, which may or may not be attractive.
I used Linux for many years as a primary development machine, and it was great. Ubuntu is doing a good job solving the "there is no good desktop for Linux" that was pretty true five years ago.
That said, I prefer my Mac because I get almost the same ability to play at the command line (I spend most of my day in Emacs right now, including running my shells there), but I also get a refined experience when I'm interacting with applications outside of development (e.g. Garage Band, Pages, Keynote, etc).
In the end, I didn't switch for development, I switched for all the time I use my laptop when I'm not developing. For me, it was worth it, but YMMV.
Unless you intend to do development for iOS, buy a PC and dual boot into Ubuntu. Even if you really need Photoshop of Office, you can run them on the Windows side. You'll feel dirty, but you'll be fine.
With a Linux machine, you'll have an environment closer to whatever server your application will run (nobody deploys on OSX and nobody sane deploys on Windows), which is a bonus. Plus, package management will save you lots of time. If you want to partition your machine on several environments, you can use Linux containers to do that and have many little Linux "servers" running without interfering with your desktop and taking up very little resources (much less than full blown VMs would).
Disclaimer: I am writing this on a Mac. I love Macs, but I work on Linux.
Having a linux desktop and mac laptop, I prefer my linux box, and probably will not get a mac again in the future. I do Java and Ruby dev. Apple basically won't commit to java in the future. Apple updates do cost money ( not incremental updates) as well as most of their software. Now I'm not saying there are not free ones, but I want utility not eyecandy in most aspects ( and I understand people will probably not agree with that point) and the repository pretty much I can find what I want. In order to use a lot of the tools I want, I need to use macports or fink. Paths to hardware upgrades are going to be some what easier on hardware thats not mac, probably along with price of hardware. I use mainly cloud/web utilities for things like google apps, calendar, and email.. I don't care for a lot of the native mac apps, I really can't think of a single mac app that I use that isn't available on ubuntu.. but the good examples are things like iMovie and garage band. I really don't understand the point of development being more enjoyable, you're going to be living in a text editor and hopefully you understand commands to run things without a gui ( example would be code repository ). Also part idealism as well for me, I like be a supporter and advocate, and when if I have a chance to educate people and be interested in alternatives, I'm all for it.
As others have stated I think its what you do outside of development. Also you can look at the osx86 project if you're adventurous.
Get a Macbook Pro, dual install Ubuntu via Bootcamp, then run Windows in a VM in either OS (fine for testing, at least). That lets you learn OSX and build iPhone apps while still being able to use Linux as your primary OS if you desire.
I've been researching this setup the past few weeks, and it appears the only issue was that the linux gfx drivers for the HD3000 gpu (embedded in the i5/i7 Macbook Pro Sandy Bridge cpu's) were still alpha/beta quality, but apparently that's fixed in Ubuntu 11.04.
I'm still see-sawing though. My other option is to get a tricked out custom Sager with the latest Nvidia GTX 485 gpu and use it to start farming bitcoins (and perhaps learning CUDA). The embedded HD3000 gpu in Intel i5/i7 gets very good performance for an on-chip gpu (google for it), but is not in the same league as the 485 GTX.
I own a Mac(Book Pro), and I dual boot Mac OSX and Ubuntu 11.04 on it.
I spend 90% of my time in Ubuntu (mainly developing).
I honestly think that if you're tight on cash and you just need a machine for development, get as much CPU-cycles and stability for your money as you can, and run a linux distro.
Most all laptops are equal for development, regarding processing speed at least. As long as the CPU and video card are not budget types, and there is enough RAM.
What makes a big difference to me is the display quality and the battery. Apple tends to have very good batteries. That's why I personally would buy an used Unibody Macbook or Macbook Pro, one of the recent types with the long-life high-capacity batteries.
I do mainly Linux development work, on Ubuntu, using an older Macbook Pro, and everything just works great and is super smooth to use - in fact this is the best Linux machine I have used!
I use a macbook pro and it truly is a better laptop than anything else, but if you're looking at a desktop then the argument becomes a lot murkier if you're not doing iOS development. If cost is an issue, I'd build a windows desktop from parts that are OSx86 (Hackintosh) compliant so if you need the osx experience you can get it. That gives you the best of most worlds' I'd say without having to pay the mac premium - though if you're getting a laptop, then the mac premium is almost certainly worth it IMNSHO.
I'm not going back to linux on the desktop until it can sleep my laptop reliably. OSX is so nice for that. Just close the lid and go... I can't imagine working any other way now.
Are there any up-to-date statistics how many people uses ubuntu? Ideally also compared to other linux distributions, windows, osx.. Google gives me only few years old numbers or estimates, I guess its not easy to do these kind of stats?
Been using Unity and natty for a few weeks now. The only feature I really miss from the gnome interface right now is the ability to add / move / remove toolbar widgets. Has anyone figured out if it's possible / how to do this in Unity?
Overall I feel a lot more productive with Unity. The numerous super- functions are really helpful and nifty. I especially like the super- 1-9 for positioning/resizing windows on the current monitor.
I find the description of which image to choose confusing. You need the a 64-bit image to handle processes over 4GB, right? Why is the x86 version recommended for "most machines with Intel/AMD/etc type processors and almost all computers that run Microsoft Windows." (That's from the server description, too.)
On Sandy Bridge graphics,X server freezes or flickers everytime anything interesting happens, like screensaver or suspend or console switching. New graphics bugs are reported daily. My X has frozen hard 6 times in 2 days.
Nvidia drivers have some trouble also.
In short, 2011 hardware is not compatible with Unity or Compiz at all. Legacy Metacity is slightly better, and disable all power management to get a mostly stable system..
[+] [-] fingerprinter|15 years ago|reply
My workflow adapted to some of the additions in Unity so quickly that it was absurd. At this point I could never go back to something without Super+#, Super+w, Super+s and the other keybindings found here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/unity-keyboard-mouse-sh...
Just be sure to install compizconfigSettingsManager from the software center and you can tweak Unity to some degree.
Just an FYI, what I tend to dev on is Ruby/Rails, Python, Javascript (Node/etc), some Erlang (not as much anymore) and Android dev. This system is so freakin' fantastic for all of those...really quite happy.
[+] [-] chao-|15 years ago|reply
Some concerns aside, I respect a lot of the chutzpah that Canonical is showing: Unity, Wayland, trying to force KDE/GNOME to work together on a notification API. They want to see the Linux desktop improve, and even if people fight against them and they lose, to me it feels better than the inertia of the status quo. Stasis gets no one anywhere.
[+] [-] Garbage|15 years ago|reply
And features - http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/features
[+] [-] mhw|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nateberkopec|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scrrr|15 years ago|reply
The shortcut keys (using the Windows-button) are very useful and the dock-like launcher is a good replacement for the old task-bar.
It might take a couple more years but somehow I have the feeling that Ubuntu might be heading for the mainstream. Rightfully so.
[+] [-] cageface|15 years ago|reply
I'd like to think so, and they're doing a great job, but I can't help but feel they're a few years too late. I suspect general email & browsing is going to happen more and more on tablets and phones and people will only want full-blown computers to run specialized native apps, most of which will probably never be ported to Linux.
Of course, thanks to Android, Linux will be more relevant than ever in this scenario.
[+] [-] elithrar|15 years ago|reply
Pressing Windows + key in a non-Windows operating system always seems so counter-intuitive to the everyday user.
[+] [-] whyme|15 years ago|reply
I hope so... I could easily have a dozen family members switched over in a heartbeat - if only iTunes were readily available (and not having to use vmware or such...).
Sadly, until then they're S.O.L.
[+] [-] lwhi|15 years ago|reply
I'm not sure I'll upgrade for a while yet, I want to find out what the general consensus is first.
[+] [-] dspillett|15 years ago|reply
I recently bought a new netbook and rather than waiting a couple of days or installing the beta to upgrade later I put an older release on. 10.04 in fact, rather than 10.10, as that is an LTS release and I was in a cautious mood.
[+] [-] Newky|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thenduks|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cgoddard|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aw3c2|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crocowhile|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] helium|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] praptak|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gregwebs|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prkchp_sndwch|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] JonnieCache|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] javanix|15 years ago|reply
I wonder whether there'd be major security concerns if a torrent layer was stuck over the main centralized backbone? It could probably reduce bandwidth costs for hosting and provide better speeds to people, though keeping the "swarm" updated might be kind of tricky.
[+] [-] beaumartinez|15 years ago|reply
I BitTorrented the 64-bit Desktop edition it as soon as OMGUbuntu broke the news on Twitter and it took me around half an hour (for 700 MiB).
[+] [-] minalecs|15 years ago|reply
http://torrent.ubuntu.com/releases/natty/release/
[+] [-] unwind|15 years ago|reply
No problem at all. You can choose to launch the classic desktop experience when you log in to your computer.
Not sure if this really means that the choice has to be re-made on every login, or if is remembered. Anyone?
[+] [-] johkra|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsvaughan|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pyre|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drivingmenuts|15 years ago|reply
It's classic or aught.
[+] [-] selectnull|15 years ago|reply
Upgrading now and feel like a kid on a christmas morning :)
[+] [-] krat0sprakhar|15 years ago|reply
I'm a student in India and in a dilemma about buying a Mac or buying a windows machine (dual booting with Ubuntu 11.04 ). At about 3/4th the price of a Mac I can purchase a more powerful windows laptop and boot up Ubuntu ( and thus avoid windows altogether ).
I need a workstation for Ruby on Rails/ Node development. Since my parents will be the one paying, I want to be sure if Mac is worth it. I've never worked on a Mac before but since I've read that most startups that are hiring offer Mac to developers, I'm guessing owning a Mac would really make development more enjoyable. Would love to hear your guys' thoughts on this.
Thanks a lot.
[+] [-] SoftwareMaven|15 years ago|reply
There is no easy way to answer this question. You can definitely get a more powerful PC for the price. With the Mac, you are buying some brand, some better construction, and a lot of better customer service. You are also buying OS X, which may or may not be attractive.
I used Linux for many years as a primary development machine, and it was great. Ubuntu is doing a good job solving the "there is no good desktop for Linux" that was pretty true five years ago.
That said, I prefer my Mac because I get almost the same ability to play at the command line (I spend most of my day in Emacs right now, including running my shells there), but I also get a refined experience when I'm interacting with applications outside of development (e.g. Garage Band, Pages, Keynote, etc).
In the end, I didn't switch for development, I switched for all the time I use my laptop when I'm not developing. For me, it was worth it, but YMMV.
[+] [-] rbanffy|15 years ago|reply
With a Linux machine, you'll have an environment closer to whatever server your application will run (nobody deploys on OSX and nobody sane deploys on Windows), which is a bonus. Plus, package management will save you lots of time. If you want to partition your machine on several environments, you can use Linux containers to do that and have many little Linux "servers" running without interfering with your desktop and taking up very little resources (much less than full blown VMs would).
Disclaimer: I am writing this on a Mac. I love Macs, but I work on Linux.
[+] [-] minalecs|15 years ago|reply
As others have stated I think its what you do outside of development. Also you can look at the osx86 project if you're adventurous.
[+] [-] SkyMarshal|15 years ago|reply
I've been researching this setup the past few weeks, and it appears the only issue was that the linux gfx drivers for the HD3000 gpu (embedded in the i5/i7 Macbook Pro Sandy Bridge cpu's) were still alpha/beta quality, but apparently that's fixed in Ubuntu 11.04.
I'm still see-sawing though. My other option is to get a tricked out custom Sager with the latest Nvidia GTX 485 gpu and use it to start farming bitcoins (and perhaps learning CUDA). The embedded HD3000 gpu in Intel i5/i7 gets very good performance for an on-chip gpu (google for it), but is not in the same league as the 485 GTX.
http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np8150s1-clevo-p150hm-p-2981.ht...
iOS development vs bitcoin farming and CUDA is the tradeoff, still thinking that through.
[+] [-] BasDirks|15 years ago|reply
I spend 90% of my time in Ubuntu (mainly developing).
I honestly think that if you're tight on cash and you just need a machine for development, get as much CPU-cycles and stability for your money as you can, and run a linux distro.
[+] [-] AnthonBerg|15 years ago|reply
What makes a big difference to me is the display quality and the battery. Apple tends to have very good batteries. That's why I personally would buy an used Unibody Macbook or Macbook Pro, one of the recent types with the long-life high-capacity batteries.
I do mainly Linux development work, on Ubuntu, using an older Macbook Pro, and everything just works great and is super smooth to use - in fact this is the best Linux machine I have used!
[+] [-] te_chris|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2mur|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] urza|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] larrik|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cgoddard|15 years ago|reply
Overall I feel a lot more productive with Unity. The numerous super- functions are really helpful and nifty. I especially like the super- 1-9 for positioning/resizing windows on the current monitor.
[+] [-] mjs|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] BasDirks|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulkoer|15 years ago|reply
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/774089 http://old.nabble.com/Ubuntu-11.04-broke-my-MacBook-Pro-td31...
I really love ubuntu, but if you have a macbook pro be careful! I may have to have my logic board replaced!
[+] [-] lurker19|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stuartcw|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bergie|15 years ago|reply