So I installed Ubuntu 12.04 today...

[Dutchy]

I've been trying out the upcoming release of Ubuntu in a VM for quite some time now and thought the time was ripe to install it on my notebook along side Fedora (always a good Idea to have multiple distro's).
In the past I have been pretty negative about unity but after a year it has improved quite a bit, although that's what I thought.

Somehow the physical install is different from the VM:
-Sticky edges do not work
-The option to change the launcher icon size from the control centre is completely missing
-The launcher doesn't seem to use compiz any more, i.e. I can't change any settings so the icons stupid backlit thing is always on making it hard to distinguish between running and not running programs hard.

So this makes it pretty unusable for me (which I didn't really plan to do a lot anyway but that's not the point) but I have to admit that it looks shinier than ever and the additions to the control centre are nice.

Then an updates notification caught my eye and here it comes: Ubuntu 12.04 (which isn't even released) offered me an update to the "Ubuntu" Kernel 3.2!
What? Fedora 16 is already on 3.3 and it was released way earlier.
This is why I love Fedora (this also might be because 3.3 finally has a good Realtek 8168 driver which does wake on lan).

To conclude: Go Fedora, Boo Ubuntu!

[Gareth Jones]

Is Ubuntu using Unity2D as its graphical fall-back mode yet? If so, I'd guess that one or other of your installs is using that – probably the physical install if Compiz isn't being used.

[Misfit138]

I've personally never had much success running Ubuntu.
I first started messing around with GNU/Linux in 2004, and among many other distros, I tried installing Ubuntu 4.10 which did not even boot on my machine. I tried many other versions since then, none of which impressed me.
It's interesting to me how much distributions have in common, yet how dramatic seemingly minor differences in community, documentation and methodology contribute to the overall feel and usability of a system.
I used exclusively Arch since 2006, and have just now installed Fedora, which I am really enjoying so far.
So, I guess I agree with your disappointment overall with the Ubuntu distribution, but am thankful for the choice and availability of high quality alternatives, like Fedora.

[sanhozay]

Originally Posted by Dutchy

Somehow the physical install is different from the VM:
-Sticky edges do not work
-The option to change the launcher icon size from the control centre is completely missing
-The launcher doesn't seem to use compiz any more, i.e. I can't change any settings so the icons stupid backlit thing is always on making it hard to distinguish between running and not running programs hard.

Based on this description, your physical install is using Unity 2D, which is the fallback mode. Your VM sounds like it was the real deal, presumably because you have 3D-capable drivers installed on the host.

Search for "additional drivers" in the Dash and see if it offers a choice of a proprietary driver for your video card. That would enable the 3D acceleration needed for Unity, as opposed to Unity 2D.

[GrezH]

Originally Posted by sanhozay

Based on this description, your physical install is using Unity 2D, which is the fallback mode. Your VM sounds like it was the real deal, presumably because you have 3D-capable drivers installed on the host.

Search for "additional drivers" in the Dash and see if it offers a choice of a proprietary driver for your video card. That would enable the 3D acceleration needed for Unity, as opposed to Unity 2D.

+1

Looks like it to me as well

[JohnnyF]

I had Ubuntu installed on a laptop for a couple of years now...the move to Unity Desktop finished it for me...I am now a dedicated Fedora user and never happier...its so sleek compared with Ubuntu. I think Mark S has lost the plot somewhere

[Dutchy]

It looks like you guys are right!
It somehow doesn't "see" the Intel igp properly (probably some Nvidia optimus related bug).
The compiz problem makes sense since it's Gnome 3 under the hood which doesn't use that anymore if my mind serves me right.
I have found some tunables with dconf-editor but not the ones I was looking for.

Apart from that it has become mighty unstable both on bare metal as vm (lots of complaining about system errors (like abrt), not logging on, disappearing desktop (probably because of the periodic wallpaper changes)).
I also managed to degrade the only administrator account to a normal user account by just clicking around in the configuration centre (which rendered the install pretty much useless). ;p
To raise my rights again I was asked for the root password, which obviously wasn't set, but I was able to correct that with a simple drop to the root shell (talking about user friendliness).

So for me this one is far less stable and "polished" than the previous releases (apart from 11.04 which ran like crap) and knowing that this is an LTS that is due in a few days doesn't look very promising (at least for my install).

One thing I absolutely DO LOVE are the wallpapers!

[Dan]

One thing I absolutely DO LOVE are the wallpapers!

Agreed. There are some nice ones there.

[VernDog]

I have never had issue with Ubuntu. I didn't like Unity at first, but now prefer it over Gnome3 and Cinnamon.

The only issue I'm having at the moment is nvidia, not Ubuntu.

[Dutchy]

Status update at my Intel igp (i915 / i7-2630QM) problem:

Had some time today to look at the problem.
First I did an update but that didn't help, so I looked for if it detected my gpus:

lspci | grep -i vga

The intel and nvidia were shown so that was alright.
Then I went looking for installed packages and noticed that it had all sorts of things installed.
Nvidia-current and the whole shabam which is kind of strange because normally you'll need to enable that through the jockey helper program (from my previous experiences that was the case at least).
So after checking for proprietary drivers that were in use (none) I decided to look around at the internet a bit.

This page mentions some unity 3d check:

/usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p

Which gave me an error about Xlib: extension GLX missing on display.

A search brought up this page where the following commands are given:

sudo apt-get purge nvidia*
sudo apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg-video-intel libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri xserver-xorg-core
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

So I ran those and after a reboot I now have Unity 3D working which can be configured through compiz.
The Gnome configuration panel still says the graphical driver is unknown though.

Thanks Ubuntu for automatically installing the nvidia proprietary driver while it can't be used by default because of the dual GPU's (Nvidia Optimus).
So to me it looks like Ubuntu's user-friendliness isn't user-friendly at all!

[fedvasu]

Originally Posted by Dutchy

Then an updates notification caught my eye and here it comes: Ubuntu 12.04 (which isn't even released) offered me an update to the "Ubuntu" Kernel 3.2!
What? Fedora 16 is already on 3.3 and it was released way earlier.
This is why I love Fedora (this also might be because 3.3 finally has a good Realtek 8168 driver which does wake on lan).

To conclude: Go Fedora, Boo Ubuntu!

Ubuntu takes conservative approach with kernel releases , 3.2 is long term supported ,makes sense for LTS version of ubuntu, i get it that 12.04 even after being released is buggy and actually *gasp* hangs !! like window$ vista , but it's quite responsive in general , 12.04.01 should fix the remaining edges , currently using dual-boot config fedora 16 and Ubuntu 12.04 , as much as i love fedora , it has quite a few decent apps missing like Miro,linuxdc++ etc.

I don't like the fact that in fedora i have to update my kernel every week *phew*

apart from that fedora rocks yo!

---------- Post added at 01:34 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:33 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Dan

Agreed. There are some nice ones there.

Ubuntu 12.04 wallpapers FTW!!