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post #31 of 104
4/9/12 at 12:46pm
Mint is still trying to figure out exactly which direction is going to work best for them, so they have a couple of different things going on.

They tried just writing extensions to Gnome Shell but that turned out to be a nightmare.

And they've trying MATE, but there are concerns with the long-term prospects of MATE. Like what happens to new apps that based on GTK3? Who, if anybody, is going to backport them to MATE? Odds are nobody will, so MATE is essentially a dead-end.

So now they're trying to write their own shell (cinnamon) on top of Gnome 3. This looks like it might give those of us that prefer a "classic desktop" about 98% of what we want. But if the underlying API's aren't stable, it'll turn out to be unsupportable too. The jerks over at the Gnome foundation could make Clem's job impossible if they want to. But so far, the prospects for cinnamon looks hopeful.

I suspect that if cinnamon fails, then Clem will look into what it would take to make XFCE a full-fledged Gnome2 clone. But I'd bet he waits until after XFCE switches to the GTK3 library. There's no point in wasting time working on the GTK2-based dead-end.
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post #32 of 104
4/10/12 at 7:39am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac The Knife View Post

Mint is still trying to figure out exactly which direction is going to work best for them, so they have a couple of different things going on.

They tried just writing extensions to Gnome Shell but that turned out to be a nightmare.

And they've trying MATE, but there are concerns with the long-term prospects of MATE. Like what happens to new apps that based on GTK3? Who, if anybody, is going to backport them to MATE? Odds are nobody will, so MATE is essentially a dead-end.

So now they're trying to write their own shell (cinnamon) on top of Gnome 3. This looks like it might give those of us that prefer a "classic desktop" about 98% of what we want. But if the underlying API's aren't stable, it'll turn out to be unsupportable too. The jerks over at the Gnome foundation could make Clem's job impossible if they want to. But so far, the prospects for cinnamon looks hopeful.

I suspect that if cinnamon fails, then Clem will look into what it would take to make XFCE a full-fledged Gnome2 clone. But I'd bet he waits until after XFCE switches to the GTK3 library. There's no point in wasting time working on the GTK2-based dead-end.

Good summary of the current state of Linux desktops and associated GUI API's.

We're going through a lot of change right now with the entire UI paradigm- all OS's are experiencing it. Whether it's Win8 and Metro, the iOS-ification of OSX, or Unity/Gnome3 Shell and associated touch UI methods.

Don't know why Canonical/Ubuntu has been singled out for so much criticism given this general trend.

Canonical (any distro, really) ends up being damned if they do, damned if they don't at this point:

If they just use Gnome 3, the drama queens bitch how they've taken away their beloved Gnome 2 (deprecated, dependent on obsolete GTK2, and was buggy anyways), or bitch how bad Gnome 3 Shell is (go whine to the Gnome Foundation, not the distro). Plus, simply using Gnome 3 is just doing what everyone else does. Aren't we tired of that? The days of a distro getting by with simply packaging upstream projects are numbered. A distro needs to contribute something more and differentiate itself.

If a distro decides to do their own thing (Ubuntu-Unity, Mint-Cinnamon), they risk getting bashed for being "non-standard", too different/ unfamiliar, and suffering bugs/instability for some time.

In the end, I believe Ubuntu and Mint realized that to have control of the end-user experience, you need to do it yourself. Relying on the whims of upstreams like the Gnome Foundation has demonstrated that it's not working, whether due to personalities, politics or individuals involved.

We're very fortunate in Linux/FOSS-land that most significant distros package several desktop alternatives for every major release- KDE, LXDE, XFCE, and maybe some others.

We're also fortunate that the major desktops like Gnome, KDE and XFCE all have different release schedules, so that when one goes through a huge change, we can bail to another more stable, mature desktop. A few years ago it was KDE4, and most of us went to Gnome2. Now with Gnome3, KDE 4.8 and XFCE 4.8 are there, as well as the up and coming MATE, Trinity and Mint-Cinnamon desktops.

Where do Win or OSX users go when their default UI is overhauled? (hopefully some Linux distro )

The transition to GTK3 is equally important for supporting basic touch hardware going forward:

https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnom.../msg00074.html

GTK+ 3.4.0 released

Quote:
* Add support for touch devices
- New device types GDK_SOURCE_TOUCHSCREEN and
GDK_SOURCE_TOUCHPAD for direct and indirect
touch devices
- New event GdkEventTouch and GDK_TOUCH_MASK
- New signal GtkWidget::touch-event

* Add support for smooth scrolling
- Scroll events can contain scroll deltas,
obtainable via gdk_event_get_scroll_deltas()
- Scroll direction for such events is GDK_SCROLL_SMOOTH
- To receive scroll events, widgets must now
set either GDK_SCROLL_MASK or GDK_SMOOTH_SCROLL_MASK

* GtkScrolledWindow will do kinetic scrolling
with touch devices

Preaching to the choir here, but sometimes it's good to be reminded and also for the benefit of Linux noobs.
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post #33 of 104
4/10/12 at 8:17am
Canonical and Ubuntu have only been singled out by the users and potential converts. Windows 8 isn't even out yet, but it is getting plenty of criticism. I know I have bitched about it and have no desire to use it. Finally, do we even need to go into Apple? Apple could serve up a pile of crap on a pretty plate and the fanboys would tell you it is better than the Last Supper. To hear Appleboys tell it, there is a night and day difference between UIs. Everytime I play with a Mac, I don't see this awesome user experience.

I agree with you on the choices. I even like that Ubuntu is trying Unity, Gnome is trying 3 and KDE went to 4. It means they are trying to innovate and come up with new ideas. Eventually they should surpass what MS and Apple are doing, because they try new stuff and throw it out there to see if it sticks. The other two have to try something and release it. If it doesn't work, they have to redo it in the next release which takes time (years in MS's case). The FOSS desktops are more nimble in this regard and can evolve more quickly.
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post #34 of 104
4/10/12 at 12:08pm
I've been playing with Mint via a virtual machine on my Mac the last few days. Linux seems to have come a long way since I used it last. I ran Linux exclusively (first Red Hat and later Mandrake) back in the late 90's to around 2004. Looks like its made some excellent progress since then.
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post #35 of 104
4/11/12 at 11:33am
Thread Starter 
Blue Systems to sponsor Kubuntu

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/it...u-1518345.html

Quote:


Developer Jonathan Riddell, who has worked on Kubuntu for the past seven years, has announced that Blue Systems will be the Kubuntu project's new sponsor from May with the start of the 12.10 development cycle. The news comes just two months after Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution, confirmed that it would no longer be funding the KDE derivative of Ubuntu and would be dropping paid support for future versions of the distribution.
Blue Systems has also partnered with and sponsored other KDE projects and distributions including Linux Mint and Netrunner. "With this new sponsorship we will have the independence to give the project new wings and take the excellent KDE Software to new audiences," said Riddell, who had been paid by Canonical for his work on Kubuntu.
Speaking to The H, Riddell confirmed that Blue Systems will be paying him to continue full time work on Kubuntu, and that they plan to set up an account to help the project to pay for sprints, promotional materials, its web servers and other expenses. He also said that they have yet to talk to Canonical about the Kubuntu/Ubuntu trademark rules, which could force the project to change its name. However, Riddell expects that there will be no problems with its use. Riddell's last day with Canonical will be on 11 May, the final day of this year's Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS).

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/0...than-canonical
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post #36 of 104
4/20/12 at 6:23pm
It looks like HP is getting in on the act.
http://www.extremetech.com/computing...oliant-servers
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post #37 of 104
4/26/12 at 11:27am
Thread Starter 
Quote:


"So how does Ubuntu Precise Pangolin (12.04) fare ? I will say exceptionally well. Unity is not the same ugly duckling it was made out to be. In Ubuntu 12.04, it has transformed into a beautiful swan. As Ubuntu 12.04 is a long term release, the Ubuntu team has pulled all stops to make sure the user experience is positive. Ubuntu 12.04 aka Precise Pangolin is definitely worthy of running on your machine."

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/0...-second-chance

http://www.aboutlinux.info/2012/04/ubuntu-review.html
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post #38 of 104
4/27/12 at 9:20am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ericglo View Post

It looks like HP is getting in on the act.
http://www.extremetech.com/computing...oliant-servers

Now if only they would let me get my hands on an HP laptop with Ubuntu! I'd love a 17-inch quad-core HP with a 1080p LED display (especially with Nvidia graphics) but all the ones they offer have audio hardware that doesn't work with Linux.
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post #39 of 104
4/27/12 at 9:38am
Quote:
Originally Posted by LexInVA View Post

Now if only they would let me get my hands on an HP laptop with Ubuntu! I'd love a 17-inch quad-core HP with a 1080p LED display (especially with Nvidia graphics) but all the ones they offer have audio hardware that doesn't work with Linux.

Make sure it also doesn't have the hybrid Intel/nVidia graphics. That is also not supported very well under Linux. I have a Samsung QX410, that I got specifically because it has nVidia graphics. But it has the "hybrid" graphics, and the nVidia Linux driver won't work properly.

Some laptops have the option to disable the hybrid graphics in the BIOS, but not this one.
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post #40 of 104
4/27/12 at 10:05am
Quote:
Originally Posted by waterhead View Post

Make sure it also doesn't have the hybrid Intel/nVidia graphics. That is also not supported very well under Linux. I have a Samsung QX410, that I got specifically because it has nVidia graphics. But it has the "hybrid" graphics, and the nVidia Linux driver won't work properly.

Some laptops have the option to disable the hybrid graphics in the BIOS, but not this one.

From what I know of HP, they owned up to the switchable graphics problem and allow you to select one or the other in the BIOS if need be, but I would just run the Nvidia graphics if they offered it cause it's a no-brainer. Unfortunately, HP only uses AMD GPUs right now and we all know how poopy their drivers seem to be on both Linux and Windows at this point in time.
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post #41 of 104
4/27/12 at 12:39pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by LexInVA View Post

... Unfortunately, HP only uses AMD GPUs right now and we all know how poopy their drivers seem to be on both Linux and Windows at this point in time.

If you don't care about openGL acceleration (mostly only impacts desktop effects since there's almost no native openGL games for Linux) and if you can live without hardware deinterlacing then the new generation AMD GPUs combined with the open source Radeon driver is serviceable.

And it has the advantage of playing nice with KMS. Unlike both the closed-source Nvidia and AMD drivers and especially the open-source Nouveau driver.

But, yeah, I've never had any luck getting the closed-source AMD drivers to handle video without massive amounts of tearing and other issues.
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post #42 of 104
4/27/12 at 10:09pm
I tried installing Kubuntu and it works fine with integrated Intel. For some reason, I can't get my Nvidia card to work. A search showed others are having issues. I will play with it some more tomorrow, but if it doesn't work then it hits the can.
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post #43 of 104
4/28/12 at 2:15pm
I got Nvidia working and I am not sure how. Of course, then I restarted the computer and now it isn't working.

I have been playing with Intel and I am almost ready to stick with integrated graphics. One of the biggest things I wanted was good dual monitor support. In Kubuntu, it has actually worked pretty good. I would prefer to have more resolution selections, but I think I can live with it.
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post #44 of 104
4/28/12 at 3:07pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ericglo View Post

I got Nvidia working and I am not sure how. Of course, then I restarted the computer and now it isn't working.

I have been playing with Intel and I am almost ready to stick with integrated graphics. One of the biggest things I wanted was good dual monitor support. In Kubuntu, it has actually worked pretty good. I would prefer to have more resolution selections, but I think I can live with it.

There is a problem or two with the just released Nvidia driver so don't use it. Go back one release and it should be able to get it running.
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post #45 of 104
4/28/12 at 3:29pm
you mean go back to 173.14.30
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post #46 of 104
4/28/12 at 7:03pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ericglo View Post

you mean go back to 173.14.30

I think he means the last version released, like 295.33.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_archive.html
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post #47 of 104
4/29/12 at 8:49am
Thanks WH, I haven't really paid attention to Nvidia drivers.

I just wiped the HD of K and will install regular 12.04 LTS.
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post #48 of 104
4/29/12 at 9:30am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ericglo View Post

Thanks WH, I haven't really paid attention to Nvidia drivers.

I just wiped the HD of K and will install regular 12.04 LTS.

If you want to install a driver other than the one Ubuntu offers, then you need to download it from nVidia. Here is a How-To on installing the downloaded driver. Note the step on updating the initramfs file:

http://www.overclock.net/a/install-n...tu-11-04-11-10
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post #49 of 104
4/29/12 at 11:04am
Thanks, I will keep that for reference.

I just installed regular Ubuntu and the Gnome Classic. I installed the Nvidia driver through Synaptic and everything seems to be working fine. I did try dual monitor with Intel and it seemed to work ok. My only problem is that it only gives 1280x720 as an option for my Sony CRT. IIRC Radeon did the same thing. Nvidia allows me to do 1080i. The Sony seems to handle 720, but I am going to stick with Nvidia for the time being. Also with the Intel, there was an issue with start up and both monitors plugged in.

Next up is to move everything over from this drive to 12.04 and then install Kubuntu on this drive.
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post #50 of 104
5/1/12 at 7:46pm
Got everything moved over. This LTS seems to install smoother with less issues than previous versions.

My install times are about 10 minutes. This was on my desktop and laptop. The laptop is dual boot, because I still use Windows it for work. I did have two issues. When using the partition manager, it didn't say which OS was which. I just stayed right down the middle. The second issue was the boot manager. I had to reinstall it. Now, it is working fine.
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post #51 of 104
5/3/12 at 9:03am
I upgraded my server on release day as well - zero issues. Assembled the raid devices, installed samba, sickbeard, sab, virt-manager and calibre and done. A total snore except that NFS is not running correctly. Between two 12.04 machines on GbE, performance is awful for writes. We're talking ~2MB/s writes vs 100MB/s reads. Performance starts strong and apparently some buffer fills and tanks. SMBFS will give me over 100 read/write and local IO are fine. Only thing I've found is turning on async or using UDP, neither of which are a solution (nor safe). Even changed my scheduler to deadline and tweaked IP settings. FWIW, I've had great results with deadline on my work servers, It's all I'll use now for IO machines. I never hated Unity so it's a non issue for me
-Trouble
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post #52 of 104
5/7/12 at 5:00am
Thread Starter 
http://www.howtogeek.com/112510/supe...es-to-install/

Quote:


The dash on Ubuntu's Unity desktop allows you to search for applications, files, music, and videos - but you're not just limited to these. Install custom lenses and scopes to extend the dash with more features.

Most additional lenses and scopes are currently found outside the official repositories. Unfortunately, many useful lenses, including the dictionary lens, books lens, and Tomboy notes lens, aren't yet available in PPAs for Ubuntu 12.04.
Using Lenses & Scopes

If you use Ubuntu's default Unity desktop, you're probably familiar with clicking the Dash icon and searching for applications. You can also click the icons at the bottom of the dash to search for files and folders, music, and video each of these different search panes is known as a lens.

Click the Filter results link within a lensto narrow your search. The options here depend on the lens for example, the video lens introduced in Ubuntu 12.04 allows you to specify the video websites you want to search. This should give you an idea of the power of lenses they can search both the web and your computer.

Scopes are search backends for the lenses. For example, the music lens has Rhythmbox and Banshee scopes, which allow it to search these two music applications. You could add a Spotify scope to search Spotify from the music lens.
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post #53 of 104
5/7/12 at 8:20am
Thread Starter 
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?is...120507#feature

Bottom line:

Quote:
I think that when we look at individual pieces of the Ubuntu experience we can certainly find things we'd like to improve. While I think Unity has grown to maturity, I found that its lack of flexibility bothered me. Likewise if we look at the Ubuntu One sync service and compare it to Dropbox we can see where One might come up short in features. The HUD panel and the lenses are good, though they could be polished further. Ubuntu's five years of free support are really quite good, but lose out in a one-on-one comparison with RHEL and its clones. However, if we take Canonical's latest Ubuntu release as a whole it's easy to see how putting together all of these pieces into one integrated product produces an overall experience head and shoulders above anything else in the Linux ecosystem.

The novice-oriented documentation, combined with hardware certification, combined with integrated One services, plus the music store, plus five years of support, plus Landscape, plus the HUD & lenses, the desktop and server editions, the over 38,000 packages with additional PPAs, the freedom to choose between sticking with FOSS software or installing restricted software and the price tag of $0.00 all adds up to a product virtually unparalleled in the Linux community. Granted there are projects which reshape or place their own layers on Ubuntu (Linux Mint comes readily to mind). Many of these flavours and derivatives are quite good, but I don't think I've seen any of them put together all the pieces as effectively as Ubuntu has with this release.
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post #54 of 104
5/11/12 at 6:13pm
FWIW, Mythbuntu seems to work fine (though I was running the 0.25 PPA on 11.10 before the 12.04 upgrade).
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post #55 of 104
5/16/12 at 4:49am
Thread Starter 
Hybryde Linux

For those who have issues with Gnome3 or Unity, here is a new Ubuntu compatible distro with all the significant desktops pre-installed, with the interesting ability to switch among them without loggin out-

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=hybryde

Quote:


Hybryde Linux is an Ubuntu-based distribution for the desktop. Its most unusual feature is an option to switch rapidly between multiple desktop environments and window manager without logging out - the list includes Enlightenment 17, GNOME 3 (GNOME Shell and GNOME 3 "Fallback" mode), KDE, LXDE, Openbox, Unity, Xfce and FVWM. This is achieved via a highly customisable Hy-menu, which also allows launching applications and configuring the system. All open applications are carried to any of the available desktops. The system offers an interesting way to work fluidly in a multi-desktop environment.

Quote:


Olivier Larrieu has announced the release of Hybryde Linux 1, a desktop Linux distribution with one unique feature - the ability to switch rapidly and fluidly between a number of desktop environments and window managers without logging out and without having to close open applications first. The list includes Enlightenment 17, GNOME Shell, GNOME 3 "Fallback" mode, KDE, LXDE, Openbox, Unity, Xfce and FVWM. The switching between desktops is achieved via a customisable Hy-menu which also allows launching applications and configuring the system. The project's website is in French and by default the distribution only supports the French language, but extra language packs can be installed from standard Ubuntu 12.04 repositories.

Haven't been able to connect to their site yet-

http://www.hybryde.org/

so can't tell if the current release is based on Ubuntu 12.04 or something earlier.
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post #56 of 104
5/16/12 at 4:44pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rgb View Post

Haven't been able to connect to their site yet-

http://www.hybryde.org/

so can't tell if the current release is based on Ubuntu 12.04 or something earlier.

I finally connected, and it's all in French.


LL
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post #57 of 104
5/16/12 at 6:09pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by waterhead View Post

I finally connected, and it's all in French.


Google translate-

http://translate.google.com/translat...e_evolution%2F

Quote:
Hybryde is a concept based on the Linux distribution Ubuntu.

Hybryde is a tool to discover, to use a multitude of desktop environments and without disconnection.

Kde, Gnome3, Unity, E17, XFCE, LXDE, and FVWM OPENBOX gathered on this distribution. To orchestrate the operation Hybryde, a home office with the Hy-menu have been specially studied. The Hy-menu, offers to switch from one environment to another so quickly and smoothly, without disconnection, open applications from the home office follow you throughout your experience multiple environments.

From version 12.04, you will be able to activate fonctionalitées as the setting of memory cache of your browser, choose to simply and quickly among your window manager metacity, compiz, kwin and mutter. And finally, customize your menu (themes, wallpapers, transparency ...).

We wish you a happy discovery.

It's based on Ubuntu 12.04 and uses the same app binaries/repos.

The version based on Ubuntu 11.10 is still available-

http://translate.google.com/translat...Fdownloads.php

This distro looks like it could be a nice alternative for those deciding which desktop to use. I think this is the first Ubuntu 12.04 derivative I've seen with Gnome3.

So, for the Unity haters, if you can't find one of these desktops to your liking-
Kde, Gnome3, Unity, E17, XFCE, LXDE, and FVWM/OPENBOX, plus Mate and CInnamon in Mint13

there's no hope for you
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post #58 of 104
5/16/12 at 6:20pm
Thread Starter 
Yet another Ubuntu 12.04 compatible option with two more desktop choices, MATE (pronounced "MAH-tay") and Cinnamon, both Gnome2 "clones":

Quote:
Clement Lefebvre has announced the availability of the release candidate for Linux Mint 13 - in MATE and Cinnamon flavours: "The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 13 RC 'Maya'. Available in two editions, Linux Mint 13 features the choice between a productive, stable and mature MATE 1.2 desktop and the brand new, modern-looking and exciting Cinnamon 1.4. These two desktops are among the best available, they're perfectly integrated within Linux Mint and represent great alternatives to GNOME 2 users. Linux Mint 13 is also an LTS (long-term support) release and it will be supported until April 2017." .

Downloads:

32bit

Mate
http://ftp.sh.cvut.cz/MIRRORS/linuxm...d-32bit-rc.iso

http://torrents.linuxmint.com/torren...rc.iso.torrent

Cinnamon
http://distrowatch.com/linuxmint.mir...d-32bit-rc.iso

http://torrents.linuxmint.com/torren...rc.iso.torrent

64bit

Mate
http://ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/linux/debian...d-64bit-rc.iso

http://torrents.linuxmint.com/torren...rc.iso.torrent

Cinnamon
http://distrowatch.com/mirror.switch...d-64bit-rc.iso

http://torrents.linuxmint.com/torren...rc.iso.torrent
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post #59 of 104
5/17/12 at 7:33am
Thread Starter 
http://www.unixmen.com/201204-top-th...ling-ubuntu-2/
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post #60 of 104
5/17/12 at 7:53am
Thread Starter 
How to install Burg boot loader in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise “Pangolin” and LinuxMint13

http://www.unixmen.com/how-to-install-burg-in-ubuntu/

http://code.google.com/p/burg/

Quote:


burg is a brand-new boot loader based on GRUB. It uses a new object format which allows it to be built in a wider range of OS, including Linux/Windows/OSX/Solaris/FreeBSD, etc. It also has a highly configurable menu system which works in both text and graphic mode.
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