Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

I stick with Debian because I get both. Stable for stability, Unstable for "release often" (like, daily)

What "giant mess up" would that be? The hysterical reaction of one 14 year old whose expectations were not properly addressed in a pre-release of (non-lts) ubuntu?

If only Ubuntu/Canonical treated its LTS any differently than it does the more frequent releases. It's just another release in the six-month cycle but with a longer support life. They still shoved a bunch of alpha-level bits on top.

I haven't used 10.10 to any great extent, but it would appear that 10.10's more mature "me menu" and Ubuntu One-related packages could very well make it more "stable" than 10.04. And 10.10's lack of Unity means it's a bit of a sweet spot at the moment for Ubuntu users wary of a new desktop shell that is only making its debut in the 11.04 release.

>I haven't used 10.10 to any great extent, but it would appear that 10.10's more mature "me menu" and Ubuntu One-related packages could very well make it more "stable" than 10.04. And 10.10's lack of Unity means it's a bit of a sweet spot at the moment for Ubuntu users wary of a new desktop shell that is only making its debut in the 11.04 release.

This is very true! 10.10 feels in many ways much more mature than 10.04. The only place where I use 10.04 is on my servers. The big differences have to do with greatly improved themes, and little tweaks that improve usability. Not to mention all the program updates.

I'd say something about Slackware being stable and all, but I run Slackware-current on my desktop and netbook. I do hear that the Slackware official releases are pretty reliable, though...

> ...but I run Slackware-current on my desktop and netbook.

Show-off. :)

Well I'm even more leet because I run Arch Linux on a couple of boxes, and Arch has unsigned repos! That's right, they lack the very basic security of package signing so you have no way of knowing if your packages have been tampered with! It doesn't get any more bleeding edge than that.

TC, I thought about Linux From Scratch once, does that count?

The HeliOS Project began the practice of installing nothing but LTS on our outgoing computers in 2008. That may change with Natty. To my way of thinking, implementing a sweeping desktop GUI change in a LTS isn't very smart. Let us that rely upon a rock-solid LTS do so and save the experimentation with the in-between releases.

Because many of our installs and respins are done by volunteers, we have used UCK to do our custom distros and to this point, UCK only works with Ubuntu releases. It looks like we'll be taking another look a Mint and finding a fairly painless way to add our educational games and apps to the HeliOS release. The good thing is that they are staying with a fairly recognizable Gnome desktop.

Can't say the same for some folks we know.

Of course it does, Bob. That is worth 0.5 geekcreds and a quatloo's worth of Cheez Whiz.

One thing Red Hat/Fedora does right is keep all the bleeding-edge features in Fedora while offering what is supposed to be a consistent, tested user experience in RHEL. (The only sticking point in this perfect world is the relative lack of packages in RHEL vs. Fedora and RHEL's lack of interest in non-business desktops.) And Fedora has a rolling release now, just like Debian with Sid and Slackware with -current.

It would be great if Ubuntu could get a lot more conservative with what it puts in its releases while offering a Ubuntu-current type of rolling release for people who crave the new, the untested, the half-broken, etc.

I don't want to single out Ubuntu here. While Unity could very well be a mess, I can't imaging GNOME Shell offering a fully formed user experience at this point, and that is what Fedora will be shipping in late May. At least they have nearly 2 months in which to polish it up a bit.

Quoting:Because many of our installs and respins are done by volunteers, we have used UCK to do our custom distros and to this point, UCK only works with Ubuntu releases. It looks like we'll be taking another look a Mint and finding a fairly painless way to add our educational games and apps to the HeliOS release. The good thing is that they are staying with a fairly recognizable Gnome desktop.

Pretty much what I have been doing since Ubuntu 9.10. One can simply purge the Unity packages, along with Ubuntu One as well.

But I'm really interested in the next Linux Mint due to Gnome 3, which unlike what people think, I'm excited since by the look of it will continue the consistent design with added visuals and functionalities.

And just a bit off topic, I read an article saying Windoze 8 will implement Ribbon interface, at least Ubuntu users won't have to deal with that.

TC: How many geek-points is compiling KDE-4.5.9999 (from svn!) and more recently 4.6.1 + KOffice 2.3.1 from scratch? And running FF4.2a1pre from nightly-trunk? Apart from a self-configured/compiled kernel my distro doesn't officialy support (TuxOnIce)? Nah, just boasting.

Bob: I think the ASM-patch owes you at least 1000 points!

Joking aside: If KDE didn't release 4.0 in the bad state it was back then, it probably wouldn't be where it was today. I guess the same might be true for NN/Unity: Sometimes you need to release alpha/ pre-beta-stuff to progress.

In other news ... decided to give Foresight a spin. And am rather liking it so far. .

Hans, that is many thousands of geekcreds. You win! :)

You know you might have your priorities wrong when this dialog happens:

"Honey, are you coming to bed?"

"Yes dear, just as soon as Open Office compiles..."

Geekcreds not accepted in that circumstance.

Trust me.

No problem, my girlfriend already ditched me two months ago, so I have some spare time left!

Is there a book, "The Joy of Compiling from Source"?

If you write it!

I knew that my brain had been permanently altered by geekiness when, at least 20 years ago, I saw a large display of Hires rootbeer in a grocery store -- and my first thought was "What is hi-res rootbeer?"