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Ubuntu 12.04: Still Alive, Still Kicking

Posted by Jonquil on · 23 comments
xjonquilx | Sabayon, Ubuntu, Fedora, Linux, Oh My!; By Jonquil McDaniel 		Mail this story
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On April 27, 2012 Ubuntu released its new operating system Ubuntu 12.04. Since then I have been playing around with it, and I’ve got to say that although I had my doubts about Unity it is turning out to be quite a nice desktop environment. So without further ado let’s take a look at what’s new in Ubuntu 12.04!

On April 27, 2012 Ubuntu released its new operating system Ubuntu 12.04. Since then I have been playing around with it, and I’ve got to say that although I had my doubts about Unity it is turning out to be quite a nice desktop environment. So without further ado let’s take a look at what’s new in Ubuntu 12.04!



As you can see nothing has really changed about Unity upfront. While Ubuntu has switched from using Banshee to using Rhythmbox and also has removed Tomboy and Gbrainy (making it Mono-free), everything else has pretty much remained the same in terms of appearance and applications. And no, Ubuntu hasn’t replaced Firefox with Chrome. I did that, LOL.

Something that IS very new to Ubuntu is the use of Lens. Lens is just a fancy word for the new application menu, which now is split in to five menus. The first menu lists recent apps, files, and downloads. The second menu lists recent apps, installed apps, and recommended apps for installation. The third menu lists recently accessed files, downloads, and home folders. The fourth menu lists music and the fifth menu lists videos. Additionally you have the same search bar you had in Ubuntu 11.10, only this time it is capable of searching not only files you’ve accessed but any file in your home folders.



The Software Center in Ubuntu 12.04 also now features books & magazines.



Here’s a feature in Ubuntu 12.04 I think other distributions would do well to copy: a Privacy menu. Now you can easily control what information gets saved & delete it on the fly.



Here’s an interesting feature I haven’t had the chance to play around with yet: a Landscape client. According to the information available on it it’s a web based tool for managing Ubuntu operating systems over a network. It’s not exactly something you’d use in the standard home setup but it’s nice to see Ubuntu is making life a little easier for system administrators.

The new Heads Up Display, or HUD, makes application commands a little easier by providing a search box in which you can type the command you’re looking for.



Additionally HUD is capable of issuing commands for Indicators.



Now it’s time for one of my absolute favorite features in Ubuntu 12.04. The desktop automatically changes color to match the color of your wallpaper. While I can see this getting on the nerves of people that like to customize their desktop manually, it’s a great time saver for those people that don’t like to bother too much with customization.

There’s just one thing that gets on my nerves in Ubuntu 12.04. While I haven’t pinpointed the source of the behavior yet, Ubuntu sometimes automatically moves a window to another workspace. This is annoying when I’m having to drag and drop images in to my posts. It means I have to stop what I’m doing to move the opened image back to the workspace I’m working on.

So far that’s all I’ve found that is noticeably new in Ubuntu 12.04. Have you found any new favorite features in Ubuntu 12.04 that weren’t discussed here? Tell me about them in the comments!

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Comments (23)

3 earlier comments in the full thread.

tracyanne ·
ditto caitlyn and Jeff
BernardSwiss ·
Well, apparently there is some good news:

They got rid of Tomboy

They got rid of Banshee

They got rid of Mono !!!!!!...1111



And I think switching to Rythmbox is good too (I thought they'd already done that, but I guess I must have done it myself. Perhaps Alzheimer's shadow is looming over my future...
mbaehrlxer ·
BernardSwiss: that's interesting. do you have some references?

greetings, eMBee.
tracyanne ·
Mono removed as a required dependency is good. That means the latest available stable version of Mono/MonoDevelop can be installed, and kept updated.
BernardSwiss ·
@mbaehrlxer:

-- from the article, 2nd paragraph.
flufferbeer ·
@paulhubert,

> Why is it we see so many articles telling us how great Unity is?

Maybe 'cause lots of people are promoting LUnity for all the mobile stuff that's come out recently? Even today, there was a big deal made between the notorious Macro$ucks and Barnes & Noble regarding the small device, the Crook (oh, I meant the Nook). For all those people who want nothing to do with LUnity on desktops, there are also a slew of articles how to replace this with desktops such as what Jeff91 & caitlyn suggest above.

2c
tracyanne ·
I DOn't like KUbuntu 12.04.

I've beenn testing it, and I can't find MonoDevelop. Every other Mono development tool is ther and installs, but I can't find MonoDevelop, it simply isn't available in the packages.

sudo apt-get install monodevelop

will not install it

kubuntu@kubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get install monodevelop Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done E: Unable to locate package monodevelop
tracyanne ·
Well that's strange. Just after i posted the above I installed Mono-Complete. Still no monoDevelop in the list of install files, but I typed monodevelop into the CLI, as expected the application failed to run and the message suggesting use

sudo apt-get install monodevelop

to install it once again appeared, so once again i typed the above, and this time, for no reson i can discover, it suddenly started installed monodevelop and all it's UI dependencies.

Now I have monodevelop.

So now I don't hate kubuntu 12.04
tracyanne ·
Saw this in the mono documentation.

Quoting:Mono currently only supports the X86, PowerPC, ARM, SPARC, S/390, AMD64 and IA64 architectures.


which is quite interesting as .NET only supports X86, ARM (maybe) and AMD64, provided the operating system is Windows.
tracyanne ·
Interesting the Muon Package Manger, still doesn't list monodevelop, even though it is now installed, which may mean the issue is muon.

And.....

Yes it is, I installed synaptic (it too does not show get listed by muon, so I installed it with sudo apt-get install synaptic. When I run synaptic all the missing packages get listed.
mbaehrlxer ·
BernardSwiss: oh, duh, for some reason i thought you were quoting another source. no idea why i didn't think to search the article itself for that...

greetings, eMBee.
BernardSwiss ·
@mbaehrlxer:

I've been known to be equally... ummm... discerning :-P on occasion, myself.
tracyanne ·
And tracyanne sits in a corner mumbling to herself.
tracyanne ·
I installed Kubuntu 12.04 today. It was a miserable failure.

Everything looked fine while running from the USB key. Simply it just worked, it looked sweet. So I installed it on the hardware, and rebooted. Neither my keyboard nor mouse were recognised, the drivers simply failed to load.
Khamul ·
@ta: Try the new Linux Mint KDE 12. I haven't tried it yet, but maybe that'll work better. It looks like the Mint people have more interest in supporting their KDE distro than the Ubuntu people have in supporting theirs.
DrGeoffrey ·
As long as we're plugging favorites, you might also want to consider Sabayon KDE. Once I installed from a Sabayon KDE usb and let it also re-install grub2, I've become fairly impressed with KDE.

Of course, why I would need all those bells and whistles escapes me. Particularly given that (1) XFCE works well with presentations on a separate display, and (2) early indications suggest KDE may be a bit of a power hog (battery life is important to me). But, I see no reason to expect these issues cannot be resolved. And once resolved, the choice (for me) between XFCE and KDE becomes strictly personal preference.
Khamul ·
paulhubert wrote:ALL I ever use a keyboard for is TEXT and an occasional Ctrl-A - Ctrl-C Ctrl-V NOTHING else. NO shortcuts. NO menus. This is what the MOUSE is for.


I think keyboard shortcuts are fine; they can speed things up for people who bother to learn them. However, requiring them, especially for basic operations such as turning off the PC, is extremely idiotic.
DrGeoffrey ·
A follow up.

I was a little put off at the prospect of Sabayon, being a Gentoo derivative. But, unlike Gentoo it does not require you to compile everything. Also, Sabayon is a rolling release that does NOT have a habit of breaking things (a clear difference from my experience with LMDE).

The result? Since adopted (September/October 2011) I've had just one minor issue (one update to LibreOffice was premature, resulting in an inability to access password protected files for a couple of weeks around Christmas). For this reason I recommend having a second distribution on your hard-drive. A fail-safe, if you will, that you can boot to if necessary.

So far I've only needed that fail-safe once. And holding this one issue aside, I've had Sabayon running for longer than a month (multiple times), with each interval characterized by daily multiple suspends, and at least one daily hibernate.

All in all, I like the Debian tree, a lot. But none of the Debian derivatives I've tried has matched Sabayon for stability.
tracyanne ·
Quoting:@ta: Try the new Linux Mint KDE 12. I haven't tried it yet, but maybe that'll work better.


I'm alteady using LM12, it's great. I wanted to try Kubuntu 12.04, as I intend to upgrade to LM13 as soon as it's available, and probably stay on it for the next 5 years.

Kubuntu 12.04 didn't instill a great deal of confidence, I hope Clement gets whatever issues is causing that fixed.
albinard ·
I really don't know why I've never come to agreeable terms with KDE, especially since my current favorite is Xubuntu with Compiz added (11.10 on one machine, 12.04 on another). I guess it appeals to me as a rather simple, straightforward working distro with a whole s**tload of eye candy.

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