Ubuntu 11.04 Released

If it really is that important for your OS to look like OSX why not try Macbuntu?

Macbuntu | Download Macbuntu software for free at SourceForge.net




Of course it really wouldn't take more than 10-15 mins to set up Ubuntu Maverick to look like this, but since it has been done for you....

 

Yeah, nobody's managed to make a distribution like that. Except they have, it's called Mint. It's way easier for a noob to get videos playing and mp3 players working with that than with windows.

Heck, you've got to install codecs just to play most modern .avi files on windows nowadays.

 

That's very snazzy! I like! I'm going to try it right now, I hope it doesn't break my setup.

Edit: Dear god that is too freakin cool! Thank you so much for the link! Repped.

 

Mint is what got me to love Linux. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by it all and Mint is right there to say don't worry everything is going to be all right LOL.

Mint in it's out of the box state can easily be sold at retail stores along side Windows and OS X.

 

Thanks again naticus for the link, I'm really loving macbuntu.

 

The reason why linux will never "get traction" is because apple will always run their os and windows offers incentives to oems to pre install it on systems. Not to mention that everyone is used to windows. I bet if most users took one day to use linux and see how well it works out of the box they would be fine with it even with a non dumbed down distro. Especially since most users surf/email/movies it would be an easy switch.

 

There's an interesting interview from a few days ago which I will quote part of here:

I can't link to the full text since it contains swears but it's from linuxfr.org article # 1230981 if you want to look it up yourself given that warning.

 

I've often wondered this, but I don't have a good answer.... but here it is:

Why do we care?

No, really, why do we care? We [Linux users] aren't a commercial organization, we don't receive any compensation based on marketshare. Our jobs (at least most of our jobs) aren't dependent on increasing or maintaining an install base.

So why do we care? Now don't get me wrong, I think Linux is neat. I've converted family members to using it, and introduced other enthusiasts to it. But why does it matter if we get as many users as possible? Does it matter?

I'd say no. I'd say we're best served not by radically altering (or even destroying) various technologies in an attempt to reach a market segment who don't care about what OS they run, but rather by ensuring that the community remains open, friendly, and happy to help those who themselves feel inclined to switch... just as we've done for the last two decades.

 

Can we have that last post of ThinkRob as a sticky in the Linux forum please?!
That's maybe the best spontaneous summary of LinW#7 I've ever read.

 

Nah that argument is entirely too logical. downvote from me.

Check out ubuntu bug #1, that's more like it.

 

I care about amount of Linux users simply because of demand for some applications. Myself as example - I can't get rid of Win$ form my work comp just because there are no Linux equivalents of applications that I use (Adobe Premiere/After Effect/Photoshop/Audition). Yes, you can say that there is Gimp etc. but it's FAAAR worse that Photoshop. Adobe released those apps for Mac - there was demand, so they did it for profit, but here we are - couple of geeks wanting the same on Linux. Adobe made it's products for Mac, which is BSD, so porting to Linux wouldn't be so hard... But, wait, hey, we are only couple of geeks, doing so wouldn't be profitable enought for Adobe...
Hope you get my point.

 

BTW. I completly disrespect Adobe.
They are lazy.
They don't respect Linux users.
Thier Flash is year by year more bloated.
There is no stable x64 Flash for Linux (srsly, 2011 and no x64 stable version..)
etc.

 

I'm afraid your assumption is rather inaccurate.

There are vast differences between Mac OS X and Linux, and porting Photoshop to Linux from the Mac OS X codebase would likely require a complete rewrite of the UI layer at a minimum. Last I checked, Photoshop was still a Carbon application, so Adobe wouldn't even be able to use GNUStep as a base for a port. Honestly, they'd probably be better off using winelib to port the Windows version. *That* actually would be relatively easy...

 

I'm not an adobe fan at all.

As for linux userbase I guess there is something to be said for the current setup. Right now seems to be the perfect balance where we have just enough users without getting enough to ruin the os. Linux as a whole suits me perfectly. But when a certain distro gets to popular ::cough ubuntu cough cough:: it becomes a monster. They try too hard to mimic a popular mainstream os and it becomes an uncomfortable system to use as mainstream os' are a one size fits all system.

 

Yeah, porting applications from OS X to Linux is impossible without a complete rewrite because of the GUI toolkits and WM bindings.

 

I've thought that they can use the core of applications they made for OSX, as it's BSD which is in some parts compatibile with Linux. Looks like I was wrong.

You are right, it was only assumption. I don't have any bigger knowledge about OSX nor BSD - never actually used any. I've based my guessing on fact that some applications are working 100% fine on both Linux and BSD, but OSX is not using X server which makes the whole case way much more complicated.

BTW. Wayland, we are waiting for your revolution...

 

OS X uses some BSD userland code and parts of the FreeBSD kernel (grafted atop Mach to form xnu), but at this point it's pretty different.

When people say that OS X and Linux are similar, they're usually referring to the fact that both are mostly POSIX-compliant UNIX-like operating systems. In that sense, yes, there are some similarities that prove useful to cross-platform software.

The problem lies in everything else. The UI layer is completely different, and aside from QT, there's really not much cross-platform support out there, so Adobe would have to roll its own if it wanted to share code. I'm not sure whether Adobe uses Core Image, Core Data, etc. but if they did then those would have to be ripped out or re-implemented atop GNUStep. Then there's the plugin architecture, etc.

OS X's UNIX-like heritage would help in terms of any basic POSIX functionality (file IO, for example), but would be rather irrelevant when it comes to the complex parts of the application (UI, plugins, etc.)

Now I'm sure Adobe *could* do it. Heck, they probably could release a winelib-based "port" of the Windows version with only a couple months of work... but without a market for it, I'm not holding my breath.

 

You learn new things everyday - thanks for this explanation

 

Yeah, complex Windows applications typically have a higher chance of working with Linux than complex Mac ones because of the excellent WINE project.

 

I can vouch for that.

Don't make me laugh. Besides basic stuff like office, I haven't been able to get any but one of my many games to work properly on wine. Unfortunately windows is still the best platform for (windows) games.

 

Applications != games.

 

Ok fine. You can run office and a small hand-full of applications.

 

Tried running it on my MacBook Pro 5,5 and it was of little use. :/

Ended up putting it on my old HP laptop and although I had to enable a highly experimental 3D Graphics driver, i'd say it was worth it.

Unity is a bit laggy on the PC though.

Just my two bits.

 

Yeah this is VERY sad and one of the many reasons why I cannot wait for adobe internet extensions to be not needed.

The only software I have not been able to run on WINE so far is empire earth and VS2008 (obviously). But then again thats what my VM is for.

 

More than just a small handful.

Take a look at Wine's AppDB some time...

 

Too bad switchable graphics and optimus will get linux drivers any time soon. that means no hdmi outs or playing fancy games on it.

 

I did. They listed a TON of the games I have as been playable or compatible, and not one worked for me.

 

Almost all versions of WINE suffer regressions. If the WineDB says it works with one version, there is no guarantee it will work with another.

That said, using WineDB's suggested version of WINE and any listed 'tricks', I have never encountered false information.

 

Have you tried Crossover?

 

Gaming on wine tends to work better on nvidia cards. I've had more trouble with ATI/fglrx. Intel is a different story, it's pretty much impossible to get decent 3D under wine unless you've got a sandy bridge iGPU.

 

I have starcraft 2 working on one of my ubuntu boxes without any mods. c2d e6850 with nvidia 7950GTX. Dont have any ati cards that will run anything worthwhile (best I have is a t400 with 3470)

 

Oh I see. Then that is my problem. T410 running arrandale graphics.

 

It might be quite difficult to get many of the demanding games to even work on that card, much less get a smooth, playable framerate.

 

They're all old games, mainly from the 90's to early 2000 or so.

 

Oh OK. They should probably work then.

 

I finally got a chance to check out 11.04 with unity. I still like simpleness of unity for a netbook environment but for a power user its pretty lacking.

 

As I said before, I honestly don't know why they didn't just stay with the netbook remixes for the touch interface, and vanilla gnome/kde for the others.
Some have said you can just "disable" it and use the classic interface. How do you go about doing that?

 

You have to log out and change your session setting. Screenshots here: How to Use Classic GNOME Session on Ubuntu 11.04 - Softpedia

 

Ah ha! I see. Thanks again.

 

Keep in mind, the "classic" interface is considered "deprecated" by the Ubuntu devs, and will be going away in the next release. IMHO, this means that you might want to start figuring out your migration path now, since 11.04 isn't going to be around for *that* long...

 

For 11.10 I guess you could get away with the Gnome 3 fallback mode.

 

That's nice of them. Why have "classic" at all then? Why not just dump unity on us now?

 

As a recent Ubuntu/Linux convert, my hope is that they keep improving Unity, giving users some more control over customization.

I don't really consider Gnome 3 a fallback option. I previewed it in the latest build of OpenSuse. I found that Ubuntu 11.04 had a noticeable edge in performance.

Of course, Gnome 3 could see improvements over time, bit it's got some ground to make up, IM(newb)O.

 

I was literally meaning 'forced fallback mode' in gnome 3 from the system settings->system info menu. It is a bit like gnome 2... worth checking out.

 

My suspicion (although I have no proof of this) is that even the developers know that Unity's nowhere near production-ready.

 

Ubuntu is IMO going the same way OSX did. They are trying to unificate (Unity?) everything into one, complete OS.

 

I hope they keep at and get popular.....not because I use it, but because it helps the rest of us with hardware driver availability.

 

They do. Mark Shuttleworth knows it. Ubuntu 11.04 is NOT an LTS release. You have to remember that. More so, Unity needs real world runs as the default so that they know where, and how to improve the platform. This is why Unity, as of now, doesn't have many customization options. They wanted to focus on getting the product out, and that lacked priority.

A lot of people in the community fail to realize that Long Term Support(LTS) releases are done for a reason - and it isn't just for servers. LTS releases have a strong focus on stability, while regular releases usually see the deployment of new technology(such as Wayland, Unity, etc.).


As for Ubuntu 11.10 having a Gnome 3 fallback mode - no, Ubuntu 11.10 will feature Unity 2D for machines that lack compositing support.

 

From everything I've read gnome 3 will be available in 11.10. So fallback should be an option, but have you heard otherwise?

I have tried unity-2d in a VM, wasn't bad.

 

Yeah, it will be available, but Unity 3D will be default with Unity 2D as fallback.