My rubbish Ubuntu Linux experience
Summary: After a severe buffeting in response to my tongue-in-cheek, winky-eyed ;) blog about how Ubuntu Linux is rubbish ("amateur", "user error", ow), I have learned from my errors. Suffice to say, I have had a rubbish Ubuntu Linux experience.
After a severe buffeting in response to my tongue-in-cheek, winky-eyed ;) blog about how Ubuntu Linux is rubbish ("amateur", "user error", ow), I have learned from my errors.
Suffice to say, I have had a rubbish Ubuntu Linux experience. It was good to find out how to fix the problem (which is why Ubuntu Linux and the internet are so brilliant, as someone always has the answer. But I don't think Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.10, with the much-vaunted Unity interface, is very good.
I say this for three reasons. Firstly, performance. On my rather old Acer Aspire One 110, it runs very slowly. Secondly, the launcher dock on the left hand side makes ordinary web pages scroll horizontally. Thirdly, there is no obvious and apparent way to customise these things (ie get rid of the launcher, add a Main Menu, edit the applets).
I admit, I am impatient. After waiting 7 hours for the upgrade, I gave UNE 10.10 about 40 minutes of noodling and frustration. But I think that's fair, and who knows, I may well return to the interface humbled, with my tail between my legs.
For now though, I have now installed Xubuntu 10.10, and will customise to optimise!
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Talkback
As I have also said, I think UNE 10.10 is a step forward in some ways, a step backward in others, and in either case it is only a preliminary step. There is obviously a lot of work to be done on it. It seems to me that the large icons down the left side of the screen are perfect candidates for touch-screen activation, which I suppose is a good thing. But like you, I would really like to have the possibility to customize the whole interface. Maye in the next release...
I can't use it on my HP Mini-Notes, it won't even load on them - it just gives me an error and then offers to load the standard Ubuntu distribution. I have UNE loaded on the Samsung N150 Plus, and it actually works pretty well on it. I'm not sure I'll invest the time to give it a real good test, though, first because I keep finding myself stuck in various places, wondering what to do next, where something has gone, how to close a window (or otherwise make it go away, minimize, unmaximize or whatever), or otherwise befuddled; second, because something else has caught my interest - KDE Netbook. I have written about it once already, and will likely do so again soon.
Anyway, keep up the good writing - and when you get frustrated enough to write something inflammatory, don't forget to put on your fire-proof knickers first.
jw
I think I may sound churlish when criticising UNE, and I really do appreciate all the work that has gone into Ubuntu generally and UNE in particular. However, until now I had never installed a version of ubuntu that was *a step backward*, which IMHO UNE 10.10 is. Wouldn't it have been better to keep it as beta? I do wish the team all the best and I'm sorry my criticism has been construed as negative.
@jw: "because something else has caught my interest - KDE Netbook."
Exactly the problem. If Ubuntu ships a release that doesn't quite work, then isn't there the danger that it will lose all the goodwill shown toward it's line of netbook specific OSes?
Looking forward to hearing more about KDE Netbook, and I've invested in some flame-proof pants ;)
@marvin: "Let's hope that Unity will mature quickly over the next few releases ... it has promise."
Absolutely, I really hope it evolves well and quickly.
@GreyGeek: you just have to look at pretty much any blog entry I've written and it may come across that I'm actually _in the pay_ of Canonical, and that I've sold my soul to Ubuntu. So I thought, carelessly, a flippant title would be out of the ordinary and would buck the trend. I didn't really think about the global nature of the web. Doh.