Ubuntu 12.04 LTS - Scorecard
Summary: Well, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting an Ubuntu 12.04 review, with pictures, videos, step-by-step instructions and everything else imaginable.
Well, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting an Ubuntu 12.04 review, with pictures, videos, step-by-step instructions and everything else imaginable. So rather than write yet another, I am going to take a different approach - a quick result run-down and a few comments about installing it on the various computers around here. As I have a fairly wide variety of hardware, in both configuration and age, this should cover a lot of different situations, and perhaps offer hope and encouragement to those considering upgrading (or especially those considering installing for the first time), and consolation to those who might have tried and run into trouble.
I like to start with the good news, so I will lump a bunch of these together:
Fujitsu Lifebook S6510, HP Pavilion dm1-3105ez, Samsung N150 Plus, Asus Aspire One 522: All installed from scratch flawlessly, and everything works. Wireless networking using various cards from Intel, Broadcom and Atheros, graphic displays in resolutions from 1024x600 up to 1920x1280 (on an external monitor), using display controllers from Intel, ATI/AMD and nVidia, Bluetooth, and of course all the routine things like USB ports, SD/MMC memory card slot, HDMI and VGA monitor connections, and whatever other hardware those systems had. All very routine.
Then the not-so-good-but-not-terrible news:
Installing from Live USB memory stick is slow. I mean really, really slow. It takes ages to boot even as far as the "Install Ubuntu" / "Try Ubuntu" prompt, and then ages again after you choose one of those options before it is ready to work. The installation procedure is nearly identical to previous releases, but takes many times longer as well. I don't know what they have done to slow it down, but it is amazing, whatever it was.
Also, on the HP Pavilion dm1-3105ez the infernal Synaptic ClickPad doesn't work properly. To their credit, Ubuntu gets it closer than many other Linux distributions, because you can at least simulate a right-click with a two-finger tap, but that's about it. Click-and-drag is a nightmare, if you can get it to work at all, and of course two-finger scroll doesn't work at all.
The really bad news:
It absolutely refused to install on my Samsung NF310 netbook. This may very well be some sort of problem with the computer, but it is worth noting that I have recently installed Linux Mint Debian Edition 201204 on that system, and it was no problem at all. The problem seems to be something to do with reading the partition table, because it never comes up with the question about importing documents and settings from other operating systems, and while the installation processing actually does start, and seems to run through copying files, installing the system, configuring hardware and such, it always crashes when it gets to importing documents. It's not just the import that crashes, either, it must be crashing ubiquity (the Ubuntu installer) completely, because it is left without GRUB installed, so it won't boot.
I tried quite a few things in hopes of getting around this problem, to no avail. I even went so far as to delete all of the other Linux partitions, and the Extended Partition they had been installed in, so the system was left with nothing but the original Windows partitions, and it still crashed when I tried to install Ubuntu 12.04. So I finally gave up on that, and decided that system could be a good test unit for the upgrade procedure. I reloaded Ubuntu 11.10 on it (which loaded perfectly, by the way, so why won't 12.04 load?), and then went to the Update Software utility and selected the option to upgrade to 12.04. It gave me a pretty good explanation of what it was going to do and how long it would take, and that some packages from 11.10 would no longer be supported, some would be removed, some new packages would be installed, and a lot would be upgraded. It then downloaded over 1,300 packages, and set about performing the upgrade. It has been at that for about an hour now, and appears to be about halfway through. Not bad. If it completes successfully, I'll be impressed, and pleased.
Even more bad news:
On a brand new Samsung NP300E5A notebook (so new that I haven't even written about it here yet - stay tuned), with Windows 7, openSuSE and Linux Mint Debian already installed, when I installed Ubuntu 12.04 and told it to put GRUB in the root partition (not the MBR), it screwed up somehow and left the system unbootable. Not good. I was able to fix it without much trouble, and once I got over that it seems to work just fine, but that is a pretty big stumble.
Summary:
Once it is installed and running, it seems to be quite good. Be prepared to be patient while it is installing, because rather than the 10-15 minutes it takes to install most Linux distributions, it is more likely to take 30-45 minutes. But installation is a one-time operation (or should be in most cases), and once that is done the boot and operation speed seems quite normal. It is well known around here that I don't like Unity, and I don't see anything in this release that changes my feelings on that in any way. But that's just me, and there seem to be plenty of people who like Unity. Fine, choice is one of the major strengths of Linux. I wish them lots of success with this release - anything that hurts Microsoft is wonderful as far as I am concerned, and more power to them.
jw 29/4/2012
Update - shortly after I posted the above, the upgrade finished successfully on my NF310. It looks like everything is just fine, and it even kept the configuration for things like wireless networking across the upgrade. Less than 1.5 hours total time. I'm honestly quite impressed.
jw
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Talkback
(one of the bigger annoyances is that Firefox now won't let you right-click on bookmarks to bring up a menu of choices (like deleting the current bookmark). I only had that issue before with Opera, and never before for Firefox on any version of Linux. What's going on?)
Your long time installing experience is very surprising for me, because I've installed Ubuntu Precise on my laptop and desktop pc only from usb stick and it didn't take much time.
In short term, I am in love with Ubuntu's new look and speed, so microsoft windows 7 seems for me like an ancient dinosaur after Ubuntu Unity experience.
Peace!
Two days ago, I gave my wife one of my HP MiniNotes (4GB SSD, 512 MB Ram, 1.0GHz ViaC7-m), and wanted to give her an OS to which she would take kindly (she does not suffer fools gladly, particularly the ones who offer "...the latest, the greatest, the best cartoon-interface, the one which 'even your mum can use'").
I loaded Ubuntu 9.04. She loves it, as do I ( the introduction of 9.10 is what drove me to Linux MINT, after reading a blog of yours).
Total load time? 15 minutes, worst case.
Ain't progress wonderful?
Warmest regards...
The entire experience was smooth and fast. Not a hitch. Install was a breeze, and probably my favorite graphical installer ever. It was a Kingston Datatraveler, but I don't know much beyond that.
I will note that on one of my roomie's Toshiba Satellite laptops (some other old-old model I don't know), Ubuntu would hang at the logo splash screen when either attempting live boot or install. Hope we can resolve that soon, or maybe use something that's modern enough to be sane. Once installed, it's sexy, if not graphically as snappy as it could be on that intel integrated graphics hardware. I'll build something new soon.
Yes, it did take me a long time to install but this was mostly down to the absolutely appalling Internet performance I'm experiencing at the moment since I chose to update during installation. As an aside and particularly since I live in London, I wondering what effect the Olympics is having now and will have during the games.
I have two ISPs, both rated at 10Meg the freebie TalkTalk which now is just very very slow and Virgin cable which is faster but constantly stalls during downloads etc. I chose the slower connection as it is, at least, stable.
The one criticism I do have with Unity is that applications (ugh!) cannot be selected by type, e.g. Office, as in Gnome 3 and of course the drop down menus in Gnome 2. Searching through all the applications if you're not sure what you are looking for is most unsatisfactory.
Fortunately, the icon layout on the launcher bar has been improved and icons can be resized.
Slightly OT, but nonetheless... I did have a look into the likely effect on broadband during the Olympics, but no one seems to be in charge of communicating disruptions in a centralised way to businesses or consumers. Hence, your comment of what effect it is having already and what it will have is an important one!
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/networking/2012/04/20/businesses-left-in-dark-over-olympic-broadband-crunch-40155066/
Cheers,
Ben
Thanks to one and all for reading and commenting.
jw
I did read your earlier news item and was somewhat reminded of this:-
"Whose Job Is It?
This is a story about four people named Everyone, Someone, Anyone and No-one. There was an important job to be done and Everyone was expected to do it. Everyone was sure Someone would do it. Anyone could have done it, but No-one did it. Someone got angry about it because it was Everyone’s job. Everyone thought Anyone could do it, but No-one realised that Everyone wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everyone blamed Someone when No-one did what Anyone could have done.”
On the question of OTT, I was not exaggerating. I'm frequently (regularly) surfing and downloading at analogue speeds and have commented about this several times and, yes, Virgin cable was constantly stalling when downloading the 12.04LTS CD ISO. I have always put this poor experience down to the ISPs and the wider Internet being totally overwhelmed, hence my concern about what will happen with the considerable increase in demand in connection with Olympics.
Moley
I would do it, but my wife has banned me from upgrading the X-series from 11.10 until I've written up a paper.
D
Seems I had a big Oopsie moment. I didn't fully understand how it worked and wrote in haste. You have to deselect categories as well as select them. Still I think I don't really like the feature. If we have to have change from Gnome 2 then Gnome3 does it better and is, in my opinion, nearer to the computer paradigm.
Despite the improvements, I think I'm still with JW on this one, it's not for me just now.
I just installed MATE on Ubuntu 1204LTS. First impressions are very good. Better than the fall back mode.
If you really want Gnome Classic, that is actually a reduced mode of the Gnome 3 Shell, so you can install Gnome Shell, and then select "Gnome Classic" on the login screen. However, I find Gnome Classic to be a rather poor substitute for Gnome 2. Although it has some resemblance to the Gnome 2 desktop with top and bottom panels, the configurability and customization are very limited, it doesn't work the same way as Gnome 2 in a lot of areas, and I invariably ended up shaking my head and deciding that I would rather learn to use Gnome 3 Shell than to subject myself to Gnome Classic.
MATE, however, is a different story. Although I haven't tried it on Ubuntu (I can't even find it in the Ubuntu Software Center), I know that there are instructions on how to add the necessary repository and install it available on the net. I have used MATE quite a bit on other distributions, and I have found it to be very nice. As far as I am concerned, it is very difficult to distinguish MATE from Gnome 2 - it works the same way and it is configurable in the same way. If you are determined to use Ubuntu and not to use Unity or Gnome 3, then MATE is probably your best choice.
Hope this helps... Thanks for reading and commenting.
jw
http://tinyurl.com/cyn7vbh (ubuntuforums) - which looked promising. MATE also looks promising - I heard that it was initially a bit buggy, which is what put me off... Maybe someone will do a proper gnome-shell which runs on GTK3/gnome3 in the vein of gnome2?
@moley - to me gnomeshell and unity are in joint second place behind gnome2! I find gnomeshell irritating to use, particularly when using more than one desktop, or trying to quickly get to files and folders. Unity is no better with workspaces, but it does at least try some sort of OS method of getting to files and folders. I've nothing against the Unity paradigm of a dock on the left-hand side, and appreciate the concepts of the 'lenses' (potentially a powerful tool), and particularly the HUD. If they can improve the efficiency of the code and implementation, I see it as a desktop with potential. I don't even mind the menu bar in the title bar, being a previously long-time Amiga user!
At the moment, though, gnome2 is excellent. If I could add application search (i.e. the windows button, type, then press enter), HUD, snapping windows, then I'd be pretty happy.
jw
I installed Cinnamon this evening after reading your suggestion to duncanjmurray. So now I have lots of choices in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Perhaps there's a way forward now with all these choices and a five year support and upgrade cycle. The idea of a five years support cycle which also provides software upgrades is very appealing.