ubuntu Ubuntu 12.04 thread -- Beta 2 released!

[Southern Patriot]

But these kind of changes make me wonder whether they actually test anything on real-world users, or just think "this is super-intuitive in my mind, so other people must find it awesome too".

If this wasn't a Ubuntu thread, I'd almost swear that comment could equally be applied to Windows 8 in many respects.

[ViperAFK]

This will be such a great release :)

[Growled Member]

Sounds like they win back some of the users they lost during the 11xx series.

[Syanide]

Beta 2 has been released!

This marks the last milestone before the release on April 26.

Read more about the changes since beta 1 here.

Download it here.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

^ your link doesn't work, here's the correct one http://www.webupd8.o...2-released.html

some great work going on with Ubuntu lately, the Unity interface has really come together

[Syanide]

^ your link doesn't work, here's the correct one http://www.webupd8.o...2-released.html

some great work going on with Ubuntu lately, the Unity interface has really come together

Thanks, edited. Also added download links.

[simplezz]

I'm a hardcore Arch Linux user but I can appreciate Ubuntu's ease of use and the fact that everything just works out of the box. I'll give this a try out tomorrow.

[ViperAFK]

I find it kind of absurd that they haven't listed this bug in the known issues on the beta download page:

https://bugs.launchp...ity/+bug/946663

Besides that everything is working quite well with beta 2.

I gave gnome-shell 3.4 a shot too since that landed, its a good improvement as well. I think I am starting to like unity more though.

[Syanide]

The improvements are really noticeable, but there's still much to work on. Dash (and Unity in general) is quite fast (especially when keyboard operated), but to reach an application via mouse still takes way too many clicks compared to the old menu system. The expanded applications list should really be the 'home' tab on dash, as clunky as it looks with all the icons, I've seen people having a hard time figuring out how to get to apps (once again, with a mouse). One of many remaining quirks, but hats off to them for all the other improvements, can't believe it's only been a years since Natty.

[.Neo]

They really need to get rid of that fat border around the launcher. Can't believe it's still there? :/

[butilikethecookie]

I like unity. It trys to well.....unify the Linux experience. On other distros it's kind of a cookie-cutter OS. Unity is very consistent.

Posted from Ubuntu 12.04 Beta (VMware)

[Thino]

Unity is starting to grow on me finally, I really didn't like it when I first used it.

Also it's loading Compiz really fast on logging in and Gnome 3.4 is quite nice

[Syanide]

New wallpaper(s) released (still haven't landed in Precise). I think I like these the best compared to the earlier versions, having orange really makes it look nicer. Having said that, it's still pretty meh.

Version with noise:

Version without noise:

[ZakO]

12.04 Final version releasing tomorrow! I've been running the betas as the primary OS on my laptop for the last 6 weeks, for the first time I've been impressed and stuck with it (even though there are a few applications I need which don't have suitable Linux alternatives, so unfortunately I needed to install Wine).

As long as there are no regressions in the final release I'll probably use it to replace OSX on my Rails development machine. Finally a Linux distribution where out of the box the fonts/font rendering doesn't look ****, I quite like unity too now you can resize/auto-hide the bar and use alt+tab / super+s / super+w for window switching.

Hopefully they don't go any further down the route of "we know best, not the users" when it comes to customisation though. I already had to fork the notify-osd part of unity to add basic configuration options (click-to-close, different timeout, etc.). Mark Shuttleworth said they're definitely not going to add configuration options, and won't accept any pull requests / patches adding this functionality, even though there have been many requests by users to add configuration options for notifications. It wouldn't be so bad if the unchangable defaults weren't so stupid, who needs a bubble-notification to show for 10 seconds with no option to reduce the time, and no way to manually close it?

[Growled Member]

12.04 final will probably be the only final I haven't downloaded and explored since 5.10. I'm honesty not into Linux much anymore. Most of the programs I need are in Windows these days and I hate emulation. I wish them well but Linux on the desktop is dead.

[.Neo]

I tend to agree. While Ubuntu as an OS made great advancements I'm finding it fairly shocking how low quality and feature lacking the platform's software is. I honestly wouldn't know how to get my work done.

[htcz]

Is this Beta 2 or RC? The final version is due 27-29 right?

[painejake]

Is this Beta 2 or RC? The final version is due 27-29 right?

Afaik final version should land today mate :)

[painejake]

I tend to agree. While Ubuntu as an OS made great advancements I'm finding it fairly shocking how low quality and feature lacking the platform's software is. I honestly wouldn't know how to get my work done.

Yeah I know what you mean, its finding the apps that's the main issue. With the Ubuntu Store they need to show most popular in a more elegant way so people can fins these different apps.

Is this Beta 2 or RC? The final version is due 27-29 right?

Afaik final version should land today mate :)

[ZakO]

12.04 final will probably be the only final I haven't downloaded and explored since 5.10. I'm honesty not into Linux much anymore. Most of the programs I need are in Windows these days and I hate emulation. I wish them well but Linux on the desktop is dead.

Slightly off-topic but from your previous posts I always thought you were a big fan of Linux on the desktop, is it just application compatibility or did something else change? (Unity? Mark Shuttleworths dislike of user customisation?)

I still prefer Windows and use it on my desktop for .NET development, Photoshop, and the numerous other applications which don't have suitable Linux alternatives, but I thought for the first time Linux was semi-decent as a desktop OS (I've been testing Ubuntu and other distributions since 6.04). The only reason I'm considering Ubuntu as the primary OS on my laptop is for Ruby / Rails development, tests which take ~15s on Windows take < 1s on OSX/Linux, while doing TDD and running tests hundreds of times a day this gives a significant time saving.

Is this Beta 2 or RC? The final version is due 27-29 right?

Final version is due later today (26th). https://wiki.ubuntu....chedule#line-42

[htcz]

Final version is due later today (26th). https://wiki.ubuntu....chedule#line-42

Ignore that. I thought this thread was new: I have B2 already installed :laugh:

Is that a upgrade path going from B2 to Final simple?

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Ignore that. I thought this thread was new: I have B2 already installed :laugh:

Is that a upgrade path going from B2 to Final simple?

The upgrade path is a simple

user@host $ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
[/CODE]

- this will install the latest packages and bring your system on the same level as the final release.

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Download link for the 12.04 final .isos:

http://mirrors.melbourne.co.uk/ubuntu-releases/12.04/

[CPressland]

Download link for the 12.04 final .isos:

http://mirrors.melbo...releases/12.04/

Legend!

[CPressland]

Just finished installing in a VM and installing VMWare Tools, much faster than previous versions of Unity.

Just a shame I have no use for the Desktop version of Ubuntu, I only require the Server version, and even then I'm moving most of my servers over to Arch linux.