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Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal will ship with 2D version of Unity for older and weaker computers
Given the fact that one of the most common targets for Linux installations is on older, 'reclaimed' hardware, it would have been surprising if Ubuntu didn't ship with a 2D window manager. Canonical's Bill Filler also mentions that "many ARM platforms fall into this category," though we're not quite sure which ARM devices he has in mind. Most low-power devices are either netbooks or smartphones -- and netbooks are Atom x86, not ARM (at least for now), and a lot of smartphones have hardware acceleration via OpenGL ES (and who puts Ubuntu on a smartphone, anyway?)
Basically, this is great news for people that want to put Ubuntu 11.04 on old laptops, netbooks and desktops with awful integrated graphics -- or simply those that don't like the 3D version of Unity! It's also great news for those that virtualize their Ubuntu installations under VMWare or VirtualBox, both of which have a hard time with 3D acceleration.
[It seems, at the time of publishing, that Bill Filler's blog post has vanished. Maybe he was jumping the gun; or perhaps something else is afoot...]
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Comments
11
Subscribe to commentsAemonyJan 14th 2011 8:50AM
Is it just me or is Linux completely unable to seperate itself interface-wize from Windows and Mac? Canonical's changes over the past year seems to me like an identity crisis. Though I expected a more genuine outcome, not one simply combining Windows (superbar) and Mac (window buttons on left side, merged top bar) with their own twist (superbar on left, maximized windows merge even more with the top bar).
The only 'new' thing I see and like is the maximized choice window showing itself when clicking on the Ubuntu-logo at the top left corner, which actually looks interesting.
In a nutshell I'm actually looking forward to trying out Unity in 11.04, and the interface do look attractive and have the potential to be popular, but I'm a bit dissappointed that Linux never really manages to stand out from the crowd with the UI perspective in mind. The ONE thing it has which has continued to make it stand apart is default support for virtual desktops, though I wonder how many actually uses it.
lassiJan 14th 2011 9:30AM
@Aemony
well, why should it? if you want crazy linux desktop, you've always had the choice. actually, this looks 'crazy' to me, like sort of "fancily configured afterstep by default".
anyhow, they're trying to secure their way into mobile space for moolah. a lot of their concept study kind of stuff has been just for that. this ui mimicks a bit of some published/selling specialty tablets a bit too.
"yay we made a new taskbar" is basically the way operating system refreshes are done nowadays, sadly.
now: are there any new window helping tools? like snapping like in windows 7?
ProlornJan 14th 2011 3:31PM
@Aemony I must agree with Iassi, Ubuntu Unity already looks pretty distinctive to me. Going nuts with the interface doesn't make any sense, in ideal or practice. Ideally, the UI should be be useful and intuitive, and while some elements of the Mac and Windows styles are inertia, the aspects you point out are genuinely good designs, which Ubuntu would be foolish to pass up *just* because they originated elsewhere. And in practice, Ubuntu would not want to make it too hard for new users to switch, would it?
In any case, as I said before, Unity *does* already looks very distinctive.
SilverWaveJan 14th 2011 3:53PM
@Aemony
Yes its just you ;-)
SilverWaveJan 14th 2011 3:59PM
@Aemony
Being a little more serious I am not sure this is really that big a move tbh.
It looks as if I give up a bottom bar and use a bar on the left instead?
Well... OK...
For the search,(tracker?) to be useful it would have had to have progressed a huge amount from the last time I used it.
I was so disappointed with it I disabled the tracker services as it was not worth the overhead.
The overall "look" is interesting though...
JeffreyJan 14th 2011 4:47PM
@lassi
It's not a question of what they should do but what they said they were going to do. They said they wanted to have their own identity the same way Mac/OSX has it's own identity. Instead they just moved from coping off of a bunch of the Windows interface to coping Mac interface.
It's just that clearly all that stuff they said about having their own identity was gonads from the start.
motangJan 14th 2011 9:35AM
I don't know, the translucent menus makes me think it's not 2D screen shots.
ear0waxJan 14th 2011 11:49AM
I have ubuntu 10.10 booting on my N900, so yeah I put ubuntu on my smartphone. And there is ARM laptops.
SilverWaveJan 14th 2011 3:51PM
hmmm 10.04 is so nice I will probably skip this for a while :-)
This is from someone who clean installed the latest and greatest every 6 months previously...
odd.
ttyApr 5th 2011 4:54AM
Hi guys,
I upgraded from 10.10 to 11.04. After successfull install I restarded a laptop, but non of the shells appeared. Just desktop, icons and that's it. I'm a n00b in this area. Any thoughts? Thx!
Sebastian AnthonyApr 5th 2011 5:12AM
@tty Hey! I would suggest asking the same question on the Ubuntu support forums :)