Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal), Reviewed In Depth
Table of contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Installation Walkthrough
- 3. Ubuntu 11.04 Overview
- 4. Duelling Desktops
- 5. The Panel
- 6. Dash
- 7. The Launcher
- 8. uTouch
- 9. Keyboard/Mouse Shortcuts
Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) has arrived, and we have the scoop on everything you need to know about Canonical's latest Linux, along with the usual review and benchmarks. Is this the change we've been waiting for, or is the Natty Narwhal a fail whale?
A couple of weeks ago, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, launched Ubuntu 11.04 'Natty Narwhal', one of the most highly anticipated and controversial desktop Linux distributions ever introduced. What makes Natty a landmark release is the inclusion of the brand new Canonical-developed Unity user interface. Unity replaces the GNOME 2 shell that served as Ubuntu's default UI since the distribution's inception.
The timing of Canonical's decision polarized both the Ubuntu and GNOME communities, as the GNOME project also recently finalized GNOME 3. Ubuntu 11.04 was originally slated to use GNOME 3, along with the new GNOME 3 shell, as its default GUI. The GNOME 3 shell is no less a drastic departure from GNOME 2 than Unity, and popular opinion is split in all directions.
As the most widely-used desktop Linux distribution, Ubuntu was a major driving force behind GNOME's adoption. Linux Mint is the second most popular desktop distribution, and an Ubuntu derivative. Mint will use GNOME 3 in upcoming releases, but without the GNOME 3 shell. Whether you're a fan of Unity or GNOME 3, one thing was always certain: Ubuntu was destined to change in a big way this spring.
But enough with GNOME and the political back-story; we have a whole lot of Ubuntu 11.04 to cover. This is such an atypical release that the question “What is Natty Narwhal?” cannot be answered simply.
Let's start with the meaning of Natty. Here in the States, Natty is short for Anheuser-Busch's bottom-shelf line of “Natural” beers. If you were ever a struggling student, there's a good chance you subsisted at one point on ramen and Natty Ice. Consequently, it has also come to mean cheap, trashy, or sub-par. How's that for a rough start?
And for that matter, what is a narwhal? I mean, look at that thing.
Apparently, Canonical's name for this release gets worse. The word narwhal dates back to Norse seafarers who explored the Arctic waters where this horned beast lives. Narwhal quite literally means “corpse whale” because its skin resembles a water-logged corpse. Oof. Ubuntu 11.04: Cheap, Drunk, Dead, and Bloated.
Let's hope not!
We typically bring you an Ubuntu: Benchmarked and Reviewed article every April and October, but since Unity introduces such tremendous change to Ubuntu, there's a ton of new stuff to go over. Thus, we decided to include a full-on guide to the new OS. We have an installation walkthrough, a roundup of changes to the software, a spotlight on the graphical redesigns, a Unity tour, uTouch testing, keyboard/mouse shortcuts, and even a few essential tips to get you up and running in Ubuntu 11.04.
And of course we still benchmarked the new version of Ubuntu. However, this time there is a twist. Instead of testing Natty Narwhal against its predecessor (Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat) and the latest LTS (Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx), we replaced Maverick with Natty. That's right; since Unity is the big deal in this release, we benchmarked Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal with Unity versus Natty Narwhal with the GNOME 2 shell, now referred to as the 'Classic' interface. We took this route to see if the new GUI has any performance implications. Ubuntu 10.04 LTS is still a part of our data to provide a comparison to the latest Long Term Support release.
Before we get into the numbers, let's kick this off with an installation walkthrough of Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal.
- ubuntu ,
- 11.04 ,
- natty-narwhal
I've tried Ubuntu 11.04 for a while, but I didn't like it.
For starters, there are the Unity drawbacks already mentioned in the review (although they seem to annoy me more than they did the writer of this very nice review).
Then there is the hideous brown and orange colour scheme introduced a few versions ago. Okay, using the cream coloured alternative theme works, but it's not exactly pretty either.
As for user friendliness, it deserves good marks. However, prettier and easier to use distro's exist, notably Linux Mint.
Last but not least, everything about Ubuntu screams 'wannabe Mac OS X', but it doesn't work that way. Why would you want to imitate Mac when Linux is so much better? Gnome is every bit as pretty and usable as Mac, but it's different. And that's good.
I would recommend Mint to new Linux users, Fedora for intermediate users (at least, when GNOME 3.0 learns to play nice with proprietary AMD drivers) and Arch Linux for advanced users.
But I do have to give Ubuntu credit for one thing: they send volunteers to a vast number of high schools in my region, where they give lectures to teachers and interested pupils about Linux. Made me feel less of a preacher in the desert
I can get narwhal at my local Indian restaurant. Hmmm narwhal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykwqXuMPsoc
Nuff said.
I can get narwhal at my local Indian restaurant. Hmmm narwhal.
You don't. Narwhals only live in the Arctic and aren't commercially hunted anymore. Some inuit can hunt a few of them for subsistence hunting, but you won't find narwhal in your local restaurant.
Great review! Thankfully no bias.
Abit late considering 11.04 came out almost 2 months ago. Nice in depth review though. But overall I don't like unity, even Windows have learnt if its working and liked why change it? Hence the Windows taskbar and start menu has been pretty much the same since Windows 95. Gnome 2 was great, then Gnome decided to "increase your workload" by Gnome Shell and sorry it just doesn't work. No minimizing or maximising is just shit. Okay since this is about Ubuntu, I'll get back ontrack with Unity. Unity lacks polish and feels unfinished, the panel is static and cannot be customized. The hiding launcher bar is annoying and doesn't work well to keep it showing on 4.3 resolution screens. As if its static, you lose horizontal screen space hence you need to side scroll on the web. The file menus moved into the panels is a shit idea. I mean why is all this being implemented when its for use with desktops, its almost as if it was created for mini screens when the majority PC users run 15" or higher. Please Ubuntu Team and Gnome team, re-think you strategies or alot of potential users would switch to KDE, LXDE or XFCE.
In regards to LibreOffice not having a global menubar, there's a package in the official repositories that offers this functionality. It's just not installed by default.
Now, I must first say that I always hated Ubuntu and haven't used it since version 6.10. I had been using Fedora and openSUSE up until I tried Natty. This newer version won me over and so far it has been great. I can't understand why there are so many complaints about Unity. Most problems I have are related to the launcher popping up whenever something is dragged, but other than that it actually allows me to work faster. The fact that I can just type to look for stuff is wonderful. So much faster than going from menu to sub-menu to sub-menu...
The fact the I can use the same interface on both my netbook and my desktop is also a plus and works really well whatever the resolution. This thing does wonders on small screens!
Why would you want to imitate Mac when Linux is so much better? Gnome is every bit as pretty and usable as Mac, but it's different. And that's good.I would recommend Mint to new Linux users, Fedora for intermediate users (at least, when GNOME 3.0 learns to play nice with proprietary AMD drivers) and Arch Linux for advanced users.
Couldn't have said it better myself. I was interested to try unity but a few minutes with a live spin have confirmed my worst fears - it is ugly, inflexible and screams mac-envy.