Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin - Five years of excellence

The spring season begins; I've written a long, ethusiastic review of Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin 64-bit Long Term Support (LTS) edition, covering live CD usage, installation in a quadruple-boot configuration and post-install use, including Wireless, Bluetooth, Samba sharing, webcam, look & feel, menu changes, the Heads-Up Display (HUD), multimedia playback - Flash and MP3, applications, Ubuntu Software Center tweaks and polishes, updates, customization, privacy settings, stability, speed, responsiveness, suspend & resume, resource consumption, other changes and features, and more. Have fun.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/ubuntu-pangolin.html


Cheers,
Mrk

 

Re. HUD, I think it works better when within an app. If one is at the desktop, the dash (tap of the super key) may be more appropriate.

 

Mrkvonic very nice a balance review this one

and best part is stability and cpu quite

one more thing they actually added the fall back classic mode so i wonder if you review mate 1.2 VS fallback gnome classic VS cinnamon

or

mate 1.2 and gnome classic

which is better for old gnome user and why

according to expect like you

 

Nice review as usual, Mrk. I'm really quite surprised. One might think you actually "like" Ubuntu.... I like Ubuntu 12.04 as well, except I'm running Gnome Fallback along with cairo-dock.

Again, nice review.

Later...

Bob

 

Ubuntu 12.04 on a high-end laptop

Here's another review of Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin, this time on my high-end laptop with 64-bit CPU and Nvidia card, covering installation in a quadruple-boot configuration, user account import, graphics card issues, look & feel, visual integration, webcam, power consumption, system resources, performance, responsiveness, and more. This should be rather interesting.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/ubuntu-pangolin-high-end.html


Cheers,
Mrk

 

Dear Mrkvonic ,
Hi , could I second the request of mack_guy911 for your opinion on 'which is better for old gnome user and why' . I use a fairly modern but old style desktop under Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and only ever connect my smartphone to transfer photos and files through the USB , and I'm loathe to get into Unity unless I really should . What d'ye say , as an OAP I'd certainly value your opinion on this ?

 

I switched to Xubuntu for the desktop a few versions back. On my netbook, I'm using Lubuntu. Both have more "traditional" UIs than Gnome 3 or Unity. Xubuntu uses XFCE as a desktop environment and Lubuntu uses LXDE.

I feel Xubuntu is a bit more polished and has more features, but it also uses more resources. Lubuntu is definitely faster, and I'm thinking of using it on the desktop too. I tend to like a desktop that doesn't get in my way, and for that I'll sacrifice some eye candy and creature comforts.

I did run into a problem with Xubuntu 12.04 though... fonts in some apps like Firefox and Thunderbird didn't look good. Playing around with the aliasing and sub-pixel hinting settings didn't help.

I found that I had to fix a setting in ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xsettings.xml

It had this originally: <property name="Lcdfilter" type="string" value="lcdnone"/>

I changed it to: <property name="Lcdfilter" type="string" value="lcddefault"/>

That cured the problem.

 

Won't that depend on the monitor involved (LCD or not)? BTW, this is supposed to be a nice test page: http://spasche.net/files/lcdfiltering/. Came across it here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_Configuration

 

Yes, I should have mentioned that. It's been about 5 years since I've used a CRT monitor anywhere, so I just wasn't thinking of them.

Even at work we've switched over completely to LCD monitors, and we tend to hang onto stuff for a long time.

(The Arch docs are quite good. I find them very useful and I don't even run Arch.)

 

I wasn't thinking of CRT. More about LED.

 

LED displays like OLED do require sub-pixel hinting, but I don't know if the settings for LCD screens will also work for LED ones or not.

 

Well, while waiting for Mrk's opinion, why don't you just try out Live CDs of distros that are well known for being less demanding: Bodhi Linux or Lubuntu?