what you think of ubuntu 12.04

Discussion in 'all things UNIX' started by mack_guy911, Apr 28, 2012.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Hungry Man

    Hungry Man Registered Member

    Joined:
    May 11, 2011
    Posts:
    9,146
    Is your Ubuntu with Wubi/ NTFS?

    Games with a lot of dynamically loaded textures will do much better on Ubuntu with EXT4 than Ubuntu with NTFS. Load times will also improve.
     
  2. moontan

    moontan Registered Member

    Joined:
    Sep 11, 2010
    Posts:
    3,931
    Location:
    Québec
    no, it; s the Standard ISO, running on ext4.

    no Wubi for me, ;)
     
  3. Snowden

    Snowden Registered Member

    Joined:
    May 2, 2012
    Posts:
    68
    I view 12.04 as bland... I'd never use it as my primary OS and I used Ubuntu for a decent while in the past. However, It's minimalistic schema works really well for me now. I set it up as a VM.

    Couldn't imagine actually doing regular work on this though.
     
  4. vasa1

    vasa1 Registered Member

    Joined:
    May 1, 2010
    Posts:
    4,417
    I'm now trying out Unity 2D just to see how "inferior" it is. So far:
    • The switcher we see with alt+tab is less glamorous.
    • The sizes of icons in the launcher are not configurable because there's no slider in Settings, Appearance, Behavior. But, someone, somewhere spent a weekend figuring out how to get the sizes down.
     
  5. pandorax

    pandorax Registered Member

    Joined:
    Feb 14, 2011
    Posts:
    386
    12.04 is not sluggish like 11.10, i like it. :thumb:

    But it doesn't remember window positions! :cautious:
     
  6. Kerodo

    Kerodo Registered Member

    Joined:
    Oct 5, 2004
    Posts:
    8,013
    That's typical in linux... In KDE you can tell it to remember window positions, but I don't think you can in Gnome or Unity..... not sure though.
     
  7. vasa1

    vasa1 Registered Member

    Joined:
    May 1, 2010
    Posts:
    4,417
    It does remember some positions and sizes. But there's method in the madness sometimes. Here I'm talking from memory but the first window defaults to top left, the next to top right, the third to bottom right or something like that. I haven't looked into it deeply because I just try to adjust (except when it comes to having an excess of #ffffff on the screen).
     
  8. Okay, now that I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 on my ex-laptop... I'm pretty impressed. They've done a good job.

    However, this release still suffers from the perpetual desktop distro problem: bad out-of-the-box performance. To be fair though, a lot of this is Linux defaults. To whit:

    - Swappiness is the default 60. With this, Unity starts swapping immediately after login on my computer! Not good. Setting a lower swappiness level (e.g. vm.swappiness=10) makes the system much more responsive.

    - XOrg with the Intel KMS driver defaults to using sync-to-vblank. Unfortunately, the Intel 945 is really underpowered for sync-to-vblank, resulting in a framerate of about 15 FPS and Unity 3D being spectacularly slow. Exporting vblank_mode=0 fixes this.

    With these adjustments, Unity 3D makes Windows XP look like a sloth. Without them, using it is like tiptoeing through molasses.

    My verdict: Ubuntu 12.04 = really good for desktops. Linux default settings = really bad for desktops. The sync-to-vblank setting should IMO be made manageable by a GUI at some point, but I think it's the swappiness that really needs to be taken care of; high swappiness can bring even powerful computers to their proverbial knees. I'd say it's time to take a leaf out of Zenwalk's book, and include a sysctl file to reduce swappiness in the desktop metapackage.
     
  9. Hungry Man

    Hungry Man Registered Member

    Joined:
    May 11, 2011
    Posts:
    9,146
    I have a pretty powerful computer so default settings have been working well.
     
  10. Whoah, hold that thought! Got a completely random Xorg crash on the laptop ("ddxSigGiveUp" in Xorg.0.log). That was under Openbox too, no compositing or OpenGL stuff at all. Seriously not cool!

    (And this, IMO, is why desktops should never ever depend on 3D stuff. Graphics drivers are trouble enough when they're provided by the hardware vendors. Granted, Windows 7 in my experience has been absurdly more stable with 3D stuff than Linux... But that might be because I haven't exercised it very much.)
     
  11. NGRhodes

    NGRhodes Registered Member

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2003
    Posts:
    2,381
    Location:
    West Yorkshire, UK
    Running well, but got a few glitches. The annoying one is xorg freezes sometimes when my laptop lids closes. Complete productivity killer - will have to go back to 11.10 until its fixed.

    Unity seems to run quicker and a bit more usable (full keyboard navigation of the dash is possible now).
     
  12. Hmm. Just recalled that nohz/highres can sometimes mess up Xorg, so I booted with noapic, nohz=off, and highres=off. No crashes... yet. Still pretty bummed about this glitchiness though.

    Edit: Okay, I think I have it down to the noapic option. I guess a kernel regression happened at some point.

    (Stuff like this, BTW, is why Linux will probably never make it big on the desktop. People want their OS to work out of the box so they can get work done. That Linux is in some ways superior, depending on the work you're doing, doesn't enter into it if it doesn't work OotB.)
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 12, 2012
  13. NormanF

    NormanF Registered Member

    Joined:
    Feb 20, 2009
    Posts:
    2,872
    Its stable. WORST feature is the Apport crash reporter. Seemed like a good idea but the constant pop ups detect nothing and ruin a pleasant Ubuntu experience. I disabled it and now its fine!
     
  14. NormanF

    NormanF Registered Member

    Joined:
    Feb 20, 2009
    Posts:
    2,872
    I like Cinnamon. But Clement & Co should make a fallback version. Not all of us have high powered video cards to do justice to the 3D Cinnamon.
     
  15. ubuntu has indeed come a long way.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
    By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.