The Desktop Faces Of Ubuntu 11.04 Alpha 1

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The Desktop Faces Of Ubuntu 11.04 Alpha 1

Ubuntu 11.04 Alpha 1 is set to be released today and many of you have been wondering what Canonical's Unity desktop will look like in this forthcoming release codenamed Natty Narwhal. I, for one, have been quite interested based upon the terrible Unity experience in Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook, so I fired up the latest Ubuntu Natty daily LiveCD released this morning. Here are some screenshots of the new Ubuntu Unity desktop as it stands in Natty Alpha 1 along with screenshots of Natty's classic GNOME desktop.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=15520

[HokTar]

The "Applications" "Places" and "System" menus are fast and organised my stuff nicely. I loved it when I switched from the dark side.

Now I will be forced [1] to get back to that slow "Start" menu-like [2] interface? Great.


[1] Running gnome2 for the rest of my life is not really an option.
[2] Mint has something like that, KDE is the same, Gnome-Shell and Unity again will be using a global button for these.

[aaaantoine]

I could get used to this quickly. It's a lot like my current desktop layout (KDE vertical panel w/ SmoothTasks).

I wonder how multi-monitor support is, though.

[MiUNX]

That is so ugly. They better improve it considerably. Not that I use ubuntu, but just saying...

[BlackStar]

I could get used to this quickly. It's a lot like my current desktop layout (KDE vertical panel w/ SmoothTasks).

+++

I use the same layout on Gnome (vertical AWN panel) and it's excellent.

Has anyone managed to get 3d hardware acceleration when running Natty on VirtualBox? I'm getting a drmOpen() error in Xorg.0.log that I can't seem to solve.

[BlackStar]

That is so ugly. They better improve it considerably. Not that I use ubuntu, but just saying...

I agree with that. Canonical's designers seem to have strange tastes in colors and layout. The default theme feels too heavy and has strange, ugly inconsistencies (especially jarring is the contrast between the menu bar and the scrollbars, as well as the title bar and gnome-panel).

[cliff]

Whats with the Ridiculously large icons wasting all the screen space on the left?
Whats next a Huge ribbon bar on the right?
Your application will be postage sized in the middle.
Think I will stick with Gnome thanks.
Or Mint Debian.

[crazycheese]

Ive been using this vertical(but to the right, not left) bar config for two years already. XFCE, GNOME, KDE4. You just drag the panel there and do a little widget tuning. Most problem comes in gnome, with its time/date widget, that always wants to place the text perpendicularly.

But thats 8 minute setup. And its not special.


Ubuntu.. we polish the buttons!

[madjr]

still not looking as nice old unity, but is getting there.

hope this one works with my old ati with the open drivers, because the old one didnt

once it becomes themable, similar to awn or dockbarx it will rock

[johnH]

The screen-shots don't impress me. I have my top panel repositioned to the left side and my bottom panel repositioned to the left side, which gives me screen top-to-bottom for use. I do this with all my wide screen monitors, netbook, and laptop. I don't see why there is both a top panel and a bunch of LARGE icons on the right side which takes up more screen space than my 40 pixel wide panel. I have it all in my panel. Maybe Unity operates quicker, but I haven't seen it in action, just the screen-shots in the Phoronix article above.

Where are the "Application", "Places", and "System" menus? I like having them around.

What is Ubuntu trying to accomplish with this setup?