The Canonical team has released Ubuntu 12.04 – a new long term support release. The biggest new feature is the HUD, an addition to the traditional application menu system, where you can search for the actions you want to perform instead of having to hunt for them in menus. Unity overall has been improved, and I must say that even though this new release is simply not at all ready for Asus ZenBooks, Unity runs perfectly well on it, and to my own shock and surprise, I’m slowly warming up to it. It’s starting to make sense, it looks nice (especially after some custom tweaking), has become a lot more configurable, and it’s really, really, really fast.
I hardly dare to post this question as no doubt some people will call me a moron:
Here goes, a retorical question: instead of forcing new behaviours on us, would it please be possible that sleep/hibernate issues be fixed ?
On a daily basis I switch my laptop between standalone and docked, between one screen and two screens; and each time I need a full reboot as sleep/hibernate simply hangs. This worked perfectly well on both my windows and mac laptops over the last decade…. but not on my linux laptop (at all).
of course, no doubt some people will tell me to write a patch myself…
I sincerely wish I could.
cynical ? nop, just what I experienced several times now
TomUK
ps: feel free to call me a moron; I just wish I could make better use of my Linux laptop
Which GPU and which drivers?
I know osnews isn’t a support forum but this is how I would troubleshoot it. Cold boot docked and save output of lsmod. Cold boot undocked and do the same. Compare the lists and the unload any extra modules in the docked list before you suspend (there’s a file you can add the modules to in /etc/pm.d iirc).
Thanks to the crap design of ACPI and even crappier implementation of some vendors, this will always be a pain for almost all non-Windows, non-Mac users.
What hardware and drivers are you using? Are you using proprietary drivers or in-kernel / open source drivers?
If this is a bug in FOSS drivers please file a bug to: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/
Thanks.
What I find sad is they claim Ubuntu is “Linux for humans” aka new users, yet when i pick my netbook, which is one of the more popular lines, which actually started out with Linux? what do i find immediately after the install page but this, the “fixes”
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EeePC/Fixes
Now does ANY of this look even a LITTLE noob friendly? this is one thing I can’t stress enough, if you want Linux to succeed then you can’t have pages of gobbledygook that a normal bog standard person, NOT a Linux admin or someone with Bash experience, is expected to accomplish by themselves! Either focus on drivers and stability or have a “Help me!” button so that someone that actually have skill and experience can take command and do this instead of expecting Suzy the checkout girl to suddenly become a fricking programmer!
As many complaints as i have with Windows this is ONE thing they get right. my 71 year old dad got impatient and decided to install Win 7 on his new machine all by himself. when i get there what do i find? A perfectly running machine, windows took care of all the drivers, no need to even insert any discs, it even pointed out he didn’t have an AV and popped up a page with several free ones and pay ones to choose from. the ONLY thing I had to do was show him how to install Firefox.
It really doesn’t matter how much cool stuff you put in if every device has to have a “fixes’ page and I’m sorry but the average user won’t care what the reason is, that’s just an excuse. All they will know is the computer is broken and you expect them to take a dozen levels in geek skillz to get it working. I ran nothing but Linux for 3 years, I still run it in a VM now, but in all honestly this kind of stuff just makes Linux look like a geek server OS. I mean this is supposed to be the EASY OS remember?
That page seem to reference mostly older versions so maybe this is already fixed? Progress happens sometimes, ya know.
This is my number one issue for running Windows 7 on my laptop in work (number two is that the corporate apps are all based around Exchange / Sharepoint but that isn’t so big an issue). I move between single/multiple screens and dock/undock and over the years this has never worked seamlessly on Linux (we only ever use Thinkpads). There are a few people in the office who run Linux natively but they tend to leave their laptops permanently docked and don’t take them to meetings. The rest of us run Windows natively and run Linux in VMs, otherwise there would be no end of trouble – on a few occasions when someone running Linux natively tried to present using a projector, they couldn’t get it to work properly and there was a lot of joking that they’d need to recompile the kernel to get it working
It was primarily sleep/hibernate issues that drove me back to Windows on my Thinkpad.
After a weekend spent struggling to get Linux working properly, with no solution in sight, it was quicker and easier to install XP to get a fully working system.
A shame, as I genuinely would prefer to be running Linux Mint on it.
Strange, I’ve never had problems with suspend/hibernate/resume on Linux.
My computers are: ThinkPad T510 and a bunch of desktops with ASUS motherboards (P5P41T-LE, etc).
I suggest you file bug reports to: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/ if you are still struggling with suspend/hibernate problems.
Also, ask/pressure your hardware manufacturers to contribute back fixes as well.
Edited 2012-04-27 16:59 UTC
thanks for all the supportive remarks – really appreciated. It was indeed a retorical question as the actual issue is already logged as a bug… except that no one is interested in fixing it (Lenovo business laptop) … and yes, I wish I could do it myself :/
Tom UK
Try upgrading your kernel to the latest 3.3.x.
A lot of ACPI patches went to Linux 3.3 and it fixed some ACPI issues I had with my Lenovo ThinkPad T510. I’ve seen also that some other users reported success with 3.3 and ACPI on their ThinkPad laptops.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA0NDE
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36132
Please upgrade your kernel to the latest 3.3.x, test your suspend/hibernate and report back your results.
The latest kernel on Ubuntu 12.04 is 3.2.0 and this version seems to have some issues with ACPI on ThinkPads. At least from my experience.
Linux 3.3.x fixed all this for me.
Edited 2012-04-27 22:49 UTC
Hi Dave,
please see my response to TomF below, I would recommend that you upgrade your kernel to the latest 3.3.x as a lot of ACPI patches went to 3.3.x.
Linux 3.3.x also fixed some ACPI issues I had with shutdown/reboot on my ThinkPad laptop, perhaps the latest kernel will fix things for you too.
It’s also recommended that you always try the latest kernel version before reporting issues.
If your problem persists with the latest kernel I recommend you take some time and report the issue to: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/
Please try suspend/hibernate with the latest kernel and report things back.
Thanks.
Edited 2012-04-27 23:10 UTC
Oh yes.
sleep/hibernate with Linux is a lottery game. If you are lucky, it works. Sometimes. With some specific distro release and the proper BIOS. Sigh…
To be fair:
I have occasional problems with my trusty old WinXP laptop. And even more with a 2010Q4 Macbook Pro. How Apple manages to screw up with just a handful of models to support is beyond me.
I’m fairly satisfied with Ubuntu now, even if Unite is still slow.
Use to be unity vexed me, now its just not my cup of tea. That’s 12.4, I can see myself using it if I don’t do splitscreen and if they can deliver the media experience they’re trying for. Multitasking is slightly more annoying than in Mint 12’s Gnome 3 but alt tab suffices well enough. Yeah, I might go for it on my little acer netbook.
Last I checked people were still having trouble with Amazon video and I couldn’t find a work around. If I can find a way of getting lib-hal working (or some other means) that would help immensely.
edit: that wasn’t a plea just a statement. I mean it would be nice if someone knew how but…
Edited 2012-04-26 21:18 UTC
I think it’s interesting speed was mentioned as a big selling point in the above blurb. On my machine Unity (even Unity 2D) crawls. Almost to the point of it being unusable.
While I think Unity does some good things, it’s too slow and memory hungry for my taste.
What are the processor/ram/gpu specs of your machine?
Dual-core 2GHz CPU, Intel onboard video card, 3GB of RAM. This same machine runs KDE4 without any problems, with or without desktop effects enabled.
Sounds odd,
I am running it on a 2.4 GHz laptop, with 4GB of RAM. Even with Chrome, a bunch of youtube videos running, and windows in all workspaces (lisp, pdf viewers, etc) it does not eat more than 2 GB of RAM or feels sluggish at all.
Unless the nivida board I am using makes *that* much of a difference.
I have a 1.3Ghz single-core with 758Mb RAM and a Intel GM card from the stone age that runs Unity just fine.
Either the developers are getting it right or I’m getting soft in my old age, but Unity seems considerably less awful (in a test VM at least) than the first time I tried it. I can’t put my finger on why though.
I’ve been “stuck” on 11.04 / gnome 2.x terrified of upgrading but this one might persuade me.
I don’t understand why you’re “stuck” on Ubuntu! Linux is about choice and there’s plenty of it available in the Linux world. My personal recommendation is to ditch Ubuntu, as many have, in favor of Linux Mint. Wait a few weeks for ‘Maya’, or Linux Mint 13 to make it’s debut. Trust me, it will get right everything Canonical gets wrong. Linux Mint supports the MATE desktop environment, which just updated to a very stable 1.2 release. MATE is a fork of Gnome 2.x that is very stable and can coexist peacefully with Gnome 3.x libraries. If you never want to be “stuck” again, then go a step further and choose Linux Mint Debian edition. I actually just switched back to Linux Mint after a 3.5 year stint with Sabayon. Since I prefer rolling distributions, Mint’s Debian Edition with MATE desktop is just what the doctor ordered. Of course all the other desktops are well represented too, including Mint’s innovative Cinnamon shell, which is a sane fork of Gnome 3.x. The Debian Edition is a rolling release which means it’s always up to date with the latest packages and programs. Unlike Ubuntu (and Mint’s own Ubuntu derived main edition) which is frozen for six months until the next release.
Yep, Ubuntu Studio 11.10 was the last straw before I jumped to Mint 12, I can’t be happier, it was literally an upgrade away. Mint 12 + Mate desktop = the way Desktop Linux should be, no shoehorning a tablet UI onto the desktop which seems to be the new fad for every OS…
Well, I guess he already chose Ubuntu.
Actually, GNOME fallback mode in de latest Ubuntu mostly works like GNOME 2.
Just wait for the reviews. There’ll be mixed up feelings about it. To me, Unity is a overall failure. I’ve moved to RHEL 6.2 and plan to stay with that for at least two to three years after this desktop mess along the lines of Unity and GNOME Hell is more settled.
Actually Unity and GNOME fallback in this Ubuntu release seem to make a lot more sense.
It is a LTS release after all.
No, actually the fallback mode is jerky. It’s becoming common place to indicate this mode for “possible unaware” users. However, I am far from dormant concerning the GNOME 3 Fall back mode. I tried Ubby LTS, and I had 2 crashes on me. Ubby 12.04 is, as the “Linux User” online review says: “Precisely what we feared”.
What impressed me was Kubuntu, seems to be departing from Canonical philosophies… they put a nicer splash screen and the only issues I’ve found are related to KDE itself (No, they haven’t got rid of that stupid moon when logging out).
Unity is much improved over what it was. I’m running with an NVidia driver and that’s pretty sweet. Still, I opted to apt-get xubuntu-desktop, add the elementaryos project’s PPA’s, and add plank, because there are still aspects of Unity that hard-code my keyboard layout in ways I don’t want.
Keyboard layout is the last thing I want to see changing. That’s hard-coded muscle memory. In fact, there ought to be a small unified keyboard service that all Linux desktops interface with, editing in a way similar to XFCE’s editable accelerators and kept consistent, because I just have to keep getting work done and I’m tired of changes to the desktop disrupting that. Fiddle with menus all you want, add docks and launchers – let the user control their keyboard, dammit! That’s a bigger investment than mouse menus.
http://www.kubuntu.org/news/12.04-release
I have been running the beta version of Kubuntu 12.04 LTS for a while now without any issues. This release features the recently released Calligra Office Suite version 2.4 (which is a fork of and upgrade to the older KOffice suite), and so it promises to be a very good release of Kubuntu, and I feel I can recommend it.
I was always a KDE and kubuntu fan, but the latest kubuntu releases were very unstable in my box, so I moved to xubuntu and I really like it. xfce is simple but elegant, powerful but non-memory hungry and it is conservative but modern at the same time.
Take a look at it too!
Tried upgrading from Ubuntu 10.04, but totally hosed the installation instead. GRUB was only displaying entries for the 10.04 kernels. Probably has to do with me upgrading from 9.04 to 9.10 to 10.04 and having several third-party repos.
Did a clean install (which is a lot faster, to boot) just now and finally got to try Unity. I kinda miss the application menu with all the neat categories, but I guess I’ll get used to it eventually.
I think you’ll grow fond of it.
I absolutely loved the Application / Places / System tri-menu of the old Ubuntus, to the point that I was really annoyed when I had to use Windows – but now I’m quite productive using Unity’s sidebar, and Windows is slightly less annoying.
I tried both Mint (Cinnamon) and OpenSUSE (KDE4) six months ago, but found I actually prefer Unity. It’s getting better each release.
I never upgrade major versions of *any* OS. A clean install is always worth the time IMHO.
Oops – 12.04 download just finished. It’s showtime…
Having suffered many kernel modesetting issues with ATI cards and Fedora, I was hoping that an Nvidia GT 520 wouldn’t have them with this Ubuntu 12.04 release.
Sadly, the installer is broken on that card – if you don’t choose “nomodeset” via f6, you get some CD/DVD thrashing and a blank screen with a flashing cursor for a couple of minutes and that’s it. Epic fail 🙁
I clicked on the “not ready for ZenBook” link, but it shows everything working OOTB, and only two things that need post-configuration to work *better* than OOTB.
I don’t understand how this equals “not ready”.