First off, you have to know that Ubuntu will no longer fit on a CD. You'll have to use a spare 1 GB flash drive lying around, or use a DVD. I opted to use the startup disc creator in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and use an existing USB drive that carried 12.04 LTS on it.
To boot the newly created drive, you have to reboot your machine, and access your machine's boot menu. Select the drive that you stuck 12.10 on, and boot off of it. Once done booting, you can select to try (run full distro off of the USB; Live Environment), or go ahead and install to a medium and reboot into it. For testing purposes, I choose to try Ubuntu. After a short pause, you are taken to the new Unity 3D only desktop, as Unity 2D was removed a while back.
The launcher icons are as followed:
- (Ubuntu Button)
- Install Ubuntu (does not show if you installed Ubuntu)
- Home Folder
- Firefox Web Browser
- LibreOffice Writer
- LibreOffice Calc (spreadsheets)
- LibreOffice Presentation (similar to PowerPoint)
- Ubuntu Software Center
- Ubuntu One
- Amazon
- Ubuntu One Music
- Settings
- Workspace Switcher
- Trash
Web Apps Integration
Unity
The new Unity desktop now can run on devices that couldn't support Unity because of actual performance or drivers issues due to a new software driver called LLVMpipe. It uses software based rendering, instead of hardware based rendering usually provided by the graphics card.
Now I purposefully ran Ubuntu on an old machine to test how well Canonical and the rest of the Ubuntu contributors pulled this off. While the interface was still laggy (expected as it can't naturally run Unity 3D; Compiz or something else crashes, and the graphics card is not all that good), it still ran faster then I thought it would. All of the fancy effects seemed to work just fine.
Opening the dash was, however, quite difficult. I really wish Canonical would improve the dash's open and closing sequence, because it still pauses on even the fastest machines. The dash on the slow machine took at least a second to open up, and typing into it was laggy. So apparently even though my old machine was upgraded to 2GB ram (which does help with software such as Google Chrome, which consumes a lot of ram), applications such as Unity still perform slowly and or laggy. If you were typing something, you have to wait for the cursor to actually catch up to your keyboard input. The spinning half circle animation was just as laggy. From this info, you can also deduce that HUD had similar issues.
The work space switcher did, however, perform with minimal to no lag. I can move windows between work spaces, and I can now close them since that feature has been added to Unity (I can't recall the name of it off of the top of my head).
Amazon
As stated in a previous post, Amazon is in Ubuntu 12.10. By default the Amazon icon is in the launcher, and it has an affiliate tag for Canonical to make money off of your purchases, to support the Ubuntu project. There is in fact settings to set whether you want your searches to be sent to online services (Amazon) or not.
About Ubuntu / Default Applications / Graphics Drivers
I took a screenshot of the About window while doing the review, so you can see that below.
- Web: Firefox
- Mail: Thunderbird Mail
- Calendar: gedit
- Music: Rhythmbox
- Video: Movie Player (Totem)
- Photos: Image viewer (eye of GNOME)
The nautilus program seems to perform a little bit faster from the one in 12.04, which is always preferred. The loading animation has also changed when there is a little yellow box at the bottom while it is loading files or searching. The back and forward buttons along the top are also different from what I remember. Overall, I think that the file browser is fine, and it is still retaining old features for now while Canonical decides exactly what they want to do. There is several articles on this, so I encourage you to search for them via the search box.
Now for some issues
While reviewing 12.10, I ran into a couple of issues. First off, 10 minutes into using the OS it completely locked up on me, and I had to force reboot using a handy Linux keyboard shortcut. I'll do an article on that later on (the keyboard shortcut). The lock up happened to me again in another session, but it took much longer. I was actually typing in some text into IRSSI (a terminal/command line based IRC client) when the the system suddenly locked up. The last line of text I was typing while I pressed enter did go though, but nothing else. The screen didn't respond the text being entered into the chat. Not sure if the freezes are because of a graphics issue, but once again I had to reboot via the keyboard short cut. After that reboot, I was basically done for right now. I got especially mad at this because I was busy composing this post while using Ubuntu. Most of the stuff I was doing was gone because I was also using LibreOffice to test it out (because it is a newer version, though nothing's really changed).
The second issue I was having was actually some elements shifting in the nautilus file manager. When hovering over certain sections of the program, as well as right clicking somewhere, some elements shift by 1-3 pixels. Not that much of a difference, but it is in fact noticeable. The forward button is also cut off when using the folder display tabs along the top to go back to a folder. If you need screenshots, I'll be happy to add some, but at the session, I did not think to take a snapshot of that.
The Wrap Up
Ubuntu 12.10 really did impress me. I already looked at features such as Unity previews, and it is in fact very nifty and useful. However, despite a good effort by llvmpipe, I WOULD NOT recommend running Unity on a older or less capable device such as a netbook. The interface can really lag, especially the dash as mentioned earlier. Some aspects performed ok, such as the works space switcher and the maximize/minimize window animation.
However, if you are running this on a more capable machine, you should be fine.
Hope you all enjoyed this review/in depth look of Ubuntu 12.10. I wish I could record video, but my computer is old and recording video would push the CPU beyond it's limits and will just slow the whole computer down. It'll be a while before I get a new machine, so that's all I say.
