Friday 29 April 2011
Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal Review
Welcome back Ubuntu Adventurers!
Today I’m going to be writing a quick review with some initial thoughts about the new release of Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal. I haven’t made any secret of the fact that I was pessimistic about the new Unity interface. I have to say, I was really REALLY wrong. This new interface is really intuitive and quick to pick up.
Ubuntu 11.04 Desktop
At first I found it difficult to find my way around the OS but after playing around for around 30 minutes and reading some online help such as the two sites I have referred to in my last couple of posts (links at the bottom of this post) it’s becoming natural, very quickly. There are 3 main features that I have found that make the OS really simple to use. The first of which is the use of the super key (windows key). If you press is you will be greeted with the new launcher menu (known as a lense). Start typing for what you need and shortly after the results are there for you.
Search results after hitting the super key
Another great idea, if you hold down the super key then the unity launcher gets numbers attached for quick launch. This is a great idea for shortcutting work - especially when multi tasking.
Unity Launcher - Numbered
The final thing I want to quickly show you guys is a great new Compiz feature that Windows has and I feel Ubuntu has been missing - snap in windows. Now, when you drag a window to the left or right it will fill half the screen to allow viewing of multiple windows with ease.
Compiz Snap-in Window
I could talk about Ubuntu 11.04 all night and the hundreds of features that the guys at Canonical have written in, but what would be the fun in that hey? Click the download link below, burn the ISO to a CD or USB drive and start playing…enjoy Ubuntu Adventurers!
Ubuntu Download
OMG! Ubuntu Natty Guide
Jorge’s Stompbox Natty Guide
Kev Quirk 02/05/2011, 13:01
Since writing this review I decided to put Natty on my netbook (atom 1.7GHz, 2GB RAM, 160GB HDD) and the machine really struggled. Running only the OS and Firefox, the CPU was at a constant 100% and around 40-50% RAM which massively effected performance - this was also the case using Unity 2D.
So beware guys. If your thinking of running natty on older hardware or a netbook, it will probably struggle. Since this i have reverted my netbook to use a largly customised version of Elementary OS which runs well.
Jing