My OperaUbuntu 9.04 Alpha 5 Hands On.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009 4:18:02 AM
I've been playing, experimenting and testing with Jaunty since alpha 4 and I have to tell you, this is what the Ubuntu project needed! It's a dream come true for me. My extreme anti Linux Laptop, an Acer Aspire 5050-5410 boots automatically! Without having to type "exit" in the busybox screen of death. But that doesn't mean it boots fast. I hangs for a while in "starting up..." after like 30 to 45 seconds the uSplash appears and then the system boots.
Compiz works out of the box, Wifi is supposed to work but I haven't tested it yet, but it already includes the drivers, so it has to work. The only problem I faced in Alpha 4 was that the touch pad didn't work, but I plugged my USB mouse and downloaded the Synaptics driver and it works like a charm.
I've upgraded to Alpha 5 and everything is heading the right direction and it's getting super stable. At least on the laptop Alpha 5 is stable as a rock. I hope Jaunty works with the laptop when it releases, because Intrepid Beta worked, but the final release gave me all the Busybox headaches and never worked as expected (they should have called it Intrepid Slowpoke).
Now to the other machine, a Gateway GT 5676, AMD Phenom Quad Core, SATA HDDs, ATI Radeon HD3200 graphics 4 Gigs of RAM.
Intrepid Gave more problems than any other Ubuntu version. It was slow, I couldn't browse the Internet while listening to music because the prossesor would get to 100% in a matter of miliseconds and then to 10-15% (which is the normal percentage) and that kind of hanged the system, the music skipped, videos skipped as well, if I was scrolling a page it skipped too, you get the picture... it was hell!!! Oh did I mention that I had to turn off Compiz in order to watch videos on my HDD and some formats on the net? If I didn't turn off Compiz the video screen would flicker. I searched the forums and discovered the Gstreamer Properties, then all Hell broke loose, and it got worse!. Tried re-installing, same crap again.
Then I went back to my trusty 8.04.2, super stable, faster, no flickering screens, I could listen to music and do everything I always do on my PC without a hassle. T
oday I installed on a small partition Jaunty just to see how it works on my desktop PC. First of all it boots extremely fast, it's jaw dropping in comparison to Hardy and Intrepid. The new login screen is very cool, I don't like the 3d Ubuntu Logo too much, but the rest is very awesome and I know many artist will use that layout to make new and better looking GDM screens.
I can't tell you how fast Jaunty's Gnome is on my PC bacause the video drivers are way back there and they haven't caught up with X yet, so everything is very slow video wise. But windows open fine and all that stuff. Hopefully soon I'll be able to use Jaunty is an usable environment and will write about it's performance desktop wise. Until now I know it boots very fast.
Update: Ooops I forgot to mention that the internet feel snappier. Fire fox scrolls smoother and heavy sites are handled better. Google reader flies in Jaunty, it's great!
Compiz works out of the box, Wifi is supposed to work but I haven't tested it yet, but it already includes the drivers, so it has to work. The only problem I faced in Alpha 4 was that the touch pad didn't work, but I plugged my USB mouse and downloaded the Synaptics driver and it works like a charm.
I've upgraded to Alpha 5 and everything is heading the right direction and it's getting super stable. At least on the laptop Alpha 5 is stable as a rock. I hope Jaunty works with the laptop when it releases, because Intrepid Beta worked, but the final release gave me all the Busybox headaches and never worked as expected (they should have called it Intrepid Slowpoke).
Now to the other machine, a Gateway GT 5676, AMD Phenom Quad Core, SATA HDDs, ATI Radeon HD3200 graphics 4 Gigs of RAM.
Intrepid Gave more problems than any other Ubuntu version. It was slow, I couldn't browse the Internet while listening to music because the prossesor would get to 100% in a matter of miliseconds and then to 10-15% (which is the normal percentage) and that kind of hanged the system, the music skipped, videos skipped as well, if I was scrolling a page it skipped too, you get the picture... it was hell!!! Oh did I mention that I had to turn off Compiz in order to watch videos on my HDD and some formats on the net? If I didn't turn off Compiz the video screen would flicker. I searched the forums and discovered the Gstreamer Properties, then all Hell broke loose, and it got worse!. Tried re-installing, same crap again.
Then I went back to my trusty 8.04.2, super stable, faster, no flickering screens, I could listen to music and do everything I always do on my PC without a hassle. T
oday I installed on a small partition Jaunty just to see how it works on my desktop PC. First of all it boots extremely fast, it's jaw dropping in comparison to Hardy and Intrepid. The new login screen is very cool, I don't like the 3d Ubuntu Logo too much, but the rest is very awesome and I know many artist will use that layout to make new and better looking GDM screens.
I can't tell you how fast Jaunty's Gnome is on my PC bacause the video drivers are way back there and they haven't caught up with X yet, so everything is very slow video wise. But windows open fine and all that stuff. Hopefully soon I'll be able to use Jaunty is an usable environment and will write about it's performance desktop wise. Until now I know it boots very fast.
Update: Ooops I forgot to mention that the internet feel snappier. Fire fox scrolls smoother and heavy sites are handled better. Google reader flies in Jaunty, it's great!
