Unity is a new desktop environment designed for netbooks and touch-screen devices. It includes a new panel as well as a new vertical launcher. Unity is build using technologies from GNOME 3, including the Clutter library and the Mutter window manager.

Ubuntu Light is a version of Ubuntu designed to dual-boot with another operating system, and focused on getting on the web fast. It’s a stripped down Ubuntu (no file management) and uses the simpler Unity desktop. Canonical is offering Ubuntu Light to computer manufacturers only, because it’s intended to be customized for specific computers in order to boot fast.

Here’s a few other bits of information about the next version of Ubuntu:

• Ubuntu Netbook Edition will drop Network Manager for Intel’s Connection Manager because Network Manager does not support indicators. This change will probably be included in the Ubuntu 11.04 desktop.
• GNOME Shell is for desktops (it will be available in Ubuntu 10.10, but not as the default environment), and Unity is for netbooks.
• Client-side window decorations and RGBA (alpha channel) will be added to Ubuntu 10.10 early in development.
• More category indicators (like the messaging indicator) will reduce the number of indicators. A sound indicator will hold indicators for media applications and allow interactions like manipulating playlists.
• Canonical has a professional font foundry working on a new interface font. When it’s ready, there will be a beta program.
• A new icon theme is being worked on, but it will take a while to complete and may not be finished in time for the next Ubuntu.
• Ubuntu 10.10 will be released on October 10, 2010 (that’s 10.10.10).

You can get all the details by watching Mark Shuttleworth’s UDS keynote (thanks to Alan Pope for posting the video).

There’s an official PPA software source from Canonical with a test version of Unity. Here’s how to install it:

1. Open Ubuntu Software Center.
2. Select Edit->Software Sources->Other Software.
3. Click Add, enter ppa:canonical-dx-team/une, and click Add Source.
4. Search for Unity in the Software Center and install it.

To start Unity, log out to return to the login screen. Select your user, select Ubuntu Unity Netbook Edition in the Sessions box, and log in.

At first glance, it looks like you have the normal netbook edition GNOME panel at the top of the screen, but with a Google search box instead of a window list. There’s also a colourful stack of icons on the left hand edge of the screen.

The launcher

The Unity application launcher is a dock. There are some default applications which always appear. Any application that is running will also appear, along with a small indicator that it is running on the left of the icon. The currently focused application also get a indicator on the right side.

Selecting an icon in the launcher causes it to glow while the application loads. Dragging up and down scrolls the list of applications, and dragging an icon out allows it to be repositioned. Right clicking on an icon initiates a scale effect which lets you select from all the windows for that application. There’s no support for minimizing windows.

It’s not easy to access applications which are not in the launcher because there’s no main menu. One item in the launcher is a folder which will show all the installed applications.

The window manager
Unity uses the Mutter window manager from GNOME 3. It’s a compositing window manager and supports some basic animations. At this time the integration between window title bars and the panel has not been implemented. The panel and launcher are run by Mutter, so it won’t be possible to use another window manager like Compiz with Unity. [update] A Compiz developer has Compiz working inside Unity, so this may not be true after all.

The panel

Clicking the Ubuntu logo scales all the windows and lets you select one to switch to it. The search box goes to Google for now, but later it should be used to search your computer. Everything else on the panel is an indicator, which the current exception of the network manager applet. Despite it’s appearance, the panel is not based on GNOME panel, but is drawn by Mutter.

I’m pretty excited about Unity. While the current version is not complete, it does seem to be in a usable state on my netbook so I’ll continue testing it there.

Moving everything to the left opens up the space on the right nicely, and I would like to experiment in 10.10 with some innovative options there.

Now it is clear what he was talking about: Shuttleworth has introduced window indicators (“windicators”) on his blog. Window indicators are like the indicator applet on the panel, but live on the right hand side of every window title bar. They would be used to show state for a particular application, and would be interacted with using an API similar to the one used for the indicator applet.

Here are the example window indicators given:

• online/offline status
• unsaved changes
• progress
• “basket” showing items selected for a purpose
• sharing status
• application-specific volume

Shuttleworth also proposes using window indicators and Chrome-inspired temporary status bars to replace traditional status bars. This would save precious vertical screen space on netbook displays. On netbooks, window indicators would also be integrated into the panel like the title bar is in Ubuntu Netbook Edition. Shuttleworth blogged about a global menu bar for netbooks as well.

These changes would be implemented in the next version of Ubuntu, 10.10 “Maverick Meerkat.”

My Thoughts
I’m not convinced that there’s enough benefit in window indicators to justify the problems they would create.

It will be a challenge to get applications to adopt window indicators. Thanks to PulseAudio, it’s easy to show a volume control for every window. But most applications that use sound already have a volume control built in which would have to be patched out for Ubuntu. I can foresee problems with applications such as web browsers which use sound through plugins which show up as separate applications to PulseAudio. But most other window indicators will require even more modifications to applications. If GNOME doesn’t adopt window indicators, then applications will need specific code for Ubuntu and every other distribution.

Currently window title bars are not drawn by the individual applications, but by the window manager or window decorator. Window indicators require applications to interact with their title bars much more. If an application draws it’s own title bar, it’s called “client side window decorations,” which are mentioned in Shuttleworth’s blog post. (Google Chrome has an option to do this in order to draw tabs over the title bar and save screen space.) Giving applications this control could create inconsistent title bars and cause problems for other window managers (just read what Compiz and KWin developers have to say). A better option for implementing window indicators would be to have an API for the application and window manager to communicate over.

Instead of window indicators, I’d like to see something simpler: the menu bar collapsed into a button and moved into this area. Especially in web browsers, there’s been a move away from having a traditional menu bar. Chrome, the Firefox 4 theme mockups, and the latest version of Opera have all moved what used to be the menu bar into different places. Firefox 4 and Opera have added a button to the title bar. Why not standardize on a button in the title bar for the application menu? It would be consistent, reduce clutter on the screen, and save screen space. There are already global menu bar hacks which move the menu bar, so it could be possible to do this without changing applications.

I’ve been following the development of 10.04 on my netbook, but today I performed a fresh installation on it and my main desktop system. Here are my thoughts so far.

Eee PC 901 Netbook
My netbook has been getting better and better with recent Ubuntu releases. Installation is easy thanks to the Startup Disk Creator tool included in Ubuntu which lets me put the installer on an SD card. All the hardware works perfectly.

I’ve actually been running the development version of Ubuntu 10.04 on this system since alpha 1, so I thought there was a bug when after installing the final release I didn’t get any desktop effects. The desktop effects settings are grayed out. After a bit a digging I found that Compiz was not even installed. I haven’t found any information about this, but it appears that the netbook edition no longer includes desktop effects.

During the alpha releases I was using the full Ubuntu desktop rather than the netbook edition because when I installed the netbook installer was not available yet. The netbook edition is touted as being even faster, so I installed that instead when the final release was available.

I set up my wireless network as usual, but found that Ubuntu would not connect to it when I logged in or woke up from suspend. For some reason the “connect automatically” option was not set. I removed the network and re-added it and the option was set this time.

The netbook boots very quickly; if I look away I’ll miss the boot entirely. The boot splash is hardly necessary on this machine.

Dell Dimension 9200
My desktop system has been working great with Ubuntu for many releases now, and this is no exception. After fixing a hardware issue with my CD drive (the old Ubuntu system wouldn’t recognize blank CDs and I got I/O errors from the live CD, checking the SATA cable fixed it), the installation went smoothly. Everything on the system works. This is the first time I’ve installed 64-bit Ubuntu on this system.

On systems with Nvidia graphics, Ubuntu now defaults to the open source nouveau driver. It provides 2D acceleration and kernel mode setting (flicker-free booting) support, but no 3D acceleration at this time. After installing the Nvidia restricted driver, which lacks kernel mode setting, the boot splash is very low resolution and low colour.

General Notes
I can’t wait until I can remove the notification area entirely and replace it with the indicator applet. The indicator applet allows “scrubbing” between different items, and includes no inconsistent right and left click menus. So far the network manager applet is the only item running that has not been ported, and it still includes different right and left click menus!

It’s nice to have a default theme that I can not only live with, but find to be high quality. Parting with the consistent gray panel icons for another theme would be tough.

I was running Ubuntu 9.10 will PulseAudio disabled for a long time. It fixed a lot of stuff but it broke some Ubuntu things, so I’d rather not have to do that. In 10.04, so far it seems that some problems have been fixed, and some remain.

The new Simple Scan utility is awesome, it’s so much better than what there was before.

This is the first time I’ve used 64-bit Ubuntu. I was reading a while ago that there’s actually a performance advantage to running 64-bit when you can. So far everything seems to just work, including running 32-bit applications.

Some of the first applications I installed:

1. Google Chrome: I install the version from Google so I can keep up with updates from the beta channel. Installing Google’s package will add their repository automatically.
2. GNOME Do: the super-spacebar key combination is in my muscle memory so I can’t live without this application launcher.
3. KeePassX: what I use securely store my passwords.
4. Ubuntu Restricted Extras: the quickest way to install Flash, Java, web fonts, audio/video codecs, and more.
5. rdiff-backup: my backup software of choice. I also remembered to restore my crontab to keep my automated backups going.
6. Gmail Notifier: a Gmail notifier that’s integrated with Ubuntu. It pops up a notification when new mail arrives in my gmail inbox, and lights up the messaging indicator.
7. GIMP: the powerful image editor. Don’t forget you have to install it yourself now that it’s not included.
8. WINE: run the occasional Windows application in Ubuntu. Add the WINE PPA to get new versions as they are released.

I’ll have lots to write about over the next few days as I finish getting set up.

My netbook is an Eee PC 901. Everything works out of the box with the latest versions of Ubuntu. I use the Ubuntu Netbook Remix, but there doesn’t seem to be an alpha release of it available yet so I installed the normal Ubuntu desktop. I downloaded Lucid Lynx Alpha 1 and created a live-USB system using USB Startup Disk Creator.

After booting the live system the network manager notification icon was missing, and I couldn’t connect to my wireless network. Killing nm-applet and restarting it fixed this.

The Ubuntu installer now has a “Update this installer” button on the language selection screen. I was hoping this would mean I wouldn’t have to install updates after booting the new system, but all this button does is install the latest version of the installer application. Once the update finished, the installer restarted and the update button disappeared.

I haven’t had any problems with the installed system, but there isn’t much of a noticeable difference from 9.10 yet. Here’s a few changes I did notice:

• The touchpad defaulted to “edge scrolling” instead of “two-finger scrolling” but it was easy to change this setting.
• Notification bubbles seem to be drawn in a debug mode.
• Ubuntu Software Center uses a nice new animated breadcrumb control.
  
• Bootup seems to be a bit faster than 9.10. A transition from usplash/xsplash to plymouth/xsplash is taking place, so the boot experience could change soon.
• A few changes are planned for the default software selection, but most have not been made yet. GIMP will be dropped, a video editor will be added, and a smaller selection of games will be available.

There were many problems with Intel’s graphics drivers in Ubuntu 9.04. My only system using Intel graphics is my Eee PC netbook, which worked fine with 9.04, and is working better than ever with 9.10. Kernel mode setting is enabled by default, which means that the display’s native resolution is set early in the boot process and does not change even when switching to a terminal. Compiz works great, and windows with 3D rendering will no longer have the 3D area render on top of other windows or in the wrong location. Performance is good enough to play Quake Live (with Compiz disabled).

Since Ubuntu started using PulseAudio by default, it has never worked properly for me. On my netbook, the new version of Skype and PulseAudio are working much better than in 9.04. Most of the problems have been on my main system which I have not upgraded yet, but I’m hopeful. The new sound preferences looks great, and finally exposes the application-specific volume controls that PulseAudio supports.

The boot experience has been improved significantly. I rarely reboot my desktop, but my netbook boots fast enough now that I don’t bother with standby mode and am booting and shutting down often. Booting starts with uspash, just as in previous releases, but now with just a simple white Ubuntu logo and no progress bar. If a disk check is needed, its progress is displayed in usplash. X now starts much earlier to display the brand-new xsplash. xsplash features a fancy spinning progress animation. Next, the newly re-written GDM login screen is displayed with a dark theme matching xsplash. After logging in xsplash is displayed again until the desktop is loaded. The plan is that usplash will not be needed when X/xsplash is able to start early and fast enough. My only complaint with the boot experience is that the xsplash animation stutters a lot.

The new Human theme and Humanity icons are still brown, but look fantastic. The Dust theme, as well as a few nice wallpapers are installed by default.

I’ve finally adopted Ubuntu’s netbook remix interface on my netbook. In previous releases, I’ve always used the full desktop. The auto-maximization and compact window switcher work great for me. The netbook launcher is handy and looks great, but is sorely missing a text box for launching apps. Also, in large categories scrolling is too fast, while in categories with few entries scrolling is very slow. I also wish that the netbook remix left out some applications to save disk space because the smaller SSD in my Eee PC is only 4 GB (and who needs a CD burning application on a netbook?).

OMG Ubuntu has a visual tour of some of the new features. If you’ve installed 9.10, here’s a great post with a ton of things you can do next.

In the video the code name for Ubuntu 10.04 is revealed: “Lucid Lynx”. As this release fits into the two year long term support schedule, it will receive the LTS designation. A few details about what this version will entail are given in the video. Ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx” will focus on GNOME 2 rather than GNOME 3, which will be adopted in subsequent releases. The server edition will focus on cloud computing and support for large scale web infrastructure.

Ubuntu 10.04 should be released in April 2010.

[update] Mark Shuttleworth has formally introduced Lucid Lynx in written form.

• Boot performance has been improved, even without Ext4 you should notice a speedup.
• The slick new notification system is enabled.
• The latest version of the GNOME desktop environment is included.
• OpenOffice has been updated to version 3.0.
• Ext4 filesystems are now supported (but Ext3 is still the default for now).

If you’ve installed from an alpha, beta, or release candidate CD all you need to do is install any available updates to get the final release version. If you need a CD, be sure to use the Bit Torrent downloads.

If you’re interested in trying out this beta release, remember that it’s intended for testing and not mission-critical systems. The release candidate is coming on April 16, and the final on April 23. Use the Bittorrent downloads to get your disk ISO the fastest!

Installing
I always perform a clean install of new Ubuntu releases to completely remove old software and configuration files that have built up over the last six months. I use separate home and Ubuntu system partitions so it’s easy to install Ubuntu without wiping out my files. However, once I’ve booted the live CD I use the file browser to archive all the hidden application configuration files in my home directory so I get the new default desktop.

The new ext4 filesystem is now stable and included in Ubuntu but will not be the default for this release. After reading about the problems with ext4 wiping out files, I decided to play it safe and stick with ext3 for now.

The first problem I ran into is one I’m familiar with from past Ubuntu installations. The software repository mirror for Canada is so slow to respond that updating the package listings takes longer than the actual installation. I just browsed the Internet from the live CD and waited for this step to finally complete.

Issues
After logging in to the new system I tried to enable the proprietary Nvidia driver with the hardware drivers utility. I forgot about the unusably slow repository, so the driver download would not progress. I had to kill the driver utility to stop it from trying forever to download the driver, and then kill the backend process separately. After selecting a faster repository mirror I was able to install the drivers and download updates.

Since installing Ubuntu 8.10 I’ve never been able to work out the audio glitches. Things don’t look much better in 9.04 so far. Firefox will randomly stop playing sound, and then hang when I close it to restart. Also, the first time I logged in I got crackling and static sounds and restarting PulseAudio fixed it. I’ve never had this particular issue before, and it hasn’t happened again, so I’m hopeful that it was a one-time problem.

Ubuntu doesn’t crash often for me, but when it does it’s usually caused by a 3D application. I’ve played Civilization 4 via Wine on Ubuntu 8.10 for a long time without a problem, but the first time I started playing in 9.04 ended with a crash. My monitor actually lost it’s signal after the crash, which would suggest that the Nvidia driver is to blame. The magic SysRq key combo, Alt+SysRq+REISUB, allowed me to safely reboot. I hope that the newer Nvidia driver isn’t less stable than the old one.

Minor tweaks that I like:

• The Transmission Bittorrent client’s interface has been tweaked in a few places. It’s now easier to select which individual files to download and set their priority.
• gedit has controls in its status bar for selecting a highlighting mode and tab mode. These two controls mean I don’t have to dive into the preferences to change the tab mode to spaces for working with Python files, and I can turn on syntax highlighting before I save my file.
• The default version of Compiz now recognizes GIMP’s toolbox windows and keeps them floated above the image window like Metacity.
• Synaptic includes a Get Screenshot button in package descriptions. This could be useful, but the button is shown even when no screenshot is available (which seems to be the case for most packages right now). It seems to me that this should be something built into the Add/Remove application rather than Synaptic.
• Multiple monitor support has supposedly been improved. I haven’t tested this but was impressed that the display preferences utility offered to open Nvidia’s utility:
  

  It appears that your graphics driver does not support the necessary extensions to use this tool. Do you want to use your graphics driver vendor’s tool instead?

• Ubuntu chooses font settings automatically depending on your display hardware. For me, this meant that subpixel smoothing was turned on for my LCD like it should be. Previously I’ve used a custom font configuration, but the defaults look acceptable now. [update] Mackenzie has pointed out in the comments that these font DPI adjustments are now back to their defaults.

If you’ve tried the beta, how’s it been for you? Any new features in particular you like?

It’s a good idea to download new Ubuntu releases from BitTorrent to get the fastest download and ease the load on the servers. I found the official list of torrent downloads here:
http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/downloadmirrors#bt

I burned a copy of the live-CD and booted it up. Using a root nautilus file browser window, I moved all the configuration files and directories (the ones with names starting with a dot) to a new directory. This is so I can keep my home directory, but start fresh with the default settings for most applications.

The install went smoothly, except for the scanning the mirror portion which took a long time to complete.

On the newly installed desktop, I moved the .mozilla and .wine directories back into my home so I get my Firefox profile and fake Windows installation.

Before updating or installing drivers I needed to switch to a faster software mirror. I did this using System->Administration->Software Sources and selecting the other option in the Download from box. The mirrors in Canada were in pretty poor shape. The main server for Canada was not responding, and I got 404 errors a few others. I ended up with gpl.savoirfairelinux.net, which has been nice and fast.

After finding a working mirror, I couldn’t install updates because something was locking apt in the background. I had to reboot before I could continue.

I installed these packages next:

• ubuntu-restricted-extras – Flash and multimedia codecs
• gnome-do – Application launcher
• openssh-server – SSH Remote access
• community-themes – Some nice themes for GNOME

A while ago I turned off displaying desktop icons. Since then my ~/Desktop folder has become so full of files that now they don’t even fit on the desktop. Hide desktop icons by running gconf-editor, and setting this value to false:
/apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop

Fonts on the new system just didn’t feel right until I installed my .fonts.conf again.

How has everyone else’s upgrade gone? Enjoying any new features in particular so far?

The Warrior Rabbit is our talisman as we move into a year where we can reasonably expect Ubuntu to ship on several million devices, to consumers who can reasonably expect the software experience to be comparable to those of the traditional big OSV’s – Microsoft and Apple. The bar is set very high, and we have been given the opportunity to leap over it. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to shine, and we want to make sure that the very best thinking across the whole open source ecosystem is reflected in Ubuntu, because many people will judge free software as a whole by what we do.

The announcement goes on to lay out some goals for this release:

There are some specific goals that we need to meet in Jaunty. One of them is boot time. We want Ubuntu to boot as fast as possible – both in the standard case, and especially when it is being tailored to a specific device. The Jackalope is known for being so fast that it’s extremely hard to catch, and breeds only when lightning flashes. Let’s see if we can make booting or resuming Ubuntu blindingly quick.

One of the features under development for Fedora 10, 30SecondStartup, will also work to decrease boot time.

Another goal is the the blurring of web services and desktop applications. “Is it a deer? Is it a bunny? Or is it a weblication – a desktop application that seamlessly integrates the web!” This hare has legs – and horns – and we’ll be exploring it in much more detail for Jaunty. We have already laid some foundations for weblications in the online services discussions that took place in Prague, but since we fully expect those services to ship in 9.04 the discussion will be that much more intense in Mountain View.

Mozilla Prism blurs the line between web and desktop applications, and packages are already available which bring common web apps to the desktop with Prism. Will we see apps like Google Docs in the application menu via Prism in Ubuntu 9.04?

Those bizarre-but-fearsome antlers might well remind one of the intricate pattern of collaboration between developers in a distributed version control system. So it’s fitting that Jaunty will see us move all of Ubuntu into Bazaar. For the first time, any developer will be able to branch any Ubuntu package with a single bzr command, publish their changes, and perhaps even publish builds of that package in their own Package Archive. We will also make the developer community structure of Ubuntu much richer – in addition to MOTU and core-dev, we are introducing ways for developers to participate in specific applications, either at the package-upload level or at the version-control level. Whatever your level and specialisation of interest, we’ll make sure that you can participate accordingly.

I’m not too familiar with version control systems, but Bazaar should make it easier for developers to get involved.

Ubuntu 8.10 also had some goals when it was announced. Will Ubuntu meet them when 8.10 is released? Here are the two from the first announcement: “re-engineer the user interaction model so that Ubuntu works as well on a high-end workstation as it does on a feisty little subnotebook” (Yes! 8.10 will better support new netbook laptops, such as the Eee PC), “pervasive internet access, the ability to tap into bandwidth whenever and wherever you happen to be” (Yes! 8.10 includes an updated version of NetworkManager with support for 3G networking).

Wondering what a jackalope is? Wikipedia says it’s a fictional animal: a cross between a jackrabbit and an antelope.