[conspire] *buntu 11.10 (was: Safety at CABAL meetings: NO UNCOVERED CABLE RUNS)

[Nick Moffitt]

Rick Moen:
> With all the repair work and the unplanned shopping expedition for a
> new bicycle helmet, I didn't get a chance to play around with the new
> Ubuntu-family 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot discs I burned last week:  Ubuntu,
> Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Lubuntu for i386 and for x86_64.  The last of
> those (Lubuntu) is new to the official Ubuntu lineup, and is notably
> lightweight compared to the other three.

I find that Oneiric is unique, as an Ubuntu distro.  This is the first
release where instead of spending development effort packaging
*released* software from upstream (e.g: GNOME 3), they chose to release
their own software as part of the core UI infrastructure.  

This means that normally an Ubuntu beta would be beta packaging of
released software, but this go 'round it was beta packaging of beta
software.  The schedules are all a bit behind, and as a result I feel
like integration suffers (oddly enough).

I still have trouble with sloppy focus and Unity 3D, and occasionally
get wild Z-order window stacking problems (such as transient windows
appearing BEHIND the parent window).  This is due to compiz and Unity
having two different window-stacking data structures that can fall out
of sync, I'm led to understand.

I kind of miss mutter, really.  It was small and contained and the
operating model seemed to fit a desktop like mine a lot better (2D grid
of workspaces, which in compiz are just windowed regions in one giant
workspace, making isolation difficult).  I can understand why it wasn't
sustainable, though.

So Oneiric is really the desktop release designed to shake out as many
bugs as possible so people can get things working in 12.04's
really-long-term-support release, it seems.  I'd use it only to help
debug Ubuntu, myself.

-- 
"It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to
find out how nature *is*.  Physics concerns what we can
*say* about nature."
                -- Niels Bohr