Ubuntu 12.10 - Your thoughts?

Priapus

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Howzit guys,

So, the last time I used Ubuntu was version 9.10. It seemed okay and I enjoyed it.

Yesterday, I downloaded 12.10 and ran it on a VMWare on my MacBook. Now it did seem sluggish. However I am putting this down to it being in a virtual environment, rather than on actual hardware.

I was thinking about deploying it on another machine as the main OS - however, I have been hearing a lot of bad news about it.

Just curios, what are your thoughts on the latest OS?
 
Have not used Ubuntu now for a long time. Why dont you give Mint a shot?

Hmm, I do have a copy of it - just didn't think to try it out again.

I'm using VmFusion on the laptop and Ubuntu is slow. Even lags on web browsing!
My Windows VMs, don't do this though.
 
This type of distro can be very sluggish on a VM if you only have one processor core allocated. If this is the case with your setup then try giving the VM two cores instead.

I switched from VMware to Virtualbox for Linux guests a few months back since this seemed to be a bit friendlier, especially when it came to the add-on tools. Maybe VMware has caught up again in the meantime.

I am running Ubuntu 12.10 in Virtualbox environment at the moment for evaluation purposes and it is working smoothly. The PC I am using does however have more resources that can be allocated to the job (two Xeon E5645 processors + 12 GB RAM), which may be part of the difference.

If you are looking specifically at Ubuntu then 12.04.1 seems to be reasonably sorted out and well behaved. Otherwise there is Mint etc.
 
Using 12.10 since it was first released. Works well enough on my rather dated hardware(Intel E7500, 2Gb DDR2, AMD HD4650). No stability issues to date. Best advice is to install it & try for a while, then decide if it suits your needs....or not!
 
I use Ubuntu 12.10 on my Macbook Air, and I love it. Compared to MacOS, it's much more tunable and customizable (if you're into that kind of thing, I am), and I personally love the Unity interface - the more you use it, the more you realise how great it is. However, the trackpad doesn't work quite as well, and Unity is a bit RAM-hungry. I blogged about Ubuntu on Macbook here:

https://plus.google.com/118226948467140990198/posts/FXKe5gtnDoW

I also posted (separately) about reducing SSD wear, limiting RAM usage and also controlling the amount of bandwidth it uses.
 
12.10 performance is acceptable on our testbed Celeron D 3.4Ghz (single core) with 2Gb RAM for basic office purposes.

Unity is matter of individual taste and doesn't float my boat, for ease of use I'd opt for Mint.
 
Love my netbook running 12.10 The only issue i have encountered so far was with "remmina", the RDP/VNC client. It seems to have an issue with the screen resolution, haven't had time to debug it yet, but KRDP works great. As for performance, no hassles. I have an encrypted home directory that significantly prolonged the cold boot time, to about 40 seconds, but since it a mobile device, the extra security is worth the wait.
 
... The only issue i have encountered so far was with "remmina", the RDP/VNC client.

My preferred linux workhorse ATM is Fedora 17 and I experienced similar problems with remmina so I switched to vinagre for Windows & linux RDP. Couple of minor problems with hot keys but I'm pretty happy with it - I haven't tested it on any Ubuntu Unity versions maybe you can try it.
 
Thanks for the input guys. I am going to reinstall it on the MacBook. I am using VMFusion. So will allocate more ram to it and a second core. The MacBook has 8GB of ram, so I can allocate a little more.

I'm actually looking to replace the Windows OS on my media pc. However I doubt Linux can surpass Windows in that environment.
 
I quite like it, once you give Unity a fair chance and learn to work with it.

I actually thought it was very lightweight now since I also run it in a VMWare Fusion VM.
 
I'm actually looking to replace the Windows OS on my media pc. However I doubt Linux can surpass Windows in that environment.

Install OpenELEC.

Linux can surpass Windows in every way...all depending on your exact requirements. OpenELEC is purpose built for media, so if there are other things you like to do with it then probably it won't work for you.
 
Well the idea is to stream from the media pc to an Xbox 360. Is Linux able to do this ?
 
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