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Comment by _grrr | Hacker News Reader

I've been putting off the update to 11.04 from 10.10, is it relatively pain free?

It's a buggy mess IMO. I'm running 11.04 on recently purchased Lenovo X220 (replaced my 3 year old MBP) and I've had frequent hard locks in X, windowing glitches (windows doing weird things, scroll bars acting up), and issues with cleanly shutting down and rebooting.

I blame the lockup/windowing issues completely on Unity and I've had more success with the system since I've switched to the classic Ubuntu desktop. My current Linux desktop is running 10.10 and it will stay that way for the foreseeable future (perhaps until 11.10). I have a new sandy bridge desktop coming in next week and I'm undecided as to what I will be installing on that system.

I had similarly bad experience with my x220. If you try to boot with external screen connected, the screen blinks like a strobelight, you need to change resolution to make it work. X hangs up sometimes. Ditched unity, running xubuntu seems to be smoother and more sane.

The upgrade is easy, it is using it afterwards you may not like. Ubuntu used to have the slogan "Ubuntu: Linux for human beings." Now it should be, "Ubuntu: Linux for guinea pigs." I don't know how they manage to mess up the clock. I have to open it and close it twice for the date to refresh and show the correct date. Double clicking the sidebar icons doesn't always do the same thing. Sometimes I get a grid to select the window, other times it opens all windows in a stacked configuration. Still using it though.

The upgrade to Natty was pretty painless for me .. and I like Unity. Like you, I was also pretty cautious about whether to make the jump, but I'm glad I did.

Unity isn't perfect yet, but I'm confident the UI team are heading in a decent direction.

Indeed, I am a Mac user, after using Linux and BSD from 1994 to ~2007. But I have a Linux machine for work that requires plenty of (affordable!) CPU power and memory. I recently installed Ubuntu 11.04 on that machine, and this is one of the very first times I thought "they get it". Unity is a fresh breath of air compared to the old 'let's hide applications deep in menus'-paradigm. Unity makes applications quickly accessible and manageable. It's not there yet, but it is going in the right direction.

It depends if you want it for desktop or laptop. If it's for laptop, check https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/760131 - new kernels use a lot more energy. Until this gets fixed, I don't think it's worth updating.

Regarding the upgrade itself, yes - it's as easy as usual (click, click, click, .... done).

You can always install a different kernel.

Sure, I just thought that if someone asks whether the update is easy, he won't be up for kernel changes :)

I've been using Gnome classic which is pain free. Unity I believe should have been bundled - but not default. It feels like beta.

and if you don't like Unity, you can still use your old environment by selecting "Classic Ubuntu" on the login screen

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