For me, the most interesting features are:<p>* 32-bit compatibility on amd64 systems<p>Ubuntu 11.10 provides "multiarch" support for installing 32-bit library and application packages on 64-bit systems. For all amd64 installs and upgrades, select 32-bit software (like Skype and Flash), will now be installable directly using the same 32-bit packages that are used on i386 installations. You are not required to install the ia32-libs compatibility package. For users, this change means that the 32-bit libraries will always be available at the same time as their 64-bit counterparts, even in the case of security updates, and users will only need to install those 32-bit libraries required by the user's application(s).<p>* Hybrid CD/USB images supported<p>All ISO images released with Ubuntu 11.10 are hybrid CD/USB images that can be written directly to a USB disk and booted without the use of special software. Users who wish to enable persistent storage on a USB stick can still use the usb-creator tool to configure the USB stick.
Checkout the online tour <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/tour/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ubuntu.com/tour/</a>
I am curious are there any software/libraries which can build a demo/tour like this for any Desktop application?
I wonder if unity can work on my recent laptop. It has a recent nvidia and like most of these, it has the optimus "feature" which for now requires the hackish bumblebee.<p>It has been years since I had to go in the xorg.conf file, that was the main reason I switched from debian to ubuntu. That is the only feature I wish of any Ubuntu release. Can someone tell me if it has now been implemented ? From the release notes, they don't seem to mention it.
Question about the "dash" (menu that appears after clicking the top-left ubuntu logo) - for those who've tried it out - does it let you customize it now? More specifically, does it let you change the main shortcuts like "Browse the web", "View Photos", "Check E-mail", "Listen to music" to other functions? Thanks in advance if anyone's able to help with this.
My experience so far:<p>* Looks nicer.<p>* You can't modify the panels. I always had some shortcuts there, now I have to go through the menu.<p>* You can't even change the default icon theme using the customization app. You have to get gnome-tweak-tool (IIRC).<p>* ALT+F2 doesn't do anything by default. I guess the key bindings are changed/some are disabled by default.<p>* It tried to install the new ATI drivers, then miserably failed. Trying to fix it, I purged the old drivers, but it still didn't work. This only caused it to freeze at boot time, so I had to the recovery console to fix it.<p>* Bottom line: never ever upgrade from an old version. Always do a clean install (or pick up a different distro/OS).<p>* Note: I'm using Gnome (now not so) classic.
I cannot believe they removed the option to run classic. I literally cancelled my update the moment I learned that (on slashdot). I hear there is a way to bring it back but I am worried about compatibility at this point. So I will have to wait a bit and see whether others can get classic to work for ubuntu 11.10 and look for alternative distros.<p>This is really annoying because the main reason I run ubuntu is so I do not have to deal with testing and installing distros.
Any reason why Ubuntu just doesn't seem to make the switch to DVD based installation ISOs?<p>I end up burning the CD images on DVD anyway and would definitely prefer to have a larger selection of available packages on the installation media, even if I didn't end up installing some.
If you're on a laptop, and the trackpad stops working after upgrading, try one of these solutions in the terminal:<p>synclient TouchpadOff = 0<p>or<p>sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/touchpad.conf and in that file type "options psmouse proto=imps" (no quotes).<p>The second solution worked on my Lenovo T510. Credit goes to Hopper122 here <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1479286" rel="nofollow">http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1479286</a>
I ran Ubuntu 11.04 on a netbook and performance was terrible. Switching to Unity 2D helped a bit but it was still struggling. Any indication 11.10 will work better?<p>Of course I'm gonna give this a try regardless but I'd like to hear from netbook owners if they've noticed better performance.
It doesn't appear that XMonad works as nicely, at least, I'm unable to get the panel to work. It seems gnome-panel is no longer used, furthermore, right-clicking on the new unity panel to configure it doesn't seem work. XMonad works... I'll just be panel free for a while.
The online tour really makes me like Unity, but of course that is too brief an impression. Might have to give it a spin on a home machine.<p>I used to upgrade religiously every 6 months, from 7.10 to 10.04LTS. Been waiting for next LTS to upgrade work machines.
Check out the new content on their Ubuntu countdown site:
<a href="http://thisisthecountdown.com/" rel="nofollow">http://thisisthecountdown.com/</a><p>They released a soundtrack for this release of Ubuntu.
Maybe this isn't the best place to ask, but does anyone know if you can do the 'aero snap' with windows when running unity in 2d (non-accelerated) mode?
Ubuntu 11.10 has removed simple configurable items like font size and screensaver into a non-default tool, making them much less accessible to non-hackers.<p>Combine this with all the usability changes in Unity (alt-tab affects all workspaces, etc.) and you have an environment I'm not too excited to work in.
I flagged the other 11.10 submission[1] for the reasons in mgunes's comment, and it's dead now. The same should happen here.<p>1. <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3106857" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3106857</a>