Ubuntu 11.04 Beta 1 Review
Well I went ahead and performed an upgrade on my laptop taking my Ubuntu 10.10 to 11.04 Beta 1. Now normally doing upgrades for any operating system, whether it’s Windows or Linux is usually a BIG no no because of the problems that will usually occur during or after the upgrade; However this was not the case this time.
The upgrade went flawless with no hiccups at all during the upgrade process. After the upgrade, the only thing I experienced was the Ubuntu Software Centre not displaying the list of programs for any of the categories I clicked on or programs I searched for. This however fixed itself after I rebooted the laptop and performed an update. The update simply updated extra components that I guess did not get done during the upgrade step.
The unity side menu is nice although I do find that if a program is maximised to full screen, I am unable to get the side menu to scroll back out from the side until I take the program out of full screen. Other than that one minor issue, I feel the unity desktop kind of gives Ubuntu a little more professional/pleasing look.
There is more mouse clicks now that one must do when browsing through the programs list which can get annoying if you are in a rush and I don’t really like that the programs menu will disappear after so many seconds of no mouse activity but hopefully there is a setting someone to change that. Another thing I am not that pleased about is browser slider. With this new Ubuntu, the standard wide slide you see along the right of your browser on long web pages is replaced by a very thin line. If you want to scroll down, you need to hover your mouse pointer over a section of that thin line and a scroll button will appear with two arrows for you to scroll up and down but like the Unity program menu, this can disappear on you when you don’t want it to.
Overall, I like what I see, I just hope that come April 28th when 11.04 is officially released, the two or three little problems mentioned will be fixed or have an option to be changed by the end user. If you have a spare machine I would recommend installing 11.04 and give it a try yourself.