By Ryan Paul
Ubuntu 11.10, codenamed Oneiric Ocelot, prowled out of the development forest earlier this month. In our review of Ubuntu 11.04, released back in April, we took a close look at the strengths and weaknesses of the new Unity shell and compared it with GNOME 3.0. In this review, we're going to revisit Unity to see how much progress it has made over the past six months. We will also take a close look at the updated Software Center user interface and the transition from Evolution to Thunderbird.
**details of enhancements and features in article **
Conclusion
Ubuntu 11.10 is another modest incremental improvement over the previous release. Although it doesn't bring a huge number of changes, the enhancements—particularly to Unity—have a big impact on the general feel of the platform. The Unity shell still has some annoying limitations, but it feels more practical for day-to-day use.
I don't find myself pining for a classic GNOME alternative anymore. The availability of the 2D version is also important because it will make the environment available to everyone, irrespective of whether their hardware can handle compositing.
Other parts of the desktop stack have continued to evolve and often a more capable environment than previous versions of Ubuntu. The Software Center continues to stand out as a solid piece of quality design.
Ubuntu's distinctive look and feel is mature, but still benefits from some tasteful refinements in the new version. Further work is still needed to finish bringing features like the new scrollbar style to the whole desktop. Thunderbird looks great in this release, but LibreOffice still looks gratuitously non-native. The new fixed-width variant of the Ubuntu typeface is a big win for terminal users and those of us who live in Vim—it's probably my favorite new feature in Ubuntu 11.10.
Hardware compatibility remains hit and miss, with some painful misses on laptops and netbooks. Ubuntu still trails its proprietary rivals in areas like power management and trackpad support.
Existing Ubuntu users will find a lot to like in Ubuntu 11.10—it tangibly moves the distribution forward and improves the quality of the user experience. There is still a lot of room for improvement, however, especially in Unity, which I think still needs one more cycle to really fall into place.
As usual, work has already begun on the next major version of the distribution. Ubuntu 12.04, which is due for release in April, is going to be a long-term support release—which means that it will be supported for five years. The focus of development leading up to 12.04 will be on stabilization and robustness, which means that it will likely be a stronger candidate than 11.10 for day-to-day desktop use.
