Test Drive: Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot (live) on the EEEPC 900

As soon as the final Ubuntu 11.10 released has been made available I downloaded it. I was mainly curious to see if the many problems I did encounter with the Beta 1 release had been solved in the October's final release. So here I am, again, with a short post just to put in evidence how things have been fixed since the beta release test.

First impressions

There are beta versions that are almost final releases and others that literally fall apart, Ubuntu 11.10 Beta 1 was definitively of the latter type. In the little time passed since then things are enormously improved. Of the many errors experienced while testing the beta version none appeared with the final release. Also the “Dash” window, the one Unity uses to launch applications and search files, is now rendered correctly without the resize problem it first showed on the small EEEPC screen.

Unity's configuration possibilities are really scarce but, at least, by changing backdrop and theme you can make it look almost nice

Conclusions

Unity's and Ubuntu's overall stability has been greatly improved at a level of what can be called “final” version. I'm not a Unity fan but, even I still don't like some of its mechanisms I have to admit that it's definitively matured, not enough to convince me to leave my old NBR installation but, indeed, a good step forward.