So I got the new Ubuntu to install. I downloaded another package and this one worked. I went with the recommended 32 bit version. It COULD well be that the reason the 32 bit is recommended is that the 64 bit simply doesn't work.
It was a LONG install, well over an hour. That seemed a bit odd, but everything went smoothly. Performance is sub-par in general. Boot time from the boot menu is a little over 2 minutes. Mint boots in about 45 seconds and Windows 7 in about 20 seconds. This machine is an I7 960 clocked to 3.7 - I may drop it to stock and see if Ubuntu performs better, native is 3.2 on this CPU.
First thing I did was look at the display properties to configure the duel display setup. It easily detected both monitors and allowed me to extend my desktop to both with different resolutions and aspect ratios for each. I noticed that it was using a default driver and had my Nvidia GTX-460 tagged as "unknown." Now Unity handled multiple displays with transparencies fully intact without the Nvidia driver, which is pretty impressive.
So I went to the Nvidia site and downloaded the only Linux driver they bothered to supply. Went to the driver manage and tried to activate - driver failed. Hmm, this is obviously the same driver that works with Mint, given that it's the ONLY driver offered by Nvidia for Linux, on this card. Oh well, other than speed I'm not sure it does much.
Unity is a nice looking interface. I think it beats traditional Gnome. But it isn't in the same league as Aero-Glass, not that anything is. The designers opted for two docking bars, and did so because Unity lacks the Aero features of stacking, open many programs and the overly-large icons eat up the main dock. So they added a top dock (movable) to show tasks like mail and search. It shows the lack of elegance in the GUI that this is needed. Also missing is the peek feature of Aero. Hold your mouse over a dock icon in Aero and a preview of the program is displayed, put the mouse over the preview and the window is displayed. This is the type of interface functionality that makes Aero so much better than anything else on the market, Unity doesn't live up to this. Another irritation with the interface is the inclusion of a really nice workspace manager - that does nothing. Click on it and it shows all four workspaces in a grid. Cool, I'll drag this window to that workspace and... Wait, they won't drag... Shit, it just previews, I can't actually manage my workspaces with it.. WTF?
This is not the fault of Ubuntu, but Thunderbird is still crap and can't communicate with an encrypted Exchange 2010 server. So no email with Ubuntu - same with Mint. Good thing the OWA has gotten pretty good over the years.
The Citrix receiver worked flawlessly, as it does in Mint.
Over all, Ubuntu is quit sluggish, everything lags and tasks take far longer than they should on a relatively powerful machine. Some of this may be due to graphics drivers, but most of it isn't. 11.10 just isn't quick. Mint and Windows 7 are vastly more responsive on the same hardware. This leaves me to view Ubuntu 11.10 as "merely okay." Mint runs much better as a Linux distro, and Windows 7 still is light years ahead of both in interface and over all functionality.
