Ubuntu 11.04 codenamed “Natty Narwhal” is going to be the new born baby in the Ubuntu family. The expected launch date for Natty Narwhal is April 28, 2011, but Alpha versions are already out to test the product before the final stable release. Alpha 3 (the last one in the Alpha launch series) released on March 3, 2011, and the two Betas are to follow March 31, 2011 onwards.
So, What’s the big difference this time? Is it better than the previous Ubuntu releases? Is Canonical seriously making efforts towards Ubuntu Desktop in order to compete with far more popular Windows, and Mac for global Desktop market share? Such questions generally arise every time a new version of Ubuntu is released, every 6 months.
The biggest difference in 11.04, compared to the current stable 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, is the change in the User Interface. Yes its true, GNOME Desktop Environment no longer ships with Ubuntu now, possibly because of the disagreement with the Canonical Ltd. And, that’s why Canonical started working on its own brand new UI – Unity, after the release of 10.10. Though, it didn’t give them enough time to design a completely new UI given the 6 months development cycle time between every Ubuntu release, still they’re pushing hard, and with every Alpha release, major difference are being made and well noticed, and lots of bugs reported earlier after the Alpha 1 release are fixed now. No doubt, Unity UI looks promising (See the screenshots below – Click them to Enlarge).
Two other important features of Ubuntu 11.04 are:
- Replacement of Oracle’s Open Office Suite with LibreOffice 3 package, as the default Office suite.
- With 11.04, Qt Framework is also given a go, thus encouraging a whole lot of new apps based on it. This would also push it for cross-integration of apps with other environments, such as KDE.
Right now, we can’t tell whether if Natty Narwhal is better than Ubuntu 10.10, or if Canonical is seriously planning to rule the Desktop market share in near future, because there are still a lot of changes being made every day, and we can’t judge it until the final product is released on April 28, 2011. I’ll be surely writing a Review on it, after the final stable launch.
There are many Linux experts, who consider the UI change to be a wrong move made by Canonical because of less development time, lots of bugs, complexity in interface design, and might turn down large number of Ubuntu users to switch to some other Linux platform. One can’t be sure about whether its gonna happen or not, at this stage. But, one thing is for sure, Natty would prove out to be somewhat buggy compared to 10.10 despite changes constantly being made to the interface. But, I think it would be fair to judge and compare Unity with GNOME after the launch of Ubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot”, as it would give Unity a fair time to furnish itself.
I’d certainly love to know your opinions about this brand new Ubuntu 11.04, and most importantly the Unity UI.