unity

2011-04-29T19:32:00

Tried Ubuntu's new interface “Unity” out for grins and giggles. First I tried to install 11.04 (latest stable Ubuntu) into a kvm based VM on my Debian CPU server, only when you get login it says no 3D hardware no good! Next I tried installing it on my work notebook alongside windows. Ubuntu has this pretty neat thing where you can try it out without partitioning your drive by installing it into your windows partition as a disk image at the cost of some disk performance. Ubuntu boots up into Unity, only it doesn't use all three monitors, and the two that it uses it is mirroring rather than double heading them. No problem, bound to be a glitch or two when dealing with Ubuntu. It suggests without prompting that I install some propriety drivers. OH-NOES says the GNU Thought Police^[1], don't install the proprietary drivers to make your system useable! Once installed says I need to reboot, which sort of reminds me of Windows--don't I miss it?. Reboot and now it says I can't run Unity because the drivers don't support 3D. Same message as I got in the VM. Awesome job guys. Awesome. I can't decide who is more retarded, nVidia for not just releasing their drivers open source so that they can be put into the mainline kernel, Ubuntu for releasing what appears to be an unfinished product that is unable to degrade into 2d, or the Linux kernel hackers who break driver compatibility for every version or any kind of slight modification to your kernel such that it is impossible to release commercial drivers without writing a retarded compatibility layer over what is a horrendous excruciating pile.

seriously, there is something Orwellian about insisting that a license with more clauses than the BSD is “freer” or promotes “freedom”

The Twilight Report

unity