So I finally grew a pair and did the upgrade to Ubuntu 11.04. All went smoothly but it took like damn near four hours for everything to be done. The new unity interface is still kinda lame (I used netbook edition of 10.10 and hated the sidebar launcher) and I still don’t dig the sidebar launcher thing even though it doesn’t take up the screen space like it used to since the windows now cover it. I immediately went right back to the desktop edition which they now call “classic.” My boot time is now more like 30+ seconds, which isn’t too bad since my first install of 10.10 had some missing file error that caused it to be around 20 seconds instead of the famous 10 second boot so I never had a chance to be spoiled by a quick boot. I also had to re-configure a few things to get everything back to how it was.

First thing I had to do was install CompizConfig Settings Manager (ccsm) from the Ubuntu Software Center. I believe they got rid of whatever handled the effects in 10.10 and this is what you use now to manage all the effects. Although it doesn’t seem to apply the settings in some instances (?) The drop shadows on the windows look like crap and have a massive x-offset.

Second thing I had to do was the re-install the NotifyOSD Configuration since the previous version was just for 10.10. Simple instructions to do that are here. They also added the ability to turn the fade off on hover and to be able to click on the notification to close it. However it might be worth mentioning that “once you run NotifyOSD Config tool, these two last options (to prevent fading and to close the notification bubbles on click) will be removed from the ~/.nofiy-osd file so use NotifyOSD Config firstly and then tweak this or remember to add these options back to the file if you use the config tool later on.” In other words it might be easier to just edit the settings via the command line w/ gedit. If not you will find that every time you edit the file, kill the process and open the Notify config you will have the settings replaced by some odd default settings. I am not sure why this doesn’t come packaged with ubuntu in the first place but all in all it was a quick fix. Link: http://www.webupd8.org/2011/05/configurable-notifyosd-bubbles-for.html

I sort of wish I hadn’t upgraded as everything seemed a bit snappier and was less buggy in 10.10 but I’ll give natty a little time to grow on me.