natty narwhal

Unity 3.8.4 has just landed in Ubuntu 11.04 BETA 1, bringing stability, speed improvements and consistency.

So, what's new in Unity 3.8.4?

• pressing Super summons the Dash (is the same result as when one presses the Ubuntu logo)
• launcher items/icons have now a visual decoupling move (when pressed&hold)



• a new white Dash highlight mode (matches the scrollbar)

A while ago, Mark Shuttleworth announced on his blog the launching of the innovative scrollbars, named Ayatana Overlay Scrollbars.

First, the scrollbars were introduced for testing and feedback purposes via a PPA (maintained by Andrea "Cimi" Cimitan, the dev behind Ayatana Overlay Scrollbars) and received, as usual, many bug fixes but, more important, tons as positive feedback (regular users').

It is almost a habit that Natty should receive some bling each day and, as of today, Compiz's Grid plugin has just been enhanced with an awesome animation.

This comes as a feature freeze exception (the plugin itself can't do any damage to Natty, plus can be easily disabled with just one click).

The Grid plugin behaves just like Windows' "aero effect", it can resize a window dragged to top, right or left side of the desktop, making it fit perfectly (full-screen, right-half, etc).

Canonical's ShipIt, the programme responsible for delivering free-of-charge Ubuntu CDs has just reached its end after "delivering millions of Ubuntu CDs to millions of new users".

A couple of days go the developers changed some of the Unity Springboard/launcher icons, like "Applications" and "Files&Folders" places/lenses, BFB icon and others in order to achieve a better visual experience.

Just now, the Workspace Switcher icon has been reversed to its initial look (colorful, just like the other icons on the Springboard), making a clear distinction between the "regular" items/icons on the launcher and the lenses (Applications, Files&Folders) , which are all monochrome icons or have a dark background.

Unity is the default shell in Ubuntu 11.04, Natty Narwhal, and, although is growing each day, becoming more mature and quite a lovely experience, it doesn't have an easy-to-use GUI, capable of handling "everything".

The Dash is the overlay and the lenses/places are the technology that integrates with the Dash (the overlay) to show groups/categories of things that interest one (such as books, applications, files, etc), lenses are used to return various data (like askubuntu Q&A, clips from Youtube, etc). At the moment we have Applications lens and Files&Folders lens in Ubuntu 11.04 (as default lenses).

Unity 3.8(.2) "BETA" has just landed in Ubuntu 11.04 BETA 1, bringing stability, many bug fixes and not-so-much eye-candy.

So, what is new in Unity 3.8 BETA?

Ubuntu 11.04 beta 1 has just been released and is ready for download @http://releases.ubuntu.com/11.04.

There are no great changes since the last week (Unity 3.6.8) and this release is about fixing bugs, stability and speed improvements.

If one wants to keep an eye on every change in Natty's development cycle (until its final release), check our previous posts.

"Multiarch is the term being used to refer to the capability of a system to install and run applications of multiple different binary targets on the same system", like, for example, running a i386 application on an amd64 system (this is the "core" functionality of multiarch, but other combinations are possible, too).

Multiarch simplifies cross-building and allows for the co-installation of libraries and headers for different architectures, but not binaries (not yet).

Why is this relevant for Ubuntu?