It’s that time again. I know it’s not terrifically popular with everyone and might only appeal to people who are comfortable working with the command line.
But if you’re tired of burning CDs and just want a single image you can write straight to USB with dd and without an intermediary bootup, this might appeal to you.
The standard disclaimers apply. You’re overwriting your USB, of course. There are no special tweaks in place. It’s all default, and only for i386. I’ve just saved you the step of booting a CD and clicking on “Startup Disk Creator.”
Or in the case of Unity, scratching around through the gigantic buttons, finally searching for “USB” and finding the application button hiding somewhere. Or at least, that’s what I ended up doing. 🙄
Motho ke motho ka botho 
Talking about 11.04… did you run it on a slower computer? I just installed it on a netbook (Acer aspire one, N260 with 2gb ram). Actually it was an upgrade from 10.04 to 11.04…
I think Unity is quite heavy for that kind of machine.
Oi’ Marko, If unity is too much, then when you are logging in and you press/choose your account, there should be a list on the bottom that says “unity” or something along those lines. Just change it to “ubuntu desktop classic,” and you get the old interface with the theoretical speed boost of the new kernel. It is very useful if you want to update but like the older interface. Hope that helps people!
“Or in the case of Unity, scratching around through the gigantic buttons, finally searching for “USB” and finding the application button hiding somewhere. Or at least, that’s what I ended up doing.”
You got it right the second time. Basically, Unity[1] is supposed to be a user friendly command-line interface. The typical user interaction should consist of the user pressing Super, then typing (an approximation of) what he wants to do (name of program, file, song, etc) followed by Enter[2]. No more hunting icons around with a mouse.
This blog post might make you understand the concept better. 🙄 😉
[1] And launchers in general: kupfer, gnome-do, synapse, etc
[2] I have to be honest here, this has rarely worked well in practice for me. Neither Unity nor other launchers can find my files all the time
I just use Unetbootin. It dosen’t always work, but if it dosen’t then I burn a cd. On the note of Ubuntu 11.04 I can’t try it until the power usage bug in the newest kernel is fixed. Does anyone have any news about that?
When synaptic told me to upgrade to 11.04 I tried and it crashed. I downloaded the iso twice and it didn’t work. I don’t even like unity or gnome shell ,but I though one should give it a go and stop being a stick in the mud, but no. I’m off to bodhi linux 🙂
K. Mandla
You seem to write a lot about minimalist operating systems in both physical requirements as well as UI. Unity is quite minimal in terms of UI under the right conitions the work flow is quite nice. I have yet to decide if the work flow is better than gnome 3 which has me puzzled. It runs very well on old hardware so you might check out the Fedora 15 beta.
Anyone who has used Ubuntu for any amount of time may have gotten attached to a style of UI those of you who replaced gnome panels with AWN or Docky might have less trouble. Someone completely new is going to have alot of respect for the new UI. As much as I don’t like the UI there are just things that make sense.
I hope you will review the Fedora 15 beta or at least the final as I think you will find Gnome-Shell refreshing.
Wow they still don’t provide this? 😛
I tried to dd the iso to a USB drive and it didn’t boot, so I guessed no. 😐
I tried Unetbootin as well as dd and both bypassed the Live session and dumped me back into Grub. I’m on Debian squeeze and Ubuntu only has USB instructions for Ubuntu and Windows.
Looks like the torrent is going to take a day to download, I’ll be sure to seed it for that long when I’m done taking 11.04 for a spin.
Thanks for this, K.
@ Tobias Mann
like dmenu?
Thanks all, very thought provoking Web site
Sorry I don’t follow. I could benifit from more information.
Tobias, nothing but a case of replying to the wrong comment! See below.
@ imgx64
“You got it right the second time. Basically, Unity[1] is supposed to be a user friendly command-line interface. The typical user interaction should consist of the user pressing Super, then typing (an approximation of) what he wants to do (name of program, file, song, etc) followed by Enter[2]. No more hunting icons around with a mouse.”
like dmenu?
Thanks all, very thought provoking Web site
“[1] And launchers in general: kupfer, gnome-do, synapse, etc”
😉