Given the fact that one of the most common targets for Linux installations is on older, 'reclaimed' hardware, it would have been surprising if Ubuntu didn't ship with a 2D window manager. Canonical's Bill Filler also mentions that "many ARM platforms fall into this category," though we're not quite sure which ARM devices he has in mind. Most low-power devices are either netbooks or smartphones -- and netbooks are Atom x86, not ARM (at least for now), and a lot of smartphones have hardware acceleration via OpenGL ES (and who puts Ubuntu on a smartphone, anyway?)
Basically, this is great news for people that want to put Ubuntu 11.04 on old laptops, netbooks and desktops with awful integrated graphics -- or simply those that don't like the 3D version of Unity! It's also great news for those that virtualize their Ubuntu installations under VMWare or VirtualBox, both of which have a hard time with 3D acceleration.
[It seems, at the time of publishing, that Bill Filler's blog post has vanished. Maybe he was jumping the gun; or perhaps something else is afoot...]
Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal will ship with 2D version of Unity for older and weaker computers originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 14 Jan 2011 06:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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