Hardware Issues and 11.04 Beta

[Pongo Pan]

On Fri, 2011-04-15 at 21:06 -0400, Mark C. Miller wrote:
> I wanted to get a look at Unity, so I upgraded a 10.10 machine to 11.04 
> Beta.  It's an older IBM Thinkcenter P4 HT.  When the upgrade completed 
> I received an error message that my hardware would not support unity.  I 
> presume it's a graphic card issue.  I'm not smart enough to figure out 
> how to get the nomenclature for the graphics card in the Thinkcenter.
> 
If your graphics card doesn't support 3D or compositing, you can't do
Compiz or Unity 3D (which requires Compiz).

> Is this just a beta issue or should I expect that I'm not going to be 
> able to upgrade my machines anymore.

You can still use traditional GNOME or Unity 2D for 11.04 (natty) at
least.  You could also switch to a distro built on Ubuntu, like Mint,
and enjoy the same code base, repositories and access to ppas.  There
are lots of choices for older hardware.

> I've only been with Ubuntu since 8.04, but every new version has 
> installed easily and run perfectly.  I'd hate to think that won't be the 
> case anymore.

Unity is interesting but only a small piece of the Ubuntu distribution.
It's still a great distro when used with regular GNOME or with an XFCE
variant. Unity 2D, or whatever.