Ubuntu 11.04 Alpha 1 To Bring 2D Version For Older, Unaccelerated Hardware

Ubuntu 11.04 Alpha 1 brings the 2D version for older, unaccelerated hardware. A new 2D implementation of Unity, Ubuntu 11.04's new default desktop, is to be made available for users without accelerated 3D graphics support.

For Ubuntu 11.04 Alpha 1, one of the most common targets for Linux (Essential Linux Device Drivers) 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.

However, most low-power devices on Ubuntu 11.04 Alpha 1 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, which is a subset of the OpenGL 3D graphics API designed for embedded devices such as iPod and iPhone.

It is great for people who 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.

Ubuntu 11.04 Drivers Free Download

• NVIDIA Ubuntu 11.04 Graphics Drivers
• Ubuntu 11.04 Intel Graphics Drivers
• Ubuntu 11.04 AMD Graphics Drivers

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