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Ubuntu 18.04: Unity is gone, Gnome is back, and Ubuntu has never been better

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Re: Ubuntu 18.04: Unity is gone, Gnome is back, and Ubuntu has never been better

#91

Post by Shinchy »

fb03 wrote: post #23

I've been skipping all the Unity drama by staying on Xubuntu which is really snappy and stays out of your way. Also, Gnome on this laptop (Dell Inspiron 15 7000) gave me (and several others users, as per forum post https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2358975 and some bug reports I found on the internet) a freeze or stutter every 10 or so seconds. So instead of having to start debugging shit from a fresh Linux i…

Had the exact same issue, ended up switch from Wayland over to Xorg to get it working. However this isn't anywhere near as nice of an experience.

Re: Ubuntu 18.04: Unity is gone, Gnome is back, and Ubuntu has never been better

#92

Post by H1Supreme »

mort96 wrote: post #53
fb03 wrote: post #23

I've been skipping all the Unity drama by staying on Xubuntu which is really snappy and stays out of your way. Also, Gnome on this laptop (Dell Inspiron 15 7000) gave me (and several others users, as per forum post https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2358975 and some bug reports I found on the internet) a freeze or stutter every 10 or so seconds. So instead of having to start debugging shit from a fresh Linux i…

XUbuntu is great, and the distro I use for my desktop, but I'd also suggest checking out Ubuntu Mate 18.04. It's "old school" similar to XFCE, largely without animations to slow things down, and the 18.04 version replaced the old menu with brisk-menu which is fast, super key activated, and has search (basically it works a lot like XFCE's). Ubuntu Mate uses gtk 3 and probably in general more modern technology than XFC…

I've been running a customized version of Mate for a few years. It's sleek and efficient. Had some screen flicker issues at first, but switching window managers to Compiz (I think) fixed it.

I even brought an old Macbook back to life by throwing Mate on it in place of MacOs.

Re: Ubuntu 18.04: Unity is gone, Gnome is back, and Ubuntu has never been better

#93

Post by ythn »

fb03 wrote: post #23

I've been skipping all the Unity drama by staying on Xubuntu which is really snappy and stays out of your way. Also, Gnome on this laptop (Dell Inspiron 15 7000) gave me (and several others users, as per forum post https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2358975 and some bug reports I found on the internet) a freeze or stutter every 10 or so seconds. So instead of having to start debugging shit from a fresh Linux i…

Been using Xubuntu since 14.04 - couldn't be happier. It's my default distro now.

Re: Ubuntu 18.04: Unity is gone, Gnome is back, and Ubuntu has never been better

#95

Post by collyw »

habosa wrote: post #85

Been using 16.04LTS on my personal laptop for a few years, just moved to 18.04. I feel like the biggest improvement by far is the Snap package manager and its integration with the Ubuntu software store. After 10+ years of doing personal computing on Linux this is the first time that installing my main apps has ever felt sane! I was blown away by being able to install the latest Android studio, with a launcher icon, i…

What was wrong with Synaptic?

I always felt the the offical Ubuntu package manager was a dumbed down version that(though its been a while sine I have used Ubuntu). Synaptic definitely felt better for installing libraries instead of applications.

Re: Ubuntu 18.04: Unity is gone, Gnome is back, and Ubuntu has never been better

#96

Post by corey_moncure »

justin66 wrote: post #59
fb03 wrote: post #23

I've been skipping all the Unity drama by staying on Xubuntu which is really snappy and stays out of your way. Also, Gnome on this laptop (Dell Inspiron 15 7000) gave me (and several others users, as per forum post https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2358975 and some bug reports I found on the internet) a freeze or stutter every 10 or so seconds. So instead of having to start debugging shit from a fresh Linux i…

Ubuntu with MATE works as well. I used Xubuntu for a while but I was always fascinated by how bad a couple aspects of XFCE are. They maintain documentation [1] on oddball ways of resizing windows instead of just giving people what they want. I suspect MATE just does what most people want out of the box. [1] https://xubuntu.org/news/window-resizing-in-xubuntu-and-xfce...

I just ended up making a bunch of keyboard shortcuts with the Windows-key.

  Win+R -> Resize
  Win+M -> Move
  Win+A -> All desktops
  Win+Q -> Stay on top
  Win+H -> Hide
  Win+Arrow -> change workspace
  Win+Shift+Arrow -> Carry focused window to workspace
etc.

This works so well for me that I completely removed all the buttons from the window manager since I no longer need to access them anymore.

Re: Ubuntu 18.04: Unity is gone, Gnome is back, and Ubuntu has never been better

#97

Post by mrighele »

isostatic wrote: post #52
leephillips wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly my approach. Periodically I ask what are the advantages of an environment like Gnome that would make it worth it for me to put up with the resource usage. I haven't heard anything compelling yet.

Many years ago I used to use light weight window managers. I remember using icewm after I got fed up with enlightenment, but I think it was Fluxbox that I kept for a long time -- up until about 2010. However having access to things like a network manager to join wireless networks, a battery indicator, a volume control, etc is essential in today's world, which is why I now run a heavyweight xfce environment.

You can have those with a window manager too, but in this case you need to do more fiddling

I use xmonad with stalonetray [1] (which as you may guess from the name is a standalone notification tray) and dzen2 [2] as a notification area for basic information ( battery / cpu / temperature / wifi status ). With them I cover enough of my needs and I don't feel the need to anything more complex.

I think that it would be nice to have some middle ground between a full desktop environment and bare-bone and manually configured window manager though.

[1] http://stalonetray.sourceforge.net/ [2] https://github.com/robm/dzen

Re: Ubuntu 18.04: Unity is gone, Gnome is back, and Ubuntu has never been better

#98

Post by Sylos »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #38
neverminder wrote: post #2

I'm on Ubuntu 18.04 (upgraded from 16.04) and I'm still using Unity. Technically Unity is not gone, but it's no longer a default, Gnome is. I've tried Gnome and was very disappointed. No global menu integration which means losing useful screen space for no good reason. Tray icons somehow look squished and ragged. No fractional scaling is a massive issue for me since I'm working with dual 27 inch 4K displays. Tray bar…

Another serious issue with Gnome IMHO, also shared with Unity, is way too small window edges so that attempting to drag-to-resize a window becomes an exercise in patience. I'm on a laptop most of the time and, like you, have absolutely no desire to go back to wasteful non-global menus. Have you eyed a replacement DE for Unity/Ubuntu going forward? Edit: OTOH, Ubuntu have clearly spent a good amount of effort to custo…

Are you aware that you can hold down Alt and right-click-drag on a window to resize it? Alt+left-click-drag moves the window. (I believe it's Alt on GNOME, might be the Windows/Super/Meta/Logo-key instead.)

So, when you have your hand on the keyboard, this can be much more convenient.

Re: Ubuntu 18.04: Unity is gone, Gnome is back, and Ubuntu has never been better

#99

Post by collyw »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #83
Dayshine wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I never understood the fixation about ease of installing The only time I use linux is when I need a linux VM for something. This happens maybe 2/3 times a year, and I can never remember all the random linux specific installation stuff. Ubuntu goes into enough detail that I don't need to google it, Debian doesn't. My fixation is because I don't care about what version of linux I'm using, I'm not going to be using it…

I honestly don't know what you're talking about with "random linux specific installation stuff". Installation of Linux hasn't really been any different from Windows since the early aughties as far as I can tell. Select keyboard layout, provide hostname, just let the partitioner use the whole disk automatically, configure the network, etc. As someone who frequently hates on Desktop Linux, I agree with the sentiment th…

I would really like to run Arch, but last time I checked it was a manual process (so I am on Majaro). The docs are really good. I am expert enough to get a lot of benefit from that amount of detail, but not expert enough to be bothered with the manual install process.

One thing that gets me is ~12 years ago I used to install distros all the time. There was a semi standard way to partition your drive, / home and swap. Now I look at the partitions that are produced and a lot of the time I have no idea what is going on. And please stop moving the bloody usb drive mount location about.

Re: Ubuntu 18.04: Unity is gone, Gnome is back, and Ubuntu has never been better

#100

Post by keypress »

leephillips wrote: post #33
fb03 wrote: post #23

I've been skipping all the Unity drama by staying on Xubuntu which is really snappy and stays out of your way. Also, Gnome on this laptop (Dell Inspiron 15 7000) gave me (and several others users, as per forum post https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2358975 and some bug reports I found on the internet) a freeze or stutter every 10 or so seconds. So instead of having to start debugging shit from a fresh Linux i…

Exactly my approach. Periodically I ask what are the advantages of an environment like Gnome that would make it worth it for me to put up with the resource usage. I haven't heard anything compelling yet.

I run Xfce on Debian, I have Gnome 3 in reserve. And occasionally try it out. I quite like the notification area/panel under Gnome. Font clarity seems a little different (better). Workspaces are okay, plug-able drives are handled well, network manager is pretty good these days, as it now has a CLI alternative. But I don't like the application launcher. Not a fan of scrolling through loads of icons.

Nautilus has got increasingly shitty. So there's less Gnome now in my Xfce.

I tried Win 10 recently, it was horrible.

In conclusion they all have warts. But Xfce is okay in a Win95 kind of way. It could be better.

Simple UI seems to always elude distros/desktops.

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