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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

#101

Post by collyw »

freehunter wrote: post #81
gnode wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people who have little / no experience with Linux, an easy low-expertise required install makes all the difference.

Yup. If you can't get it installed, you can never try it, which means you can never be wowed and never switch to it full time. Installing Linux used to be a huge problem, and that's why Ubuntu became popular. Other distros caught up, but it was really Ubuntu that pushed it.

To be fair there were other distros with good installers, where Ubuntu shone was with drivers and non free packages. Though I seem to remember installing scripts to install mp3 decoders, dvd readers and flash plugins all in one go.

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

#102

Post by banishwashtub »

rullopat wrote: post #42

With KDE that got so much better in the last 2-3 years, Qt license that is not an issue anymore since a long time... why so many distros are still using GNOME (especially version 3)?

I try using KDE every couple of years and I can't even put my finger on why it grosses me out so much. The "K" start to every piece of software is obnoxious, I don't know if this is true today but I remember one of my first times using KDE and searching for "calculator" or something and being unable to find it because it was "kalculator". Terrible UX.

I think what really gets me is I use Windows at work and KDE is too close to windows in some respects but isn't...it's also too close to other Linux DE's but isn't. Feels really awkward, and isn't very pretty. I don't necessarily agree with the design decisions of GNOME Shell and GTK but I think they still look a lot better than KDE and Qt.

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

#103

Post by tuomosipola »

No type-ahead search in Nautilus. Ubuntu actually dropped their unofficial patches one version ago, Gnome developers years ago. I cannot fathom how Gnome 3 developers think this is a good idea. We have tried to file bug reports, discuss with them, explain the use case. Still nothing. Very frustrating for us users.

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

#105

Post by tuomosipola »

shabbyrobe wrote: post #77

> Ubuntu has done a bit of tweaking so that you can actually put launchers, folders, and files on your desktop, which should be welcome news for many Ubuntu users. How long that will last is an open question, though, since GNOME just completely removed the code that made it possible for Canonical to enable this feature. I was curious about this and went spelunking for more information. https://community.ubuntu.com/t/…

It seems strange that Gnome is heading to an non-intuitive direction. You could have all the cool stuff but I think you also should provide the familiar Desktop metaphor elements. I already made a comment about the missing type-ahead search in Nautilus file browser, which decision destroys many people's workflows.

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

#106

Post by Dayshine »

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…

Well, Windows 10 is literally pick language, pick a disk, log into your microsoft account (or create local). There are no technical decisions in the installer beyond picking a disk, and usually there is no choice there.

With Linux, I have to check what the three identical guided partition options mean, check what a network mirror is, work out which server packages I need, work out what GRUB is.

That's four pretty technical things. Honestly, I'm probably familiar enough to make a best guess these days, but I have no idea what the consequences of the choices are and google doesn't generally help as sometimes there is no right answer!

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

#107

Post by Symmetry »

kcdigital wrote: post #87

Anyone else use a tiling window manager like i3wm? https://i3wm.org/ Since I mostly work in the terminal, it improves my productivity quite a bit when I can navigate around and open apps without touching the mouse.

I run xmonad from within a Gnome session, at least on my laptop. I looks like the PPA lazy people like myself use to do the integration has been updated for 18.04[1] so I'm going to move my laptop over shortly.

[1]https://github.com/Gekkio/gnome-session-xmonad

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

#108

Post by ajross »

sliken wrote: post #20

Since 20+ years ago I used decent window managers that let me have a 2x2 workspace. VERY simple to use. Moving the mouse works within a workspace and the same way across workspaces (mouse off any edge). Moving windows worked within workspaces (click, drag, drop) same as across workspaces (click, drag, drop). Basically the principal of least surprise. Moving the mouse and clicking shouldn't have special rules across w…

Oh, goodness. Use your keybindings! Don't "move your mouse to the corner", press the windows key. Ctrl-Alt-Up/Down will scroll between desktops rapidly and visually. Add Shift and it will carry the focused window along with you.

When you move a window, it "lands" exactly where it started, moving a window between virtual desktops doesn't change it's X/Y position (why would it? what do you want to happen?).

Basically, you're having trouble learning your new tools. But different and bad are not the same thing. Spend a little longer and try harder.

Everyone hates new desktops when they try them the first time. "Everyone" hated Unity too. And Gnome 2. And Gnome 1. And KDE4...

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

#109

Post by danpalmer »

shabbyrobe wrote: post #77

> Ubuntu has done a bit of tweaking so that you can actually put launchers, folders, and files on your desktop, which should be welcome news for many Ubuntu users. How long that will last is an open question, though, since GNOME just completely removed the code that made it possible for Canonical to enable this feature. I was curious about this and went spelunking for more information. https://community.ubuntu.com/t/…

From what I understand, and I don't follow this particularly closely, so I might be wrong...

They are removing the ability to have a Nautilus backed set of Desktop icons, with the intention of replacing this with something built in a more standard way for the rest of Gnome (which I think means web technologies?). As I understand it this not about removing desktop icons, it is about replacing unmaintained legacy code with more a modern alternative. I don't think the alternative is ready yet, but that's not to say that the direction they want to go is not having the feature.

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