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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

#161

Post by lainga »

sandworm101 wrote: post #123
tuomosipola wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>> It seems strange that Gnome is heading to an non-intuitive direction. Really? I've never heard anything but non-intuitive ramblings from UI design people. None of them seem to ever actually use computers. Rather, they dream up use cases based on contrived scenarios. I want one thing: The icon is where it was yesterday. Gnome, unity all the others have one job: Let me launch the program I need and get the F out of…

>Let me launch the program I need and get the F out of my way.

That is a philosophy DEs should have, but (if you'd like suggestions) which XFCE most cleanly follows.

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

#162

Post by teddyh »

sangnoir wrote: post #118
collyw wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> What was wrong with Synaptic? >> broken dependencies. Not that it's Synaptic's fault, but some packages will have conflicting dependencies, especially if you're using PPA's to get recent software versions. It's not uncommon to get "foo (latest) requires bar >=3.1 but you have bar 2.8 installed. Baz (installed) requires bar 2.8". Snaps avoid conflicts by having each app contain it's dependencies, which could otherwi…

> Snaps avoid conflicts by having each app contain it's dependencies, which could otherwise conflict.

It also negates the entire point of having a package management system, as you can’t upgrade a security issue in libfoo and get it fixed once, but have to wait for all the users of libfoo, and the users of users of libfoo, and so on, to provide a new version of the Snap package with a new fixed libfoo contained inside it.

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

#163

Post by kyrofa »

collyw wrote: post #95
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.

> What was wrong with Synaptic?

Once an Ubuntu release has been cut the debs within it can (for the most part) only receive bugfixes, not new features. Which means that as an LTS goes through its lifespan, the software within it slowly gets further and further out of date. Snaps, on the other hand, are as up-to-date as their publishers make them.

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

#164

Post by awaaz »

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...

Another keyboard-only method which I haven't seen mentioned yet, that I learned in Windows but seems to work well even in Linux, is to press alt+space and then

  'm' followed by arrow keys to move the window around, or
  'r' followed by arrow keys to resize the window
For people like me on laptops with trackpads, these keyboard shortcuts work really well.

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

#165

Post by sandworm101 »

lainga wrote: post #161
sandworm101 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It seems strange that Gnome is heading to an non-intuitive direction. Really? I've never heard anything but non-intuitive ramblings from UI design people. None of them seem to ever actually use computers. Rather, they dream up use cases based on contrived scenarios. I want one thing: The icon is where it was yesterday. Gnome, unity all the others have one job: Let me launch the program I need and get the F out of…

>Let me launch the program I need and get the F out of my way. That is a philosophy DEs should have, but (if you'd like suggestions) which XFCE most cleanly follows.

That's my favorite mint flavour.

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

#166

Post by mikewhy »

themodelplumber wrote: post #82
justin66 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

To their credit, the Alt+RMB method for resizing windows is, along with Alt+LMB for moving windows, really amazing. I get annoyed when I have to go back to the old way on my Mac and Windows systems.

BetterTouchTool can do moving and resizing on macos, I've got them set to "FN+control" and "FN+control+option". Still haven't found anything good for Windows.

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

#167

Post by walterbell »

teddyh wrote: post #158
walterbell wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need the equivalent of CSS user stylesheets for UX, where user preferences can contextually override publisher/designer preferences. The relationship between the user and other sources of “design input” can be adversarial. Open-source rule engines can help users to negotiate this adversarial space.

> CSS user stylesheets for UX Isn’t this, quite literally, what Gnome Shell Extensions are? https://extensions.gnome.org/

Thanks for the pointer. Looks like the docs are scattered: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13107743/documentation-f...

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

#168

Post by foxhop »

I actually switched to Fedora when Ubuntu Unity came out (after being a long time Ubuntu user of many years).

Gnome was a major reason for my switch. I didn't have time for unity (just like I gave up on KDE for the same reason).

Gnome is solid and looks beautiful these days.

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

#169

Post by _phaq »

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 wilfully destructive to remove something that is depended on by so many without making sure there's a replacement in place first.

Could cut straight to the GNOME logo after that sentence. This is sort of what they do, yeah. And they do have their niche with that, which is big enterprise-y, centrally administered systems.

If the user doesn't need to administer things themselves, then not exposing ways of administration in the GUI means less ways for the user to hurt themselves. Or rather to do something not so smart and then need tech support to fix it. Can't accidently hide your panel, if you actually cannot hide your panel at all.

I have no problem with one of the many desktop environments specializing in that, but the Linux desktop is mainly controlled by companies who then develop and set GNOME as default on their distros, which are also used by people who do need to administer their PC.

Ubuntu and Fedora have GNOME as default. Debian, too, which doesn't really have an opinion, but it's what they've always used and it's stable. Arch and Gentoo don't have an opinion at all, for obvious reasons.

openSUSE is still holding against, but SUSE uses GNOME in SLED, too, and has been spreading a sort of "We like all desktop environments in *SUSE-land"-mentality, which makes me feel like they're wanting to swap out KDE here, too, at some point.

But yeah, if you haven't yet, do yourself and the Linux desktop a favor and give KDE a fair try. Or pretty much anything else than GNOME.

I'm not saying it's impossible for you to like GNOME better, but there's so many desktop environments out there that are developed from users for users, which are actually objectively better than GNOME in so many categories. Even the most lightweight of desktop environments like LXDE/LXQt often have more features than GNOME.

And KDE is what you get when you take this feature per resource usage ratio of these lightweight environments and then multiply it by the resources that a modern system can easily provide. If you ever wanted to have all of the features and options that a desktop OS could have, KDE comes far too close to that. It's the flagship experience for power users (not the type that only ever wants to see a terminal).

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

#170

Post by diffeomorphism »

Dayshine wrote: post #106
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tec…

> 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.

While it is nice that you want to learn, you do not have to know any of that. Boot, select disk, username+password, click next a few times, done.

And the (or create a local) part for windows is very non-obvious: https://superuser.com/questions/904673/can-i-install-windows...

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