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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

#221

Post by jschwartzi »

thinkmassive wrote: post #177
jschwartzi wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Widgets on the phone work great because the launcher is where I end up every time I press the power key. Widgets on the desktop are useless because the desktop is always obscured by things I'm actively working on, and the only time I will see a widget is when I'm not using my computer for anything at all.

Fair point. I don’t use a desktop at all because I use a tiling window manager. When I worked at a Linux distro (endlessos.com) they had modified Gnome to have a universal search bar on the desktop. It was targeted at a different group of users than me, but it seemed to make sense based on that group. Hopefully Gnome does sufficient user testing to deliver a useful experience to some significant group.

I would certainly use a search bar, especially if it had the capability to launch terminal programs or open a terminal in a certain directory. Most widgets I see on my phone are things like calendars or counters, which on a desktop OS should go in the same space as running programs.

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

#222

Post by Barrin92 »

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.

Seems the answer is in that last link of yours:

>Nautilus had have a feature called “the desktop” which adds icons on the background of the user workspace, similar to Windows.[..] if you look you will see that the desktop is composed by more than 10.000 lines of code

That's a big mess and I finally understand why opening nautilus on i3wm always completely messes the desktop up. Using the file manager as a hack to build a desktop is a bad abstraction and I can understand why it they'd want to rebuild it.

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

#223

Post by mkasu »

tapoxi wrote: post #133
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/…

> the Desktop filesystem metaphor is used by almost every single computer user I have ever seen Smartphones, tablets, and Chromebooks are incredibly popular and lack a desktop. ChromeOS is the most similar to GNOME here, in that it has a desktop wallpaper but you cannot create anything there.

Most of these smartphones and tablets have homescreens which serve a pretty similar purpose. And people are used to having links to all their favorite apps on it.

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

#224

Post by rav »

dm319 wrote: post #143
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.

> missing type-ahead search in Nautilus file browser I'd forgotten this! Very frustrating when you're used to using this to switch to a file in that directory. I also missed split-screen functionality, and the inability to right click and fire up a terminal from that location. Oh, and also looks like they've dropped being able to double-click on an executable .sh file to run it. Luckily none of this bothers me as the…

>> missing type-ahead search in Nautilus file browser

> I'd forgotten this! Very frustrating when you're used to using this to switch to a file in that directory.

I agree, but FWIW you can press Ctrl-L to focus the address bar, which allows you to enter a relative path, e.g. name of a file/directory in the current directory.

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

#225

Post by truncate »

mort96 wrote: post #43
asgraham wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does workspace grid [1] work on 18.04? Not sure how to get wrapping, though. [1] https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/484/workspace-grid/

This isn't strictly related to your suggestion, but a more general comment. Am I the only one who finds it a bit frustrating that any time someone complains about missing/bad functionality in gnome, someone recommends to install an extension, but when a user complains about stability or performance, their number of extensions are blamed?

No you are not the only one. I've had performance problem with GNOME on my Dell XPS 13 for a while. Initially it was mostly sluggish animations. After couple of years, with regular updates, my fan is continuously spinning and it visibly feels slow. I don't use very few popular extensions (hide title on maximize, the ubuntu defaults).

I mostly use i3 which is perfect, but one of those days when I feel like using a full desktop environment, I just can't. On positive side however, scaling for hidpi screen seems to work out of box in Ubuntu 18.04.

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

#226

Post by q3k »

dm319 wrote: post #143
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.

> missing type-ahead search in Nautilus file browser I'd forgotten this! Very frustrating when you're used to using this to switch to a file in that directory. I also missed split-screen functionality, and the inability to right click and fire up a terminal from that location. Oh, and also looks like they've dropped being able to double-click on an executable .sh file to run it. Luckily none of this bothers me as the…

Restore sanity by applying the following patch: https://code.hackerspace.pl/q3k/q3kverlay/tree/x11-libs/gtk+...

(or just use this overlay if you run Gentoo)

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

#227

Post by ctrlc-root »

rdtsc wrote: post #200

Am I the only one who didn't hate Unity? I wonder if it was an effect of people who didn't like it complained and threw hissy fits. Those that liked or didn't mind, didn't say anything. So it _seemed_ as if everyone hated and they just had to replace it. I've observed that pattern happen with product features before. A customer chimes vocally that they hate something, another does etc. An issue is created, work start…

Unity wasn't perfect but I personally really enjoyed it after the initial adjustment period. I mostly switch between a web browser, a terminal, and a text editor. I like how Unity let me run the applications I needed while staying out of my way and taking up mininal screen space.

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

#229

Post by kidsil »

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…

I've used XFCE for years, then moved to LXDE.

I find it smoother, much more intuitive, and about the same with regards to memory footprint

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

#230

Post by bonzini »

jschwartzi wrote: post #171
thinkmassive wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the desktop metaphor be constrained to “just a folder with a background set to grid view” though? Phones are already far ahead of most desktops by having widgets. Perhaps we’ll see innovation in the area of desktop UIs from Gnome when they get the next generation in place.

Widgets on the phone work great because the launcher is where I end up every time I press the power key. Widgets on the desktop are useless because the desktop is always obscured by things I'm actively working on, and the only time I will see a widget is when I'm not using my computer for anything at all.

Wouldn't that apply to desktop folder icons as well?
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