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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

#241

Post by opencl »

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/

Gnome extensions are weird because the UX around them very much feels like an attempt to actively discourage their use.

-using the website to install extensions requires both a browser extension and installing chrome-gnome-shell, not installed by default by most distros

-UI to configure extensions is in Tweak Tool, again not installed by default in most distros and full of the things GNOME people don't really want you to touch but will begrudgingly allow

-the second most popular extension is an improved UI for managing extensions

-the API is poorly documented and new releases always break tons of extensions

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

#242

Post by choward »

Jedd wrote: post #22

Unity was never the main reason people chose to use Ubuntu -- it was always (well, from when I first heard about it until I lost interest (5 years ago)) the claim that Ubuntu is easier to install than Debian. I never understood the fixation about ease of installing , as that's something I either did once every few years on custom hardware, or had automated already using a CFM. For stuff I installed manually (laptops,…

> CFM

What is that? Pretty hard to search for.

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

#243

Post by devcpp »

amenod wrote: post #185
lainga wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I love it for this. I got burned by both KDE4 and Gnome... 3? (starting as actually usable WM, then getting drunk on success and thinking they can and should reinvent the modern desktop). I would love Xfce even more if they fixed some small UX shortcomings (like being able to sort opened apps the way you want to, being unable to set anything in Indicator plugin and similar), but even so it's at least stable and usefu…

You can enable drag-and-drop in the Window Buttons panel Item. As for Indicator, yeah, it's a bit of a mystery. But I don't think much is missing there.

Other examples of missing stuff: - Complex shortcuts: you can't set keyA and also keyA+keyB as shortcuts work on keyPress rather than keyRelease. So no SuperKey and also SuperKey+L/D/R and such. - Easy window resize: the dragging thing is exactly 1 pixel wide. Gotta use Alt+Right-click to resize.

But you get used to XFCE's tiny quirks, it really gets like heaven after some work.

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

#244

Post by msla »

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…

XFCE is nice, but I've been using Window Maker since before Ubuntu even existed, I've carried my basic GUI across multiple distros, and I use it on Ubuntu to this day.

https://windowmaker.org/ -- Really, though, it's in the package repos of just about any distro...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_Maker

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Window_Maker

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

#245

Post by pbhjpbhj »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #150
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

KDE too has cycled through removing the ability to put things on the desktop and reverted to allowing a "folder view" and then back to a traditional windows desktop (as one option). They still do some kookie stuff with Plasma -- from big things like Activities to little annoying things like removing the drag-resize from the application menu (I fix the size in ~/.config after every update), and removing the KDE versio…

You always had an ability to put things on the desktop in Plasma, even in KDE 4.0. It just worked in a completely different way, unrelated to the "Desktop" folder in the filesystem. Also, Alt+PPM works well for resizing the Plasma menus now. It was missing for some time due to architectural changes.

PPM? Didn't realise it had been fixed, there's no affordance for resize on the menu ...

Definitely wasn't a usable way for putting icons on the desktop when plasma rolled out.

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

#246

Post by bobthepanda »

alxlaz wrote: post #214
_phaq wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ad…

> 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. Does Gnome really have a niche there? I know of three places with large Linux deployments (as in hundreds of stations). None of them use Gnome -- its interaction model is so weird and foreign that getting people who aren't Li…

Is something intuitive if you can't get people to figure out how to use it on their own?

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

#247

Post by seba_dos1 »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #245
seba_dos1 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You always had an ability to put things on the desktop in Plasma, even in KDE 4.0. It just worked in a completely different way, unrelated to the "Desktop" folder in the filesystem. Also, Alt+PPM works well for resizing the Plasma menus now. It was missing for some time due to architectural changes.

PPM? Didn't realise it had been fixed, there's no affordance for resize on the menu ... Definitely wasn't a usable way for putting icons on the desktop when plasma rolled out.

Sorry, RMB :) Used Polish name for some reason.

There was, in a form of the icon plasmoid. It worked and behaved completely differently than Folder View does, but if you really wanted, you could have some icons on the desktop. It still works, by the way - it gets created when you drag'n'drop something into the non-Folder View based desktop.

I think drag'n'dropping might have been added shortly after 4.0, but the icon widget was there from the beginning for sure.

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

#248

Post by greatquux »

xemdetia wrote: post #63
greatquux wrote: post #19

There's really only one reason I do use GNOME Shell: the Pidgin IM integration and Panel OSD extensions popup a pidgin notification in the center screen where I can reply back to it inline without having to switch to the desktop where pidgin is running (or switch to the active pidgin window even if it's running on the other monitor with the static desktop). I do so much communication with various people throughout th…

What do you even use pidgin for nowadays? I haven't launched it since AIM died (and MSN before that).

I use Pidgin to connect to Skype, Facebook, XMPP and Google Hangouts with plugins. I communicate with lots of people on various networks and with only one program and even then only through notifications. I just need texting somehow and I'd be all set!

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

#249

Post by Max_aaa »

bobthepanda wrote: post #246
alxlaz wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Does Gnome really have a niche there? I know of three places with large Linux deployments (as in hundreds of stations). None of them use Gnome -- its interaction model is so weird and foreign that getting people who aren't Li…

Is something intuitive if you can't get people to figure out how to use it on their own?

Intuition is based on past experience.

So for most people it would be a "Windows 7"-esque GUI.

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

#250

Post by digi_owl »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #134
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…

> Windows XP got it right. I'd say Windows 95 in this context. XP was the first stable version of Windows (yes, the first one deserved to be called Windows 1.0), but the Start menu was working well in Windows 95/98/ME, too.

I'd say the label of stable goes to Win2k. XP was in many ways Win2k with new theme and a more aggressive license verification scheme.
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