Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

theregister.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 93 posts

Re: Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

#41

Post by bergie »

dman wrote: post #21
hasenj wrote: post #16

Completely disagree. I've been using Unity for a while now, it's pretty awesome and much much better than anything (classical) gnome could ever be. This article sounds like "I've just used OS X for the first time and there's no start menu, instead it has a weird thing that's like a dock or something." So, no more gnome-panel applets. What's the big deal? Most of them were useless and ugly anyway. And yes, there is a…

One thing that threw me off in Unity was the lack of a hierarchical menu for launching applications. Is there someway to create a button that shows the hierarchical menu? btw this isnt a criticism of unity, just me trying to pick the brains of a power unity user.

I guess that varies by the user. For me, on Ubuntu there are generally only two applications I end up launching from the panel: terminal and a browser.

The other software I use are either communicational tools (IRC and instant messaging), launched from the messaging menu, and document-specific tools (openoffice. GIMP, inkscape, gedit) that I launch either from terminal or the file manager.

I don't know how well Unity supports this workflow, as the Maverick version of it was too slow to use. But I appreciate the extra vertical space given by the global menu

Re: Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

#42

Post by viraptor »

vacri wrote: post #6
windsurfer wrote: post #4

This seems pretty typical of Ubuntu releases, frankly. Anyone remember the Firefox 3 fiasco? Luckily, if you don't like it, you've got lots of choice, the current version will be supported for another 12 months, and the next version will be out in 6 months. It's not a big deal.

This is something that's so often overlooked. If you want a stable desktop for production use, use an LTS version of ubuntu. If you want 'close to the edge', get the last version or two, they come with 18 months support. If you want to fool around on the edge, well, that's where they do crazy stuff like this. Early adopters are beta testers, always have been, always will be.

> If you want a stable desktop for production use, use an LTS version of ubuntu.

I'm not so sure about it. All releases are supposed to be stable (final releases at least, not the current beta). LTS has nothing to do with "not-beta" - it's about the length of support only and this is the way it's advertised on the ubuntu website. Whenever they write about "stable" regarding LTS it's in the business context - it's "not changing" rather than "not crashing".

Re: Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

#43

Post by rbanffy »

dman wrote: post #34
rbanffy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never noticed how fast my GPU was until I crashed the theme engine by accidentally xkilling the bottom panel. And I don't think it looks that bad.

I might be hitting a bug then on the nouveau drivers. because I am getting completely unthemed gtk which looks a lot like Tk.

I think we have different definitions of ugly ;-)

I confess. I don't think unthemed GTK 2 is ugly.

Re: Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

#44

Post by nnutter »

dman wrote: post #21
hasenj wrote: post #16

Completely disagree. I've been using Unity for a while now, it's pretty awesome and much much better than anything (classical) gnome could ever be. This article sounds like "I've just used OS X for the first time and there's no start menu, instead it has a weird thing that's like a dock or something." So, no more gnome-panel applets. What's the big deal? Most of them were useless and ugly anyway. And yes, there is a…

One thing that threw me off in Unity was the lack of a hierarchical menu for launching applications. Is there someway to create a button that shows the hierarchical menu? btw this isnt a criticism of unity, just me trying to pick the brains of a power unity user.

I don't think a hierarchical menu is needed. What purpose would that help with? I think instead they should focus on making it easy to search in the launcher.

One cool feature they have is that it can listed installed apps as expected but also apps available in Software Center. Hopefully, someone can search for "draw" and get appropriate apps listed. Or for "GIMP" and either launch of install the app.

Re: Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

#45

Post by nnutter »

hasenj wrote: post #16

Completely disagree. I've been using Unity for a while now, it's pretty awesome and much much better than anything (classical) gnome could ever be. This article sounds like "I've just used OS X for the first time and there's no start menu, instead it has a weird thing that's like a dock or something." So, no more gnome-panel applets. What's the big deal? Most of them were useless and ugly anyway. And yes, there is a…

At first I thought Unity was a stupid idea. That in Canoncial's quest to compete with OS X's "elegance" they were copying one of its most hated features, The Dock. However, after using Alpha 3 and Beta 1 a bit I feel like it is The Dock done right. It auto-hides but still reveals notifications. It does not abuse precious vertical screen real estate. It does not disconnect the act of finding apps to launch from apps that are running.

It is definitely not perfect and as is so common in open source it lacks polish. It abuses glow effects and is a bit non-intuitive in its finer details. However, it solves far more problems than its creating and is definitely a good change.

Whether it is a better change than Gnome Shell is another question and as I haven't used Gnome Shell I can only hope that one or both will push desktop usability ahead.

Re: Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

#46

Post by nnutter »

vacri wrote: post #6
windsurfer wrote: post #4

This seems pretty typical of Ubuntu releases, frankly. Anyone remember the Firefox 3 fiasco? Luckily, if you don't like it, you've got lots of choice, the current version will be supported for another 12 months, and the next version will be out in 6 months. It's not a big deal.

This is something that's so often overlooked. If you want a stable desktop for production use, use an LTS version of ubuntu. If you want 'close to the edge', get the last version or two, they come with 18 months support. If you want to fool around on the edge, well, that's where they do crazy stuff like this. Early adopters are beta testers, always have been, always will be.

Using LTS delays the time between changes not the magnitude of the change.

Re: Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

#47

Post by csulok »

riledhel wrote: post #38

People understand this is why other people release betas right? To test new things? To test unfinished products? To gather early feedback? I've been using Unity for a month or so in Maverick Meerkat (10.10) and I find it great for daily usage, in spite of it's minor glitches.

Except for critical issues, nothing will change. The things that make the most important UI unusable / annoying are not critical issues, but in fact very low priority usability issues and or missing features.

Re: Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

#48

Post by glenjamin »

hasenj wrote: post #16

Completely disagree. I've been using Unity for a while now, it's pretty awesome and much much better than anything (classical) gnome could ever be. This article sounds like "I've just used OS X for the first time and there's no start menu, instead it has a weird thing that's like a dock or something." So, no more gnome-panel applets. What's the big deal? Most of them were useless and ugly anyway. And yes, there is a…

How about when I have two 21" monitors, and don't maximise my windows. And if it's anything like OS X the menu bar will be one screen only.

There seems to be plenty of good things about it, and i do quite like OS X, but having the menu bar fixed at the top is not some sort of usability godsend.

Re: Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

#50

Post by mnutt »

sid0 wrote: post #19
elehack wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because by some other standards, such as Fitts' Law, it's a good move - it gives the menu infinite vertical size. Also, it is an effective way of conserving vertical screen real estate. With the increasing prevalance of widescreen displays, vertical space is (relatively) scarce. This is particularly true on netbooks, and even on full-size laptops. Merging the menu with the top dock gives you an extra 24 pixels or so…

What about applications like Firefox 4 that don't require full-blown menu bars? What about applications that want to try out alternative user interfaces (ribbon etc)? What about multi-monitor setups? What about high-resolution (1080p or higher) monitor setups? What about high-res multi-monitor setups, where you might have to move the mouse over 4000 pixels to get to the menu you're looking for?

As a high-res monitor user, with proper mouse acceleration it's really not any harder to hit a menu item that is anchored to the top of the screen than it is to stop the mouse on a menu item 200px away.

The only issues I've seen are when I have a non-rectangular monitor configuration.

Post reply on HN