Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever • Hacker News Board

Re: Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

#51

Post by natrius » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 6:18 PM UTC

glenjamin wrote: post #48

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.

I use Unity with two monitors and unmaximized windows, and it works fine. In the window is on the second screen, the menu bar follows.

Try it.

Re: Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

#52

Post by Maascamp » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 6:26 PM UTC

mnutt wrote: post #50

sid0 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Proper mouse acceleration is a poor poor solution for the parents problem. I can't (physically can't) use a mouse that moves faster than a certain speed.

Re: Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

#53

Post by Maascamp » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 6:28 PM UTC

nuclear_eclipse wrote: post #18

yaix wrote: post #9

apt-get remove unity; apt-get install gnome Done. What's the problem?

You don't even need to do that much. Just select the classic desktop at login time.

The article seems to state that switching to classic still forces you to use the single menu bar.

Re: Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

#54

Post by rubergly » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 6:33 PM UTC

The only complaint I've ever had with Unity is that the dock consumes the super key for shortcuts. The only reason I've been unable to stick with Unity is that I can't assign gnome-do to the super-based hotkey I'm used to. I could learn to use the Unity Launcher, but it never seemed to be anywhere near as easy to use as gnome-do.

Re: Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

#55

Post by mcantelon » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 6:36 PM UTC

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…

>You've gotta keep in mind though that's not a finished product yet.

If it's in the beta you'd think it probably should be a finished product.

Nonetheless, I think it's good that Ubuntu is pushing this if it'll result in a more competitive desktop offering (and diehards can simply change to GNOME).

Re: Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

#56

Post by androith » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 6:41 PM UTC

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.

Of course, the problem is that LTS releases are horribly outdated (the packages in the repos), that it becomes hard to be productive. I needed a new version of a library (actually not THAT new) to compile something, and it just wasn't there! LTS for the lose.

Re: Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

#57

Post by rubergly » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 7:05 PM UTC

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 is the Unity Launcher like Gnome-Do on steroids? Maybe things have improved, but the Launcher of the Unity that's included in Ubuntu 10.10's repositories is really limited. It doesn't have any keyboard shortcut to load the launcher (at least as far as I can tell; it seems like super is the shortcut in current releases, but that does nothing for me in Unity 2.46), and opening things is _nowhere_ near as snappy as quickly typing "term" and then hitting enter, since it requires waiting a second to populate the list, and then you have to use the mouse to select the item.

Re: Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

#58

Post by EdiX » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 7:06 PM UTC

motters wrote: post #33

metabrew wrote: post #5

I'm running unity since yesterday - feels like they compromised massively on the full desktop experience for the sake of compatibility with touch-based and netbook devices. I'll give it a week or so though; no-one likes change, and it's impossible to make any significant UI change without hoares of angry and confused users foaming at the mouth until they get their bearings.

I expect that the new interface will divide opinion. If you remember what a kerfuffle there was over moving the close button from right to left then this is a much bigger change.

All this talk about minor changes that are easily dealt with through configuration feels more and more like a form of bikeshedding to me.

Re: Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

#59

Post by commandar » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 7:24 PM UTC

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…

>if you maximize Firefox

This is what has me concerned. I never maximize windows. I've not used Unity yet, but the trend with both it and OS X Lion seems to be moving toward more and more modal interface paradigms in a world where we have the largest, highest resolutions displays that have ever been available to the average person. I'm not happy with the idea, personally.

Re: Natty Narwhal with Unity: Worst Ubuntu beta ever

#60

Post by nuclear_eclipse » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 7:27 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #42

vacri wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "no…

There's a difference between stable (reliable) and stable (unchanged). When talking about the stability of LTS, people are meaning that the package set, and the versions of those packages, will not change throughout the support cycle of the release. Eg, if the release comes with Firefox 3.0, it will stick with Firefox 3.0 for the duration of the cycle, even though Firefox 4.0 or later versions are released in the interim.