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Ubuntu Unity desktop back from the dead after several years' hiatus

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Re: Ubuntu Unity desktop back from the dead after several years' hiatus

#41

Post by simion314 »

KronisLV wrote: post #7

Unity just felt consistent, usable and boring - all qualities that I appreciate in a desktop environment, which is why some of my devices still use XFCE and there's almost nothing that I find lacking in that regard. Now, GNOME isn't necessarily bad either but it was still sad that Canonical moved on from developing Unity because it did set Ubuntu apart and by the time of the official migration away from it, was actua…

I remember that at one point Canonical had done real user testing, bringing people to use stuff and watching them struggling. Big difference vs the other DE that they use now where some big ego dude instinct determines what is removed or changed for the sake of brand identity or futuristic design.

Re: Ubuntu Unity desktop back from the dead after several years' hiatus

#42

Post by jdub »

okasaki wrote: post #24
littlecranky67 wrote: post #20

To provide some historic context: Unity was released in times when there was this "Netbook" trend, started by Asus EeePC with 7" display, followed by a lot of other cheap Netbooks in the 7"-10" display category. Additionally, Canonical pushed to become a mobile/smartphone OS vendor. These constrained display sizes were some of the main factors in the UX design of Unity. Fast forward to today, Netbooks were a short-li…

Should be noted that compared to Unity, GNOME 3 is an even more extreme variant of the phone/netbook UI.

That was never the objective, nor the result. It's just an ill-informed meme.

Re: Ubuntu Unity desktop back from the dead after several years' hiatus

#43

Post by red_admiral »

simion314 wrote: post #41
KronisLV wrote: post #7

Unity just felt consistent, usable and boring - all qualities that I appreciate in a desktop environment, which is why some of my devices still use XFCE and there's almost nothing that I find lacking in that regard. Now, GNOME isn't necessarily bad either but it was still sad that Canonical moved on from developing Unity because it did set Ubuntu apart and by the time of the official migration away from it, was actua…

I remember that at one point Canonical had done real user testing, bringing people to use stuff and watching them struggling. Big difference vs the other DE that they use now where some big ego dude instinct determines what is removed or changed for the sake of brand identity or futuristic design.

Was that user testing on new users, or experienced ones? There's a big difference between how to make the onboarding as easy as possible for someone who's never used your system before, vs making it efficient to use for power users. The former gets you Ribbon UI and similar - which is really really good at that - but it means that people like me get annoyed when something they have to do 50 times a day now takes 3 clicks instead of one. I can understand that I'm on the losing end of a tradeoff that's a global improvement, but I still get annoyed.

When you're building bazaars and not cathedrals though, there's no good reason why everyone should be using the same UI. Maybe I'm part of a 5% or less of the population who wants the title bar of the active window and only that to be my accent color, but the solution here is to just let me configure that. And I don't mean in the sense of "I can spend a summer learning and editing the source code and build a custom distro that looks the way I want", I mean that I remember the old days where this was either a switch, or the default, or a couple of lines in a config file. I gave up on GNOME when everything became "sure, you can do a term project on configuring the CSS files" if you really don't like THE ONE true design choice.

Re: Ubuntu Unity desktop back from the dead after several years' hiatus

#44

Post by rob74 »

threatripper wrote: post #37
reidrac wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I recall correctly, both GNOME and Unity shared rejection from a number of users (I don't know if that was large group or just very noisy), and an approach to community management that was basically if you don't like, go away . In the early days, Unity was more usable than GNOME (could be my hardware, perhaps; apparently my nvidia drivers were buggy and I was told to change GPU), but back then Mark Shuttleworth wa…

> If I recall correctly, both GNOME and Unity shared rejection from a number of users (I don't know if that was large group or just very noisy) The GNOME redesign. The old 2D GNOME was OK. It was functional, stable and pretty (for someone who thinks that Windows 3.11 style is a good fit for a work environment). Then the old software was abandoned and the update was pushed onto users. KDE also had a transition disaste…

Has there ever been a good time for Linux on the desktop? I'm using Linux (Kubuntu) daily, and it works most of the time, but I still see some issues from time to time (multi-monitor strangeness, windows suddenly appearing without frames because kwin crashed, desktop wallpapers not being shown or being shown incorrectly etc.).

Re: Ubuntu Unity desktop back from the dead after several years' hiatus

#45

Post by antman »

bitcharmer wrote: post #32
antman wrote: post #16

I remember what happened I think. There was a thread here on HN a few years back presenting something new Ubuntu Unity related and discussion developed about how Unity was bad. Someone from Ubuntu team saw the thread and said he did not know people hated it so much and they will look into into it/change it back to gnome? Apparently forgotten and I can't find the thread to verify the details!

I don't think Canonical cares at all about community input on things like that (just look at snap). It was just that unity really was that bad. No need to blame HN crowd for this.

I am not blaming, the opposite.

Re: Ubuntu Unity desktop back from the dead after several years' hiatus

#46

Post by thriftwy »

bitcharmer wrote: post #33
thriftwy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering why more people are not using KDE. It is a honest desktop environment which does not try to pretend phone/netbook or parrot Mac OS X. Many of KDE apps are the best in a given category. Konsole certainly is.

> Many of KDE apps are the best in a given category. Konsole certainly is. Have you tried Terminator?

No, but

> Terminator on Mac OS X showing live search highlighting and UTF-8

Looks like something working around deficiences in Mac OS X's terminal app which just aren't there in modern X11 terms.

Judging from its feature highlights, the only one I did not see in Konsole is horizontal scrolling.

Re: Ubuntu Unity desktop back from the dead after several years' hiatus

#47

Post by simion314 »

reidrac wrote: post #12
KronisLV wrote: post #7

Unity just felt consistent, usable and boring - all qualities that I appreciate in a desktop environment, which is why some of my devices still use XFCE and there's almost nothing that I find lacking in that regard. Now, GNOME isn't necessarily bad either but it was still sad that Canonical moved on from developing Unity because it did set Ubuntu apart and by the time of the official migration away from it, was actua…

If I recall correctly, both GNOME and Unity shared rejection from a number of users (I don't know if that was large group or just very noisy), and an approach to community management that was basically if you don't like, go away . In the early days, Unity was more usable than GNOME (could be my hardware, perhaps; apparently my nvidia drivers were buggy and I was told to change GPU), but back then Mark Shuttleworth wa…

>If I recall correctly, both GNOME and Unity shared rejection from a number of users

Of course GNOME fanboys complained that someone dared to replace their precious DE with a nicer Qt based one instead of kissing the ass of giant ego GNOME designers. Even when Ubuntu got back to GNOME Canonical listen to the users and put features back in on Ubuntu.

Re: Ubuntu Unity desktop back from the dead after several years' hiatus

#48

Post by bmacho »

sph wrote: post #35

"This new release doesn't come from Canonical: it's from Linux wunderkind Rudra Saraswat", a 12 years old Linux enthusiast from Bengaluru, India. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/rs2009 Incredible stuff, love to see it.

I used Ubuntu Unity for a while when I realized, such a strange feeling: yeah, I seeked for, downloaded, trusted, and I am very satisfied with the work of a ~12 yo kid.

Also I can recommend Ubuntu Unity. It's not that different from gnome, but works great.

Re: Ubuntu Unity desktop back from the dead after several years' hiatus

#49

Post by ttctciyf »

IMO, the lasting stability of a UI is a far greater factor in long-term user acceptance, satisfaction and facility than almost any breaking "improvements" that are imposed by developers - c.f. Firefox for a negative example.

So, if you want to (re-)introduce a new desktop paradigm, give users a simple mechanism to choose to disagree.

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