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

theregister.com

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

#121

Post by CoastalCoder »

ginko wrote: post #99
simion314 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Actually, I think most Gnome 2 refugees eventually settles with XFCE or Mate. I did at least. ..wonder what I'll do after the Gnome team kills XFCE by enforcing Wayland for GTK.

I really disliked Unity, and hated the fact that Canonical was pushing it down my throat.

IIRC I used Mate as a temporary solution, and happily jumped to Cinnamon when it came out.

Nowadays I use Pop Shell because (at least when I switched) it seemed to offer better widgets for controlling audio, etc. on my System76 machine.

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

#122

Post by jeroenhd »

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…

I much prefer modern GNOME and KDE to their older counterparts. I believe modern DEs definitely lack a certain polish, but the old, clunky late-00s UI is incredibly unappealing.

I can see why existing Linux users may have resisted the change but I wouldn't have even tried Ubuntu long enoughto switch to Linux had they stuck with the old system.

Windows 3.11 is a terrible fit for productivity, Win95/98/2000 were immensely better. The Windows usability only improved until mscursed themselves with Windows 8 (with the exception of Vista which was released before it was done and was almost as buggy as modern Linux, though SP1 fixed most of that).

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

#123

Post by marcodiego »

Veliladon wrote: post #116
nothatscool wrote: post #80

Unity’s global menu system was wonderful and once getting used to how well it used vertical space switching to gnome was like going back 10 years. Seeing multiple empty bars across the screen makes it completely unusable to me not to mention their need to replace simple menus with seemingly random icons scattered everywhere. I’m using kde plasma now with a global menu set up. It’s good but isn’t as hassle free as Uni…

From the article: > As a small example, the update makes right-clicking the trashcan in the Launcher to empty it work again, without needing to open the trashcan's own window. I feel like that single line illustrates just how badly GNOME has lost the plot over the last decade.

I'm using Ubuntu 20.04. Right clicking the thrash can icon works as intended.

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

#125

Post by marcodiego »

The best feature from Unity was just tapping alt and easily finding the menu option on the app I was running. This helped a lot with apps that had many or deep menu items like GIMP or LibreOffice. The new policy, however, is for apps to drop menus. I don't think a new incarnation without app developers embracing it would have the same effect.

Also, for the sake of maintainability, it would be very good if this was implemented using GNOME extensions.

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

#126

Post by simion314 »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #121
ginko wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I think most Gnome 2 refugees eventually settles with XFCE or Mate. I did at least. ..wonder what I'll do after the Gnome team kills XFCE by enforcing Wayland for GTK.

I really disliked Unity, and hated the fact that Canonical was pushing it down my throat. IIRC I used Mate as a temporary solution, and happily jumped to Cinnamon when it came out. Nowadays I use Pop Shell because (at least when I switched) it seemed to offer better widgets for controlling audio, etc. on my System76 machine.

>I really disliked Unity, and hated the fact that Canonical was pushing it down my throat.

But we KDE users should we hate Canonical that they were pushing GNOME? I did not hated them for this though I am puzzled why not create Unity based on KDE libraries (probably there were many reasons some including Qt and C++ are ugly)

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

#127

Post by Veliladon »

jeroenhd wrote: post #119
Veliladon wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > As a small example, the update makes right-clicking the trashcan in the Launcher to empty it work again, without needing to open the trashcan's own window. I feel like that single line illustrates just how badly GNOME has lost the plot over the last decade.

AFAIK GNOME doesn't really do desktop icons and the ones Ubuntu added were actually a GNOME extension. Ubuntu chose to bundle that extension so the burden on creating a unified experience should be on them.

> AFAIK GNOME doesn't really do desktop icons

So the GNOME people are taking their inspiration from Windows 3.x?

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

#128

Post by simion314 »

reidrac wrote: post #113
simion314 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure if most, but there were a lot of happy Unity users , but the DE got of lot of hate , much more hate then other GNOME forks or alternatives, Probably Ubuntu/Canonical haters just found another project to attack and seen it as Canonical inventing something new instead of letting RedHat inventing shit and kissing TH ass and follow them.

I profoundly dislike all that "hater" rhetoric. Sure, there will always be trolls, but by tagging any dissenting opinion as "Ubuntu/Canonical haters" I feel like there's a lost opportunity to improve. You can't please everybody, but both Unity an GNOME shell had some very bad ideas, and it took too long to correct course (and in some cases it didn't happen). I believe some of the criticism came from people that reall…

Come one, Arch users complaining that Ubuntu was not using SystemD was not honest, the Arch users were not using Ubuntu or Upstart to have a clue what they are talking about. And related with SystemD debate, you have alot of people that are not system admins or can't write a C program or a good bash scrip[t having an opinion because they read a blog post , I wish we all can't determine when we have no idea and just abstain. So about SystemD , I have no idea if is better or worse, my experience with init systems is almost zero so I should shut up.

There were a lot of hather, sure there were some valid criticism but you can't invalidate the fact they were haters, and if we would want to waste our time we could read those old topics and find them but we have better things to do.

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

#129

Post by CoastalCoder »

thriftwy wrote: post #30
okasaki wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

I use some KDE apps (Konsole, Kdiff3, etc.) even when using a non-KDE desktop such as Pop Shell or Cinnamon.

At least on Debian-based distros, those KDE apps just require a lot of additional packages.

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

#130

Post by johndfsgdgdfg »

ignoramous wrote: post #89
possiblelion wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, what kid! To be fair - having time and access to computer between the ages of 9-15 is something that I have come to appreciate in my life as well. Even if I didn't understand everything at the time, playing with open-source software, Linux, jailbreaking iDevices etc has definitely formed who I am today.

Parallels with Blake Ross [0] and Arfa Karim [1] there. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_Ross#Mozilla_and_Firefox [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arfa_Karim

I just read Arfa Karim's wiki page. It was so sad to read such a talent passed away so soon :(
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