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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

#141

Post by jeroenhd »

Veliladon wrote: post #127
jeroenhd wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Windows 3.11 docked applications onto the "desktop" when you minimized them so no, not really.

It's not really taking inspiration as much as trying new things. Everyone has copied over the desktop because everybody else did so, all the way back to when Apple first ripped off Xerox's GUI. Even on Windows I disable all the clutter of desktop icons that programs will randomly add to my desktop because they deem themselves important.

I personally don't see the benefit, but people who do can pick a distro that writes a well-integrated desktop icon addon (apparently, not Ubuntu).

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

#142

Post by delijati »

lproven wrote: post #95
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.

[Article author here] He does amazing work. I did a little profile piece on him a few months ago: https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/04/rudra_sarsawat_ubuntu...

i this you linked to the wrong unity8 ... unityx seams to be something different ... https://lomiri.com/ is the renamed unity8 that is used in the ubuntu touch phones now ubports phones

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

#144

Post by michaelmrose »

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…

The biggest deal was that you couldn't have old and new and many distros with a rapid release cycle adopted new versions as soon as they became available.

For instance KDE 4.0 which wasn't really ready came out 11 January 2008. Fedora 9 came out in May.

Had simply choosing 3 or 4 beta as it might accurately have been called been possible at login I think there would have been zero issues. 4.0 wasn't actively broken but it lacked polish and it was missing features from 3.x that hasn't been implemented yet.

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

#145

Post by ehvatum »

addicted wrote: post #85
cfn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not alone, Unity was my desktop until it was dropped by Canonical. I ended up moving to Windows after that as I did not like the replacement. The main thing I remember was that it was quite fast and worked well with Vmware which is what I used to host client's VMs. Maybe I will give it another go now.

Gnome was always faster than Unity. Which is not surprising considering Unity was a bunch of hacks on top of Gnome.

> Unity was a bunch of hacks on top of Gnome

Where do you get this shit? Over 11 years ago, Shuttleworth abandoned the vision of Unity as a shell for Gnome.

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

#146

Post by derefr »

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…

> I think it was a case of an extremely loud minority who weren’t even using it

Well, yes, but "an extremely loud minority who weren't even using it" can have an important point about something: namely, that investing/focusing on polishing it, detracts from investment/focus on polish of the alternative they prefer.

Ubuntu GNOME was always a spin of Ubuntu; but when it became the flagship spin of Ubuntu, the polish on it got a lot better. (For example, previously, effort on an "app store"-experience application was divided between Canonical's "Ubuntu Software Center", and GNOME's "GNOME Software", with both being pretty janky as a result; with the switch, the "Ubuntu Software Center" was discontinued, and all effort of both parties went into polishing GNOME Software, and it became something worth using.)

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

#147

Post by washadjeffmad »

jimnotgym wrote: post #138
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…

When Ubuntu moved to Gnome I remember getting so frustrated at how much screen space Gnome wasted that my old laptop became difficult to use. I gave up on the Linux desktop after that

I remember a lot of the same sentiment about GNOME 3, but if you recall, were you aware of WMs or other DEs at the time?

There was a short lag between when 2.32 was deprecated and when Maté and Cinnamon were released, and I remember XFCE and KDE still being pretty excellent. I used tiling WMs on my other TTYs so changing the defaults didn't affect me.

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

#148

Post by Mikeb85 »

BirAdam wrote: post #137
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…

I felt much the same way. The global menu also fixed the issue of people shoving menus into hamburgers that I hate. Unity additionally had their search feature that doubled as a run box which was awesome. Tap meta and type the application name and hit enter. Unity really maximalized productivity in my opinion. It’s a shame that Canoncial abandoned it, but being open source the community seems to have quietly continue…

> Unity additionally had their search feature that doubled as a run box which was awesome. Tap meta and type the application name and hit enter.

Gnome Shell does the same thing...

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

#149

Post by fareesh »

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 am 12 and what is this

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

#150

Post by ehnto »

jimnotgym wrote: post #138
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…

When Ubuntu moved to Gnome I remember getting so frustrated at how much screen space Gnome wasted that my old laptop became difficult to use. I gave up on the Linux desktop after that

This is very unlikely to get you back on board, but a tiling window manager like i3 gives you all the freedom and space you could possibly want.
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