71–80 of 194 posts
But left taskbar and being unable to integrate Docky with Compiz effects beauty it's a continuous pain
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All that being said; you can install gnome in ubuntu 11.10. You don't have to use unity. If it were this easy, nobody would be complaining. But as far as I can tell, Gnome Classic (without HW accel) is broken by default on Ubuntu 11.10, with the default Gnome Panel being entirely messed up. This wasn't the case in 11.04, which had a great fallback that I still use daily, and I think it's the reason the Unity complain…
If you install gnome-shell, everything works quite well.
It's easy to waste a day trying all these alternatives to get something that works. I don't call that an easy-to-use distro. Particularly as it's a regression.
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Most people dislike Gnome 3 as much as Unity.
From the article > "Mint 12 will be running Gnome 3"
I think people are looking at these operating systems the wrong way. In the past, Ubuntu was the easy to set up but hacker-friendly linux. Nowadays, they are transitioning to being more for OEMs and other devices. Linux Mint is simply coming in to fill the gap that Ubuntu is leaving as it transitions to other markets.
The great thing about Linux – its killer feature compared to Windows or Mac – is that it's open-source, meaning each user is free to tweak it however they see fit. Ubuntu has been an interesting experiment in whether such an open-source system can also be designed to be competitive with a casual market; they're finding that the casual market's extremely difficult to penetrate, and so they're trying to innovate and make something genuinely appealing. I'm curious to see if they succeed or not, but it doesn't really matter either way, because Linux remains the turn-into-anything choice for people who need (or just want) more control over their computing environment.
As Ubuntu makes drastic changes, a new iteration of Linux becomes the go-to for people who want a conventional installation. Maybe it would have made more sense for Ubuntu to remain the conventional brand and for a newly-branded brand name to be the one fiddling with Unity, but Ubuntu's already got a name for itself and Shuttlesworth wants to take advantage of it. I think it's beautiful how Linux is capable of branching and splitting so painlessly. I don't use it myself, but that's okay – Linux doesn't need considerable market share to remain the valuable tool that it is.
> it’s Ubuntu without someone else telling you what to do or taking the OS into a direction that you’re unwilling to follow Debian, anyone?
Or Fedora. Or if you like tweaking things, Arch or Gentoo. Or to become more knowledgeable, a BSD. I think part of what is happening here is that some number of people who got started in Ubuntu, as their first non-Windows OS, take it for granted (thus get outraged at change) but now feel the 'growing pains' of someone who wants to get more technical. Since their heads aren't where they were when they started with Ubu…
Canonical has done great things to make Ubuntu Just Work. It works great out of the box under most virtualization solutions. It's also one of the only distros that has done away with most font bugs in Linux, for example. At least Linux Mint DE still has many of those - I tried it briefly after the Ubuntu 11.10 debacle.
The outrage is there because Canonical is actively breaking workflows that used to work, in other words, forcing users to spend time tweaking their system instead of being productive. That's a recipe for disaster and user outrage. Just ask the Firefox devs :-)
> it’s Ubuntu without someone else telling you what to do or taking the OS into a direction that you’re unwilling to follow Debian, anyone?
Personally I found it a bit snarky. By the same token I find that UI wars are the most vitriolic, after all they are the way you talk to the machine day in and day out. Screwing with that, screws with everything. I have found Ubuntu's strategy interesting because it seemed clear that while KDE was following general guidelines around Microsoft OSes to be more accessible, and Gnome was following general guidelines arou…
I find that it is a stable solution and allows you to sidestep the Gnome/Unity wars.
Personally I found it a bit snarky. By the same token I find that UI wars are the most vitriolic, after all they are the way you talk to the machine day in and day out. Screwing with that, screws with everything. I have found Ubuntu's strategy interesting because it seemed clear that while KDE was following general guidelines around Microsoft OSes to be more accessible, and Gnome was following general guidelines arou…
XFCE does a better job. "XFCE4" has been around for 7 years and they provide small improvements but don't make any radical changes.
Unity was pushed out before it was ready. I understand the need to get people using it but it's still not a passable desktop for many people and probably won't be for another couple of Ubuntu release cycles. Hopefully once it stabilizes they won't repeat the mistakes of GNOME/KDE and decide to change everything again.
I had a really nice config runnig Gnome2 + XMonad. I tried for hours to get this config running again nicely with Ubuntu 11.10, without much luck. Then I stepped back and thought for what I'm needing or want a desktop: automounting + wifi. For automounting I'm now starting 'thunar --daemon &' in my '.xsession', and for wifi and it's config I'm using 'wicd' and otherwise just XMonad.