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Ubuntu’s move to Unity is the best thing that ever happened to Linux

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Re: Ubuntu’s move to Unity is the best thing that ever happened to Linux

#91

Post by lucian1900 »

daliusd wrote: post #10

I consider myself power user. I am developer, I have experience with Windows, Mac OS X, BSD OSes and Linuxes. I have actually tried various desktop environments and WMs (including several tiling managers, I have used awesome WM for half a year). Overall I really love experimenting with software to the very deep level. I have tried Unity and I really like it. It is simple and it does what I need. It respects my screen…

I agree. Especially on my 13" laptop, Unity gives me by far the most screen space of any other desktop environment out there (including OS X), especially vertical.

It has a few bugs, but they're not that big a deal.

Re: Ubuntu’s move to Unity is the best thing that ever happened to Linux

#92

Post by mst »

wildmXranat wrote: post #84

Ugh, that is hype and nothing more. I've been using ubuntu since version 4 or so, and Unity has made me switch the windowing manager. Simple as that. It impedes my workflow and it doesn't even come close to what a simple, developer centric manager should be in my point of view. I installed the WM that comes with Lubuntu and unless Unity changes for the better, it will not be on my workstation. I can also say, that ma…

And there's precisely the point: "it will not be on my workstation".

Unity is aiming for the desktop market, not the workstation market.

My desktop is Windows, because it allows me to consume media, browse the web, shove stuff onto my iPod with iTunes, and at no point do I actually have to think.

My workstation is debian with fvwm2.

Ubuntu is "linux for human beings", not "linux for development workstations". This is not necessarily a problem.

Re: Ubuntu’s move to Unity is the best thing that ever happened to Linux

#93

Post by fader »

supar wrote: post #82
technomancy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think you don't have a choice? I'm running Ubuntu with xmonad, and before that was on xfce; it's super easy to switch. I will probably switch to Debian soon, but that has more to do with Ubuntu pushing nonfree software than Unity.

In theory yes, however alternative desktops are not supported. The choice of desktop is the primary difference between Ubuntu and (say) Debian which doesn't worship any. Not that "support" exists anyway, but there's no point in using Ubuntu if you use a different desktop. I also agree about your non-free software argument. Plus all the useless, additional services ubuntu is trying to push (Apple-style).

How are other desktops supported less under Ubuntu than they are under Debian? (The "useless, additional services" bit confuses me too, TBH. Could you provide some examples?)

Re: Ubuntu’s move to Unity is the best thing that ever happened to Linux

#94

Post by hamoid »

I think the only thing wrong with Unity is that it came without instructions.

My dad, a non computer expert, updated to a recent Ubuntu and wondered where did all the menus go to. He called me saying that he needed help.

Even I'm a power user, it also took me time to adapt. The first days I was trying to do things the old way. For example trying to find the applications by clicking instead of typing. After I realized, I think I'm now faster than before. I was already used to Quicksilver and Launchy, so pressing the start key, typing a few letters and pressing enter feels fast and easy.

I was also annoyed by windows maximizing when I dragged them to the top. No one told me what was that about. Today I realized that I can easily drag windows to the left or right borders for having two windows side by side, which I find very useful.

So I think what's missing is a welcome video tutorial that explains the changes and tells us how to be productive with Unity.

I wonder about one thing though: aren't geeks doing most things with the keyboard? I don't think you notice Unity much if you stay away from the mouse.

Re: Ubuntu’s move to Unity is the best thing that ever happened to Linux

#95

Post by rbanffy »

technomancy wrote: post #51

This almost seems plausible until you realize that Gnome 3 has all the polish of Unity but none of the immediately obvious bugs. If they had simply contributed to Gnome 3 instead of breaking off into their own thing, the result would be far ahead of what they have now.

I am not alone thinking Gnome 3 is not as comfortable to work with as Unity. Unity was born because Canonical wasn't happy with the directions Gnome was taking with 3, and, after using 3 for some time, I have to agree - lots of polish, true, but it's not as clean and direct as Unity.

Unity has its bugs. In the end, they'll be dealt with. It's a 1.0 release, after all.

Re: Ubuntu’s move to Unity is the best thing that ever happened to Linux

#97

Post by jiggy2011 »

icebraining wrote: post #81
jiggy2011 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure about "eating memory" with programs still running. I'm no OS expert but I'm pretty sure that assuming that app isn't doing anything then it's pages will be swapped out to disk (in essence , quitting the application from a memory perspective) if there are more pressing requirements for the memory. What is the technical difference between a program that is running or not running? As far as I can tell it…

I'm no OS expert but I'm pretty sure that assuming that app isn't doing anything then it's pages will be swapped out to disk (in essence , quitting the application from a memory perspective) if there are more pressing requirements for the memory. Yes, but let's say you open an email client to receive notifications. Then you perform various tasks that involve opening new applications for a limited period of time, and…

I see what you are saying here, although I suppose in this example the email client is probably doing some polling tasks in the background making it less likely to be swapped.

Surely it would not be difficult to have a paging algorithm that says something like "this program has no open windows or background tasks in operation you should prefer to swap this application's memory over others", no idea whether this is how it currently works or not?

I suppose there is the overhead of doing the swap operation which you would not need to do if you'd simply dumped the contents of the applications memory on the floor. I guess the memory management algorithm could just swap stuff related to state to disk but dump library code completely and reload this as needed.

Memory is so cheap now that people will usually have more of it than they are actually using at any one time so it probably makes sense where possible to still hold recently used applications (state + libs etc) in there if there is no contention for the memory.

I think my overarching point is that OS programmers are pretty smart , I would be slow to assume that they screwed something up in such an obvious way.

Re: Ubuntu’s move to Unity is the best thing that ever happened to Linux

#98

Post by flomo »

rsheridan6 wrote: post #45
guard-of-terra wrote: post #13

There is no indication whatsoever that Ubuntu will be able to reach "average joe", and building a product for audience you can't reach is pretty pointless. The only audience really using Ubuntu is one consisting of coders and geeks. There's a famous russian chinese saying: When a rhino stares at the moon - he is wasting his spleen flowers.

They did (sort of) reach a mass audience through Dell's Ubuntu laptop program in 2007. It didn't quite work out then because Ubuntu wasn't ready (I owned one, it was not ready for prime time). It still isn't, but it's closer. If it was ready, then avoiding the Windows tax would be a good enough reason for retailers to push Ubuntu.

The issue with pushing Linux onto unwitting users is many don't understand it's incompatible with their Win32 software and end up returning the computer. Therefore Dell had to put up a big "here be dragons" page in front of the Ubuntu systems.

If this were to actually work, they would need some sort of huge mass marketing campaign which convinced people they actually want or need Linux on their computer, which is very unlikely. Defining your audience as people who want to save the 5% cost of a Windows license cost from their already cheapass PC is never going to amount to much.

Re: Ubuntu’s move to Unity is the best thing that ever happened to Linux

#99

Post by rbanffy »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #62
rbanffy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use two monitors and I solved this problem by using multiple desktops. Every desktop has one of my "tasks". When I want to see what other window is doing, I move to that given desktop. This way, each desktop has one "context" - Emacs and a development server, a browser and another window to the same development server (screen is your friend), one with various "social" things - IM, Skype, IRC, Twitter - and others w…

This is an approach that could work for sure, but then you need to be disciplined and remember what is open on each desktop. I love the simplicity of just having a list of windows at the bottom of each monitor, requires no memory or keyboard shortcuts to switch between things.

I tend to keep things consistent. The browser is usually on the top-left desktop, emacs on center-top, twitter and pidgin, on lower-left.

Re: Ubuntu’s move to Unity is the best thing that ever happened to Linux

#100

Post by jeltz »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #23
sp332 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note the present tense in the first quote and the future tense in the second. Unity will be a very user-friendly system once they fix more of the bugs.

The problem is, by the time they have fixed the bugs and made it nice they will spot something else shiny and start again. So you'll get 2 or 3 nice stable releases before being baptized by fire again.

Indeed, look at all the work canonical spent into speeding up boot and how it a couple of releases later regressed heavily almost back to where we started. Stories like this gives me little faith in Canonical managing to keep on improving Unity.
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