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Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

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Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone is agreeing you already know what they are looking for as they've expressed it in their agreement. When someone says something is ugly you don't know what they think is ugly about the design so it doesn't provide any thing but a comment.

No, I often don't know what it is that makes people gush about the beauty of multi faceted things like operating systems, gadgets or APIs. But be that as it may, I doubt this is what causes the downvoting. I'm pretty sure a statement like "colors and icons are ugly" would have provoked a similar reaction.

Saying "X is pretty" is not much use, but it is not mean.

Saying "X is ugly" is not much use and is mean, thus more likely to attract downvotes.

Saying "I think X is ugly. Here's why {list of subjective reasoning}" may be useful and is not as mean.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Unity & Xface (short time) user and honestly I find the latest Unity version to be well suited for my needs&habits but your recommendation made me curios but not curios enough to wipe out my current (fresh) Unity install in order to try out Gnome. I think I checked Gnome some time in the past and it didn't convince me to stay with it. If you would like to enumerate some of the (newer?) differences and strong po…

it's mostly the UX - I really like the way Gnome gets out of your way and still is very, very slick. Plus, if you dont like certain things - you can customize it within seconds using extensions.gnome.org (for example - https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/ ) I think all the design decision by Unity are a bit jarring for me - including all the left-window-close-maximize things. BTW, if you follow my…

Agreed. It gets out of your way and looks good.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

#63

I really recommend trying out the Ubuntu KDE flavour (KUbuntu). I really like it as being more usable and configurable than Unity and Gnome.

I completely agree with you on this. The level of customization that can be done with KDE is unparalleled. Every bit of it is hackable

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

#64
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a data point for a bystander: I much prefer Unity over Gnome 3. Here's the quick list of things that prevent me from taking Gnome 3 seriously: Alt+Tab is completely broken: it gathers windows from all virtual desktops, ruining the very purpose of virtual desktops. There are plug-ins that help, but they keep breaking after version updates and they don't function as sleek as Unity's built-in default window switcher.…

>Alt+Tab is completely broken This is kind of an opinion. There is no rule book that says it needs to behave a certain way. I prefer this. >ruining the very purpose of virtual desktops I use virtual desktops to separate windows in overview mode so when they're presented for picking they aren't really small. And also for organization. >Gnome's "workspaces" are not as powerful as traditional virtual desktops. The bigge…

> This is kind of an opinion. There is no rule book that says it needs to behave a certain way. I prefer this.

In case you wanted more proof of this I think both of these are wrong and it should be by window not application. Thankfully MATE does this and is coincidentally available now in Ubuntu 14.04.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

#65

The first comment I saw said it was impressive. The second said I should use Gnome instead of Unity. The third said I should try something called localepurge for a leaner install. The fourth said KDE was better than Gnome and Unity. The fifth recommended Xubuntu over Gnome. This is the sort of fragmentation that makes popular adoption difficult, but is also what makes Linux awesome.

Most HN readers are developers (who all have unique and specific tastes in their machine setup), and have enough experience with Linux to find it easy to install alternative window managers.

For "popular adoption", I'm sure the completely standard Ubuntu install is just fine.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

#66
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Unity & Xface (short time) user and honestly I find the latest Unity version to be well suited for my needs&habits but your recommendation made me curios but not curios enough to wipe out my current (fresh) Unity install in order to try out Gnome. I think I checked Gnome some time in the past and it didn't convince me to stay with it. If you would like to enumerate some of the (newer?) differences and strong po…

I don't like Unity animations and I want to change it. The only way to do that is to change compiz plugins. However, they always break. Gnome extensions are way easier to install, and even you can code them because it is JS/CSS, for that reason there are so many extensions in extensions.gnome.org .

For me the Unity animations are the perfect balance between the elegance I notice and appreciate when I'm in "relax" mode and the usability and snappiness I need when I'm in "work" mode shifting between many windows and workspaces. 14.04 snappiness improved noticeably and that's great !

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

#67

The first comment I saw said it was impressive. The second said I should use Gnome instead of Unity. The third said I should try something called localepurge for a leaner install. The fourth said KDE was better than Gnome and Unity. The fifth recommended Xubuntu over Gnome. This is the sort of fragmentation that makes popular adoption difficult, but is also what makes Linux awesome.

I don't think those that would contribute to "popular adoption" are reading HN comment threads. They would also probably not be able to download, burn, and boot an ISO live disc either, which is the principle issue with adoption - it needs to be default.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

#68
Well, that was fun. The upgrade crashed halfway through. I rebooted in recovery mode, finished the upgrade using the dpkg repair option, and then restarted a few times and found that it still wasn't working. Looked like a video problem, so I checked /etc/X11 and found the xorg.conf files had been backed up and not replaced. A comment in the last one inspired me to run nvidia-xconfig and it worked fine. Pretty typical when you use Nvidia drivers, and still a lot less painful than upgrading Windows XP to 7.

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

#69

I really recommend trying out the Ubuntu KDE flavour (KUbuntu). I really like it as being more usable and configurable than Unity and Gnome.

I was on Kubuntu when it shifted from 3.5 to 4.0. Gods, what a mess that was! I presume it's had time to settle down now; is it back to being as reliable as 3.5 was? Or do people with long memories still have to grit their teeth at all the missing features?

Re: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

#70

I really recommend trying out the Ubuntu Gnome flavor [1] - I really like it as being more usable than Unity. Plus https://extensions.gnome.org/ is incredible. P.S. - [2] this is my personal optimization script for a lean and developer friendly Gnome Ubuntu 14.04 install. YMMV. [1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuGNOME/GetUbuntuGNOME [2] https://gist.github.com/sandys/6030823#file-lean_install_ubu...

As a data point for a bystander: I much prefer Unity over Gnome 3. Here's the quick list of things that prevent me from taking Gnome 3 seriously: Alt+Tab is completely broken: it gathers windows from all virtual desktops, ruining the very purpose of virtual desktops. There are plug-ins that help, but they keep breaking after version updates and they don't function as sleek as Unity's built-in default window switcher.…

Every point you make except, to my knowledge, the last, is easily fixable via the gnome tweak tool or extensions. I found the same things to be frustrating when I switched to gnome, but I've been able to tweak it to the point that I now find it to be a productive work environment. That said, I've used gnome, unity, cinammon, xfce, mate and KDE, and have found each to be good in its own way and frustrating in others.

I love the fact that I can choose between many great options.

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