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​Mark Shuttleworth on where Canonical and Ubuntu Linux are going next

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Re: ​Mark Shuttleworth on where Canonical and Ubuntu Linux are going next

#2
I have to agree with him on Unity, the reaction to it seemed to outweigh it’s presentation. I gave it a try and liked some aspects but ultimately ended up on Cinnamon.

I realize that’s a totally subjective statement but I was surprised by some of the reactions I heard about it.

Re: ​Mark Shuttleworth on where Canonical and Ubuntu Linux are going next

#3
post #2

I have to agree with him on Unity, the reaction to it seemed to outweigh it’s presentation. I gave it a try and liked some aspects but ultimately ended up on Cinnamon. I realize that’s a totally subjective statement but I was surprised by some of the reactions I heard about it.

>I realize that’s a totally subjective statement but I was surprised by some of the reactions I heard about it.

Agreed. I think a lot of it just came down to performance. Unity was ahead of it’s time, and a lot of people just didn’t have the hardware to handle it with zero lag.

Re: ​Mark Shuttleworth on where Canonical and Ubuntu Linux are going next

#5
post #2

I have to agree with him on Unity, the reaction to it seemed to outweigh it’s presentation. I gave it a try and liked some aspects but ultimately ended up on Cinnamon. I realize that’s a totally subjective statement but I was surprised by some of the reactions I heard about it.

People (me) were just mad because seemingly in the blink of an eye they went from having a stable mature linux desktop, sometimes even approaching "it just works," to having that ripped away and replaced with a choice between [radical new desktop] or xfce. Unity or GNOME Shell might really be great, but that's a huge change to force on unsuspecting neckbeards.

Wish Canonical would have just created MATE themselves.

Re: ​Mark Shuttleworth on where Canonical and Ubuntu Linux are going next

#6
post #2

I have to agree with him on Unity, the reaction to it seemed to outweigh it’s presentation. I gave it a try and liked some aspects but ultimately ended up on Cinnamon. I realize that’s a totally subjective statement but I was surprised by some of the reactions I heard about it.

>I realize that’s a totally subjective statement but I was surprised by some of the reactions I heard about it. Agreed. I think a lot of it just came down to performance. Unity was ahead of it’s time, and a lot of people just didn’t have the hardware to handle it with zero lag.

The last thing a DE should do is consume so many resources nothing else can run properly. There is no benefit to it. DE's should use almost nothing and run lag-free on 10 year old hardware. Show me a single feature in Unity that saved so many people, so much work that it justified extra power consumption across the world. Hell, show me a single feature that didn't actually slow people down compared to, let's say, xfce.

Re: ​Mark Shuttleworth on where Canonical and Ubuntu Linux are going next

#8
post #2

I have to agree with him on Unity, the reaction to it seemed to outweigh it’s presentation. I gave it a try and liked some aspects but ultimately ended up on Cinnamon. I realize that’s a totally subjective statement but I was surprised by some of the reactions I heard about it.

I actually stopped using linux as my main OS in 2010 because of Gnome3 and Unity. The "Applications","Places","System" menu was clear, intuitive and desktop oriented. I never liked KDE, and MATE seemed like a rather unoptmized fork. So it left me with using Xubuntu VM on a Windows host (and I hate Windows because of it lacks bash).

Once I moved to the US I started using Mac and never looked back. The best thing that Apple does is that they don't try to merge desktop and tablet UX.

Re: ​Mark Shuttleworth on where Canonical and Ubuntu Linux are going next

#9
post #2

I have to agree with him on Unity, the reaction to it seemed to outweigh it’s presentation. I gave it a try and liked some aspects but ultimately ended up on Cinnamon. I realize that’s a totally subjective statement but I was surprised by some of the reactions I heard about it.

Have they fixed the problems with Firefox on Cinnamon? I ran it for quite a while, and was thoroughly frustrated by dropdowns showing up in the wrong place on Firefox (this on 16.04). Moving over to XFCE was an effective workaround, but other than the Firefox problem, I preferred Cinnamon.

Re: ​Mark Shuttleworth on where Canonical and Ubuntu Linux are going next

#10
post #2

I have to agree with him on Unity, the reaction to it seemed to outweigh it’s presentation. I gave it a try and liked some aspects but ultimately ended up on Cinnamon. I realize that’s a totally subjective statement but I was surprised by some of the reactions I heard about it.

>I realize that’s a totally subjective statement but I was surprised by some of the reactions I heard about it. Agreed. I think a lot of it just came down to performance. Unity was ahead of it’s time, and a lot of people just didn’t have the hardware to handle it with zero lag.

>I think a lot of it just came down to performance.

Absolutely. I for one embrace (positive) change and had no problem adjusting to Unity. I liked it a lot, even more than Gnome 2, but the performance was just shockingly bad on every computer I used it on. From my Thinkpad T420s with the Intel graphics to my desktop with a GTX 970. Everything was noticeably slower than it was under any other desktop environment. I finally just quit using it. The real shame is they had a version based on Qt a while back that didn't require compositing. If they had continued with that, the performance would have been stellar. Oh well.

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