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(Ubuntu) 11.04, a leap forward

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Re: (Ubuntu) 11.04, a leap forward

#41

Post by spiffworks »

CrazedGeek wrote: post #34

I have an earnest question for certain people who dislike Unity: Why are you switching distros entirely? I'd understand if Unity was the only available option, but GNOME2 still works fine, GNOME3's in a PPA, and there's other DEs that are more-or-less officially supported (KDE, XFCE, LXDE).

Exactly. I've been using Ubuntu for the past 2 years without ever logging into a Gnome session. The package management, the drivers, the sane defaults are all worth it even if you disagree with all their design decisions. What doesn't work in the repos get fixed really fast. I am typing this from a Natty laptop running Awesome WM and I never have to see Unity if I don't want to.

Re: (Ubuntu) 11.04, a leap forward

#42

Post by jamesgeck0 »

tintin wrote: post #37

A thing I don't like about Unity are the context-menus. When your application is fullscreen they are ok, but when your window is smaller it's strange to have the context menu still on top of your screen. I also never understood why Apple is doing this. To me it just feels out of context. But overall I think Unity is great. People don't like changes so there will be a lot of boo-ing and bah-ing, but I think in the end…

The menubar is at the top of the screen because it's easier to click them. Fitt's Law[1] says that the larger something is, the easier it is to target. When something is against the edge of the screen, you can't move the mouse past it, so it has infinite width or height (or both; corners are nifty). By placing the menu at the top of the screen, you go from a clickable area with a height of about 20px to a clickable area with infinite height.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts_law

Re: (Ubuntu) 11.04, a leap forward

#43

Post by one-man-bucket »

yason wrote: post #20

I liked Unity the UI itself but the fact that it was a Compiz plugin turned me off for my main desktop. My WM history goes FVWM2→Sawfish→Metacity. This means I've developed usage habits over the last 15 years that I expect the window manager to oblige with. Compiz is not... very coherent in that. Compiz has tons of options but not all of them work yet there is only nearly everything that FVWM2 and Sawfish had. The tr…

If you can run gnome apps, you should definitely try gnome-do. It's like the launcher, but more polished.

Gnome-DO is the main reason I'm staying with "ubuntu classic".

Re: (Ubuntu) 11.04, a leap forward

#44

Post by warfangle »

hasenj wrote: post #23
makmanalp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, unity has that feature where if you drag a window towards the side of the monitor, it'll tile to one half instead of the full monitor. What really bugs me is the dumb launch menu. I think it's pretty much the same idea as the one on macs. Who the hell decided that it was a good idea to group applications together? Why is everyone (win7 also) following suit? It's dumb to extrapolate that just because two win…

This is the first release. Consider it a glorified MVP. It's not that this is the greatest idea ever! It's more like, given the constraints and the available options, this option has enough goodness to out-weigh the badness. The grouping of multiple windows from the same application together is the only major problem I find with this setup, and even then it's not so major. It can probably be solved by providing a key…

My only complaint about the launcher is it takes a variable amount of time to expand. I haven't nailed down what causes it, but sometimes it pops open right away - and sometimes it takes a couple seconds. It's also nearly impossible to right-click on an item - the panel disappears right before I'm able to click. I partially blame that on the shitty trackpad on my Cr48, though.

Re: (Ubuntu) 11.04, a leap forward

#45

Post by spenrose »

hasenj wrote: post #15
chanks wrote: post #12

The sticking point for me with Unity was switching between multiple open windows. I typically have a dozen or so terminals and gedit and Chrome windows open across a half-dozen workspaces, but if I want to bring (let's say) a specific terminal on my current workspace to the foreground, I couldn't figure out a better way to do it than to open up Unity's display of all the many terminals I have running and try to pick…

All my terminals are tabbed in one window. But I hear yea; switching between several windows for the same application is not very keyboard-friendly.

I map Ctrl-Fx for F1 to F8 to each of my 8 virtual desktops, and have specific tasks (and window sets) open on each of them -- mostly xterms and emacs buffers. A couple of keystrokes always finds what I need. The key is establishing a task-to-desktop mapping, such as: current big programming effort on 1, email and issue tracker on 2, source code main trunk on 3, smaller jobs on 4 and 5, release terminals on 6, web browser on 7, SQL terminal on 8.

Re: (Ubuntu) 11.04, a leap forward

#46

Post by jellicle »

Normally I upgrade Ubuntu on several machines immediately upon the release of a new version. Often before it is released, which has occasionally gotten me into trouble. This has been my cycle for, I don't know, at least since 5.04 or 5.10.

I'm not upgrading to 11.04.

11.04 is clearly a disaster. We'll see if 11.10 is the same and whether I need to find a new distribution or not.

Re: (Ubuntu) 11.04, a leap forward

#47

Post by StavrosK »

jellicle wrote: post #46

Normally I upgrade Ubuntu on several machines immediately upon the release of a new version. Often before it is released, which has occasionally gotten me into trouble. This has been my cycle for, I don't know, at least since 5.04 or 5.10. I'm not upgrading to 11.04. 11.04 is clearly a disaster. We'll see if 11.10 is the same and whether I need to find a new distribution or not.

Because it's impossible to select "Gnome" in the pre-login dropdown?

Re: (Ubuntu) 11.04, a leap forward

#48

Post by igouy »

StavrosK wrote: post #47
jellicle wrote: post #46

Normally I upgrade Ubuntu on several machines immediately upon the release of a new version. Often before it is released, which has occasionally gotten me into trouble. This has been my cycle for, I don't know, at least since 5.04 or 5.10. I'm not upgrading to 11.04. 11.04 is clearly a disaster. We'll see if 11.10 is the same and whether I need to find a new distribution or not.

Because it's impossible to select "Gnome" in the pre-login dropdown?

I didn't see how to (with an update rather than a new install) but I eventually figured out how to use the Login Screen Settings to make Ubuntu Classic the default.

BUT switching back to Ubuntu Classic did not get rid of the Unity Overly Scrollbars - so it's still a game of hunt the scroll thumb.

Re: (Ubuntu) 11.04, a leap forward

#49

Post by igouy »

jamesgeck0 wrote: post #42
tintin wrote: post #37

A thing I don't like about Unity are the context-menus. When your application is fullscreen they are ok, but when your window is smaller it's strange to have the context menu still on top of your screen. I also never understood why Apple is doing this. To me it just feels out of context. But overall I think Unity is great. People don't like changes so there will be a lot of boo-ing and bah-ing, but I think in the end…

The menubar is at the top of the screen because it's easier to click them. Fitt's Law[1] says that the larger something is, the easier it is to target. When something is against the edge of the screen, you can't move the mouse past it, so it has infinite width or height (or both; corners are nifty). By placing the menu at the top of the screen, you go from a clickable area with a height of about 20px to a clickable a…

Even on my smaller than average 1280x1080 monitor, the top of the screen can be a long way from the current mouse position - notice that Fitts Law factors in that Distance.

(And as you've brought up Fitts Law, think about what that says about the very much smaller target provided by those Unity overlay scroll thumbs compared to a window size scrollbar.)

Re: (Ubuntu) 11.04, a leap forward

#50

Post by lloeki »

AlisdairO wrote: post #24
makmanalp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, unity has that feature where if you drag a window towards the side of the monitor, it'll tile to one half instead of the full monitor. What really bugs me is the dumb launch menu. I think it's pretty much the same idea as the one on macs. Who the hell decided that it was a good idea to group applications together? Why is everyone (win7 also) following suit? It's dumb to extrapolate that just because two win…

When I first started using macs, I hated the group-by-application idea too, but I've come to prefer it. Combined with application-specific expose, I find it scales so much better for when I have over 10 windows open on a non-huge screen - which I do most of the time. When I go back to a WM with a list of lots of windows open, I find myself hunting and pecking amongst all these tiny, almost indistinguishable icons, an…

I Cmd+M the ones I want to keep around but don't plan to use right now. They go in a smaller mode below a divide line on Exposé. Also I tell the Dock to "minimize into the application icon".

Document window + Application icon + Exposé can really scale up, to the point I rarely ever use Spaces (when I was an avid user of virtual desktops under Linux).

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