Live data from Hacker News

Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10

github.com

81–90 of 90 posts

Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, seriously. Unity (the ubuntu desktop interface) is an abomination. Not a joke. Very serious. It is painful to even try to use. It forces so many unnatural behaviors, in favor of... I don't even know why. It's not elegant, it's not pretty, it's not fun to use. It is bad. Horrendously bad. And suited to the tastes of little more than a very small handful of people, who probably open a browser and read email, and do…

I'm a software engineer and it's my favorite GUI available for Linux. I've used all the hip things like Xmonad, dwm (for a long time), XFCE (for a very long time), Gnome 2 and 3, KDE 4 and 5, i3 (which I still like a lot), et cetera. I still prefer Unity nowadays. It's simple, it's fast and stable (at least for me), and it reminds me of OS X (which I also like). Everyone who runs Linux at my job uses it. No one had t…

Give Cinnamon/Mint a whirl; I couldn't "do" Linux desktops until Cinnamon. It works really well out of the box. It's not quite as OSX-y as Unity but Unity had a few quirks that I couldn't stand.

Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10

#82
post #29

Sounds a little bit like slashdot in here with the pointless Microsoft/Unity hate rants. This is really awesome and I can't wait for more and more integration. This is nothing but awesome

No, seriously. Unity (the ubuntu desktop interface) is an abomination. Not a joke. Very serious. It is painful to even try to use. It forces so many unnatural behaviors, in favor of... I don't even know why. It's not elegant, it's not pretty, it's not fun to use. It is bad. Horrendously bad. And suited to the tastes of little more than a very small handful of people, who probably open a browser and read email, and do…

After I switched to Ubuntu a couple years ago, I gave Unity a whirl (it being the default desktop environment), and I use it to this day.

Unity is simple and it doesn't try to be the be-all and end-all of my computer use. Unity seems to be designed by people who understand that the purpose of a desktop environment is to facilitate launching other programs and perhaps moving their windows across the screen a little bit, and that's it.

I am a former KDE user, and I used to spend hours and hours on end tweaking my KDE configuration. Finding that perfect equilibrium was a quest without end, but the abundant opportunities for shaping the DE to my liking didn't make me any more productive.

Switching to Unity was a liberating experience. Suddenly, I could not do any of the things that KDE allowed me to do...and I didn't suffer any ill consequence as a result of that. Rather, I discovered that all I ever needed from the desktop environment was to let me run Emacs and Firefox. Everything else was, and always has been, superfluous.

Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, seriously. Unity (the ubuntu desktop interface) is an abomination. Not a joke. Very serious. It is painful to even try to use. It forces so many unnatural behaviors, in favor of... I don't even know why. It's not elegant, it's not pretty, it's not fun to use. It is bad. Horrendously bad. And suited to the tastes of little more than a very small handful of people, who probably open a browser and read email, and do…

I'm a software engineer and it's my favorite GUI available for Linux. I've used all the hip things like Xmonad, dwm (for a long time), XFCE (for a very long time), Gnome 2 and 3, KDE 4 and 5, i3 (which I still like a lot), et cetera. I still prefer Unity nowadays. It's simple, it's fast and stable (at least for me), and it reminds me of OS X (which I also like). Everyone who runs Linux at my job uses it. No one had t…

As a software engineer it's hard to imagine you can't see the benefits of learning something in order to gain an edge in productivity. I mean that is the essence of programming? In order to master something, it takes effort.

While lowest common denominator UIs are great for simple tasks performed by novice users, so much more can be accomplished by even putting in a little effort. I mean you did take the time to learn a programming languge, correct? Or was your programming language so natural you never had any questions? Did it just work without any effort?

Or are you implying that a GUI is a distraction? That it provides no benefit and something like a tiling window manager or other system can't give you any productivity benefit? I'd find this hard to believe.

Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10

#86
post #25
post #14

Cool hack, but I really prefer native Win 10 window management. The only thing superior is IMHO XMonad.

I suppose there's nothing stopping one for doing that tho? I was sitting here and thinking about trying it out with i3. If that works then it is only missing a decent pkg mgmt (in my opinion ofc), at least on the technical level. I sort of enjoy the thought that my current setup (arch) is entirely OSS and hackable though (not on a hw level ofc)... It makes me smile every time I log in :)

I've just spent some time experimenting with the state of X-on-windows.

It seems that there are two main options: - Rootless mode (the default install for VcXsrv), in which your windows are managed by the Win10 WM and integrate quite nicely

- Rooted mode, in which you can use your own window manager, but the windows are restricted to living inside a native Windows window. Using this in fullscreen on a virtual desktop provides a near-linux experience, but some remapping is required so you don't conflict with Windows' alt-tab, etc. Other bits of integration like copy&paste still co-exist nicely.

Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you test it?

Just using a CPU intensive application I work on (GAP, a computer algebra system), on my laptop. I'm hoping we can kill our current windows build, and require people install bash for windows.

Maybe the resources required to run just one bash instance (and whatever you run within it) is lower than the resources required to run whatever DE you had on Linux (Unity is notorious) enough for it to show?

When I asked how you tested, I was looking for a more detailed answer: what were the environments, the hardwares, what does the cli app you used do (CPU, IO, allocation etc.) (this you answered), etc.

---

I normally run a KDE session, which takes up some memory and the KDE ecosystem aren't the lightest users of syscalls (I'm looking at you Konsole), but when I need sheer perf (even for benchmarks), I kill all KDE sessions and switch to an openbox session running st.

Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just using a CPU intensive application I work on (GAP, a computer algebra system), on my laptop. I'm hoping we can kill our current windows build, and require people install bash for windows.

Maybe the resources required to run just one bash instance (and whatever you run within it) is lower than the resources required to run whatever DE you had on Linux (Unity is notorious) enough for it to show? When I asked how you tested, I was looking for a more detailed answer: what were the environments, the hardwares, what does the cli app you used do (CPU, IO, allocation etc.) (this you answered), etc. --- I norm…

Sorry, I didn't do anything that detailed!

I compared a standard Ubuntu install to a standard windows 10 install on a T420 Think pad.

Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10

#89
post #29

Sounds a little bit like slashdot in here with the pointless Microsoft/Unity hate rants. This is really awesome and I can't wait for more and more integration. This is nothing but awesome

No, seriously. Unity (the ubuntu desktop interface) is an abomination. Not a joke. Very serious. It is painful to even try to use. It forces so many unnatural behaviors, in favor of... I don't even know why. It's not elegant, it's not pretty, it's not fun to use. It is bad. Horrendously bad. And suited to the tastes of little more than a very small handful of people, who probably open a browser and read email, and do…

I use Xubuntu so I'm a bit of a stranger to Unity. I have tried it and it certainly didn't suit my needs. It's inelegant to say the least. Do not disagree I only meant the knee-jerk "AHHHH MS SUCKS UNITY SUCKS SYSTEMD SUCKS" lunacy that I see when these topics come up. XFCE or bust.

Re: Ubuntu Unity running on Windows 10

#90
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Isn't a VM a better option? Please explain how it is better. They've implemented the ABI/syscalls in the kernel allowing for direct execution of unmodified ELF64 binaries.

If you're going for a full Linux/GNU/Ubuntu/Unity stack, the only thing this cuts out is Linux, making his a Windows/GNU/Ubuntu/Unity stack. I know they've replicated the system calls, but they won't perform or always operate identically to a Linux kernel. Which is why I asked about where people thought Unity on Windows would make sense. Because a VM will most likely generally give a better experience. If you restric…

> but they won't perform or always operate identically to a Linux kernel.

Why does the implementation have to be identical? How would that even be possible, unless they violate the GPL. I don't get your point.

> Because a VM will most likely generally give a better experience.

Again, please explain WHY it would give a better experience. What do you see lacking?

Post reply on HN