Slashdot Mirror
Ubuntu Unity: The Great Divider
Barence writes "Canonical's decision to impose the new Unity interface on Ubuntu 11.04 users appears to have split the Linux distro's users, according to PC Pro. Features such as a moving Launcher bar and invisible scrollbars have angered many users, with one claiming that 'Ubuntu is doing a great job throwing away years of UI experience.' The rush to meet the six-monthly release schedule also appears to have harmed the release, with many users reporting graphical glitches with the new user interface."
I hate unity.. but just logout and go back into ubuntu classic.
Who knew with such a catchy name?
Canonical understands that people don't want to use a desktop environment with a smelly foot as its logo.
Now aren't we glad about the 'fragmentation' in the Linux desktop space? If Ubuntu sucks, you simply switch to Debian or Mandriva or Fedora or Slackware or another distro that doesn't include this insanity. Choice is great.
This is an entirely configurable option. Users who like it will keep it, users who don't will switch it. Anyone complaining is just doing it to hear his own voice.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
... then maybe it's time to switch to Fedora?
I've been starting to use it, but it's kind of meh. My main annoyance with it is that the bar doesn't seem to work very well. Getting it to stay open long enough to click has been sort of hit or miss so far, but it is somewhat interesting. It really should have an obvious way of getting it to open up and stay open as it is sometimes it stays open and sometimes it doesn't. Plus it doesn't work very well in virtual box if you haven't a hard monitor border on that side.
I installed it the day it was out. The menubar is somewhat different, so what?
For me, it's working fine and I'm sticking with it. Gnome fanboys will not appreciate it, but Unity feels a bit slicker than Gnome. And the user experience is so close it's almost undistinguishable.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
So I upgraded to 11.04 on my laptop, a Dell D620. Its a decent laptop, dual-core CPU, works quite well for what I use it for (not games).
Well, when I first logged on after the upgrade I was notified my computer could not handle Unity and would default to the old desktop. So that's where I'm at now, and I have no problem with that. I'd have LIKED to try Unity, but I've been given no option to.
I upgraded the girlfriend's laptop to Natty Narwhal. The interface is nice, but she's still bugging me about buying an iPad2 (no MS ever again for her after she experienced Vista) so that she can have Netflix and iTunes. Really, I don't think the interface is as important as what you can do with it.
Unity is an ugly hybrid of a desktop GUI and a mobile phone GUI.
I can see the kernel (hehe) of the good ideas behind it, but this is one they should have kept in the lab and refined for 6-12 more months. It isn't ready for prime time.
Let's all remember how much we hated XP when it came out, and then how much we wanted Windows 7 to be XP when it came out.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
If you want to keep the Ubuntu distro with a good UI all you need to do is install KDE
Despite still not being up to its best 3.5.9 shape, KDE 4 is much better than that unity abomination Ubuntu is trying to impose.
OSX Crimeware kit released yesterday, rushing releases cause glitchy behavoir in Ubuntu ... Windows people are smiling today...
I'm not "angry" or anything, but there are some things that are annoying about the interface. My main problem is the title bar. I love the idea of trying to make the client area as large as possible -- and I love that Firefox takes up nearly the entire screen. However, to make that work, they have really goofy title bar logic. The menu and title bar are basically sharing the same area. If you mouse over the title bar, it turns into the menu. However, if the window isn't maximized, then the menu is still at the top of the screen (like Mac OS). If you have two windows open, one maximized under a non-maximized window, then the title bar looks like it belongs to the maximized window, but it really belongs to the window with the focus.
My other complaint is that the icon bar is stuck on the left. I'd prefer it on the right, or on the bottom. It's also annoying because it doesn't always stay out -- sometimes it hides, sometimes it takes multiple clicks to get something launched, sometimes it pretends to poke out, but then goes away... It's not as simple as "when I put my mouse over there, stay open until I move my mouse away". There seems to be other logic going on that I can't figure out.
Lastly, my Wi-Fi broke upon upgrading (BCM4322). I had to do some command line modprobe stuff to get it back running. Not a Unity issue, but still annoying, and hurts usability.
I've been running Unity on my netbook for six months and it's not bad there as it's a bit more space-efficient on the screen and all I do is web browsing and type the odd document in Office; hence the half dozen launcher icons are all I need.
But I only lasted about 30 minutes with it on my laptop until I switched back to Gnome, because having 30 launcher icons scrolling up and down the screen and having to move the mouse to random parts of the screen to make them appear and scroll through the list to find the windows that are actually open is just awful.
IMHO the big problem is the idea of a 'one size fits all' GUI for everything when people have very different requirements on different systems. Unity is an improvement on small screen devices where you don't need to open six out of thirty different applications at a time, but not good when you do.
I kinda like... the option of using the classic theme. If I had a touchscreen I think I would like the new interface. But I don't, neither at my desctop nor at my laptop. And for the love of God what did they have in mind with the new obscure scrollbars? I think that Ubuntu took the wrong turn and there is a precipice ahaid
My problem with it is that it won't reboot or shutdown even with shutdown -r now or shutdown -h now. The screen stays lit.
I don't have much time to figure it out but my overall impression is somewhat NeXTish but needs work. Useable. Nice to see someone trying something different.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
Choosing the classic desktop from the login screen is a click away, don't get why people are shouting and whining so much. Unity will take at least another cycle to mature. The most disturbing thing is that canonical have not provided a helpful unity development guide for geeks to jump into and have a chance to give back to the community.
I admit its not the latest hardware, but I regularly use older hardware. The VGA card is on the motherboard, and is probably rubbish too. It draws a solid colour areas over the tops of windows you are trying to use, and hides the bar which would enable you to logout!
Once you manage to get back to "classic, without effects" its OK. But for bad user experience, I'd still give it 10/10.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I'm not sure who decided that we needed Cell Phone UI's on our desktops, but I'd like to slap the person(s).
For me personally, Xfce4 is the only sane desktop solution left.
Go nuts.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
FAIL!
Have the Ubuntu 11.04 on a couple of machines, but immediately switched to classic desktop on both. This thing is ridiculous, retarded and useless to me. I am not an Apple user, I don't own any iProducts and don't want to in no small part because I absolutely despise their way of doing interfaces. I hate the 'ribbon' garbage as well, BTW.
Anyway, from point of view of a developer, this GUI is a POS. No way I am going to use something that takes a chunk of my screen like that, gets rid of the battery power/network status icons (and whatever else I want to see on the launch bar). I honestly do not have patience to figure out where the application window goes once I attempt to minimize it. Is the window closed then and the application is killed? Is it somewhere on the background, and if so, how do I get it back? Where is the minimized window icon? That crazy search window that pops up only when I want to see the normal menu with the usual items in them - the entire idea of a menu tree is gone?
Anyway, you may want to use your computer as some sort of a weird appliance... I need a predictable, stable system, things should be where I am used to them, not hidden and removed in ways that defy any logic. The minimize/close/maximize window icons will be on the right side of my windows and there will be a normal tree like menu with items where I will find them every time I look there and there will be an icon for every window on the bottom of the screen, period.
You can't handle the truth.
Slow, ugly buggy just like gnome3 it sucks .... sad days for gnome/ubuntu users ...
Has anybody used unity as a HTPC interface?
If you use focus-follows-mouse, as anyone who has used X11 for a long time does, then the single menu at the top is useless, because on the way to go click something you invariably pass over a different window which then changes the focus, and thus the menu.
Also, attempting to run something from a Unity system to display on a remote machine (or Xvnc) means that you just don't have a menu at all.
Finally, you can't start more than one instance of something. If I click on the Terminal icon in the "dock" for example, unlike a launcher panel, which starts a new one where I am, it takes me (possibly to a different workspace) to the one currently running.
Yes, I can just log into "Classic" but that doesn't change the fact these deficiencies exist.
Unless all you want to do is look at what your desktop image is then dual screens (w/ nvidia drivers) do not work at all.
Ubuntu's rapid releases and sometimes shotty releases have made me get used to waiting several months, sometimes 6 months, before upgrading. It's likely I'll just move 100% to Debian or something like Mint next time I upgrade my computer. Thanks for all the years Ubuntu, buts its time I go back home to Debian.
Before I upgraded!
Ubuntu need to decide whether they are "the Linux for the rest of us" or "the bleeding edge".
When they started out, making Linux more polished-looking, consistent, user friendly, easy to install and the Linux you'd recommend to Aunty Agatha, that was bleeding edge (even if it wasn't exclusive to Ubuntu, they did a lot to advance that field, and to promote Linux in general) so there was no choice.
Now that most Linux distros are, at worst, no harder to install than Windows, and make a good College try at auto-detecting your hardware and helping you locate drivers they might want to think twice against "forcing" major changes on mainstream users (even if there is a way to revert, making them the default will give some people a WTF moment and fragment support and documentation). They also tend to introduce other major changes to subsystems with their regular releases.
If I were Ubuntu I'd have the last LTS version "headlining" the website as the recommended download, with the latest 6-monthly release as an option, and divert a bit more effort to backporting new versions of applications (not just bug/security fixes) to LTS so that non-techie users had an easy way to install the latest & greatest applications without a major OS overhaul. Of course, that's very unsexy work, especially if you're not being paid.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
if it wasn't so buggy.
I can't count how many times X has shut down just randomly with Unity.
On top of that, I think some of the concepts behind it are better than Gnome Shell, but I haven't tried Shell in a long time.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
While I consider myself fairly tech savvy, Linux is something that I have never had the fortune/misfortune of toying around with and learning. One of my biggest regrets was never having the chance to tinker with Linux while growing up as a kid. In any case, with all the hype surrounding the 11.04 release, I wiped out my old XP installation on my dual-boot Windows 7 desktop and installed Ubuntu. Here are my thoughts:
- Installation was exceptionally nice and easy for a Linux OS. Simple point and click experience. I did have issues with GPT info in my bootsector that was preventing Ubuntu from seeing my Windows 7 disk. So I had to use FixParts to fix it (with the help of some great support from the ubuntu forums). I don't count this against Ubuntu though, as the issue can be chalked down to MS
- OS design and interface (Unity) - Since I've never tried GNOME/KDE, etc, I didn't have any biases when starting out with Unity. I actually quite like it. While I am a big fan of being able to search for apps/files rather than navigating menus (similar experience in Windows 7), I do feel that Unity should also provide a nicely organized menu system of browsing through all the installed apps. It's well and good to be able to search for the app you're looking for, but as someone new to the OS, I don't even know what apps I should be looking for. In that respect, I did find Ubuntu Classic (similar to 10.10 interface) to be nicer
- The launcher bar (on the left) is okay. Not particularly sold on it, and one thing that was quite annoying is that there is very little difference between whether an application in the bar has launched windows, or has not been opened yet. I prefer the Windows 7 taskbar in that respect as it makes it a lot easier to tell with a quick glance if an app is open and if there are multiple instances open
- I really liked having multiple workspaces (of course, not unique to Ubuntu, but novel to a Windows user) as well as all the neat hardware accelerated transition animations you can access via compiz settings manager.
CONS
- Ultimately I had to go back to Windows 7 because of the terrible graphical glitches. This is a common complaint on the forums, more so for ATI users (I have an HD 5770). I tried the open source Radeon drivers as well as the fglrx proprietary ones, but had no luck with either. Dual monitor setups were also very finicky, and there doesn't seem to be any easy way to correct for overscan on my HDTV since it detects it as a projector for some strange reason (there are other posts about this from 10.10 on the ubuntu forums with no solutions suggested by anyone in the community).
I use my desktop also as an HTPC using XBMC, and on Windows 7, I can have XBMC playing stuff on the TV while I can still use my PC with the other monitor. This allows my wife to watch her shows while I am doing my own thing on the PC. This seems almost impossible to get working on Ubuntu, and is made worse by all the graphical glitches that kept forcing me to reboot. I really wanted to like Ubuntu and I was hoping I could convince myself to make a serious attempt to migrate away from Windows, but I don't think Ubuntu is quite there yet *for my needs*.
Hopefully things will keep improving with Ubuntu. The one thing it also made me realize is that MS did in fact do a great job with Windows 7 after the steaming pile of turd that was Vista. It's been rock stable and I can go months without rebooting or having my system slow down to a crawl.
But the original selling point of Ubuntu was that it was the distro that "just worked". You didn't have to spend days tracking down hardware problems, or hours figuring out how to change all defaults to something that worked. That meant the defaults were set to those that would be most familiar and comfortable to most computer users.
It is nice to have a distro like that to recommend to Linux Newbies, but Ubuntu is moving in a direction where it no longer is that distro.
I do get that people are very particular about their interface, I am one of them. Maybe I am misinformed, but I thought I read that you can use "classic" Ubuntu interface of Gnome and set it at login. I'm using Kubuntu 11.04, and have been very happy with it thus far. There are other variants of *buntu as well. Just because something comes a certain way out of the box, it doesn't mean you can't configure it. Surely Linux users understand this.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
it is time for a Ubuntu/Gnome boycott , maybe this way the devs will listen to the users complaints
I upgraded to 11.04 and I like Unity. It's a lot quicker and, while a little buggy, I'm already moving faster than with Gnome. That said, if you don't like Unity or Gnome 3, then either stay with 10.10 or 10.04 (LTS) or go to Linux Mint or Debian or pick a distro but quit bitching or pay for Windows / Mac. Either way, get off my lawn!
Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
Compiz crashes 2-3 times a day for me. Evolution crashes as soon as I start it (hangs fetching messages) and I have to do 'evolution --force-shutdown' on the command line because for some reason xkill is gone. Had to switch to Thunderbird, because Evolution was unusable.
I also uninstalled the appmenu because there were situations involving VirtualBox and Java/Swing apps where it would just go blank and stay that way, so I would have no menu at all. Plus, when you combine the app menu with Gnome's propensity to steal focus and raise windows to the foreground regardless of what you happen to be doing at the time, it's almost unusable.
After 4 days of tinkering and disabling things I'm to the point where I can actually do something (barring the compiz crashes, which require a reboot). Overall this is the glitchiest, most unstable Linux instance I've ever dealt with. I'll probably go back to KDE this upcoming weekend.
I am a right handed person. I am used to and find it very convenient to see the minimize, maximize, and close buttons locate on the upper right corner. With OSX's window (and now ubuntu), those buttons are on the upper left corner. I don't know about you guys, but for the right handed person, I find this is a poor UI layout. Don't get me started with OSX borderless window!
Every new release someone whines about a change in default apps or UI.
They could stick to one of the LTS versions, but they invariably jump on the new versions despite hating change.
I didn't like Unity, so I gave Gnome3 a go. No need to whine about it. If I didn't like either I could stick to classic or a previous release and update on an app by app basis.
It's pretty plain to see in the years of releases that LTS is stable, and the others are venues for experimentation and rapid change. But maybe that needs to be made more obvious to Joe User.
I tried on two machines, a 13" laptop and 40" combined dual-monitor desktop. Worked great on the laptop: I really liked it. On the desktop, though.... For one, mirror the menus is a big improvement compared to anything. They tray (notify area) was on both monitors, the focused app's menu stayed on that monitor (compare to multi-mon OSX where the app's menu shows on one central monitor regardless of which monitor app is on). But the launcher sucks. It lives on a single monitor, and being on the horizontal edge, means I've got potentially 40" to slide the mouse before I get to the bar. Now, it's got a text-driven launcher app too, like Spotlight or Gnome Do or Windows' start menu. That always runs on the primary screen. And then the app launches on the primary screen. Whereas with Gnome Do, it summoned on my active screen and then launched the app on the screen its active screen. Unity lost 10 years of advancements with multiple monitors. And that makes it a huge pain.
Implicit Evaluation with PHP
I don't know if it's intentionally ironical, but I laughed for at least a minute.
Hopefully this will be sorted out by the next LTS release. I found awhile back that I'm much better off with those than being a guinea pig for whatever comes out twice a year.
After all, at least so far, if a nice new app comes along, I can still find a backport of it.
I'm not a computer newb at all -- I started way back before there were portable ones. I do some software development still as well as content management for a site I run. I'm always doing something a little closer to the metal than most users. I like the UI model as is -- since I know whats going on underneath, and I don't need any magic between me and the machine. Other people may feel differently, and may want a new look and feel -- the same way people might sell a perfectly good car that now bores them. For me, that boredom is glorious! I just want a stable platform to do my own thing with -- those are exciting enough, and I don't like the idea of having to learn a bunch of new habits to do the same old things (or worse, not being able to do them any more).
Could be the whole desktop thing needs a new way of going about it all for ever dumber users, or some sort of "look, shiny" for those of short attention span who thrive on anything that lets them be a little ahead of us old fogies who aren't into constantly changing things that worked fine already. If that's what it takes to get market share.....but in the case of ubuntu -- I don't really understand a need for that anyway.
At any rate, due to the short attention span driving this, again, I hope/predict it will be sorted out in some decent way by the time I care to go to a newer LTS version (of whatever distro I like then, for now, it's still Ubuntu).
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
I started with Suse until Suse screwed up their distro. They got it bloated by trying to go after the Windows/Apple crowd. They failed miserably.
Now, Ubuntu is going the same path. All right, good luck with chasing Apple.
So, guys, which distro shall we try next?
I want:
- non-bloated kernel that is fast and responsive
- non-bloated UI that is fast and responsive (best on plain VGA)
- and my good old TkDesk, X-Emacs, is still supposed to work
- and I want the middle mouse button back!
I have it running on my old EEE 1000 40g and it's running ok for the most part. I'm not doing anything serious with it but I'm really not going to use it on a main machine till there is an LTS release. I can say I already miss having my weather app up next to the clock. It's an OK experience but not enjoyable. Sadly Gnome is changing big time as well so I dunno... I feel like things are changing where they don't need to be changed because it worked fine as is.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
>Mark Shuttleworth where he apparently said that perhaps power users should switch to a different distro.
Mark, Mark, Mark:
If power users switch to another distro, who is going to answer 1st-day newbs' questions on ubuntuforums.org? 2nd-day newbs?
And who's going to do all that free Ubuntu development and package management work for you on launchpad?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
The irony is, well, it's palpable.
I've managed to get around in it, but things like when the window pops to the top it explodes to full screen are *REALLY* annoying. There are other bits that I found annoying: the home directory has a stupid @ sign in front of it, so when you have your home directory on another drive for safety and use a soft link to have home under root, it keeps bellyaching that it can't find home when you boot. Also the bootloader had been mangled so that new kernels must be built in a full screen terminal, otherwise the system wants to install (old) nvidia drivers onto it (and that isn't possible unless you have booted into the new running kernel and so it likes to stall in an X terminal.....annoying!). The bar on the side doesn't disappear unless there is a window about to crowd it....there is no overriding autohide ....annoying, and the annoying bar at the top doesn't ever go away: massively annoying! There are other things: I used to have menus with a lot of stuff in them: the stupid little bar on the side doesn't let you access nearly as much, in order to add new stuff to the bar you have to have a corresponding icon in the window: REDUNDANT!, and you can't change the location of any of the bars; it used to be that you could drag them to the window edge you liked, now thats all gone! Unity might be good for a smart phone or a teeny screen notebook, but I have two 22" monitors, I have a lot of real estate. I can select from menus, I don't necessarily need an icon for everything, and as an example: I used to have a great system monitor running out of the admin menus: as far as I can tell, its gone forever and I'm missing it already! One of the major grumps I had with gnome was configuration options, especially the main menu. The finally fixed that about 2 years ago: FINALLY! Now with unity: menus are gone completely! What the hell!?! Next time, it might be good if Ubuntu users could have a choice between gnome and unity (much like the choice between KDE and GNOME). Oh, and it would be nice if Ubuntu didn't fsck up the bootloader! Let me change the system to how "I" want it, not how you think I should have it. I had building kernels down to two scripts: ./fetch and ./build and now Ubuntu is trying to make it harder! Arggh!
The apps available to day are pretty nice. One would assume that in a couple of years things will have shaken out that the new interfaces are more consistent and compatible. There's nothing wrong with 10.10, which I am about to REINSTALL soon as I burn another thumb drive.
If they fix the fuckign panel I might be able to stick with 11.04. But using ubuntu in "classic" mode has, for me, resulted in a desktop that crashes more often than a virus infected windows machine. So remind me: why did I switch to linux, again?
What's shocking to me, more so than the new Unity interface, is the fact that so many nvidia cards aren't working. I know that this isn't an LTS release, but it's still really bad that such a huge bug went into the release version of 11.04. The issue spans across several generations of NVIDIA cards, on both desktop and laptop systems, and is confirmed in Ubuntu and Kubuntu. Shoddy testing doesn't begin to describe it. Bottom line, stick to 10.10 for another month or two, or just wait for 11.10.
Stop treating it like one. I don't want a netbook interface shoved down my throat, forcing me to use my desktop pc on an enormous hd screen like a netbook. That is just absurd. I don't know what gnome 3 will bring but I pray that it will still look something like what I am using now. I don't need my user experience revolutionised, I need it to work and be comfortable for me. Unwelcome change is not why I chose Ubuntu.
blah blah tl;dr, unity is the worst thing to happen to ubuntu. Way to drive users away, Canonical! Settle your beef with Gnome and get over yourselves.
I jumped ship to Arch after trying to run a stable gnome-shell on 11.04 (or use an out of date gnome-shell on 10.10). Even running gnome-shell on 11.04 was met with several crashes whenever I would zoom out to activity view, or try to unlock my KeePassX db.
Granted, those were from repositories/ppas.
But I like Gnome 3 (I know i'm in the quiet minority here). So I went looking for another distribution; after a suggestion from a coworker, I switched to Arch. I had a working Gnome3/Shell install in less than 4 hours. It helped that I already had /home on a separate partition, so I didn't have to backup my /home first.
That was a week ago. Still have some bugs to iron out (gdm isn't starting automatically even though it's listed in the DAEMONS variable in rc.conf, can start manually by logging into console and running the /etc/rc.d/gdm start), but over all, I love it.
I didn't hate XP, per say, I just saw no immediate benefit over Windows 2000. Of course, service patches and better driver support fixed that in the long term.
As for Windows 7, heavens, no. I was quite happy that Vista was Vista, and that Windows 7 is Windows 7. What unyielding luddites are using software these days? Your age has ended; get your arses on some boats and sail into the west. Leave the realm of Middle Operating Systems to the rest of us.
Then what little Karma the Canonical has will quickly head off into the distance.
IMHO, the next LTS will be the make or break release for them.
I just wish they'd say this.
Ok Ubuntu lovers. The next release is going to be bug fix and feature completion only.
But they won't. IMHO their ego's won't let them just say 'No'.
Tried it, and hated it...but still forced myself to stick with it for a couple of days in the hopes that I would understand why Canonical made this decision. Maybe it was just me and it really was a good UI. I am not happily back in the gnome environment and can safely say that if Unity is the only choice in 11.10, I will be switching distro's after many years of enjoying Ubuntu. Just a damn shame IMO.
I was expecting to like Unity, I've been waiting for an interesting change in the linux desktop UI. But I can't stand it. It seems like they tried to copy mac os and missed the point of half the features. The launcher bar on the side is space wasting, hard to reconfigure and doesn't seem to have an auto-hide feature. The applications drawer is no longer divided by app category, so you have to scroll through everything even if you know you're looking for an internet app. The top menubar is unusable if you have focus follows mouse (which is a must have for me). And if you have multiple monitors the menubar decides to stretch across both. If it duplicated on each you'd have access to menus on either monitor, if it only showed up on one monitor you'd have more space on the other, this is just a useless waste of space. The whole thing is just a mess.
After that I tried gnome 3, which I was also expecting to be clunky given everything I've read. It has a couple rough edges but man, this is the new UI I was looking for. The launcher bar is part of the window management screen which not only auto hides but is brought up with a hot corner. App management is combined with window management in a seamless way. The app list is made of big chunky tiles like Unity's, but there are categories on the side that correspond to the old submenu's, while still providing an All Applications category AND a which search bar for your apps. And I frankly love the fact that minimize is replaced by smart workspaces. I never realized how broken a concept minimize was until I could manage workspaces like this.
Its not perfect. There is a menu bar which is mostly unused at the moment. It really could have the option to be a global app menubar. It just needs to work with focus follows mouse better. And a couple decisions were made in the interest of simplicity that seem pretty dumb. For example there's no shutdown option in the menu, only suspend, because someone on the design team decided you should never need to shutdown. You can, you just have to hold alt while the menu is open. I hope that gets changed real quick.
All this aside, Unity seemed unusable to me and not a good direction to go in, while Gnome 3 seemed rough but usable and have many interesting new ideas.
I "upgraded" my 5-year-old Dell laptop (one of the first that came pre-installed with Ubuntu) from 10.10 to 11.04 and had to switch to classic mode. The Unity interface seems to require too much resource and so it didn't load anything besides the desktop icons. I've had similar problems before with Compiz. Seems like with this release, the Ubuntu people dropped any pretense of catering to older systems and went full force with the eye candy. If I want a resource hog OS, I might as well go with Windows.
People just fear change mostly, and really love to feel affronted about something to get attention and validation.
I don't fear change, I just hate it. Why should I waste my time to relearn how to use the GUI every time a new version comes out?
Before I type "sudo do-release-upgrade", any word on how well kubuntu works ?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
hello baby penis!
Yesterday I finally replaced ancient XP with Ubuntu on one of my machines.
The first impressions were "it's retarded." The install required to connect to the net to download required packages (over ethernet, while I only had wifi) despite running off 600MB install disk. I finally managed to install from 'live' and was not impressed - the Unity interface was so dumbed down that it was beyond useless - multitouch touchpad support broken, power managment disabling all the options I needed, gedit unable to load files containing unprintable characters and so on. At first I thought "That's it, Ubuntu has jumped the shark. I need to look for a different distro.
Then I thought "let's see, maybe KDE is still usable." Of course none in the default, but simple apt-get install kde-plasma-desktop loaded it just fine. Log out, session: KDE, log in, done.
And then I decided I'm quite happy with Ubuntu. The OS under the hood is actually pretty good, and once you replace the desktop manager, it's quite a nice OS to use.
So, install KDE and stop complaining.
sudo apt-get install kde-plasma-desktop
It's that easy,
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Just can't handle disappearing scroll bars and launchers. Not intuitive at all. I have tried to live with it but the attraction wore off fast. Now I am futzing with Gnome 3 which while not perfect is at least useable for my daily needs. I am just waiting for the next stable release of Fedora and that looks to be my next distro. That or Mint which I use now and then. I like Ubuntu but it's just getting weirder.
Seriously, Linux is about choice. Don't like the desktop? Install one of the other dozen or so window managers and desktops.
It's not like it's any more difficult than herpan, derpan, pointan, clickan in Synaptic.
I keep seeing shit like this and I swear it must be Softies trying to spread FUD. Stop it. It's about as controversial as Debian "forcing" Gnome 3.
Fucktards.
--
BMO
Things like this make me glad I use Linux Mint (which is built on top of Ubuntu). Though, I'm not sure what the Mint devs are going to do with all of this.
I HATED Unity but decided that I needed to use it for a week before I made up my mind. Long story short...I like it now. I am running it on two 24" displays and I am just as productive as I was with the Gnome 2 interface now that I know all the keyboard shortcuts. Its a harsh toke for sure to go from the 'classic' interface to Unity but I think that a lot of people are just not giving it a chance. As for the problems with Compiz and other bugs, I have not really had any issues. The only problem I have had is the proprietary Radeon driver is slow so I am not using it at the moment.
Took me about ten minutes to switch to Classic (of which, 8 minutes were looking in help for info about the new interface before I saw the note about logging in as a Classic session).
I hate ribbons and dynamic menu and toolbars. I hate every thing Microsoft does to hide stuff they don't think we'll use and I hate it here too. I have a 17" laptop screen. The buttons are tiny. If I'm looking for an option, I want it to be in the same place, every time, without clicking or mousing over something.
I really hope I can stay with Classic forever, but from the other comments it sounds like even that'll change.
OK, honestly not trying to troll here, but I can't be the only one who thinks the new Launcher's ugly as sin.
Here's Unity: screenshot
Now here's the dock on my Mac: screenshot
Start by giving XFCE a try.
Open you horizons, as stated in a number of previous posts.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Canonical has single handedly stabbed themselves in the face.
1) Unity wasn't ready
2) Unity really sucks and is the *DEFAULT* window manager
3) The Ubuntu 11.04 install cd doesn't even boot on half of my hardware anymore. (hardware it worked with from 7.x - 10.10, #ubuntu says the 2D fallback at install doesn't work half of the time)
In all honesty, I was the biggest of Ubuntu fan-boys... I even grudgingly accepted the left hand window buttons in 10 as they could be tweaked. But this is just too much. While Gnome 3 is also going through growing pains, IT'S UI AT LEAST MAKES SENSE AND IS STABLE! Personally I think as a community, the disheartened users need to return to Debian or move to Mint. Debian 6 squeeze has gotten a lot better and it's package selection wider thanks to the Ubuntu focus and fame.
THAWTELESS, Star City, Monday (NNGadget) — Canonical, Inc. has announced the release of Ubuntu 11.04, "Venereal Vista," based on the Unity Vista desktop, which only 5 out of 11 first-time users managed to crash in final testing two weeks ago.
Unity is Canonical's response to the GNOME 3 shell, which uses 1 gigabyte of RAM and four processor cores to exquisitely render a single button in the centre of the screen in beautifully anti-aliased text; when pressed, GNOME tells the user to switch off the computer and do something useful with their life, such as showering.
"This was just not up to the user expectations of Canonical's vision of the desktop," said Mark Shuttleworth, from his castle high on a crag in West London. "So we added a 'minimise' button too."
Design is at the centre of Shuttleworth's roadmap for Unity. "I woke up one day and thought, 'Gosh, I'd really like to make using my universal general-purpose computer that I can do ANYTHING with feel like I'm using a locked-down three-year-old half-smart phone through the clunky mechanism some l33t h@xx0r used to jailbreak it, I can't think of a better user experience.' We're not quite there yet, but this gets Unity a lot of the way."
Picture: Unity is made of arse.
Shuttleworth foresees an exciting future for Linux for the general Internet user. "It'll be a whole world of Linux devices, which millions of people will use all the time, everywhere! Of course, at the moment those are called 'phones' and run Android."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Ubuntu is clearly on a innovation path, which will continue in the future. You might find Linux Mint or Elementary OS appealing if orthodoxy is what you want.
I love Unity myself, but I can see why so many consider it a bit noobie-unfriendly, it requires you to know most of the apps'es names...
Anyway, Gnome Shell will be the other Gnome option available around and I think that will be received even worst.
The Elementary people are developing a alternative Desktop Environment, which looks good... But I still don't get what all the fuss is about, I mean... Standalone Compiz has been an option for quite some time now... You will only need a nice panel (there are plenty available, I recommend xcfe-panel) and that's it...
"Canonical's decision to impose the new Unity interface" -- that's just ridiculous...
BTW, Fedora a bleeding edge distro? Come on, that's not even rolling release!
Seriously guys. Unity? This was the popular UI of choice?
Playing with the classic desktop instead or maybe I'll checkout kubuntu. Hopefully they didn't butcher it too badly in 11.04. I've met one online who likes Unity. And I think he was a bot actually. Go figure ;-)
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
more like First Troll.
Tried to install from a DVD on my Vaio laptop. Unity crashes during install. Tried the 32 bit version. Unity crashes during install.
Installed OpenSuse 11.4 from DVD; everything works perfectly, video, sound, camera, wifi, multi-boot.
Really, though, I like GNOME, I like KDE and all the rest, but Unity isn't half bad. It really does what it's called by uniting the Mac OSX dock (the only feature of Macs that I ever really liked) into a sidebar with the traditional menu-based navigation. It's also good for peeps like me who have a metric ton of programs by really clearing up the desktop. And yeah, it's unstable, but what do you expect with first-week releases? I also agree that it's not too terribly great for power users, but we also have things like Tiny Core and Damn Small Linux which are both modular and user-defined.
Suse with KDE has more polish than kubuntu, KDE is definitely second choice in the ubuntu universe.
I've been using Natty since betas, and this complaint about Unity seems utterly silly to me, since it is SO easy to just use "Ubuntu Classic." I've played with Unity a little bit, and think that it has a couple good ideas, but also don't really like it (even on my netbook where the space savings should be most helpful). So you know what I did, I selected the simple pick list on the GDM login screen to use Ubuntu Classis! And after that, my selection sticks as my default choice (and sticks per-user as you'd expect).
Clicking on one pick list ONCE during a login really doesn't seem burdensome to me. And it's not like Unity is all that bad or all that different either (the betas were a little buggy, but 11.04 release seems stable).
Buy Text Processing in Python
I've been running Ubuntu/Gnome since 6.03 (now on 10.3) and the Netbook Remix (UNR - a Unity based version) for the last year and a bit. The Gnome version has always been on a desktop with a fairly bog standard monitor, and UNR has been unsurprisingly on a netbook with the wide-but-short screen that this entails. (My review of the Asus netbook I use includes a few comments on Unity: shameless-blog-link) Here's my thoughts, because I think they're relevant.
I like Gnome. I know a lot of people bitch about it, but personally I quite like it. The defaults are roughly what I set up anyway, and it's fairly intuitive for me. The only major change I make other than basic cosmetics is a menu bar on the left, auto-hiding, with big icons for Firefox, Gimp, a terminal, gphpedit and all the other programs that I use daily.
UNR took a little getting used to, but given the efficiency that it places on screenspace I've found it to be very worthwhile. You can easily drop out of UNR and re-login with Gnome, and the experience is identical to the desktop version, but Unity is genuinely a swisher, faster, easier system when you're limited on screen height and using a trackpad...the big shiny icons, much as I dislike them on a desktop, actually make things really quick and easy on a netbook.
The downside to UNR/Unity? It's clearly not hugely stable yet. This is quite possibly to do with closed source binaries from graphics card manufacturers, the only crash-worthy problem I've ever had with the netbook is UNR dropping out to a terminal after going into a bit of a panic finding the graphics card. There's nothing in particular that seems to spark it, it just seems to be a fundamental, occasional glitch very low down in the system somewhere. It's not related to processor or graphics card load, it just flips out sometimes.
So I like Unity style stuff when it works, and on a netbook. I also adopt a few of the Unity style features on a standard Gnome desktop. It definitely has a few very nice usability features. I want the option not to use it though. My preferred solution would be a very bog standard Gnome interface as standard for desktops, plus "themes" you can apply to get OSX, Unity or Windows style layouts. Then (as exists for KDE, xfce etc) options at boot for the others. And keep Unity...it's great on a netbook but it needs work. Offer it as an option, not a default, at least not until it's stable and generally the preferred option.
That said, hell, I get the whole #! for free, so who am I to bitch about these things?
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Wanted to save my father a few bucks with this ubuntu version in his new machine to be used as a media player. Couldn't make hdmi audio output to work, gave up and had to buy a windows license. Then I saw the requirementes for a hardware to be ubuntu certified and it is said that hdmi audio is not tested.
I really don't get this. I'm not so happy with unity yet - but I know it's going to change a lot in 6 months. But, that's the whole point of open source. If you don't like it, change it. Or, simply use another distro for a while.
When XP first came out, it was slower on existing hardware (like most Windows releases) and was for many worse than Win2k Pro in terms of stability.
When Windows 7 came out we didn't want it to be like the initial XP release, we wanted it to be better than XP SP3 plus two more years of patches.
The next release of Unity will likely fix the major problems. Which is reminiscent of MSFT, as a previous poster pointed out.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Linux for the rest of us is bleeding edge.
Microsoft could have just kept servicing windows XP forever, and nobody would complain, but slowly, MacOS and other innovative competitors would take over. Change is painful and ruffles a lot of feathers. The change to Vista is testament to that, but very few people using windows 7 right now will complain that XP was better. Windows XP is outdated and stale just like conventional Linux desktop environments.
Yes, Canonical will take a lot of flak for their bold decision. And yes, Unity is still rough on the edges. But if they want Ubuntu to continue to be in the lead of user friendly distributions (or newb distros, as you called them), then they need to be willing to upgrade and revise. Unity will get smoother in the next few releases, and when we all look back I am sure that it will have been worth it.
As somebody who stopped using Ubuntu about two years ago, I welcome the changes. I installed and am using 11.04 on my eeePC (formerly untouched by linux). If there are more out there like me, then the user-base for Ubuntu will continue to grow.
I really don't have time to read all of these comments on the UI, but I've GOT to ask this question: Why hasn't someone implemented a UI that spits out XML that references a stylesheet? Seems to me, with an XML-based UI and a stylesheet, you could make the UI do whatever you want, but the underlying code would consume/produce the same XML all the time, abstracting user preferences from the rest of it. Look, I'm just a simple caveman, unfamiliar with your ways (I am a mainframe tech, my UI is a 7-color 3270 emulator), but it sure seems that a stylesheet type solution (whether based on XML or not) would help.
I haven't been able to use the touchpad or wireless on any ASUS laptop with Ubuntu since 8.10.
It's hard to get upset about wacky UI stuff when the "just works" doesn't work.
In a way, it's cool that it is different, but it definitely feels like a step back from 9.10/10.10. The biggest thing that bugs me is that I'm used to having a lot of similarly named scientiic and computing software and I can't always remember what they're called. I haven't configured the desktop yet, but it's definitely a slowdown having to stop and try to remember what I'm supposed to be running rather than relying on muscle memory.
It's also a pain to type "term" in the search box so that I can get at my bash scripts, since I haven't memorized a terminal hotkey combo.
Also, the asymmetry throws me off. On the plus side, it seems to be more stable with flash and java, and the updating grub interface is cleaner.
Felt uncomfortable with the choice between GNOME Shell and Unity for quite some time, until I finally took the time to seriously test-drive the stuff.
Short: Ifell in love with Unity.
Love the clever use of screen space. Especially how the title- and menubar of maximized windows is merged into the top panel - brilliant. The reduced screen clutter from the new scrollers - enjoyable. Although the new scrollbars still need some UX love - they are hard to hit and such, but I am convinced that issues will be solved. Similar like the problem of resizing frameless windows was solved. Love that I still have workspace handling.
The side panel looks dull on screenshots. Guess the Canonical guys shall post animated gifs or something instead. In life it feels much slicker due its nice animations. Maximized windows let slide out of the screen. Did I mention the nice and useful animations?
Summary: You really shall try GNOME Shell and Unity before talking them down. There are good chances you'll fell in love with them. For me Unity fits well, others will love GNOME Shell. Just grunting without having tried them is lame. Seriously lame.
Next dream: Both projects finally would get together and use compatible specs at least.
I decided to move to KDE once I saw Unity.
I absolutely hate when system tries to "predict" or "optimize" something. Microsoft started it with XP, Gnome and KDE adopted it very quickly. It became so awful that Windows 7 GUI or KDE4 almost give me headaches whenever I get to use them.
I've been aggressively looking for a new OS to migrate to because I desperately want to get off the OSX before it becomes iOS. I have been trying different Linux Distros in the past few months and because I had used Ubuntu before I didn't try it till the very end. I wish I had tried it first, and I have to credit Unity for making me me pick Ubuntu. I think Unity is a really good change, and while it's new and might not be working properly for everyone, I say it's a step in the right direction. It's the first time I've used a Linux GUI that is both usable and not a poor man's windows/osx clone. I think it's more organized and the location of things make more sense. I stopped using menu trees when Quicksilver/Do came into existence, and stopped using scrollbars when mice started coming out with scroll wheels so some of the criticism people have don't apply the way I use GUIs. I just hope Canonical doesn't get discouraged by the haters and keeps developing and making improvements to Unity. I'd hate to see it go. Hermiquin.
I have found no compelling reason to do an upgrade. I think I will stop here at 10.10. It works just fine.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
relly i mean that at this point they should just trash it and fork gnome 2. like they should have done in the first place. i tested it in 10.10 and saw it as utter garage then then 11.04 comes along and its still the unstable useabilty nigthmare it was then.
Ever since an automatic update of Ubuntu trashed its own partition to the point where it would not boot at all, I decided to switch to a different distribution but have not yet decided which because they all seem to have a different set of problems. Any suggestions?
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
I installed 11.04, and completed the whole install while playing around with Unity..other than the menu bars requiring more mouse distance to activate, I didn't think it was that bad. Once set to 32x32 icons at the sidebar, it even looked fairly OK.
And then I just installed KDE and called it a day. Change KDE for your personal choice there, I don't discriminate.
I don't think it's that BAD, but one month in the oven would have helped it a lot. It's suffering KDE4.0-style negative feedback which will probably doom it as it doomed KDE (or so it seems judging from the negativity towards it).
Anyway, even if it was much worse, it's still an option and I will gladly take my right to have a choice.
It took about 10 minutes for me to get nearly all of the similar functionality back. I really like the sidebar now that i can hit special+tab+{num} to get the exact window I want. Aside from that, it is nearly identical to 10.10
Seriously guys, take a breather, ask yourself how much the changes actually impact your workflow, and then realize that Ubuntu is still a damn awesome distro. Sure, there are others, but Ubuntu is pretty rad.
Sometimes, you have to change, or die. The old way of doing window'd systems can't last forever. Yeah, it's different. But it's not bad, and all uber geek tools are still there.
I have Ubuntu 11.04 with Unity running on my work production system and on a personal netbook. It was a shock at first, because I didn't know it was coming. I used Compiz, so to see all my 3D goodness evaporate, I was heartbroken.
But after using it a while, I realize, it is actually better, and I'm starting to love it... even though I still spend considerable time in my trusty terminal window.
Realize when it's time to change. People on Windows have not seen much real change, and what change they have seen is not for the better. But when something comes across that's "Not as good as it was in MY day!" then you are probably being passed on the highway of progress.
I didn't like the iPhone. Touch screens seemed like a fad to me. But I knew I'd have to change. And now, couldn't live with a phone without a touch screen. It's still not an iPhone, but I'm certainly not on my BlackBerry Curve anymore. Unity is looking like it's getting touch screen ready. It's also allowing more real estate. As anyone who has used a touch screen device, regular old windows is not the best choice.
I8-D
I am not pleased with the direction either Ubuntu or Gnome are going. I have been a big fan of both Ubuntu and Gnome, but I don't understand the need to slap this Tablet/Smart phone ui on their products. Unity and Gnome Shell are the reason I decided to give Linux Mint a try. Clement Lefebvre has publicly taken the stance to do whatever is necessary to keep Mint more or less the same as it is now. If they fail me I guess it is time to move to XFCE. That is the beauty of linux in the first place... I have the ability to choose! On a side note: Attention developers: GUI paradigms exist for a reason!
If you are going to use a new UI, add some hints or something. I am not sure how to modify the current UI options. It appears that in order drill down to the apps I want, I have to first load all these applications icons in this black overlay that kills my older laptop's CPU. It does not appear to integrate will with certain applications title and menu bars correctly. Right-Clicking for alternative options no longer appears to work. I have trouble moving between apps with it when I want to nest. I found the old UI easy and rapid to navigate. With the new one everything is a pause. With full-screen apps and normal apps at the same time it just fails.
Just login using classic... but that is only one of their problems. They seemed to have borked wine, and LibreOffice is just hosed. I upgraded one workstation but am working on going back to 10.10 since 11.04 is not ready for prime time.
Hmmm, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could make monitors just that incy wincy bit larger so that I could have all the programs in view ready to launch when I want! Then I'd have the real-estate of Ubuntu 11 and the launchbar-at-hand of Ubuntu 10.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
A fair and insightful review. Next time you get a machine with an Nvidia card, give it another try. Makes a difference.
Completely love Unity. Looks really good and I find the interface very easy.
I was curious as to whether bi-annual would actually mean every two years. Apparently it can mean either, but semiannual and biennial specify six month and two year periods respectively. Amusingly to sad bastards like myself, this means both the regular and LTS releases are biannual.
Forcing wonderful new features that nobody asked for onto thousands of Ubuntu boxen that do actual work for a living is a damn stupid mistake that has been tried, regretted and rejected by Microsoft and Apple before now, and I suspect everybody else that pushes an OS with vainglorious promises of "support" that introduce more bugs than they ever fix.
I don't much like Ubuntu, to tell the awful truth, but it has done its job reasonably well through Intrepid, even on Dell Inspiron. Natty can suck eggs, until market discovery ratifies the changes.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Disclaimer - I haven't even tried out Unity yet and still deciding when to upgrade - but just from looking at some of the screenshots, the Unity interface seems to be way too much of a compromise between the old interface and a Win7 style interface, trying to keep both camps halfway happy, and ending up with alienating both.
I like the Win7 interface a lot and would actually prefer to have a similar style bar on my Ubuntu desktop. However, the various Unity screenshots (such as the ones from the article link) have a launch bar plus an additional menu bar on top. This effectively negates all the gains of introducing the launch bar - instead of clean and slick, it now looks messy and cluttered, with a visually confusing mix of layout and styles.
Furthermore, people have their personal preferences where they like to put a (single launch bar without any additional bars) - e.g. I like to put mine on the right side of the screen, as I find it less obtrusive. And I like auto-hide, whereas others don't. It should be easy and intuitive to move it around and (de)select auto-hide.
So my $0.10 is I believe Unity is going in the right direction, but it needs to be more radical - the way Microsoft did with Win7. Have one single Win7-style bar, make it movable, and dump the bar on top. You don't hear people complaining about the Vista -> Win7 switch (where Microsoft did exactly this) - people were generally positive.
And for the power users, it really shouldn't matter - there is always alt+tab, alt+f2 etc.
"six-monthly" means 6 times per month to me.
They are in fact in a totally different place. But once I found where, I admit that it makes sense.
They are now in the sytem menu with your username at the top right of the screen, just below "Shutdown".
Switching off Unity is so easy, even a brain dead earth worm could do it.
Canonical has not "imposed" the Unity interface on anyone. They have simply made it the default, which is easy as pie to change.
Just click your username, then at the bottom, select the Classic interface. It becomes the new default, and you are done. No more Unity.
I upgraded to 11.04 and when the system rebooted, Apt stopped working, I get a Hash Sum mismatch error when I try to get packages or even running apt-get update. Went back to 10.10 by doing a fresh install...
I have four computers, all running Ubuntu: two ancient Dell p4 desktops (added ram, Nvidia cards, etc.), a Thinkpad and a netbook. I installed the latest Ubuntu on one of the Dells and instantly hated it. I have the netbook remix on the netbook and hated it so much last year that I switched to the Gnome desktop, but this is worse. The launcher bar adds nothing but another annoying layer to getting stuff done. But the thing that made me switch back to Gnome this time was the stupid magic scroll bars. Is this a joke? What "problem" is this supposed to solve? Too much scrolling? This imbecilic "feature" speaks volumes about Canonical's demented agenda, which is apparently to load their product down with Playskool/Mac crap like this. Yeah, for now I can go back to Gnome, but I'm sensing that they're shooting themselves in the foot here. I'm certainly not going to recommend this nonsense to anyone now on Windows.
Sent from the iPad I found in your car.
I saw an article on Slashdot a couple of weeks back "German Company To Install Linux On 10,000 PCs"
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/11/04/23/2241214/German-Company-To-Install-Linux-On-10000-PCs
What company in their right mind would choose Ubuntu after this change.
Can you imagine the loss in productivity from the change inflicted in 10,000 PCs?
Operating systems are boring. That is all.
I commend Canonical the community for releasing a Linux distro, but criticism is also helpful (and entirely warranted in my opinion). I started using Linux circa 1997. There have been glitches in Linux distros over the years. However, it seems this version was rushed (these defects are blatantly obvious--e.g., the launcher bar does not work????) and certainly places this distro release at or near the top of the worst-of list. After installing Ubuntu 11.04 (twice) and both x32 and x64 versions, the graphical interface simply fails. First, even with otherwise decent equipment, the so-called Unity interface will not run at all. So... Ubuntu defaults to the legacy, classic GNOME display. Summary in one word: unusable. (OK, horrible or unacceptable would also suffice.) The "legacy" interface has numerous defects making it practically unusable (e.g., the launcher display does not work, windows randomly display the title bar in random inversion on top, right, left, etc. of the window, text randomly goes into "CGA" mode (big, chunky, letters), disappearing windows, disappearing window gadgets. I could go on. The point simply is: Linux is (otherwise) a mature, robust system. Why defeat that legacy with so-called "cutting edge" technologies with little, or no, compelling benefit? Yes, Linux users vary widely, but I believe many use Linux on older systems or simply for a more stable and streamlined system. Yes, some Linux users enjoy experimenting; others want a stable, working basic install and basic usable system. Frankly, this release sets-back Linux five years or more in my opinion. Rather than being able to convince potential users, we are back to the hope-we-can-clap-it-together-just-to-get-the-UI-working mode of yesteryear. Yes, it is fun to customize Linux personally; BUT if you are trying to introduce or use Linux in a more restricted environment, the system simply cannot be as it now is--bifurcated UI and (in my experience) both unusable? (Sorry to the team. No offense meant. Healthy dialog intended.)
I'm square in the sights of a perfect potential new Linux user. Thing is, I really don't care for either Gnome 3 or KDE 4.x. And I refuse to deal with stability issues and horrible graphic glitches.
As a new user I don't currently know enough to care about "anything under the shell" so it's all about the UI's and the apps that run with/for/inside them. Aren't some apps not available for some desktops?
The one I have my eyes on to study later is xfce.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I and several people I've spoken to havent been able to upgrade even - the upgrade process fails.... ...
its certainly not auspicious so far
My only complaint with the Unity interface is the requirement for 3D hardware acceleration. The vast majority of Linux systems I use are virtualized, not on real hardware. I have so far not gotten Unity to work on a virtual machine.
I do understand that there are instructions in some places articulating the hoops to jump through to make it work under some VM platforms, and other instructions relating to "Unity 2D" or something -- my casual half-hearted efforts to follow them didn't work, and casual half-hearted efforts are all I'm going to put time into at this stage.
When it gets to the point that I can trivially download a "live CD" image and boot it on a VM and see the new interface... at that time I'll begin to evaluate it.
At that time I'll be asking questions like "how easy is it for me to push a button to completely disable the concept of virtual desktops and all UI traces of them?" and "could I put this in front of my dad or my nephew?". From rumors I've heard, I'm not optimistic about the answers, but at this point there's no reason for me to get worked up about it -- right now I don't have a realistic option to even consider it.
(Result: still sticking with MacOS X for desktop/laptop use, and plain vanilla Debian (without any GUI) on servers and VMs, with the occasional windows box or VM for testing. Maybe that'll change some day, maybe not.)
Unity is terrible! Gnome 3, not much better. Maybe when people hear about user friendly linux distros they will think 'kubuntu' and not 'ubuntu', which is probably not such a bad thing. I've decided to switch back to kde.
I just upgraded two comupters to Ubuntu 11.04 Computer 1: a slightly older 32bit desktop: sorry you don't have the specks to run unity. Computer 2: Installed OK and works well enoguh after getting used to it. All except for the unified menubar thing. Even that would be fine if it worked all of the time, but having it work for a handful of Apps only, and break for everything else, that was enough to prompt me to uninstall that particualr tool.
I have more screen real estate than ever before on my desktop; and I suspect that's the case for most desktop users. So, why in the world does Shuttleworth think it's worth ten pixels to get rid of the pervasive scrollbar? XFCE is my new friend!
When the Linux desktop wars happened in the late '90s, it was exciting and meant that the Linux desktop was growing up.
When the Linux desktop wars started all over again in the late '00s, it was depressing and meant that the Linux desktop had stopped growing up.
In the late '90s, I doubled down on my enthusiasm about Linux.
In the late '00s, I switched to a desktop that was already grown up and gave up on Linux for now.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
A better product? Obviously when the ENTIRE product was present, consumers didn't think so.
Could it be that the branding and the visual experience, the reference to tradition, memory, and social status are a part of the product? Perish the thought, that would be unheard of in all of society!
In fact, Coke clearly has a better product if consumers prefer it. Pepsi has a better product for the blind, it would seem.
But this is the same kind of nonsense that has people saying that Apple makes lousy products that consumers just happen to love and desire. Either your definition of "product" or your definition of "lousy" are faulty if you think this, because the entire POINT in the existence of PRODUCTS is to get consumers to love them.
You don't make them for science, and you don't make them for a particular combination of taste sensation in the absence of visual sensation and that's all that matters, yo. Or if you do, you're not going to take those VC dollars very far.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
A Slashdot first!
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Sorry guys, but I gave up on linux a long time ago. The idea of it sounds good in theory, but certain things are just annoying about it. For instance nothing seems to be standard.
I work in the commercial world, and people use microsoft office which is standard. It doesn't work to try and replace office with other free office software.
Also getting certain brands of printers to work is difficult if not impossible.
I install windows 7 and everything just works. I have been using windows since 95, so stuff is standard, and 99% of the time just works.
I give linux a spin now and again, but if fails to impress me.
Been an Ubuntu fan for an awfully long time, and evangelized it onto the hard drive of several relatives and work colleagues. I fucking hate Unity. I'm running Natty right now on "Ubuntu Classic" mode to avoid it; and despite all the wonderful things Canonical has brought to desktop Linux, the silliness of this decision has me thinking of moving my main PC to another distro; I've got Fedora 15, Arch, Gentoo, and a few others waiting in the pipeline.
Tenemus pyrobolos atqui jacimus cognitiones.
If you don't like Unity, then set your default to Gnome. It's easy - quit complaining
There could be a few drawbacks to using Unity but I really haven't seen them yet. We aren't using Linux because it is the easiest operating system. It is a bump in the road at most. We will all get used to this and then Gnome 3 will probably be the next step. Constant change but that is what this community is all about anyway. :-)
I always wait at least a month after an upgrade comes out. That policy has served me well. Gives Ubuntu time to collect complaints and fix glitches. If I encounter any, there are already threads on the web about the issue. Downloads are quicker too. Lets me bypass needless aggravations.
I started a negative thread, complaining about Unity, and it was quickly closed.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=10737811#post10737811
I tried to slashdot it, but with a generally slashdot never posts my stories.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Other "innovative competitors"? Are you kidding? Did you just fall off the turnip truck yesterday?
Apple has had 25 years to grind Microsoft into dust by being the "innovator".
Didn't really work out so well for them in practice.
This mindless Apple worship is at the heart of this Unity nonsense including ideas and features ripped off of MacOS whole cloth. They don't really work any better over there either. This is an artifact the mentality that mistakes the look of the outside casing as "build quality".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
there is no place like GNOME
With all due respects to the geeks and nerds in the /. community, I do not think Ubuntu or any other distro will ever achieve the popularity their ease of use deserve, simply because they are too damn difficult to install. The install process is extremely smooth, but until the process of creating the ext3/4 partitions is eased up/ automated / GUIed, no linux distro ever will achieve the popularity that we want them to. It was only yesterday when I was installing Natty on a fellow computer science Master's student's laptop that it truly struck me how messed up that process is.
First the install had to be aborted and gparted had to be started. Then since there were four primary partitions which came with the manufacturer (HP), we had to remove one, and then find that gparted had problem reading the 250 GB main partition which we wanted to split. So chkdsk /f was run on that which took about an hour. After all this we managed to create the partition and install it.
It is truly amazing that this problem is never given its due importance. Using GPartEd itself is not too easy for a newbie, hell its f***king hard. Add to that the chances of the great disasters waiting to happen on a wrong format/partition creating going wrong, its a miracle there are so many people who actually use GNU/Linux at all!
Am I the only one here who actually likes Unity?
I've tried multiple graphical environments through the years, from Windows 3.1 and NeXT, to BeOS and XP and KDE (2, 3, 4) and Gnome 2. Every one of them introduced new concepts, some of which worked, some didn't, but I don't understand what the big deal is adapting to a new interface. For a long time, the the Windows 95 start menu concept was thought of as a solid, and KDE 2 and 3 and Gnome 2 to a certain extend, adapted it and enhanced it, but basically followed it. Usability studies are however showing that the whole layer under layer of options isn't the best way of organising things, which is the reason behind KDE 4's menue, Ribbon interface in Office, as well as launchers such as Launchy and Gnome-Do.
The other thing that power users are deriding is lack of options and customisability. Sure, options are good and power users like making their desktiop their own, but we have to realise that for a general purpose system, evey option has a cost. Cost in terms of support, cost in terms of number of things that can go wrong, or that the user can mess up. Now, I am not saying that we should remove all options and preferences, and sometimes systems go too far (for example Gnome 3 has gone too far in my opinion) but these things take time to settle down. Sometimes the bendulum swings too far one way, then the other, until a balance is found with which most users are happy. Give it time.
For a bunch of tech-savvy intelligent people, I find the slashdot crowd's utter resistance towards any UI change baffling. Rarely, even in corporate environments have I seen so much change resistance. It seems like some of us formed our UI habits in early 90s, and are so attached to them, we just can't think of anything different. It's just a new UI people! And it's a bit different, and it's not perfect, but surely, like everything Linux, it will get better overtime. Like it or not, trying new things is a sign of innovation, which is the sign of a healthy eco system.
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My set up has one monitor in potrait and one in landscape mode. Won't work with compiz that Unity is built on. It worked in 10.10 with Xinerama & RandR. Hardly an improvement.
I am getting used the slicker look of Unity, though. Too bad it has to go.
Unity is rubbish. Nuff said.
For God's sake (oops, sorry, didn't mean to offend you 'scientists' out there), the biggest problem with Linux heads is such a lack of unity among 'believers.' The problem with Gnome, et al., is that they can't submit to one another. It's like "FUCK YOU! My way is better than yours, so I'ma do it my way. If it doesn't work for you, bite me." So few of the professed devotees of Open Source have it together in that way. Open Source is great, but lack of unity and strong central, and I might add BENEVOLENT leadership is why Microsoft and Apple are making billions and Desktop Linux is still limping along. Thousands of years will go by before the service motive overtakes the profit motive until those that truly are service motivated learn to serve one another.
I tried out the 11.04 release and it was great! Sure, you have to set your default desktop to Gnome, and uninstall the application menu stealer, to make it functional on a desktop workstation. But that's no problem at all for any experienced Linux user.
On the other hand, a large majority of first time Linux users who take the plunge with Ubuntu 11.04 will be doing their first Microsoft OS install within the next few days. A few might toss out the computer in question - if it was an older machine to begin with - and go buy a REAL Apple product, because they just learned that "Linux sucks, there's no way to use it for the things I need to do."
My issue with Unity is, I admit, a personal one. 98+% of the (as tested) population has a better ability to recall images than I do. I'm a 'verbal person' in a 'visual world'. It's only because Ubuntu, so far, lets me set gnome as the default interface that I have not, yet, abandoned Ubuntu.
Consoles were a great improvement over cards (you can't backspace over a hole) but I have to hover over every icon besides the one that actually looks like a printer before I know what it does.
WinDoze, at my day job, at least allows me to replace icons with text in toolbars and menus (sometimes).
Tried it, hated it, went back to Ubuntu Classic. Might try again in future but right now Unity is POS (at least in my mind).
The Unity interface can be removed any time you login by selecting "Classic" option at the bottom of the screen.
I run the Cairo (MacOS-style) dock in Ubuntu, so the new launcher was the first thing to go after the upgrade to v.11.
As a programmer, I have to say that what matters the most that it works properly with stability and as long as the software development tools are available, people shouldn't complain a lot about it. However, in a user point of view, it's kinda annoying to deal with it, since that the latest version is actually like the netbook UI, not the desktop. According to what I read from Softpedia ( if I'm not mistaken ), the netbook version won't be available to download and that only the desktop edition and the server edition would be available to download -- which we now know what happened already.
Those that like the POS distro, have little to say, and more power to them..
With a scant 40+ or so years experience in computers, I have NEVER had so much unadulterated crap thrown at me from a source of software, ever before.
There were an abundance of missing drivers, routines and necessities for many of their users. Unity is actually a drain on the system, if you are not using it...
And the first chance they had at updating... after a weekend of trying to get it working...
They microsofted my install (update blew it out of the water.)
I do NOT want a keyutesey cell phone interface on my desk top...
Take your geegaws and leave the to the airheads but, don't cram them at us who don't like the 'We Say So' attitude...
I have 10,10 back in and after using, faithfully, Ubuntu since 4.x Warty...
I am looking elsewhere for one that fulfills my needs and not some Microsoft wanna be...
To the one that said what they said about XP... that was not the case. Most liked it. (unlike Vista, Me and other mis-steps...) I just got sick of Windows because there IS NO Security... period. That, and (*&)*&%&(^*)(*&(_&*(^9087 updates blowing you out of the water.... something Ubuntu is learning too damned well.
unity can suck my dogs bollocks - did a child develop it?
I started using Ubuntu when I got a netbook from Dell with it preinstalled. I upgraded the version to 9.04 (or somewhere close to that) and really got to like it. The netbook interface was fast, compact, and really made sense. It was so good that I decided to switch my desktop to Dual Boot and use Ubuntu as my primary OS and have Windows just for gaming.
Then, I tried the first Unity version for netbooks and I had to downgrade. It was so slow and took up screen space in completely stupid ways (when my screen is 1024 wide I don't need to loose space on the left hand side thanks!). I'm on the last LTS now for both the desktop and the netbook but I suspect I'll have to move to Linux Mint or something when it gets depreciated.
I am one of the users who actually like the new Unity desktop environment. Although, I will admit, it does need a few tweaks but that is understandable for such a new desktop environment. As far as the 6 month release, I do not believe that this hurts Ubuntu at all. Every so often, Ubuntu releases a Long Term Support (LTS) version which is always meant to be the stable version. Every other version is considered bleeding edge and is meant for more advanced users and early adopters. This is the best way for Ubuntu work out bugs with new features like Unity. I usually recommend the latest LTS to people who are new Linux and I am installing and configuring it anyway so my users can go straight to using it not configuring it,
Unity sucks, its a try hard windows 7 do over. It eats resources and it hard to navigate. Going back to Ubuntu classic!
10.04 LTS... as far as my math skills can carry me that means you can use Ubuntu 10.04 with Gnome support until at least after the end of the world. Mayan's be DAMNED!
Apple has had 25 years to grind Microsoft into dust by being the "innovator". Didn't really work out so well for them in practice.
Tell that to the shareholders. It worked out rather better for Apple than it did for Commodore, Radio Shack, Sinclair, Sun (workstations), Silicon Graphics, DEC, Atari, Acorn and all the other platforms (including, ultimately, IBM) that were flattened by the corporate juggernaut created by IBM and inherited by Microsoft. All of those are history, or relegated to small scale enthusiast-run cults (although Acorn left a rather good legacy by developing the ARM processor) while Apple are growing, making money hand-over-fist and firmly on the shortlist of major PC manufacturers. I know its a jump, but baybe - just maybe - they are doing something right?
MS's success has little to do with innovation and a lot to do with its dominant position in corporate computing. Its hard to produce a competing platform when OEMs won't bundle it or promote it lest they fall out of favor with MS?
Meanwhile, Apple and Google seem to be doing a good job between them of grinding Windows Mobile and Symbian into dust (is Symbian officially dust yet?)...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
vi vs emacs. GNOME vs KDE. Old GNOME vs GNOME Shell. Desktop vs server. Noobs vs ubergeeks. Totally free vs encumbered. Now Unity vs. anything else. Sheesh.
Until the Linux community begins to realize that so many of these divisions are illusory yet keep Linux development fragmented and unfocused. This leaves too many places where anyone trying to limit or eliminate this community and/or free software can do so. Look at some of the openly anti-Linux commentators and some of the "supporters" who constantly harp on such shortcomings.
At the very least agree to disagree and move on. At least working in parallel is moving ahead whereas arguing with each other gets no one anywhere.
The most annoying thing about Ubuntu is how they are making it harder and harder to customize it to how we like it. Things like the non-intuitive, over complicated grub2 with it's limited options, and the limited customablity of the new gdm . It appears that Canonical wants to control user experience like Jobs.
I think even newbies will find the launcher that starts out open by default pretty easily. (Sure, it doesn't have all the programs on the first level, but then neither does the Windows Start menu.)
Unity isn't a touch screen UI. It's a UI that isn't touch-hostile (or touchpad-hostile, or small-monitor hostile) to the extent that traditional desktop GUIs are, but it mostly avoids hostility to those things by presenting information in a cleaner, more efficient way than traditional desktop GUIs. While there are a few things I think it could really use (including better organization of apps from the "Applications" menu), I think its a much better keyboard, mouse, and big monitor desktop GUI, than most, as well as being more suitable for small screens, touch screens, and touchpads than most desktop GUIs.
Turn graphics off, log out, then log in again. You will have more or less the familiar desktop. I have been using the desktop with fallback, and it is great. (I setup 4 desktops, and use them as I did with gnome2.2) Sure there are some glitches with G3. But that is what Fedora is about. To proof the product before going live in RedHat or in other distributions. I will definitely switch from F14 to F15 on go live date. I am currently testing with the beta for F15 and am delighted.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
UNITY, the great DIVIDER :)
Anyway, Real Men use Xmonad, dwm or Ratpoison. Me? I'm a bit of a wimp, so I use Openbox.
Also, Compiz by itself is a surprisingly capable window manager, for all of you who like your jiggly windows and desktop cubes.
I want to see when something's sucking the CPU without having to run the full System Monitor.
Just type in "top" in a terminal. When done, hold Ctrl and press c. It's the best way to see what's using CPU w/out impacting the CPU usage.
Some were yelling one thing, some another. Most of them had no idea what was going on or why they were there. Acts19:32
The quality of the 11.04 release was the poorest for any Ubuntu release I've ever seen.
Unity failed to work out of the box for me. On my dual screen monitor, the program icons displayed down the left side of the right-side screen - effectively in the middle of the display. There were no borders on any window, so windows couldn't be moved. The display was filled with glitches that appeared and disappeared intermittently. Compiz was broken. Emerald issued a segfault. Metacity provided some basic functionality - but barely.
I tried for about three hours to fix (via the Ubuntu forums and blogs) - and made some headway. Ultimately, Unity looked like a nice tablet interface. Probably a nice netbook interface.
But I'm a power user. I typically have four virtual desktops open with a large number of apps running. Unity's big icons and dumbed-down feature set is just the opposite of what I need.
I tried Gnome 3 on Ubuntu, following the PPA install instructions. I couldn't get it to boot (some ICEauthority issue). But it looks like Gnome 3 features a similarly dumbed-down interface as UNITY.
So, I've already moved to KDE (Kubuntu). It's a bit of a learning curve - but I'm willing to invest the time. It works the way I want to work.
If you don't like Unity, you don't have to go to Linux Mint, or Debian, or Windows or a Mac.
KDE or XFCE are simple installs from inside Synaptic or the command-line. And unlike Unity and Gnome 3. They aren't filled with bugs. They actually work - and work well.
I've long been an Ubuntu user and fan. I'm terribly disappointed in this release. It's filled with bugs. And Unity is being forced as the user interface, instead of being offered as an option. Unity is a great tablet (or netbook) user interface. But I need a real desktop interface supporting multiple monitors with multiple virtual desktops. It appears Ubuntu is headed in a different direction. For now, I'll use Kubuntu (KDE). But if Canonical continues down this nonsensical path, I'll be finding another distro.
My technical problems weren't with Unity, but with Compiz. Unity is tied very tightly to Compiz, so much that it's impossible to make some changes without installing the compiz-configuraiton-manager (which isn't in the Recommended: list of packages for Unity, for some reason).
Compiz is also the window-manager for "Ubuntu Classic," so the problems persisted. Had to switch to "Ubuntu Classic (no effects)" mode.
I did bring some things back from Unity:
- Made a second GNOME-panel on the left side. No autohide, and only 32 pixels wide instead of Unity's... well, I don't know, but I couldn't find anywhere I could change the width of that launch-bar thingy. And I spent a good two hours looking just so nobody else would have to go through what I went through.
- Added window-list applet (after patching it so that vertical display works properly.
- Added my icons to launch my most-used apps, and gave them distinct icons that I chose (ie. a different icon for each ssh launch to each host, instead of the same generic "terminal" icon for every host)
- I tried running the "app menu" applet in the top GNOME-panel, but that got annoying very quickly as I would move the mouse to use a menu, and roll over some other window, changing the menu before I got a chance to click on it.
- top panel (24px) is now system status indicators, and monitors for other machines I take care of. Left side is what I have launched and what I can launch. Works out very well for me.
So, in a real DYI fashion, I saw what Unity was doing, picked the good stuff, and incorporated it into what I use.
Since 11.04 made my gnome and unity desktop buggy, I installed the kubuntu-desktop. I missed KDE! It is so much more graphically appealing than Gnome or Unity. I am sticking with Ubuntu + KDE.
-bill
I routinely use Linux as a developer and all the rest of office work, and I usually need:
* to keep more than one window at a time on the desktop (i.e. the output of a device and another shell to send test commands from it)
* to switch from one desktop to another quite quickly (i.e. to follow the build process and the editor on one desktop, while talking to a device on the other)
both these tasks are quite easy on the gnome2 interface, not so bad on the gnome3 interface (even if they require more mouseclicks and loose time animating things..), but quite involved in Unity. That's why I was happy that I could switch to "ubuntu classic" desktop.
I know I could use more than one monitor, and in some places I do, but I like to work on my laptop, too.
Moreover, there's a compiz-nvidia bug which causes screen corruption, but that's not Ubuntu specific.
After installing the latest version of Ubuntu with Unity, my impression is that it could hardly be better designed to turn off the users Ubuntu is looking for.
Let's be honest here. For the population that doesn't understand the difference between Office and Windows, or Google and Internet Explorer, any flavor of Linux but Android is simply too demanding (and Android is a stretch). Friendly Linuxes like Ubuntu are aimed at people like me; people who know how to use Windows/OS X competently on an everyday basis and are willing to explore some. People who know what a command prompt is and know that they can type on that partially used line.
Unity is designed to Mac-ify the interface. It has a side-mounted dock (which takes up the space less in demand in the widescreen world) and throws all your applications into one folder instead of having sub-folders and sub-sub-folders. The problem is, the Mac interface is designed to be very simple to use and not call for much customization. It's a computer for people who don't need to know the difference between Google and Safari. A Mac can be used for more, of course, but there is a shallow end of the Mac user pool that is simply too stupid to use Windows. On the other hand, getting a Mac to do anything but what it does well requires know-how (and indiscriminate destruction). Unity, correspondingly, makes it a pain in the rear to find any application or settings window unless you use it often enough for it to be in your default list or menu bar, or know the entire system well enough to call it up by name. It's a system that annoys the middle-skilled computer user in its efforts to cater to the low-skilled. This works fine for Macs and their bimodally distributed user pool (high-skilled users who have used Mac/*nix for decades, and low-skilled users who want a very simple computer or a status symbol); the problem is that Ubuntu's low-skilled users barely exist, so they've instead annoyed their entire user pool. Not smart.
Too many bugs and so clumsy for day-by-day use... I'm considering change distro like other people too. I'm just can't work using this so buggy version of Ubuntu. Years of hard work to build something and just one stupid release to blow all.
that's the thing, tho: the LTS releases are really no more stable than any other - in some cases it seems even LESS so becayse they seem to figure "we'll fix those problems on the next update."
And they do. 10.04.2 works pretty much flawlessly for me where 10.04 was a clusterfuck of bugs. The only thing now missing for me is hdmi audio - not a big deal, but annoying none the less when it was working under 10.10 before I did that "upgrade" to 11.04 and fucked everything up to the point I had to ffr the goddamn machine.
I hope I have learned my lesson now: the last three releases I have "upgraded" within weeks of the latest becoming available, and in each case I was forced to revert back to the previous version (a time costly procedure that inevitably leaves me still having to correct some /home settings by hand). I think from now on I will stick with lts releases ONLY at least six months after their initial release.