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Tom's Hardware Dissects Ubuntu 11.4's Interface and Performance
An anonymous reader links to an exhaustive look at the latest Ubuntu, running at Tom's Hardware. "The new Unity interface is broken down into its individual elements and explained ad nauseam. Overall the article is objectively balanced, the author does a good job of pointing out specific design flaws and shortcomings instead of complaining about how Unity doesn't work for him specifically. The walkthrough of the uTouch gesture language is exciting (wish I had multi-touch), though a full listing of keyboard and mouse shortcuts come in handy, too. Towards the end of the article there are benchmarks between Lucid, Natty with Unity, and Natty with the Classic interface. The performance of the Unity interface isn't bad at all, but that kernel power issue does rear its ugly head."
from the summary: "The new Unity interface is broken"
I still think they released it way too soon. I would never point a new user at 11.04 due to its stability, regardless of its usability. I really expected to see some of the problems fixed by this point too, but the patches seem to be just starting to trickle in. I'm hoping they don't yank out the 'Classic' Gnome interface on 11.10 as planned.
it is not a "review of a review," it is a direct link to a review, and a brief description of the link by the submitter. this is actually how slashdot works.
the news is the fifteen+ pages of information, tips, and comparative benchmarks on the new interface.
since there was less than two minutes between the story getting posted and you feverishly working for a snarky-first-post to jack up your karma, i'll forgive you for not noticing.
enjoy the mercy. next time, rtfa.
The quoted part of the summary got it right in the first six words.
Overall the article is objectively balanced
This is how it starts:
Let's start with the meaning of Natty. Here in the States, Natty is short for Anheuser-Busch's bottom-shelf line of “Natural” beers. If you were ever a struggling student, there's a good chance you subsisted at one point on ramen and Natty Ice. Consequently, it has also come to mean cheap, trashy, or sub-par. How's that for a rough start?
And for that matter, what is a narwhal? I mean, look at that thing.
Apparently, Canonical's name for this release gets worse. The word narwhal dates back to Norse seafarers who explored the Arctic waters where this horned beast lives. Narwhal quite literally means “corpse whale” because its skin resembles a water-logged corpse. Oof. Ubuntu 11.04: Cheap, Drunk, Dead, and Bloated.
The technique of associating a product with negative images is an old one - it's called Poisoning the Well.
This review is anything BUT balanced.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
It would have been better released as a netbook or tablet only DM option.
The game.
He was complaining about the name, if you were to read the conclusions page you would notice that he didn't exactly roast Ubuntu over hot coals.
15 frigging page review you read the first half a page and determine its not balanced. Don't karma whore for the " I RTFA" karma if you didn't read the fucking article.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Other than this paragraph, the rest of the review seemed pretty fair. I found myself agreeing with the good and the bad.
I actually didn't find unity to be as horrible as other people were making it out to be. Two things I would fix: 1) Turn off the autohide of the left panel. I hated this so much for the first couple of days until I found some settings to turn it off. 2) The universal (c.f. Macintosh) menu bar at the top also autohides the menu until I mouse over it. I still haven't figured out how to fix that.
Yes a car anology, on slashdot, I am that original!
Imagine a car, they replace the brake with a handle on the dashboard. The gas pedal is a set of buttons, one for each 10km/h speed range on the dashboard. To drive you always need your foot on a pedal on the floor. Sound silly? Trains are like that. It works perfectly well. So would you want this arrangement in your car?
The steering wheel you say? The need for the steering wheel in your car would make the train controls unusable?
EX-FUCKING-ACTLY.
That is the entire problem with both Unity and Gnome 3. ALL the controls in your car are not just there because of how they would be best implemented but because they have to work together with the other controls. And that can create some interesting designs. Take the UPS trucks. Where is your stick shift? Why is it not in the same place in cars like that? Because it would get in the way of the driver crossing the center to get out on the other side of the car. Most busses got an entiry set of control on the left hand side of the driver because they can because the door is not there. But this means the driver has to get out through the counter area for the passengers. British double deckers did not have the driver interact with the passengers, and he was in his own cabin, excitting through his own door, making it impossible to put controls like the handbrake in there. Function dictates design.
Changing the interface we are all familiar with can be done, if there is a need but you got to be careful you don't upset all the other needs.
What are my needs in a desktop? To manipulate windows, to arrange them to according to my need to look BETWEEN them. I am a developer, a common need there is to have one window to read data from, another to put data into and a third to test the effect. Normally you do this by having a sufficiently large screen and arranging at least two of them side by side and maybe the third with a shade effect or overlap. Alt-tab in fullscreen mode is often not functional especially if there are other windows active. These windows can typically be quickly accessed from a bar at the bottom or top where all windows have a link side by side.
So, what does Unity and Gnome3 and Windows 7 do? HIDE things behind multiple clicks.
Unity and Gnome3 especially seem aimed at smaller screens operating in full screen for applications. That is great for an author who writes uninterrupted in the same writer. It works when you are watching movies and only have a file browser open in full screen and then launch a single player from that. It is possibly great for the casual user.
But for me? I have a very large screen area, switching the pointer to the top every single time I want to do something, that is NOT efficient. If I have multiple windows over of the same app, I have that for a reason, I do NOT want them treated as one. I do NOT want to click more then is absolutely necessary to get things done.
Unity and Gnome3 feel like they were optimized for a very specific use case, tablets and other small screen setups, that just ain't the norm for PC's especially PC's that are running Linux. And they changed EVERYTHING. Nothing works anymore as it did before. All the apps in your task bar? Gone, especially in unity. Customization? Gone. Stability? Gone!
It is like they took your old reliable volvo car interface and replaced it with a new one that you hate with the build quality of a trabant painted in an exciting mix of puss and shit.
Unity and Gnome3 should have been kept as an option for a long time until the kinks had been ironed out, a very clear and fun to watch tutorial had been out to show EVERY single current use case redone in the new style and until it absolutely worked smoothly, stable AND without taking loads of functions away.
Instead Gnome and Ubuntu tried to emulate MS by pulling a Vista. They redesigned things people didn't want redesigned, and removed functionality and replaced it with instability.
Do not WANT.
I tried it,
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I swapped form a mac to the last version of ubuntu, added Docky on the side, and loved it, started to convert friends.
Unity i feel is a step backwards, in my experience as an average user I can see what they are trying to do, and quite like it, but am beset with issues and bugs that prevent it working properly.I agree its been released to early.
For those who can be bothered reading here are the issues I have encountered.
My experience as a non linux guru is this:
Support for native ATI drivers seems flaky, had to regress to unity 2D. Sorry ATi are a major video card manufacturer.
I run two screens, (one slightly lower width than the other) I have to reset the screen screen position every time I boot, it insist on right justifying meaning I lose the dinky menu. Surely it could remember the screen position?
The Dinky menu does not reliable pop up, and is often quite delayed or slow in its arrival (bring back Docky)
It insists on opening applications in the lower screen full screen, and often removed the window frame as it does so. Forcing you to use alt space to find the un-maximise option. Some applications (such as chrome for example) do not respond to alt-space and you need to shut them down via the dinky menu.
Often if a window is not full screen it does not correctly interpret the mouse position correctly, being offset by the amount the application sits within the window.
The mouse can be erratic in its movement, jumping suddenly between screens when when trying to make small movements.
Now I am sure if I searched forums I could find fixes for a lot of these issues, but this is not really the 'use out of the box' experience I had come to expect from ubuntu, and hence I feel its a step backwards. I installed gnome 3 today, easier.
I also find 11.4 unusable, as I've only been able to download 11.04, myself. ;-)
...talking about SOFTWARE?!?!?
No need to defend me, I was righteously modded troll for overreacting. All I wanted to do was to complain about the submission's style and rhetoric that sounded like a blatant slashvertisement to me.
For me, an OS description or review in plain words or even videos and benchmarks (especially from Tom) is more misguiding than informative. The important thing about an OS is its feel and functionality and (call me a troll again, but) I can't get that experience unless I actually install it and try it for myself. To provide an analogy, I have never eaten shark fin soup and no Tom's hardware reviews are ever going to convince me it's good, unless I taste it.
... that we have to opt out of.
Short of all gnome devs using vertical spit screen Emacs or equivalent there is no way that the majority to devs have not encountered the problem you are speaking of and are are equally frustrated by it.
Getting a bug free new DE is a lot of work (understatement) and everyone wants to try it out so they have released this early. I can't see how they will not add the usability later. They don’t have the budget or time for proper usability testing so everyone gets to ague what it needs over the internet.
I've been using Unity now at home for the last month or so. Its Gnome 2 at work on the Fedora 13 development machines. Unity excels as a "consumerist" interface. The traditional windows paradigm that wastes screen space irks me no end - when I wanna code I want Netbeans/Eclipse to use every pixel. The test app can be switched in and out as needed - the docs are on the other screen. I've tried using Ubuntu 11.04 at home for coding but Netbeans hates the default look and feel and does not seem to completely honor look & feel settings, and why TF should I change my whole env just to please NB ? I guess you get what you pay for - and Ubuntu is one hell of a bargain, but I would like Canonical to spend a bit of time on dev workflow and make sure the popular modern dev tools (Eclipse & Netbeans) works well in Ubuntu - I understand its not their beef. But at the same time: Developers, Developers, Developers ! All in all I like Unity, I'm keeping it. And haters please keep the entertaining hate'n on - all progress depends on the unreasonable man. But keep it real - you can't be a l33t libertarian unfettered atheist and weep into to your designer microbrew every time somebody moves a close button and be taken seriously at the same time.
"The new Unity interface is broken..."
Well they're off to a good start. Honestly why anyone would want to use such an interface on anything larger than a netbook is beyond me.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
The UI has everything hidden behind searches or submenus or whatever to free up screen real estate on smaller screens. On my dual-26" monitor setup, I don't want buried and simple. I want the 10-15 main apps/scripts I use on the front page and the start menu to show me all the admin/config options in a standard menu the way I've had it everywhere else.
Maybe I'm getting old and fuddy-duddy but I found this interface a clunky and unusable attempt to look like a mix of Windows 7, iOS, Android and Mac OSX. The search box in Windows 7's start menu still shows me all the control panel/admin task items just like the start menu. The Unity search box could not find my network config, my updater app or a bunch of other apps I'd been happily using before switching.
I'll be honest and say I read no documentation or tutorials on how to use Unity but I can't remember the last time I had to read a book on how to use a flippin' menu system.
Any developer of an operating system, regardless of proprietary or open licence, would do well to pay attention to what power users do to tweak the OS immediately after installing, and what tools developers create to make it easy to tweak. Consider the nice little app Ubuntu Tweak - it's a worry when a third party add-on gives superior fast access to common things you need to fix, it demonstrates how broken-by-design the original OS is.
Interesting, Linux Mint, Pinguy and other Ubuntu derived have not embraced Unity, and as always their versions of 11.04 fix quite a list of broken things.
Microsoft paid a lot of attention with Windows 7, after Vista. A lot of the defaults, such as services, were similar to what power users would do to tweak some speed out of Vista.
Canoncial are you listening?
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
I recently decided to put Ubuntu 11.04 on a spare machine, just to see what all the fuss was about. I hated it, for the same reasons that others have given above. It seemed to be different for the sake of being different. The clincher was when I tried to open a second text terminal. It wouldn't let me, presumably because I already had that application open, and why on earth would I need two of them?
So then, just for kicks, I decided to install the latest Debian. When the desktop came up it felt like coming home. In fact, I was a little shocked to see how much it looked like the Ubuntu I was used to. There was a Debian logo in the upper left corner instead of an Ubuntu one, but that seemed to be the only difference. The same applications, the same themes, the same everything. I never realised how little Ubuntu added to its Debian base.
So I've made up my mind. The next big reinstall is going to be Debian instead of Ubuntu. Best of luck to Ubuntu with its Unity, its Wayland, its Ubuntu Software Center and its Ubuntu One, but as far as I'm concerned it's time for something else.
I found the Toms Hardware guide Informative and interesting, I have to admit I really disliked unity when the first version appeared and decided it wasn't for me and stuck with Lucid. I liked Lucid's netbook remix very clear and easy to use especially combined with gnomeshell.
The article went through a lot of the changes, the colour coding of the icon states the little tweaks to the launch bar showing which applications are open and the number of windows. The global menu feature makes good use of the screen. looking at my desktop screen as I write this on lucid nearly an inch is wasted on window borders and task bars that I don't need, as my focus is writing this reply.
While unity is the default, It will also allow me the classic desktop mode I am using now. So it seems to me that it will do no harm to at least download the live 11.04 cd and give it a spin.
I wasn't intending to do that prior to reading the article and now i've been walked through the system I don't think it will be as frustrating as my previous experience with unity.
Now obviously I can't get a real feel for it without downloading it and trying it for myself but that article has done enough to convince me to download it and give it a spin.
I can spare time for that, your right it is an advertisement in all but name but adverts are not all there to persuade you to buy lousy products some are actually pretty good once you get them out of the box.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
( sorry for repeat, did not mean to post as anon ) I consider myself to be a power user ( been running Ubuntu since dapper, installed and run it on many desktops, laptops, netbooks and even a few servers ), and am a developer by trade. I was highly skeptical at first, ready to switch to Mint when I first heard that Unity was going to be the default, but just like the "window buttons on the left-gate" of the previous version I was willing to give Canonical a chance. I'll admit the first hours were an exercise in frustration, mostly due to having to unlearn many old habits. The one thing I did to alleviate that frustration was to prevent the launcher from auto-hiding. After a couple of days of daily use I realised that it had clicked for me, and now I wouldn't go back. Looking forward to see more possibilities of customisation in the future, but as is, I find that Unity really works.
Don't Tell Me What I Can't Do!
I was a KDE 3.5 user... and then KDE4 happened, which was, I guess, an attempt to be as successful and awesome as Windows Vista. I tried out XFCE and was very pleasantly surprised at how quickly I was able to migrate over.
I still have one desktop that is KDE 4, but I am not really happy with it. They keep screwing with things for eye-candy only that reduce functionality and break stuff. It's just a play thing for them. They don't really care what their users thing.
And if you complain about it on the KDE message boards, they will delete your post or just ban you.
Yeah, I'm seeing this. Running 11.04 with classic interface on a Dell Mini 9. I thought the battery was finally dying of old age - no, it's terrible power consumption.
Is there anything that can be done about this? Old kernel version?
http://rocknerd.co.uk
and the news is that somebody just discovered unity?
For me, the news about 11.04 is that KDE just works. Call me a happy camper.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
I know opinion is exceptionally polarised on this subject, but my personal favourite was always the global menu bar.
However, there are many reasons why it was never properly implemented on Linux desktop systems and it was available for years in KDE, but hardly ever used by anyone. Why?
1. It can not be used in conjunction with focus-follows-mouse, a favourite of some UNIX oldies. These are, however, becoming relatively fewer as Linux desktop usage has spread among people that have never seen a system using focus-follows-mouse.
2. Not a single existing Linux application was ever designed for the global menu bar. In most cases this just means they seem a bit awkward with the menu, even after patches to enable the menu have been applied. For other cases (i.e. LibreOffice) it is very hard to make it work at all with a global menu.
3. Linux users just aren't familiar with it, the way Mac users have always been.
Now, if Canonical had introduced the global menu bar 6 years ago, it may have been worth it (arguable), but it most definitely isn't now. The reason is that the menu bar is going away anyway. Hardly any Windows application these days show the menu bar by default, and some new applications have started getting rid of it altogether. I.e. Chrome, which just has the one menu from its wrench button. Introducing the global menu bar now was simply a waste of time and effort for something which will be gone in the next two or three years.
It takes about 0.2 seconds to turn it off and switch back to the legacy interface. Every time an article about Ubuntu shows up, I see hundreds of comments complaining about Unity.
Just turn it off. You don't have to use it. You can do it right from the login screen in a couple of clicks.
I hear a lot about how bad Unity is.
The irony is that every argument I hear is that it doesn't work like Windows. The bigger the Linux fanboi the complainer is, the more he complains it doesn't work like his beloved Windows.
Here's the news: Windows is not the best UI out there. It was crap when it first came out, it morphed into something (mostly) usable but so ubiquitous that formerly computer-illiterate people learned it out of necessity. It still, in all of its incarnations, has many usability flaws and is in fact lacking in discoverability and presentation. I know this, because i have from time to time had to use the Windows interface to accomplish a task, and inevitably have to find a gutu somewhere who can tell which command-line or odd keyboard+mouse combination I need to do something useful.
I use Unity every day for my work. It has a couple of flaws I would like to see addressed, but by and large it works just fine. It gives me more precious screen real estate (and even with a dual-monitor setup that is a precious commodity) but by-and-large it just gets out of the way and leaves me to do what I want to do, not what the OS UI designers want.
So, Linux fanboids, work against nature and try to open your minds a bit.
Desktop users don't care about +/- a few percent in file copy speed. What they should have tested was: does the desktop grind to a slow, unusable halt when copying files? I know 10.10 did, and also Windows to some extent, but not as bad. This would be a huge win if it worked better on the new Ubuntu.
Jesus, you Americans are a bunch of insular, retarded fucks on occasion and that goes for the reviewer as well. Using the google search in any browser would have shown you the use of the word Natty. It means neat, as in cool or elegant. Mark Shuttleworth is South African, and fortunately, American beer is not available there.
I wasn't aware of any Ubuntu 11.4 being released... is it an improvement on 11.04?
What turned me off many years ago when I was introduced to Linux was very similar to what you state about Unity. At the time they were trying to mimic XP down to the start bar type menu and such. Yet most of it didn't work like it looked like. As in, if your going to mimic the look you have to mimic the behavior. If I right click and it doesn't do what you have copied would have, or worse nothing at all, then your doing it wrong.
Needless to say it got off on the wrong foot so that every little niggling difference or any confusion I had doing anything simply doomed the product in my eyes. I just removed it and nodded my head anytime someone boasted about Linux on Slashdot like how the old folk do when they see someone crazy. Yup, he's plum crazy Margaret - now just smile and nod and maybe he will go away.
I will say its nice to see a review of Unity/Ubuntu because it keeps me apprised of where its going without my getting frustrated by trying it myself. Once one of these critical sites comes out and states - Hey, this is actually pretty good, then maybe I will feel safe trying it again
This is like taking a Pontiac Fiero and skinning it to look like a Ferrari.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Overall the article is objectively balanced
This is how it starts:
Let's start with the meaning of Natty. Here in the States, Natty is short for Anheuser-Busch's bottom-shelf line of “Natural” beers. If you were ever a struggling student, there's a good chance you subsisted at one point on ramen and Natty Ice. Consequently, it has also come to mean cheap, trashy, or sub-par. How's that for a rough start?
And for that matter, what is a narwhal? I mean, look at that thing.
Apparently, Canonical's name for this release gets worse. The word narwhal dates back to Norse seafarers who explored the Arctic waters where this horned beast lives. Narwhal quite literally means “corpse whale” because its skin resembles a water-logged corpse. Oof. Ubuntu 11.04: Cheap, Drunk, Dead, and Bloated.
The technique of associating a product with negative images is an old one - it's called Poisoning the Well.
This review is anything BUT balanced.
Anyone that's been there a few times and read the articles knows to expect this quality of writing from Tomsharware. I'm not sure why other people find it an attractive news source.
I recommend other hardware review sites like anandtech-- very thorough reviews, and they don't split their articles into 30 pages to promote more adviews.
Another good example of ho-hum writing was their benchmark of AMD vs Intel processors with the WoW Cataclysm game release. They reported this for the AMD processors and didn't bother asking why going from 3 cores to 5 doesn't make a difference but 5 to 6 does (makes little sense), just "oh, looks like it needs 6 cores".
I am also a long time Debian use who switched to Ubuntu, and I am not happy with the direction that Ubuntu is taking.
I'm used to installing Debian without a desktop. I was thinking of using LXDE.
Does Debian now come with Gnome?
wtf is this, ubuntu?
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ubuntu-11.04-natty-narwhal,2943-13.html
2 hours lost?!!?
how can anyone write code that causes such a huge battery life reduction?
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
I've read hundreds of pages of people commenting on Unity, and it seems to run about 10:1 ratio of people who hate it to people who like it.
But Canonical absolutely refuses to even *consider* the fact that maybe Unity was a mistake. It's "nah nah nah I can't HEAR you!"
With that attitude, Ubuntu is doomed. Even open source companies can't survive not listening to their users.
"The new Unity interface is broken down [...]"
You needn't say more!
?? Wtf? You mean you weren't able to do this before? All four of what you describe I was doing since v10.04. Granted, I was using KDE on Kubuntu, but presumably GNOME would have had its equivalent, no? (I really do want to know, since it would make a difference in my migration plans to GNOME.)
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
I upgraded to 11.04 several months ago, tried to Unity interface and switched back to the classical view. Forgot all about it, until I read this article.
1. Not that I really use it but I'm pretty sure there's a Finder in classic Gnome.
2. Personally, if I'm using multiple desktops, I only want to Alt-Tab between the ones on the current desktop anyway. But there's Shift-Alt-Tab which goes between all windows.
3. Compiz implements this in Window Previews.
4. I don't know about this one, but one assumes you could simply create a shell script...
Still not a fan of Unity. I'm going to try it several more times while 11.04 is the current version of Ubuntu, but if they do make it the only option available by default (and thus, inevitably, the only option supported, at least in the way that whenever there is a problem with "Classic Gnome", Ubuntu people will ask you if you can just switch to Unity), I won't be an Ubuntu user any longer.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
It's not specifically Ubuntu - it seems to be a problem with the 2.6.38 kernels and above. It's also been reported on other distros using this kernel, but no-one seems to know exactly what triggers it.
... you can read English can't you ...?
Wow, the irony. Maybe people will listen to your complaints when you learn how to write English first.
Gnome 3 was developed for good keyboard shortcuts so you don't have to mouse everything. Tapping the window key is a lot easier than dragging your mouse to the corner. You also now have alt-tab and alt-~ to play with. But you have to get over your fear of the keyboard.
The odd thing that I have noticed is that the people who complain the most about clicks seem to have the greatest fear of the keyboard. :-/
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Serious question about the global menu bar: Did they find a way to make it work with focus-follows-mouse? That's one thing I really miss on my Mac. I hate click-to-focus, and I've tried the various add-ons to enable focus-follows-mouse. But on a Mac, the global menu bar makes it completely impractical. To get to the menu bar you have to move the mouse outside the window. If you pause over another window on your way to the menu, the other window gets focus and the menu changes. Has Canonical found a way around this, or did they just omit focus-follows-mouse as an option?
The other thing I didn't see in the article was any mention of multi-monitor support. Does Unity have it? If so, how does it play with the global menu and the launcher? Are they only on the primary display, or are they replicated on each one?
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
After seeing the latest "innovations" both Unity and Gnome 3 brought to the table, I made a switch to Arch Linux with OpenBox, permanently.
IMHO both Unity and Gnome 3 are doing a great disservice to Linux
"Optimized for tablets..." What tablets? Where are the Linux tablets? All I see is out there are iPads and Androids, with Microsoft joining the fray with Windows 8 soon.
What will probably end up happening is what we've already seen with Linux on desktops: Ubuntu and possibly some other tablet-optimized distro will try to sign up a hardware vendor (say, Dell, since they seem to be somewhat friendly to the idea)....and fail, due to the market realities (aka. other OS vendors with deep pockets and deeper market penetration will eat their lunch)
Then they will try to position themselves as an alternative OS on somebody else's tablet (be it Android or Win8), with minuscule uptake (hobbyists and enthusiasts) - mostly because they will have too many rough edges being not fully optimized to run on proprietary hardware.
In the meantime the majority of Linux laptop/desktop users will struggle with the tablet-optimized UI ....or switch to something more usable, maybe even go back to Windows.
... were easily solved with four little words:
"Ubuntu Classic (No Effects)"
I don't need eye candy. Perhaps I should give Xubuntu a look?
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
Anyone else with NoScript or similar notice how many damn ad servers Tom's Hardware tries to pull stuff from?
At least get the goddam title right. It isn't Ubuntu 11.4, timothy, it's 11.04 . The referenced article does have it right.
Hmmm, troll? See here http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2225174&cid=36390518 ? Perhaps because it shows you are nothing but a TROLL, & a "ne'er-do-well" that claims he has a "massive ego", but nothing to show for it (delusions of GRANDEUR there, boy?)??
You know, I tried to "extend the olive branch" to you here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2230314&cid=36414652 , but to no avail... now, you sow the wind? Here comes the whirlwind... from now on, & that's showing you are a troll by your own evasions of the 1st URL above & a simple question there...
Hmmm, troll? See here http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2225174&cid=36390518 ? Perhaps because it shows you are nothing but a TROLL, & a "ne'er-do-well" that claims he has a "massive ego", but nothing to show for it (delusions of GRANDEUR there, boy?)??
From a simple question, troll, here http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2225174&cid=36390518 ? Perhaps because it shows you are nothing but a TROLL, & a "ne'er-do-well" that claims he has a "massive ego", but nothing to show for it (delusions of GRANDEUR there, boy?)?? Absolutely.
I don't know if I should point this out, but the irony of an AC calling someone a troll is pretty funny. :)
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
you know what - been using unity since shortly after launch - I actually like it. Haven't had a chance to compare with gnome 3 yet but - I find the "shell" by default really efficient. Menu button, two chars and you can find just about any app to launch in under 2 seconds. It's reasonably quick and reasonably responsive. Does it have faults - sure, but it's new, so what did you expect? If you don't like it, don't use it - that is the beauty of the linux ecosystem after all
I mean you really don't. Locomotive engineer here with current cert.
Unity is new and all, people will like it or they won't - but am I the only one that has noticed all the threads in the Ubuntu forums about how horribly wireless is broken? I haven't gotten one wireless chipset to work correctly (Atheros, Broadcom, and even an Intel!).
Or, can't drinkypoo answer a simple question himself?? Apparently not. LMAO!
I'd like to try Unity before actually installing anything, but when I boot from the Ubuntu 11.04 live-CD, I just get a Gnome desktop.
Does anyone know if I can try Unity without actually installing it?
Good luck with Arch Linux security issues!
Yes, because in the next version (11.10) this will be gone.
Once in XFCE, make sure you disable compositing in the window manager settings if it gives you problems.
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
Hate to part with the general vibe, but I stopped using Ubuntu back at 9.04. Used some Macs and Windows XP, Vista, and 7 over the last two years. Then I recently wiped my laptop of Win7 and put Ubuntu 11.04 on it. I love it. I like the effects, the GUI is snappy and works well for me. I hope they keep the Unity UI. I liked GNOME back when, but the navigation was very difficult to follow sometimes. This version is MUCH easier.
Yes, but that feature is not implemented. Just open up a terminal window and type "sudo system-config-awards -AufTy --enable system.objects.reward.metal.brass.eyecandy --commit" and then type "sudo systemctl --restart gui.wants.kevin'sconfig.gui.validation.scripts". Easy as pie, I don't know why you needed to ask the question. The answer will be in the FAQ once we write it!
From TFA: "Let's start with the meaning of Natty. Here in the States, Natty is short for Anheuser-Busch's bottom-shelf line of 'Natural' beers."
From Mirriam-Webster: "Natty: trimly neat and tidy. ('He's quite a natty dresser.')"
After every other name in the series taking the form [adjective + noun], why would they suddenly switch to [noun + noun]??
Other than that, great article.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
It kind of grew on me. Only thing I can't accept is the bloated GDM/KDM, and LightDM seems to be unstable. Compiz interfers with the wonderful scrolling in Firefox. Went with Kubuntu 11.04 and start X from the command line. I run kernel 3.x, Openbox, and the KDE apps. Use Xbindkeys for multimedia keys. Best of both worlds IMO.
on a desktop. Why do you need menus and stuff cluttering up the place? Everyone knows it should be just like TV - a blank screen and maybe a Facebook or Google/Bing button. Because users like clicking, but not too much - look at remote controls! All those choices and menu options are too many. Computers should be smart enough to know what you want when you want it. They shouldn't confuse you will a lot of unnecessary cluttery things that might get in the way of streaming ads. I mean really, let's have some common sense; we're trying to build TV 2.0 here!
unity is awkward by default however it gets easier for a user as the system learns what the user uses
i think i can live with it
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
I think the main problem with Linux is the desktop never seems to get to the level of Windows or a Mac no matter how many frameworks are added. They keep changing it all the time and amazingly, the same lack of features still exist. Be it, KDE, Gnome, Unity, etc the simplest things that have been around for years in proprietary systems that people use everyday are simply avoided by Linux GUI library developers. For example, the Open/Save dialog boxes in gnome (GTK+) are incredibly watered down and weak. Example, they do not allow you to type a path or use a filter in the path. So if I type *.jpg in one of these boxes it tries to save or open a file name called "*.jpg", rather than show me only jpeg files. This is completely stupid. Easy fixes like this I find annoying and unnecessary in Linux desktop environments. Instead the developers seem to have a fetish for spending their time working on multi-desktop 3D cube animations (ie. compiz) and other useless windowing effects that are simply not productive but more of a novelty for people to ooh and ahhh about until they need to open a common dialog.
The other problem I have (as an application developer) is that these libraries are not intuitive and lack good solid documentation and non-trivial examples. Take GTK+ for instance. The GUI builder that is supposed to help you develop apps quickly using this library (glade) is weak and almost featureless. IMHO Visual Studio is still the undisputed champ of ease of use for the developer. Linux GUI's and their apps will not improve by much until a viable fully functional IDE with seamless and fully functional Drag and Drop component support is available. The ability to drop highly complex components like Internet Explorer and Excel grids into a window and access their functionality through ActiveX gives the developer in Windows a tremendous advantage over developing in a much simpler environment like Gnome or KDE. In Windows I can drag and drop a Media control and a PDF viewer into a custom app and save myself tons of time. The Linux GUI library developers need to start thinking about building in this advanced capability which Windows developers have had at their disposal for almost two decades! Otherwise Linux will sadly and unnecessarily remain in the server console environment. This is 2011, vi and emacs just don't cut it anymore.