Ubuntu Gnome Remix 12.10 Arrives For Testing

sfcrazy writes "The first ISO (alpha) images of Gnome Shell edition of Ubuntu is now available for download and testing. The Gnome edition of Ubuntu will bring back a lot of hard-core Gnome Shell fans who were looking elsewhere to get the pure Gnome Shell experience. Both Fedora and openSUSE are doing a great job at offering Gnome 3 Shell experience and the arrival of Ubuntu GNOME Remix will give the project the audience it needed."

Comments

I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been a Linux user for a few years now and while I've seen great strides made in desktop aesthetics and usability, I still can't with a pure conscious say that any of the DEs are as good as or better than what comes on Windows or OSX. Windows is without a doubt snappier and the taskbar has a lot of nifty and intuitive features. I can get past the artwork, fonts, and icons on Gnome/KDE/Xfce/etc. as I get that good artists cost money and that's not something these groups have in spades but basic usability is not something that needs to look good, it just needs to work. So, what's the deal?

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

...continued

Take the window previews in Windows. I used to have those with Compiz and you can enable them in Unity but the implementation is buggy. When you mouse off of them, a lot of the time they won't go away so you have to mouse back over again. Also on Windows, you can grab the bottom of a window and pull it down to the taskbar to get a maximize vertical state. Why can't I do that in Linux? Another thing that rocks with Windows is if say you download something and you right click and select "see file in folder", when the file manager opens, the file is already selected so you don't have to hunt around for it. This is a small thing but it makes a huge difference by eliminating extra work. Also, if I select "Single Click" in the Nautilus settings, why doesn't the file picker respect that? And why is the file picker stuck on "details" mode? I'm pretty sure that KDE doesn't have these problems by the way but it has other ones. The main one being how much slower than GTK based DEs it is. I haven't tried it since probably 4.6 though so this could be fixed by now.

Anyway, there are many things I like about Linux on the desktop that Windows doesn't have like focus follows mouse (a must for multiple monitors), being able to mouse scroll a non focused window when I don't have ffm turned on. I love the way the notification tray in Unity looks and works. It's super consistent and writing plugins for it is a breeze. I also like the dock in Unity with how easy it is to add functionality to a launchers right click menu something that Windows and OSX people can only dream about. I just wish Linux didn't fall down on the simple things. I really want that auto file select thing.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, this is completely subjective. So far I've found XFCE, Gnome 2, and KDE all much more enjoyable to use than any Windows interface.

I can get past the artwork, fonts, and icons on Gnome/KDE/Xfce/etc.

It couldn't be more simple to switch themes, icons, etc.

Windows is without a doubt snappier and the taskbar has a lot of nifty and intuitive features. [...]but basic usability is not something that needs to look good, it just needs to work.

Usability and "snappiness" are not things any of them are behind in, so no idea what you're going on about there. I can't think of anything off the top if my head that the Windows taskbar can do that you can't do in other DEs. If there is any, it's not anything I used.

Take the window previews in Windows. I used to have those with Compiz and you can enable them in Unity but the implementation is buggy. When you mouse off of them, a lot of the time they won't go away so you have to mouse back over again.

Compiz bugs most likely trace back to your graphics drivers, which is unfortunate, but doesn't at all speak to the state of DEs.

Also on Windows, you can grab the bottom of a window and pull it down to the taskbar to get a maximize vertical state. Why can't I do that in Linux?

That's what tiling WMs do, and much more. I've also used an XFCE fork that does this, but I didn't use it frequently.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

So where in Burson Marsteller do YOU work?

Re:I don't get it

[metacell]

You really have no problems with the Gnome desktop at all? In Ubuntu 11.10, the system menu applet (top right) used to disappear regularly for me, and be replaced with a duplicate switch user applet. In the Gnome version of Ubuntu 12.04, the sound applet disappears instead. If I switch to Unity, the desktop freezes with alarming regularity. Or sometimes, all program windows freeze, while the Unity menus are still active.

I'd still rather use Linux than the backdoor-infested parasite that is Windows, but it could be a lot better.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

You must still be using winXP.

Re:I don't get it

[mvar]

Windows is without a doubt snappier

This is probably the biggest issue for me (along with the lack of mainstream games)

Re:I don't get it

[Robert Zenz]

...and the taskbar has a lot of nifty and intuitive features.

Like what?

Re:I don't get it

[hairyfeet]

You DO realize that every time someone like you screams "Shill!" when someone points out a legitimate beef you make the community look like this guy right?

As for why basic usability features don't get done, its simply human nature or as i like to call it "the busted shitter problem". It has been said time and time again its the last 20% that takes 80% of the work but with FOSS you have the busted shitter problem in that releasing NEW software is FUN, while spending years doing bug fixes, regression testing, and QC? Is about as fun as getting a root canal at the DMV. To hunt down that bug and fix it will probably take a good year of hard work that is gonna suck balls, so why in the hell should somebody do a lousy job like that for free?

And THAT is the problem in a nutshell. Apple and MSFT pay millions of dollars to developers to do all those truly shit jobs so those bugs don't end up affecting the end user, whereas the devs for a lot of the stuff in Linux are doing the work gratis so the truly shit jobs aren't done.

Maybe a combination carrot and stick approach is required? Have a bounty for the worst bugs, were people donate to get them fixed, and at the same time have a set schedule, say 5 years, per software release when it comes to things that the system counts on. That way the devs can't just keep putting out new versions willy nilly because the distros won't add them to the repo and would have an incentive to actually work on what they have instead of through the baby out with the bathwater like they did with the DEs and sound subsystem.

Because there are plenty of guys like me that would be happy to put your product on new systems and give you a support network like Apple has with the Apple stores but obvious major bugs like that being released in supposed "ready for the user" software just makes the whole system look second rate and it makes after market support a nightmare and too costly for the little guys.

Re:I don't get it

[fa2k]

The problem is that you can't benchmark "snappiness". It's easy to count the number of seconds it takes to boot, and distro developers seem to get fixated on that. Response time involves CPU scheduling and throttling, the graphics subsystem, I/O scheduling, prefetching, caching, etc. (probably too obvious to be "insightful", but I'll post it anyway)

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

You really have no problems with the Gnome desktop at all? In Ubuntu 11.10, the system menu applet (top right) used to disappear regularly for me, and be replaced with a duplicate switch user applet. In the Gnome version of Ubuntu 12.04, the sound applet disappears instead. If I switch to Unity, the desktop freezes with alarming regularity. Or sometimes, all program windows freeze, while the Unity menus are still active.

I'd still rather use Linux than the backdoor-infested parasite that is Windows, but it could be a lot better.

In 11.10 they changed the configuration database for gnome but somehow gnome did not pick up changes in the database. I moved to Unity but that turned out to be a cluster-fuck that took a long time to beat into something I could work with. Additionally certain shortcuts are caught deep in the window manager and you can't override them which is pretty annoying for me since I'm a n OS X user and wanted to remap a whole lot of shortcuts from the [ctrl] to the [cmd] button. Another gripe is that switching desktops is dead slow in 12.04 with both Unity and Gnome.

Re:I don't get it

[humanrev]

Maybe a combination carrot and stick approach is required? Have a bounty for the worst bugs, were people donate to get them fixed, and at the same time have a set schedule, say 5 years, per software release when it comes to things that the system counts on. That way the devs can't just keep putting out new versions willy nilly because the distros won't add them to the repo and would have an incentive to actually work on what they have instead of through the baby out with the bathwater like they did with the DEs and sound subsystem.

Occasionally I will donate to open source projects (particularly if they have an easy method of donating like PayPal) if I use the software often and feel it's worth a bit of cash if it will help with future development. Although I haven't done it yet I'm likely to donate to Linux Mint as they seem to be doing the best job (in my opinion of course) in making an easy-to-use Linux distro with sane defaults and decisions. But I know I cannot use that money as a method of enforcing improvements - it's a donation; you can only hope it will help provide incentive/resources to continue development.

Re:I don't get it

[aix tom]

releasing NEW software is FUN, while spending years doing bug fixes, regression testing, and QC? Is about as fun as getting a root canal at the DMV

That's why I think that the whole "let's bring the Linux desktop to the masses" approach is flawed.

FOSS is at it's best when there is a huge overlap between the people who use the software and the people who write the software. Because THEN fixing bugs that impede "getting the work done" has a higher priority than cranking out new features. There are a lot of examples of software that hasn't really "changed" feature-wise in years, even decades. (bash, vim, lynx, slrn) and so on. Sooner or later I hope some of the GUI alternatives will reach the same level of maturity, so that they just "work as intended" and the user interface doesn't need to be changed all the time. That could be a huge market. A lot of corporate environments begin to get fed up with having to re-train users all the time, they stick with old software mainly because it isn't practical to switch work-flows around all the because someone decided to try a new interface design he thought to be cooler.

Having a line of FOSS alternatives that focus on not changing interfaces all the time, but to keep them stable and consistant long-term could be a way to get more FOSS adoption on the desktop side in corporations.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that you can't benchmark "snappiness". It's easy to count the number of seconds it takes to boot, and distro developers seem to get fixated on that. Response time involves CPU scheduling and throttling, the graphics subsystem, I/O scheduling, prefetching, caching, etc. (probably too obvious to be "insightful", but I'll post it anyway)

One can actually quantify user interface 'snappiness', in academia it's called 'user interface friction'. If you put in some effort into searching the web you can even find a few CS papers on the subject.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

On the converse....

I find myself sorely missing alt-drag and virtual desktops on Windows. The 'powertools' virtual desktop management actually seems very lacking. There is an alt-drag project to add alt-drag as a third-party addition, cluttering the already massively cluttered system tray in windows.

In terms of KDE, it's not that QT was slower than GTK, it's that many parts of KDE has had performance issues, and KDE has made great strides.. Nowadays you can get Windows-like previews, or compiz 'present windows', or a combination thereof. KDE's task management can now act very dock-like if you wish.

Re:I don't get it

[rasmusbr]

Another thing that rocks with Windows is if say you download something and you right click and select "see file in folder", when the file manager opens, the file is already selected so you don't have to hunt around for it. This is a small thing but it makes a huge difference by eliminating extra work.

That is a nice touch for those rare occasions when you want to both open the folder and the file, but most of time you either want the file or the folder and not both.

An important long-term goal of virtually every active UI project is to rely less on folder structures and more on tagging and search, so it's understandable that developers don't spend their limited time on polishing folder-oriented tasks. I agree though that it's a shame that they're apparently spending their limited time on removing features. It would be better to leave Nautilus in the shape it was in it's prime. I mean, why bother to change something that we're going to gradually switch away from anyway?

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

What I found interesting reading your post is that I apparently have the exact opposite preferences. I cannot stand the window preview and taskbar behaviour on Windows 8. I never open a folder when downloading a file, I access it through the browser's download window/tab. I really do not like focus-follows-mouse.

Which is cool, we all have different preferences, I just think it's interesting how people approach things differently and see certain features are good or bad. Which I think it what keeps me on the KDE desktop, almost everything can be turned on/off.

Re:I don't get it

[Knuckles]

Also on Windows, you can grab the bottom of a window and pull it down to the taskbar to get a maximize vertical state. Why can't I do that in Linux?

You can do a similar thing in Unity (and have been for a while): you grab the window's title bar and drag it up to the global menu for full-screen or to the right or left screen edge for vertical maximizing (and using half the screen horizontally). I know it's not the same you do in Windows, but I thought I'd mention it. More at http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/what-are-unitys-keyboard-and-mouse-shortcuts

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd ask MS the same thing about Windows 8....

Re:I don't get it

[pspahn]

That is a nice touch for those rare occasions when you want to both open the folder and the file, but most of time you either want the file or the folder and not both.

Speak for yourself. I use "see file in folder" at least 95% of the time I open a downloaded file.

Re:I don't get it

[stretch0611]

Apple and MSFT pay millions of dollars to developers to do all those truly shit jobs so those bugs don't end up affecting the end user, whereas the devs for a lot of the stuff in Linux are doing the work gratis so the truly shit jobs aren't done.

As a developer, I can say that I do not consider bugfixes "shit jobs." I look at it as a piece of the complete process. I admit that I am not always fond of doing it, but their is a self-fulfilling feeling of accomplishment when you find and correct a nasty bug. My preferred environment includes a mixture of both new development AND maintenance.

However, I do admit, that there are a bunch of so-called "developers" out there that only want new development and refuse to work on maintenance. They always want to work on cool new gee-whiz features without suffering the hell of working on the crap that they wrote...

There are a plethora of the latter type of "developers" which is why I think we get people adding "gee-whiz" features that no one really asked for while it always takes a long time for someone to clean up the code afterwords. The window managers in linux are perfect examples of this... When KDE4 was released, it was a piece of trash, only recently have people be starting to like it. Gnome 3 will probably be the same way, no one likes it now, but when the good developers start eradicating the nasty bugs, people will begin to open up to it... (Of course I am more interested in LXDE right now, because I care more for functionality than I do for gee-whiz effects.)

Re:I don't get it

[rasmusbr]

Then you're probably doing something very specific over and over.

Perhaps you're moving a downloaded file from your downloads folder to a different folder, device or other location? That should really be handled by the app that initiates the download, i.e. the web browser, but AFAIK nobody has solved it in a really elegant way yet so for now we're stuck with the file manager.

Re:I don't get it

[yelvington]

I've been a Linux user for a few years now and while I've seen great strides made in desktop aesthetics and usability, I still can't with a pure conscious say that any of the DEs are as good as or better than what comes on Windows or OSX. Windows is without a doubt snappier and the taskbar has a lot of nifty and intuitive features.....

I know YMMV, but my experience has been exactly the opposite. Every time I boot my wife's Acer laptop into Windows 7, I'm just appalled at how spongy the UI feels, how slow it is to load programs, and how truly awful the fonts look. I suppose I could get used to it if it was my only option, but I find nothing "intuitive" about anything in the system, and anything I remember from the XP era just gets me into trouble.

As quickly as possible, I get back to the safety, security, performance and -- yes -- usability of Ubuntu.

I'm not pleased by Unity, but I am able to restore and reconfigure Ubuntu to a proper working desktop that acts mostly like Gnome 2. I'll be keeping an eye on the Gnome Remix. It may become a future option.

Re:I don't get it

[pspahn]

Not quite. It's because of the right-click menu. Just because I download a zip file doesn't mean I want to open the zip file... Maybe I want to extract here, maybe somewhere else. Or maybe I've downloaded an image file that I want to edit in Photoshop, or crop in Irfanview, etc.

Re:I don't get it

[AvitarX]

Are you kidding?

I download zip files often (using download all attachments), probably more than any other.

I then see the file in the folder, and then right-click to extract it. The opening of zips in explorer is not transparent, I do this for the majority of my downloads.

Re:I don't get it

[hairyfeet]

You're an older guy aren't you? Not trying to insult, I'm an old greybeard system builder and repair guy myself but you see we older guys have this thing called 'pride in our work" that frankly is being wiped out in the young. Maybe its because they can turn in great work and be outsourced tomorrow, maybe its the schools being run like sausage factories, hell maybe video games give them a short attention span...who knows.

What I DO know is that for every one of you and me that consider a solid job to be a point of pride there are 10,000 that will walk away the second they become bored or find the work getting hard which is why I say FOSS will never ever go anywhere on the desktop. Look at how many posted here after the first poster with obvious bugs, the compiz bugs, Ubuntu icons disappearing and Unity freezing, hell Thom at OSNews wrote an epic rant on how he was watching a video and went to switch to a message app and the whole desktop crashed.

If you are gonna get the masses to use your OS that kind of amateur hour shit just won't fly, no googling for fixes, no using CLI piles of gobbledygook as a crutch, obvious bugs like those need to be so damned rare people automatically start asking if you are having hardware problems if you find one. Whether the guys here accept it or not OSX and Windows have been that way for awhile now, sure you may get a bad driver but the OSes are pretty solid and more importantly consistent.

To get that level of rock solid consistency you are gonna have to get all those young devs to do QA, regression testing, and bug fixes, as well as get them to take real pride in their work so that when they hear about a bug like GP was having they drop working on Foo+4 and start immediately working to fix it. So far the ONLY way I've seen to get the new devs that act as you describe to do what needs to be done is cold hard cash, otherwise they start working on their "next new thing" and they frankly won't give a rat's ass about how well their last thing runs or does not run in this case.

Re:I don't get it

[VoidCrow]

I've been using the 64-bit Ubuntu 12.04 KDE install, along with 64-bit Windows 7. I had a couple of teething troubles with Ubuntu, and no problems whatsoever with W7. I've been using Linux off and on since the version 1 Slackware floppy distribution. I've seen Linux grow and change, and I've seen the same with Windows. The early versions of Windows were terrible, but there has been slow improvement over time. The worst mistakes made by Microsoft were the 'user as Admin' security policy, and the tremendous own-goal represented by ActiveX.

Windows 7 is tremendously reliable, fast on my AMD-Turion equipped Acer laptop, and it looks nice. I honestly don't understand the vitriol.

Re:I don't get it

[rasmusbr]

I'm on Ubuntu and I find that the simplest way to do that is to use the Archive manager GUI. The Gnome Archive manager is a lightweight and snappy app, by far my favorite extraction app of those that I've used, so I guess YMMV depending on what you use.

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

the fonts on Ubuntu is much smoother and fuller than the fonts on Windows

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows is definitely snappier but that's probably Windows 7. My feeling about Vista is that many of the "so-called-intuitive" features were a direct lift from GNOME, You will know it if you have used GNOME. It is a different story with Windows 7 and the upcoming Windows 8, I would say they have definitely taken all the ideas from the community and made it better for their users.

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Re:I don't get it

[hairyfeet]

If that were true then the GUIs back then would have been better and more functional, but they aren't. The simple fact is every. single. thing. you named is primarily a SERVER program and money is actually spent to make those tools useful on servers perform better, whereas the desktop has never been a priority.

That is why even today if someone wanted to run Linux I'd suggest they'd need to use it in a server or embedded role, in those two use cases the tools are mature and bugs fixed quickly so its actually nice to use there, while on the desktop its a good 3 to 5 years behind the competition and there are tons of amateur hour bugs that will cause everything from GUI glitches to full blown desktop crashes.

In the end as I said Linux has a busted shitter problem, the amount of money spent on the desktop is a bad joke and without a monetary incentive to fix those bugs many simply won't care, they'll go on to making the next new thing instead as its more fun to do and if I'm working for gratis why should I do the shit work?

Re:I don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

I also open in folder, more than just a rare occasion. Any time I want to move the file, open the file with a different program by right clicking and using the "Open With" feature instead of just having the browser launch it, any time I need to drag and drop the file either into a media player, img burner, or zip archive, if I want to rename the file immediately, the list goes on.... I'm surprised you only use it occasionally :)

Re:I don't get it

[stretch0611]

You're an older guy aren't you?

In the world of computers, I'm ancient. (roughly 40) I learned to program on an old Commodore Vic-20. I even taught myself 6502 assembler on it. It had 5K of RAM, but I was lucky enough to have the whopping 16K memory expansion cartridge. (Which cost more money at the time than you can get a RAID unit now including a few TBs of storage; and that doesn't account for inflation either.)

  Of course I don't think of myself as old but I do wish the youngen's would keep their useless bloated widgets, off my desktop.

I pretty much agree with you... It seems that what few older developers are left actually care about making things work. There are a few younger ones that do, but not many and the number seems to get fewer and fewer each successive year.

Linux Mint

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want Gnome 3 technologies on Ubuntu, without the awkward UI, Linux Mint has a default UI called Cinnamon which moulds Gnome Shell into something usable by humans. Give it a spin.

Re:Linux Mint

[collet]

I actually used gnome shell for more than five minutes and don't really want to go back to windows 95.

"Blah blah blah proven interface blah blah blah fuck change"

It's still better.

Re:Linux Mint

[collet]

Also I think switching distro JUST for a different DE is retarded.

Re:Linux Mint

[paulatz]

Also I think switching distro JUST for a different DE is retarded.

Especially when you are switching to a bug-infested ubuntu clone

Re:Linux Mint

[shutdown -p now]

Well, Mint is not just a different DE. It's generally better about "just get all this shit working" stuff, like drivers or Flash support.

More importantly, you can install the Debian variety instead of Ubuntu, and enjoy some unmolested packages.

Re:Linux Mint

[epyT-R]

blah blah blah fallacy blah blah blah..

Re:Linux Mint

[shutdown -p now]

You'll want OpenBSD for that. With full disk encryption.

Re:Linux Mint

[0100010001010011]

Linux Mint Debian Edition is the best 'desktop' release out there right now in my opinion. It's a rolling release so it is always up to date with Debian testing (or if you are brave unstable).

Plus a whole lot of stuff in the Mint repositories that make it a good desktop.

Re:Linux Mint

[Fallingwater]

I've had three separate goes with LMDE. First when it had just come out, and honestly I blame myself for that - you just don't try a distro before several months of testing by the public have passed. Video drivers wouldn't work, and it was full of bugs.
Second time just for kicks, as I have a business box that I don't really need but that's too worthless to sell, so I keep it as a backup computer and for those "ooh, new distro, let's check it out" moments. I couldn't get a positive feeling with it; things didn't quite work as seamlessly as the Mint people say, and I often found myself thinking "argh, why do I have to do this when in Debian it'd just work?". Eventually I just switched back to Debian.
Third time was when a friend asked me for something that was "like ubuntu but without the mess". Thought maybe LMDE had matured enough by then, so I installed it and we tinkered at it for a while. It was not a particularly pleasant experience. I ended up installing PCLinuxOS on my friend's laptop, and they've never been happier.

Re:Linux Mint

[Chrisq]

I enjoy molesting young women.

If you work for HP just make sure you have an Oracle job lined up for when you get caught.

Re:Linux Mint

[jbolden]

I don't. The software is all pretty much generic on Linux at this point. Distributions only offer two things:

a) How they tweak the software and integrate it
b) How they configure their repository

Given that (a) is a good reason to switch.

Re:Linux Mint

[Osgeld]

mint has the problem of including a bunch of half assed junky widgets that seem to always break

pass

Re:Linux Mint

[Tarlus]

Depends on how the respective distro handles the DE.

Wishful thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

Both Fedora and openSUSE are doing a great job at offering Gnome 3 Shell experience and the arrival of Ubuntu GNOME Remix will give the project the audience it needed.

Since when such blatant personal views which largerly border on wishful thinking are accepted as information on /.? Sorry to ruin it for the submitter but on Distrowatch, neither Fedora nor OpenSuse made any progress with the "pure" GNOME 3 experience. On the contrary, the two top distros, Mint and Mageia focus on traditional desktop metaphors without trying to force dumbed down tablet UIs down users' throats. Besides, Fedora is going to include MATE, the fork of GNOME 2.

Sure, GNOME 3 needs an audience -- as does Ubuntu. But I really don't see the Unity disaster being fixed with the GNOME 3 debacle.

Re:Wishful thinking

[oakgrove]

But I really don't see the Unity disaster being fixed with the GNOME 3 debacle.

I tried Unity when it first got started in 10.10 and I hated it. It was buggy, it was unintuitive, on and on. Then I tried it again in 11.04 and while it was better it still pretty much sucked. On to 11.10 which while not being as good as Gnome 2, was usable. But now that I have been using it for a few months on 12.04, I love it. It's definitely a more productive environment for me than default Gnome 2 was especially with the integrated search. I prefer the approach to multiple monitors, the notification area is vastly improved and very uniform, the dock is solid and does exactly what it needs to do and even sports the per icon right click menu configurability. I'm a big fan of the HUD. Press the alt key and you can just start typing any functionality in your applications menus and the HUD will look until it finds a match. Makes Gimp very easy to use. About the only thing I don't like about Unity is the dash menu. It opens only after a noticable delay, does a very poor job of facilitating application discoverability and the icons are comically large. If it had some kind of list mode and a bit more functionality it might be better. But even that can be easily mitigated with the classic menu panel plugin or the cardapio launcher.

Basically, I thought I'd never like Unity but in 12.04 at least for me it seems solid and deserves a place at the table.

Re:Wishful thinking

[BluPhenix316]

I completely agree. The HUD is pretty awesome. The only thing I don't like really is the dock. However, you can just auto-hide the dock and use something like Avant or Cairo which is much better. Well I think the whole purple color scheme of Ubuntu sucks as well. You can change the purple color scheme but with LightDM even if you change the background and startup splash there is still a brief period of time when the screen is purple before the background loads. I think there is a patch for LightDM that fixes it if you want to recompile and install it but that is a lot of work just to change something that only lasts for a couple of seconds on boot.

Re:Wishful thinking

[ericcc65]

I haven't used Unity but, to be honest, the one thing I can't get over is the lack of symmetry. I know, it's petty, but it just hits me as wrong, like fingernails on a chalkboard wrong, to have something on the top and left side of the screen. Is that changeable?

Re:Wishful thinking

[BluPhenix316]

Depends on what you are talking about. You can hide the dock completely and use your own. I use Avant Window Manager and it provides a MacOS X style dock at the bottom of the screen. If you are talking about the HUD, then i'm not sure if you can change it but it never bothered me being in the upper left hand corner. You can change the Windows themselves. You can detach the menus from the top bar if you want. You can also change where you want the close, maximize and minimize buttons if you want as well.

Re:Wishful thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

the killer feature is being able to edit the quicklists, this lets you group related activities with a program

Too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

They turned it from "Linux for Humans" to "Linux for morons". Trust broken. The damage is done. The certainty's gone. The spirit altered.

Re:Too little too late

[pointyhat]

Unfortunately "Linux for Morons" is the only thing likely to grow market share as most humans are morons.

I dont blame them really - for most people, it's just another appliance.

Re:Too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Except they didn't do any of those things so if you actually have anything to back up your worthless assertions then present it. Otherwise, you're just trolling.

Re:Too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately "Linux for Morons" is the only thing likely to grow market share as most humans are morons.

Of all the things keeping Linux off the desktop, I'd put complicated desktop environment at best around 15th. Gnome 2 was at least as easy to use as Windows XP was for example. I'd say the number one issue is lack of third party support. It's just not very easy to get started developing for Linux. There is no "Visual Studio" standard. I mean, what are you supposed to use? Vim and Glade? Get real. In order for interesting "long-tail" applications to appear on Linux, you have to make development cut and dry. Think Android simple. Lots of great documentation, drag and drop GUI, and an easy, performant language to get rolling in. That's the fundamental flaw right there since practically everything in an operating system depends on good development tools. Then we can start talking about library incompatibilities between distros, and driver breakage, etc.

Re:Too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a metric fsck-ton of third party applications running on Linux. Pretty much every program my company writes runs on some form of Linux, or Solaris for the older software that we still support.

There just isn't much third-party commodity software because the free equivalents are generally good enough.

Re:Too little too late

[captainpanic]

They turned it from "Linux for Humans" to "Linux for morons".

I love them for that. No, I am not kidding.

But no jokes aside, Linux is not a single system. Ubuntu is for the complete n00bs (like myself), but there are still plenty of other Linux versions for the better-informed people like yourself. Stop complaining and shop around a bit. Most are easy to download.

Re:Too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate unity and gnome 3 yet that didn't stop me from using them and find my way around..
I respect what they are doing. Never forget this is open source , if u don't like it then change it and distribute it ;)

Re:Too little too late

[vurian]

"There is no "Visual Studio" standard. I mean, what are you supposed to use? Vim and Glade? Get real." Qt Creator. That's a really excellent development environment.

Re:Too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

I have used Arch, Gentoo, Fedora, Debian, and some others, and I love Ubuntu 12.04 for this reason: it works!

I think one of the biggest problems in the community is rampant elitism. I could care less if you compiled your kernel from source, does your wireless work? Mine does!

Unity is different, and I've tried all the DEs and some WMs. If you don't like it, spend all of 23 seconds installing the desktop of your choice. No big deal.

Re:Too little too late

[IAmR007]

KDevelop is starting to get there as well. It's still a bit buggy and needs some usability improvements (such as more automatic ctags stuff), but it's made quite a bit of progress and keeps getting better. I personally quite like the feature that gives each local variable its own tint (saturation can be adjusted in the config, mine's at ~10%); It takes a few hours to get used to and therefore not be a distraction, but once comfortable, the color coding makes visually scanning code easier to track. It's not quite up to Qt Creator level, yet, but it's something to keep an eye on.

Re:Too little too late

[drdaz]

I've been using Linux for the past 10 years or so. I choose Ubuntu as my Linux of choice.

How am I a moron for choosing an environment where most things work, out of the box, without me having to spend days fucking about? You can be sure that whatever I'm trying to actually achieve with the machine will take plenty time, so not having to configure everything about the OS is a distinct advantage.

My time is valuable to me, and Ubuntu saves me time. I fail to see how this is moronic.

Re:Too little too late

[RazorSharp]

Unfortunately "Linux for Morons" is the only thing likely to grow market share as most humans are morons.

I dont blame them really - for most people, it's just another appliance.

But morons ask non-morons for OS advice. Morons pay attention to what non-morons use, and then use that.

The trick is a balance. Make it usable for morons but hidden beneath the surface is everything a geek wants. This is how OS X became so successful. No one trusted Mac OS in the 90s not b/c only a small niche used it, but b/c the wrong niches used it. No one turned to their graphic designer or teacher friends for computer advice. Then OS X comes out and geeks flock to it - most as their third OS and they just wanted it b/c of the concept, but it was really good so it didn't take long to become their primary OS. And then they recommended it to morons who asked for advice.

If there was a Linux desktop environment that I could comfortably recommend to the computer illiterate then I would. Just because Gnome and Unity tried to dumb things down doesn't mean they're useful to anyone. That's the difference between Gnome and OS X's approach - OS X isn't designed to cater to morons, it's designed to cater to everyone.

Re:Too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

/agree. I'm a Linux admin and at work take care of many flavors of Linux. At home I run Ubuntu for my torrent/media server. Why? Because Ubuntu is the main desktop distro out there and everything comes working out of the box. Now I admit I am hardly in the GUI now that I have got everything setup, but the time I have spent there isn't as bad as many people make it out to be........it sure beats windows metro ui..... lol

Re:Too little too late

[Nemyst]

I have a friend whom, half the time I meet in class, spends half the course messing with wicd on his compiled from source Gentoo laptop. In the meantime, I'm happily browsing on Windows 7 and listening to the class. I had trouble even with Mint, where graphics acceleration plain and simply wouldn't work with my AMD switchable graphics setup (it's shitty on Windows, imagine on Linux).

A Linux distro that works 99% of the time and doesn't break on each update is the bare minimum if the community really wants to see a significant switch to Linux. You'll need games and applications on top, as well as lots of marketing, but a solid core is the first step. Unfortunately, despite all the jokes about the "Year of the Linux Desktop", I think most Linux aficionados don't actually want it to gain mass market traction.

Re:Too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you ever switch from Arch/Gentoo to Ubuntu? I've had zero problems with driver support, and the ArchWiki is one of the most expansive, informative Linux wikis on the net. Instead of being lazy and realizing that you can't properly configure a Linux distribution and saying that Ubuntu is better because it just works, consider that most people who actually use Linux aren't n00bs.

Re:Too little too late

[couchslug]

Try this obscure distribution, forgotten these days. It's reliable and you can set it up as you like.

http://www.debian.org/

Re:Too little too late

[gehrehmee]

Make it usable for morons but hidden beneath the surface is everything a geek wants.

So, kind of like Gnome-shell, a simple intuitive interface, with a plugin infrastructure that lets developers change just about anything?

Re:Too little too late

[jbolden]

I had trouble even with Mint, where graphics acceleration plain and simply wouldn't work with my AMD switchable graphics setup (it's shitty on Windows, imagine on Linux).

The Linux kernel and the graphical subsystem don't support switchable graphics. There are about a 1/2 dozen good projects to get this to work on X. In theory this should be doable that is to say that is probably possible to paste together a working solution. Alex Williamson is doing so great stuff with this, and deserves appreciation. But it will be some time before any distribution has this all working.

The correct advice for Linux in 2012 is to

a) Control this directly from the command line
b) Pick one of the two graphics modes and just stick with it.
c) Pick a switching solution and understand at best this is an early beta.

Re:Too little too late

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I second Kdevelop. I use it at work, its fast, lightweight and has all of the features I need from an ide. There is one crazy bug still in there that causes a random crash when hitting a closing bracket }, but it doesn't lose data even if you haven't saved for a while. I hit that maybe once or twice a week.

QT Creator is good too, Kdevelop is just faster for me.

Re:Too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

you will find that ANY switchable grafic solution will either have nvidia/intel -or- amd/intel.
which of the names overlap in both cases?
you see, *beep* cannot make a better grafic card, so they just "make a problem"
by putting a grafic chip in everything (cpu).
they "make" a problem because good luck finding a *beep* cpu for laptop/netbook that DOESN'T
have a gpu also (and thus forcing a problem on you).
there should be a "world wide consumer protection"investigation here ...

Re:Too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

We already have that, its called debian.

Re:Too little too late

[IAmR007]

Yeah, nastiest bug I've encountered was from early kdevelop4. I canceled the "make project" dialog, and the project directory hadn't been entered, and was ~ (and not marked invalid due to no project name). Canceling it did an rm -rf ~/*.

Re:Too little too late

[DerPflanz]

The community doesn't want to see a significant switch to Linux. We will not be special anymore. We won't have magical computer skills anymore. And we'll have viruses.

I couldn't care less if nobody used Linux. *I* use it, because *I* like it. All this effort to get people to move to Linux is better spent on creating open protocols and formats, so *every* OS out there would just work.

Re:Too little too late

[pointyhat]

Yes there is: Eclipse CDT (for C/C++) and JDT for Java.

Re:Too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

I read that as "Linux for mormons"... apg-get install magic_underpants

What up with the PR talk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'd really like to synergize with the upcoming Gnome shell paradigm shift to leverage the richness of the polished experienceness-ness. Thanks, Slashdot, for letting me experience the bullshitness of experienced PR bullshitters with experience.

Ubuntu Gnome Remix...

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean Linux Mint 13 with MATE? :p

Just as bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still Gnome 3, which is just as bad as Unity. Until Mate (fork of Gnome2) matures and gets picked up by a few distros I'm sticking with XFCE.

Re:Just as bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unity in 12.04 is quite nice actually. You should try it sometime.

Re:Just as bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Granted it may be but that's besides the point. This distro was to have Ubuntu WITHOUT Unity, and Gnome 3 kind of defeats the purpose on that.

Wayland

[Anonymous Coward]

Have they yet renounced the ways of Wayland?

Re:Wayland

[unixisc]

Wayland is in the plans of KDE, Unity and GNOME. Not that that'll stop them from running on X, for those that refuse to adapt Wayland. But if one wishes to go w/ X, one could always go w/ either the other DEs or WMs, or one could go w/ the BSDs, which currently have no Wayland plans (That may make sense for them, but I do wish PC-BSD adapted Wayland)

Sperate Distro nice but wasnt needed.

[detain]

You could quickly and easily already apt-get install a nice gnome setup pretty easily in Ubuntu so I think its a little silly they keep making new spinoff distros for different choices on what packages you want to install. I'd think it would be better for everyone if they kept it all as 1 distro with a few more options during the install process to choose what type of desktop you want, or if you want a serve,MythTV interface (mythbuntu) , or educational setup (edubuntu) . The torrent image is almost done downloading, I'm anxious to try it out and see how it is in a VPS.

Re:Sperate Distro nice but wasnt needed.

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't a spinoff. It's the same as Kubuntu, or Edubuntu, or Xubuntu, or whatever else. Looks like this one has a GNOME3 PPA, because those packages aren't yet in the real repos. But it still uses the real repos.

Re:Sperate Distro nice but wasnt needed.

[oakgrove]

I think its a little silly they keep making new spinoff distros for different choices on what packages you want to install

I'm pretty sure the only officially supported version of *buntu at this point is Ubuntu. Everything else is done by the community not Canonical.

Re:Sperate Distro nice but wasnt needed.

[dgp]

$ sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

How is this fork any different/better than Ubuntu 12.04 after installing the gnome-shell package?

Re:Sperate Distro nice but wasnt needed.

[detain]

At this point, its got a newer version of Gnome. Beyond that I'd say its convenient for people with no or slow internet connections to already have the packages they plan installing on the installation medium. Since this is a test release you cant expect too much. I ran into a few issues starting X after install so I cant really comment much more on what is different/better.

Re:Sperate Distro nice but wasnt needed.

[Tarlus]

It's really not a separate distro so much as it is an Ubuntu ISO bundled with some different packages. They are just giving it a different name so you know what you're getting.

Re:Sperate Distro nice but wasnt needed.

[Tarlus]

How is this fork any different/better than Ubuntu 12.04 after installing the gnome-shell package?

For one, you don't have to run that command. =)

Also, it provides a live CD for those who are interested in trying it without committing any changes to their own system.

I hate articles like this...

[supersloshy]

Whenever these kinds of articles are brought up, there is NO insightful discussion whatsoever. It's sickening, really. Instead of actually contributing to a logical discussion, every single comment on these kinds of articles says, more or less, "lol GNOME 3 sucks and only morons would like it because it's obviously trash; use a DE that actually makes sense". The problem with this kind of comment should be painfully obvious, but apparently it's not so simple with most of you. People say this in EVERY FREAKING COMMENT ON THESE ARTICLES! There is no originality whatsoever! Look, WE GET IT! You guys don't like GNOME 3! Just shut up then and leave the people who do like it alone! So what if some people enjoy GNOME 3? That's not your freaking problem! If they want to make an Ubuntu flavor that uses GNOME 3 by default then LET THEM FREAKING DO SO WITHOUT HAVING THEIR PERSONAL PREFERENCES QUESTIONED. Is this REALLY that hard? Is it really so bad to say something like "Oh well I hope this works out for them" or "I hope that GNOME 3 fans enjoy it"?

Seriously, you have a freaking right to dislike any DE you freaking want. I'm not contesting that. Just because I don't like some DEs doesn't mean that I should just go and yell at people who do like them all the time. That's not only rude but it's a waste of my breath. People like different things and you all should freaking realize that some people have different preferences than you do. I love GNOME 3 and I wish this project the best, and even if I didn't like GNOME 3 I'd still support its freaking existence because everybody has a right to support the software that they use. That's THE WHOLE FREAKING POINT OF HAVING MULTIPLE DEs AND DISTRIBUTIONS IN THE FIRST PLACE!

Good gravy... Just shut up and leave us all alone. We don't need your flamebait and trollish comments.

Re:I hate articles like this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Life will get easier if you learn to handle criticism.

Re:I hate articles like this...

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the point of criticizing another person's preferences? There's no right or wrong here, and you're not going to make them like what you like.

Articles like this are filled with garbage comments, and nothing he said indicated that he can't handle criticism.

Re:I hate articles like this...

[Anonymous Coward]

That you miguel?

Re:I hate articles like this...

[Anonymous Coward]

You mad? You mad.

This is on par with the parent, in terms of constructive dialogue.

Re:I hate articles like this...

[oakgrove]

I'm a big fan of Unity and I see it get slagged off all the time typically by people using outdated or incorrect information. If I'm in the mood I just calmly respond explaining what I like about Unity and talking up some of its features that might go unnoticed to a user that hasn't given it much time. I rarely get flamed and often the post gets modded up enhancing the visibility of a Unity "success story". As far as Gnome 3 goes, I've tried it a few times and there are some things I like including Mutter and a lot of the old Gnome 2 bugs having been fixed. Other than that, I don't really see a whole lot. The Gnome team removed a lot of functionality that was present in Gnome 2 yet somehow didn't really make the DE any easier to use AFAICT. Nor do I see any productivity improvements like I get with, i.e., the HUD in Unity. But I'm always up for embracing something better so my question to you as a Gnome 3 advocate is this: what am I missing that might win me over?

Re:I hate articles like this...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you 100%. But you overuse the term 'freaking'.

Re:I hate articles like this...

[epyT-R]

ok so your argument boils down to yet another "only tolerate positivity/censor everything else" post. There's a lot of that going around these days. Anyway, why should the critics be silent? Sorry to ruin your day, but adult human beings realized that the world isn't limited to simple positive/negative dichotomies by the time they're 9.

You sound like that 'leave britney aloonuhhh' guy/girl/mantywaist....person.

Re:I hate articles like this...

[epyT-R]

so that he might learn something? handling criticism is a skill that separates adults from the fast growing adult aged children segment. an adult would defend his position with logic and reason. a child would throw a tantrum and take everything personally.

Re:I hate articles like this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever these kinds of articles are brought up, there is NO insightful discussion whatsoever. It's sickening, really. Instead of actually contributing to a logical discussion, every single comment on these kinds of articles says, more or less, "lol GNOME 3 sucks and only morons would like it because it's obviously trash; use a DE that actually makes sense". The problem with this kind of comment should be painfully obvious, but apparently it's not so simple with most of you. People say this in EVERY FREAKING COMMENT ON THESE ARTICLES! There is no originality whatsoever! Look, WE GET IT! You guys don't like GNOME 3! Just shut up then and leave the people who do like it alone! So what if some people enjoy GNOME 3? That's not your freaking problem! If they want to make an Ubuntu flavor that uses GNOME 3 by default then LET THEM FREAKING DO SO WITHOUT HAVING THEIR PERSONAL PREFERENCES QUESTIONED. Is this REALLY that hard? Is it really so bad to say something like "Oh well I hope this works out for them" or "I hope that GNOME 3 fans enjoy it"?

Seriously, you have a freaking right to dislike any DE you freaking want. I'm not contesting that. Just because I don't like some DEs doesn't mean that I should just go and yell at people who do like them all the time. That's not only rude but it's a waste of my breath. People like different things and you all should freaking realize that some people have different preferences than you do. I love GNOME 3 and I wish this project the best, and even if I didn't like GNOME 3 I'd still support its freaking existence because everybody has a right to support the software that they use. That's THE WHOLE FREAKING POINT OF HAVING MULTIPLE DEs AND DISTRIBUTIONS IN THE FIRST PLACE!

Good gravy... Just shut up and leave us all alone. We don't need your flamebait and trollish comments.

I don't give a shit about Gnome. What I care about is that a number of distros are pushing Gnome 3 down our throats. And even worse is the state of GIMP because of all the brain dead decisions being taken by you Gnome-tards that develop Gnome 3. Insofar as Gnome 3 is killing a number of high profile GTK applications, yeah my anger is directed towards you and all those idiot developers (or should I say designers) working on that cesspool of a DE. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. Now I'll leave you alone.

Re:I hate articles like this...

[RabidReindeer]

Whenever these kinds of articles are brought up, there is NO insightful discussion whatsoever. It's sickening, really. Instead of actually contributing to a logical discussion, every single comment on these kinds of articles says, more or less, "lol GNOME 3 sucks and only morons would like it because it's obviously trash; use a DE that actually makes sense". The problem with this kind of comment should be painfully obvious, but apparently it's not so simple with most of you. People say this in EVERY FREAKING COMMENT ON THESE ARTICLES! There is no originality whatsoever! Look, WE GET IT! You guys don't like GNOME 3! Just shut up then and leave the people who do like it alone!

It's not about you, it's about Gnome. I'm glad you like Gnome 3. I don't. It removed too many capabilities that I depended on all day every day, and not all of them have well-known ways to get them back. Or, from what I can tell in some cases, any way to get them back.

If Gnome 3 had been an alternative Gnome, or an option to something that preserved the capabilities of Gnome 2, I wouldn't care, but it was made the default desktop for Fedora 17. It took me from a cluttered but functional desktop to a clean desktop that did virtually nothing except show me what my social networking friends were up to (I don't HAVE friends!) and demolish my working space every time I overshot the mouse into a corner.

The developers of Gnome over the years have shown a consistent contempt for a large part - if not the actual majority of their users. And, since they refuse to listen on their own channels, the howling mobs have to make their voices heard where they can. Here, for instance. Besides, if all this forum offered was fulsome praise for Gnome 3, that would be too much like validation of something a lot of us don't consider valid.

If you enjoy Gnome 3, I'm happy for you, and your voice in the matter is just as valid as anyone else's. But we want the conversation to be democratic, and that means dissent as well. Be glad that there is dissent. Too much of today's discussion is conducted in echo chambers.

Re:I hate articles like this...

[jbolden]

Mostly if you are using Gnome 3 on Gnome 2 style hardware it might very well be a downgrade. Where Gnome 3 will shine is in more versatile form factors. Other than that:

1) Integrated messaging and notifications.
2) Much better handling of virtual desktops.

Is about it.

Re:I hate articles like this...

[jbolden]

I happen to like Gnome 3 as well. On the other hand the Gnome community quite aggressively aimed to be the standard Linux desktop, not some obscure piece of software. Obscure software has the right to do what it wants. Public utilities have an obligation towards the public good. They were the ones that wanted this degree of focus. And as the standard desktop for free software they then decided on a development path that alienated their most important distributer (Canonical) technical directions that upset freedesktop project, and alienated their user base.

I'd like it if the discussion of Gnome 3 were a bit more mature. But your rant about personal preferences is out of place. The issues with Gnome 3 were not about personal preference. They are by their very nature political.

Re:I hate articles like this...

[Nursie]

Integrated messaging and notifications if you use our approved messaging client

And most folks seem to think the virtual desktop stuff is actually far, far worse.

Re:I hate articles like this...

[jbolden]

Integrated messaging and notifications if you use our approved messaging client

No any Gnome 3 messaging and notification system would work. If by approved you mean it has to use the OS API's well yeah.

And most folks seem to think the virtual desktop stuff is actually far, far worse.

I haven't seen a good debate on this anywhere. Do you have a link?

Re:I hate articles like this...

[Nursie]

Well yes, any gnome 3 messaging service, so that means empathy. Other things that used to work in the systray equivalent are relegated to a semi-transparent life elsewhere in the UI, for no good reason can tell. This is not useful, especially where there are protocols and services empathy does not support. I have yet to hear any good reason why other systray/notification area apps are not allowed, but it fits in with the whole "you can't customise anything" ethos, as well as the record of just throwing things out.

As for virtual desktops, it's to do with control, or rather the lack of it given to the user. Also the fact that the dynamic nature of them means that things are not always in the same place. I'm sure if you search for "Gnome 3 virtual desktop" on Google you'll find all sorts of things about it.

Re:I hate articles like this...

[jbolden]

I have yet to hear any good reason why other systray/notification area apps are not allowed

Because Gnome is a GUI. GUIs are free to set standards. They've defined a standard notification system. It makes it easier for application developers if they can be assured that if they use the Gnome API for notifications everything will work fine.

That's the reason. That's the reason any OS sets any standard.

Also the fact that the dynamic nature of them means that things are not always in the same place.

I can see that. That's true.

Re:I hate articles like this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude. Gnome 3 made a lot of people bitterly disappointed, the people "in charge" keep sounding like Baghdad Bob and there are all the other users out there who in the past used to get all kinds of arrogant crap for "not following the way", like "you should should just use Gnome, it's the default" any time any kind of problem was encountered, etc.

Now all the previous arrogance and stupidity in the Gnome community have come home to roost, and boy, are you gonna get whooped. Gnome is running the gauntlet, and I doubt it'll make it.

Re:I hate articles like this...

[supersloshy]

You don't seem to see that this a completely optional distribution for people who already like GNOME 3. In no way is it being shoved down your throat.

Re:I hate articles like this...

[supersloshy]

This isn't a discussion about GNOME 3, though. This is about a completely optional distribution for people who already like GNOME 3. That is what the article is about and I just wished people talked about that instead of the exact same rants we get all the time.

Re:I hate articles like this...

[jbolden]

This is a vanilla Gnome 3 with Ubuntu repository. Ubuntu / Unity is a Gnome distribution so not too much has to change. The main issue of controversy I can think of specific to this product is whether this should exist as a distribution, and not just a package at all, and I did see a few posts on either side of that one. But mostly I don't see much to discuss. This wouldn't have been a bad article for /. to just skip.

But if we are going to discuss it, in theory the real controversy should be over Ubuntu Unity vs. Ubuntu / Gnome 3. Now that would work if we had more Unity and Gnome 3 people, and we might by say 2014 (assuming both project survive this war, which I'm not sure of). The problem for /. is the people most interested in discussion that are former Gnome 2 / Ubuntu users; young power users hate OS change, and the people who learned Unix from Ubuntu are still very raw emotionally about this direction. And so you were right in our point that this would lead to a non productive conversation with people who hate both Unity and Gnome 3.

Where I disagreed with your angry post, was about the fact that this was simply a discussion of personal preferences and that Gnome's actions were not political. I don't think this is about personal preferences. What the appropriate degree of community sanction is for Gnome is a political issue it is not about personal preference. If Gnome gets demoted to a minor side project with a small following then it becomes about personal preference.

What's the point of this coverage?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, this is just another flavor of 'buntu. Slashdot doesn't cover them all, and this one is simply Gnome 3; it's not a reversion to the 2.x world. So, what's the hook? Why is this project particularly newsworthy?

Time to upgrade to this

[Anonymous Coward]

Without the stupid rounded corners, oversized borders, transparency crap, fancy gpu and cpu hogging bullshit of Gnome and KDE. No stupid compositors that require ridiculous effects that are recipe for X crashes and stalls... Run it with a straight Nvidia OpenGL driver and Google Earth will actually run smokin' 3D flight sim even on my old P4 with a really old Gforce 256 meg AGP card. Dump pulse audio and just use good old alsamixer, and every bit of software that I want to run like VLC, Audacity, Handbrake...and the likes runs just fine without relying on stupid video compositors that hog cpu and gpu cycles. X has come a long way and to clobber it with the same crap that one would expect from a Windows PC is just plain stupid. On good hardware the speed of running a slimmed down DE is really worth it and I feel is the real future of Linux.

I try the same thing with Gnome or KDE on the same hardware and poof nothing but dog squats and rapid crash restore action on the screen.

I am thinking of doing a series of setup vids and instructional vids on how to make a killer cheap Linux box that will do Citrix, GoogleEarth, Flash, all office document formats, play bluerays and all other media and do it faster than any other system in existance.

Linux can be the fastest OS ...period.... if you do your setup right and leave the fancy effects to the programs not the FRIGGING DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT!

Don't get me wrong Gnome and KDE have their good points but good video performance and speed is not one of them they have become far to complex and fail at the basic task of doing what the user requests in an unobtrusive manner.

Re:Time to upgrade to this

[Just Some Guy]

No stupid compositors that require ridiculous effects that are recipe for X crashes and stalls...

Funny how often that completely invalid position is repeated. Your graphics card is optimized for 3D acceleration. You have a little supercomputer sitting there waiting for you to ask it for help. Compositors take a lot of the workload off your slow main CPU and offload it to that supercomputer. If you can get the round corners and wiggly windows for free because your graphics card is the end result of a few billion R&D dollars making it good at that stuff, why not? Especially with something as slow and power-hungry as your P4, I'd rather let the coprocessors do as much of my desktop's work as possible.

Re:Time to upgrade to this

[Windwraith]

Actually, KDE is my desktop of choice because not only it can run fast without compositor, you can also disable it on-the-fly without any noticeable change. So you can have composition for the "exposé"-like features, taskmanager thumbnails and other things (that can come in handy when doing coding or sprite editing) and disable it when you need speed for a game or something.

Kwin is a really solid window manager, can be given a ton of automation options (such as "make this window appear with this geometry and in desktop 2", or "automatically disable compositing", or even force other attributes, like giving a close button to apps that somehow don't provide one, like peazip). And yeah, it's quite fast by default. And even when compositing, too.

Re:Time to upgrade to this

[stretch0611]

No stupid compositors that require ridiculous effects that are recipe for X crashes and stalls...

Funny how often that completely invalid position is repeated. Your graphics card is optimized for 3D acceleration. You have a little supercomputer sitting there waiting for you to ask it for help. Compositors take a lot of the workload off your slow main CPU and offload it to that supercomputer. If you can get the round corners and wiggly windows for free because your graphics card is the end result of a few billion R&D dollars making it good at that stuff, why not? Especially with something as slow and power-hungry as your P4, I'd rather let the coprocessors do as much of my desktop's work as possible.

Nothing is free... Yes the GPU does a lot... However, the GPU still needs to be told what to do and given the information to do it.
The GPU will take care of your 2D and 3D effects and physics (depending on the age and quality of your graphics card) without a direct impact on the CPU. However, the CPU still needs to spend time looking for input events to determine when the GPU should start those effects. The memory still holds this information on the effects. The system bus still needs to transfer the data from memory to the GPU for it to know the parameters of the effects. The GPU still uses power and increases the internal heat of the system.

Now, a modern computer has created ways to minimize the slowdown such as direct access from the GPU to system memory. However, it only minimizes the slowdown, it does not eliminate it. BUT, the one thing that is still used is memory... The more detailed the effect or more detailed images, the more raw memory is required. The more memory in use for storing graphic data, the less can be used for application data. The less available memory you have, the more virtual memory and disk i/o you will use. Once you start using a lot of i/o, your system will slow to a crawl. (And everything now starts using all these little effects, so it is not just your bloated desktop, it is all your bloated apps, and even bloated hardware drivers rendering your 4GB of memory today inadequate to compensate.)

Re:Time to upgrade to this

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got shitty but modern asus laptop that doesn't play smooth 720p video in gnome3 and unity. There is no problem if I attempt to play the video in lxde. According to your theory it should be opposite because desktop effects actually make everything more responsive and faster.

Sorry ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've already gone back to Debian and I can find no reason to return to Ubuntu. I left partially because Unity was a steaming pile of horse manure for desktops, and partially because of the arrogance of Canonical (or, more correctly, that nutjob Shuttleworth) in plain dismissing all the criticism.

No I think I'll stick with Debian from now on. To be honest, I can't really see what Ubuntu adds to the base release other than catering to the great unwashed :-)

Re:Sorry ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are an idiot.

I don't get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome is an open source desktop environment, right? Most *Nix users agree Gnome got to be pretty good, useful for all the frontends, skins or faces or whatever they're called, designed to be used with Gnome.

Then the people who maintain Gnome decided to try to cram their ideas for reducing inefficiencies that they saw as overhead that were consequences of the user interface design, right down users' throats. However, removing features meant a steep learning curve, and a recalibration of gestures, etc., on the part of every user who chooses or is forced to use the new Gnome interface, just to be able to get back to where they were in terms of their 'productivity to time spent dicking around with the computer' ratio. Also you have to catch back up with what work you failed to get done WHILE you were learning the new interface.

It's rather like failing to asses how much money you waste trying to save it, by, for example, driving 10 miles out of his way, exclusively to fill your tank up with gasoline, at a cost savings of 3 cents per gallon. To add insult to injury, you realize the car's fuel tank was almost full already, so you might be able to get another quart of gasoline in before it leaks...

More importantly, however, my question I pose to all of "/." is this. Why does someone not simply take whatever was (by general consensus) the best version of Gnome before they started ripping features out of it, and then figure out which one to fork Gnome in to. Since it's FLOSS, (UIAVMM...) anything you really wanted could be build on top of an older version. Why are we still letting people so obviously out of touch with what users want or need, it's just ask for, or even demand

Re:I don't get it.

[oakgrove]

More importantly, however, my question I pose to all of "/." is this. Why does someone not simply take whatever was (by general consensus) the best version of Gnome before they started ripping features out of it, and then figure out which one to fork Gnome in to. Since it's FLOSS, (UIAVMM...) anything you really wanted could be build on top of an older version. Why are we still letting people so obviously out of touch with what users want or need, it's just ask for, or even demand

Here you go! The issue with Mate being a first class citizen is multi-fold though. First of all, despite many people not liking Gnome 3, they don't want to use something they perceive as "old" so going with a Gnome 2 fork just doesn't sit well. Another issue is there were many architectural problems and inherent bugs in Gnome 2 that were solved in the new version. Do the people maintaining Mate have the chops and resources to address these issues? I think ultimately projects like Mate and Trinity (KDE 3.5) serve a great purpose to maintain a legacy environment for people that just won't have it any other way but it is very doubtful that the full force of the community will ever get behind something like this mainly for the reasons I outlined above.

Re:I don't get it.

[stretch0611]

First, I admit that I am not fond of KDE4 or Gnome3. I am looking at my next primary desktop using either LXDE or Mate if it is stable. I care much more for usability and stability than I do for gee-whiz features.

While I agree that they will not have the full community behind them, I wonder more about what effect this will have specifically on the developers. I believe that developers are the most limiting factor and I wonder if developers are split between all the different window managers, which project, if any, will actually have the necessary resources for continued development.

I love the smell of a flamebait in the morning

[21mhz]

Nice, a cheery article worded like an advertisement, for all the GNOME 3 haters on Slashdot to get on their favorite horse and start spewing rage.

Yes, I'm OK with GNOME 3. No, I don't care what's going on with Ubuntu these days. Canonical's increasing preference for NIH-motivated development means there are less people funded by them to fix real problems.

Re:I love the smell of a flamebait in the morning

[epyT-R]

don't forget the people who claim they don't care, but still post for the chance to label any criticism as 'hate.'

Ubuntu is loosing the contact with user base

[aglider]

This is, in my opinion, the reason why Ubuntu will die.
They did the same when they dropped a working KDE 3.5 in favour of an unusable KDE 4.
KDE chose to move to v4, but this doesn't mean that Ubuntu needed to follow.
The same applies to GNOME with the Unity twist.

The biggest value for Ubuntu/Canonical is the user base. Make them angry to loose both them and your value.
Say after me: I'll listen to the user base!

Re:Ubuntu is loosing the contact with user base

[Robert Zenz]

This is, in my opinion, the reason why Ubuntu will die.

You can say that as often as you want, the "I like this because it's shiny" userbase is bigger then the "I want to get work done so how do I disable this shit?" userbase. We* are the niche, not the others. See iPhone/iPad and Android.

* "We" as in: Mate, Gnome2, KDE3, Xfce, bare-window-manager users. Personally I recommend Sawfish and Mate. I also like KDE4 to a certain extend, good ideas, but too much shiny-stuff.

Re:Ubuntu is loosing the contact with user base

[aglider]

I am not arguing about the desktop/window manager of your choice. You can install whichever you like.
But Ubuntu/Canonical took a number of questionable decisions and kept them despite the complaints.

KDE4, as of now, is quite usable and stable. The way I use it is very similar to KDE v3 as I have disabled all the fancy stuff.
I am not using KDE v3 (or trinity) because it'd be too much work to have it working.
Finally, I'm considering a switch to Awesome which is ... aehm ... awesome!

Re:Ubuntu is loosing the contact with user base

[macraig]

Linux developers don't listen to their "user base". Instead they listen to their "muse"... which is apparently a six-foot-tall invisible rabbit named Harvey (or Anthony, for you Doc Martin fans).

Re:Ubuntu is loosing the contact with user base

[M1FCJ]

I love KDE, I'm using KDE4 right now but the first KDE 4.0 implementations on all distros sucked so bad, I had to go somewhere else until it got fixed. That was a big mistake which alienated a lot of people. Unfortunately when someone mentions KDE4, most still remember KDE4.0.

Re:Ubuntu is loosing the contact with user base

[jbolden]

The biggest value for Ubuntu/Canonical is the user base. Make them angry to loose both them and your value.

Mark Shuttleworth doesn't agree with you. He think the biggest value for Ubuntu is the potential. He's not looking to be the most popular distribution in a 1% marketshare OSes. You may not like it, but understand where you stand. Both Canonical and the Gnome Foundation are very unhappy with the blown opportunities of the last decade.

Re:Ubuntu is loosing the contact with user base

[St.Anne]

Where's the GNOME 2 remix?

Re:Ubuntu is loosing the contact with user base

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, Ubuntu supports a KDE spin, a XFCE spin, a LXDE spin, a Mythtv spin, a Educational institution oriented spin, a audio/visual pro spin, and now a "pure" Gnome spin. So how the fuck are they not listening to their user base?

Re:Ubuntu is loosing the contact with user base

[Anonymous Coward]

Strange I use KDE4 all the time on many machines and love it and don't have one real problem with it.

Re:Bin gnome altogether

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares ?

The GNOME developers keep giving users the finger. GNOME should be consigned to the wastebin of history. Irrelevant, unusable crap.

I agree, unfortunately if Gnome goes so do a number of very high profile applications not the least of which is Gimp. I like Gimp (it was one of the reasons I started using linux many years ago in the late nineties), I use it on windows and linux and I certainly don't want to replace it with a warez version of photoshop or some light photo editing software.

I seriously don't see the Gimp developers ever porting that software over Qt or something that doesn't depend on GTK/Gnome. A real pity.

Why I switched to XFCE

[aaaaaaargh!]

I'm using Ubuntu as a desktop environment for daily work for years now and switched to XFCE recently. The reasons are quite simple, people know them already, but allow me to reiterate them infinitely:

10 PRINT "I want a traditional, unobtrousive desktop environment ('desktop metaphor') with hidable and freely configurable panels and some way to define command shortcuts."
20 PRINT "I also strongly prefer normal windows with minimal, user-definable decoration, ordinary menus (on the top of windows), and a fast file browser."
30 GOTO 10

All of this has existed for a long time and there was no reason to change it. I use whatever session/window manager gives the above features to me. There are plenty of choices besides Unity and Gnome 3, e.g. XFCE works fine for me. Sorry if that offends Gnome 3 or Unity developers for some odd reason.

Re:Why I switched to XFCE

[Anonymous Coward]

and debian's recent choice to make XFCE default, proves you're not really alone :) some might even say debian is mainstream for old folks who like a 'conservative' nix

stability >> all else

Re:Why I switched to XFCE

[siddesu]

As a fellow xfce user let me retort that the language you chose to reiterate your preferences make them sound kind of lightweight. :)

Re:Why I switched to XFCE

[flyingfsck]

Sorry, but you'll have to translate that into C# before the Gnome developers will understand it.

Re:Why I switched to XFCE

[jbicha]

...except that Debian didn't actually make XFCE the default (at least not yet) but that fact was missed by most bloggers and their readers. Source: http://packages.qa.debian.org/tasksel

Re:Why I switched to XFCE

[Anonymous Coward]

10 PRINT "I want list of new bugs for this distro and I don't care when they will be fixed."
20 PRINT "I don't want to be vanilla, I don't wan't to change."
30 PRINT "Well I know some day I must change but please don't mention this."
40 GOTO 10

sudo apt-get install gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

I ran that command in Ubuntu Precise a while ago, and, since then, I'm a happy camper.

I don't have much beef against Unity, it's just that on low-spec machines or in a VM, Unity 2D is not snappy enough compared to the "no effects" version of Gnome, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a 2D version.

I am still impressed at how easy it was to switch to Gnome, with no side-effect or additional tweaking required.

Re:Hardcore Gnome Shell fans, seriously?

[ciascu]

Having enjoyed Ubuntu as a novel change from Slack and Debian, I was pretty unconvinced by Gnome Shell or Unity when they appeared, switched to Mint and, as Gnome 3 started to improve, switched to Fedora. Eventually, I released I missed the Ubuntu repos and familiarity of the Debian derivative structure, and returned to experimental Ubuntu Quantal.

The first thing I did was install Gnome Shell, as I still haven't warmed to Unity, and this has brought some interesting regressions. But I live with them (and have great, well-meaning intentions of delving into the code) because I now, for whatever reasons, really like Gnome Shell. In fact, having been introduced to Mac for the first time in the last few weeks, albeit a version a year or two out of date, I found the interface a wee bit clunky, not particularly intuitive and distinctly unslick for a moderately heavy terminal user. Nice enough, but knowing the alternatives, I wouldn't pay good money for it. That's fine, I'm not in the target demographic. Garage Band, however, I'm sold - those kind of experience applications I think Mac does fantastically, and I believe there are fantastic IDE/code versioning/project management GUIs, but that not the point here.

So I guess this article refers to me. I certainly don't remember jumping on any band wagons, in fact I'm pretty sure I ended up here by repeatedly jumping off them, and despite being decidedly unhardcore, I claim to be "excitingly different" on blind date forms, as the interwebs tell me preferring Gnome Shell to XFCE, Fluxbox or TTY makes me rarer than a unicorn in hen tooth pyjamas.

Time for a Business Desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it time to build a Business desktop that all can converge on?

Business wants predictability, and consistency and shivers with anticipation at new rollouts (but in a bad way).

Imagine 10,000 user workforce and how to manage this WM vs that WM when its changing to fast.

Re:Bin gnome altogether

[DrXym]

GNOME 3 is eminently usable. Whether it is configurable enough for power users is another matter entirely.

Why always the ISOs?

[Richard_J_N]

There are very very many distros out there that exist as "respins" or "custom editions" which are basically debian + package-selection. For example, dyne:bolic, musix, ubuntu studio, kubuntu, ubuntu-gnome-remix. Why aren't they just published as: base-distro + package-repository + taskel (list of packages to apt-get) +
settings to change + (optionally) list of packages to remove?

I've never understood this - it hugely increases the maintainer workload, makes it harder to migrate (need to reinstall), makes it harder to try out, makes it harder to have a mixed system, and make it a real problem if the distro maintainer quits.

Perhaps someone can explain this to me, because I am truly puzzled.

Aside: yes, I recognise the advantage of, say, xubuntu (as a more minimal base-system), and I know that Kubuntu can be installed with "apt-get install kubuntu-desktop" - but why do most systems insist on clean-install from ISO as the primary (sometimes only) way to install them?

Re:Why always the ISOs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? Almost all distros that I know of have some form of netboot install method that does exactly what you describe. None of them "insist" on it.

Re:Why always the ISOs?

[Just Some Guy]

Almost all distros that I know of have some form of netboot install method that does exactly what you describe.

I used to play football. As long as we're tossing out irrelevant factoids, I mean...

Those netboot installs require you to install the system. That's what he doesn't want to do. Suppose you already have a working Ubuntu system. What he's asking for is a little installer that applies the delta between what you need and what you already have installed and running on your system. Suppose you're only 8 packages short of having, say, a Mint desktop system. Wouldn't, it be easier to apt-get install those 8 packages than download an entire CD or DVD ISO to reinstall the entire thing from scratch?

Re:Why always the ISOs?

[jbicha]

If you're using Ubuntu 12.10 Alpha, all you have to do is install ubuntu-gnome-desktop to get the extra packages. We're not going to make a metapackage remove packages that you already have installed though.

Re:Why always the ISOs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? You're an idiot if you expect that the only amount of delta between consecutive release versions is only 8 packages. C'mon jock, can't you think of better case scenario than that?

Re:Why always the ISOs?

[Anonymous Coward]

What he is asking, is why people who are just distributing Debian+X brand it as if the +X was more important than the Debian. It's like pouring Guinness in a cold glass and calling it Ubenbrew. The answer is that while the value added is marginal, the effort required is significant and nobody wants to put in that kind of time without getting something out of it. Since they aren't making squat, all they get to do is say that "I am the chief distribution engineer for Ubenbrew."

Re:Why always the ISOs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously there's no value generated. That's why Debian continues to be monstrously more popular than Ubuntu.

Re:Hardcore Gnome Shell fans, seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha! He who recommends flamebait mods ...

Re:Hardcore Gnome Shell fans, seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome Shell is junk to those who don't have an open mind to UI paradigm shifts. I've only ever used Gnome 3 on Fedora and Arch boxes (and have been using it since it first arrived in the arch repositories). Yes, it was different. Yes, it was bigger and took up more space. Then I realized "Holy shit i'm running an Open-Source Desktop Environment in Linux. I can customize this!" So I did; themes dramatically help. Now, I fail to see how you can't make a DE work for you. If it doesn't just install another one. You can't critique a DE for existing when there are alternatives. What's the point? The Gnome 3 devs have been pretty clear that they are continuing their roadmap.

Unity + Gnome 3 = ???

[Anonymous Coward]

What would happen if the user interface disasters of Unity and Gnome 3 could somehow be combined into a single desktop environment? It would be like the desktop version of the Winchester house.

Re:Hardcore Gnome Shell fans, seriously?

[Osgeld]

glad you have nothing better to do with your time than to unfuck something as simple as a desktop

Linux - For the One Percent - For The Elite

[Anonymous Coward]

How would you rewrite things if you knew a hacker was sitting at the keyboard instead of grandma. Somebody who knew what TCP and SMTP meant. Note, this is not an excuse for clunky interface, no documentation, un-intuitive interfaces or shift-alt-control-w shortcuts being the only way to do something.

A hackers OS with the Best Ergonmonics. Intitive and FAST!

OS X and Windows are for the un-enlightened. If they refuse to learn, then they get the training wheels and the fisher price icons and support from India. Sucks to be them. Maybe they should crawl out of their self-imposed, peer enforced ignorance and LEARN something.

If the masses have turned their noses up at Linux, Fuck 'em. Write it for us.

We're awesome, let's have an awesome OS. They way we all know it is supposed to be done.

  I want a Man's computer. An adult's computer. A Hacker's computer.

How about going back to the original Xerox GUI desktop. How about some ergonomic science to extend the first principles. How about actually HIRING some Italian named Sergio or Valentino to put some style into it. How about an API for Native Gui Apps that aren't gibberish? Developers Developers Developers. The most expensive thing about any platform is the LEARNING CURVE. Make the learning curve to get a desktop app going as short as possible. Not that 720 function call mess called the win32 api.

  Ergo. Style Speed. No bugs. Put envy and exclusivity into Linux.

Exclusivity being you need to be a hacker god.

Or is there a underlying agenda for someone to make huge money pushing massive quantities of low margin linux boxes and devices out to the masses?

Cause it seems like the end game for linux is always conquering the desktop. Why must linux capture the desktop? Why?

Linux only has 1% market share. That is the universe telling linux it should be for the 1%, the elite, the computer gods that walk this planet.

Instantly and Completely useable by a Hacker

[Anonymous Coward]

A hacker should be able to sit down in front of it and do everything without ever looking at a help file.

He should release a bit sigh of relief and know he is home.

Desktop Summit and a Desktop Czar

[Anonymous Coward]

All the Gnome and KDE guys need to meet somewhere and DECIDE. What goes, what stays. What the direction is.

We need a winner here. One and only one API and desktop. And then clean the thing up, and document it. No bugs.

Grandma should be able to understand desktophello.c

Like Linux is the Kernal Czar, the Desktop Guys need a Desktop Czar.

There is the linux kernel.

Then there are the utilities like grep and vi.

Then there is one and only one desktop and gui api.

Linux stops there. It does not try to be an office suite or take on microsoft.

LINUX IS A PLATFORM.

Linux stops at being a modern GUI platform.
Linux runs on everything.
Linux has drivers for everything.
LInux has a standard top quality way to install ALL apps.

Taking on the microsoft office suite is a fool's errand.

A standard Linux install should have no end users apps.

LINUX IS A PLATFORM ONLY.

Install what you wish is the whole of the law..

Leave the apps to the apps people. Stop trying to bundle it all. Ubuntu takes on too much and fails. STOP AT BEING A PLATFORM.

For apps, linux should concentrate on two areas.
  1. The Server Room
  2. Games
ie: The Computer Guy World.

If a machine / OS combo can endure the load of games and serving forever without falling over, then you got a real platform.

Word processors are for secretaries, spreadsheets are for beancounters and power point is for marketing droids.

Linux is for the computer guys. Games, Porn, Servers, Hacking and Anarchy. All the cool shit.

So, Gnomies and KDE'-ians, meet in some cool place like Switzerland or the Hague or Coopenhagen, and make the Earth Tremble.

Resolve this desktop fighting. Craft your vision of what Linux should be.

Build the platform. Apps are the mortal's problem.

Apps are how people make money. Give them a fast, stable platform.

When there is only one desktop to write for, I will start writing native linux apps.

I see two warring platforms and an unresolved war with no end in sight. If I chose, I stand a 50% chance of being wrong. That is too expensive.

Re:Bin gnome altogether

[raxx7]

GIMP depends on GTK, not GNOME.

Death to "Unity"

[BrendaEM]

In spite of its name, Unity divided the Linux landscape.

Gnome foundation leaders, here is your chance to strut your stuff by making a better desktop, also usable as a desktop, or face impeachment.

Re:Death to "Unity"

[Clsid]

They didn't divide anything that wasn't already divided. If anything, even if they were valid reasons, GNOME divided the Linux landscape. Unity is just more of the same story, only in this case their goal is Linux for the masses so it is a fair goal. Me? I'm perfectly happy with Gentoo or Slackware, especially the latter because of its true simplicity. But let the noobs have their distro and that is called Ubuntu.

Re:Death to "Unity"

[Anonymous Coward]

unity... all the hate is justified.
I jumped to lubuntu and use it daily. easy to install, configure, and use. Done. Been a linux head since 97.

Re:Death to "Unity"

[Clsid]

I honestly don't know how you deal with Ubuntu being a power user.

Why the anti-Unity hate?

[INowRegretThesePosts]

The biggest value for Ubuntu/Canonical is the user base. Make them angry to loose both them and your value.

Among my friends, they generally like or at least tolerate Unity. In the Ubuntu Software Center, the most recent (later than March 2012) reviews average 4 star.
I, personally, like it very much. It saves screen real-state and:
1) Provides direct buttons for all the programs I commonly use
2) For other programs, I just hit Super and type the first letters of the program name

It is perfectly convenient.

I think the Slashdot anti-Unity hate is a remnant of the early days of Unity, when it was allegedly not baked enough.