Canonical Finally Lets Users Move The Unity Launcher To Bottom In Ubuntu 16.04 (softpedia.com)

prisoninmate writes from an article on Softpedia: It is official, the packages needed to move the Unity Launcher of Ubuntu Linux to the bottom of the screen have finally landed in the main repositories of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system, due for release on April 21, 2016. Softpedia reported that Ubuntu users might be able to move the Unity7 Launcher at the bottom edge as a rumor in February -- but now they confirm it finally landed for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. It is not known if Canonical will implement a visual setting in the Apperance/Behaviour panel for users to easily switch between having the Unity Launcher on the left of at the bottom of the screen for the final release of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, but you can do it by running a simple command.

Comments

and nothing of value was gained

[cellocgw]

While I fully agree that all gui elements should be movable, I really don't get why anyone still thinks that menu/task bars should be on the bottom. Every laptop or desktop monitor since like forever has a cinema aspect ratio, so vertical pixels are at a premium. Why waste them on stuff outside the active window? I cringe every time someone decides to present a document in some meeting, leaving the taskbar at the bottom (and the app's ribbon visible at the top), with room for maybe a paragraph at a time visible.

Just because teh first time you saw a Windows taskbar it was on the bottom is no reason to think it makes any sense to leave it there.

Xfce

[duckintheface]

The fact that such a trivial customization is newsworthy tells you just how bad Unity is. There is nothing special about having a user defined layout of the desktop. Many other distros have provided such user freedom and Ubuntu did too in the past. But now the default desktop is Unity which goes out of it's way to take away user choice in the name of "unifying" the desktop between laptops and phones. Yes, you will have the same desktop and it will be crippled everywhere.

I like Ubuntu as an operating system. It's stable (if you use the LTS version), has the best and fastest security updates and is the Linux OS with the best hardware compatibility. But I can't tolerate Unity. So when I install Ubuntu, the first change I make is to go to the Ubuntu Software Center and search for xfce4 (the current xfce desktop) and install "Meta-package for the Xfce Lightweight Desktop Environment". This will let you choose which desktop you want each time you log on. You can use Unity where that is your preference and switch to Xfce when you want.

Xfce lets you define the exact size and positions of all panels. You can have docking panels on the sides, top, bottom.... wherever you want. But the best thing about Xfce is that it lets you create desktop launchers of your own. Just right click on the desktop, choose application launcher, url link, or file manager folder. And these launchers can be dragged to the panels you have created and docked there. Gnome used to let you do that, but no more. As far as I can determine, Xfce is the only desktop that empowers the user in such a useful way.

Re:news for nerds

[unrtst]

There's always a trade-off that Linux folks (and UI designers in general) debate -- more customizability and options (which often introduce more opportunities for things to break) vs. streamlining and less customizability.

No. Fuck that. That is not the case for the vast majority of these types of issues.

In the majority of cases, the options were previously there, and they options still exist within the codebase, but they have removed the ability to toggle that option via a friendly configuration panel, and may go so far as to bury it further or go to extra lengths to make it difficult to re-enable. If you have to use gconf-editor, gsettings commands, chrome://flags, about:flags, about:config, gpedit.msc, opera:config, etc etc etc... then, IMO, they're doing it wrong - it's awkward, unorganized, and just a shitty way to abandon the responsibility of laying out configuration screens nicely. Some examples:

* window menu, minimize, maximize, close buttons should be easily positionable on the title bar. If they can be moved elsewhere, it should be easy to move them back and put them in any order on either side in any mix of left/right/etc.
* application menu (the typical File, Edit, ... Help lists) should be their own menu bar. if they can be moved elsewhere or are by default (ex. to global menu bar, or integrated into the application title bar), it should be easy to move them back. It should also be easy to re-arrange them or add/remove items, but that's fine being an advanced option.
* window borders should be theme-able, at least with respect to their size (from 0 to N pixels wide). Some desktop themese in the paste have had zero or 1 pixel wide side borders which makes it impossible or very difficult to grab them and resize the window. If that's what someone wants, that's fine, but leave the option to make them larger - it's almost always within the codebase already!
* docks / start menus / what-have-you should be easy to move to any edge, span the width or resize and float left, right, or center, autohide, etc etc etc. All the things they were able to do over a decade ago by simply dragging and dropping things. If it's so difficult to allow that, then there is something wrong.

These sorts of changes don't just make things difficult, they make things completely unacceptable for some very well established workflows. For me, the global menu debacle forced my hand. I've used focus follows mouse (no autoraise) for nearly 2 decades. I'm not budging on that. They have since compromised, but that was also a dumb move IMO. Just add an easy option to stick it back on its own bar and everyone would be happy (something like settings -> appearance -> window manager -> application menu placement). Why fight against your users on options that take zero additional code (they already have to have code to account for a variable number of menu bars and variable layout of said bars).