[HN Gopher] Ubuntu Unity desktop back from the dead after severa...
___________________________________________________________________
Ubuntu Unity desktop back from the dead after several years' hiatus
Author : samizdis
Score : 200 points
Date : 2022-07-02 07:45 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| I used to dislike Unity when it came out. I thought it's weird
| with the global menu, close button in the top-left corner and
| other ideas. However, after using macOS for a longer period of
| time, I got used to these ideas and actually prefer them
| nowadays. After that Unity became one of my favorite desktop
| environments.
| knorker wrote:
| The fact that unity just seemed like "let's cargo cult macos"
| while they were bragging about how awesome they were
| ("objectively the best" was thrown around) was a real turn off
| for me.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| Hey if it worked for RedHat and Pottering it's gonna work for
| Ubuntu.
| lproven wrote:
| They did a macOS ripoff directly because Microsoft was
| threatening to sue everyone doing Win95 ripoffs: https://www.
| theregister.com/2006/11/20/microsoft_claims_linu...
| thibran wrote:
| Canonical had at some point two variants of Unity, the regulate
| one (slow) and a qml based one (super snappy). I'm still sad that
| they did not stick with the qml version. GNOME nowerdays is fine,
| but for years it was slow and lacking compared to what we already
| had with qml Unity.
| butokai wrote:
| There's another comment below that mentions Unity 8, which has
| been forked and is being maintained as a mobile shell. Is that
| the same QML Unity you're mentioning? I remember they were
| going for some kind of convergence.
| lproven wrote:
| No.
|
| The Qt-based Unity was called Unity2D.
| https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity2D
|
| It was dropped when LLVMpipe rendering made OpenGL fast
| enough to be usable on machines without 3D hardware:
|
| https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE2MTQ
| Shadonototra wrote:
| Some day i'll sit down and port unity to arch linux, but damn i
| got too much stuff to do already..
| lproven wrote:
| It was done: https://github.com/chenxiaolong/Unity-for-Arch
|
| I have not tried it, but Rudra Saraswat's new Unity-like
| desktop, UnityX, is also available in an Arch version:
| https://9to5linux.com/you-can-now-install-the-unityx-desktop...
| Shadonototra wrote:
| Yeap i saw that one, maybe that could be a good starting
| point
|
| As for UnityX, i don't think starting from scratch is wise
| sph wrote:
| "This new release doesn't come from Canonical: it's from Linux
| wunderkind Rudra Saraswat", a 12 years old Linux enthusiast from
| Bengaluru, India.
|
| https://wiki.ubuntu.com/rs2009
|
| Incredible stuff, love to see it.
| fareesh wrote:
| I am 12 and what is this
| bmacho wrote:
| I used Ubuntu Unity for a while when I realized, such a strange
| feeling: yeah, I seeked for, downloaded, trusted, and I am very
| satisfied with the work of a ~12 yo kid.
|
| Also I can recommend Ubuntu Unity. It's not that different from
| gnome, but works great.
| lproven wrote:
| [Article author here]
|
| He does amazing work. I did a little profile piece on him a few
| months ago:
| https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/04/rudra_sarsawat_ubuntu...
| signal11 wrote:
| When you wrote wunderkind, I really didn't think you meant it
| literally!
|
| The work is interesting enough coming from _anyone_ , but
| that little detail makes it more impressive.
| lproven wrote:
| I entirely agree.
|
| His handle on the Ubuntu Discourse is rs2009.
|
| I believe that this is because he was _born_ in 2009. When
| Unity debuted, he was _2_.
|
| As an Ubuntu user since 2004 and a Linux user since 1996, I
| find it hard to express how ancient this makes me feel. :-/
|
| But yes, he is a great kid, super smart, and I hope his
| enthusiasm lasts and does not burn out.
| delijati wrote:
| i this you linked to the wrong unity8 ... unityx seams to be
| something different ... https://lomiri.com/ is the renamed
| unity8 that is used in the ubuntu touch phones now ubports
| phones
| lproven wrote:
| [?]
|
| I did not link to Unity8 at all in my article.
|
| The article is about Rudra Saraswat, so I linked to Rudra's
| project, UnityX. As far as I know, he isn't working on
| Ubuntu Touch at all.
| noobermin wrote:
| This young fellow is why computing should be accessible
| everywhere. How many more wunderkinds are we missing out on
| and failing who may be wallowing in poverty or suffering
| elsewhere in the world?
| [deleted]
| possiblelion wrote:
| Damn, what kid! To be fair - having time and access to computer
| between the ages of 9-15 is something that I have come to
| appreciate in my life as well. Even if I didn't understand
| everything at the time, playing with open-source software,
| Linux, jailbreaking iDevices etc has definitely formed who I am
| today.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Parallels with Blake Ross [0] and Arfa Karim [1] there.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_Ross#Mozilla_and_Firefox
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arfa_Karim
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| I just read Arfa Karim's wiki page. It was so sad to read
| such a talent passed away so soon :(
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Interestingly - Canonical dumped Unity in 2017, Rudra would
| have been 7 years old then.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Any videos of UnityX in action? Couldn't find anything good
| oldjavacoder wrote:
| Unity was OK once the global menu was disabled. Today I use KDE.
| It lets me configure it the way I want.
| correct-opinion wrote:
| I have tried and still use different DEs, but for some time now
| Windows 10 DE is my favourite one. I think all others should just
| copy it, no need to reinvent the wheel.
| hu3 wrote:
| Compared to Windows 10, the Windows 11 DE is such a regression
| imo.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Anything specifically you like about it? Tiling seems really
| limited, virtual desktops could still need more work, the
| search I have basically given up on (though "everything" is a
| kinda nice app for part of that), volume mixer widget is also
| very limited (e.g. see ear trumpet as an alternative), file
| manager still does not have tabs, network settings are
| convoluted (manual eduroam setup anyone?),...
|
| Honestly, whenever I use windows it feels "okay" but I could
| not point at anything to say "oh, neat".
| htkibar wrote:
| I remember quitting Ubuntu because they dropped unity - hah.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| To provide some historic context: Unity was released in times
| when there was this "Netbook" trend, started by Asus EeePC with
| 7" display, followed by a lot of other cheap Netbooks in the
| 7"-10" display category. Additionally, Canonical pushed to become
| a mobile/smartphone OS vendor. These constrained display sizes
| were some of the main factors in the UX design of Unity. Fast
| forward to today, Netbooks were a short-lived hype to be replaced
| with Ultrabooks (13" and up), and Canonical failed to become a
| mobile phone OS vendor and went back to Gnome as a default DE.
| okasaki wrote:
| Should be noted that compared to Unity, GNOME 3 is an even more
| extreme variant of the phone/netbook UI.
| jdub wrote:
| That was never the objective, nor the result. It's just an
| ill-informed meme.
| okasaki wrote:
| I don't know which idea is worse,
|
| (1) that they forced desktop users on a phone UI
| intentionally
|
| (2) or that they weren't trying to make a phone UI but
| somehow ended up with the gross garbage that is GNOME 3+
| anyway.
|
| Either way GNOME 3+ stinks.
|
| Even the GNOME developers had to concede and offer the
| alternative GNOME flashback
| (https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeFlashback), which
| looks like GNOME 2 (but not customizable). Given how
| intransigent they are usually, the push-back must have been
| enormous.
| addicted wrote:
| Lol, because Linux users are the biggest whiners on the
| planet.
|
| Almost no one appreciated Unity when it was around.
|
| All this nostalgia for it is just that.
|
| If Ubuntu switched to Unity tomorrow people would just
| start whining like mad about it.
|
| I bet Gnome Fladhback doesn't even get 1% of the usage of
| actual Gnome.
| okasaki wrote:
| Unity wasn't appreciated because it wasn't better than
| what it was replacing (GNOME 2). Though at least it had a
| sort of window list you could use to quickly switch
| windows with a mouse. You know - the device people use on
| desktop PCs.
|
| Nothing to do with whiners. Although I'm sure the world
| feels like it's full of whiners if you work on UIs at Red
| Hat. As is often the case though, that feeling is more a
| reflection of your situation than objective reality.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| I was using Ubuntu but when Unity got dropped I went back
| to Windows... Now I'm on Fedora 36 with KDE, and :'( my
| new work laptop has to be Windows :'( so sad.
| ehvatum wrote:
| > Lol, because Linux users are the biggest whiners on the
| planet.
|
| Gnome is even more of a loser on FreeBSD.
| thriftwy wrote:
| I'm wondering why more people are not using KDE. It is a
| honest desktop environment which does not try to pretend
| phone/netbook or parrot Mac OS X.
|
| Many of KDE apps are the best in a given category. Konsole
| certainly is.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| I used Gnome for a very long time, switched to KDE and
| switched back. Recently I decided to retry KDE after
| hearing good things about Plasma, and I can say that it
| wasn't hyperbole. The desktop feels light and snappy, the
| settings have been cleaned up and organized while retaining
| the flexibility/configurability. It may not be as "clean"
| as Gnome out of the box, but it can be customized a whole
| lot more to how you want your desktop to be.
| Yizahi wrote:
| Not many distros ship KDE as a main and first class DE. On
| the ones which allows KDE during install (meaning it was at
| least somehow tested, probably), in my anecdotal experience
| KDE 5 often run horribly with severe visual bugs. AND then
| community says this "why did you pick distroname+KDE, it is
| cutting edge, go pick Mate/Gnome/Cinnamon/XFCE". And both
| of these things together are rather frustrating.
| Lio wrote:
| I think I'm in a minority here but I prefer Gnome to KDE
| because it feels like it takes more inspiration from macOS
| than from Windows.
|
| Different strokes for different folks but I don't enjoy the
| OS/2, Windows, KDE way of doing things.
|
| I'm thankful we have choices.
| herbst wrote:
| I am in the same boat. Windows 95 like desktops are
| simply not the most optimal way to work anymore.
|
| The reason I like gnome most is because it is so out of
| the way. I am enjoying maximal screen estate while
| switching apps is just as easy as it is supposed to be.
|
| When gnome shell was new some things were buggy,
| especially on low power machines, but that changed really
| quick. I can't think of a single issue.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I use some KDE apps (Konsole, Kdiff3, etc.) even when using
| a non-KDE desktop such as Pop Shell or Cinnamon.
|
| At least on Debian-based distros, those KDE apps just
| require a lot of additional packages.
| worble wrote:
| I'm basically on KDE for one reason, and that reason is
| dolphin. No other file manager even comes close in my
| opinion.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| > Many of KDE apps are the best in a given category.
| Konsole certainly is.
|
| Have you tried Terminator?
| thriftwy wrote:
| No, but
|
| > Terminator on Mac OS X showing live search highlighting
| and UTF-8
|
| Looks like something working around deficiences in Mac OS
| X's terminal app which just aren't there in modern X11
| terms.
|
| Judging from its feature highlights, the only one I did
| not see in Konsole is horizontal scrolling.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Considering how keyboard-driven Gnome Shell is this is a
| terrible take...
| amelius wrote:
| There is also Ubuntu Touch for tablets etc., which was started
| by Canonical, but then dropped because of lack of interest.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Touch
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| That Canonical designed Unity to be convergent (functional to
| both mobile and desktop) doesn't mean it wasn't a superb
| desktop environment.
| brnt wrote:
| The make or break moment for Unity was Canonicals failed crowd-
| source campaign for their phone. Work on Unity 8 was underway
| and would have succeeded Unity 7, and would have been the DE
| for both their phone and desktop.
|
| With the end of the campaign, it seems like all their desktop
| efforts ended too, and they shifted focus to servers, snap,
| snap-stores.
| bregma wrote:
| This is nowhere near the historical truth. The Ubuntu Edge
| (2013) had no effect on the Unity project or on the OS
| convergence project. Those were cancelled several years
| (2017) after the Ubuntu Edge as a result of a business
| decision to make the company more profitable for investors.
| There is zero money in desktop, and Canonical continues
| supporting Ubuntu only as enabling technology for their
| server and IoT product lines.
| asoneth wrote:
| > The Ubuntu Edge (2013) had no effect on the Unity project
| or on the OS convergence project.
|
| The failure of Ubuntu Edge to meet its lofty ($32M)
| crowdfunding target did not immediately result in Canonical
| abandoning their convergence aspirations. But it was part
| of a broader trend of failed attempts to monetize mobile
| and desktop users. Had more those attempts been
| sufficiently successful I doubt they would have abandoned
| OS convergence.
| brnt wrote:
| Nowhere near you say? Mir and Unity 8 dev were put on the
| back burner not long after the Edge campaign. Remeber that
| no release with them was ever made. Formally terminating
| dev work a few years later seems to fit in very well: there
| suddenly was no need for Mir, and the shift in focus to the
| server fits well with dropping a custom DE.
| ttctciyf wrote:
| IMO, the lasting stability of a UI is a far greater factor in
| long-term user acceptance, satisfaction and facility than almost
| any breaking "improvements" that are imposed by developers - c.f.
| Firefox for a negative example.
|
| So, if you want to (re-)introduce a new desktop paradigm, give
| users a simple mechanism to choose to disagree.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > any breaking "improvements" that are imposed by developers -
| c.f. Firefox for a negative example.
|
| Huh? Firefox hasn't released any improvements since 3.6 about a
| decade ago; I'm pretty sure they're dead.
| shapefrog wrote:
| Must have come back for the Year of Linux
| heurisko wrote:
| I loved/love Unity and kept on installing it on my desktops. It's
| now running on 22.04.
|
| Don't see why it needs to be changed. There are so many parts
| that feel a lot of thought has been spent on them.
| KronisLV wrote:
| Unity just felt consistent, usable and boring - all qualities
| that I appreciate in a desktop environment, which is why some of
| my devices still use XFCE and there's almost nothing that I find
| lacking in that regard.
|
| Now, GNOME isn't necessarily bad either but it was still sad that
| Canonical moved on from developing Unity because it did set
| Ubuntu apart and by the time of the official migration away from
| it, was actually pretty stable and solid.
|
| Of course, the financial aspects of developing their own DE when
| they could just be contributing to GNOME instead also need to be
| taken into consideration.
| bmacho wrote:
| > boring
|
| I always found it neat, especially with the ubuntu colors and
| fonts. Aesthetically stimulating, really.
| akagusu wrote:
| As a company it made sense to develop their own desktop
| experience instead of relying on the default experience
| provided by Gnome, since the majority of developers in control
| of Gnome are Redhat employee or ex-employee or affiliated to
| Redhat in some way, and Redhat is their main competitor.
| simion314 wrote:
| I remember that at one point Canonical had done real user
| testing, bringing people to use stuff and watching them
| struggling. Big difference vs the other DE that they use now
| where some big ego dude instinct determines what is removed or
| changed for the sake of brand identity or futuristic design.
| kkfx wrote:
| Probably you refer to the "forced" passage to Unity-Qt, who
| was not mature at that time, witch means buggy and laggy.
|
| BUT such move was not bad, was needed because too much people
| do not want to evolve, keeping on menus-based systems who
| start to age, without this move GNU/Linux would probably lost
| many new users who want modern desktops...
|
| Unfortunately modern desktops are still crappy floating WM
| with a completely lost design underneath but that's another
| story...
| red_admiral wrote:
| Was that user testing on new users, or experienced ones?
| There's a big difference between how to make the onboarding
| as easy as possible for someone who's never used your system
| before, vs making it efficient to use for power users. The
| former gets you Ribbon UI and similar - which is really
| really good at that - but it means that people like me get
| annoyed when something they have to do 50 times a day now
| takes 3 clicks instead of one. I can understand that I'm on
| the losing end of a tradeoff that's a global improvement, but
| I still get annoyed.
|
| When you're building bazaars and not cathedrals though,
| there's no good reason why everyone should be using the same
| UI. Maybe I'm part of a 5% or less of the population who
| wants the title bar of the active window and only that to be
| my accent color, but the solution here is to just let me
| configure that. And I don't mean in the sense of "I can spend
| a summer learning and editing the source code and build a
| custom distro that looks the way I want", I mean that I
| remember the old days where this was either a switch, or the
| default, or a couple of lines in a config file. I gave up on
| GNOME when everything became "sure, you can do a term project
| on configuring the CSS files" if you really don't like THE
| ONE true design choice.
| Avamander wrote:
| Unity had a lot of features for power users as well (good
| default shortcuts for ex.) and the global menu was a
| godsend on smaller screens.
|
| So I wouldn't say it's really an either-or scenario, just
| that tastes differ.
| simion314 wrote:
| I think there wee people that used computers before, user
| testing will usually identify situation you describe where
| doing a task takes too many clicks.
|
| My issue is with big ego people, they use the excuse of
| casual user to impose their views, I have a KDE example too
| (so GNOME users can stop downvoting this without any
| comment explaining why) , on KDE4 the big ego dude added a
| thing in the corner, "the cashew". the users asked for an
| option to hide the ugly thing but the dude refused to add
| an option, he refused patches,.
|
| Now some people will say that we the users do not
| understand that adding options is adding complexity but
| this is not the case here and in the end KDE removed it
| https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/10/kde-kills-desktop-
| toolbo... probably after the big ego dude left. This is not
| the only KDE example, t was the same with scrolling on some
| widgets, options to disable it was refused by same dude. No
| user testing, no group of people thinking about it, just
| one big ego person thinking that because he read half of a
| book he is a big visionary.
| reidrac wrote:
| If I recall correctly, both GNOME and Unity shared rejection
| from a number of users (I don't know if that was large group or
| just very noisy), and an approach to _community management_
| that was basically _if you don 't like, go away_.
|
| In the early days, Unity was more usable than GNOME (could be
| my hardware, perhaps; apparently my nvidia drivers were buggy
| and I was told to change GPU), but back then Mark Shuttleworth
| wasn't the best PR person always starting flames on his blog.
|
| At the end I got tired of the almost constant drama and gave up
| the _new desktop_ trend and settled on XFCE (and I couldn 't be
| happier).
| kkfx wrote:
| You memory is correct and incorrect at the same time: early
| Unity was rejected by many because too much rigid (like you
| can't move the launcher bar or the top bar) and "too alien"
| because at that time people was thinking in category-based
| menus not dashes and fear to loose the "overview ability" of
| menus. Than Unity mature a bit and such criticism disappear.
|
| In the end most power users at that time already have
| switched to side docks observing that they fit better modern
| 16:10 and then 16:9 screens instead of the old 4:3. Also
| Android at that time offer a substantially identical
| graphical concept with a dash-like menu, a fixed launcher bar
| on the shortest side of the screen witch happen to be the
| bottom one on mobile, have a small fixed top bar etc.
|
| Unity offer _innovation_ and after much reticence people
| embrace it without even notice. Windows have copied Kde4
| menus, most have copied Android and Unity desktop.
|
| Gnome criticism are a far older things about absurdity like
| nautilus spatial view the RH management want against nobody,
| the new rush was for GTk3 and the choice of going web-tech,
| against vala crap etc after with Gnome SHell criticism add to
| criticisms because Gnome SHell essentially copy Unity look &
| feel suffering from a secondary narcissistic design that put
| the desktop at the center of the world instead as a silent
| servant who appear only when needed.
|
| At a certain point Canonical decide that people are too
| reactionary and so there is no interest in innovate desktop
| anymore, it's time to make money and they loose much on the
| mobile finally find a room in IoT and server support.
|
| Nowadays desktops are left at that evolution point, with no
| further advancing for generic users, while power users have
| rediscovered past ideas like tiling WM and document-centric
| UIs. Generic users desktop is pushed to be a modern WebVM
| improperly named browser for legacy reasons, power users goes
| deep in the classic glorious and far more advanced past than
| today dark middle age of tech. Surely some choose XFCE,
| Fluxbox etc simply because they are born with such WM concept
| in the '90s/early '00 and do not want to move from that era,
| as many still want '60s cars instead of something else more
| older or more modern :-)
| simion314 wrote:
| >If I recall correctly, both GNOME and Unity shared rejection
| from a number of users
|
| Of course GNOME fanboys complained that someone dared to
| replace their precious DE with a nicer Qt based one instead
| of kissing the ass of giant ego GNOME designers. Even when
| Ubuntu got back to GNOME Canonical listen to the users and
| put features back in on Ubuntu.
| ginko wrote:
| Actually, I think most Gnome 2 refugees eventually settles
| with XFCE or Mate. I did at least.
|
| ..wonder what I'll do after the Gnome team kills XFCE by
| enforcing Wayland for GTK.
| simion314 wrote:
| I am not sure if most, but there were a lot of happy
| Unity users , but the DE got of lot of hate , much more
| hate then other GNOME forks or alternatives, Probably
| Ubuntu/Canonical haters just found another project to
| attack and seen it as Canonical inventing something new
| instead of letting RedHat inventing shit and kissing TH
| ass and follow them.
| reidrac wrote:
| I profoundly dislike all that "hater" rhetoric. Sure,
| there will always be trolls, but by tagging any
| dissenting opinion as "Ubuntu/Canonical haters" I feel
| like there's a lost opportunity to improve.
|
| You can't please everybody, but both Unity an GNOME shell
| had some very bad ideas, and it took too long to correct
| course (and in some cases it didn't happen). I believe
| some of the criticism came from people that really loved
| those DE, and that's why they were passionate about it.
|
| When people don't care, they just use something else.
| simion314 wrote:
| Come one, Arch users complaining that Ubuntu was not
| using SystemD was not honest, the Arch users were not
| using Ubuntu or Upstart to have a clue what they are
| talking about. And related with SystemD debate, you have
| alot of people that are not system admins or can't write
| a C program or a good bash scrip[t having an opinion
| because they read a blog post , I wish we all can't
| determine when we have no idea and just abstain. So about
| SystemD , I have no idea if is better or worse, my
| experience with init systems is almost zero so I should
| shut up.
|
| There were a lot of hather, sure there were some valid
| criticism but you can't invalidate the fact they were
| haters, and if we would want to waste our time we could
| read those old topics and find them but we have better
| things to do.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I really disliked Unity, and hated the fact that
| Canonical was pushing it down my throat.
|
| IIRC I used Mate as a temporary solution, and happily
| jumped to Cinnamon when it came out.
|
| Nowadays I use Pop Shell because (at least when I
| switched) it seemed to offer better widgets for
| controlling audio, etc. on my System76 machine.
| simion314 wrote:
| >I really disliked Unity, and hated the fact that
| Canonical was pushing it down my throat.
|
| But we KDE users should we hate Canonical that they were
| pushing GNOME? I did not hated them for this though I am
| puzzled why not create Unity based on KDE libraries
| (probably there were many reasons some including Qt and
| C++ are ugly)
| threatripper wrote:
| > If I recall correctly, both GNOME and Unity shared
| rejection from a number of users (I don't know if that was
| large group or just very noisy)
|
| The GNOME redesign. The old 2D GNOME was OK. It was
| functional, stable and pretty (for someone who thinks that
| Windows 3.11 style is a good fit for a work environment).
| Then the old software was abandoned and the update was pushed
| onto users.
|
| KDE also had a transition disaster. That time was not a good
| time for Linux on the Desktop.
| rob74 wrote:
| Has there ever been a good time for Linux on the desktop?
| I'm using Linux (Kubuntu) daily, and it works most of the
| time, but I still see some issues from time to time (multi-
| monitor strangeness, windows suddenly appearing without
| frames because kwin crashed, desktop wallpapers not being
| shown or being shown incorrectly etc.).
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Yes for someone like yourself who is comfortable with a
| computer from 2003-2022.
|
| The challenge is that Linux isn't a singular product its
| a source compatible ecosystem of parts. There has always
| existed a collection of excellent parts one could use to
| make an excellent experience. However as a user you
| probably don't want to build your own distro so you are
| going to be relying on someone else's collection and
| projects come and go and differ substantially in quality
| both between projects and over time.
|
| For instance Ubuntu has basically from my perspective
| gone to hell.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| I would have disagreed with you except atleast once a day
| (usually more), my monitors go blank and once the display
| is back after few seconds, all the windows get shoved to
| the smaller monitor on the right, all resized to the
| monitor size. I move the windows again one by one to the
| main monitor, resize them to how they were and curse
| NVIDIA while praying that this doesn't happen again too
| soon. Even changed from Pop! desktop to KDE which didn't
| help (that's why my unsubstantiated choice is to curse
| NVIDIA instead of the DE). Cherry on top if I'm connected
| to the work machine over Citrix so I have some more
| windows to resize and reposition over there too.
|
| Close to two decades of using Linux desktop on a daily
| basis and I still have to deal with these issues. As
| someone who doesn't have any intention to leave Linux due
| to these issues, I don't think there EVER will be a 100%
| rock-solid time for Linux desktop. Wayland will stabilize
| and then people will point out issues with it, come-up
| with another component and we will wait for that to
| stabilize - and on and on, forever.
|
| Ironically, such issues rarely happened, if ever, when I
| was using Ubuntu Dapper Drake.
| kkfx wrote:
| I see this happening on few low-end machines (Intel core
| i3 integrated graphics and Celeron integrated one), not
| know the cause though...
| noisy_boy wrote:
| I have a Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 2 with i7 processor and
| NVIDIA Max-Q graphics so I think the issues common on
| low-end machines are unlikely to apply in this case.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >my monitors go blank and once the display is back after
| few seconds,
|
| Are you sure you aren't having power issues? I had
| similar problems I think I fixed with randr, but a UPS
| for your monitors might be a better choice. Never daily
| though, more storm based or once every few months.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| That is an interesting point - though no other devices
| are affected so it is unlikely that this is related to
| power.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I'm only sharing my experience, but the reason I figured
| out it was a power thing was in the summer my AC would
| stop for a second too. I never noticed any problems with
| anything else in the winter.
| majewsky wrote:
| Isn't that just how all desktop OSes are? It works most
| of the time, and then sometimes you run into things that
| are bafflingly broken.
|
| For me, it's the Windows desktop at work. I'm accustomed
| to Windows spawning windows fully or partially out of
| bounds, though at least that's something that you can fix
| with the "Move" option from the Ctrl+Space menu. But for
| a few weeks now, there seems to be a bug where the
| affected window just stops being rendered entirely. It's
| in the taskbar, I can start Ctrl+Space "Move" and see the
| movement cursor, but there's nothing there. I don't know
| what triggers it yet.
|
| Meanwhile, my Linux desktop has no problems at all.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Having made a sibling comment lamenting issues with my
| Linux desktop, I have to sort of agree with you. Sort of
| because, I have seen issues like what you mentioned on
| Windows in the past, but not that often. I use Linux
| desktop not only on principle but also because of open
| source and the flexibility is unparalleled, but I do feel
| like things break more often than they do on Windows
| (maybe due to the amount of flexibility and therefore the
| use cases/scenarios it has to deal with).
|
| Having said that, Pop!_OS was also problem free for me
| for quite a while until the desktop blanking issue
| started happening - right at the time of NVIDIA driver
| upgrade. Linus was right shitting on them - my next
| laptop would not be using NVIDIA for sure.
| christophilus wrote:
| Yes. I had easily as many issues with Windows and OSX
| when each was my d at driver. I don't really have
| anything bad to say about Fedora + Gnome except that
| occasionally, my 5k thunderbolt monitor is finicky when
| waking from sleep. It's a simple enough fix, but it's
| still a minor inconvenience maybe once a month.
|
| Linux package management alone puts it ahead of both
| Windows and OSX in my book.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| The biggest deal was that you couldn't have old and new and
| many distros with a rapid release cycle adopted new
| versions as soon as they became available.
|
| For instance KDE 4.0 which wasn't really ready came out 11
| January 2008. Fedora 9 came out in May.
|
| Had simply choosing 3 or 4 beta as it might accurately have
| been called been possible at login I think there would have
| been zero issues. 4.0 wasn't actively broken but it lacked
| polish and it was missing features from 3.x that hasn't
| been implemented yet.
| dm319 wrote:
| That period I stopped recommending linux to friends as I
| felt burned by the experience of losing gnome 2. I remember
| going from ubuntu 10.04 beyond support, to xfce, gnome
| fallback, gnome flashback, linux mint cinnamon, crunchbang
| (stayed a while), linux mint mate then ubuntuMate, where
| I've been for several years now.
|
| I'd say UbuntuMATE is functional, boring and pretty, and
| frankly should be the modern standard for a work
| environment linux.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I much prefer modern GNOME and KDE to their older
| counterparts. I believe modern DEs definitely lack a
| certain polish, but the old, clunky late-00s UI is
| incredibly unappealing.
|
| I can see why existing Linux users may have resisted the
| change but I wouldn't have even tried Ubuntu long enoughto
| switch to Linux had they stuck with the old system.
|
| Windows 3.11 is a terrible fit for productivity,
| Win95/98/2000 were immensely better. The Windows usability
| only improved until mscursed themselves with Windows 8
| (with the exception of Vista which was released before it
| was done and was almost as buggy as modern Linux, though
| SP1 fixed most of that).
| pxc wrote:
| > KDE also had a transition disaster. That time was not a
| good time for Linux on the Desktop.
|
| KDE's transition disaster came a bit earlier, with the
| release of KDE 4.0 in 2008. By the time GNOME 3 came out in
| 2011, KDE 4.x had seen 6 or 7 feature releases, and had
| (imo) largely recovered from all the rewrites in terms of
| feature parity. I was pretty happy on KDE in 2011.
| Twirrim wrote:
| I didn't hate Unity, but it had a bug (for me, and clearly a
| bunch of others based on the launchpad bug traffic for the
| bug I filed) that persisted for the entire time Canonical
| owned it, that meant I couldn't use it.
|
| I could repeat it very easily, just start the application
| using alt+f2 and use the keyboard to launch it (terminal,
| chrome, whatever). When triggered a window wouldn't be
| accessible over alt-tab. Was running, couldn't alt-tab to it.
| As someone that uses the keyboard a lot for navigation, it
| was a show-stopper. I have to be able to alt-tab between
| windows.
|
| Eventually filed in 2012,
| https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/951929
| "Fix Released" but you know, still people reporting it later
| on in 16.04
|
| In fact, even now, the number of "confirmed" bugs with long
| life on them on Launchpad is particularly disturbing,
| considering how many of them are fairly fundamentally
| impacting.
|
| Like, say, https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/1126221.
| Filed 2013 _by an at-the-time Canonical employee_ , confirmed
| in 14.xx and then 16.xx. If you had multiple displays, put a
| window on one and then disabled it, windows on the other
| screen get essentially stuck, can't be alt+tab'd to or
| anything.
|
| Or
| https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/1619563,
| hey I know, let's have two actions be on alt+tab. Switch
| windows, and close window! What could go wrong...
|
| or
| https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/49579,
| reported _2006_ , still reported 16 years later. If you have
| menus like the Application open, the timed screen lock won't
| kick in.
|
| Over and over and over, what could have been a really good
| desktop experience was crippled by stubbornly ignoring the
| bugs filed against it (at least, I assume ignoring because
| the number of times engineers would actually comment on the
| tickets seemed to be few and far between). Canonical
| repeatedly shot themselves in the foot by not nailing the
| basics: the environment has to work.
| waingake wrote:
| The amount of hate Unity would get on this website... Hackers
| gonna hate it seems. It's a shame that Canonical listened.
|
| On a positive note I'm very impressed that the reboot is being
| lead by a such a young developer. Thank you!
| heurisko wrote:
| Does this require a PPA? As the Unity version in the main
| repositories is still 5.5.
|
| https://packages.ubuntu.com/jammy/unity
| nothatscool wrote:
| Unity's global menu system was wonderful and once getting used to
| how well it used vertical space switching to gnome was like going
| back 10 years. Seeing multiple empty bars across the screen makes
| it completely unusable to me not to mention their need to replace
| simple menus with seemingly random icons scattered everywhere.
| I'm using kde plasma now with a global menu set up. It's good but
| isn't as hassle free as Unity was.
|
| I'm really sad that canonical abandoned Unity. It was so easy to
| use and was really easy to recommend to people. I think it was a
| case of an extremely loud minority who weren't even using it that
| contributed to canonical abandoning it.
| kijin wrote:
| I wasn't a fan of Unity when Canonical was pushing it, but I
| totally agree that it was better than the GNOME Shell version
| we're left with nowadays.
|
| On the other hand, that impression might be because the default
| GNOME apps back then had much more usable menus packed with
| features. Now it doesn't really matter whether your menu bar is
| global or not, because all those menu items are being killed
| anyway. Otherwise the multiple empty bars you see wouldn't have
| been as empty as they are.
| longstation wrote:
| I am same there (using KDE Plasma with global menu). Recently,
| with VSCode's menu on title bar, it seems to have started a
| trend doing so. For example, JetBrain's IDEs are also designed
| that way. I found the term for that, it's called LIM (locally
| integrated menu). Now, Unity has done that many years ago. If I
| remember correctly, the behavior was: when maximized, it
| behaves like a global menu; when not, it's a LIM.
|
| Fortunately, there's a PR for implementing such things in KDE
| Plasma. Here is the discussion [1]. Right now, you can use it,
| but it probably won't be merged into the main branch soon.
|
| PR: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/breeze/-/merge_requests/126
|
| There's also a KDE theme the PR draws inspiration on (which you
| can use for KDE now): https://github.com/Zren/material-
| decoration
| mikewhy wrote:
| This seems like a weird half-step between "headerbars" /
| client side decorations / hamburger menus. KDE Maui is going
| that direction: https://mauikit.org/apps/
|
| Sadly it just seems to be more like a custom window
| decoration that only does shadows (no actual title bar) and
| regular KDE headers, no actual window controls / CSD.
| BirAdam wrote:
| I felt much the same way. The global menu also fixed the issue
| of people shoving menus into hamburgers that I hate. Unity
| additionally had their search feature that doubled as a run box
| which was awesome. Tap meta and type the application name and
| hit enter. Unity really maximalized productivity in my opinion.
| It's a shame that Canoncial abandoned it, but being open source
| the community seems to have quietly continued.
|
| Ultimately, I think Canonical just slowly realized that home
| users are going to cost money for everyone but Apple, while
| servers will make money. They shifted nearly all of their focus
| there and just package the same things everyone else does for
| desktop. Sadly, the one non-standard thing that they continue
| insisting on is Snap.
| losingom wrote:
| >Sadly, the one non-standard thing that they continue
| insisting on is Snap.
|
| Snap was and largely is mainly for the server crowd, that
| they've shoved into the desktop. So in that regard I suppose
| it's at least consistent for them. That said, snap is still
| terrible, but Canonical always just does their own thing.
| wmf wrote:
| Docker won the server market years ago; Snap has no chance
| there.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > Unity additionally had their search feature that doubled as
| a run box which was awesome. Tap meta and type the
| application name and hit enter.
|
| Gnome Shell does the same thing...
| noisem4ker wrote:
| ...as does KDE Plasma with Krunner:
| https://userbase.kde.org/Plasma/Krunner
| derefr wrote:
| > I think it was a case of an extremely loud minority who
| weren't even using it
|
| Well, yes, but "an extremely loud minority who weren't even
| using it" can have an important point about something: namely,
| that investing/focusing on polishing it, detracts from
| investment/focus on polish of the alternative they prefer.
|
| Ubuntu GNOME was always a spin of Ubuntu; but when it became
| the _flagship_ spin of Ubuntu, the polish on it got a lot
| better. (For example, previously, effort on an "app
| store"-experience application was divided between Canonical's
| "Ubuntu Software Center", and GNOME's "GNOME Software", with
| both being pretty janky as a result; with the switch, the
| "Ubuntu Software Center" was discontinued, and all effort of
| both parties went into polishing GNOME Software, and it became
| something worth using.)
| Veliladon wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > As a small example, the update makes right-clicking the
| trashcan in the Launcher to empty it work again, without
| needing to open the trashcan's own window.
|
| I feel like that single line illustrates just how badly GNOME
| has lost the plot over the last decade.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| AFAIK GNOME doesn't really do desktop icons and the ones
| Ubuntu added were actually a GNOME extension. Ubuntu chose to
| bundle that extension so the burden on creating a unified
| experience should be on them.
| Veliladon wrote:
| > AFAIK GNOME doesn't really do desktop icons
|
| So the GNOME people are taking their inspiration from
| Windows 3.x?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Windows 3.11 docked applications onto the "desktop" when
| you minimized them so no, not really.
|
| It's not really taking inspiration as much as trying new
| things. Everyone has copied over the desktop because
| everybody else did so, all the way back to when Apple
| first ripped off Xerox's GUI. Even on Windows I disable
| all the clutter of desktop icons that programs will
| randomly add to my desktop because they deem themselves
| important.
|
| I personally don't see the benefit, but people who do can
| pick a distro that writes a well-integrated desktop icon
| addon (apparently, not Ubuntu).
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| Apparently so does every recent OS, e.g. Windows, Mac,
| ios, Android,.... . They all feature an app
| drawer/launcher/start menu quite prominently and that is
| always _not_ the desktop.
|
| Having one window of the files app always open, removing
| all window decorations and calling it "desktop" can be
| good, but I won't pretend that there isn't an overarching
| movement away from that.
| marcodiego wrote:
| I'm using Ubuntu 20.04. Right clicking the thrash can icon
| works as intended.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| When Ubuntu moved to Gnome I remember getting so frustrated at
| how much screen space Gnome wasted that my old laptop became
| difficult to use. I gave up on the Linux desktop after that
| ehnto wrote:
| This is very unlikely to get you back on board, but a tiling
| window manager like i3 gives you all the freedom and space
| you could possibly want.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| I remember a lot of the same sentiment about GNOME 3, but if
| you recall, were you aware of WMs or other DEs at the time?
|
| There was a short lag between when 2.32 was deprecated and
| when Mate and Cinnamon were released, and I remember XFCE and
| KDE still being pretty excellent. I used tiling WMs on my
| other TTYs so changing the defaults didn't affect me.
| hvis wrote:
| Unity was a great project, but not all is lost.
|
| I've been using this GNOME extension for years, and it's been
| very solid: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1287/unite/
|
| It emulates Unity quite well (removing the titlebars on
| maximized windows, among other things).
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| I have never understood unity.
|
| For all it's faults and annoyances I have never once considered
| gnome, kde, or even cinnamon inferior to unity.
|
| People talk about it's consistancy in the comment section but as
| someone who has had to use different DE varients over the years,
| any features unity had a claim to fame for were implemented and
| then superseded by gnome a long time ago.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Back from the dead _as fork_. The power of free software.
| ur-whale wrote:
| Some things ought to be left buried lest they come and haunt you
| for years to come.
| hatsunearu wrote:
| Good. Unity was the best desktop environment on Linux by a long
| shot.
| marcodiego wrote:
| The best feature from Unity was just tapping alt and easily
| finding the menu option on the app I was running. This helped a
| lot with apps that had many or deep menu items like GIMP or
| LibreOffice. The new policy, however, is for apps to drop menus.
| I don't think a new incarnation without app developers embracing
| it would have the same effect.
|
| Also, for the sake of maintainability, it would be very good if
| this was implemented using GNOME extensions.
| silisili wrote:
| That's exciting. I must be one of the few who actually liked
| Unity a lot, probably better than Gnome. From what I understand,
| a lot of the underlayment was 'hacky' and abandoned. While I
| don't like most NIH that Canonical does(snaps, upstart, mir), I
| really wish they'd have kept Unity.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Unity fan as well, nowadays I use XFCE on my surviving Linux
| netbook.
| cfn wrote:
| You are not alone, Unity was my desktop until it was dropped by
| Canonical. I ended up moving to Windows after that as I did not
| like the replacement. The main thing I remember was that it was
| quite fast and worked well with Vmware which is what I used to
| host client's VMs. Maybe I will give it another go now.
| zecg wrote:
| It was always there, just apt install unity? It even asks you
| which greeter to use and, unlike when Canonical was trying to
| monetize it, you don't have to remove the adware "lenses"
| such as Amazon.
| addicted wrote:
| Gnome was always faster than Unity. Which is not surprising
| considering Unity was a bunch of hacks on top of Gnome.
| ehvatum wrote:
| > Unity was a bunch of hacks on top of Gnome
|
| Where do you get this shit? Over 11 years ago, Shuttleworth
| abandoned the vision of Unity as a shell for Gnome.
| thecosmicfrog wrote:
| Upstart predated systemd. I never understand the negativity
| that surrounds it.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| When Gnome2 was finally removed from Ubuntu, I tried Unity
| desktop for a while, didn't like it and installed Gnome3...
|
| ...
|
| ...
|
| ... and after an hour decided, that Unity is actually _not that
| bad_. Almost every change Gnome3 did over Gnome2 was a change
| for the worse or for _far worse_. Unnecessary waste of space on
| meaningless panels, unnecessarily revamped menus, etc. Just no.
| I didn 't dive in this matter in detail, but people were saying
| that Gnome3 team has a rather hostile attitude towards
| criticism, and it shows in the results.
|
| Anyway, after a few years of using Unity I got used to it and
| was sad when it was killed. Hope it gets the second chance.
| dleslie wrote:
| Gnome3 and Unity drove me to use MATE, and though I give KDE,
| Gnome, and XFCE a shot every six months or so I still use
| MATE.
|
| AFAICT, for someone who prefers verbosity, purposeful display
| usage and textual clarity over all else, it doesn't get much
| better on the Linux desktop than MATE.
| Nursie wrote:
| How is MATE these days? I switched to Xfce when the Gnome 3
| debacle hit, and after spending about 10 minutes arranging
| things to look like Gnome 2, have never looked back.
| dm319 wrote:
| I've been using MATE for several years now. It's very
| solid and they've improved and modernised it nicely since
| gnome 2 times.
| 2000UltraDeluxe wrote:
| It's a nice Gnome 2 experience. If you're set up with
| Xfce there's little reason to switch, but if you want to
| go Gnome 3 -> Gnome 2 then MATE is the best option imo.
| Nursie wrote:
| I've just read the wikipedia page and was delighted to
| find they have a fork of gedit which doesn't hide the
| menus! That's now installed on my system.
| herbst wrote:
| If you didn't give gnome shell a second chance, maybe it's
| time to do so. When it was released many defaults made gnome
| 3 awkward to use, mostly wasting screen estate for huge icons
| and so on.
|
| Meanwhile it's all configureable and at least with Manjaro
| also comes with sensible defaults that work well on a 28" as
| well as a 15" notebook.
| pndy wrote:
| > Almost every change Gnome3 did over Gnome2 was a change for
| the worse or for far worse.
|
| At first it felt like they just went for change for a sake of
| change so they could be unique among the DEs but now, it
| seems the long-term goal wasn't just creating a combination
| between desktop and mobile environment but aiming at being
| the mobile environment first with optional support for
| desktops.
|
| And indeed, reading all experiences people had with devs
| working around Gnome nowadays it seems they forgot they're an
| open-source community and decided to play corporation card,
| where it's totally fine to ignore the end-user and their
| feedback.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| > but aiming at being the mobile environment first
|
| I'd say, being 'touch environment first', not mobile. And
| it resulted in a very poor UX for mouse users, while touch
| GNU/Linux computers never appeared (except androids, but
| they have no use for gnome anyway).
| dingi wrote:
| GNOME has excellent support for keyboard based navigation
| BTW. Almost anything can be done with the keyboard. Most
| shell actions has a keyboard shortcut.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| They could have done it without taking away convenient
| menus. Previously all apps had standardized interface,
| now everyone invents the bicycle for themselves.
| addicted wrote:
| Gnome's focus has been creating a desktop environment that
| is consistent and easy to develop for. Which requires
| minimal testing and is not exceedingly buggy.
|
| Which is why Gnome is extremely popular across the
| spectrum. With users, distros and developers.
|
| Gnome makes Linux an OS that can compete with the likes of
| Macos and Windows and actually best them.
| rtpg wrote:
| It might be worth trying gnome 3 again, and opening gnome
| tweaks.
|
| There's a couple size settings that makes stuff feel good. I
| have moved onto KDE and honestly KDE is way less smart about
| screen real estate (it makes up for it in functionality
| fortunately)
| nikodunk wrote:
| Agreed - def worth trying again. Gnome 3.x was what -
| Windows Vista era? I switched back to Gnome after the 4x
| series was released a year or two ago. A bunch has changed
| for the better.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > When Gnome2 was finally removed from Ubuntu, I tried Unity
| desktop for a while, didn't like it and installed Gnome3...
|
| Gnome 3 was never known as an improvement over Gnome 2. But
| didn't Gnome 2 continue as MATE?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATE_(software)
| Nursie wrote:
| It was picked up by an interested party and then attracted
| a community, after the Gnome folks dropped Gnome 2 like a
| hot coal when they announced Gnome 3 (no we're not
| supporting it any more, it's deprecated, no, there's no way
| to make 3 behave like 2, no, you can't have 2 and 3 on the
| same box, that doesn't work).
|
| So it continued after a short period of discontinuity,
| during which time I think a lot of people moved to Xfce,
| and Mint built their "Cinnamon" DE.
| dm319 wrote:
| There was a several year hiatus between end of gnome 2 and
| beginning of mate, and even longer (a year or two) before
| mate was solid. During this time I remember a lot of
| attempts at gnome 2 replacement (fallback, flashback etc)
| and people jumping ship to xfce. I spent a while on ubuntu
| 10.04 LTS beyond security support then crunchbang before
| hearing of the mate project, then moved to linux mint and
| ubuntumate, which is where I've stayed. Those years were a
| bit disrupted and I stopped recommending linux to friends
| during that time.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| I was the same until I started using popos[0]
|
| Based on gnome has tiling windows and very keyboard focused its
| very nice.
|
| 0 https://pop.system76.com
| cowtools wrote:
| I've recently installed this plugin on my own distro. It
| sucks that default gnome can only tile 2 windows per monitor.
| This plugin is great
| amelius wrote:
| I still use Gnome metacity flashback because it wastes less
| screen space and has a nice virtual workspace switcher.
|
| I'm less happy with the configuration/tweak tools and the fact
| that they are only accessible from within the account and the
| display itself (not easy to administrate for different users). I
| wish there was someone keeping a list of requirements so that
| every new WM could avoid mistakes in the previous ones.
| thepangolino wrote:
| For me the killer feature of Unity is the HUD[0] allowing you to
| simply type to find menu items. Save so much time going through
| options it is incredible.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_WW-DHqR3c
| akho wrote:
| There was also plotinus (https://github.com/p-e-w/plotinus) for
| a sort-of-similar thing. I think it still works, but I use too
| few gui applications to bother.
| lproven wrote:
| I find it interesting because as a long-term Unity user, I
| never used the HUD at all and turned if off when I could.
|
| But I think it says good things about the environment that
| different users found their own things they liked about it.
| Bolkan wrote:
| Awesome. It was the last linux desktop I liked. Vertical appbar
| worked better than anything available today.
| akagusu wrote:
| The feature I really miss from Unity is tap Alt and type for menu
| options.
|
| It was really useful when you didn't remember the menu option you
| want.
|
| Pretty innovative at the time.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It feels funny. When Ubuntu moved to the Gnome shell with their
| customizations, it felt strange for a couple hours, then
| everything made sense. I completely forgot I am not using Unity
| on Ubuntu - the icons are where they used to be and that's about
| what really feels different now from stock Gnome.
| bitwize wrote:
| Unity was probably the most straightforward n00b-friendly Linux
| DE. I'm still rocking it in 2022 because I'm running a Lisp VLM
| on a 16.06 Ubuntu image. It's... less objectionable than GNOME
| and less fiddly than KDE.
| superkuh wrote:
| This is great as it's from a third party any not forced on users.
| Convergence was never a thing and it will never be a thing.
| jstanley wrote:
| Kind of off-topic, but I've been enjoying Regolith[0] on Ubuntu
| lately.
|
| It uses i3 as a window manager, but integrates a bit more neatly
| with things like the Gnome Settings application so you can use
| the tiling window manager but still don't have to configure
| everything the hard way.
|
| [0] https://regolith-desktop.com/
| colordrops wrote:
| Interesting, will check it out. I think I've read that pop
| shell from system76 is an i3 inspired layer on top of gnome.
| I'm curious if it provides even better integration than
| Regolith. Only problem is that the one serious attempt to port
| pop shell to NixOS has been aborted. Will probably move from
| i3/sway to one of these two at some point
| fellerts wrote:
| When Canonical dropped Unity for Gnome I also jumped to
| Regolith, and have been very happy for a couple years. Fell in
| love with the tiling aspect of i3 without the need to endlessly
| tinker with my OS. This truly was a set-and-forget experience.
| alexalx666 wrote:
| its the best!
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Unity was great. Pop comes close, but unity just worked.
| pabs3 wrote:
| and Unity 8 was forked as https://ubuntu-touch.io/
| cm-t wrote:
| Unity8 was (community) forked as lomiri https://lomiri.com/ (
| And Ubuntu Touch is a distro that use Lomiri )
| Yizahi wrote:
| Is it still lagging on slower machines? I'll keep using XFCE for
| the time being, like many other in this thread.
| [deleted]
| antman wrote:
| I remember what happened I think. There was a thread here on HN a
| few years back presenting something new Ubuntu Unity related and
| discussion developed about how Unity was bad. Someone from Ubuntu
| team saw the thread and said he did not know people hated it so
| much and they will look into into it/change it back to gnome?
| Apparently forgotten and I can't find the thread to verify the
| details!
| bregma wrote:
| I doubt very much that that anecdote is true.
|
| I was involved in the development of Unity at Canonical, just
| as I was involved in the development of the Eee PC at Xandros
| before that. Unity developers were very well aware that there
| was a small but extremely vocal minority of users who expressed
| their strong dislike and contempt for their work. We were also
| aware of the much larger and quieter plurality of people who
| liked and appreciated it, and maybe the majority of people who
| just turned on their computer and got to work without a second
| thought about the desktop environment. A part of my job was
| managing the negative feedback from users... I think would have
| been aware of any decision to change back to Gnome based on the
| strident and biased opinion of some rando on the internet.
|
| For the record, Unity was discontinued as a business decision
| to make Canonical more profitable for its investors. Plain and
| simple. Normal everyday business.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Unity developers were very well aware that there was a
| small but extremely vocal minority of users who expressed
| their strong dislike and contempt for their work. We were
| also aware of the much larger and quieter plurality of people
| who liked and appreciated it, and maybe the majority of
| people who just turned on their computer and got to work
| without a second thought about the desktop environment.
|
| How would you tell? If most people don't say anything and
| most of the ones that do say something have negative
| feedback, how do you distinguish between most people being
| okay with it versus most people hating it quietly?
| bmacho wrote:
| Canonical and Unity went to the direction of Mir/phones/cars
| but then they gave up, and Unity died.
| lproven wrote:
| [Article author here]
|
| I am astonished at what a short memory HN has.
|
| The Ubuntu project manager did an "ask HN" post on what people
| wanted to see next. It is here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821
|
| The result was fairly overwhelming: stop Unity, Mir, the mobile
| stuff, etc.
|
| So that is what happened.
|
| I personally feel it was a huge mistake. :shrug:
| akho wrote:
| I opened that post. The top comment asks for mixed DPI,
| trackpad gestures, and better power management. I had to scan
| (and click the next page thing) quite a lot to get to
| something that looked vaguely critical of Unity (and even
| then it was "collaborate with Gnome more"). I wish they took
| the other suggestions as seriously...
|
| Unity was entirely pointless though.
| lproven wrote:
| Unity was _not_ pointless.
|
| The point was that Microsoft was threatening to sue any
| company distributing a Windows-like desktop Linux.
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2006/11/20/microsoft_claims_lin
| u...
|
| SUSE signed a patent-sharing agreement; Red Hat and
| Canonical said no.
|
| Both developed their own non-Windows-like desktops. RH
| sponsors GNOME, and many RH people worked on GNOME 3.
|
| Canonical tried to get involved and was rebuffed. E.g.
| https://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/tag/gnome
|
| So it rebuilt its existing "Netbook Launcher" as a general-
| purpose desktop.
|
| MS didn't sue anyone in the end, but it got what it wanted:
| massive fragmentation in the Linux world, no harmony, lots
| of split and duplicated effort.
|
| My analysis, from a decade ago, is here: https://www.thereg
| ister.com/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft_for_l...
| simion314 wrote:
| >I am astonished at what a short memory HN has.
|
| I remember this events too, probably HN hate was not the main
| reason but probably it was the final straw.
|
| Then you see some dudes ehre hating on snap, dudes calm down,
| your fucking flatpacks are not equivalent, they are
| GNOME/desktop centric, can't use them on a server.
| knorker wrote:
| What i remembered is that it was widely hated, and canonical
| was shoving it down everyone's throats and saying things like
| "we know that unity is objectively the best desktop environment
| that ever existed", allowing them to discard any critique.
|
| But eventually they had to face reality, and gave up.
|
| I'm sure there were people who liked it. I never met one.
| lproven wrote:
| Hi. I wrote the article at the top of this post. I am still
| using Unity now as I have been doing for about a decade.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| I don't think Canonical cares at all about community input on
| things like that (just look at snap). It was just that unity
| really was that bad.
|
| No need to blame HN crowd for this.
| antman wrote:
| I am not blaming, the opposite.
| lproven wrote:
| This is incorrect.
|
| What Canonical did is exactly what HN asked them to do in
| this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-07-04 23:02 UTC)