11.04 / Unity GUI blues

[DuroSoft]

All in all I'd like to say that I'm very disappointed with the direction things are going with the new default unity interface. The old menu system which was pretty well organised and easy to navigate has been replaced with a buggy dock system with built in search feature that makes it almost impossible to find certain system menu items that used to be extremely easy to find, especially if you don't already know what they are called. The dock system itself is clunky. I know it is targeted at laptop / tablets, however I use a 12-inch X61 thinkpad and I find that the old system is much easier to use. On my desktop, and on any system with multiple monitors it is even buggier and much harder to use. Even if all the bugs are eliminated, I think it's a bad direction to be going in in terms of usability. I would list the countless bugs I have encountered using the new UI, but I'm sure they have already been reported numerous times.

Needless to say I've switched to the "classic" interface, and I've found that it has been upgraded in a few nice subtle ways including what looks like new icons for wifi and sound, and it also looks like the old bug with the empathy chat icon covering up the shut down menu has been fixed.

My biggest complaint, however, is the change that has been made to scrollbars. I use a number of computers with different input devices ranging from mice to touch screens to touch pads, and my favourite, the lenovo trackpoint (red dot). The new scrollbar would be perfect were it not for one simple change that I continue to find maddening. Users such as myself have for years have been taking advantage of the fact that you can "throw" your mouse at the right edge of the screen when you have a maximised window and then quickly drag up or down (without having to look at the scrollbar and make sure you are clicking in the right area) to scroll up or down. This saves me a lot of time when I work on my laptop or on anything that doesn't have a usable scroll-wheel, which is actually most of the time. Unfortunately, someone evidently thought it would be a great usability improvement to add a 1 pixel border on the right side of every vertical scroll bar, which means that now when I move my mouse all the way to the right and start dragging, no scrolling takes place and I have to *gasp* aim vertically as well as horizontally to be able to grab the scroll bar. I'm sure there are lots of other people who are being driven crazy by this, and I just wonder if there is anyone at all who is happy with this feature. Please remove the 1 pixel border!!

I'd also like to report that the new scrollbars are completely broken in Java programs (read: unusable). Since I need to use Eclipse for school, and since I'm annoyed by this one pixel border, I have of course disabled the new scrollbars for my user account, but I hope to see it get fixed / changed / removed completely in new releases. I've talked to a bunch of my friends and pretty much everyone I've spoken with hates the new scrollbars. Maybe we're just an isolated pocket of users that use scrollbars in this way because we use trackpoints, but I imagine there is a much larger group of people annoyed at this.

[Peter09]

Agree that the new scroll bars in 11.04 are not good - hope they will get some work done on them for 11.10.

Considering the number of changes made to the interface for 11.04 it is not surprising that there are rough edges around in Unity.

[3rdalbum]

Unity is a massive improvement overall - less chrome, more content. It makes my 22 inch screen seem bigger; this is great! It's also much easier to launch programs - just hit the Super key and start typing.

There is a work-alike for the Gnome Applications menu around that creates an applications list in Unity - no idea what it's called, but it has been mentioned in Ubuntu Forums recently so you can have a scout around.

If your computer doesn't have a scroll-wheel on the mouse or a scroll area on the trackpad, you're in a very niche minority I'm afraid. At least the overlay scrollbars can be disabled if you don't like them. I wish they were in more programs - less chrome, more content is what I'm really digging.

[realzippy]

Unity is a massive improvement overall...

Maybe for you. :)
You simply seem to ignore the discussions in the web about unity and it's
issues.
For me it will be reason to say goodbye in 11.10....

[scorp123]

It's also much easier to launch programs - just hit the Super key and start typing. That's a stupid concept, sorry to say so. If I want to type stuff I*might as well just use the terminal.

On KDE4.x and GNOME 2.x all programs were just 2-3 clicks away.*Finding your way around the programs and desktops was easy ... with Unity things are so much dumbed down that I find Unity utterly unusable.

[malspa]

Funny how some people love Unity and some people hate it, isn't it? I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

[scorp123]

For me it will be reason to say goodbye in 11.10.... Welcome to the club.

Any distro you can recommend? I've been looking at Fedora and SUSE ... but honestly I hate *.rpm. And Gnome 3 isn't much better than Unity.

Maybe I'll go to Mint or to plain pure Debian ... Or maybe even Solaris 11. The packages there are reeeeeaaally ancient. But at least they are rock-solid stable and just work without the fancy new stuff nobody wants.

[realzippy]

Welcome to the club.

Any distro you can recommend? I've been looking at Fedora and SUSE ... but honestly I hate *.rpm. And Gnome 3 isn't much better than Unity.

Maybe I'll go to Mint or to plain pure Debian ... Or maybe even Solaris 11. The packages there are reeeeeaaally ancient. But at least they are rock-solid stable and just work without the fancy new stuff nobody wants.

Well,
wait and see.I am sure somebody will fork good old gnome2.xx...
There are too many of us out there not standing GnomeShell/3/Unity...
Will use gnome2+LTS until there are no more security updates...then have a look at KDE.

[scorp123]

... then have a look at KDE.

KDE 4.x isn't bad per se. I just find that Kubuntu 11.04 has some of the same problems that also Ubuntu 11.04 has, e.g. stability problems (I experience lots of freezes which doesn't happen with Ubuntu 10.10 on the very same hardware!), kernel regressions (e.g. increased power consumption on laptops), driver problems (especially if you use Nvidia cards), and so on.

So yes, KDE maybe. But not necessarily on (K)Ubuntu, at least not for as long as they have these kind of regressions and stability problems.

Also, I see quite a difference in performance between 11.04 vs. 10.10:

I am typing this very message on my MacBook Pro 5,4 that I downgraded back to Ubuntu 10.10 again after having had Kubuntu 11.04 on it last week. Compared to Kubuntu 11.04 + KDE, Ubuntu 10.10 + GNOME 2 are sooooo much snappier and smoother. This is very much visible when I use desktop effects such as "Expo" or the "Cube". On Kubuntu 11.04 these effects (desktop cube + desktop grid, which is similar to "Expo") would stutter and be very choppy. Under Ubuntu 10.10 and with GNOME 2 both "Expo" and "Cube" are ultra smoooooth. And no crashes so far, no freezes. It just works.

So performance-wise too Ubuntu 11.04 is like a step backwards for me, sorry to say so.

[3rdalbum]

That's a stupid concept, sorry to say so. If I want to type stuff I*might as well just use the terminal.

Do you go to the Edit menu and then down to Copy, or do you hit Control-C? My point exactly.


On KDE4.x and GNOME 2.x all programs were just 2-3 clicks away.*Finding your way around the programs and desktops was easy ... with Unity things are so much dumbed down that I find Unity utterly unusable.

On Unity, all programs are still only three clicks away. If you prefer to see only Multimedia, or only Office, you can right-click on the Applications lense and choose the category you wish to view.

I don't see why people are saying "I hate Unity, I'm going to another distro in October". Other distros are going to drop Gnome 2 shortly if they haven't already - it's no longer maintained. You could use Gnome 3 or some other DE, but then you could do that in Ubuntu 11.10 anyway. Unity is a choice that you have in addition to the other choices that Ubuntu gives you.

[scorp123]

Do you go to the Edit menu and then down to Copy, or do you hit Control-C? My point exactly. Middle mouse button ):P Or the upper right corner of my Mac's trackpad.

Why in the world would I hit "Control-C" .... that's sooooo Windowsish.


On Unity, all programs are still only three clicks away. If you prefer to see only Multimedia, or only Office, you can right-click on the Applications lense and choose the category you wish to view. Yeah, you click left, you click right, then left again ... oh wait, or was it the right button? ==> It's totally inconsistent. On GNOME 2, KDE 4, XFCE and all the others the menu items are on the left click, context menus are on the right ... Why oh why did they have to reinvent the wheel here? For me as a long-time user that's totally a no-go.


Other distros are going to drop Gnome 2 shortly if they haven't already - it's no longer maintained.Ever heard the word "Fork"? It's going to happen.

[zero244]

I used Unity for a couple of weeks, mainly just to see how it would work on my hardware.
I didn't have any stability issues, but really not that fond of the new Unity way of doing things.

The desktop looks more like the UI on a cell phone than a computer workstation.

I think a lot people, probably including myself, don't want a lot change. Once you learn a system it allows you to be the most efficient doing day to day tasks.

If they hadn't of taken down the repos I would probably still be using Hardy as long as my hardware was working.

Unity and Gnome 3 may be a good way of doing things in the end, only time will tell.

[3rdalbum]

Middle mouse button ):P Or the upper right corner of my Mac's trackpad.

Why in the world would I hit "Control-C" .... that's sooooo Windowsish.

So, you use the quicker way of doing it, not the GUI way of doing it. That's my point - experienced computer users use the quicker option (keyboard shortcuts, mouse gestures, combinations) rather than the "go to a menu" option.


Yeah, you click left, you click right, then left again ... oh wait, or was it the right button? ==> It's totally inconsistent. On GNOME 2, KDE 4, XFCE and all the others the menu items are on the left click, context menus are on the right ... Why oh why did they have to reinvent the wheel here? For me as a long-time user that's totally a no-go.

The Applications lense looks like a button or a dock icon, not a menu. Its left-click and right-click behaviour is consistent; right-click gives you a menu, left-click launches it.


Ever heard the word "Fork"? It's going to happen.

One person claiming that they're going to fork Gnome 2 will not make it happen. If the Gnome 2 "fork" ever eventuates, it'll be packaged for Ubuntu. How could it not be packaged for the most popular distro? Will any other mainstream distributions ship with legacy software, or will they ship with the latest and greatest Gnome 3 or KDE 4?

[mc4man]

That's a stupid concept, sorry to say so. If I want to type stuff I*might as well just use the terminal.

On KDE4.x and GNOME 2.x all programs were just 2-3 clicks away.*Finding your way around the programs and desktops was easy ... with Unity things are so much dumbed down that I find Unity utterly unusable.
If desired any location,app or command is just 2 clicks and executed in unity so the silly "too many clicks" argument doesn't hold water

[Ms_Angel_D]

Welcome to the club.

Any distro you can recommend? I've been looking at Fedora and SUSE ... but honestly I hate *.rpm. And Gnome 3 isn't much better than Unity.

Maybe I'll go to Mint or to plain pure Debian ... Or maybe even Solaris 11. The packages there are reeeeeaaally ancient. But at least they are rock-solid stable and just work without the fancy new stuff nobody wants.

I hear Linux Mint is staying with Gnome, as a matter of fact I have heard lot's of good things about mint. :)

[scorp123]

So, you use the quicker way of doing it, No. I use the consistent way of doing it. When I use the mouse I use the mouse. No need to touch the keyboard. And when I am in a terminal I use the keyboard and don't touch the mouse. That's consistent. And it makes sense. It's "user friendly".

What's not "user friendly" is to force the user to constantly change the input device: Use your mouse and the left-click to perform A, quickly use your keyboard to perform B, use your mouse again and a right-click to perform C, use your keyboard again and hit some magic key combo "Super-something" to perform D ...

Naaaah, sorry. That's silly. It disrupts my workflow.



One person claiming that they're going to fork Gnome 2 will not make it happen. It happened to KDE 3 too.

[scorp123]

I hear Linux Mint is staying with Gnome, as a matter of fact I have heard lot's of good things about mint. :) I've been involved with Mint. I used to be one half of their "two men support team" back in the early days, around 2006 + 2007.

[marcus0263]

Welcome to the club.

Any distro you can recommend? I've been looking at Fedora and SUSE ... but honestly I hate *.rpm. And Gnome 3 isn't much better than Unity.

Maybe I'll go to Mint or to plain pure Debian ... Or maybe even Solaris 11. The packages there are reeeeeaaally ancient. But at least they are rock-solid stable and just work without the fancy new stuff nobody wants.

Me, I've been using Linux Mint for they do a good job cleaning up Ubuntu. But with the direction of Gnome I've been revisiting KDE and have been messing about with Kororaa KDE flavor. As much as I've pretty much dislike rpm's I'm actually impressed with yum and yum extender. Kororaa is based on Fedora, I'm going to revisit Fedora again but I do like how Kororaa just works out of the box and also makes it easy to install propriatary drivers like Nvidia, Adobe Flash and what not.

If you look at Canonical working with Gnome they just gave them the finger and spun off to Unity. I dislike both as to the reason why I'm revisiting KDE, not bad so far. I do miss the solid base of Gnome 2.x but the interfaces .....................

Someone needs to slap both Canonical and Gnome on the side of the head, on size does NOT fit all. A tablet/phone interface does NOT work well on the desktop. I do have to say at least KDE had enough common sense to develop "both" a Desktop and tablet/phone interface.

Massive fail Canonical and Gnome!!!!!

[Tamlynmac]

marcus0263
Someone needs to slap both Canonical and Gnome on the side of the head, on size does NOT fit all. A tablet/phone interface does NOT work well on the desktop. I do have to say at least KDE had enough common sense to develop "both" a Desktop and tablet/phone interface.

Unity isn't my preference either. However, I really see no reason to beat it to death. Canonical has aligned itself (via contract) with a mfg and it only makes sense for them to produce a product that will perform.

One should keep in mind that there's various flavors of Ubuntu (as have been discussed in this thread) and users who dislike the new direction can select from the alternatives. Canonical continues to support the other flavors and I've read or heard nothing of any intent to discontinue that in the future. Not to mention other Linux distros.

IMHO Linux is all about choice and should a user decide that Ubuntu no longer meets their needs, then simply choose an alternative. Complaining and arguing resolves nothing. I seriously doubt it will have "any" impact on the direction that Canonical has chosen.

I have no idea what the agenda might be to continue debating that which is out of one's control. Especially, in a section of the forums that requests we not debate (see sectional guidelines and the motive for this (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1805569&page=2) thread closure). Perhaps logic might suggest, rather than pursuing a debate - one should invest their time deciding which alternative best meets their requirements. Then get involved in it's future improvement.

Just my $0.02/opinion and I refuse to argue or debate it in this section of the forums.

[malspa]

Well said, Tamlynmac.

I like Unity, but I'm not liking my first look at GNOME 3 (running it tonight, live session, Fedora 15). Still, when it comes down to it, nobody says I have to use either of them. Many people like one or the other or both, and that's great. Also, I can't help but believe that both of them will continue to improve.

[Ms_Angel_D]

Thank you all for your feedback :) I believe this thread has run it's course.