The Taming of the Unity (a recommendations)

[PJs Ronin]

Someday, maybe, I'll understand why a panel -- a horizontal row of icons -- is so much better than a dock -- a vertical row of icons.

I am, though, in no real hurry to get there.

Perhaps I have an answer for you, provided we only talk about Unity.

I'm one of those who like a super clean desktop. I want nothing showing except my wallpaper. However, I also need to do things so I need a way of accessing programs etc. The developers have, in their wisdom, provided me a top panel that is difficult to modify and does little except contain a shutdown/logoff/restart button, and a Launcher on the side that launches... itself, applications and Dash. All well and good, but now I have two things cluttering my desktop... just because one of these things can hide itself makes never no mind to me. My OCD is telling me that sucker is hiding, waiting.

So here's a radical thought. Why doesn't Dash/Launcher do its thing from the top panel rather than bringing a new intrusion into the mix... Top (or anywhere else for that matter) panel/launcher/dash/applet combo. A one stop shop. I mean, if you're going to force something on me why not actually make it useful?

[r_avital]

PJs Ronin,

I'm completely with you on that. Gave a detailed answer to the question, highlighting the many advantages of panels over the launcher and that other thing cluttering your desktop. I love a super-clean desktop myself, and Lucid (using gnome2) provided just that. Rock-solid, configurable nearly at will, useful panels, as many or as few as you wanted, doing exactly what you wanted, how you wanted..

The trouble with your suggestion, is that the top panel you speak of, is used by all open applications as the only part of the screen where any app's menu will be displayed. Cannot show an app's menu within the app's window within a unity session -- this is the meaning of "unity."

So fewer features + impaired functionality + cluttered desktop + frequent and obscure crash messages = "upgrade"

[Or the ACA. Take your pick]

[montag dp]

Well, there is, you just disable the unity plugin in compiz, but then you also lose the top panel, and thereby you lose all your application menus, because under gnome3, you cannot activate application menus. They're all suppsed to be on the "unifying" top panel that is active only with Unity.

And yes, it looks a bit better with smaller icons.

Here's what I just found out on that:

sudo apt-get purge unity-tweak-tool, and the unity plugin in compiz will let you reduce the icons all the way to 8 pixles (24 pixels would be reasonable for me). But if you need to use the unity-tweak-tool for other configurations that have little or nothing to do with unity, it will force them back to the minimum size unity accepts in the "launcher" configuration, which is 32.

This is not a tragedy, but just indicates that one development team or developer doesn't know what the other is doing. Par for the course, I suppose.

Or personally, I just use a desktop environment more to my liking in the first place. No point forcing Unity to do something it's not made to do.

[buzzingrobot]

In this particular case:

1. ...the new "improved" dock -- it's Henry Ford's Model T, you can have it in any color you want as long as it's black. Left edge. Only. Nowhere else. And you, the community of users responsible for making the OS so popular, can go pound sand.

I'm one of those users and I never liked the Gnome 2 panel. There's no way of knowing how many Ubuntu users prefer the old Gnome 2 panel. People who pine for it online are self-selected and can't be taken as representing the majority of users. In any case, software development isn't something that can be led by polling users. Developers make choices, so do users. If someone wants the old Gnome 2 panel, I'd point them to MATE.

Because the panel -- now that we know it's not exclusively horizontal -- could contain icons for launching apps...

Here's what really annoyed me about the Gnome 2 panel: If you put icons in a panel to use as launchers, clicked and launched an app, moved to another work space, clicked on that same icon expecting to return to the running instance of the applications in its work space? Nah, wouldn't happen.

The easiest way for me to manage my desktop is to open one application per workspace by clicking on a dock icon and then moving between those applications by clicking on the same icon. Gnome 2's panel -- the one in old Ubuntu -- can't do that.

Because the panel, you could have one, two three, eight, as many as you wanted. You could set them up as you pleased, each with its individual size, background color, background image, transparency and hiding/unhiding settins, if you were inclined to do all that work.

I am not inclined. Either it looks and works like I want out of the box, or at least with a few minutes effort, or I move on. When I run Unity, I add a background, shrink the dock to 32 pixels, and I'm done.

[r_avital]

I'm one of those users and I never liked the Gnome 2 panel. There's no way of knowing how many Ubuntu users prefer the old Gnome 2 panel. People who pine for it online are self-selected and can't be taken as representing the majority of users. In any case, software development isn't something that can be led by polling users. Developers make choices, so do users. If someone wants the old Gnome 2 panel, I'd point them to MATE.

Well, I'm one of those users as well, and a) yes there is a way to know, because b) as you mentioned yourself, there's MATE, so c) you could get a count of MATE downloads or activity on MATE-related forums, therefore d) they're not self-selected.

Here's what really annoyed me about the Gnome 2 panel: If you put icons in a panel to use as launchers, clicked and launched an app, moved to another work space, clicked on that same icon expecting to return to the running instance of the applications in its work space? Nah, wouldn't happen.

Good point. FYI, I've just checked on my Lucid machine (gnome2), the application switcher (not the static one, just plain application switcher) does have mouse and keyboard shortcut options for "next window (all windows)" and will happily switch you to the appropriate workspace when you Alt+Tab to the application you want. So Unity did not add anything new, it was already there, Unity just modified the look/feel.

The truth is that I would put up quite well with Unity, if it worked. But on my end, it simply doesn't. The launcher NEVER shows up from hiding when I need it if I don't set a keyboard shortcut just to make it slide out. Transparency settings are not respected. Oh, and every 30 minutes or so, without doing anything intensive like music/videos/gaming (not into that anyway), I get the lovely "System Program Problem Reported" box, A.K.A. Canonica's rename of the MS-Windows-2.x GPF. Even under MATE.

Sorry. Force something on me, AND it's buggy? Nope. Going back to Lucid where I still get security updates, until this nonsense at least stabilizes a bit better. There's folks on this forum still running productively on Hardy and Intrepid, so I'll be in good company

[buzzingrobot]

Downloads don't tell you how many peope use a distribution, or for how long.

Forum posters are the epitome of self-selected people. They choose themselves, usually to support some kind of agenda.

The workspace switcher in Gnome 2 is not the container for icons that launch apps. It's only populated after something is launched. Gnome 2 won't let me launch an app, launch an app in another workspace and create that workspace if needed, and switch betweeen apps regardless of workspace by clicking on the same icon that launched them.

[rrnbtter]

Greetings,
My suggestion would be to just accept the fact that Gnome2 is about done in Ubuntu and move on. The fact that most of the complaints in this post are about worn out is proof enough that Unity is doing well. I too liked Lucid and Maverick but Ubuntu Raring is by far the best OS I have ever used since MSDOS 2.8 and I for one can't wait to see what comes next.

[cariboo]

I'd suggest to r_avital, that his time may bet better spent, troubleshooting his problem, I've run Unity since it first came out as a netbook DE, and have never had the problems he says he has. I run development versions, as they are at the point now where they are almost boring to use, and Unity has changed quite a bit since 12.04 was released, and they don't even look similar, and certainly don't function the same.

[arpanaut]

Around and around we go...
Where it stops, nobody knows!

Simple solution: Find a Distro/DE that suits your tastes/needs,
and quit expecting people to change things to fit what you think is right.

Ubuntu/Unity just does not suit everyone, and I don't think it is expected to.
It's the direction that Ubuntu has chosen, if you don't like it, there are options!

[Paulgirardin]

Someday, maybe, I'll understand why a panel -- a horizontal row of icons -- is so much better than a dock -- a vertical row of icons.

I am, though, in no real hurry to get there.

it's horizontal