Unity isn't terrible, but it's not that good either

[ventrical]

I have been testing Oneiric Ocelot and Unity3D and 2D are doing some amazing things .. even with compiz.!! It looks as if a lot of bugs are beig ironed out. If this becomes the trend then Unity will probably stay around for a while.

[kyletstrand]

I have been testing Oneiric Ocelot and Unity3D and 2D are doing some amazing things .. even with compiz.!! It looks as if a lot of bugs are beig ironed out. If this becomes the trend then Unity will probably stay around for a while.

This makes me happy to hear. I run 11.04 on my laptop, but unity just wasn't there. The idea is superb, but with all new creations, it needs the necessary tweaking time. I am still on 10.04 on my main system because it's performed flawlessly for me and I don't feel like risking the potential buggyness that unity could give me.

My under informed postulation is that by 12.04, unity will be very nice.

[viperdvman]

I too am one of those who are indifferent in regards to Unity. I can use it on Ubuntu 11.04 just fine, especially since I have it set up to autohide (not Window dodge) and still have my Avant Window Navigator dock at the bottom. So I keep very much the same look I have for my Ubuntu Clasisc (GNOME 2.32). If I decide not to use AWN, I can put most of the same stuff in the Unity launcher, so I do have a choice as to which to use.

I also like that the Global Menu (app menu) works for pretty much everything, including LibreOffice without any bugs. It looks and operates almost exactly like Mac OS X's global menu, with program name and app menu. For comparison, my GNOME 2.32 global menu doesn't show the app name, nor does it work for LibreOffice without the LibreOffice menu bar plug-in installed (and even that is buggy).

However, one thing I don't like with Unity on 11.04 so far is the fact that I can't customize the top panel in any way, with the exception of changing whether the broadcast account section shows my username, my name, or nothing at ll (sans button). I can't add or remove stuff from it like I can with GNOME 2.32. That, and I can only get the launcher to autohide and not turn it off. I like my Mac OS X style dock (whether docky, cairo, or AWN), and I prefer to use it.

Another thing I don't like is that unlike most desktop environments (including Windows and Mac OS X), I don't get the full list of Applications without having to type it in the search bar. Even GNOME 3 in Fedora shows the full applications list. If they can just add that in there, Unity will be a lot more useable for people who want to see their full list of apps.

Other than a few gripes, I can live with Ubuntu 11.04's Unity desktop just fine... I just prefer to run Ubuntu Classic until Ubuntu 10.04's support ends.

[wackawacka]

This is late. I know. But there comes a time when a GNU/Linux user needs to stop brushing off a distro after five minutes and fleeing back to something he/she prefers. There comes a time to stop laughing about others lamenting about it's downfalls, and try it for him/herself.

For about the past week or so, I have been working at home offline. I've been doing another Linux From Scratch, and the internet tends to distract me, so I disconnected this computer until I was done. I got done, and I did not want to configure the internet. I didn't feel like it. On another hard disk on this computer, there was Mandriva, and I couldn't figure out how to get the wireless working. Well, it's not that I couldn't, but rather I just didn't feel like it. I wanted something that would just work "out of the box". The first thing I came across was the Ubuntu 11.04 live CD. So I installed it over Mandriva.

I wasn't doing anything serious anymore, so I decided to use it for the rest of the night. I wanted to experience something. I wanted to really see why people hated it. I wanted my mouse to stop working. I wanted to have my computer crash every five minutes. I wanted to see what the fans of this distro love so much about it. I wanted to see the fireworks. I wanted to see... well... I wanted to see something.

I didn't, and I still don't see anything. Rather, this just reminds me of the time I was using my mobile phone web browser and wished that I had a real keyboard.

Everything said about Unity, to me, amounts to either a complete over-reaction (good or bad), or a hardware issue. I haven't had a single crash, I haven't had a single mishap from any input device, I have no issues with the panels or the sidebar thingy that seems to bug everyone. From my viewpoint, there's nothing wrong with this. But at the same time, there is nothing interesting about it either.

So I have to search for my apps. I do that anyway, because I don't use desktop icons, and it's faster for me to just search for what I want anyway. That's what I do in any distro, even if I don't have to. But that could just be me. For those that absolutely hate having to search, though, when you click on that little search thingy, you get not only giant icons that are there for reasons I don't understand, but you also get icons that will narrow your search. This is not rocket science, nor is it even problematic. At it's core (this is crucial), it's not terribly different from the menu in any other Gnome environment that people have been used to.

Unity isn't interesting. Maybe it was jarring being that it's not Yet Another Spin On Good Ol' Gnome. Maybe people didn't like change. Maybe, for those that liked it, people read far too much into the change. Perhaps, they have never picked up any recent Mac made from 2009 to present. I don't know. But after using Unity, in all it's full 3D glory, with pretty much the default things going on, I don't see what all the fuss is about; good or bad.

Unity isn't worth mentioning. You remember when people turned their GNU/Linux to Mac? That was pretty cool. As far as Unity is concerned, I'm pretty sure that someone could take Ubuntu 10.04 or 10.10 and make a Unity out of it. There's nothing terribly different here other than extreme customization. Well, that's the way I see it.

I don't see what people hate about this (I'm using it right now). I don't see what people like about this. The best thing that has come about for me is that I finally decided to try out this Chrome crap that people keep talking about. It's pretty good, overall, for a web browser. I like it. Thanks, Unity. Other than that, just like the rest of this OS, there's nothing new.

Even after all that stuff I just said, there's nothing to talk about. It's just Ubuntu version XX.XX. Something else will come along, people will lament, and people will praise. But this, even from me, got way more attention than it deserves.

Chrome's cool, at least.

i like my footprint.