Ubuntu is no longer the flavor of Linux I prefer

**LinuxFanBoi** · October 25th, 2012

I hope this is the right place to put feedback to the dev team, if not I hope a moderator will move it to the propper forum.

I'm leaving Ubuntu for a distro that's more friendly to folks like me who enjoy customizing their UI. I'm not a fan of Unity, never have been and never will be. I know I could keep Ubuntu and set it up to go back to gnome, but I shouldn't have to. Gnome should be the default as it used to be. If the devs want people to have the option to use Unity they should give us a choice.

Until the Ubuntu team is ready to offer a distro that is geared to those of us who like to tinker, I'll be using a different flavor of Linux. No hard feelings, I know the target audience for Ubuntu is a wide variety of people with varying and often times limited skills who do not what to be overwhelmed by an intimidating OS, but it appears I'm no longer in that target audience.

**jrog** · October 25th, 2012

No hard feelings here, either. I hope you enjoy whichever distribution you choose.

One concern, though:

Originally Posted by LinuxFanBoi

I know I could keep Ubuntu and set it up to go back to gnome, but I shouldn't have to. Gnome should be the default as it used to be.

Why think that?

First, Unity is a shell running on GNOME, so there is at least some sense in which GNOME still is the default. Maybe you meant that GNOME Shell should be the default rather than Unity? Or were you thinking that Ubuntu should have stayed with GNOME 2? Or something else? I'm just not sure which thing you're suggesting here.

Anyway, if you're suggesting GNOME Shell, why should it be the default rather than Unity? Both are new shell experiences, both are hard to customize, neither "used to be" what Ubuntu came with, etc. (and GNOME Shell has received some really awful press). If you're suggesting GNOME 2, well, I can't see why Ubuntu should have stuck with a DE that is now generally unsupported and unused elsewhere as the default. Few distributions have done this. What Unity does is use GNOME 3 with a custom shell -- just like Linux Mint does with Cinnamon, for example. I can't really see why that's a bad decision.

Even if you disagree with all of that, though, I guess the bottom line for me is that I don't see why it shouldn't be perfectly acceptable for Ubuntu to use Unity. I wouldn't go to Chakra Linux and tell them that they should use GNOME (they're a KDE-only distro), and I wouldn't go to Linux Mint and tell them that they should use GNOME (Shell) as the default, either (they offer KDE, Xfce, Cinnamon, and MATE, and none of them is considered "the default," AFAIK). Especially since Ubuntu is distributed along with Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, etc., I can't really see what the issue is. It may be that you don't like Unity, and that's okay, but there are probably people who don't like KDE and so don't like Chakra (for example), too; that doesn't mean Chakra should change its defaults.

**coffeecat** · October 25th, 2012

Originally Posted by LinuxFanBoi

I hope this is the right place to put feedback to the dev team, if not I hope a moderator will move it to the propper forum.

From T&E sticky:

The forum membership, staff included, are volunteers. Most are ordinary users. This is not the place to address concerns to Canonical, the Ubuntu design team or the developers, nor is it the place for bug reports.

**Version Dependency** · October 25th, 2012

I'm leaving Ubuntu....<snip>.... I'm not a fan of Unity...<snip>...

Not this again. I thought we got over this 2 years ago. Gnome 2 is dead and it is not coming back. Canonical didn't kill Gnome 2, the Gnome project killed it. Don't like Unity, then don't use it. Find a desktop environment/window manager that you like and install it. You have all of the same options on Ubuntu as you do on Fedora as you do on Gentoo as you do on <insert distro name>.

Try some of the following: KDE, XFCE, LXDE, Enlightenment, Openbox, Fluxbox, Compiz standalone, AwesomeWM, PekWM, Razor-QT, and a hundred other window managers out there. Want to seriously tinker? Grab a minimal ISO or the server ISO and build your own customized Ubuntu.

I know I could keep Ubuntu and set it up to go back to gnome, but I shouldn't have to.

So you are tinkerer...but you can't be bothered to install a new desktop environment/window manager? That takes literally seconds in many cases. It seems you really just want to rant about your hate for Unity.

**Linuxisfast** · October 25th, 2012

Ubuntu being for mass deployment is not meant to be tinkered and destroyed. Its meant to function as a swiss knife and do it all for years which it does well. In case its tinkering you want, compile Gentoo or Arch and tinker to your heart.