Now that the Unity hate has cooled down, how do you feel about the WM?

[llanitedave]

I don't hate Unity, I actually think it's pretty cool for the most part. Better for small screens than large ones, though.

Screen real estate doesn't seem to be an issue with any of them, since both Xfce and KDE allow you to hide the panels when you aren't hovering over them.

I settled on KDE not because because Unity is that bad, but because KDE is that good.

[layers]

unity is the reason I will probably never veer off from 10.04

[screaminj3sus]

It's nice that the flame wars have died down, but that just demands that we look at the real problem here:

What drives the design?

With Gnome Shell, I feel like the design was driven by a need to eliminate distractions. Unfortunately, I don't really believe this need exists outside the mind of Gnome developers, and thus the resistance to Gnome Shell in the community.

With Unity, I think the design was driven by a desire to emulate the touch-style paradigm of application-centric thinking. I don't think touch input devices have proven themselves, outside of their convenience in extremely mobile devices. For the desktop, it really doesn't make any sense to use this design until we perfect an input technology like eye-tracking.

Unity works excellently as a desktop UI IMO, particularly on a laptop. Its great at conserving vertical screen space, while not hiding too much functionality, and its got very good keyboard navigation.

I like gnome-shell too, but not as much. I don't like that in gnome-shell the dock is only available in the overlay, so you have to open the overlay way too often. I like that unity has a feature rich launcher that is always visible.

[screaminj3sus]

I like it, just wish that it is less buggy. There are a whole bunch of things broken in 12.04 and many are fixed in 12.10, I am waiting for an update.Instead of adding more stuffs and keep changing it IMO they should spend the time to make it solid and bug free.

I do agree that bugginess has been unity's biggest issue. 12.10 has been quite solid for me so far though, I'm not getting any more random compiz crashes like I had in 12.04 and 11.10.

[x-shaney-x]

Unity works excellently as a desktop UI IMO, particularly on a laptop. Its great at conserving vertical screen space, while not hiding too much functionality, and its got very good keyboard navigation.

I like gnome-shell too, but not as much. I don't like that in gnome-shell the dock is only available in the overlay, so you have to open the overlay way too often. I like that unity has a feature rich launcher that is always visible.

It does have an extension called "dash to dock" which works very well and even "dodges" like the launcher used to.

[Copper Bezel]

It's a nice extension for mimicking the Unity workflow. It also adds reasonable window cycling so that the Dash can be used not only for launching, but also for window switching, too, as in Unity.

It's down to workflow, though. I don't personally find myself using the Favorites Bar as often as I use other features in the Overview. I use the Overview to switch apps or workspaces, close windows, and launch applications by search, and within that is a little bar to launch my pinned apps, too. So having the "launcher" available without going to the overview doesn't offer much, because I'm still going there for everything else.

In Unity, search, the launcher, the workspace switcher, and window switching are all sort of a-la-carte. In Shell, they're all in one place. It's possible to hack either one to work more like the other, and as I've said, I make my Unity work more like Shell than it's really intended to. It can be done going either way.

But it's probably best to pick the workflow that works for you and not have to fight the system, as screaminj3sus has with Unity.

[screaminj3sus]

It's a nice extension for mimicking the Unity workflow. It also adds reasonable window cycling so that the Dash can be used not only for launching, but also for window switching, too, as in Unity.

It's down to workflow, though. I don't personally find myself using the Favorites Bar as often as I use other features in the Overview. I use the Overview to switch apps or workspaces, close windows, and launch applications by search, and within that is a little bar to launch my pinned apps, too. So having the "launcher" available without going to the overview doesn't offer much, because I'm still going there for everything else.

In Unity, search, the launcher, the workspace switcher, and window switching are all sort of a-la-carte. In Shell, they're all in one place. It's possible to hack either one to work more like the other, and as I've said, I make my Unity work more like Shell than it's really intended to. It can be done going either way.

But it's probably best to pick the workflow that works for you and not have to fight the system, as screaminj3sus has with Unity.

Exactly, I had tried the dash to dock extension, which made it better for me, but I still found that I liked unity better, and that I was basically just trying to make gnome-shell act more like unity.

When it comes down to it, one's favorite UI is the one that doesn't require you to "fight the system", whichever that UI may be.

It does have an extension called "dash to dock" which works very well and even "dodges" like the launcher used to.

I was angry when they first removed dodge windows from unity, but over time I actually started to prefer having the launcher always visible.

[monkeybrain2012]

I was angry when they first removed dodge windows from unity, but over time I actually started to prefer having the launcher always visible.

If you are using 12.04 you can get dodged windows back with ppa.

http://www.webupd8.org/2012/05/how-t...-minimize.html

It is not a deal breaker for me, but I prefer having this function.

[rai4shu2]

Unity works excellently as a desktop UI IMO, particularly on a laptop. Its great at conserving vertical screen space, while not hiding too much functionality, and its got very good keyboard navigation.

There's a lot to like about Unity, in particular because it aims to combine all the best of both worlds (hence the name). The thing I'm pointing out here is simply this:

Application-centric design

I'm sitting here wondering if this is really a good idea. I mean, we've had a very document-centric design for a long time for a lot of good reasons.

[MisterGaribaldi]

There's a lot to like about Unity, in particular because it aims to combine all the best of both worlds (hence the name). The thing I'm pointing out here is simply this:

Application-centric design

I'm sitting here wondering if this is really a good idea. I mean, we've had a very document-centric design for a long time for a lot of good reasons.

Well, Mac OS and Mac OS X are, respectively, exclusively and mostly, application-centric OS platforms, and have been quite successful as such. And, while it's true there are times when being able to start up multiple, isolated instances of an application can be beneficial, I'm not sure I see this as being a requirement for most people.

MS-DOS was, arguably, docu-centric, though there were plenty of programs you would open and stay in, across the creation and access of multiple documents. Windows has been, as far back as my memory goes, largely -- if not exclusively -- docu-centric.

So, classically, Apple's Mac platform and Microsoft's DOS and WIndows platforms have fairly well represented both operational paradigms.

Arguably, Linux has always tended towards the docu-centric approach, so far as I'm aware of it. And, to me in a way, it's quite ironic because Gnome represented, classically, the ultimate mix of Mac OS / Mac OS X-like "Finder" yet with the best of the docu-centric approach that Windows has always been known for. That's a good part of the reason I've always preferred Gnome, and it's probably one of the biggest reasons why I'm still upset over the Gnome 3/Unity change.