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

[fontis]

My initial reaction to it has remained the same regardless of how many times I've tried it and even used it extensively.
I'm currently still forcing myself to use Ubuntu 12.04 with Unity but really... I just don't like it.

I think it's flawed in a few ways and I'll explain why.
I think the Dash is a bit too disorganizing and frankly the whole new "menu approach" that Gnome and Unity have taken is just counter-productive. I much prefer the way things were with Gnome2 or the Start menu in Windows or even the menu in KDE.

That aside, I think it's a huge flaw that Unity still relies on Compiz instead of just being standalone to begin with. Even though Unity is clearly better now than it was in Natty, it's still not there and it will never be unless Compiz is overhauled or Unity is just made into something more standalone.

I also think it's really silly that the Launcher is stuck on the left side and you can't move it without h4x.

But the worst thing right now is the top panel. I just don't understand the point of having a top panel forced on the screen which seemingly serves no purpose whatsoever other than to host your notification bar and that wretched global menu. It's such a huge design flaw for a desktop environment. You basically have two static elements on your screen at all times instead of just simply one.

I wish they would just remove the top panel completely and morph the notifications into the Launcher panel instead.

That being said, it IS clearly functional and I'm sure a lot of people don't feel the way I do and they enjoy it the way it is. But these are just a few things on my mind

[mamamia88]

Perhaps I was not clear enough. I meant that Unity required me to make greater use of the keyboard in lieu of the mouse. Like I said, I'm no expert but with my Unity I had no access to the 'traditional' (you'll probably hate that word) menu for apps in accessories, games etc. I found I had to go to Dash, type the first couple of letters and then the app would list.

I had no minimized icon on the dock. The 'cube face' I needed was in an app running in a VM and all that appeared on the dock was the VM app (virtualbox) and not the app itself. Clicking the 'docked' VM icon just brought up Virtualbox and not the app.
I had these aspects installed/active prior to trying Unity again. I don't think it's appropriate that Unity retrogrades my DE just because it wants me to go in a different direction.I totally agree with you. However, I have always been of a mind to make my computer do what I want it to do, not what a developer thinks I want it to do.

Interestingly, after my first rant I installed Cinnamon. Happy camper right here folks. Cinnamon is fast, lean and smiles at those who love a mouse.

Don't get me wrong, I think there is a future for Unity... but that future is more likely to be on hardware that depends on touch.

Me too. But Canonical is trying to make a desktop that stands out from the crowd. Unity isn't meant for you and me who like to tweak the desktop alot. Personally I find shell a pretty good middle ground between "traditional" and "modern". With plugins you can have a beautiful desktop but still have some of the features you miss from the old paradigm of desktops. Also I think that the firefox method of customizing your desktop should have been done a long time ago.

[Linuxisfast]

I have various machines running xfce, gnome and kde but find Ubuntu to be the most productive, the indicators, the easy access of the side bar and quick find of dash all work nicely for me.

[neu5eeCh]

Interesting discussion. I recently thought I'd try Unity again. I tried installing it on my brand new Acer Aspire One Ao722. Unity, whether because of Compiz or otherwise, was slow, buggy and completely collapsed post-install. I would get a complete purple screen or the screen would be split (left half on the right, right half on the left). I nuked the Unity install and tried Xubuntu/Voyager. Everything has been smooth as butter. I've been using Xubuntu on all my systems and have grown to love it's flexibility, refinements and conveniences.

Unity, however, would have been good on the Acer, having such a small screen.

I mention the installation debacle because I have a hunch that installing CCSM is what screwed Unity over. The reason I installed CCSM was for one feature -- the grid grab bars (for resizing windows). One of the nice XFCE refinements missing in Unity (as an example) is that with a keystroke XFCE will place my pointer on the window's corner and let me immediately resize it without having to hunt for the corner. I click and move. As soon as I installed CCSM, I was no longer able to hold down the Super Key in order to see hotkeys. Instead, all my apps on the launcher were numbered. (I recall that Canonical wanted to remove CCSM from the repos.) So, I could have removed CCSM but would have lacked the functionality and ease of use of XFCE.

The most annoying feature concerning Unity (and one that could be easily remedied) is choosing apps in the lens. Why oh, why oh, why (when I type in Terminal for example) do I then have to navigate to the Terminal Icon!?! This feature is so obtuse and annoyingly easy to remedy that it alone turns me off Unity. Gnome Shell's Activities overview is far superior in this respect. Like Synapse, I can type Terminal and hit return. Done. Unity should anticipate the software that I want, like Synapse or Gnome Shell, and hightlight it. C'mon boys.

I don't mind the global menu but I don't see why Unity hides it. Auto-hiding the menu is utterly pointless. It's an affectation that we should be able to switch on or off.

Another major annoyance remains the launcher's lack of responsiveness. I don't like having to see it. It's an in-your-face affectation. It kills real-estate, makes the desktop feel claustrophobic and offers little to no useful information. When autohide is applied, however, the responsiveness of the launcher remains amateurishly problematic. Sometimes it pops up, sometimes I have to bang the side of the screen until it scurries out of its hiding place.

So, my feelings? I want Unity to succeed. I like everything Ubuntu has done for the Linux Desktop. However, Unity (in my experience) remains half-baked and stubbornly recalcitrant in areas that would seem easily remedied.

[Linuxisfast]

Interesting discussion. I recently thought I'd try Unity again. I tried installing it on my brand new Acer Aspire One Ao722. Unity, whether because of Compiz or otherwise, was slow, buggy and completely collapsed post-install. I would get a complete purple screen or the screen would be split (left half on the right, right half on the left). I nuked the Unity install and tried Xubuntu/Voyager. Everything has been smooth as butter. I've been using Xubuntu on all my systems and have grown to love it's flexibility, refinements and conveniences.

Unity, however, would have been good on the Acer, having such a small screen.

I mention the installation debacle because I have a hunch that installing CCSM is what screwed Unity over. The reason I installed CCSM was for one feature -- the grid grab bars (for resizing windows). One of the nice XFCE refinements missing in Unity (as an example) is that with a keystroke XFCE will place my pointer on the window's corner and let me immediately resize it without having to hunt for the corner. I click and move. As soon as I installed CCSM, I was no longer able to hold down the Super Key in order to see hotkeys. Instead, all my apps on the launcher were numbered. (I recall that Canonical wanted to remove CCSM from the repos.) So, I could have removed CCSM but would have lacked the functionality and ease of use of XFCE.

The most annoying feature concerning Unity (and one that could be easily remedied) is choosing apps in the lens. Why oh, why oh, why (when I type in Terminal for example) do I then have to navigate to the Terminal Icon!?! This feature is so obtuse and annoyingly easy to remedy that it alone turns me off Unity. Gnome Shell's Activities overview is far superior in this respect. Like Synapse, I can type Terminal and hit return. Done. Unity should anticipate the software that I want, like Synapse or Gnome Shell, and hightlight it. C'mon boys.

I don't mind the global menu but I don't see why Unity hides it. Auto-hiding the menu is utterly pointless. It's an affectation that we should be able to switch on or off.

Another major annoyance remains the launcher's lack of responsiveness. I don't like having to see it. It's an in-your-face affectation. It kills real-estate, makes the desktop feel claustrophobic and offers little to no useful information. When autohide is applied, however, the responsiveness of the launcher remains amateurishly problematic. Sometimes it pops up, sometimes I have to bang the side of the screen until it scurries out of its hiding place.

So, my feelings? I want Unity to succeed. I like everything Ubuntu has done for the Linux Desktop. However, Unity (in my experience) remains half-baked and stubbornly recalcitrant in areas that would seem easily remedied.

Its an AMD Fusion chip netbook if I am not mistaken, very similar to the ASUS 1215B I have, in my case Unity works fine as long as I enable the AMD Catalyst via hardware driver, since 12.10 has the latest Catalyst, it works quite well actually, my system has 2GB RAM though.

[Linuxratty]

Wasn't a fan, still not a fan. To each his/her own.

Same here..Don't like keyboard short cuts. I prefer to point and click..The less typing I have to do,the better.
I like the old fashioned drop down menus..Still using Fallback.

[jrog]

I have a hunch that installing CCSM is what screwed Unity over.

Not sure about that. In my case, at least, I have had CCSM installed for quite some time and have been having a generally great Unity experience nevertheless.

The most annoying feature concerning Unity (and one that could be easily remedied) is choosing apps in the lens. Why oh, why oh, why (when I type in Terminal for example) do I then have to navigate to the Terminal Icon!?! This feature is so obtuse and annoyingly easy to remedy that it alone turns me off Unity. Gnome Shell's Activities overview is far superior in this respect. Like Synapse, I can type Terminal and hit return. Done. Unity should anticipate the software that I want, like Synapse or Gnome Shell, and hightlight it. C'mon boys.

Unity does this; I just double-checked. I hit the Windows key to open Dash, I type "terminal," I hit enter, and a terminal launches. I think you must have been experiencing another bug here. (EDIT, in light of the comment below this one: Maybe the problem is that the result is not highlighted in the Dash, so you didn't realize you could just hit enter to launch the first result?)

Another major annoyance remains the launcher's lack of responsiveness. I don't like having to see it. It's an in-your-face affectation. It kills real-estate, makes the desktop feel claustrophobic and offers little to no useful information.

This is probably just a matter of personal preference, but I feel very differently about this. On widescreen displays, anyway, the launcher feels (and looks) great -- it is probably one of the highlights of the Unity experience for me. I can make the icons small enough to not take up much space (and it is space that is not really used up on widescreen displays anyway, since the launcher is to the left rather than on the bottom or top), while still being able to quickly launch applications and multitask between them. I can easily see what I have open and so on, too. De gustibus non est disputandum, though!

[Paqman]

The most annoying feature concerning Unity (and one that could be easily remedied) is choosing apps in the lens. Why oh, why oh, why (when I type in Terminal for example) do I then have to navigate to the Terminal Icon!?! This feature is so obtuse and annoyingly easy to remedy that it alone turns me off Unity. Gnome Shell's Activities overview is far superior in this respect. Like Synapse, I can type Terminal and hit return. Done. Unity should anticipate the software that I want, like Synapse or Gnome Shell, and hightlight it. C'mon boys.

That used to annoy me too, until I realised that you can actually just hit enter and it launches the first result. It may have been like that all along and I was getting annoyed with it for nothing, which I find a bit embarrassing.

[coffeecat]

(when I type in Terminal for example) do I then have to navigate to the Terminal Icon!?!

Type terminal and then ENTER, or simply type ter and click on the terminal icon that appears in the dash. Even just 't' or 'te' typed in the dash offers me the terminal. I fail to see what is troubling you.

I would think many forum members using Unity would have pinned terminal to the launcher anyway!

EDIT:

until I realised that you can actually just hit enter and it launches the first result.

Or that.

[johnnybgoode83]

Features-wise, I feel the Unity is pretty complete now. In my opinion, the next two releases should be all about stability and performance with a features freeze. There are still a few issue to iron out.