What happened to Ubuntu?

[SonWon]

<Rant ON>
Back 5 years ago I was running Ubuntu Hardy Heron. I thought it was great at the time. When I decided I wanted to play games I moved to Windows 7. Well now I am back with much better hardware and running Ubuntu 12.04 and it plays games just fine for me. However I must admit I am disappointed with Ubuntu. With Hardy Heron I could configure things the way I want. Now everything appears locked down. Something simple like changing the order of the indicators is a chore of copy and edit files which I have yet to get to work. Also, I wanted to add a GPU & CPU temperature indicator that would display the temperature on the bar like I did with Hardy Heron 5 years ago. And I find this is near impossible too. Adding the CPU usage for each core on the bar was also possible with Hardy, not so yet for 12.04. I should add I don't want to click and get a drop down; I have that working thank you. I want to see the value dynamically changing on the bar. This was all easy to do with Hardy. And can I easily move Unity to the bottom of the screen, of course not with 12.04. All of the little configurable things seem to have been pulled and removed. I am disappointed in the direction Ubuntu is moving in.

And what ever happen to laptop power management? 12.04 is no better than Hardy and maybe worst since there is no indicator to change the power state. I had that too before.

This is like Windows 8 no start button. Appears today's Ubuntu is no better than M$. Win 7 had more configuration options that 12.04.
<Rant OFF>

Not here for a debate, is just my opinion.

Can someone please advise me which distro has the best power management for laptops and allows customizations? And runs Wine / PlayOnLinux. I think I'll leave Ubuntu.

[Iowan]

Moved to Ubuntu, Linux and OS Chat.

[Daliz]

You could try Kubuntu which is Ubuntu with KDE desktop. It's much more configurable than Unity. If you don't want to reinstall you could install KDE desktop to your Ubuntu installation.

You might like XFCE too but it's much more minimalist than KDE. If you want configurable, stay away from Gnome3.

[mastablasta]

it's not what happened to Ubuntu it's more what happened to Gnome.

KDE or XFCE for easy configuration.

[mips]

You can try Xubuntu, openSuse, Manjaro, Mint, Mageia

[Bucky Ball]

Xfce rocks. You can try it in a standard Ubuntu install. Just install xfce4 from the repos, log out, choose 'xfce session' from the 'Sessions' popup and see how you go. VERY configurable, lightweight and fast.

[dave2001]

I hate the Unity interface, I agree with you on that. However, the rest of you're "rant" is a bit unfair. You can still configure Ubuntu however you like, especially given that you can change you're entire desktop, unlike windows. There are several flavors of Ubuntu with very different desktops, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Gnome Ubuntu, etc.

For a new desktop, I would suggest KDE. It is exceptionally configurable, and can be either simple or have plenty of "eye candy". Xfce would be my second choice, it's a very nicely designed desktop and has a smaller resource footprint than KDE.

Power management for laptops has improved a lot since Hardy Heron, however, it is not enabled by default in newer versions. You have a couple options:
1. enable and configure the default Ubuntu solution, called "laptop-mode-tools"
2. install another utility many people use, TLP http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-...anagement.html
-- keep in mind you want to use one or the other, do not have both installed or they will conflict with each other.

[craig10x]

Unity is really just a dock...i don't understand why some use words like hate it...but if you don't like docks then you can use one of the alternate desktops available for ubuntu as was previously mentioned...
Gnome changed to the gnome shell and if you look at that i think you will appreciate unity more as i feel it's a much more streamlined and nicer approach to gnome shell desktop...Canonical wanted to work with gnome when they switched to the shell concept but couldn't get cooperation from them so they had to go off on their own and develop their own solution which to me, is the superior of the two...

In my case, in fact...though i always have liked ubuntu best i did not like it's original gnome 2 interface (before gnome introduced gnome 3) in which there were 2 panels (space waster in my opinion) and a "fan out" apps menu (clumsy and cumbersome to wade through)....as a result, for several years i went to linux mint with it's more window's style lower panel only and slab menu...I returned to ubuntu when Unity was introduced...(in ubuntu 11.04)

To be fair, you may want to work with it for two weeks or so, then if you still don't care for it, switch to an alternative as they mentioned...too many here try unity for like 15 minutes and decide it's not for them just because it is different...

The idea is to put your favorite apps and frequently used ones on the unity launcher (dock) for quick 1 click access and use the "dash search" to locate those you don't use often...used like that it's a simple and productive desktop i have found

[vasa1]

Unity is really just a dock. ...

Why do you say that? What about the dash, global menu, hud, and scopes? Aren't they also part of Unity?

[craig10x]

Yes they are...but dash is just a search (like you would have on a slab menu in windows or mint for example) and global menu is a nice space saver (which by the way will have an optional turn off control in 14.04 i read) and as far as online searches, if you don't want them, then you can turn them off in privacy settings....so basically, what that leaves you with is a dock and a search...

I'm talking about how unity is used (in the same manner as any dock) not it's overall features included with it (which are up to the individual if he wants to use or not)...
and Unity Launcher IS INDEED a dock...pure and simple...