Unity- Despite flaws, increased productivity

[-gabe-noob-]

Hi guys, I just recently updated to unity and I'd like to share some of my thoughts and gather some of yours.

First of all, the overall layout, its actually really nice looking. Appealing to the eye and really is a 'modern' desktop. The windows behave in an intuitive manner. I find that it is increasing my productivity.

Despite the fact that I like the layout, I feel that more choices especially with panel layout and panel look (not everyone likes it semi transparent) are pretty important.

I think the most noticeable difference with unity is my productivity. I find that it is easier to navigate to what I want, easier to manage tasks and easier on the whole to use my computer, and that is what matters.

TL:DR In its nascent stage, unity still lacks some key customization that I'd like but I find that it makes me overall more productive and therefore is worth it.

What do you guys think about unity from a productivity standpoint? From a 'look' standpoint. Do you guys feel that maybe it is furthering the desktop environment into a more modern age?

[Frogs Hair]

I was a dock user prior to Unity . Now that the launches are added for the applications that most used it is pretty much the same except the dock was on the bottom . Dash works pretty well for the rest.

[kseise]

I am not a fan. Both Unity and Gnome-shell have taken a step back by requiring typing to launch applications again. I thought the idea of a GUI was to eliminate the keyboard in navigating the OS.

[NCLI]

I am not a fan. Both Unity and Gnome-shell have taken a step back by requiring typing to launch applications again. I thought the idea of a GUI was to eliminate the keyboard in navigating the OS.
Why eliminate when you can supplement?

[NightwishFan]

Why eliminate when you can supplement?

Exactly! I was just about to post this. :)

[benc1213]

I was trying my best to really like unity and I have been using it for a couple of days but I really don't like it. I might come back to it in 10.10 but for now I will just move to kubuntu.

[cgroza]

I noticed the same thing, it just needs some getting used to.

[radar920]

I am enjoying Unity so far and learning the shortcuts which is making things much better. My only issue so far is with the quickness that the side dock comes up and goes away. Its a little too slow and is some cases takes a few tries to work. Other than that i was pleasantly surprised after hearing all the negative.

[andamaru]

I am enjoying Unity so far and learning the shortcuts which is making things much better. My only issue so far is with the quickness that the side dock comes up and goes away. Its a little too slow and is some cases takes a few tries to work. Other than that i was pleasantly surprised after hearing all the negative.

I noticed the same thing, the dock does some weird things when I have an app full screen or anything window causing it to hide. I've also got it to half hide but I've been unable to reproduce it

[Perosteck]

I am enjoying Unity so far and learning the shortcuts which is making things much better. My only issue so far is with the quickness that the side dock comes up and goes away. Its a little too slow and is some cases takes a few tries to work. Other than that i was pleasantly surprised after hearing all the negative.

Make a quick move of the pointer into the top left corner of the screen and it appears instantly.

Once you have configured your stuff, Unity is damn quick on the draw.

[radar920]

Make a quick move of the pointer into the top left corner of the screen and it appears instantly.

Once you have configured your stuff, Unity is damn quick on the draw.

Hah! Thank you, now that is nice.

[bowens44]

Hi guys, I just recently updated to unity and I'd like to share some of my thoughts and gather some of yours.

First of all, the overall layout, its actually really nice looking. Appealing to the eye and really is a 'modern' desktop. The windows behave in an intuitive manner. I find that it is increasing my productivity.

Despite the fact that I like the layout, I feel that more choices especially with panel layout and panel look (not everyone likes it semi transparent) are pretty important.

I think the most noticeable difference with unity is my productivity. I find that it is easier to navigate to what I want, easier to manage tasks and easier on the whole to use my computer, and that is what matters.

TL:DR In its nascent stage, unity still lacks some key customization that I'd like but I find that it makes me overall more productive and therefore is worth it.

What do you guys think about unity from a productivity standpoint? From a 'look' standpoint. Do you guys feel that maybe it is furthering the desktop environment into a more modern age?

I find just the opposite to be true. For me it's not intuitive
at all. Every thing seems to take 3 to 4 extra clicks. I am afraid that I'm going to wear out my mouse because of all of the extra movement that is required because of the global menus. Finding an app is real adventure. The menu system is possibly the worst that I've used.

I don't think that it looks like a modern desktop. I think it looks like a toy or maybe a cell phone but certainly not like something that is suitable for a desktop machine.

[akand074]

I find just the opposite to be true. For me it's not intuitive
at all. Every thing seems to take 3 to 4 extra clicks. I am afraid that I'm going to wear out my mouse because of all of the extra movement that is required because of the global menus. Finding an app is real adventure. The menu system is possibly the worst that I've used.

I don't think that it looks like a modern desktop. I think it looks like a toy or maybe a cell phone but certainly not like something that is suitable for a desktop machine.

Stop using your mouse so much and it'll be 3 or 4 times faster. I used to use Gnome-Do but with Unity and Gnome 3 I no longer need it. Check out all the hot keys (http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/unity-keyboard-mouse-shortcuts) and you can likely fully use your system in ultra speed without even touching your mouse. I was using Unity only on my laptop and Gnome 3 on my desktop, but after learning all the new hot keys I'm thinking Unity might be even better as of right now.

[-gabe-noob-]

about the whole it looks toyish type deal, I personally think the modern desktop will be like this, childishly simple with everything staring at you right in the face. Personally I like not having to deal with drop down menus to navigate to whatever "place" I want to get to. The keyboard is a supplement to a GUI rather than something that is completely avoided by it, which tremendously increases my productivity. Everyone has their likes and dislikes though, thanks for the feedback guys.

[LADmaticCA]

I too was a kupfer/gnome-do user with gnome 2.x. I never used the drop-down menus, so I have no problem finding or launching programs with unity. The global menu though, I'm still not crazy about.

[Johnsie]

Lol, I got into a fight with my girlfriend because I couldn't multitask properly with Skype in Unity. Thanks alot Canonical :D

[-gabe-noob-]

Lol, I got into a fight with my girlfriend because I couldn't multitask properly with Skype in Unity. Thanks alot Canonical :D

PEBKAC

also I saw that other thread you posted. C'mon dude.

[Peter09]

UI designers have long recognised that the mouse/menu system is not the best way of driving a computer. Navigating a mouse to a small target, moving over multiple other targets before clicking require concentration and coordination. Just watch a beginner try it.

Power users have for a long time deferred to keyboard shortcuts, command lines and searches to perform these tasks, even in windows.

What Unity does is move focus away from the mouse/ menu towards an easy to use and easy to remember system of shortcuts.

Allowing casual users to easily adopt the practices of Power Users.

[earthpigg]

interesting read, thank you :)

[kseise]

Stop using your mouse so much and it'll be 3 or 4 times faster. I used to use Gnome-Do but with Unity and Gnome 3 I no longer need it. Check out all the hot keys (http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/unity-keyboard-mouse-shortcuts) and you can likely fully use your system in ultra speed without even touching your mouse. I was using Unity only on my laptop and Gnome 3 on my desktop, but after learning all the new hot keys I'm thinking Unity might be even better as of right now.

Why not eliminate the launcher and just run an autohide terminal instance to let you type the stuff in? A GUI is for clicking stuff isn't it? Can we get the keyboard overlays for the shortcuts like they did for the PS/2 in the late 80s early 90s? That would be cool and retro at the same time!:guitar:

UPDATE:
Sorry, I forgot to address this:
Why eliminate when you can supplement?
Because I don't see this as supplementing the GNOME menu systems. If there was a way to do what we used to do, then it would be supplemental. Otherwise, it is a replacement. As others have mentioned, I had to find a blog that showed me to right click on the Launcher [+] icon to get a list of applications. Why not put the short form main menu where the Ubuntu icon is and keep the old menus available? That would be supplemental.

[Legendary_Bibo]

I'm curious as to what everyone is doing all the time that requires these increased speeds in "productivity".

[scratman]

It's amazing how much more work I get done now that Transmission doesn't close when I tell it to, just disappears and continues using resources, I have to click 4 or 5 times to load up anything I don't open 5 times a day, I have no toolbar so that I can differentiate between different versions of the same program (and no, I can't open videos in new tabs...) Oh, and them there's the nice way I get thrown back to the log in screen at random intervals, that really increases my productivity!!! :D

I've done my fair share of Alpha and Beta work over the years, I really hoped upgrading at release and not before would be less painful, it really wasn't this time!! 1323 open bugs in Unity alone. 'Nuff said... https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity

There is a serious lack of tutorials to guide users through the new interface, but having glanced through a couple of hundred of the bugs listed, it seems like Canonical have dropped the ball here and pushed through their new baby, showstoppers and all. I hope that there are some serious fixes available in the next few days. If not, I'd be interested to know how many people have kept Unity, and how many have reverted to GNOME 2.x, or another WM.

[c2006]

It's amazing how much more work I get done now that Transmission doesn't close when I tell it to, just disappears and continues using resources, I have to click 4 or 5 times to load up anything I don't open 5 times a day, I have no toolbar so that I can differentiate between different versions of the same program (and no, I can't open videos in new tabs...) Oh, and them there's the nice way I get thrown back to the log in screen at random intervals, that really increases my productivity!!! :D

I've done my fair share of Alpha and Beta work over the years, I really hoped upgrading at release and not before would be less painful, it really wasn't this time!! 1323 open bugs in Unity alone. 'Nuff said... https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity

There is a serious lack of tutorials to guide users through the new interface, but having glanced through a couple of hundred of the bugs listed, it seems like Canonical have dropped the ball here and pushed through their new baby, showstoppers and all. I hope that there are some serious fixes available in the next few days. If not, I'd be interested to know how many people have kept Unity, and how many have reverted to GNOME 2.x, or another WM.

For me it's been pretty much rock solid. There are a few glitches, but it's fairly solid for a first outing. Can't wait to see how it goes in 11.10...

A warning that certain settings in ccsm will conflict with Unity and eat your narwhal* wouldn't hurt, but aside from that, I've had nothing that a logout and re-login hasn't fixed. I've written a short "reset Unity" (which seems to fix most glitches) script for the Narwhal-eating stuff and plonked it on the desktop, as well as placing a terminal shortcut there.

A UI's first major release is always a bit bumpy. I'd daresay Gnome 3 will be bumpy going into 11.10.

*I couldn't resist substituting this for the traditional hamster. :P

[Shmantiv_Radio]

It looks pretty good. A transparent panel would be nice, but I can live without it. The ability to minimize windows by clicking the dock icon would be useful, as would a show desktop icon (maybe a right click of the workspaces icon could be added at some point?).

My general problem with Unity is the bugs I've encountered. From the old Compiz bug of disappearing window borders to the menubar/windows buttons not showing up if you use the aero snapesque Compiz thing and maximize the window anytime afterwards.
Both of these were encountered in about 3 hours of the using the release version of Natty (I never experienced them in the Beta ironically). After 3 fresh installs with 3 different ISOs the same bugs still happen, and I'm using a netbook with the bog standard Atom setup.

[Perosteck]

Unity increases my competitiveness in a tough corporate world of hard men getting things done!

[tgm4883]

I've done my fair share of Alpha and Beta work over the years, I really hoped upgrading at release and not before would be less painful, it really wasn't this time!! 1323 open bugs in Unity alone. 'Nuff said... https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity

Please at least make valid arguments. There are 87,000+ open bugs in Ubuntu (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu), so 1300 seems pretty insignificant. Are you saying we shouldn't be using Ubuntu at all?

[NormanFLinux]

Really? I thought it was the other way around, to develop an interface aimed at Joe and Jane Home User, who have no interest in customization but just want to have an operating system that lets them get to work quickly.

That makes the power users unhappy but then again Ubuntu is not for them.

[aaaantoine]

I'm curious as to what everyone is doing all the time that requires these increased speeds in "productivity".

Working.


...Mostly.

[Johnsie]

I'm curious as to what everyone is doing all the time that requires these increased speeds in "productivity".


I work full time as a programmer in one of Ireland's biggest mailing houses. We are one of the companies that did well during the financial crisis because we are efficient and flexible.

As the programmer responsible for all our internal computer systems I often receive phone calls from people who need help or have come across a problem on one of the systems. When this happened before I was able to click one of the numerous short-cuts on the desktop and in the places menu. My panel was also like a quicklaunch for quickly getting into things.

The benefit of this for me was that I didn't have to remember keyboard short-cuts and I only ever had to use the keyboard when I actually needed to type something. This helped me to deal with problems quickly when the users needed it. It's difficult to hold a phone, type and also use the mouse and I don't have a headset for my work phone, but the main issue is being able to access files and applications quickly. I had no problem doing that in Gnome2 or Windows.

Unity slows me down with all of this because of a lack of real estate for custom icons. Some of my icons were to ssh shares and others were to samba shares. Having the 'Places' menu made it really quick for me to access those files.

Rather than just complaining I've decided to take part in the testing of Ocelot and will be submitting numerous blueprints at https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu to make sure that the next releases of Ubuntu are better at helping me and others do our jobs efficiently.

[Peter09]

Hi,
yours is one of the few complaints about Unity that I have seen that is really valid. I believe that this functionality is in the offing, however this page may help you.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/13758/how-can-i-edit-create-new-launcher-items-in-unity-by-hand

[scratman]

Please at least make valid arguments. There are 87,000+ open bugs in Ubuntu (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu), so 1300 seems pretty insignificant. Are you saying we shouldn't be using Ubuntu at all?

I'm absolutely not saying that we shouldn't be using Ubuntu at all, just Unity. It's not ready, it's not quicker than Gnome, nor is it more efficient, it's not more attractive, and it's not stable. It feels like Canonical have gone "We know how to build a UI, and we know what is best for our users, so we'll just build one and put it in by default." (Remember how Windows does that...?) The problem is that it really doesn't feel like they made the right call. You ever see the episode of The Simpsons' where Homer designed the "Perfect Car"? At least I can ditch Unity and revert to a better Desktop Environment.

There are always going to be people that are against change, much as there will be people that are utterly ecstatic about the change, do you recall the arguments on Facebook when they completely revamped the interface? It will take time to adjust, but people are more inclined to make the adjustment when they can see the benefit. Currently I can't. I'm much more in favour of a deprecated Desktop Environment that I can use quickly and reliably, than one that puts much of the software further from my grasp, has panels that get in my way and distract me, and feels less stable than a drunk Lindsay Lohan, who's forgotten to take her medication and decided to go ice skating!

[Johnsie]

Hi,
yours is one of the few complaints about Unity that I have seen that is really valid. I believe that this functionality is in the offing, however this page may help you.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/13758...-unity-by-hand

Thanks for the link. I would do this, however on my work desktop I dont have enough room on the sidebar for all the icons I need quick access to. i can't remember how many I can have on my work desktop but on my netbook there is room for something like 12 icons. I need alot more than that. So even if I created the icons there would be not enough room.

My suggestion to the developers was to make a show desktop icon and also decent replacement for 'Places'. Hiding away important features is not good if there is no suitable replacement.

[Peter09]

Well you are most probably right, you could

- reduce the size of the launcher to a minimum to get more icons on
- the launcher will accept more icons that it can display at once - it rolls up and down

Not an ideal fix.

I do recall that Unity will allow you to put launchers on the desktop - just not sure how.

[Swagman]

Has anyone actually got the 64 bit version to work properly yet ?

I have a dormant HD (unpowered) in my case that ha<s>s</s>d Lucid on it. Because all the problems I had trying to test 64 bit version out on my 16gb USB stick I decided to unplug my main drive and re-power the Lucid drive and (test) install to that.

I gave up !!

So many damn glitches.

[cariboo]

Has anyone actually got the 64 bit version to work properly yet ?

I have a dormant HD (unpowered) in my case that ha<s>s</s>d Lucid on it. Because all the problems I had trying to test 64 bit version out on my 16gb USB stick I decided to unplug my main drive and re-power the Lucid drive and (test) install to that.

I gave up !!

So many damn glitches.

On my well supported hardware, I'm running 64-bit on two systems, both with nVidia graphics, it also runs well on two 32-bit systems, my atom 270 powered netbook with Intel 945 graphics and an old Celeron powered system with nVidia graphics and 512MiB ram, I have kicking about.

[akand074]

Has anyone actually got the 64 bit version to work properly yet ?

I have a dormant HD (unpowered) in my case that ha<s>s</s>d Lucid on it. Because all the problems I had trying to test 64 bit version out on my 16gb USB stick I decided to unplug my main drive and re-power the Lucid drive and (test) install to that.

I gave up !!

So many damn glitches.

I also got mine working in 64 bit perfectly on my desktop with an ATI card (specs in my sig) though it's currently running Gnome 3, and also on my laptop running an AMD Turion processor, crappy ATI 3200 I believe integrated card.

[Nasair]

I was trying my best to really like unity and I have been using it for a couple of days but I really don't like it. I might come back to it in 10.10 but for now I will just move to kubuntu.

Try Xubuntu 11.04...other than some default application differences (which in some cases I found I like better) it is a lot more usual able and very fast. Only thing I miss is tabbed browsing but I use another file browser when I find myself really needing tabs for one reason or another.