Safe to romove Unity?

[luxsphinx]

So I upgraded Ubuntu and was greeted by Unity. I was unsure of it at first and figured I would give it a shot. It has failed miserably in almost every way aside from looking nice in some instances. It's slow, clunky, and was a total wreck to my efficient use of the computer. But they can't all be winners I suppose. I can see where it would be useful (since it seems more finger-friendly) on a tablet device, but I'm using a standard notebook, not a tablet.

That being said, I switched back to what is now "Ubuntu (Classic)" and have put things happily back on track. However, since I have no intentions of ever bothering with Unity again, I want to remove it - it's just wasting space. My questions are, would this be safe? Are Unity and Ubuntu entwined to the point where doing so would make future updating/upgrading a problem? If it is a problem for the future, I feel it would be easier to just change distros (Mint, OpenSUSE, or just Kubuntu) - any recommendations?

[cbowman57]

I use Gnome 3.0 shell so I just sudo apt-get purge unity, doesn't seem to cause any problems from what I can tell.

[luxsphinx]

@cbowman57 Thanks for the response. I guess that pretty much answers it.


To be fair to Unity, however, I'd like to just put down some specifics of likes and dislikes - after all there were a lot of people who put time and effort into developing it and it would be inconsiderate to dismiss it so generally.

Functionally, it does work. The problem is that the route it takes is not the most direct one and requires more clicks. It seems to rely far too much on searching for programs rather than on categories like nearly all menu systems do - and do so for good reason, its quick. Sometimes, I simply do not recall the name of the program I am looking for, meaning search is useless and a standard menu lets me see what I need much faster. There also seemed to have been a substantial increase in the use of system resources compared to before.

There are, however, many quirks that are simply annoying.


If I open the Dock, I must click on the button again or hit the esc key to leave it. Clicking off of it (on open screen space) does not close the Dock.
Adding things to the Launcher is not intuitive. Common sense would say that dragging and dropping an icon on it should add that to the Launcher - it even shows a caption "Drop to add application". But, alas, this does nothing. The program does not get added. In fact, the only way I've found to actually get icons to stay in the Launcher is to run the program so that it's icon shows up, then right-click and select "Keep in Launcher".
Back to the Dock, why is everything huge? It's a major waste of screen space. I do not need two inch icons in the main "Shortcuts" portion of the Dock. Nor do I need the Dock to take up 75% of my screen. It is as if this was designed for a tablet or netbook (which I believe it was), but that almost no work was done to fit it properly to the desktop/notebook form factor. Things do not need to be jumbo sized if you are not on the move or using your fingers on a touch screen.
Menus. I am using Linux, not Mac. That is part of the reason I dislike the window functions being on the left (and have moved them to the right). I hate the attempt to imitate the Mac interface by using the top panel as the universal menu space for all programs. If I was on a tablet or tiny screen and thus always used programs full-screened, this wouldn't be too much of an issue, but once again I am on a notebook. I have many windows open at once and having the top bar constantly changing is just a pain.
The former menu setup had all of my programs organized in their proper categories. This no longer the case and half of my programs can no longer be found under any category other than "All Applications".
The offering of other programs for download was nice at first, but quickly wore out its welcome. It might be nice for new users, but if you know what you want or have what you need it just starts to seem a bit forced. There should be the ability to customize the Dock to get rid of this (as well as altering the size of icons and the Dock itself).

To its credit, Unity is innovative and sort of different - in a limited sense since much seems borrowed from Apple. It most certainly has attractive graphics, but this also makes things slower. Another positive is that it does make Ubuntu stand out as different and gives Canonical some more control in design I suppose.

I feel as though it has some great potential if it was more tailored to the desktop/notebook form factor (one style of desktop/notebook and another for tablet/netbook would be great) or at least allowed the user to make the tweaks - user customization has always been something very attractive about Ubuntu and Linux in general and sadly this seems to be dissolving.

Unity just isn't ready for prime time in my opinion and should have had some work done before it was made the default.

[cbowman57]

Yes, I'm with you on virtually every point, I have nothing against Unity, I wish Canonical the best with it, but it doesn't function the way *I* want it to. There are other DE's that do, or can be made to with little effort. A comment I read quite often in the Unity threads is that it's just a matter of retraining yourself to use it, but that is contrary to my philosphy, which is a desktop should function the way a user wants it to, I shouldn't be forced to adapt to it, it should be adaptable to me. :)

In my case Gnome 3.0 shell is what I've been waiting for & I am extremely happy with it.

[sir.sargento]

Hello, I hope this helps. When I first upgraded to 11.04 I also disliked Unity. I have found a website with some nice tips for customizing the Unity dock and other things for 11.04. After following some of the tips on the website I got the dock to act how i liked it.

From what I've read it would be good to get used to Unity or maybe switch to another distro as I have read that Unity will be the default in the next Ubuntu upgrade as well but they will be removing the "Ubuntu (Classic)" option. Anyways heres the link: http://www.webupd8.org/2011/04/things-to-tweak-fix-after-installing.html

Sorry, if you have tried some of this before but it has helped me out quite a bit with some things that annoyed me.

[cbowman57]

Hello, I hope this helps. When I first upgraded to 11.04 I also disliked Unity. I have found a website with some nice tips for customizing the Unity dock and other things for 11.04. After following some of the tips on the website I got the dock to act how i liked it.

From what I've read it would be good to get used to Unity or maybe switch to another distro as I have read that Unity will be the default in the next Ubuntu upgrade as well but they will be removing the "Ubuntu (Classic)" option. Anyways heres the link: http://www.webupd8.org/2011/04/things-to-tweak-fix-after-installing.html

Sorry, if you have tried some of this before but it has helped me out quite a bit with some things that annoyed me.

I can't speak for luxsphinx, but for me customizing Unity just isn't enough, it's too dependent on the dock and the basic functionality remains unchanged. No matter what ubuntu uses for a default desktop there will always be other options available & I will be using one of the alternatives. Right now that is Gnome 3.0 and I will probably stick with it for a very long time because of it's flexibility.

[luxsphinx]

Hello, I hope this helps. When I first upgraded to 11.04 I also disliked Unity. I have found a website with some nice tips for customizing the Unity dock and other things for 11.04. After following some of the tips on the website I got the dock to act how i liked it.

From what I've read it would be good to get used to Unity or maybe switch to another distro as I have read that Unity will be the default in the next Ubuntu upgrade as well but they will be removing the "Ubuntu (Classic)" option. Anyways heres the link: http://www.webupd8.org/2011/04/things-to-tweak-fix-after-installing.html

Sorry, if you have tried some of this before but it has helped me out quite a bit with some things that annoyed me.

Thank you very much for the link, that offered quite a few fixes for things that I (and apparently many others) have found annoying. Sadly, some of those things should have been the default for Unity to begin with - such as having links to the Pictures, Documents, and Videos folders. Too bad Unity didn't have a convenient built in settings manager. If many of those things had been implemented to begin with, maybe there wouldn't be such a bad taste left by Unity with so many people, but even then it would still be quite drastic.

I found this to be particularly humorous in that link though:
"A note before reading this post: before giving up on Unity without giving it a try... don't. Try Unity for a few days - yes, it's not a finished product but it's actually quite interesting - and if you don't like it then switch."
Shouldn't something be a finished product before you deploy it not as an option, but as the default to tens of millions of people?

[wildmanne39]

Thank you very much for the link, that offered quite a few fixes for things that I (and apparently many others) have found annoying. Sadly, some of those things should have been the default for Unity to begin with - such as having links to the Pictures, Documents, and Videos folders. Too bad Unity didn't have a convenient built in settings manager. If many of those things had been implemented to begin with, maybe there wouldn't be such a bad taste left by Unity with so many people, but even then it would still be quite drastic.

I found this to be particularly humorous in that link though:
"A note before reading this post: before giving up on Unity without giving it a try... don't. Try Unity for a few days - yes, it's not a finished product but it's actually quite interesting - and if you don't like it then switch."
Shouldn't something be a finished product before you deploy it not as an option, but as the default to tens of millions of people?Hi, everyone needs to realize that this is just the first release of an new desktop and many changes came about and still are for the next release, it takes time to get the bugs worked out and have a finished product but lets be honest after you bought vista did you not feel like wow I paid for a operating system that just did not live up to the expectations, that still had bugs that needed working out. Any way there is many ways things can be customized in unity, I use the awn launcher and put it where I want it and have the other one hidden it only shows if I hit the super key. I am using 11.10 right now for testing and it has gnome 3 in the repo's for us to test also.

[luxsphinx]

Hi, everyone needs to realize that this is just the first release of an new desktop and many changes came about and still are for the next release, it takes time to get the bugs worked out and have a finished product but lets be honest after you bought vista did you not feel like wow I paid for a operating system that just did not live up to the expectations, that still had bugs that needed working out. Any way there is many ways things can be customized in unity, I use the awn launcher and put it where I want it and have the other one hidden it only shows if I hit the super key. I am using 11.10 right now for testing and it has gnome 3 in the repo's for us to test also.

I do realize that this is a project just in it's beginnings (though I'm not sure if 'first release' is the best term since it was part of Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.10), and that is why I think there is great potential for it in the future. And yes, it does take time (and user testing) to find and work out the bugs in things, but it is not the 'bugs' that I am really concerned with, it is the features and decisions being made with it that are the issue for me (i.e. Making it the default instead of just offering the option. It may be easy to change back to Gnome Classic, but the choice of making Unity the default says something). I can deal with the little quirks until a patch or update comes along, like drag-n-drop not working right on the Launcher if things are good overall. But what point is there is in waiting for a bug fix on something that seems to be there intentionally?

When it comes to customizing, I'll agree that Unity can be customized - the link provided by sir.sargento showed that - but not too much. However, I do not view disabling features all over the place to be 'customizing'. Customizing in my opinion (and I can only speak for myself) would involve adding in little extras, altering sizes, changing colors and positions, and preferably with no need for outside programs. And in that sense, Unity is limited. Even on the site linked to, many of the tips resulted in removing/disabling parts of Unity to the point that it was closer to the Gnome interface. Why bother even having it if you're just going turn it into something else that already exists?

Regardless, all of these things are my opinion, and similar to cbowman I find what customization is available on Unity thus far just isn't enough for me. Some may like it, and I'm glad that they are happy, but I am not too fond of all Canonical's choices and Unity just isn't for me at this time. I'll gladly check back on it in the future to try out any improvements though.

[raroth]

Thanks so much for the links. I'm new to Ubuntu (been using Red Hat derivatives for over a decade) and foolishly upgraded from 10.10 to 11.04. The overlay scroll bars have been driving me nuts! I followed one of your links and have put the aspirin bottle back in the medicine cabinet.

Best regards.