jjww
July 2nd, 2012, 04:08 PM
Lots of questions and info, so please take the time to read.
I love Ubuntu, I would love to stick with it, It's way better than windows especially since Vista and windows 7 which are truly dreadful so I'm not even thinking about moving back to that and I can't afford a Mac. But, (Of course there has to be a but) I have been using Ubuntu as my only OS for quite a while now (since 10.04) which got updated to 11.04 when that version was released but I used the classic desktop exclusively. With the recent hype about the improvements made to the unity desktop I finally took the plunge and updated to 12.04 over the weekend.
I'm now regretting that decision as I just don't get on with unity. It's a personal thing but I find my productivity is down hugely because it's just not designed for multi tasking.
Feel free to skip this explanation of why I don't get on with Unity but if you understand my issues it might help for a more appropriate answers/opinions.
I'm not restricted to a laptop sized monitor, I'm not using touch screen, I'm on a full blown desktop system with a 28" monitor and lots of windows open.
Because of the way that I work with typically 8 apps running and often as many as 20 apps open at any one time. Usually, eclipse, netbeans, terminal windows, browser, email, emulators and the odd game of kpatience sitting in the background for when my head is getting too stuffed full of coding issues.
I need a better interface for launching apps, hiding and showing apps (I miss the single click hide and show apps button) the fact that apps launch in full screen making it difficult to switch between apps, hiding the launcher, making it difficult to launch new apps, no option to add launchers to the task bar (That I could find anyway) for custom launchers. I use that option frequently as my custom launchers are now on the desktop and I need to minimise all windows to get to the launcher instead of just clicking the minimise button.
Quite often I will just click on a menu item for an non active window to do something like re-launch an emulator from eclipse, I just cant do this in Unity.
It takes a lot longer to navigate the launcher to launch apps. Havr to type into to the launcher search bar or browse all apps (Where have the categories gone?) making it twice as long to launch a new app than the classic desktop experience.
I guess it works well for most but it sucks for me. This is not about not wanting to move with the times. It's about change has to work better for me not worse.
So back to my question
I had a look at xfce from recent issue (May 2012 I think) linux format magazine remix of a number of Ubuntu distro configurations and it looks like it has all the features that I need/miss since updating to 12.04 and it seems on the surface to be very very good.
1) What I don't understand is what I would loose if I switched to xfce. Why is xfce not the desktop of choice? What makes Unity better than xfce?
2) How to switch?
If I choose to use xfce is it possible to replace Unity and keep my apps and data) I have sda1 as a seperate partition to my home folder. In fact I have a number of partitions for swap folder and somerthing else (Can't remember what right now).
3) Would Linux Mint suit better?
I have had a play with a mint live distro (again from lxf magazine) a while back and that looked awesome but I just went to have another look and got totally confused with the different desktop solutions (cinnamon vs MATE) and again I found myself with too much choice and not knowing enough to make an informed decision.
4) Am I just missing something?
I'm confused about the popularity of Unity? Are there features that address my issues that I just haven't discovered yet? I know I can stick stuff to the launcher bit what's the point of that if I have to minimise my apps just to see the launcher?
The just try it and see principle works but not for me right now! I need to make as informed decision as is possible to make without too much more trial and error as my productivity is suffering I need to make the right chpice as quickly as possible.
I would be grateful for any qualified opinions and answers.
Thanks for your time.
I love Ubuntu, I would love to stick with it, It's way better than windows especially since Vista and windows 7 which are truly dreadful so I'm not even thinking about moving back to that and I can't afford a Mac. But, (Of course there has to be a but) I have been using Ubuntu as my only OS for quite a while now (since 10.04) which got updated to 11.04 when that version was released but I used the classic desktop exclusively. With the recent hype about the improvements made to the unity desktop I finally took the plunge and updated to 12.04 over the weekend.
I'm now regretting that decision as I just don't get on with unity. It's a personal thing but I find my productivity is down hugely because it's just not designed for multi tasking.
Feel free to skip this explanation of why I don't get on with Unity but if you understand my issues it might help for a more appropriate answers/opinions.
I'm not restricted to a laptop sized monitor, I'm not using touch screen, I'm on a full blown desktop system with a 28" monitor and lots of windows open.
Because of the way that I work with typically 8 apps running and often as many as 20 apps open at any one time. Usually, eclipse, netbeans, terminal windows, browser, email, emulators and the odd game of kpatience sitting in the background for when my head is getting too stuffed full of coding issues.
I need a better interface for launching apps, hiding and showing apps (I miss the single click hide and show apps button) the fact that apps launch in full screen making it difficult to switch between apps, hiding the launcher, making it difficult to launch new apps, no option to add launchers to the task bar (That I could find anyway) for custom launchers. I use that option frequently as my custom launchers are now on the desktop and I need to minimise all windows to get to the launcher instead of just clicking the minimise button.
Quite often I will just click on a menu item for an non active window to do something like re-launch an emulator from eclipse, I just cant do this in Unity.
It takes a lot longer to navigate the launcher to launch apps. Havr to type into to the launcher search bar or browse all apps (Where have the categories gone?) making it twice as long to launch a new app than the classic desktop experience.
I guess it works well for most but it sucks for me. This is not about not wanting to move with the times. It's about change has to work better for me not worse.
So back to my question
I had a look at xfce from recent issue (May 2012 I think) linux format magazine remix of a number of Ubuntu distro configurations and it looks like it has all the features that I need/miss since updating to 12.04 and it seems on the surface to be very very good.
1) What I don't understand is what I would loose if I switched to xfce. Why is xfce not the desktop of choice? What makes Unity better than xfce?
2) How to switch?
If I choose to use xfce is it possible to replace Unity and keep my apps and data) I have sda1 as a seperate partition to my home folder. In fact I have a number of partitions for swap folder and somerthing else (Can't remember what right now).
3) Would Linux Mint suit better?
I have had a play with a mint live distro (again from lxf magazine) a while back and that looked awesome but I just went to have another look and got totally confused with the different desktop solutions (cinnamon vs MATE) and again I found myself with too much choice and not knowing enough to make an informed decision.
4) Am I just missing something?
I'm confused about the popularity of Unity? Are there features that address my issues that I just haven't discovered yet? I know I can stick stuff to the launcher bit what's the point of that if I have to minimise my apps just to see the launcher?
The just try it and see principle works but not for me right now! I need to make as informed decision as is possible to make without too much more trial and error as my productivity is suffering I need to make the right chpice as quickly as possible.
I would be grateful for any qualified opinions and answers.
Thanks for your time.