Unity MEGA Thread

[benjamimgois]

I agree with everything you say, but that begs the question. If the Mint Shell is just a few lines of code and that is enough to keep a lot of people happy, why doesn't Canonical do it? It wouldn't distract from Unity if it is just a few lines of code as you said.

I have no vested interest in this, I use Unity quite happily, but just wondering.

I agree. The more i use unity more i think it's a tablet interface in a desktop. It's not efficient. I work as a network engineer and the entire company use Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. Last month i tried to upgrade my session to 11.10 and the majority of people just don't get how to work with the dash and the launcher, they all agree that multitasking is a mess now. Even myself as a power user feel frustated some times when i need lot's of windows at the same time.

[mörgæs]

Moved to Recurring.

[Larkspur]

I agree with everything you say, but that begs the question. If the Mint Shell is just a few lines of code and that is enough to keep a lot of people happy, why doesn't Canonical do it? It wouldn't distract from Unity if it is just a few lines of code as you said. Then it would be able to have its cake and eat it too. If Canonical is concerned about user experience and the users can be satisfied by just a menu, I think it should just provide it as an option for the "fear change" crowd instead of digging in its heel to try to prove that it is right and all the pissed off users are wrong. What for? It just generates bad vibes and hurt feelings.

Canonical wants to reach more users, the recommendation of existing users would play a big role especially since it doesn't have a big ad budget.

I have no vested interest in this, I use Unity quite happily, but just wondering.

Despite all Shuttleworth's riches, Canonical is actually a small company with limited resources. In order to make a change like Unity in a time when Gnome 3 is introduced, they have to realistic in what they can achieve. This means a tightly defined set of goals with very little derivation allowed. Also, they were not just thinking in terms of a single release, they had a final goal - the next LTS - and each version of Unity we've seen was a step towards that.

Given their slim resources and limited manpower, they could only achieve so much with each release. The aim was not to provide a fully-matured, feature-rich Unity right off the bat, the aim was to provide a Unity that had all the features that made it suitable for most usercases. It could not cover every eventuality.

In fact, one could also ask the question why no one out of the group of Unity detractors got around to writing those "few lines" of code themselves? I mean, aren't they all power users? I'm sure it would take power users a few hours to get the code together, set up a PPA or submit it as a patch. This is the essential freedom of Open Source, after all.

On the subject of PPA's, don't the Mint team offer one for MGSE?

[beew]

On the subject of PPA's, don't the Mint team offer one for MGSE?

I am sure there will be one. Indeed there are already ppas for classic menus, panel applets and moving the Unity bar. This is the beauty of FOSS. If Canonical doesn't want to provide feature X,--which is totally within its rights,-- and there is enough demand the community will step in, you don't need to rely on one company, this is not MicroSoft or Apple (so the comparison of Ubuntu with Windows and MacOS for locked down UI is completely off base)

I was only saying that if it is just a few lines of codes, Canonical could have provided it without too much cost (Mint seems to be only one or two guys) and that would go a long way to win a lot of good will and diffuse an unhappy situation, it seems to be a bargain.

Also, I don't think Unity haters = power users. There are power users who don't hate Unity and judging from these threads apparently many Unity haters are not really power users.

[Don Bowen]

Ubunut is going off in wild directions. It can't decide if it wants to be a FREE clone of the MAC OS or a feeble imitation of some teen agers' cell phone.

I do not want either one on my notebook computer!

I will miss this OS when it finally dies collapsing under the weight of it's own warped fashion sense.

[Sightes]

UBUNTU 11.10 is the worst UBUNTU ever ...


1 - Speaker sound loudness is always at the highest degree after a boot.

2 - The same functionality but much slower than before, specially when logging in using UNITY.

3 - You can not get rid of UNITY.

4 - COMPIZ is replaced with METACITY. METACITY lacks a configuration setting manager application.

5 - Power management application makes continuous clicking sound "tik tik tik" when laptop is on battery.

6 - Power management application makes monitor blink when on battery.

It's what I noticed in just 6 hours. I am going to return to UBUNTU 10.4.

mmm i think i got almost all xd common problems on this new version , but all can solve ,
mmm about compiz , you can install too , just follow some google.cl guides XD , i got a problem when i installed , but with gnome-panel i solve , about unity , yea is too low , maybe cause is just for good pc , :/ i dont have any problem cause have an amd phenom x6 with 8gb ram , but when i try on my netbook is a bit slow ,on dell 11z i dont have any problem with battery .

[Kapitän Rotbart]

I actually really enjoy Unity. Granted it took me a bit of time storming forums and blogs to find tricks to configure my desktop to my likings, plus I still haven't figured out how to generate a custom cycle of background images, but it's not a big deal for me.

Posted a couple Unity notes on my wiki. I save a lot of time by adding quicklist shortcuts to the Unity launcher right-click menus. I find Dash relatively easy to navigate (I think I save time by launching Dash with the Super key and typing the name of the app rather than using a point-and-click mouse menu navigation). I really enjoy having all my configuration utilities as quicklist shortcuts on the System Settings launcher. In Compiz I was able to make the Unity bar launchers smaller, which helps because I have a small screen. I'm sure not everyone will like Unity, but Gnome Shell looks pretty slick as well, and I certainly am a fan of Xfce, so Ubuntu is still offering me plenty of enjoyable options. I have never been able to figure out KDE (it's just soooo confusing) and I've played around a bit with other distros, yet the Ubuntu family always seems to provide me with the latest software at fairly high stability.

My frustrations with Ubuntu 11.10 was that Evolution mail no longer works (had to migrate to Thunderbird, I certainly wasn't enthusiastic about this), Samba wasn't working at first, so I couldn't install a windaws printer over network (I know no one should use windaws) but fortunately that was fixed in the updates a week later. An update made Evolution almost work, it's still too buggy for serious use. I'm still confused about the "users and groups" migration in Gnome3. I got plenty of sources telling me how to add myself to the vboxusers because almost every Ubuntu user has an xp virtual machine in vbox, but I'm still confused about enabling a user to connect to the internets via modem is still a mystery to me (is it now enabled by default?), unfortunately I don't have a USB modem to try it myself.

Anyway, I think Ubuntu will be a winner with Unity, though in Ubuntu 12.04 I'll likely use Gnome Shell (hoping it will be more awesome by then).

[Xenogears]

I first hated it, but after going back and forth using gnome 3, xfce, kde, lxde, enlightenment, etc.

I find it is easy to use compare to the rest.

small little thing i like to see improvement.

for some reason the option to "Empty Rubbish Bin" is disable, when there are things to discard.
could be a bug.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...111114112.png/

secondly, i feel that the top panel of unity, should remain visible, since some people like
to use the mouse to go to top and click eg file, edit, view, history.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...111114112.png/

[Copper Bezel]

For what it's worth, I prefer Gnome's approach of offering no real customization options but having a freely hackable extension base to add options on demand, versus Unity's approach of offering a couple of tweakable features and just hard-coding everything else. It's fairly easily assumed that if Unity took Shell's route, there'd be an extension to turn the Dash button into a Start Menu.

On the other hand, I don't think Canonical should be expected to lift a finger in writing code that they don't intend anyone to use, particularly when it replaces a big, central part of their project with a clunky imitation of someone else's. I also don't see why the classic menu is special, and why expecting Canonical to provide one is any different from expecting them to provide any other random feature.

A small amount of coding work to offer an option many users might appreciate is reasonable. That's not really what we're talking about here, though.

[azurehi]

I know my comment will be removed, but Linux Mint 12 RC is Excellent and is now my distribution of choice.

http://eyeonlinux.com/2011/11/13/sne...linux-mint-12/