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Thread: love how new users need to come here to find out the "problem" with Unity...

  1. #11
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    Re: love how new users need to come here to find out the "problem" with Unity...

    Quote Originally Posted by Copper Bezel View Post
    Yeah, good show, ninjaaron. I like this thought.

    I was a little surprised by that thread myself, but it made sense. I mean, Unity is a comparable interface with Aero. Without some familiarity with other Linux interfaces, all the hate must seem rather silly. And even setting aside familiarity with other environments, someone just coming from Windows is just very unlikely to be as nitpicky about the finicky details of an interface, because it's really only Linux and BSD users who have been spoiled with a variety of options or can be enthusiastic about little tweaks and improvements to a workflow.

    Of course, for all of those reasons, purely Windows-attenuated users wouldn't notice the difference if Unity had no workspaces, or couldn't be swapped out for another interface, or had no official method for changing themes....
    The real funny thing is that the people complaining are self-proclaimed "Power Users," complaining that Unity is too newbie friendly to be useful. I've been trying out several WM's lately that are geared specifically towards power users like scrotwm and evilwm (mostly BSD guys), and they are surprisingly characterized by the things that many people hate about Unity. There are no gui menus or window controls, everything is type to launch, all window transformations are controlled with keybindings, saving space is a maximum priority, extensive tiling options (which Unity has). Considering what the Gnome2 "power users" are whining about, Unity is surprisingly similar to what hardcore *nix guys hack up for their custom work environments.

    If it works for those guys, and it works for new users too, it makes you wonder exactly who these "power users" having so much trouble with the slightly more limited mouse accessibility are.
    Last edited by ninjaaron; October 6th, 2011 at 10:02 PM.

  2. #12
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    Re: love how new users need to come here to find out the "problem" with Unity...

    +1

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    Re: love how new users need to come here to find out the "problem" with Unity...

    I've seen a lot of reviewers in magazines and online Linux reviews bash Unity as well. So it's not just the "self-proclaimed Power Users". I would have to read through all those reviews again to find out what their gripes are.

    Me, I like running Unity for the most part. I can't customize it as well as I can GNOME 2.x, but it does the job very well. I can add and remove stuff from the launcher, and the Dash isn't bad either, and has actually gotten better with Ubuntu 11.10.

    I still think there should be some applets for the Unity launcher like there are for Cairo, Docky, and AWN... (i.e. not launchers for Ubuntu apps). I know Unity is still very new and has some more maturing to do, but adding a few applets could go a long way

    I do like the fact that it has the Mac-style app menu in the panel by default rather than having to install it from apt-get or GNOME Panel applet in Ubuntu 10.04 - 11.04, as well as moving the window buttons to the top panel when the window is maximized... thus removing the need for the title bar when maximized.

    I urge all the haters to at least give Unity a chance. Play with it for a week. Use it to do the stuff you normally use a computer for (Internet, IMs, LibreOffice, GIMP, etc.), learn how to tinker with it, and stuff. And give it a chance. If you still don't like it, then move to either Xfce or KDE Plasma, they're both good interfaces too.

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    Re: love how new users need to come here to find out the "problem" with Unity...

    I think that the tread title refers not so much to new Linux users or new Ubuntu users but people registering on this forum just to whine about Unity.

    I know that I sometimes tend towards paranoia but I think that these posts are an attempt to seed negative comments about Ubuntu into search engine results.

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    Re: love how new users need to come here to find out the "problem" with Unity...

    Quote Originally Posted by ninjaaron View Post
    The real funny thing is that the people complaining are self-proclaimed "Power Users," complaining that Unity is too newbie friendly to be useful. I've been trying out several WM's lately that are geared specifically towards power users like scrotwm and evilwm (mostly BSD guys), and they are surprisingly characterized by the things that many people hate about Unity. There are no gui menus or window controls, everything is type to launch, all window transformations are controlled with keybindings, saving space is a maximum priority, extensive tiling options (which Unity has). Considering what the Gnome2 "power users" are whining about, Unity is surprisingly similar to what hardcore *nix guys hack up for their custom work environments.

    If it works for those guys, and it works for new users too, it makes you wonder exactly who these "power users" having so much trouble with the slightly more limited mouse accessibility are.
    Hmmm... now it just needs a scriptable config file and maybe I'll drop awesome WM for it .

    ...but probably not.

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    Re: love how new users need to come here to find out the "problem" with Unity...

    Quote Originally Posted by viperdvman View Post
    I've seen a lot of reviewers in magazines and online Linux reviews bash Unity as well. So it's not just the "self-proclaimed Power Users".
    You've got a point. I was sort of chuckling about that after I wrote it, as Linus Torvalds complains about a lot of the same stuff in Gnome 3, and I suppose he qualifies as more than a "self-proclaimed power-user"

    As do the guys at Linux Action Show, etc.

    But the point remains that GUI shells designed by hackers specifically for maximum efficiency have a lot more in common with Unity than with Gnome 2 (and certainly have much, much worse mouse accessibility than either of them). As far as I can see, the only thing that's causing difficulty is that some things, simply do not work as before, so those who do not take the time to learn the new implementation believe that they have been removed. The only thing that actually has been removed is the menu, which is such a dumb idea anyway, and has been replaced with a launching system that is many times faster.


    I still think there should be some applets for the Unity launcher like there are for Cairo, Docky, and AWN... (i.e. not launchers for Ubuntu apps). I know Unity is still very new and has some more maturing to do, but adding a few applets could go a long way
    I agree that the dock is pretty pathetic at this point, but some of the applet features are already there, they just haven't been exploited yet by the development community.

    Of course, you always have the option to autohide the Unity dock (or launcher, as they chose to name it for some silly reason), and use a 3rd party dock if you like. Gnome 2 doesn't come with any dock at all, so the Unity dock is obviously much better than that. It's also possible to get some panel applets (those that run in the systray) working by white-listing them with dconf-editor.

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    Re: love how new users need to come here to find out the "problem" with Unity...

    Quote Originally Posted by ninjaaron View Post
    The real funny thing is that the people complaining are self-proclaimed "Power Users," complaining that Unity is too newbie friendly to be useful. I've been trying out several WM's lately that are geared specifically towards power users like scrotwm and evilwm (mostly BSD guys), and they are surprisingly characterized by the things that many people hate about Unity. There are no gui menus or window controls, everything is type to launch, all window transformations are controlled with keybindings, saving space is a maximum priority, extensive tiling options (which Unity has). Considering what the Gnome2 "power users" are whining about, Unity is surprisingly similar to what hardcore *nix guys hack up for their custom work environments.

    If it works for those guys, and it works for new users too, it makes you wonder exactly who these "power users" having so much trouble with the slightly more limited mouse accessibility are.
    I never liked the term power user, to me it says that you are using the wrong interface or OS to be fully productive but I guess in this case it just means someone who is able to use the full features it offers. I think BSD and linux guys look for different things when they create an interface. I personally don't like unity but I try not to whine about it, though I fail to see your comparison, windows also has features from tiling WM such as tile horizontally, vertically and keyboard controlled window movement. Though I would say that it's only to supplement the mouse controls not to replace them like a true tiling wm or something like evilwm. So unity has to meet the requirements of those who only use the mouse more than those who use the keyboard as well. Anyway we'll soon see with 11.10 when unity has matured a bit.
    "I don't have a problem with someone using their talents to become successful, I just don't think the highest calling is success." - Richard Stallman
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    Re: love how new users need to come here to find out the "problem" with Unity...

    Quote Originally Posted by lykwydchykyn View Post
    Hmmm... now it just needs a scriptable config file and maybe I'll drop awesome WM for it .

    ...but probably not.
    I'm not using Unity much at the moment either, but I think it's a perfectly good shell. You can get a lot of things scripted like you would in awesome with ccsm, and if you know how to work it a little bit with gdm and all that.

    Course, if you stop using awesome, you can't look down on people who don't configure there WM in lua. On the other hand, Xmonad guys have one up on you, since theirs is configured in compiled haskell, and DWM guys will always be miles above us mere mortals, as the only way to configure that is to edit and recompile the C source code directly. Their website talks about how that is a perk, because that way they filter out idiots from using dwm and thereby polluting the mailing list and irc channels with stupid newb questions.

    Which is cool... if you're into that sort of thing, I guess.

    [edit]
    p.s. Unity is entirely scriptable with devilspie, of course.
    Last edited by ninjaaron; October 6th, 2011 at 11:49 PM.

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    Re: love how new users need to come here to find out the "problem" with Unity...

    Quote Originally Posted by vehemoth View Post
    Though I would say that it's only to supplement the mouse controls not to replace them like a true tiling wm or something like evilwm. So unity has to meet the requirements of those who only use the mouse more than those who use the keyboard as well. Anyway we'll soon see with 11.10 when unity has matured a bit.
    I turned off all my window controls and titles in Unity, and I have no trouble using it exclusively with key bindings. It's true that you can't be quite as finicky with the window dimensions and placement as with something like evilwm, but evil doesn't have anything like the compiz grid plugin either, which essentially means you can get good arrangements with less messing around than evilwm, and the grid comes with great default bindings. Course, there are also some great cli window management utilities that can be scripted and bound with compiz, so you can end up with some very precise window placement rules, should you desire it.

    Remember, Unity is just a compiz plugin, and if there is a problem with keyboard access in compiz, that is the fault of the user, not the window manager. Compiz will do just about anything you tell it to (except, alas, true auto tiling).

  10. #20
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    Re: love how new users need to come here to find out the "problem" with Unity...

    Well, Unity's improved a lot in 11.10, and if you don't like Unity, then don't use it. Just don't hate on it...
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