I love Unity!

[Jay MC]

It was actually Unity which first attracted me to Ubuntu. I'd tried the pre-Unity versions and didn't really like Gnome or the graphical theme. It looked and felt cheap.

I know you can pick/change your own desktop (and change the theme), but since there are so many distros out there, it kind of seemed like it would more fun to try different ones until I found one I liked, rather than forging my own path. For that reason, I've never really modified a distro's out-of-box experience much (my two concessions to individuality have been making my Ubuntu windows "wobbly" and picking a wallpaper off the web). Not really in the Linux spirit, but there it is!

Anyway, I saw screenshots and videos of Unity and got really excited. It didn't look like any desktop I'd seen before, and I thought it was interesting that Ubuntu was doing its own thing - and braving controversy to do so - rather than just assembling existing pieces (I think of Ubuntu as being more like an OS in its own right, rather than just yet another Linux distro, now it has Unity).

I liked what they were trying to achieve with the first version I tried, but found the launcher a little too eager. Many times when I went for the Firefox back button, the launcher would appear and cover it up. If I didn't notice and clicked, I would accidentally launch Inkscape. Annoying.

However, I persevered because I liked the way of working, and have since been rewarded by a much more obedient (i.e., less launchy) launcher. I find it very intuitive to use.

So, consider me a very happy Unity user.

[Mikeb85]

I switched back from openSUSE because I missed Unity. And that was before I discovered lenses!

[screaminj3sus]

I used to prefer gnome-shell, but unity has really grown on me and is now my preferred interface.

[jedispork]

I'm trying to like it but its to distracting on the side of the screen. It bothers me a lot for some reason. I also tried hiding but that makes it even more annoying. It would be nice if there was a way to combine it with the top bar. I don't think its just because I'm not used to it. I remember experimenting with the task bar in windows and I could not stand that on the side of the screen either or any of the auto hide features. Top or bottom was fine.

I'm back with windows 7 at the moment until I can find something to settle on. I will probably end up with xubuntu or mint. I didn't like windows 8 either.

[vexorian]

I want to be optimistic about this. I prefer fallback gnome, but mostly because I got REALLY used to do stuff in it. When programming I already know what to do. Keeping FF tabs in desktop 1, source code and terminal in desktop 2, and image editors in desktop 3 whilst leaving desktop 4 for any extra stuff. Etc, etc etc.

Nowadays, I am finding myself closer to GNOME3, not because of the default setting of GNOME3 (I dislike it less than unity and I think Unity is doing a much better job at being a default setting) But after installing around 20 extensions I have something that looks like something that I could use (The problem with fallback is that it is buggy and feature-lacking and there is no development for it; So I learned I better switch ).

But I have to ask, to the people using Unity successful, how do you manage to do anything with it? I mean, can you describe a heavy work day in which you have to use multiple software, folders and devices at the same time and keep switching from them. Can you describe how does it work? What tweaks and customizations do you use?

Because I tried, the day after I just upgraded to my first ubuntu version that came with unity by default (12.04) happened to be a very busy day for me. But unity felt to be getting in my way constantly.

Anyone else notice that NONE of them, no matter how obscure or esoteric, use Unity?
It's open source, right?

But let's be honest. The reason ubuntu-based distributions exist is because developers didn't agree ubuntu's default setup was the best. It would make no sense to make a different setup that also used unity. Because Unity already works well in default Ubuntu...

It would be nice if there was a way to combine it with the top bar.

You can do something like that in GNOME3, by combining many extensions and tweaks and specially the PanelDocklet extension.

[3rdalbum]

It was actually Unity which first attracted me to Ubuntu. I'd tried the pre-Unity versions and didn't really like Gnome or the graphical theme. It looked and felt cheap.

Gnome 2 really did look and feel cheap, like a third-rate software company put it together. Sorry to the Gnome 2 guys, but it felt long-in-the-tooth back when I first encountered it in 2005. A lot of people felt that way before Unity came along, now they conveniently forget their complaints about Gnome 2.

I'm glad you like Unity.

[3rdalbum]

/dev/null

Usually, I'd report this post as being unhelpful and/or rude.

Unfortunately, you're probably right. Any Unity-specific support forum would quickly get filled with people saying "Unity sucks" and the like.

[daimaru]

Gnome 2 really did look and feel cheap, like a third-rate software company put it together.

You didn't have to leave it at its default crappy look... thats what themes are for. Ok sorry for the /dev/null .. I am going to stay out of this. just wanted to say that there is xubuntu as an alternative to people that liked gnome2

[Ashtonford]

Truth is, not even 100 metric tonnes of smug sarcasm can change the fact that
Unity :: Desktop Environments as Hindenberg :: Blimps
.
There are hundreds (thousands?) of linux distros out there.
There are dozens (scores?) based on ubuntu.

Anyone else notice that NONE of them, no matter how obscure or esoteric, use Unity?
It's open source, right?

Go ahead, say that distrowatch rankings mean nothing. Say that the fact that Canonical is hemorraging money is 'built into the business model'.

Keep whistling past the graveyard.

totally agree ubuntu needs to move back to a real users desktop not try to be a tablet or cell phone os

[houseworkshy]

The thing about distro watch ranking is getting mentioned a lot. They are not really a guide to more than visits to pages. Neither are downloaded iso's, I've got stacks of them.

There is only one fairly reliable guide to how popular a distribution is. That is how much the repositories of the distribution get hit for updates. I've no idea what those stats are; if Unity is getting updated more than Gnome2 then it has been well recieved if not then not. Whether making Unity the default GUI or scrapping Gnome2 have had a positive or negative impact on the popularity of Ubuntu itself will only be known when 10.04 support runns out. We won't really know that untill May next year.