Why does everybody hate Unity?

[JamesTheAwesomeDude]

I've always heard people saying that they dislike Unity, so they're switching to GNOME/Openbox/KDE/etc.

BUT - I can almost never get a straight answer on why it's so bad.

Some things I've heard:

• "It's buggy"
• "It's not very customizable"
• "It's unintuitive"

..but I've never been able to get an in-depth explanation.
As for me, I quite like Unity - it's intuitive, powerful, and it looks pretty sharp.
I just about killed myself trying to create a Unity replica with LXPanel when I installed Lubuntu on the old computer.

What I'm wondering is, what do you guys like/dislike about Unity? Is it your favorite? Do you dislike it, but you use it anyway because you don't want to bother switching it out? Does it really irritate you, so much that you switched to another WM/DE, or perhaps it chased you over to Linux mint?
I want to hear all of your opinions on it!

[oldos2er]

Not everyone hates Unity, I've read many posts here and elsewhere on the internet from people who enjoy using it. But as often happens, the negative posts tend get more attention than the positive ones. Personally I think it's a bit silly to hate any software.

At the time I switched to KDE from Gnome2, shortly before Unity became the default desktop, Unity was quite different from what it is now. It was a netbook OS, with, as you said, very little configurability. I value configurability in a desktop environment, so that's the main reason I switched. Plus, KDE just exudes awesomeness and is only getting better as time goes on. (Never mind the fact that I'm currently running Ubuntu Server with i3!)

[JamesTheAwesomeDude]

Not everyone hates Unity, I've read many posts here and elsewhere on the internet from people who enjoy using it. But as often happens, the negative posts tend get more attention than the positive ones. Personally I think it's a bit silly to hate any software.

At the time I switched to KDE from Gnome2, shortly before Unity became the default desktop, Unity was quite different from what it is now. It was a netbook OS, with, as you said, very little configurability. I value configurability in a desktop environment, so that's the main reason I switched. Plus, KDE just exudes awesomeness :) and is only getting better as time goes on. (Never mind the fact that I'm currently running Ubuntu Server with i3!)

Ha, yeah - I "accidentally" the hard drive on the old laptop (messing around with GParted, fdisk, and parted.. on an NTFS partition with a bad sector ;_;) so I installed Kubuntu to see what would happen.
That Wi-Fi manager is awesome beyond belief.
I actually discovered Linux and Ubuntu about the time 12.04 was rolling out, so I've never tried GNOME.. I'm thinking of testing out Fedora some time, but I need some more hard drives.. And a new monitor...

[vasa1]

How do you justify the title of this thread?

[lykwydchykyn]

BUT - I can almost never get a straight answer on why it's so bad.

Some things I've heard:

• "It's buggy"
• "It's not very customizable"
• "It's unintuitive"

..but I've never been able to get an in-depth explanation.

I'm sorry, but if you've not seen a detailed explanation of what people don't like about Unity, you haven't looked very hard. Take a moment to browse through the recurring discussions threads on Unity and you'll find detailed reviews about what people don't like. I don't see the point in rehashing it all over again.

[VinDSL]

Speaking for myself, I like Unity just fine, but...

The reason I haven't been using it, the past few weeks, is because I'm testing GNOME 3 Staging, and unity-shell is segfaulting when it loads. Technically speaking, this is GNOME 3's fault, not Unity. Unity and GNOME 3 are going in two different directions right now, and Unity is currently coming_out_the_loser, in the battle.

That said, I like Unity and GNOME 3 equally -- got them both setup (customized) basically the same.

When Unity was working, sometimes I would switch back n' forth, and forget which DE I was using. Neither one irritates me, nor do I hate any Linux/Unix DEs. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. The only DE I hate is the TeleTubby Winders XP Pro DE that I'm forced to use at my workplace.

My observation(s) on others, based on reading the forums, is some ppl don't like change, and Unity made a quantum leap in the way basic functions are handled on the desktop. It takes a while to get used to Unity, but some ppl are gritting their teeth the whole time, until they've finally had their fill, and dispatch it with a hail of cursing.

[neruson]

I don't use Unity, but I don't hate it. I prefer more light weight systems on my machines. Unity, KDE & Gnome 3 just seem a little sluggish compared to what I usually use (Xfce or Openbox). Right now, I'm running Xubuntu and I love it. Xfce is coming along nicely. It's keeps getting better with every release

[Erik1984]

Of course not everybody hates it. Personally I like Unity even though I am not using it right now. As mentioned the recurring discussions subforum has a lengthy discussion topic on Unity. Think I found it: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...ity+discussion

[montag dp]

I think I could get along with it just fine if I had to, but I just like the other options better. I am currently using (and liking very much) Gnome Shell but I would also use KDE before Unity, mainline because it is highly customizable.

The main thing I don't like about Unity is the launcher thing on the side. I think it's ugly. Autohiding doesn't do it for me; I like Gnome Shell's behavior of only showing the launcher when asked for much better. I also prefer Gnome Shell's method of bringing up the overview mode when pressing Super (along with the desktop search). I also prefer the looks of Gnome Shell. I also like the automatic workspace management of Gnome Shell. I also like Gnome Shell's customizability through extensions.

So basically, I don't hate Unity but I don't use it because there are better (IMO) options out there.

[Toz]

Moved to Recurring discussions.