Unity v GNOME

[bcbuch]

I'm currently using Ubuntu Gnome 17.04. Never been a fan of Unity. I have only recently come back to Gnome from XFCE and after a brief stent using Mate. For productivity I would say XFCE without a compositor is probably my favorite DE. I don't like Compiz. Ubuntu Mate 16.04 was a nice release, but there were some issues with 16;10 that never quite ironed out and a few more with 17.4. That brought me to the point of giving Ubuntu gnome a shot. I went from a 16.10 install and upgraded to 17.04. I spent a day tweaking the system and then fresh installed 17.04. So to get the system where I could deal with it I installed Nemo and removed Nautilus. Purged Plymouth from the system. I installed extensions Activities configurator, Lock Keys, and Caffeine. Those gave me the ability to kill the hot corner, make the top bar transparent, remove the rounded corners, stop the auto suspend. and have an indicator on the top bar as to my lock key status. I enabled installed Application Menu and Windows List and installed Alacarte to edit the menu. I don't like anything on my desktop so other than that it has been a matter of removing all of the packages that come default with gnome and replacing them with those I prefer or simply uninstalling them. What I have at this point is an environment that is for the most part a modern DE with a Gnome 2 reflection. I'm getting lazy in my the older I get. I simply need my systems to run proficiently for the tasks they need to perform without a bunch of constant tinkering to keep them running..

[BigSilly]

I think after having done all that dude, I'd have just installed Cinnamon and be done with it! Much easier, and exactly what you're looking for I think.

For my part as a home user who wants his cake and eat it, GNOME 3 is preferable to Unity. I've said before the problem I had with the Unity Dash was the amount of categories and sub categories. Eventually you can train your system to remember your faves, and of course you have added many to the bar on the left. But the structure of the Dash was really frustrating and not nice to navigate. GNOME seems to have circumnavigated this very easily by simply having Frequent and All on the Overview, with the search. No fuss. One thing I will say though is that Ubuntu's search in the Dash is way better than GNOME's.

[bcbuch]

There isn't that much all that. Only a couple of hours invested in it. I don't care for Cinnamon about the only part of Cinnamon​ I will use is Nemo, and that is because Thunar in Gnome has a few issues. I may try Thunar out again. The goal right now was basically one system across all laptops and desktops that has the ability in sync in real time with Google and other cloud storage and be accessible and integrated in the desktop. Right now any changes made by us on our individual accounts are actually showing up on my laptop as well as both of our mobile devices for the info we share. The integration into Gnome is, the calendar, evolution, and file manager is working very well no issues.

Gnome out of the box is probably fine for my wife's laptop. I prefer a file manager a little more robust than Nautilus. I also have programs that I use for various tasks that work. They aren't associated with any particular DE. So I uninstall the box vanilla and replace with what I prefer. I do that with any distribution or DE I use.

[russkyca]

I don't like either. I hate that Linux distros have all main DEs which want to turn your computer into 'smart phone' like display interfaces... in MATE, LXDE, XFCE, they still use the traditional 'look' but they don't have as many resources/people working on them. KDE got slower over time but I haven't tried it in a while.... always got crashes with it and browsers always seemed to go slower but now I'm noticing similarities in Gnome. Really too bad. I don't know why they want to do this.

[monkeybrain20122]

I don't like either. I hate that Linux distros have all main DEs which want to turn your computer into 'smart phone' like display interfaces... in MATE, LXDE, XFCE, they still use the traditional 'look' but they don't have as many resources/people working on them. KDE turned into a major crap heap of bloat but I haven't tried it in a while.... always got crashes with it and browsers always seemed to go slower but now I'm noticing similarities in Gnome. Really too bad. I don't know why they want to do this.

I don't see how Unity looks like a smart phone. It actually looks a bit like Mac OSX but more straight forward to navigate. What you call "traditional look" is basically windows xp-ish' 1990 feels and looks. I run Unity on machines with very modest specs (typically refurbished laptops which are 4-5 years old and costs < $300) Never had a problem with resources. But if you are running 2000 era hardware then sure, it would be a bit demanding, but nowadays almost any laptop comes with at least 4 G of ram, you can't blame devs for not sticking to 1990's or 2000's design simply because some people still use hardware from those days.