7 ms·

Unity: a lightweight netbook interface for Ubuntu

92 points by audidude 16y ago

audidude 16y ago
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/canonical-dx-team/une/ubuntu http://ppa.launchpad.net/canonical-dx-team/une/ubuntu lucid main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/canonical-dx-team/une/ubuntu http://ppa.launchpad.net/canonical-dx-team/une/ubuntu lucid main apt-get install unity unity --show
- mhansen 16y ago
  To get the key: sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys AA2BB78B7AE26941
- mrkschan 16y ago
  don't forget the key @ https://launchpad.net/~canonical-dx-team/+archive/une https://launchpad.net/~canonical-dx-team/+archive/une
- nuclear_eclipse 16y ago
  `add-apt-repository ppa:canonical-dx-team/une` will add both the apt sources and the signing key in a single command.
potatolicious 16y ago
I love it - it's about damned time that the open source community started giving a real shit about UI.
- weego 16y ago
  I think they always have done at a certain level, but of course good developers do not make good "joe average" users, and the open source movement has really always been about programmers, not graphic designers/UX/IA people. That's always where companies have added the real value when they build off open source imo. While I admire what people like KDE and Gnome do in terms of effort, the results they return have always been questionable.
  - jteo 16y ago
    UI development is not a democratic process.
    - thmz 16y ago
      Why not? I think it is and should be. When 90% of your end users are old people who rarely use a computer you have to ask them about there needs. You will collect the 'votes' and may discover you have to drop some functionalities. And maybe a slider UI will be better than a number ticker/spinner control.
      - geocar 16y ago
        > Why not? Because users are dumb. I watch them make bad decisions all the time; they want to put a box of 60 categories here in the left nav of the page; they want to have a drop-down menu for every department in the hospital. "Asking" ten users how a user-interface should work, and you'll get ten incompatible and stupid answers. The trick to using users to get good UI is to have a programmer watch them try a prototype (or using paper prototypes). Of course, the programmer has to be tied to a chair and have his mouth duct-tape'd closed so he doesn't try and help, but the fact is when he sees the "inputs", he'll optimize the layout correctly to suit them. Programmers make fine user-interface designers when they're properly motivated.
        thmz 16y ago
        You shouldn't ask users how the UI should be. You have to listen to there needs. Then you have to translate this 'democratic' information into a UI design. When a user wants a drop-down for every department in the hospital you could translate this into "I want to select a department as easy and quickly as possible".
        cakeface 16y ago
        Listening to someones needs and then deciding what is best for them is not democratic at all. I think that you are really stretching here.
drats 16y ago
http://www.canonical.com/products/unity http://www.canonical.com/products/unity If it's all about speed and lightness they might want to drop firefox for chrome. The difference is very noticeable on an Atom 1.6gighz, and in the upcoming ARM powered devices it will be too.
- robryan 16y ago
  Does it have anything to do with betting on the browser they can probably influence more in the future rather than one they essentially have no control of?
  - pavs 16y ago
    I am not sure what you mean. How do they have more control on Firefox and not Chromium? Both are open source, both can be forked and customized in to whatever they want it to be. One is exceptionally faster than the other. Since they are concentrating on speed, shouldn't Chrome/Chromium be the obvious choice?
    - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
      I've seen a few tests that claim Firefox beats Chrome on overall page load (and e.g. memory usage). Do you have anything that shows Chrome to be exceptionally faster in the general case, or is it just reducing Javascript execution on the average page from 1 millisecond to 0.5 milliseconds?
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
      - RyanMcGreal 16y ago
        I'm not aware of benchmarks either way, but Chrome certainly feels a lot faster. Pages snap up almost instantly and events fire immediately. Firefox, by contrast, comes across as comparatively sluggish. It pains me to write this, because I've been a happy and devoted Firefox user since the early days of Mozilla, but I am gradually shifting over to using Chrome for straight browsing - though I still rely on Firefox and the unparalleled Firebux addon for troubleshooting web applications.
lh 16y ago
Looking at that Ubuntu Light example image, they could still move the window title and buttons to bar at the top, next to the search field, to save more vertical space. In the other hand, if they want to make it more usable for touch users, they'll need to enlarge the main toolbar and all those tiny indicators (battery, volume etc.) at the lost of some vertical space.
- emilis_info 16y ago
  Yes, the top of that screenshot looks messy. If they are moving in this direction, they could also get rid of the top panel. Or at least redesign it. I have been working in a similar desktop on my wide-screen laptop for nearly a year now. I feel much more productive. It took me some time and skills to configure it, but the tools are already available. I use Openbox+Tint2+Conky and some other lightweight utilities. Also Tree Style Tab extension for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5890 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5890 Since they are talking about getting users to the browser faster, they may as well tweak the browser to work better in this environment. It is more natural when window/tab hierarchy flows from left to right, than from left and then from top.
ivenkys 16y ago
"It’s about how fast you have a running system that is responsive to the needs of the user." - This is the key. Make it look nice with excellent fonts and i am sold. I know this is not designed for a workstation - but for standard browsing, checking emails and general usage , this could be it.
corruption 16y ago
I love it, however there are still a few things off. 1) The gradient on the window titlebar is too pronounced and isn't consistent with the left sidebar. 2) Fonts don't look awesome - they are okay though. Please just license or create a truly great font! 3) Icons on the sidebar don't look right. I'd rather no background personally.
- audidude 16y ago
  fonts get insanely better for my systems the moment i turn on full hinting.
  - corruption 16y ago
    Agreed (I use ubuntu too), but normal users won't do this. Surely there must be a good solution by default?
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    To get the fonts I like (Mac OS X style) I turn hinting off completely. Ubuntu seems to be moving closer to this as the default as time goes by, probably a smart move as there will be less and less people used to old-skool Windows font rendering.
    - sid0 16y ago
      "Old-skool"? Does Mac OS X do sub-pixel positioning yet?
      - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
        Yes, the released it in Mac OS X 10.2, one year after Windows XP had cleartype, but they didn't hide the feature away so that only experts could find it and so it was widely used. But, sub-pixel rendering is just a diversion from the real differences between the two systems, one fits to the grid via hints, the other anti-aliases. I believe both iPhone and Windows Phone are now using this system, and without bothering with sub-pixel rendering.
jacquesm 16y ago
Does anybody that has used both have an idea of how this compares to the Ubuntu Notebook Remix default UI? I've been using it on a small acer netbook with a 3G card in it and it has worked pretty well in that configuration for me, I'm curious how they compare but I'm loathe to install stuff on it without some idea of what I'm getting in to because it is a machine I rely on in emergencies (on the road, server down).
AngryParsley 16y ago
Dock on the left, title bar and sys tray at the top, window controls on the left side... this vaguely reminds me of some other OS, and I don't think that's at all a bad thing. People like OS X's UI. It makes sense to go with what works. If they wanted to save more vertical screen real estate, Ubuntu could take another hint from Apple and enable Global Menu Bar by default ( http://code.google.com/p/gnome2-globalmenu/ http://code.google.com/p/gnome2-globalmenu/ )
- dchest 16y ago
  They are doing this. "Third, we will make the top panel smarter. We’ve already talked about adopting a single global menu, which would be rendered by the panel in this case." See also http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/359 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/359
- Avshalom 16y ago
  I'm pretty sure they are actually, I am very sure there was a canonical blog post recently saying the netbook distro was going to use a global menu.
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  My OS X dock was always on the left, but the default positon was at the bottom. Later design changes actually re-inforced this decision as I believe the 3-D effect didn't work vertically.
riobard 16y ago
It's funny that they are talking about maximizing the vertical pixels while letting title bar, menu bar, url bar, bookmark bar, tab bar, horizontal scroll bar, and status bar eating up 1/3 of vertical pixels of the primary web browser window on the home page photo at <http://www.canonical.com/products/unity> http://www.canonical.com/products/unity>. Seriously, Open Source marketing should be improved in this level of detail. Yes netbooks have shallow screens, then why wasting 145 precious vertical pixels to show non-content controls on a web browser window only 428 pixels high? Some naive ways to improve the impression: * Make the browser window taller, preferably taking all available vertical space. Present more web content when you really want to improve the web experience. (Right now I can only see the big heading of NYT, not really interesting.) * Bundle one of those Hide Menu plugin to kill menu bar. How often do you really need it? And when you do need it, just click one button on the url bar to summon it. * Choose a page that is slightly narrower or widen the window a little bit (you have the horizontal pixels to waste!) so horizontal scroll does not show up. * Hide the status bar. Most users don't look at it anyway. * If there is only one tab, don't show the tab bar. Or better yet, replacing Firefox with Chrome solves it once and for all.
- drblast 16y ago
  On my netbook with Ubuntu I wanted to move the top gnome panel to the right side so I'd have more vertical space; apparently this is impossible to do cleanly. We have wide screens now, and a lack of vertical space. The solution seems obvious to me; don't take up vertical space with desktop UI and move it to the side instead. I love the gnome-shell, but I'd love it more if I could get those top pixels back. On a netbook, every little bit counts.
  - RyanMcGreal 16y ago
    >On my netbook with Ubuntu I wanted to move the top gnome panel to the right side so I'd have more vertical space; apparently this is impossible to do cleanly. I tried this with the past four versions of Ubuntu (8.10, 9.04, 9.10 and 10.04) on my Aspire One. In the first three cases I went back to a top or bottom panel because the side panel was ugly and unusable. With 10.04, a right-side panel is actually decent for the first time. It's not great - e.g. the shutdown applet is still too wide and doesn't flip vertically - but it's decent.
jasonlbaptiste 16y ago
curious to hear thoughts on this vs chromeos
ash 16y ago
It's instructive to compare this with Windows 7 (often comes installed on modern netbooks). Recipe: 1. move default taskbar to the left and 2. use Chrome. The result is pretty good, I think: http://drop.io/dyhgfkv/asset/windows7-png http://drop.io/dyhgfkv/asset/windows7-png
tdoggette 16y ago
Now that I've acclimated to Chrome on Windows, I don't think I could give up having the tabs on the very top of the screen. Me and my man Fitts love having the browser tabs at the top and the open applications at the bottom. It's really fast to switch tabs using the mouse that way.
Legion 16y ago
"Unity is available now for testing on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS" (http://www.canonical.com/products/unity http://www.canonical.com/products/unity) Oh hell. Now I have to run out to my pickup and grab my netbook. There goes a productive morning.

92 points by audidude 16y ago

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/canonical-dx-team/une/ubuntu http://ppa.launchpad.net/canonical-dx-team/une/ubuntu lucid main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/canonical-dx-team/une/ubuntu http://ppa.launchpad.net/canonical-dx-team/une/ubuntu lucid main apt-get install unity unity --show

mhansen 16y ago
To get the key: sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys AA2BB78B7AE26941
mrkschan 16y ago
don't forget the key @ https://launchpad.net/~canonical-dx-team/+archive/une https://launchpad.net/~canonical-dx-team/+archive/une
nuclear_eclipse 16y ago
`add-apt-repository ppa:canonical-dx-team/une` will add both the apt sources and the signing key in a single command.

potatolicious 16y ago

I love it - it's about damned time that the open source community started giving a real shit about UI.

weego 16y ago
I think they always have done at a certain level, but of course good developers do not make good "joe average" users, and the open source movement has really always been about programmers, not graphic designers/UX/IA people. That's always where companies have added the real value when they build off open source imo. While I admire what people like KDE and Gnome do in terms of effort, the results they return have always been questionable.
- jteo 16y ago
  UI development is not a democratic process.
  - thmz 16y ago
    Why not? I think it is and should be. When 90% of your end users are old people who rarely use a computer you have to ask them about there needs. You will collect the 'votes' and may discover you have to drop some functionalities. And maybe a slider UI will be better than a number ticker/spinner control.
    - geocar 16y ago
      > Why not? Because users are dumb. I watch them make bad decisions all the time; they want to put a box of 60 categories here in the left nav of the page; they want to have a drop-down menu for every department in the hospital. "Asking" ten users how a user-interface should work, and you'll get ten incompatible and stupid answers. The trick to using users to get good UI is to have a programmer watch them try a prototype (or using paper prototypes). Of course, the programmer has to be tied to a chair and have his mouth duct-tape'd closed so he doesn't try and help, but the fact is when he sees the "inputs", he'll optimize the layout correctly to suit them. Programmers make fine user-interface designers when they're properly motivated.
      - thmz 16y ago
        You shouldn't ask users how the UI should be. You have to listen to there needs. Then you have to translate this 'democratic' information into a UI design. When a user wants a drop-down for every department in the hospital you could translate this into "I want to select a department as easy and quickly as possible".
        cakeface 16y ago
        Listening to someones needs and then deciding what is best for them is not democratic at all. I think that you are really stretching here.

drats 16y ago

http://www.canonical.com/products/unity http://www.canonical.com/products/unity If it's all about speed and lightness they might want to drop firefox for chrome. The difference is very noticeable on an Atom 1.6gighz, and in the upcoming ARM powered devices it will be too.

robryan 16y ago
Does it have anything to do with betting on the browser they can probably influence more in the future rather than one they essentially have no control of?
- pavs 16y ago
  I am not sure what you mean. How do they have more control on Firefox and not Chromium? Both are open source, both can be forked and customized in to whatever they want it to be. One is exceptionally faster than the other. Since they are concentrating on speed, shouldn't Chrome/Chromium be the obvious choice?
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    I've seen a few tests that claim Firefox beats Chrome on overall page load (and e.g. memory usage). Do you have anything that shows Chrome to be exceptionally faster in the general case, or is it just reducing Javascript execution on the average page from 1 millisecond to 0.5 milliseconds?
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - RyanMcGreal 16y ago
      I'm not aware of benchmarks either way, but Chrome certainly feels a lot faster. Pages snap up almost instantly and events fire immediately. Firefox, by contrast, comes across as comparatively sluggish. It pains me to write this, because I've been a happy and devoted Firefox user since the early days of Mozilla, but I am gradually shifting over to using Chrome for straight browsing - though I still rely on Firefox and the unparalleled Firebux addon for troubleshooting web applications.

lh 16y ago

Looking at that Ubuntu Light example image, they could still move the window title and buttons to bar at the top, next to the search field, to save more vertical space. In the other hand, if they want to make it more usable for touch users, they'll need to enlarge the main toolbar and all those tiny indicators (battery, volume etc.) at the lost of some vertical space.

emilis_info 16y ago
Yes, the top of that screenshot looks messy. If they are moving in this direction, they could also get rid of the top panel. Or at least redesign it. I have been working in a similar desktop on my wide-screen laptop for nearly a year now. I feel much more productive. It took me some time and skills to configure it, but the tools are already available. I use Openbox+Tint2+Conky and some other lightweight utilities. Also Tree Style Tab extension for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5890 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5890 Since they are talking about getting users to the browser faster, they may as well tweak the browser to work better in this environment. It is more natural when window/tab hierarchy flows from left to right, than from left and then from top.

ivenkys 16y ago

"It’s about how fast you have a running system that is responsive to the needs of the user." - This is the key. Make it look nice with excellent fonts and i am sold. I know this is not designed for a workstation - but for standard browsing, checking emails and general usage , this could be it.

corruption 16y ago

I love it, however there are still a few things off. 1) The gradient on the window titlebar is too pronounced and isn't consistent with the left sidebar. 2) Fonts don't look awesome - they are okay though. Please just license or create a truly great font! 3) Icons on the sidebar don't look right. I'd rather no background personally.

audidude 16y ago
fonts get insanely better for my systems the moment i turn on full hinting.
- corruption 16y ago
  Agreed (I use ubuntu too), but normal users won't do this. Surely there must be a good solution by default?
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  To get the fonts I like (Mac OS X style) I turn hinting off completely. Ubuntu seems to be moving closer to this as the default as time goes by, probably a smart move as there will be less and less people used to old-skool Windows font rendering.
  - sid0 16y ago
    "Old-skool"? Does Mac OS X do sub-pixel positioning yet?
    - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
      Yes, the released it in Mac OS X 10.2, one year after Windows XP had cleartype, but they didn't hide the feature away so that only experts could find it and so it was widely used. But, sub-pixel rendering is just a diversion from the real differences between the two systems, one fits to the grid via hints, the other anti-aliases. I believe both iPhone and Windows Phone are now using this system, and without bothering with sub-pixel rendering.

jacquesm 16y ago

Does anybody that has used both have an idea of how this compares to the Ubuntu Notebook Remix default UI? I've been using it on a small acer netbook with a 3G card in it and it has worked pretty well in that configuration for me, I'm curious how they compare but I'm loathe to install stuff on it without some idea of what I'm getting in to because it is a machine I rely on in emergencies (on the road, server down).

AngryParsley 16y ago

Dock on the left, title bar and sys tray at the top, window controls on the left side... this vaguely reminds me of some other OS, and I don't think that's at all a bad thing. People like OS X's UI. It makes sense to go with what works. If they wanted to save more vertical screen real estate, Ubuntu could take another hint from Apple and enable Global Menu Bar by default ( http://code.google.com/p/gnome2-globalmenu/ http://code.google.com/p/gnome2-globalmenu/ )

dchest 16y ago
They are doing this. "Third, we will make the top panel smarter. We’ve already talked about adopting a single global menu, which would be rendered by the panel in this case." See also http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/359 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/359
Avshalom 16y ago
I'm pretty sure they are actually, I am very sure there was a canonical blog post recently saying the netbook distro was going to use a global menu.
ZeroGravitas 16y ago
My OS X dock was always on the left, but the default positon was at the bottom. Later design changes actually re-inforced this decision as I believe the 3-D effect didn't work vertically.

riobard 16y ago

It's funny that they are talking about maximizing the vertical pixels while letting title bar, menu bar, url bar, bookmark bar, tab bar, horizontal scroll bar, and status bar eating up 1/3 of vertical pixels of the primary web browser window on the home page photo at <http://www.canonical.com/products/unity> http://www.canonical.com/products/unity>. Seriously, Open Source marketing should be improved in this level of detail. Yes netbooks have shallow screens, then why wasting 145 precious vertical pixels to show non-content controls on a web browser window only 428 pixels high? Some naive ways to improve the impression: * Make the browser window taller, preferably taking all available vertical space. Present more web content when you really want to improve the web experience. (Right now I can only see the big heading of NYT, not really interesting.) * Bundle one of those Hide Menu plugin to kill menu bar. How often do you really need it? And when you do need it, just click one button on the url bar to summon it. * Choose a page that is slightly narrower or widen the window a little bit (you have the horizontal pixels to waste!) so horizontal scroll does not show up. * Hide the status bar. Most users don't look at it anyway. * If there is only one tab, don't show the tab bar. Or better yet, replacing Firefox with Chrome solves it once and for all.

drblast 16y ago
On my netbook with Ubuntu I wanted to move the top gnome panel to the right side so I'd have more vertical space; apparently this is impossible to do cleanly. We have wide screens now, and a lack of vertical space. The solution seems obvious to me; don't take up vertical space with desktop UI and move it to the side instead. I love the gnome-shell, but I'd love it more if I could get those top pixels back. On a netbook, every little bit counts.
- RyanMcGreal 16y ago
  >On my netbook with Ubuntu I wanted to move the top gnome panel to the right side so I'd have more vertical space; apparently this is impossible to do cleanly. I tried this with the past four versions of Ubuntu (8.10, 9.04, 9.10 and 10.04) on my Aspire One. In the first three cases I went back to a top or bottom panel because the side panel was ugly and unusable. With 10.04, a right-side panel is actually decent for the first time. It's not great - e.g. the shutdown applet is still too wide and doesn't flip vertically - but it's decent.

jasonlbaptiste 16y ago

curious to hear thoughts on this vs chromeos

ash 16y ago

It's instructive to compare this with Windows 7 (often comes installed on modern netbooks). Recipe: 1. move default taskbar to the left and 2. use Chrome. The result is pretty good, I think: http://drop.io/dyhgfkv/asset/windows7-png http://drop.io/dyhgfkv/asset/windows7-png

tdoggette 16y ago

Now that I've acclimated to Chrome on Windows, I don't think I could give up having the tabs on the very top of the screen. Me and my man Fitts love having the browser tabs at the top and the open applications at the bottom. It's really fast to switch tabs using the mouse that way.

Legion 16y ago

"Unity is available now for testing on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS" (http://www.canonical.com/products/unity http://www.canonical.com/products/unity) Oh hell. Now I have to run out to my pickup and grab my netbook. There goes a productive morning.