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No one has been ragging on Unity.... They should be. Unity is still garbage. Ruined Ubuntu for me after about 10 years of usage... Still never returning because

No one has been ragging on Unity.... They should be. Unity is still garbage. Ruined Ubuntu for me after about 10 years of usage... Still never returning because Unity is such a resource hog, so non-standard in its interface, and the fact that teaching someone Unity is a useless skill. We used Ubuntu for years to teach people how to use a computer for the first time: we gave them old PC's with Ubuntu installed. Unity made this impossible. It was too slow for the old machines, too hard to figure out for the new users, and too unfriendly for experienced users to tolerate. Hate hate hate hate Unity. Always will. Went to Mint because of it. Even installing another windowing system was a huge pain in the ass, because first, you had to install Unity and go to Synaptic and install an old Gnome. This took HOURS because Unity was so freaking SLOW! I dunno, maybe you fixed these things, but Unity ended my relationship with Ubuntu after years of advocating for it to everyone I knew.

tajen 10y ago
Ubuntu dropped the ergonomic Gnome to whip us with their own custom, unpolished Unity. Now they're doing it all over again with Mir, while Wayland could be a Linux standard. Sounds like IE all over again. That gives me trust issues with Canonical. More, they now leverage trademark law to forbid people from using ubuntu-? packages. Then they pulled the Amazon search in the menu, it showed Canonical's misunderstanding of privacy issues. Doesn't prevent from using Ubuntu, but I give 1% of my company's revenue to open-source ($800, to LE and Postgres), I don't consider Canonical as a candidate in the OSS category.
- petre 10y ago
  Sounds like systemd vs upstart all over again.
slavik81 10y ago
On the other hand, I really like unity. It works just like my old Windows 7 setup, but with handy features like being able to search menu items using alt. Technically Unity seems to be a bit of a mess, and I like Gnome 3's multi-desktop setup better, but I definitely would like to see them keep the basic design of unity.
mixmastamyk 10y ago
Ubuntu Mate, mate. ;)
sqeaky 10y ago
The only actionable complaint in your whole rant is that it is a resource hog. For reference on my system all the processes with "unity" in the name take about 210 of RAM (with a dozen windows open), a negligible amount for a modern computer or phone even. It took me about 3 seconds to figure out click the menu button and type what I want. That really is the largest user facing feature, and its a common one with other main menu based OS UIs. For the people I have put in front of it (about 5), all but one (my technophobic grandmother and never understood any UI, still has a time with the very concept of files and folders) figured it out quickly and rarely ask me questions. The most common questions is how to install some windows program. You lack of concrete examples and its conflict with my experience leads me to believe you are exaggerating.
- Brakenshire 10y ago
  In my experience it is true that Unity struggles on older computers, or perhaps where the graphics driver situation isn't great. I've had a lot of installations where the dock takes 5-10 seconds to load. Agree with you about ease of use though, people seem to pick it up quite quickly. For the basic functionality of opening and switching applications, people seem to pick it up almost immediately. Not quite the same for using the dock, but even so.

tajen 10y ago

Ubuntu dropped the ergonomic Gnome to whip us with their own custom, unpolished Unity. Now they're doing it all over again with Mir, while Wayland could be a Linux standard. Sounds like IE all over again. That gives me trust issues with Canonical. More, they now leverage trademark law to forbid people from using ubuntu-? packages. Then they pulled the Amazon search in the menu, it showed Canonical's misunderstanding of privacy issues. Doesn't prevent from using Ubuntu, but I give 1% of my company's revenue to open-source ($800, to LE and Postgres), I don't consider Canonical as a candidate in the OSS category.

petre 10y ago
Sounds like systemd vs upstart all over again.

slavik81 10y ago

On the other hand, I really like unity. It works just like my old Windows 7 setup, but with handy features like being able to search menu items using alt. Technically Unity seems to be a bit of a mess, and I like Gnome 3's multi-desktop setup better, but I definitely would like to see them keep the basic design of unity.

mixmastamyk 10y ago

Ubuntu Mate, mate. ;)

sqeaky 10y ago

The only actionable complaint in your whole rant is that it is a resource hog. For reference on my system all the processes with "unity" in the name take about 210 of RAM (with a dozen windows open), a negligible amount for a modern computer or phone even. It took me about 3 seconds to figure out click the menu button and type what I want. That really is the largest user facing feature, and its a common one with other main menu based OS UIs. For the people I have put in front of it (about 5), all but one (my technophobic grandmother and never understood any UI, still has a time with the very concept of files and folders) figured it out quickly and rarely ask me questions. The most common questions is how to install some windows program. You lack of concrete examples and its conflict with my experience leads me to believe you are exaggerating.

Brakenshire 10y ago
In my experience it is true that Unity struggles on older computers, or perhaps where the graphics driver situation isn't great. I've had a lot of installations where the dock takes 5-10 seconds to load. Agree with you about ease of use though, people seem to pick it up quite quickly. For the basic functionality of opening and switching applications, people seem to pick it up almost immediately. Not quite the same for using the dock, but even so.