15 ms·

Ubuntu 17.10: Return of the Gnome

243 points by hvo 9y ago

smhg 9y ago
What I find really useful in (default?) Unity: * Ctrl + Alt + left/right/up/down to switch workspaces * Ctrl + Alt + Shift + left/right/up/down to move the current window to a different workspace * Alt + Left mouse button to drag windows * Alt + Middle mouse button to resize windows * Drag a window to the left or right edge to resize it to that half of the screen. No idea how much of this is Gnome/remains in 17.10. Or how easy it is to set up. I guess I need to give it a try.
- noobermin 9y ago
  Settings->keyboard or just search "shortcuts" in the search bar
- josteink 9y ago
  My main app-switching feature across machines, OSes an desktop environments has been Super+[1-9] to focus my pinned app number [1-9] on the taskbar. This works in Windows. It worked in Unity. It works with my custom i3/sway setup. I never quite got it working in Gnome/KDE though. This single key-combo is super-crucial to my flow, and if Canonical has shipped a default-config which preserves this behaviour from Unity, I'd be super happy to give it a spin.
  - emilsedgh 9y ago
    I have the same flow on KDE. Right click on any application, go to "Special Application Settings" and set a shortcut for it.
  - Shorel 9y ago
    Install the Dash to Dock extension.
- audidude 9y ago
  Workspace switching with and without window is as you mention. Drag to left/right too. With 3.26 you can also drag the left/right split to arbitrary positions that may be more beneficial to the task at hand. GNOME uses Super (Windows) by default instead of Alt for drag/resize. You can change it (and lots of other stuff) in the Tweaks application. Resize uses secondary click instead of middle I think, but also available in Tweaks.
- Pengwin 9y ago
  Gnome 3 has all those shortcuts, albeit Workspaces are now in a single column, so you only have up and down navigating workspaces.
  - JoshMnem 9y ago
    That's a terrible restriction for people who have many virtual desktops. I've used 10 in two rows for years (or 9 in xmonad) so that's my mental model of where everything is located.
  - mcjiggerlog 9y ago
    I can't work without workspaces on a grid, but luckily there is a gnome shell plugin that works perfectly on 17.10 - https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/484/workspace-grid/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/484/workspace-grid/
    - fmoralesc 9y ago
      You can configure gnome-shell to use static workspaces from the gnome-tweak-tool application as well.
      - mcjiggerlog 9y ago
        Ah yes - you'll want to set the number of spaces to static first.
- pizza234 9y ago
  I have XFCE and they all work (resize is Alt+Right button), I think they're standard.
- bipson 9y ago
  How it works on Gnome (since "shell"/3.x IIRC): * Super + Alt + up/down to switch workspaces * Super + Alt + Shift + up/down to move the current window to a different workspace * Super + left click to drag windows * Super + left/right to resize to half screen * Super + up/down to maximize/restore * Drag a window to the left or right edge to resize it to that half of the screen. hth
  - vesak 9y ago
    > * Super + Alt + up/down to switch workspaces > * Super + Alt + Shift + up/down to move the current window to a different workspace These are pgup/pgdown, I believe?
  - sjapkee 9y ago
    It's awesome, but Gnome still has two shortcuts to change keyboard layout. Why? Why's it can't be fixed without some hacks?
- majewsky 9y ago
  For what it's worth, you can have all this in Plasma 5: * The "Switch to adjacent workspace" and "Move Window to adjacent workspace" actions are not bound to shortcuts by default, but you can do so via System Settings > Shortcuts > Global Shortcuts > KWin. * Alt+Left and Alt+Right for drag and resize, but can be configured to be the same as in Unity in System Settings > Window Management > Window Behavior > Window Actions. * Quick-tiling (full, half, quarter) is enabled by default.
chj 9y ago
Can't one just get a paid version without the amazon search? I know it can be uninstalled, but still, feels better that no such thing exists in the first place.
- suby 9y ago
  It's literally just an affiliate link.
  - rgbrenner 9y ago
    It's not though.. because of how it works. When you enable online searching, it sends those searches off to Ubuntu's servers and 3rd parties.. and Ubuntu explicitly says they will collect and store everything you type into the dash along with your IP address. And because of how central the dash is to Ubuntu... it's a huge piece of spyware. Depending on whether you have opted in or out (see the “Online Search” section below), we may also send your keystrokes as a search term to productsearch.ubuntu.com and selected third parties so that we may complement your search results with online search results from such third parties including: Facebook, Twitter, BBC and Amazon. Canonical and these selected third parties will collect your search terms and use them to provide you with search results while using Ubuntu. By searching in the dash you consent to: the collection and use of your search terms and IP address in this way; and the storage of your search terms and IP address by Canonical and such selected third parties (if applicable). https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-poli...
    - smacktoward 9y ago
      The key words here being "when you enable online searching." The Amazon affiliate integration has been off by default since Ubuntu 16.04.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - 9y ago
dhbradshaw 9y ago
I was hesitant to switch from Gnome to Unity. Interestingly, I'm now nervous to switch back. I guess one grows accustomed to and fond of what one uses.
- jeffnappi 9y ago
  I felt the same way, been along for the ride since Ubuntu 10.04. I just switched to 17.10 a couple weeks ago and I'd say it's my favorite Linux desktop I've ever used.
cheez 9y ago
I switched to Gnome for 17.10 (Gnome proper, not Ubuntu Gnome) and it's been amazing.
- guiambros 9y ago
  Out of curiosity, did you just install Ubuntu 17.10, removed Ubuntu-gnome and then manually installed plain Gnome on top? Any special steps to make it work (like booting to a secondary wm while you uninstall and reinstall gnome)? I'm still on 14.04 with vanilla Gnome (with my own extensions, etc), so I'm happy to see Canonical moving out of the desktop business, and retiring Unity for good. I just wish they offered a vanilla Gnome, instead of this heavily customized Unity-looking one.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    Can't you just install them side-by-side? Then after confirming "real" Gnome works, uninstall Ubuntu's Gnome. Or do they somehow conflict with each other?
    - r3bl 9y ago
      Nope, they do not. Just execute "apt install gnome-shell" and you get GNOME proper. No interference what so ever. After all, Ubuntu's GNOME is just GNOME with some extensions slapped on top.
- ggreer 9y ago
  I've had the exact opposite reaction to the change. So many common actions seem needlessly difficult. Take –for example– joining a wifi network. In Unity, you'd click on the wifi icon in the upper-right, then click on the network you want to join. Two clicks. In Gnome, you click in the upper-right, then click on the wifi icon to expand options, then click on "Select Network", then click on the network you want to join, then click "Connect". Five clicks! It's absurd. The story is similar for things like power settings or selecting sound input/output sources. I wish the Gnome team would imitate macOS or Windows instead of coming up with their own uniquely frustrating interfaces.
jdlyga 9y ago
I'm holding out hope for an Ubuntu 18.04 Unity Remix. Unity 7 just handles so many things expertly when you compare it side by side with Gnome.
dingo_bat 9y ago
I just want to say that the music in the video is _horrible_. I cannot believe they went with it. It sounds like a scammy kickstarter page!
jwatte 9y ago
I tried do-release-upgrade on 17.04, and it failed. Maybe they should work on that first? (The reason it failed was that I have the arm64 architecture installed to get cross tools, and those repos somehow return 404.)
onboardram 9y ago
I gave a chance to GNOME 3 times in last couple of years with Fedora 24, 25 and 26 and it was equally bad everytime. Memory Leaks reduced it to a crawling mess in a few hours of uptime, the desktop would freeze up permanently while doing even most basic task like switching windows or bringing up their Expose-thing, mouse will start jittering and lagging anytime icons/textures were being loaded, extensions and themes broke again and again. Who would have though putting a Javascript interpreter in the critical pipeline of (what was supposed to be) a reponsive animation-guided GUI would be a bad idea? Gave KDE a shot and beside all the bloat ans slowness, the damn thing kept crashing on my lock screen. Seriously? I have switched to Sway now which itself is far from perfect (GTK3 apps keep breaking now and again, visible tooltips in XWayland windows prevent workspace switching) but at least it doesn't hang up my machine every couple of hours or prevent me from unlocking it. How the hell did we got here? What exactly are the priorities of people working on this stuff? Here's hoping that XFCE gets ported to Wayland soon enough.
- megous 9y ago
  Well, have you reported the bugs, or helped debug them?
  - dilap 9y ago
    it's a nice theory, but in my experience most open source projects don't pay too much attention to bug reports. edit: sounds like bug-fixing nowadays in gnome may be better than i remembered / have experienced.
    - Vogtinator 9y ago
      If by "most" you mean those with just a single maintainer who works on it in his free time, you're probably right. For KDE, not so much.
    - danieldk 9y ago
      I reported some bugs in the Wayland support for GNOME Mutter a while ago. They were all fixed in a few days/weeks.
CSDude 9y ago
I just wish Gnome 2 was left as is and Gnome 3 would named Gnome Tablet Edition with those big useless buttons on a 27" screen where I click them with my mouse instead of my big fingers. When Unity was introduced, I learnt to use AwesomeWM (similar to i3) and even manually configuring it was a better experience then both Unity and Gnome 3. Alternatively, I used LXDE, which is simple enough for me.
gcb0 9y ago
it is worth of note that gnome 3 only now is getting to 90% of what it was during gnome 2. what was that? six years too? I have no idea. I am a KDE user now.
thewhitetulip 9y ago
Yay!!! I have always hated Unity (No offence to the devs behind it) but it was always a PITA. I am glad that Gnome is back! But that being said, Gnome3 has a lot of chrome space.
rukittenme 9y ago
I really like Ubuntu 17.10 sans Ubuntu. I'm running the default gnome-session. Its fast and Wayland has made Gnome feel really ... fluid? It doesn't _feel_ like a Linux machine anymore. Compositing _feels_ better than a Windows or OSX machine. Highly recommended.
znpy 9y ago
Kde3 was the best environment ever.
jdonaldson 9y ago
I love it. I'm back on vanilla Ubuntu.
- mcjiggerlog 9y ago
  Glad to see an actually positive comment - I've just installed on my desktop after being mostly a mac user for the past few years (before that unity/gnome 2), and I'm seriously impressed. Everything is so smooth and the UI is both beautiful and functional. Great job, Canonical!
mpd 9y ago
I use Ubuntu daily, so I ended up stepping onto this land mine. Overall, I don't think Gnome is completely unusable, but some little things made me jump back to Unity (which can be chosen when logging in).
- jdlyga 9y ago
  In 17.10, Unity has better desktop scaling, performs better when doing a menu search, makes better use of screen space, has more advanced virtual desktop capabilities, has the best global menu on any linux desktop, and while isn't bug free is fairly predictable. Gnome is very customizable, is more attractive looking on Ubuntu 17.10 out of the box, has better notifications, and doesn't generate the questionable error messages that Unity does. That being said, it feels like replacing a Toyota with a Buick.
  - dullgiulio 9y ago
    Yeah, just don't try to disable one extension or your desktop will freeze for a few minutes. Damn, I love javascript on the desktop.
Ologn 9y ago
I upgraded from 17.04 to 17.10. The widget in my Gnome Terminal window that shows me how many columns and rows the terminal has (if I change them) disappeared. I posted this to the Ubuntu forums, they said Wayland kills this feature, but if I fall back to Gnome over Xorg it would work. Which it does. I hope they don't deprecate Xorg because I'm sure there are a lot of things like this which work in X but don't work yet automagically with Wayland.
make3 9y ago
"Stagnation had turned Ubuntu into just another distro; now it's interesting all over again." Jesus, wtf. I hate popular tech press like this and wired so much
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
  Yeah, it seems like a stretch to call the biggest distro "just another distro".
  - baybal2 9y ago
    MATE has been by far the biggest distro for last 4 years
    - baybal2 9y ago
      Pfff it was MINT, not MATE
      - r3bl 9y ago
        Also, no evidence that it was ever the most popular one, other than in Distrowatch clicks.
        baybal2 9y ago
        I disagree, even without DW, Ubuntu should have an advantage in many many polls, and in automated measurements. Ubuntu has a non-insubstantial corporate install base that should've been registered in user agent statistics, while MINT is a wholly community driven project that don't even have an official "default" browser.
        r3bl 9y ago
        I think you've misunderstood me. Mint is #1 on Distrowatch. That's pretty much it. Everything else suggests that Ubuntu is more popular. So my parent "no evidence other than DW clicks" is aimed at Mint, not Ubuntu.
ISV_Damocles 9y ago
Absolutely not for me. When Gnome and Canonical both went crazy (Gnome 2 -> 3 and Unity even existing, respectively) I stayed with Gnome 2 for a while, switched to Mate for a bit, and eventually found that KDE 4 had settled down and was just as customizable as KDE 3 was (for my purposes, at least), and have been using Kubuntu ever since. I don't mind them experimenting with new ways of doing things at all, I just really don't understand why this needs to be done in a way that prevents people from doing things the way they've done it before if they decide they don't like the way you're doing things. I switched from Konqueror to Dolphin after it handled what I needed. I switched from Virtual Desktops to "Activities" after it was also good enough for my needs. I never used widgets in their original usage (placed seemingly at random on the desktop) but use them inside of the task bar. I use sloppy focus follow mouse and mouse raise only on titlebar click so I can use windowed applications in actual nontrivial ways. It doesn't matter if you glossed over that run-on paragraph above. tl;dr: KDE can have opinions, so can I. At least KDE respects that.
- chongli 9y ago
  I don't mind them experimenting with new ways of doing things at all, I just really don't understand why this needs to be done in a way that prevents people from doing things the way they've done it before if they decide they don't like the way you're doing things. Same reason it happened with Firefox: trying to attract more users. The broader you want your user base to be, the less customizable you have to be. Regular users can't handle heavy customization: it's too complicated and they freeze up. Power users interested in extreme customization of their environment will always be a tiny niche. Add to that the Anna Karenina Principle [0] and it makes even less sense to try to compete for such users. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle
  - ISV_Damocles 9y ago
    The keyword is "trying." When they intentionally disable functionality they are throwing away the userbase that depends on that functionality for the hope of getting a bigger userbase in return. But there's no need to be that myopic. Like I said, I don't mind if they add these features and make that the default way of doing things. I don't mind if they bury the "less broad" functionality deep in some hidden configuration that I have to get at. Just keep it around for those users, give them QA articles on how to re-enable their way of doing things, and then you can have both. There have been countless counter-examples to this "priciple", by the way: The Digg to Reddit migration being the foremost in my mind, but also the Windows Mobile to Windows Phone migration and the last Firefox redesign (that was eventually mostly rolled back or made optional again after hemorrhaging users).
hristov 9y ago
This certainly brings back some memories. This is what I wrote in HN when I first encountered Unity. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2504972 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2504972 HN tells me this was 2402 days ago. Oh how quickly the kilodays fly by. But I am glad that after a mere twenty four hundred days Canonical finally listened to my advice. I have been using mostly Xubuntu during the unity years so this thing did not affect me much. So I can look at the unity mistake not with anger but with interest and curiosity. And when you look at the whole thing dispassionately and with perspective, you have to admit that this was not a mistake that Canonical made exclusively. It was a mistake the entire computing and software industry made. It was one of those strange turns into dead ends that happen to industries sometimes. After the first ipad came out, the entire industry was absolutely certain that the future was tablets. Everyone started changing their user interfaces for tablets. And they did not care how much their customers complained, they just forced it down their throats because that was the future darn it. But it turned out that the tablet future never happened. Even now I had to pay extra for a touch screen laptop because there was no other choice, when I "use" the touchscreen option only inadvertently. The good thing about linux is that they can never railroad you into anything. So I switched to Xubuntu and that was that.
- jdlyga 9y ago
  The problem is, Gnome 3 is way more of a "tablet" operating system than Unity turned out to be. I'd take a halfway point between Gnome 3 and MATE.
  - ShabbosGoy 9y ago
    I've used Cinnamon, MATE, Gnome 2, and KDE before making the switch to i3. I highly recommend switching to a tiling WM.
    - 0xFFC 9y ago
      I am looking for tilling window manager for Wayland. Sadly I couldn't find any stable one yet. But SwayWM seems promising.
bgrohman 9y ago
"It's worth noting that in my testing, GNOME uses slightly more RAM and CPU than Unity on the same hardware doing the same things. The increase is only about 10 percent more on the RAM, and, let's face it, neither of them are lightweight desktops. If you want something light, try i3." Best advice in the article ;) I did try i3 and like it a lot. I have it running on a Chromebook now as my main machine.
wiz21c 9y ago
FTA : "The last few Ubuntu desktop releases have been about as exciting as OpenSSH releases" I felt the same with the last Debian stable. But I was kinda happy about that. Because it means it's reaching maturity.
- setzer22 9y ago
  Rationally, I think this maturity is the best thing that could happen to my system. However, I must admit I grow bored if I don't introduce some new widget/functionality from time to time.
- augustl 9y ago
  I wholeheartedly agree. What I really want is a super conservative LTS system that keeps the core - OS, window manager, file manager, network, etc - on super stable and old versions, and my apps - Firefox, Emacs, Spotify, ... - updated to the latest release. I'm tired of "new" desktop environments, and rewrites that means I'll now have to live with years of bug fixing until I get a stable system. I'm hoping that Ubuntu slowly becomes this, especially with the move to the very stable Gnome 3.
  - chrisper 9y ago
    Then use CentOS?
    - augustl 9y ago
      I should add that I also want to use the most standardized desktop environment I can find. Which these days seems to be Win10, macOS, Ubuntu, and maybe a KDE based one? My argument is the same as what Linus points out in this rant (5:33): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmHRSeA2c8&feature=youtu.be&t=333 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmHRSeA2c8&feature=youtu.be... I want life to be easy for app developers, having to target a gazillion different Linux based platforms kind of sucks.
int_19h 9y ago
For the past, oh, 10 years or so, it feels like every time I try a new release of one of the prominent Linux DEs, I keep going back to Xfce after a short while, because it "just works", can be customized exactly how I want it to be, and doesn't try to break my flow with every major release, because someone in UX has a new Grand Unifying Theory of What Users Really Want (Even if They Don't Know It).
- Nursie 9y ago
  Yup. As soon as the whole kerfuffle hit with gnome 2 being forcibly deprecated, I tried Xfce, found it lightweight and configurable, and stuck with it. Never regretted it, as a desktop it works and it keeps out of my way. Perfect.
- setzer22 9y ago
  Unless you are frequently switching monitor setups and would like a panel for each monitor. After coming from i3 I expected that to be a simple feature but I guess Xfce devs don't.
- qualitytime 9y ago
  Yes, I've used xubuntu for the past years, not just because everything "just works" at the right minimal level for me but also for it's lightness and performance.
- wiz21c 9y ago
  I use OpenBox on Debian since 5 years. But it's not because Gnome or KDE is broken, it's just because I don't need all of the stuff a regular desktop provides. I think your comment implies regular desktops are broken but I don't think so. They're not perfect but not to the point of being unusable.
  - Nursie 9y ago
    I think a lot of the problem with Gnome 3, Unity and Windows 8 was that they decided to revolutionise the way people worked, by pushing them towards different paradigms. These paradigms may or may not have been well thought out and useful, I'm not here to make that judgement, however what they did (particularly with Gnome 3 and windows 8) was push you to use the new way, either with no concessions at all to other ways of working, or vague promises that they would come later. This presents users with a learning curve and that's offputting when really you just want to get stuff done in pretty much the same way you did yesterday. For me the crucial point is that Windows (pre 8 and 10), MacOS and Linux DEs like Xfce, MATE and various others don't try to push you, and do things in a fairly 'standard' way. A menu bar may have moved, some graphics look better than others, there might be a clock in a different place. But they don't force you to full screen, try to hide all the things you've done before, make choices for you on which applications to use for what, etc etc, behaviour is pretty predictable. And if it's not, you can make a few tweaks without much fuss. So they aren't broken, but they do present a barrier to entry, and often a lack of flexibility (I'm specifically not talking about KDE as I haven't used it on over a decade).
jimnotgym 9y ago
I upgraded to 17.10. I use an old small screen Thinkpad and Gnome 3 used the top third of the screen for menus! I tried all of the plugins to no avail. I switched back to Unity because I like to see my screen. I hope to see a gnome 3 extension to mimic the unified top bar thing
josteink 9y ago
I accidentally my whole Fedora-installation yesterday, so I guess this is a good a chance as any to try out how Ubuntu feels on the desktop these days. I guess that's life :)
- augustl 9y ago
  I switched from Fedora to Ubuntu for this. All I want is a canonical (no pun intended) Linux distro so that app developers doesn't have to target a gazillion variations. So I really want to see Ubuntu succeed. So far, I've had my laptop freeze completely 3-4 times a week, fans spinning, not responding to any input in any way shape or form. This didn't happen in Fedora. Other than that, it's basically Fedora with different colors.
- majewsky 9y ago
  > I accidentally my whole Fedora-installation yesterday Out of curiosity, what happened? For me, it's been more than 7 years since I last accidentally a Linux installation.
igor_filippov 9y ago
Last time I've used Ubuntu was about 5 years ago. And it seems to look the same now. I wonder if anything meaningful was achieved during that time in terms of UI/UX besides switching desktop environments back and forth.
- castle-bravo 9y ago
  Out of curiosity, what did you use in the meantime?
  - igor_filippov 9y ago
    Well, I'm with Apple now.
reacweb 9y ago
"Ubuntu's developers have put considerable effort into making GNOME cosmetically similar to Unity". I am a "ubuntu gnome" user since the start of unity (I have used it 2 weeks, it was unusable for me). Do you mean that I will have to accept the defects of gnome plus the ugly misbehaving unity dock combined ? Should I leave for fedora ?
- chrisper 9y ago
  It's more like Gnome + Extensions = Look of Unityish. I used to use Gnome 3 Vanilla + Extensions and didn't like Unity either. Now I am using 17.10 and this new Ubuntu Gnome thingy and I am enjoying it.
- bkor 9y ago
  By default it's pretty Unity like. Fortunately by adding just one package it gives you an almost pure GNOME experience. Meaning: all the changes made for Unity-like behaviour only happen in the Unity session. They put quite a bit of work into making that happen (various blogposts by a Canonical/Ubuntu employee).
O_H_E 9y ago
I can't get why mate/kde is more usable/user friendly that Gnome. While Gnome have have Redhat & GNU behind them
sverige 9y ago
I have read most of the comments. I find myself chuckling at the memory of people telling me that using cwm with X is too...whatever. I haven't had to change my workflow for something like eight years and it's still being developed with incremental improvements. I don't understand the desire to constantly mess with the dashboard when all I want to do is drive the car.
hollander 9y ago
I've tried Gnome in the past, didn't get it, and moved back to either Mate or Unity. Then I heard that Ubuntu would move to Gnome, and I decided to make an effort. It turned out that the default settings make Gnome into something I really don't like, while it's really customizable into something that resembles Mate close enough. I haven't gone back since. The Gnome project should add two shortcuts on the desktop with scripts to set Gnome to mimick Mate or Unity, so users get their old desktop back with a few clicks.
pkolaczk 9y ago
Anyone tried it recently? How stable is it? Particularly, does it support multiple external displays with different scaling properly on Intel with Wayland? Unfortunately the live USB allows to test only on Xorg, Wayland is not available.
- audidude 9y ago
  Yes, as long as you use Wayland (the default). If you just want to just test things, pretty sure the Fedora Live image is Wayland by default for intel.
- majewsky 9y ago
  As a rule of thumb, if your GPU is AMD or Intel, then if OpenGL applications work under X11, then Wayland is going to work, too. If your GPU is Nvidia, tough luck: https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html (this is from the lead developer of Sway, a Wayland-only window manager)
dm319 9y ago
The article says that Ubuntu 17.10 is exciting again. I don't want exciting. Particularly when they drop nice features like the HUD and the integrated global menu and title bar. And that's coming from a MATE user who never got on with Unity. I will hang on to my useful places menu, my functioning file explorer and refined taskbar thank you very much!
- neverminder 9y ago
  Removing global menu and placing the clock in the middle was a mistake. Now I have 2-3 lines less code in my editor, so why was wasting space considered a good idea?
  - listic 9y ago
    I can think of having to ship in time for a "test run" 17.10 release (the one before the 18.04 LTS) as the only justification. I hope it will be worth it and they will be able to prepare 18.04 LTS all the better because of that. You don't have to update the OS every 6 months, anyway.
sambe 9y ago
Can someone explain to me what HUD means in this context? They say HUD is gone, and GNOME developers are strongly against ever having one. The screenshots show something looking like an overlay with global search. To me, that's what a HUD is.
- mrkipling 9y ago
  https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ubuntu+unity+hud https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ubuntu+unity+hud
  - sambe 9y ago
    Ahhh they mean the per-application HUD. That is indeed tremendously useful, like the OS X searchable menus and Sublime's command palette. I can't see why anyone would be against that functionality.
    - majewsky 9y ago
      If I had to guess: Because GNOME devs pursue their religious quest for simplicity ^W dumbing things down so far that they cannot acknowledge anymore that an application might have more than 5 menu items.
    - gwenzek 9y ago
      Wow, I wasn't aware that Unity had that! I mostly use Sublime because of this and whish all programs have one. Now I'm sad that it's gone…
mm4 9y ago
Ubuntu won't succeed on the desktop until it starts shipping with cinnamon as a default
- majewsky 9y ago
  Poe's Law at work.
noxecanexx 9y ago
One I never understood why people complained of Gnome changing their UI until 3.26 where they removed support for tray icons. Apps like deluge and megasync became a mess(megasync refuses to work) because there's no tray icon. Unfortunately I have been unable to find any DE that has the same navigation style
a3n 9y ago
All distros "look" the same to me, because I use a tiling window manager. I don't see a desktop, I just see what I'm working on. The gnome2/gnome3/unity silliness was partly why.
yAnonymous 9y ago
Gnome3 is much worse than Unity ever was. The difference is that Unity was getting better while Gnome is getting worse. The people at Gnome are lacking even the most basic knowledge when it comes to UX. The whole DE is a clusterfuck.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
romanovcode 9y ago
This must be the ugliest OS of the three main user-focused ones. I mean even the colors are ugly, why put dark orange colors, who thought it is a good idea?
- mrweasel 9y ago
  Look is subjective, but I not going to argue that the default Ubuntu colour scheme isn't absolutely horrible. A new colour scheme could make the default Ubuntu desktop more approachable to new users.
andrewaylett 9y ago
I don't understand why everyone seems to think Gnome 3 is a tablet UI. I had a touchscreen laptop for a couple of years and my experience is that it really isn't. It's actually not bad as a keyboard-driven UI, though: it's a rare event that I'll trigger the overlay with the mouse, or even interact with it at all with the mouse beyond dragging windows into different workspaces or dragging workspaces around (the latter being the one thing I don't think you can do with the keyboard).
- leojg 9y ago
  Because of the big toolbar? When I first saw it I assumed it would be mobile oriented.
mtzaldo 9y ago
After ubuntu announced the return of gnome as it primary DE I started looking for another distro/ubuntu variant with a good DE. So far ubuntu MATE and ubuntu budgie have been the better ones. So if you are in the market for a new ubuntu flavor you should try both.
listic 9y ago
I hope feature parity with the Unity Ubuntu is a priority. https://youtu.be/gdX606Hjt04?t=5m24s https://youtu.be/gdX606Hjt04?t=5m24s
listic 9y ago
Can we still use 32-bit Ubuntu? Is it just 32-bit iso that has been discontinued? I find it dodgy to discontinue 32-bit Ubuntu, as I remember it has been promised to exist until 18.04.
james43534 9y ago
"sudo apt-get install xfce4" has worked awesomely so far.
Kenji 9y ago
That moment when they take Gnome and make it work like the old Unity crap. I still have to click THREE TIMES to switch between two firefox windows. What the hell?? Wake up, UI designers!

243 points by hvo 9y ago

smhg 9y ago

What I find really useful in (default?) Unity: * Ctrl + Alt + left/right/up/down to switch workspaces * Ctrl + Alt + Shift + left/right/up/down to move the current window to a different workspace * Alt + Left mouse button to drag windows * Alt + Middle mouse button to resize windows * Drag a window to the left or right edge to resize it to that half of the screen. No idea how much of this is Gnome/remains in 17.10. Or how easy it is to set up. I guess I need to give it a try.

noobermin 9y ago
Settings->keyboard or just search "shortcuts" in the search bar
josteink 9y ago
My main app-switching feature across machines, OSes an desktop environments has been Super+[1-9] to focus my pinned app number [1-9] on the taskbar. This works in Windows. It worked in Unity. It works with my custom i3/sway setup. I never quite got it working in Gnome/KDE though. This single key-combo is super-crucial to my flow, and if Canonical has shipped a default-config which preserves this behaviour from Unity, I'd be super happy to give it a spin.
- emilsedgh 9y ago
  I have the same flow on KDE. Right click on any application, go to "Special Application Settings" and set a shortcut for it.
- Shorel 9y ago
  Install the Dash to Dock extension.
audidude 9y ago
Workspace switching with and without window is as you mention. Drag to left/right too. With 3.26 you can also drag the left/right split to arbitrary positions that may be more beneficial to the task at hand. GNOME uses Super (Windows) by default instead of Alt for drag/resize. You can change it (and lots of other stuff) in the Tweaks application. Resize uses secondary click instead of middle I think, but also available in Tweaks.
Pengwin 9y ago
Gnome 3 has all those shortcuts, albeit Workspaces are now in a single column, so you only have up and down navigating workspaces.
- JoshMnem 9y ago
  That's a terrible restriction for people who have many virtual desktops. I've used 10 in two rows for years (or 9 in xmonad) so that's my mental model of where everything is located.
- mcjiggerlog 9y ago
  I can't work without workspaces on a grid, but luckily there is a gnome shell plugin that works perfectly on 17.10 - https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/484/workspace-grid/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/484/workspace-grid/
  - fmoralesc 9y ago
    You can configure gnome-shell to use static workspaces from the gnome-tweak-tool application as well.
    - mcjiggerlog 9y ago
      Ah yes - you'll want to set the number of spaces to static first.
pizza234 9y ago
I have XFCE and they all work (resize is Alt+Right button), I think they're standard.
bipson 9y ago
How it works on Gnome (since "shell"/3.x IIRC): * Super + Alt + up/down to switch workspaces * Super + Alt + Shift + up/down to move the current window to a different workspace * Super + left click to drag windows * Super + left/right to resize to half screen * Super + up/down to maximize/restore * Drag a window to the left or right edge to resize it to that half of the screen. hth
- vesak 9y ago
  > * Super + Alt + up/down to switch workspaces > * Super + Alt + Shift + up/down to move the current window to a different workspace These are pgup/pgdown, I believe?
- sjapkee 9y ago
  It's awesome, but Gnome still has two shortcuts to change keyboard layout. Why? Why's it can't be fixed without some hacks?
majewsky 9y ago
For what it's worth, you can have all this in Plasma 5: * The "Switch to adjacent workspace" and "Move Window to adjacent workspace" actions are not bound to shortcuts by default, but you can do so via System Settings > Shortcuts > Global Shortcuts > KWin. * Alt+Left and Alt+Right for drag and resize, but can be configured to be the same as in Unity in System Settings > Window Management > Window Behavior > Window Actions. * Quick-tiling (full, half, quarter) is enabled by default.

chj 9y ago

Can't one just get a paid version without the amazon search? I know it can be uninstalled, but still, feels better that no such thing exists in the first place.

suby 9y ago
It's literally just an affiliate link.
- rgbrenner 9y ago
  It's not though.. because of how it works. When you enable online searching, it sends those searches off to Ubuntu's servers and 3rd parties.. and Ubuntu explicitly says they will collect and store everything you type into the dash along with your IP address. And because of how central the dash is to Ubuntu... it's a huge piece of spyware. Depending on whether you have opted in or out (see the “Online Search” section below), we may also send your keystrokes as a search term to productsearch.ubuntu.com and selected third parties so that we may complement your search results with online search results from such third parties including: Facebook, Twitter, BBC and Amazon. Canonical and these selected third parties will collect your search terms and use them to provide you with search results while using Ubuntu. By searching in the dash you consent to: the collection and use of your search terms and IP address in this way; and the storage of your search terms and IP address by Canonical and such selected third parties (if applicable). https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-poli...
  - smacktoward 9y ago
    The key words here being "when you enable online searching." The Amazon affiliate integration has been off by default since Ubuntu 16.04.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - 9y ago

dhbradshaw 9y ago

I was hesitant to switch from Gnome to Unity. Interestingly, I'm now nervous to switch back. I guess one grows accustomed to and fond of what one uses.

jeffnappi 9y ago
I felt the same way, been along for the ride since Ubuntu 10.04. I just switched to 17.10 a couple weeks ago and I'd say it's my favorite Linux desktop I've ever used.

cheez 9y ago

I switched to Gnome for 17.10 (Gnome proper, not Ubuntu Gnome) and it's been amazing.

guiambros 9y ago
Out of curiosity, did you just install Ubuntu 17.10, removed Ubuntu-gnome and then manually installed plain Gnome on top? Any special steps to make it work (like booting to a secondary wm while you uninstall and reinstall gnome)? I'm still on 14.04 with vanilla Gnome (with my own extensions, etc), so I'm happy to see Canonical moving out of the desktop business, and retiring Unity for good. I just wish they offered a vanilla Gnome, instead of this heavily customized Unity-looking one.
- yorwba 9y ago
  Can't you just install them side-by-side? Then after confirming "real" Gnome works, uninstall Ubuntu's Gnome. Or do they somehow conflict with each other?
  - r3bl 9y ago
    Nope, they do not. Just execute "apt install gnome-shell" and you get GNOME proper. No interference what so ever. After all, Ubuntu's GNOME is just GNOME with some extensions slapped on top.
ggreer 9y ago
I've had the exact opposite reaction to the change. So many common actions seem needlessly difficult. Take –for example– joining a wifi network. In Unity, you'd click on the wifi icon in the upper-right, then click on the network you want to join. Two clicks. In Gnome, you click in the upper-right, then click on the wifi icon to expand options, then click on "Select Network", then click on the network you want to join, then click "Connect". Five clicks! It's absurd. The story is similar for things like power settings or selecting sound input/output sources. I wish the Gnome team would imitate macOS or Windows instead of coming up with their own uniquely frustrating interfaces.

jdlyga 9y ago

I'm holding out hope for an Ubuntu 18.04 Unity Remix. Unity 7 just handles so many things expertly when you compare it side by side with Gnome.

dingo_bat 9y ago

I just want to say that the music in the video is _horrible_. I cannot believe they went with it. It sounds like a scammy kickstarter page!

jwatte 9y ago

I tried do-release-upgrade on 17.04, and it failed. Maybe they should work on that first? (The reason it failed was that I have the arm64 architecture installed to get cross tools, and those repos somehow return 404.)

onboardram 9y ago

I gave a chance to GNOME 3 times in last couple of years with Fedora 24, 25 and 26 and it was equally bad everytime. Memory Leaks reduced it to a crawling mess in a few hours of uptime, the desktop would freeze up permanently while doing even most basic task like switching windows or bringing up their Expose-thing, mouse will start jittering and lagging anytime icons/textures were being loaded, extensions and themes broke again and again. Who would have though putting a Javascript interpreter in the critical pipeline of (what was supposed to be) a reponsive animation-guided GUI would be a bad idea? Gave KDE a shot and beside all the bloat ans slowness, the damn thing kept crashing on my lock screen. Seriously? I have switched to Sway now which itself is far from perfect (GTK3 apps keep breaking now and again, visible tooltips in XWayland windows prevent workspace switching) but at least it doesn't hang up my machine every couple of hours or prevent me from unlocking it. How the hell did we got here? What exactly are the priorities of people working on this stuff? Here's hoping that XFCE gets ported to Wayland soon enough.

megous 9y ago
Well, have you reported the bugs, or helped debug them?
- dilap 9y ago
  it's a nice theory, but in my experience most open source projects don't pay too much attention to bug reports. edit: sounds like bug-fixing nowadays in gnome may be better than i remembered / have experienced.
  - Vogtinator 9y ago
    If by "most" you mean those with just a single maintainer who works on it in his free time, you're probably right. For KDE, not so much.
  - danieldk 9y ago
    I reported some bugs in the Wayland support for GNOME Mutter a while ago. They were all fixed in a few days/weeks.

CSDude 9y ago

I just wish Gnome 2 was left as is and Gnome 3 would named Gnome Tablet Edition with those big useless buttons on a 27" screen where I click them with my mouse instead of my big fingers. When Unity was introduced, I learnt to use AwesomeWM (similar to i3) and even manually configuring it was a better experience then both Unity and Gnome 3. Alternatively, I used LXDE, which is simple enough for me.

gcb0 9y ago

it is worth of note that gnome 3 only now is getting to 90% of what it was during gnome 2. what was that? six years too? I have no idea. I am a KDE user now.

thewhitetulip 9y ago

Yay!!! I have always hated Unity (No offence to the devs behind it) but it was always a PITA. I am glad that Gnome is back! But that being said, Gnome3 has a lot of chrome space.

rukittenme 9y ago

I really like Ubuntu 17.10 sans Ubuntu. I'm running the default gnome-session. Its fast and Wayland has made Gnome feel really ... fluid? It doesn't _feel_ like a Linux machine anymore. Compositing _feels_ better than a Windows or OSX machine. Highly recommended.

znpy 9y ago

Kde3 was the best environment ever.

jdonaldson 9y ago

I love it. I'm back on vanilla Ubuntu.

mcjiggerlog 9y ago
Glad to see an actually positive comment - I've just installed on my desktop after being mostly a mac user for the past few years (before that unity/gnome 2), and I'm seriously impressed. Everything is so smooth and the UI is both beautiful and functional. Great job, Canonical!

mpd 9y ago

I use Ubuntu daily, so I ended up stepping onto this land mine. Overall, I don't think Gnome is completely unusable, but some little things made me jump back to Unity (which can be chosen when logging in).

jdlyga 9y ago
In 17.10, Unity has better desktop scaling, performs better when doing a menu search, makes better use of screen space, has more advanced virtual desktop capabilities, has the best global menu on any linux desktop, and while isn't bug free is fairly predictable. Gnome is very customizable, is more attractive looking on Ubuntu 17.10 out of the box, has better notifications, and doesn't generate the questionable error messages that Unity does. That being said, it feels like replacing a Toyota with a Buick.
- dullgiulio 9y ago
  Yeah, just don't try to disable one extension or your desktop will freeze for a few minutes. Damn, I love javascript on the desktop.

Ologn 9y ago

I upgraded from 17.04 to 17.10. The widget in my Gnome Terminal window that shows me how many columns and rows the terminal has (if I change them) disappeared. I posted this to the Ubuntu forums, they said Wayland kills this feature, but if I fall back to Gnome over Xorg it would work. Which it does. I hope they don't deprecate Xorg because I'm sure there are a lot of things like this which work in X but don't work yet automagically with Wayland.

make3 9y ago

"Stagnation had turned Ubuntu into just another distro; now it's interesting all over again." Jesus, wtf. I hate popular tech press like this and wired so much

yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
Yeah, it seems like a stretch to call the biggest distro "just another distro".
- baybal2 9y ago
  MATE has been by far the biggest distro for last 4 years
  - baybal2 9y ago
    Pfff it was MINT, not MATE
    - r3bl 9y ago
      Also, no evidence that it was ever the most popular one, other than in Distrowatch clicks.
      - baybal2 9y ago
        I disagree, even without DW, Ubuntu should have an advantage in many many polls, and in automated measurements. Ubuntu has a non-insubstantial corporate install base that should've been registered in user agent statistics, while MINT is a wholly community driven project that don't even have an official "default" browser.
        r3bl 9y ago
        I think you've misunderstood me. Mint is #1 on Distrowatch. That's pretty much it. Everything else suggests that Ubuntu is more popular. So my parent "no evidence other than DW clicks" is aimed at Mint, not Ubuntu.

ISV_Damocles 9y ago

Absolutely not for me. When Gnome and Canonical both went crazy (Gnome 2 -> 3 and Unity even existing, respectively) I stayed with Gnome 2 for a while, switched to Mate for a bit, and eventually found that KDE 4 had settled down and was just as customizable as KDE 3 was (for my purposes, at least), and have been using Kubuntu ever since. I don't mind them experimenting with new ways of doing things at all, I just really don't understand why this needs to be done in a way that prevents people from doing things the way they've done it before if they decide they don't like the way you're doing things. I switched from Konqueror to Dolphin after it handled what I needed. I switched from Virtual Desktops to "Activities" after it was also good enough for my needs. I never used widgets in their original usage (placed seemingly at random on the desktop) but use them inside of the task bar. I use sloppy focus follow mouse and mouse raise only on titlebar click so I can use windowed applications in actual nontrivial ways. It doesn't matter if you glossed over that run-on paragraph above. tl;dr: KDE can have opinions, so can I. At least KDE respects that.

chongli 9y ago
I don't mind them experimenting with new ways of doing things at all, I just really don't understand why this needs to be done in a way that prevents people from doing things the way they've done it before if they decide they don't like the way you're doing things. Same reason it happened with Firefox: trying to attract more users. The broader you want your user base to be, the less customizable you have to be. Regular users can't handle heavy customization: it's too complicated and they freeze up. Power users interested in extreme customization of their environment will always be a tiny niche. Add to that the Anna Karenina Principle [0] and it makes even less sense to try to compete for such users. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle
- ISV_Damocles 9y ago
  The keyword is "trying." When they intentionally disable functionality they are throwing away the userbase that depends on that functionality for the hope of getting a bigger userbase in return. But there's no need to be that myopic. Like I said, I don't mind if they add these features and make that the default way of doing things. I don't mind if they bury the "less broad" functionality deep in some hidden configuration that I have to get at. Just keep it around for those users, give them QA articles on how to re-enable their way of doing things, and then you can have both. There have been countless counter-examples to this "priciple", by the way: The Digg to Reddit migration being the foremost in my mind, but also the Windows Mobile to Windows Phone migration and the last Firefox redesign (that was eventually mostly rolled back or made optional again after hemorrhaging users).

hristov 9y ago

This certainly brings back some memories. This is what I wrote in HN when I first encountered Unity. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2504972 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2504972 HN tells me this was 2402 days ago. Oh how quickly the kilodays fly by. But I am glad that after a mere twenty four hundred days Canonical finally listened to my advice. I have been using mostly Xubuntu during the unity years so this thing did not affect me much. So I can look at the unity mistake not with anger but with interest and curiosity. And when you look at the whole thing dispassionately and with perspective, you have to admit that this was not a mistake that Canonical made exclusively. It was a mistake the entire computing and software industry made. It was one of those strange turns into dead ends that happen to industries sometimes. After the first ipad came out, the entire industry was absolutely certain that the future was tablets. Everyone started changing their user interfaces for tablets. And they did not care how much their customers complained, they just forced it down their throats because that was the future darn it. But it turned out that the tablet future never happened. Even now I had to pay extra for a touch screen laptop because there was no other choice, when I "use" the touchscreen option only inadvertently. The good thing about linux is that they can never railroad you into anything. So I switched to Xubuntu and that was that.

jdlyga 9y ago
The problem is, Gnome 3 is way more of a "tablet" operating system than Unity turned out to be. I'd take a halfway point between Gnome 3 and MATE.
- ShabbosGoy 9y ago
  I've used Cinnamon, MATE, Gnome 2, and KDE before making the switch to i3. I highly recommend switching to a tiling WM.
  - 0xFFC 9y ago
    I am looking for tilling window manager for Wayland. Sadly I couldn't find any stable one yet. But SwayWM seems promising.

bgrohman 9y ago

"It's worth noting that in my testing, GNOME uses slightly more RAM and CPU than Unity on the same hardware doing the same things. The increase is only about 10 percent more on the RAM, and, let's face it, neither of them are lightweight desktops. If you want something light, try i3." Best advice in the article ;) I did try i3 and like it a lot. I have it running on a Chromebook now as my main machine.

wiz21c 9y ago

FTA : "The last few Ubuntu desktop releases have been about as exciting as OpenSSH releases" I felt the same with the last Debian stable. But I was kinda happy about that. Because it means it's reaching maturity.

setzer22 9y ago
Rationally, I think this maturity is the best thing that could happen to my system. However, I must admit I grow bored if I don't introduce some new widget/functionality from time to time.
augustl 9y ago
I wholeheartedly agree. What I really want is a super conservative LTS system that keeps the core - OS, window manager, file manager, network, etc - on super stable and old versions, and my apps - Firefox, Emacs, Spotify, ... - updated to the latest release. I'm tired of "new" desktop environments, and rewrites that means I'll now have to live with years of bug fixing until I get a stable system. I'm hoping that Ubuntu slowly becomes this, especially with the move to the very stable Gnome 3.
- chrisper 9y ago
  Then use CentOS?
  - augustl 9y ago
    I should add that I also want to use the most standardized desktop environment I can find. Which these days seems to be Win10, macOS, Ubuntu, and maybe a KDE based one? My argument is the same as what Linus points out in this rant (5:33): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmHRSeA2c8&feature=youtu.be&t=333 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmHRSeA2c8&feature=youtu.be... I want life to be easy for app developers, having to target a gazillion different Linux based platforms kind of sucks.

int_19h 9y ago

For the past, oh, 10 years or so, it feels like every time I try a new release of one of the prominent Linux DEs, I keep going back to Xfce after a short while, because it "just works", can be customized exactly how I want it to be, and doesn't try to break my flow with every major release, because someone in UX has a new Grand Unifying Theory of What Users Really Want (Even if They Don't Know It).

Nursie 9y ago
Yup. As soon as the whole kerfuffle hit with gnome 2 being forcibly deprecated, I tried Xfce, found it lightweight and configurable, and stuck with it. Never regretted it, as a desktop it works and it keeps out of my way. Perfect.
setzer22 9y ago
Unless you are frequently switching monitor setups and would like a panel for each monitor. After coming from i3 I expected that to be a simple feature but I guess Xfce devs don't.
qualitytime 9y ago
Yes, I've used xubuntu for the past years, not just because everything "just works" at the right minimal level for me but also for it's lightness and performance.
wiz21c 9y ago
I use OpenBox on Debian since 5 years. But it's not because Gnome or KDE is broken, it's just because I don't need all of the stuff a regular desktop provides. I think your comment implies regular desktops are broken but I don't think so. They're not perfect but not to the point of being unusable.
- Nursie 9y ago
  I think a lot of the problem with Gnome 3, Unity and Windows 8 was that they decided to revolutionise the way people worked, by pushing them towards different paradigms. These paradigms may or may not have been well thought out and useful, I'm not here to make that judgement, however what they did (particularly with Gnome 3 and windows 8) was push you to use the new way, either with no concessions at all to other ways of working, or vague promises that they would come later. This presents users with a learning curve and that's offputting when really you just want to get stuff done in pretty much the same way you did yesterday. For me the crucial point is that Windows (pre 8 and 10), MacOS and Linux DEs like Xfce, MATE and various others don't try to push you, and do things in a fairly 'standard' way. A menu bar may have moved, some graphics look better than others, there might be a clock in a different place. But they don't force you to full screen, try to hide all the things you've done before, make choices for you on which applications to use for what, etc etc, behaviour is pretty predictable. And if it's not, you can make a few tweaks without much fuss. So they aren't broken, but they do present a barrier to entry, and often a lack of flexibility (I'm specifically not talking about KDE as I haven't used it on over a decade).

jimnotgym 9y ago

I upgraded to 17.10. I use an old small screen Thinkpad and Gnome 3 used the top third of the screen for menus! I tried all of the plugins to no avail. I switched back to Unity because I like to see my screen. I hope to see a gnome 3 extension to mimic the unified top bar thing

josteink 9y ago

I accidentally my whole Fedora-installation yesterday, so I guess this is a good a chance as any to try out how Ubuntu feels on the desktop these days. I guess that's life :)

augustl 9y ago
I switched from Fedora to Ubuntu for this. All I want is a canonical (no pun intended) Linux distro so that app developers doesn't have to target a gazillion variations. So I really want to see Ubuntu succeed. So far, I've had my laptop freeze completely 3-4 times a week, fans spinning, not responding to any input in any way shape or form. This didn't happen in Fedora. Other than that, it's basically Fedora with different colors.
majewsky 9y ago
> I accidentally my whole Fedora-installation yesterday Out of curiosity, what happened? For me, it's been more than 7 years since I last accidentally a Linux installation.

igor_filippov 9y ago

Last time I've used Ubuntu was about 5 years ago. And it seems to look the same now. I wonder if anything meaningful was achieved during that time in terms of UI/UX besides switching desktop environments back and forth.

castle-bravo 9y ago
Out of curiosity, what did you use in the meantime?
- igor_filippov 9y ago
  Well, I'm with Apple now.

reacweb 9y ago

"Ubuntu's developers have put considerable effort into making GNOME cosmetically similar to Unity". I am a "ubuntu gnome" user since the start of unity (I have used it 2 weeks, it was unusable for me). Do you mean that I will have to accept the defects of gnome plus the ugly misbehaving unity dock combined ? Should I leave for fedora ?

chrisper 9y ago
It's more like Gnome + Extensions = Look of Unityish. I used to use Gnome 3 Vanilla + Extensions and didn't like Unity either. Now I am using 17.10 and this new Ubuntu Gnome thingy and I am enjoying it.
bkor 9y ago
By default it's pretty Unity like. Fortunately by adding just one package it gives you an almost pure GNOME experience. Meaning: all the changes made for Unity-like behaviour only happen in the Unity session. They put quite a bit of work into making that happen (various blogposts by a Canonical/Ubuntu employee).

O_H_E 9y ago

I can't get why mate/kde is more usable/user friendly that Gnome. While Gnome have have Redhat & GNU behind them

sverige 9y ago

I have read most of the comments. I find myself chuckling at the memory of people telling me that using cwm with X is too...whatever. I haven't had to change my workflow for something like eight years and it's still being developed with incremental improvements. I don't understand the desire to constantly mess with the dashboard when all I want to do is drive the car.

hollander 9y ago

I've tried Gnome in the past, didn't get it, and moved back to either Mate or Unity. Then I heard that Ubuntu would move to Gnome, and I decided to make an effort. It turned out that the default settings make Gnome into something I really don't like, while it's really customizable into something that resembles Mate close enough. I haven't gone back since. The Gnome project should add two shortcuts on the desktop with scripts to set Gnome to mimick Mate or Unity, so users get their old desktop back with a few clicks.

pkolaczk 9y ago

Anyone tried it recently? How stable is it? Particularly, does it support multiple external displays with different scaling properly on Intel with Wayland? Unfortunately the live USB allows to test only on Xorg, Wayland is not available.

audidude 9y ago
Yes, as long as you use Wayland (the default). If you just want to just test things, pretty sure the Fedora Live image is Wayland by default for intel.
majewsky 9y ago
As a rule of thumb, if your GPU is AMD or Intel, then if OpenGL applications work under X11, then Wayland is going to work, too. If your GPU is Nvidia, tough luck: https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html (this is from the lead developer of Sway, a Wayland-only window manager)

dm319 9y ago

The article says that Ubuntu 17.10 is exciting again. I don't want exciting. Particularly when they drop nice features like the HUD and the integrated global menu and title bar. And that's coming from a MATE user who never got on with Unity. I will hang on to my useful places menu, my functioning file explorer and refined taskbar thank you very much!

neverminder 9y ago
Removing global menu and placing the clock in the middle was a mistake. Now I have 2-3 lines less code in my editor, so why was wasting space considered a good idea?
- listic 9y ago
  I can think of having to ship in time for a "test run" 17.10 release (the one before the 18.04 LTS) as the only justification. I hope it will be worth it and they will be able to prepare 18.04 LTS all the better because of that. You don't have to update the OS every 6 months, anyway.

sambe 9y ago

Can someone explain to me what HUD means in this context? They say HUD is gone, and GNOME developers are strongly against ever having one. The screenshots show something looking like an overlay with global search. To me, that's what a HUD is.

mrkipling 9y ago
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ubuntu+unity+hud https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ubuntu+unity+hud
- sambe 9y ago
  Ahhh they mean the per-application HUD. That is indeed tremendously useful, like the OS X searchable menus and Sublime's command palette. I can't see why anyone would be against that functionality.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    If I had to guess: Because GNOME devs pursue their religious quest for simplicity ^W dumbing things down so far that they cannot acknowledge anymore that an application might have more than 5 menu items.
  - gwenzek 9y ago
    Wow, I wasn't aware that Unity had that! I mostly use Sublime because of this and whish all programs have one. Now I'm sad that it's gone…

mm4 9y ago

Ubuntu won't succeed on the desktop until it starts shipping with cinnamon as a default

majewsky 9y ago
Poe's Law at work.

noxecanexx 9y ago

One I never understood why people complained of Gnome changing their UI until 3.26 where they removed support for tray icons. Apps like deluge and megasync became a mess(megasync refuses to work) because there's no tray icon. Unfortunately I have been unable to find any DE that has the same navigation style

a3n 9y ago

All distros "look" the same to me, because I use a tiling window manager. I don't see a desktop, I just see what I'm working on. The gnome2/gnome3/unity silliness was partly why.

yAnonymous 9y ago

Gnome3 is much worse than Unity ever was. The difference is that Unity was getting better while Gnome is getting worse. The people at Gnome are lacking even the most basic knowledge when it comes to UX. The whole DE is a clusterfuck.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

romanovcode 9y ago

This must be the ugliest OS of the three main user-focused ones. I mean even the colors are ugly, why put dark orange colors, who thought it is a good idea?

mrweasel 9y ago
Look is subjective, but I not going to argue that the default Ubuntu colour scheme isn't absolutely horrible. A new colour scheme could make the default Ubuntu desktop more approachable to new users.

andrewaylett 9y ago

I don't understand why everyone seems to think Gnome 3 is a tablet UI. I had a touchscreen laptop for a couple of years and my experience is that it really isn't. It's actually not bad as a keyboard-driven UI, though: it's a rare event that I'll trigger the overlay with the mouse, or even interact with it at all with the mouse beyond dragging windows into different workspaces or dragging workspaces around (the latter being the one thing I don't think you can do with the keyboard).

leojg 9y ago
Because of the big toolbar? When I first saw it I assumed it would be mobile oriented.

mtzaldo 9y ago

After ubuntu announced the return of gnome as it primary DE I started looking for another distro/ubuntu variant with a good DE. So far ubuntu MATE and ubuntu budgie have been the better ones. So if you are in the market for a new ubuntu flavor you should try both.

listic 9y ago

I hope feature parity with the Unity Ubuntu is a priority. https://youtu.be/gdX606Hjt04?t=5m24s https://youtu.be/gdX606Hjt04?t=5m24s

listic 9y ago

Can we still use 32-bit Ubuntu? Is it just 32-bit iso that has been discontinued? I find it dodgy to discontinue 32-bit Ubuntu, as I remember it has been promised to exist until 18.04.

james43534 9y ago

"sudo apt-get install xfce4" has worked awesomely so far.

Kenji 9y ago

That moment when they take Gnome and make it work like the old Unity crap. I still have to click THREE TIMES to switch between two firefox windows. What the hell?? Wake up, UI designers!