7 ms·

Does anyone still use good old Unity? :)

someguy101010 7y ago
I liked it a lot, really didn't understand the community hate for it. At first it was not nice but it was pretty nice before it was deprecated.
- siriniok 7y ago
  Agree. The last versions were pretty and (still) very stable.
- crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  Was because of the slow screen refresh, and the shitty metro look that announces "im like windows, but poorer".
- Liquix 7y ago
  Never had any qualms with the design, it was just too heavy for most machines I run ubuntu on. Felt like a laggy remote desktop connection.
- threatofrain 7y ago
  I think it was too simple and non-customizable for Linux user's taste, but it was that same simplicity that made it a perfect OS for a public computer or for parents who only use simple apps.
- zanny 7y ago
  When it came out it was a substantial UX regression from Gnome 2 and it took a few releases to even reach feature parity. The same thing has been seen with KDE 4 and 5, Gnome 3, and how long LXQT has taken. Users hate experience regressions passionately, and will actively hate projects that depreciate or replace their workflows, sometimes for years, and sometimes forever.
- gameswithgo 7y ago
  I can't understand any of it. Its looked the same to me for years and years. Other distros look a little different but nothing substantive is actually different that I ever notice.
- avhon1 7y ago
  When Unity first became the default DE on Ubuntu, it was unusably slow and buggy on my computer. (This was actually an improvement -- in the previous release, Unity would immediately crash, so I had only seen it in pictures and videos.) Gnome 3 Classic was still available as a fallback, but it still wasn't the same (to many changes, to much CPU), so I switched distros. (I didn't know enough at the time to install a DE myself.) At the time, I was quite unhappy at Canonical for making their OS so difficult for me to use. I felt that I was being totally left behind, with a machine that was just old enough that it wasn't worth it to them to support it. 1 or 2 years later, I tried a newer release of Ubuntu on that machine. Unity was definitely more stable than before, but it was still frustratingly slow, and had sprouted the weird, unwanted amazon search feature. I continued to be disappointed that the default install of Ubuntu had become so needlessly graphics-intensive, and haven't played with it since. --- One other gripe with Unity -- I really didn't like how it thought that applications were more important than windows. It was difficult to switch between 2 or more windows of the same applications on the same desktop. The icon on the taskbar just showed a tiny arrow for each window. You had to hover over it before it would show buttons (icons? previews?) of each window that you could select. Alt+Tab was the same. You could only rotate between applications, but if you held it down for a moment, it would show the windows of that applications, and there was some way to pick between those on the keyboard. I really didn't like that. I would often have 2 or more terminals open, or text editors, or file browsers, and I would want to switch to the one that I had least-recently used, and I would have to do this whole dance of pulling up the application, waiting to see the individual windows, and finally picking the one I wanted. The 2-3 seconds that took were very frustrating, since I knew that I had used to be able to hit Alt+Tab a couple of times to go directly to the window I wanted. I have the same frustration every time I have to use an apple computer. It bugged me enough that I read through the keyboard shortcuts settings and learned about Cmd+Tilde, which helps, but is still very frustrating. I want a window! Why does it take two different kinds of keyboard shortcuts to get to the window I want! --- Between those two troubles, I am happy to have avoided using Unity.
Mikeb85 7y ago
Old Unity? No. New Unity (Gnome Shell), yes.
rafaelfers 7y ago
Yes, I still use it on ubuntu 16.04. I Will stay with this version until the eol
- siriniok 7y ago
  I'm using it on 18.04, works perfectly.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    IIRC 18.04 is supposed to be an extra extra extended release, so it's a good one to get comfortable with.
- dgivney 7y ago
  Me too, I spent 3 days with 18.04 and promptly downgraded again.
p_man 7y ago
Of course. Fractional scaling.
- opencl 7y ago
  GNOME 3.32/Ubuntu 19.04 allegedly adds fractional scaling for Wayland sessions but it doesn't work for me (doesn't show up in settings).
dopeboy 7y ago
After discovering Cinnamon, I haven't been able to go back.
- freedomben 7y ago
  Cinnamon is a truly underrated DE. I don't use it anymore (now that I have most of the Gnome 3 shortcuts memorized, I love it) but Cinnamon took the gorgeousness of Gnome 3 and mashed it up with the classic functionality of Gnome 2. Why the community rallied around MATE and not Cinnamon I will never understand.
- dguaraglia 7y ago
  Question: do you ever feel like Cinnamon isn't as responsive as it could be? I was using Cinnamon (first on Linux Mint and then on Manjaro) for a few months before the release of Gnome 3.32. I've switched to Gnome 3.32 and it feels much more responsive than Cinnamon. In particular cycling windows and doing anything while a notification is being displayed. I really wish Cinnamon didn't stutter as much. It's the right amount of "desktop" I need.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    IIRC Cinnamon still does compositing, so maybe you've gotten stuck on the software only path? This can happen when drivers get blacklisted for example. I use it on one of my laptops and it's been pretty smooth for me.
  - dopeboy 7y ago
    I sense it too - it's just sluggish enough for me to notice.
benttoothpaste 7y ago
Unity is still available but needs to be installed explicitly (apt install ubuntu-unity-desktop).
- finchisko 7y ago
  which version is available? unity8?
sandov 7y ago
I do. I haven't upgraded from 16.04 because I like Unity.
chrismonsanto 7y ago
I do and have no plans to switch from it. The constant UI flux is the worst part about using Linux.
- Rooster61 7y ago
  This is why I personally like MATE. I remember when they switched from Gnome 2 to Unity, and I just stopped using Ubuntu until I discovered Mint, which I installed with MATE and the rest was history. I've moved on from Mint, but the fact that the MATE dev community took the tried and true paradigms learned from Gnome 2 and made kept them alive in spirit won me over. I installed Ubuntu MATE to a box just the other day.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    I remember the switch. That's when I switched from Ubuntu to Xubuntu, where I still am.
  - freedomben 7y ago
    Ubuntu MATE is a phenomenal distro. For VMs and lower resource machines it is always my go to. Not to imply that it isn't valuable on high end machines (it is), but I personally really like Gnome 3 these days once I got used to it's way of doing things.
- jjrh 7y ago
  Never got this complaint. Just because something different is installed by default doesn't mean you can't install something else (or use one of the many _buntu's to make life a little easier) A constant window manager is actually one of the strong points of linux. Lot of people still use twm.
  - mort96 7y ago
    When someone complains that they enjoyed using DE X, and the distro switches to DE Y, they get told that they can just install and keep using DE X. When they later come asking about issues they're having related to DE X, they get told that it's not officially supported and that they should probably switch to DE Y. Both responses on their own are perfectly reasonable, but it's understandable if users get a bit frustrated.
eitland 7y ago
Weird to see anyone talk about "good old" Unity. I'm getting old enough to belive you. For me however while I can believe it I really really cannot understand it: it broke my workflow in a number of ways by default and unlike Gnome 3, Unity was next to impossible to reconfigure to something I could use productively. It is actually somewhat of a learning experience for me to see something I almost despised be missed by a number of people. I think two easy conclusions should be "different strokes for different folks" and "make your software configurable".
reddotX 7y ago
yep on 19.04 works fine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRmJPjfenEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRmJPjfenEo sudo apt install ubuntu-unity-desktop
levesque 7y ago
Even though the switch happened a long time ago, I still have a strong dislike for Gnome Shell. It might be irrational at that point since I've had plenty of time to get used it and I can't pinpoint an exact reason why I dislike it so, but it just irks me. I think the default theme deserves part of the blame. How can it still be so ugly? Unity was beautiful and behaved more naturally IMO.
Kipters 7y ago
I do and I have no plans to switch away from it. If/when it won't work on Ubuntu anymore I'll probably switch to Plasma, but for sure I'm not going to switch to Gnome. I have a desktop i7-7700 with 32 GB of ram and an RTX 2060 and Gnome still feels sluggish
- freedomben 7y ago
  Interesting, I have almost the same system (slightly different Nvidia card) and Gnome feels very quick and responsive to me. Maybe I need to try out unity again
artworx 7y ago
Its still the smoothest DE on my old Acer laptop from 2012. It never misses a frame and gets out of the way maximizing the space for the applications. Out of the box its not very configurable, but install compiz settings manager and its very good.

I liked it a lot, really didn't understand the community hate for it. At first it was not nice but it was pretty nice before it was deprecated.

siriniok 7y ago
Agree. The last versions were pretty and (still) very stable.
crankylinuxuser 7y ago
Was because of the slow screen refresh, and the shitty metro look that announces "im like windows, but poorer".
Liquix 7y ago
Never had any qualms with the design, it was just too heavy for most machines I run ubuntu on. Felt like a laggy remote desktop connection.
threatofrain 7y ago
I think it was too simple and non-customizable for Linux user's taste, but it was that same simplicity that made it a perfect OS for a public computer or for parents who only use simple apps.
zanny 7y ago
When it came out it was a substantial UX regression from Gnome 2 and it took a few releases to even reach feature parity. The same thing has been seen with KDE 4 and 5, Gnome 3, and how long LXQT has taken. Users hate experience regressions passionately, and will actively hate projects that depreciate or replace their workflows, sometimes for years, and sometimes forever.
gameswithgo 7y ago
I can't understand any of it. Its looked the same to me for years and years. Other distros look a little different but nothing substantive is actually different that I ever notice.
avhon1 7y ago
When Unity first became the default DE on Ubuntu, it was unusably slow and buggy on my computer. (This was actually an improvement -- in the previous release, Unity would immediately crash, so I had only seen it in pictures and videos.) Gnome 3 Classic was still available as a fallback, but it still wasn't the same (to many changes, to much CPU), so I switched distros. (I didn't know enough at the time to install a DE myself.) At the time, I was quite unhappy at Canonical for making their OS so difficult for me to use. I felt that I was being totally left behind, with a machine that was just old enough that it wasn't worth it to them to support it. 1 or 2 years later, I tried a newer release of Ubuntu on that machine. Unity was definitely more stable than before, but it was still frustratingly slow, and had sprouted the weird, unwanted amazon search feature. I continued to be disappointed that the default install of Ubuntu had become so needlessly graphics-intensive, and haven't played with it since. --- One other gripe with Unity -- I really didn't like how it thought that applications were more important than windows. It was difficult to switch between 2 or more windows of the same applications on the same desktop. The icon on the taskbar just showed a tiny arrow for each window. You had to hover over it before it would show buttons (icons? previews?) of each window that you could select. Alt+Tab was the same. You could only rotate between applications, but if you held it down for a moment, it would show the windows of that applications, and there was some way to pick between those on the keyboard. I really didn't like that. I would often have 2 or more terminals open, or text editors, or file browsers, and I would want to switch to the one that I had least-recently used, and I would have to do this whole dance of pulling up the application, waiting to see the individual windows, and finally picking the one I wanted. The 2-3 seconds that took were very frustrating, since I knew that I had used to be able to hit Alt+Tab a couple of times to go directly to the window I wanted. I have the same frustration every time I have to use an apple computer. It bugged me enough that I read through the keyboard shortcuts settings and learned about Cmd+Tilde, which helps, but is still very frustrating. I want a window! Why does it take two different kinds of keyboard shortcuts to get to the window I want! --- Between those two troubles, I am happy to have avoided using Unity.

Mikeb85 7y ago

Old Unity? No. New Unity (Gnome Shell), yes.

rafaelfers 7y ago

Yes, I still use it on ubuntu 16.04. I Will stay with this version until the eol

siriniok 7y ago
I'm using it on 18.04, works perfectly.
- jandrese 7y ago
  IIRC 18.04 is supposed to be an extra extra extended release, so it's a good one to get comfortable with.
dgivney 7y ago
Me too, I spent 3 days with 18.04 and promptly downgraded again.

p_man 7y ago

Of course. Fractional scaling.

opencl 7y ago
GNOME 3.32/Ubuntu 19.04 allegedly adds fractional scaling for Wayland sessions but it doesn't work for me (doesn't show up in settings).

dopeboy 7y ago

After discovering Cinnamon, I haven't been able to go back.

freedomben 7y ago
Cinnamon is a truly underrated DE. I don't use it anymore (now that I have most of the Gnome 3 shortcuts memorized, I love it) but Cinnamon took the gorgeousness of Gnome 3 and mashed it up with the classic functionality of Gnome 2. Why the community rallied around MATE and not Cinnamon I will never understand.
dguaraglia 7y ago
Question: do you ever feel like Cinnamon isn't as responsive as it could be? I was using Cinnamon (first on Linux Mint and then on Manjaro) for a few months before the release of Gnome 3.32. I've switched to Gnome 3.32 and it feels much more responsive than Cinnamon. In particular cycling windows and doing anything while a notification is being displayed. I really wish Cinnamon didn't stutter as much. It's the right amount of "desktop" I need.
- jandrese 7y ago
  IIRC Cinnamon still does compositing, so maybe you've gotten stuck on the software only path? This can happen when drivers get blacklisted for example. I use it on one of my laptops and it's been pretty smooth for me.
- dopeboy 7y ago
  I sense it too - it's just sluggish enough for me to notice.

benttoothpaste 7y ago

Unity is still available but needs to be installed explicitly (apt install ubuntu-unity-desktop).

finchisko 7y ago
which version is available? unity8?

sandov 7y ago

I do. I haven't upgraded from 16.04 because I like Unity.

chrismonsanto 7y ago

I do and have no plans to switch from it. The constant UI flux is the worst part about using Linux.

Rooster61 7y ago
This is why I personally like MATE. I remember when they switched from Gnome 2 to Unity, and I just stopped using Ubuntu until I discovered Mint, which I installed with MATE and the rest was history. I've moved on from Mint, but the fact that the MATE dev community took the tried and true paradigms learned from Gnome 2 and made kept them alive in spirit won me over. I installed Ubuntu MATE to a box just the other day.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  I remember the switch. That's when I switched from Ubuntu to Xubuntu, where I still am.
- freedomben 7y ago
  Ubuntu MATE is a phenomenal distro. For VMs and lower resource machines it is always my go to. Not to imply that it isn't valuable on high end machines (it is), but I personally really like Gnome 3 these days once I got used to it's way of doing things.
jjrh 7y ago
Never got this complaint. Just because something different is installed by default doesn't mean you can't install something else (or use one of the many _buntu's to make life a little easier) A constant window manager is actually one of the strong points of linux. Lot of people still use twm.
- mort96 7y ago
  When someone complains that they enjoyed using DE X, and the distro switches to DE Y, they get told that they can just install and keep using DE X. When they later come asking about issues they're having related to DE X, they get told that it's not officially supported and that they should probably switch to DE Y. Both responses on their own are perfectly reasonable, but it's understandable if users get a bit frustrated.

eitland 7y ago

Weird to see anyone talk about "good old" Unity. I'm getting old enough to belive you. For me however while I can believe it I really really cannot understand it: it broke my workflow in a number of ways by default and unlike Gnome 3, Unity was next to impossible to reconfigure to something I could use productively. It is actually somewhat of a learning experience for me to see something I almost despised be missed by a number of people. I think two easy conclusions should be "different strokes for different folks" and "make your software configurable".

reddotX 7y ago

yep on 19.04 works fine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRmJPjfenEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRmJPjfenEo sudo apt install ubuntu-unity-desktop

levesque 7y ago

Even though the switch happened a long time ago, I still have a strong dislike for Gnome Shell. It might be irrational at that point since I've had plenty of time to get used it and I can't pinpoint an exact reason why I dislike it so, but it just irks me. I think the default theme deserves part of the blame. How can it still be so ugly? Unity was beautiful and behaved more naturally IMO.

Kipters 7y ago

I do and I have no plans to switch away from it. If/when it won't work on Ubuntu anymore I'll probably switch to Plasma, but for sure I'm not going to switch to Gnome. I have a desktop i7-7700 with 32 GB of ram and an RTX 2060 and Gnome still feels sluggish

freedomben 7y ago
Interesting, I have almost the same system (slightly different Nvidia card) and Gnome feels very quick and responsive to me. Maybe I need to try out unity again

artworx 7y ago

Its still the smoothest DE on my old Acer laptop from 2012. It never misses a frame and gets out of the way maximizing the space for the applications. Out of the box its not very configurable, but install compiz settings manager and its very good.