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Completely disagree. I've been using Unity for a while now, it's pretty awesome and much much better than anything (classical) gnome could ever be. This artic

by hasenj 16y ago

Completely disagree. I've been using Unity for a while now, it's pretty awesome and much much better than anything (classical) gnome could ever be. This article sounds like "I've just used OS X for the first time and there's no start menu, instead it has a weird thing that's like a dock or something." So, no more gnome-panel applets. What's the big deal? Most of them were useless and ugly anyway. And yes, there is a weather indicator application that you can install. On the other hand, you have a global menu that becomes also a title bar when the window is maximized. So in Ubuntu 10.10 if you maximize Firefox, you have the following taking up vertical space: - The top gnome panel - The title bar - The menu bar - (by default) a bottom gnome panel. With unity, there's only one thing: - The Unity panel. It's the panel, title bar, and the menu bar combined into one panel. (there's no bottom panel). I would never want to go back to the classical gnome desktop. The Ubuntu button at the top-left is like gnome-do[0] on steroids. There's honestly nothing from classical gnome that I miss. Btw, you can drag and drops applications onto the launcher. At least it works when you drag them from the desktop. He's right though, the lense view[1] doesn't let you drag/drop. You've gotta keep in mind though that's not a finished product yet. Having said that, dealing with application icons in (classical) gnome was never a pleasant experience, so in this sense, Unity doesn't really lose you anything. [0] gnome-do is a quicksilver clone [1] That's the new fancy thing that pops up when you click the Ubuntu button on the top-left

mcantelon 16y ago
>You've gotta keep in mind though that's not a finished product yet. If it's in the beta you'd think it probably should be a finished product. Nonetheless, I think it's good that Ubuntu is pushing this if it'll result in a more competitive desktop offering (and diehards can simply change to GNOME).
dman 16y ago
One thing that threw me off in Unity was the lack of a hierarchical menu for launching applications. Is there someway to create a button that shows the hierarchical menu? btw this isnt a criticism of unity, just me trying to pick the brains of a power unity user.
- bergie 16y ago
  I guess that varies by the user. For me, on Ubuntu there are generally only two applications I end up launching from the panel: terminal and a browser. The other software I use are either communicational tools (IRC and instant messaging), launched from the messaging menu, and document-specific tools (openoffice. GIMP, inkscape, gedit) that I launch either from terminal or the file manager. I don't know how well Unity supports this workflow, as the Maverick version of it was too slow to use. But I appreciate the extra vertical space given by the global menu
- nnutter 16y ago
  I don't think a hierarchical menu is needed. What purpose would that help with? I think instead they should focus on making it easy to search in the launcher. One cool feature they have is that it can listed installed apps as expected but also apps available in Software Center. Hopefully, someone can search for "draw" and get appropriate apps listed. Or for "GIMP" and either launch of install the app.
  - dman 16y ago
    Hierarchical menus help with app discoverability by showing all the apps the system has to offer.
    - nnutter 16y ago
      You can view all the apps installed just fine. Ubuntu, unlike many distros, doesn't install 10 of every kind of app so I don't think its necessary.
    - hasenj 16y ago
      I've always found such menus more confusing than anything. Can you guess under which menu is the termina/command line program is hidden? No, unless you know in advance that it's under "Accessories". I mean, why isn't it under "system" or "programming"? It's too hard to guess what the menu author(s) were thinking so it's always hard to guess where a certain program is.
nnutter 16y ago
At first I thought Unity was a stupid idea. That in Canoncial's quest to compete with OS X's "elegance" they were copying one of its most hated features, The Dock. However, after using Alpha 3 and Beta 1 a bit I feel like it is The Dock done right. It auto-hides but still reveals notifications. It does not abuse precious vertical screen real estate. It does not disconnect the act of finding apps to launch from apps that are running. It is definitely not perfect and as is so common in open source it lacks polish. It abuses glow effects and is a bit non-intuitive in its finer details. However, it solves far more problems than its creating and is definitely a good change. Whether it is a better change than Gnome Shell is another question and as I haven't used Gnome Shell I can only hope that one or both will push desktop usability ahead.
glenjamin 16y ago
How about when I have two 21" monitors, and don't maximise my windows. And if it's anything like OS X the menu bar will be one screen only. There seems to be plenty of good things about it, and i do quite like OS X, but having the menu bar fixed at the top is not some sort of usability godsend.
- natrius 16y ago
  I use Unity with two monitors and unmaximized windows, and it works fine. In the window is on the second screen, the menu bar follows. Try it.
rubergly 16y ago
How is the Unity Launcher like Gnome-Do on steroids? Maybe things have improved, but the Launcher of the Unity that's included in Ubuntu 10.10's repositories is really limited. It doesn't have any keyboard shortcut to load the launcher (at least as far as I can tell; it seems like super is the shortcut in current releases, but that does nothing for me in Unity 2.46), and opening things is _nowhere_ near as snappy as quickly typing "term" and then hitting enter, since it requires waiting a second to populate the list, and then you have to use the mouse to select the item.
- Symmetry 16y ago
  In Natty typing 'term' and hitting enter seems to do exactly what you would want, except you have to wait a fraction of a second after typing to hit enter so that they can populate the list. Not as good as it could be, but tolerable for me.
  - rubergly 16y ago
    interesting; I'll look forward to this when 11.04 leaves beta. though recently I've found that just auto-hiding the two default Gnome panels and calling up gnome-do to open applications works well with my workflow.
- fader 16y ago
  I agree that it's a fraction of a second slower, as the box populates a bit slower than Gnome-Do. (Though I suspect that's just an area for optimization rather than an intent of the design.) However, for frequently-used applications, you can also pin them to the launcher allowing you to launch them with one key combination. Super-1 will launch the first application penned to the launcher, Super-2 will launch the second, etc. In effect this gives you 10 'hotkey' slots for launching applications.
  - rubergly 16y ago
    Good point. My gnome-do workflow is basically just typing in "chrome", "term", or "emacs" and hitting enter, and that could easily translate to hotkey slots. From what I recall of using unity in 10.10, it was difficult to open the same application in multiple workspaces, though; is that still the case?
commandar 16y ago
>if you maximize Firefox This is what has me concerned. I never maximize windows. I've not used Unity yet, but the trend with both it and OS X Lion seems to be moving toward more and more modal interface paradigms in a world where we have the largest, highest resolutions displays that have ever been available to the average person. I'm not happy with the idea, personally.
- hasenj 16y ago
  I think you're reading too much into it. Maximization have existed since the 90s, Unity just makes it more efficient in its use of vertical screen space.
- andybak 16y ago
  I would argue the trend is towards smaller screens if anything (small, light laptops, netbooks, tablets etc.). I always either maximise or snap Windows to some sensible half/third of the screen layout. I don't want to manually juggle Windows as my OCD kicks in and I start fiddling with them to get them exactly lined up. The Mac's 'sort of maximised but with a bit of the desktop showing round the edges' gives me the shakes...

by hasenj 16y ago

mcantelon 16y ago

>You've gotta keep in mind though that's not a finished product yet. If it's in the beta you'd think it probably should be a finished product. Nonetheless, I think it's good that Ubuntu is pushing this if it'll result in a more competitive desktop offering (and diehards can simply change to GNOME).

dman 16y ago

One thing that threw me off in Unity was the lack of a hierarchical menu for launching applications. Is there someway to create a button that shows the hierarchical menu? btw this isnt a criticism of unity, just me trying to pick the brains of a power unity user.

bergie 16y ago
I guess that varies by the user. For me, on Ubuntu there are generally only two applications I end up launching from the panel: terminal and a browser. The other software I use are either communicational tools (IRC and instant messaging), launched from the messaging menu, and document-specific tools (openoffice. GIMP, inkscape, gedit) that I launch either from terminal or the file manager. I don't know how well Unity supports this workflow, as the Maverick version of it was too slow to use. But I appreciate the extra vertical space given by the global menu
nnutter 16y ago
I don't think a hierarchical menu is needed. What purpose would that help with? I think instead they should focus on making it easy to search in the launcher. One cool feature they have is that it can listed installed apps as expected but also apps available in Software Center. Hopefully, someone can search for "draw" and get appropriate apps listed. Or for "GIMP" and either launch of install the app.
- dman 16y ago
  Hierarchical menus help with app discoverability by showing all the apps the system has to offer.
  - nnutter 16y ago
    You can view all the apps installed just fine. Ubuntu, unlike many distros, doesn't install 10 of every kind of app so I don't think its necessary.
  - hasenj 16y ago
    I've always found such menus more confusing than anything. Can you guess under which menu is the termina/command line program is hidden? No, unless you know in advance that it's under "Accessories". I mean, why isn't it under "system" or "programming"? It's too hard to guess what the menu author(s) were thinking so it's always hard to guess where a certain program is.

nnutter 16y ago

At first I thought Unity was a stupid idea. That in Canoncial's quest to compete with OS X's "elegance" they were copying one of its most hated features, The Dock. However, after using Alpha 3 and Beta 1 a bit I feel like it is The Dock done right. It auto-hides but still reveals notifications. It does not abuse precious vertical screen real estate. It does not disconnect the act of finding apps to launch from apps that are running. It is definitely not perfect and as is so common in open source it lacks polish. It abuses glow effects and is a bit non-intuitive in its finer details. However, it solves far more problems than its creating and is definitely a good change. Whether it is a better change than Gnome Shell is another question and as I haven't used Gnome Shell I can only hope that one or both will push desktop usability ahead.

glenjamin 16y ago

How about when I have two 21" monitors, and don't maximise my windows. And if it's anything like OS X the menu bar will be one screen only. There seems to be plenty of good things about it, and i do quite like OS X, but having the menu bar fixed at the top is not some sort of usability godsend.

natrius 16y ago
I use Unity with two monitors and unmaximized windows, and it works fine. In the window is on the second screen, the menu bar follows. Try it.

rubergly 16y ago

How is the Unity Launcher like Gnome-Do on steroids? Maybe things have improved, but the Launcher of the Unity that's included in Ubuntu 10.10's repositories is really limited. It doesn't have any keyboard shortcut to load the launcher (at least as far as I can tell; it seems like super is the shortcut in current releases, but that does nothing for me in Unity 2.46), and opening things is _nowhere_ near as snappy as quickly typing "term" and then hitting enter, since it requires waiting a second to populate the list, and then you have to use the mouse to select the item.

Symmetry 16y ago
In Natty typing 'term' and hitting enter seems to do exactly what you would want, except you have to wait a fraction of a second after typing to hit enter so that they can populate the list. Not as good as it could be, but tolerable for me.
- rubergly 16y ago
  interesting; I'll look forward to this when 11.04 leaves beta. though recently I've found that just auto-hiding the two default Gnome panels and calling up gnome-do to open applications works well with my workflow.
fader 16y ago
I agree that it's a fraction of a second slower, as the box populates a bit slower than Gnome-Do. (Though I suspect that's just an area for optimization rather than an intent of the design.) However, for frequently-used applications, you can also pin them to the launcher allowing you to launch them with one key combination. Super-1 will launch the first application penned to the launcher, Super-2 will launch the second, etc. In effect this gives you 10 'hotkey' slots for launching applications.
- rubergly 16y ago
  Good point. My gnome-do workflow is basically just typing in "chrome", "term", or "emacs" and hitting enter, and that could easily translate to hotkey slots. From what I recall of using unity in 10.10, it was difficult to open the same application in multiple workspaces, though; is that still the case?

commandar 16y ago

>if you maximize Firefox This is what has me concerned. I never maximize windows. I've not used Unity yet, but the trend with both it and OS X Lion seems to be moving toward more and more modal interface paradigms in a world where we have the largest, highest resolutions displays that have ever been available to the average person. I'm not happy with the idea, personally.

hasenj 16y ago
I think you're reading too much into it. Maximization have existed since the 90s, Unity just makes it more efficient in its use of vertical screen space.
andybak 16y ago
I would argue the trend is towards smaller screens if anything (small, light laptops, netbooks, tablets etc.). I always either maximise or snap Windows to some sensible half/third of the screen layout. I don't want to manually juggle Windows as my OCD kicks in and I start fiddling with them to get them exactly lined up. The Mac's 'sort of maximised but with a bit of the desktop showing round the edges' gives me the shakes...