16 ms·

I take it back. Unity is cool.

181 points by swah 15y ago

mynameishere 15y ago
I used this for 5 minutes a while ago, realized you couldn't get rid of that odious sidebar and wrote it off permanently. Why on earth designers would prevent users from reconfiguring their screen is beyond me. Even if they fixed it, you still have to wonder about their overall judgement.
- fingerprinter 15y ago
  install CCSM : sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager Open and search for Unity. Find options to mess with.
- muuh-gnu 15y ago
  Shuttleworth once stated that they are removing configuration options on purpose in order to decrease the total number of exsiting different configurations, to build a configuration brand. The logic is that every time 2 users make 2 different settings, it is harder for them to talk and to learn from each other, so removing options artificially levels the field and eases information exchange.
- SkyMarshal 15y ago
  Yes, even more annoying is that the sidebar can autohide, like when you open a full-screen window. They just disable that ability otherwise and provide no way to enable it. I'm not a Mac user, but I was under the impression you could even hide the dock in OS X?
  - wiredfool 15y ago
    It's autohiding for me, and I don't think I did anything to it. Though, it might just be a bug, I've run into a handful of near showstoppers in the last few days. edit: Though, now that I think about it, when I first installed, I got the sidebar not autohiding with fullscreen apps, so that it blocked the left inch of whatever was up. Annoying as hell.
- sutro 15y ago
  Totally agree. I switched to Linux Mint after that last release and have no interest in ever going back, even if they fix all of the many issues with Unity. I lost so much time on that last "upgrade" that I will never trust Canonical's judgment again.
rufugee 15y ago
I can't go back to Unity until it supports three monitors (with Xinerama). I know compiz won't support this, but even Unity2d doesn't work well at the moment, and 11.10 broke basic functionality in Gnome Classic. I switched to KDE a few weeks ago and it worked across the three monitors with zero extra configuration. I've also been very impressed with the polish the environment seems to have gotten since I first tried 4 years ago. What was once riddled with bugs is now slick and very pragmatic. When three monitor support comes along, I'll give Unity another shot, but for now, I'm on KDE.
- rocha 15y ago
  Do you know if it works with two monitors? That is my standard setup, and haven't tried unity because so far it seems to only support one.
  - rufugee 15y ago
    Yes, it works fine with two (I use Nvidia's twinview for that). It's when you hit three that there's a problem.
    - rocha 15y ago
      Good to know, thanks!
alperakgun 15y ago
I find it the right thing that canonical focus on the user interface, so unity is a good idea for them to focus on what matters the most, the end users. as a developer I don't care much about desktops, I find them all interesting.
- Rusky 15y ago
  That's an interesting point of view- in the past, I have been annoyed with what I saw as Canonical's over-modification of everything. However, seeing a nice desktop ui as their main product (as opposed to just another repackaging of Debian) makes that all make much more sense- you want to build your main product yourself.
fossuser 15y ago
Looks like it'll be interesting to play with in this version. I also thought unity in 11.04 was far too buggy to be usable as a daily environment. I guess it's time to check out this new release.
gldalmaso 15y ago
Unity is going to be Ubuntu's killer app that will have people leaving Windows and Mac behind for a different desktop experience that can better blend itself with different modern devices. Soon enough Ubuntu will be pluggable to our tablets and smarts or whatever hybrids will come forth in the next years.
- alperakgun 15y ago
  Totally agree, i hope unity will shine, my adding more and more goodies. On my tablet i would really want to have a full linux, if that is at all possible.
  - SimHacker 15y ago
    You DO NOT want to run a desktop user interface on a tablet. Was Unity specifically designed for a tablet? Does the window system have multitouch support? Accelerometer support? Do any of the applications themselves support multitouch and accelerometers?
    - gldalmaso 15y ago
      I'm not saying that the same desktop OS will run on both devices, but rather that the overall UI and functionality can be shared. Though, in a couple of years, who's to say that Ubuntu won't be able to run on most devices? Maybe there are challanges, but I doubt that it would be impossible. It's just a matter of time and maturity. I think people are already asking for one user environment across devices, so I bet it's something they might have in mind.
- nirvana 15y ago
  Unity is a nice ripoff of the Mac UI circa 2003 or so. That puts it way ahead of Windows which was a poor copy in 1990 and has been going the wrong way since. But I see no reason a Mac user would find Unity more attractive than the Mac UI. If they'd copied the Mac UI exactly then they'd have achieved parity. If they'd done their own UI research and come up with something new, they might have been able to come up with something better than the Mac UI. Certainly there is some room for this, given Apple's need to support old paradigms. But if you've noticed, Apple isn't exactly nostalgic. But by copying the obvious ideas, but not thinking thru why Apple made the choices they did, they miss the mark... which seems to happen with everybody who tries to copy Apple's innovations. They end up with something that on the surface looks the same, but doesn't actually work the same. I think this is because its too easy to "improve" what Apple did based on their preferences, without understanding why what Apple did the first time was the right way. Given that linux has a much higher cost[1] than OS X, to gain a lot of market share, it will need a much better UI. We saw how things went for Apple for many years, despite having a much better UI (and cheaper machines, actually) than Windows...it wasn't until the iPod lowered the awareness cost that people started switching to Macs in droves. [1] Not all economic costs are measured in dollars. Lack of awareness of a product creates a barrier of entry, and while many people have heard of Linux, few are aware of it as a Desktop operating system. This lack of awareness is a cost that needs to be overcome, or reduced, to get a lot of switchers.
mukyu 15y ago
It annoys me that I cannot make the top panel (I have no idea what to call it) either go away or have windows be drawn over it. The only way to get rid of it is when an application has an actual full-screen mode, but then half of the time it reverts back if I move the mouse to a different screen with synergy. It does not make sense to make hard and fast UI decisions based upon some idealistic vision of how people will use things (such as not being able to move the top bar or whatever) that get in the way of how people actually want to do things.
nextparadigms 15y ago
I hope Unity will attract that kind of app designers to Linux, like the ones that use Macs. I've tried using Linux several times in the past, and one of the reasons I didn't like using it, is that the apps (programs) looked so ugly and rough compared even with the ones on XP. For me, at least, that's kind of a deal breaker.
- SimHacker 15y ago
  Most user interface designers and programmers gave up on the Linux desktop and moved over to Macs years ago. The Linux desktop is like Perl 6. Don't hold your breath. And if it finally arrives, hold your breath and don't breath in, because it stinks. Even if good user interface designers attempted to contribute to projects like Gimp, they would quickly be driven away because of politics and NIH.
  - darreld 15y ago
    True and I have no idea why you were downvoted.
jlyke 15y ago
1) Open Firefox, browse to http://www.ubuntu.com/tour/ http://www.ubuntu.com/tour/ 2) Open another Firefox. Isn't happy about browsing to http://www.ubuntu.com/tour/ http://www.ubuntu.com/tour/ :( Looking forward to installing and checking out the improvements!
- otaku888 15y ago
  If you google "ubuntu tour" with the fake firefox, you can get there, and then go deeper and deeper within each instance. Well I thought it was fun anyway.
taken11 15y ago
Sadly, it still does not work with 2 monitors. i.e. attaching a projector for a presentation, all your windows get moved to the projector. can be quite a problem if you are in a meeting. in addition external monitor can only be to the right, since the dash is fixed on the left. If you want to drag something inside an application to the left side, the dash shows up and blocks the left side of the application. no way to move the dash. Just two major bugs in terms of usability. ignored for a long time.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- nevinera 15y ago
  >Sadly, it still does not work with 2 monitors. I've been using it with two monitors both at home and at work since launch, with zero configuration. The second issue is certainly annoying, but 'it does not work with two monitors' is a pretty strong claim.
  - va_coder 15y ago
    What kind of graphics card do you have?
    - asianexpress 15y ago
      Yeah, I think this is highly dependent upon the graphics card and the available drivers -- always run into driver hell with Linux
    - nevinera 15y ago
      One nVidia and one intel, not that it matters. I'm arguing with his blanket claim that 'it still does not work with 2 monitors', not that there are no driver issues on ubuntu.
  - mrinterweb 15y ago
    I also have been using two monitors since 11.04 came out. It works great.
bluedanieru 15y ago
To rehash a tired argument: Removing the menu from the window to a common location is still a big usability fail. Not because it's worse than having the functionality bound to the window itself (personally I believe it is, but I could get used to it) but because it's the only major Linux desktop that does this, and as such most of the apps anyone is going to run, are going to be built with that in mind. It's usually not such a big deal to overload the menus with Gnome and KDE, but with Unity it is. And having it double as a title bar is just stupid. Screen real estate isn't at the premium they think it is. I tried Unity with 11.04 and hated it. The bugs didn't bother me but the design did. I'll be sticking with KDE.
- barrkel 15y ago
  I disagree; on most Linux UIs I've seen, screen real estate is at a premium because of over-generous borders, oversized icons, oversized buttons, oversized listbox item sizes, all generally looking like a 96dpi UI rendered on a 75dpi device (I've often wondered if X Window historical baggage and ancient bitmap font sizes had something to do with it). Everything is about 33% oversized. (I'm a fan of the relative information density on Windows. It's really noticeable in file explorer views in details mode; Windows Explorer packs in a lot of information with very thin borders so the text on each line stays large (though the icon for the file is only 16x16), while the nearest equivalent on pretty much any Linux shell file explorer I've used has large inter-item borders that force the detail text to be tiny; and it still doesn't get in as many items as Windows.)
  - jeltz 15y ago
    At least in GNOME and XFCE you can decrease the default font size, which is what I did right after installing Debian with XFCE. XFCE also has really slim buttons and borders. Sadly the file manager, Thunar, is not slim at all. So if you have not already given XFCE a try I recommend you do. Personally I wont use Unity until the skin i as slim as XFCE.
- rdtsc 15y ago
  > Screen real estate isn't at the premium they think it is. It is on netbooks and tablets perhaps... My beef with it currently is that it doesn't work well with focus-follows-mouse. If menu is on the top, and you want to access it, you mouse will eventually bring other apps to the forefront before it reaches the top, so you end up with a menu of a different application than what you intended. But, that is just me with my hand-hacked preferences that have lingered around since 4 or 5 version ago. I bet new users don't have a way to enable focus-follows-mouse...
wiredfool 15y ago
After working with unity in beta2 over the last week, I'm not a fan. (And I realize this is beta, and things may have changed. But... We'll see tonight when I get a chance to muck with it) My current project is to put together a little machine for the kids (2,4,7). So, I need to limit options, and generally not put in anything that's going to confuse them. For reference, I've got a 10.04 desktop and 10.04 Netbook remix, as well as various OSX and IOS devices around. Ideally, I'd like something like 10.04 NBR, but with current flash/web stuff, and works with the wifi dongle I have. (This is replacing a 1st gen ppc mini that's got hardware issues. Yay for kids flash games turning off the machine) For a machine that's got constrained purposes, for lack of a better word, I find the netbook launcher interface is really good. There are a bunch of categories on the side, there are a handful of apps for each category, and everything launches full screen. I can cut back on most of the clutter, so that they don't accidentally click on something that's going to lead them astray. Unfortunately, the netbook launcher is end of lifed at 10.04 with gnome 2, and unity is the way forward. In my brief time with unity I've: * had the dock not autohide, and had firefox launch fullscreen, with the left half inch under the dock. * gotten all the windows to launch behind dash. Only visible blurred. Had to ssh in and restart. * completely killed the unity system, no sidebar, no top bar, only nautilus running. This persists through logout/login. Or rather, restart, since I can't figure out how to logout without finding terminal in the filesystem and rebooting. There are also some design head scratchers: * There are categories of apps when you look at internet apps in dashboard, but not when you look for more apps. * How do I change the big three apps on the dash screen? * unity keeps offering to install apps. I don't want that. Maybe it's cause I'm a sudoer, but I don't really want this for the other users. And it's really confusing to be looking for something to change a setting, but having the wrong name for which there are no hits, and have the top line be things to install, and not things that are on the drive already. * why does the menu bar sometimes appear, and sometimes it's the name of the app? And then, there's probably a hardware issue: for some reason, my desktop thinks that it has a laptop panel mirroring at 1024x768, so the 20" lcd starts up at that resolution. I know about xrandr, It can't do anything about the phantom panel. Some of this can be traced to "It's not the netbook launcher", some to "It's not even as well thought out as the nbl", and some to "It looks like you have grand designs on my desktop, and you're not telling me what they are, so the decisions look really strange right about now". Sometimes, I think I should have just spent the extra $500 for a mini. It would have been smaller, quieter, lower power, and it would have worked out of the box.
kleim 15y ago
"In fact every piece of hardware on this rig worked perfect without no fiddling around." Holy crap! Where is the fun now?
username_ 15y ago
"Let’s face it, most applications don’t need to be 64bit. How much ram does a calculator really need?" This passage shocked me. This guy seems to think that 64bits is only useful for using more ram. Who is using 4G of RAM on Linux, seriously?

181 points by swah 15y ago

I used this for 5 minutes a while ago, realized you couldn't get rid of that odious sidebar and wrote it off permanently. Why on earth designers would prevent users from reconfiguring their screen is beyond me. Even if they fixed it, you still have to wonder about their overall judgement.

fingerprinter 15y ago
install CCSM : sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager Open and search for Unity. Find options to mess with.
muuh-gnu 15y ago
Shuttleworth once stated that they are removing configuration options on purpose in order to decrease the total number of exsiting different configurations, to build a configuration brand. The logic is that every time 2 users make 2 different settings, it is harder for them to talk and to learn from each other, so removing options artificially levels the field and eases information exchange.
SkyMarshal 15y ago
Yes, even more annoying is that the sidebar can autohide, like when you open a full-screen window. They just disable that ability otherwise and provide no way to enable it. I'm not a Mac user, but I was under the impression you could even hide the dock in OS X?
- wiredfool 15y ago
  It's autohiding for me, and I don't think I did anything to it. Though, it might just be a bug, I've run into a handful of near showstoppers in the last few days. edit: Though, now that I think about it, when I first installed, I got the sidebar not autohiding with fullscreen apps, so that it blocked the left inch of whatever was up. Annoying as hell.
sutro 15y ago
Totally agree. I switched to Linux Mint after that last release and have no interest in ever going back, even if they fix all of the many issues with Unity. I lost so much time on that last "upgrade" that I will never trust Canonical's judgment again.

rufugee 15y ago

I can't go back to Unity until it supports three monitors (with Xinerama). I know compiz won't support this, but even Unity2d doesn't work well at the moment, and 11.10 broke basic functionality in Gnome Classic. I switched to KDE a few weeks ago and it worked across the three monitors with zero extra configuration. I've also been very impressed with the polish the environment seems to have gotten since I first tried 4 years ago. What was once riddled with bugs is now slick and very pragmatic. When three monitor support comes along, I'll give Unity another shot, but for now, I'm on KDE.

rocha 15y ago
Do you know if it works with two monitors? That is my standard setup, and haven't tried unity because so far it seems to only support one.
- rufugee 15y ago
  Yes, it works fine with two (I use Nvidia's twinview for that). It's when you hit three that there's a problem.
  - rocha 15y ago
    Good to know, thanks!

alperakgun 15y ago

I find it the right thing that canonical focus on the user interface, so unity is a good idea for them to focus on what matters the most, the end users. as a developer I don't care much about desktops, I find them all interesting.

Rusky 15y ago
That's an interesting point of view- in the past, I have been annoyed with what I saw as Canonical's over-modification of everything. However, seeing a nice desktop ui as their main product (as opposed to just another repackaging of Debian) makes that all make much more sense- you want to build your main product yourself.

fossuser 15y ago

Looks like it'll be interesting to play with in this version. I also thought unity in 11.04 was far too buggy to be usable as a daily environment. I guess it's time to check out this new release.

gldalmaso 15y ago

Unity is going to be Ubuntu's killer app that will have people leaving Windows and Mac behind for a different desktop experience that can better blend itself with different modern devices. Soon enough Ubuntu will be pluggable to our tablets and smarts or whatever hybrids will come forth in the next years.

alperakgun 15y ago
Totally agree, i hope unity will shine, my adding more and more goodies. On my tablet i would really want to have a full linux, if that is at all possible.
- SimHacker 15y ago
  You DO NOT want to run a desktop user interface on a tablet. Was Unity specifically designed for a tablet? Does the window system have multitouch support? Accelerometer support? Do any of the applications themselves support multitouch and accelerometers?
  - gldalmaso 15y ago
    I'm not saying that the same desktop OS will run on both devices, but rather that the overall UI and functionality can be shared. Though, in a couple of years, who's to say that Ubuntu won't be able to run on most devices? Maybe there are challanges, but I doubt that it would be impossible. It's just a matter of time and maturity. I think people are already asking for one user environment across devices, so I bet it's something they might have in mind.
nirvana 15y ago
Unity is a nice ripoff of the Mac UI circa 2003 or so. That puts it way ahead of Windows which was a poor copy in 1990 and has been going the wrong way since. But I see no reason a Mac user would find Unity more attractive than the Mac UI. If they'd copied the Mac UI exactly then they'd have achieved parity. If they'd done their own UI research and come up with something new, they might have been able to come up with something better than the Mac UI. Certainly there is some room for this, given Apple's need to support old paradigms. But if you've noticed, Apple isn't exactly nostalgic. But by copying the obvious ideas, but not thinking thru why Apple made the choices they did, they miss the mark... which seems to happen with everybody who tries to copy Apple's innovations. They end up with something that on the surface looks the same, but doesn't actually work the same. I think this is because its too easy to "improve" what Apple did based on their preferences, without understanding why what Apple did the first time was the right way. Given that linux has a much higher cost[1] than OS X, to gain a lot of market share, it will need a much better UI. We saw how things went for Apple for many years, despite having a much better UI (and cheaper machines, actually) than Windows...it wasn't until the iPod lowered the awareness cost that people started switching to Macs in droves. [1] Not all economic costs are measured in dollars. Lack of awareness of a product creates a barrier of entry, and while many people have heard of Linux, few are aware of it as a Desktop operating system. This lack of awareness is a cost that needs to be overcome, or reduced, to get a lot of switchers.

mukyu 15y ago

It annoys me that I cannot make the top panel (I have no idea what to call it) either go away or have windows be drawn over it. The only way to get rid of it is when an application has an actual full-screen mode, but then half of the time it reverts back if I move the mouse to a different screen with synergy. It does not make sense to make hard and fast UI decisions based upon some idealistic vision of how people will use things (such as not being able to move the top bar or whatever) that get in the way of how people actually want to do things.

nextparadigms 15y ago

I hope Unity will attract that kind of app designers to Linux, like the ones that use Macs. I've tried using Linux several times in the past, and one of the reasons I didn't like using it, is that the apps (programs) looked so ugly and rough compared even with the ones on XP. For me, at least, that's kind of a deal breaker.

SimHacker 15y ago
Most user interface designers and programmers gave up on the Linux desktop and moved over to Macs years ago. The Linux desktop is like Perl 6. Don't hold your breath. And if it finally arrives, hold your breath and don't breath in, because it stinks. Even if good user interface designers attempted to contribute to projects like Gimp, they would quickly be driven away because of politics and NIH.
- darreld 15y ago
  True and I have no idea why you were downvoted.

jlyke 15y ago

1) Open Firefox, browse to http://www.ubuntu.com/tour/ http://www.ubuntu.com/tour/ 2) Open another Firefox. Isn't happy about browsing to http://www.ubuntu.com/tour/ http://www.ubuntu.com/tour/ :( Looking forward to installing and checking out the improvements!

otaku888 15y ago
If you google "ubuntu tour" with the fake firefox, you can get there, and then go deeper and deeper within each instance. Well I thought it was fun anyway.

taken11 15y ago

Sadly, it still does not work with 2 monitors. i.e. attaching a projector for a presentation, all your windows get moved to the projector. can be quite a problem if you are in a meeting. in addition external monitor can only be to the right, since the dash is fixed on the left. If you want to drag something inside an application to the left side, the dash shows up and blocks the left side of the application. no way to move the dash. Just two major bugs in terms of usability. ignored for a long time.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
nevinera 15y ago
>Sadly, it still does not work with 2 monitors. I've been using it with two monitors both at home and at work since launch, with zero configuration. The second issue is certainly annoying, but 'it does not work with two monitors' is a pretty strong claim.
- va_coder 15y ago
  What kind of graphics card do you have?
  - asianexpress 15y ago
    Yeah, I think this is highly dependent upon the graphics card and the available drivers -- always run into driver hell with Linux
  - nevinera 15y ago
    One nVidia and one intel, not that it matters. I'm arguing with his blanket claim that 'it still does not work with 2 monitors', not that there are no driver issues on ubuntu.
- mrinterweb 15y ago
  I also have been using two monitors since 11.04 came out. It works great.

bluedanieru 15y ago

To rehash a tired argument: Removing the menu from the window to a common location is still a big usability fail. Not because it's worse than having the functionality bound to the window itself (personally I believe it is, but I could get used to it) but because it's the only major Linux desktop that does this, and as such most of the apps anyone is going to run, are going to be built with that in mind. It's usually not such a big deal to overload the menus with Gnome and KDE, but with Unity it is. And having it double as a title bar is just stupid. Screen real estate isn't at the premium they think it is. I tried Unity with 11.04 and hated it. The bugs didn't bother me but the design did. I'll be sticking with KDE.

barrkel 15y ago
I disagree; on most Linux UIs I've seen, screen real estate is at a premium because of over-generous borders, oversized icons, oversized buttons, oversized listbox item sizes, all generally looking like a 96dpi UI rendered on a 75dpi device (I've often wondered if X Window historical baggage and ancient bitmap font sizes had something to do with it). Everything is about 33% oversized. (I'm a fan of the relative information density on Windows. It's really noticeable in file explorer views in details mode; Windows Explorer packs in a lot of information with very thin borders so the text on each line stays large (though the icon for the file is only 16x16), while the nearest equivalent on pretty much any Linux shell file explorer I've used has large inter-item borders that force the detail text to be tiny; and it still doesn't get in as many items as Windows.)
- jeltz 15y ago
  At least in GNOME and XFCE you can decrease the default font size, which is what I did right after installing Debian with XFCE. XFCE also has really slim buttons and borders. Sadly the file manager, Thunar, is not slim at all. So if you have not already given XFCE a try I recommend you do. Personally I wont use Unity until the skin i as slim as XFCE.
rdtsc 15y ago
> Screen real estate isn't at the premium they think it is. It is on netbooks and tablets perhaps... My beef with it currently is that it doesn't work well with focus-follows-mouse. If menu is on the top, and you want to access it, you mouse will eventually bring other apps to the forefront before it reaches the top, so you end up with a menu of a different application than what you intended. But, that is just me with my hand-hacked preferences that have lingered around since 4 or 5 version ago. I bet new users don't have a way to enable focus-follows-mouse...

wiredfool 15y ago

After working with unity in beta2 over the last week, I'm not a fan. (And I realize this is beta, and things may have changed. But... We'll see tonight when I get a chance to muck with it) My current project is to put together a little machine for the kids (2,4,7). So, I need to limit options, and generally not put in anything that's going to confuse them. For reference, I've got a 10.04 desktop and 10.04 Netbook remix, as well as various OSX and IOS devices around. Ideally, I'd like something like 10.04 NBR, but with current flash/web stuff, and works with the wifi dongle I have. (This is replacing a 1st gen ppc mini that's got hardware issues. Yay for kids flash games turning off the machine) For a machine that's got constrained purposes, for lack of a better word, I find the netbook launcher interface is really good. There are a bunch of categories on the side, there are a handful of apps for each category, and everything launches full screen. I can cut back on most of the clutter, so that they don't accidentally click on something that's going to lead them astray. Unfortunately, the netbook launcher is end of lifed at 10.04 with gnome 2, and unity is the way forward. In my brief time with unity I've: * had the dock not autohide, and had firefox launch fullscreen, with the left half inch under the dock. * gotten all the windows to launch behind dash. Only visible blurred. Had to ssh in and restart. * completely killed the unity system, no sidebar, no top bar, only nautilus running. This persists through logout/login. Or rather, restart, since I can't figure out how to logout without finding terminal in the filesystem and rebooting. There are also some design head scratchers: * There are categories of apps when you look at internet apps in dashboard, but not when you look for more apps. * How do I change the big three apps on the dash screen? * unity keeps offering to install apps. I don't want that. Maybe it's cause I'm a sudoer, but I don't really want this for the other users. And it's really confusing to be looking for something to change a setting, but having the wrong name for which there are no hits, and have the top line be things to install, and not things that are on the drive already. * why does the menu bar sometimes appear, and sometimes it's the name of the app? And then, there's probably a hardware issue: for some reason, my desktop thinks that it has a laptop panel mirroring at 1024x768, so the 20" lcd starts up at that resolution. I know about xrandr, It can't do anything about the phantom panel. Some of this can be traced to "It's not the netbook launcher", some to "It's not even as well thought out as the nbl", and some to "It looks like you have grand designs on my desktop, and you're not telling me what they are, so the decisions look really strange right about now". Sometimes, I think I should have just spent the extra $500 for a mini. It would have been smaller, quieter, lower power, and it would have worked out of the box.

kleim 15y ago

"In fact every piece of hardware on this rig worked perfect without no fiddling around." Holy crap! Where is the fun now?

username_ 15y ago

"Let’s face it, most applications don’t need to be 64bit. How much ram does a calculator really need?" This passage shocked me. This guy seems to think that 64bits is only useful for using more ram. Who is using 4G of RAM on Linux, seriously?