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That would be wonderful if their products weren't so disappointing. You can't throw a stick around here without hitting someone who has tried Unity and hated it

That would be wonderful if their products weren't so disappointing. You can't throw a stick around here without hitting someone who has tried Unity and hated it, uTouch is utterly irrelevant to Linux on the Desktop (I thought this is what Ubuntu was about but I have been proven wrong). Juju might go somewhere, I haven't used it, but they've definitely got some competition in that space and considering their tone-deaf responses to users in the past I'm not confident it'll get any traction. But this is all fine. They're trying new shit. I wouldn't complain if it was just that. It's the heel-digging that bothers me. It seems that Mark Shuttleworth has, rhetorically, tied his reputation somewhat to the success of these projects and especially to Unity. That is, it will be hard for him at this point to just say "well we tried something new, it didn't work out like we hoped, and now we're going to iterate on the next thing." If you listen to him it's as though their new desktop is already a rousing success. If you use Ubuntu and you are hoping they switch back to another desktop in a later release I would humbly suggest that you switch to a different OS. With a more traditional business model (i.e. if they sold the OS) they would immediately sack Mark and switch strategies with someone who isn't so married to its success, when sales fell off a cliff. That's not going to happen.

andrewvc 15y ago
You can't throw a stick around here without hitting someone who has tried Unity and hated it Maybe, but I, and a good number of other people really like it. There's sizable support for unity, and my guess is a lot of non-power users (who are silent on HN) like it even more.
- bluedanieru 15y ago
  Fair enough. What I'm getting at though is that if it doesn't work, we're probably stuck with it anyway. If it turns out that some people like it, but most don't, and that in the typical case it's turning people off Ubuntu rather than on to it, I suspect that isn't going to matter. It's a pet project, in other words.
  - mtts 15y ago
    I'm guessing that if it turns out that most people really don't like it, as opposed to merely most of the people that complain about it on the internet, it will in fact matter.
- silon3 15y ago
  I'm a power user and I like it, except for application centric alt+tab and top menu bar. That is a non-starter for me. Going to use something else.
  - morsch 15y ago
    It's easy to disable the global menu bar (though I haven't tried it myself, so caveat emptor). E.g. see http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/things-to-tweak-after-installing-ubuntu.html http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/things-to-tweak-after-install... sudo apt-get remove appmenu-gtk3 appmenu-gtk appmenu-qt Had to disable it for Firefox the other day, and it's really annoying to have to go back to a window-hosted menu bar. I guess I really ought to get a mac.
  - mtts 15y ago
    I hated application centric alt+tab when I first started using OSX but after a few days I got used to it. Now I prefer it.
    - com 15y ago
      I think the nice thing for me is that it creates a hierarchical method of finding my next activity - app > window > tab The MS Windows-specific alt+tab model means way too many things to choose from without context. What I'd love in Mac OS X is a standard way that I could drill in - with enough context - using keyboard short cuts to window and then tab level. Perhaps something like that exists, but I haven't found the consistent way of doing it yet!
      - silon3 15y ago
        For me, it's essential that I can fluidly switch between last 2-3 or even 4 windows, no matter what they are. (I regularly move tabs into new window in firefox when I need to do this).
  - kablamo 15y ago
    For those that don't like it, the alt+tab behavior can be changed back to the traditional style in the CompizConfig Settings Manager. Try using the static workspace switcher.
mtts 15y ago
Frankly I don't understand why people are complaining so loudly about Unity. I've been using it for a few months and have zero problems with it. If you want to start an application, hit the windows key, type a few characters, hit enter, done. Just like you'd do on a Mac with Spotlight, in fact. For most applications, having the menu bar at the top of the screen is not a problem at all (the only exception I run into frequently being Gimp but then that application has always been an interface nightmare). Probably for most "regular users" the dumbing down of the interface that Ubuntu is ramming down users' throats is a good thing. It seems to me the intent is to build a system that gets out of your way so you can get work done and from where I'm standing it already does that pretty well. YMMV of course :-)
- sandGorgon 15y ago
  Here's ESR's comment on why Unity is unproductive - http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3822 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3822 Its more or less what Linus independently talked about. Anyway you look at it - the terminal icon behavior is pretty asinine (IMHO - OSX doesnt do it that way). My productivity goes down drastically on Unity. Instead I can use synapse, gnome-dock, etc. and get the same "shiny" without losing productivity.
  - morsch 15y ago
    The terminal icon behaviour is actually one of the things I really like about Unity. If you've got a dock, it's difficult to manage several windows of the same application: either each gets its own icon, but then you've got two identical icons in there with no way to see which is which; or you subsume them under one icon, but then what happens when you click it? You can open a sub-menu to access the various instances, you could open the most recently used one, or you could bring all of them to the front. Unity basically does the latter. I like docks, but I don't like having to click twice to access an application, so it works well for me.
    - masklinn 15y ago
      > I don't like having to click twice to access an application, so it works well for me. Windows 7 does it very well: it just pops up small "previews" of all the windows. That's what OSX does by keeping the left-button pressed on the icon (it switches to app-exposé), but without the click and in a cleaner manner. OSX's (and apparently unity's) behavior of bringing a random window to the front when you click it is helpful when you only ever have a single window for your application. Otherwise it's not generally very useful.

andrewvc 15y ago

You can't throw a stick around here without hitting someone who has tried Unity and hated it Maybe, but I, and a good number of other people really like it. There's sizable support for unity, and my guess is a lot of non-power users (who are silent on HN) like it even more.

bluedanieru 15y ago
Fair enough. What I'm getting at though is that if it doesn't work, we're probably stuck with it anyway. If it turns out that some people like it, but most don't, and that in the typical case it's turning people off Ubuntu rather than on to it, I suspect that isn't going to matter. It's a pet project, in other words.
- mtts 15y ago
  I'm guessing that if it turns out that most people really don't like it, as opposed to merely most of the people that complain about it on the internet, it will in fact matter.
silon3 15y ago
I'm a power user and I like it, except for application centric alt+tab and top menu bar. That is a non-starter for me. Going to use something else.
- morsch 15y ago
  It's easy to disable the global menu bar (though I haven't tried it myself, so caveat emptor). E.g. see http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/things-to-tweak-after-installing-ubuntu.html http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/things-to-tweak-after-install... sudo apt-get remove appmenu-gtk3 appmenu-gtk appmenu-qt Had to disable it for Firefox the other day, and it's really annoying to have to go back to a window-hosted menu bar. I guess I really ought to get a mac.
- mtts 15y ago
  I hated application centric alt+tab when I first started using OSX but after a few days I got used to it. Now I prefer it.
  - com 15y ago
    I think the nice thing for me is that it creates a hierarchical method of finding my next activity - app > window > tab The MS Windows-specific alt+tab model means way too many things to choose from without context. What I'd love in Mac OS X is a standard way that I could drill in - with enough context - using keyboard short cuts to window and then tab level. Perhaps something like that exists, but I haven't found the consistent way of doing it yet!
    - silon3 15y ago
      For me, it's essential that I can fluidly switch between last 2-3 or even 4 windows, no matter what they are. (I regularly move tabs into new window in firefox when I need to do this).
- kablamo 15y ago
  For those that don't like it, the alt+tab behavior can be changed back to the traditional style in the CompizConfig Settings Manager. Try using the static workspace switcher.

mtts 15y ago

Frankly I don't understand why people are complaining so loudly about Unity. I've been using it for a few months and have zero problems with it. If you want to start an application, hit the windows key, type a few characters, hit enter, done. Just like you'd do on a Mac with Spotlight, in fact. For most applications, having the menu bar at the top of the screen is not a problem at all (the only exception I run into frequently being Gimp but then that application has always been an interface nightmare). Probably for most "regular users" the dumbing down of the interface that Ubuntu is ramming down users' throats is a good thing. It seems to me the intent is to build a system that gets out of your way so you can get work done and from where I'm standing it already does that pretty well. YMMV of course :-)

sandGorgon 15y ago
Here's ESR's comment on why Unity is unproductive - http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3822 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3822 Its more or less what Linus independently talked about. Anyway you look at it - the terminal icon behavior is pretty asinine (IMHO - OSX doesnt do it that way). My productivity goes down drastically on Unity. Instead I can use synapse, gnome-dock, etc. and get the same "shiny" without losing productivity.
- morsch 15y ago
  The terminal icon behaviour is actually one of the things I really like about Unity. If you've got a dock, it's difficult to manage several windows of the same application: either each gets its own icon, but then you've got two identical icons in there with no way to see which is which; or you subsume them under one icon, but then what happens when you click it? You can open a sub-menu to access the various instances, you could open the most recently used one, or you could bring all of them to the front. Unity basically does the latter. I like docks, but I don't like having to click twice to access an application, so it works well for me.
  - masklinn 15y ago
    > I don't like having to click twice to access an application, so it works well for me. Windows 7 does it very well: it just pops up small "previews" of all the windows. That's what OSX does by keeping the left-button pressed on the icon (it switches to app-exposé), but without the click and in a cleaner manner. OSX's (and apparently unity's) behavior of bringing a random window to the front when you click it is helpful when you only ever have a single window for your application. Otherwise it's not generally very useful.