4 ms·

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

by 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.
    - morsch 15y ago
      No, that's not what Unity does. I'm not 100% sure (work computer right now), but I think it might work like this when you click on the icon for app X: If the active window does not belong to X, make the most recently used window of X active. If the active window already belongs to X, bring all other windows to the front. In other words, if you're already working with an app, clicking the icon brings all other app windows to the front. If you're not working with the app, clicking once show the most likely useful window, clicking twice shows all others. It feels very natural for me. I specifically prefer it to the way Windows 7 does it with its window previews. Crucially, there is no dedicated interface for selecting which application window you want to use. By bringing all app windows to the front, I can just immediately use the window I was looking for (as long as I want to use the mouse).
- mtts 15y ago
  He may have some points, but none of them are relevant for me, personally. I don't use the dock (IMHO it's a monstrosity even in OSX), I don't care about desktop wallpapers and I also don't belong in the camp of users that think focus follows mouse is a good idea. I also doubt that any of his concerns are relevant to non-power users, who seem to be the demographic that Ubuntu tries to target.
  - bluedanieru 15y ago
    There are no non-power users of Ubuntu or any Linux distro targeted at the desktop. None. Maybe that will change someday; however I think the idea should be to get people proficient with their PCs to the point that they demand more from their OS rather than just giving them any old POS that's easy to use and can't do shit, we already have Windows for that. I don't think Unity is a step in that direction. If they target "non-power Linux users", a mythical creature indeed, at the expense of power users (i.e. everyone who uses the fucking thing atm) they are more than shooting themselves in the foot, they are blowing their damn brains out. It remains to be seen what happens with Unity though, some people do like it.
    - Wilya 15y ago
      Hu ? By my count, there are quite a lot of people who have low interest in maintaining a computer and want things to just work on Ubuntu (far less so on other distributions). People who had to use linux for a school project, people who just stumbled on an evangelist at some point, and blindly obeyed the "Install linux, it's better, you will see !!" stuff. Or just people who were a little bit curious. I see plenty of people around me that don't know (and have low interest in learning) how to do much more than fire up firefox, and who still run Ubuntu. If these are power users, then I'm a sysadmin god.
      - hollerith 15y ago
        >People who had to use linux for a school project, people who just stumbled on an evangelist at some point, and blindly obeyed the "Install linux, it's better, you will see !!" stuff. Or just people who were a little bit curious. Also, wives and aged parents of Linux techies.
- lucian1900 15y ago
  OS X behaves identically wrt the Dock and terminals.
  - nknight 15y ago
    No, it doesn't. OS X has several crucial behavioral differences. * OS X does not launch a second window if the application icon is clicked twice. Some like this (I do), some don't, but it's how the Mac UI works, and is a critical part of the window management paradigm in use. * OS X displays each individual minimized window separately in the dock, and lets you choose a single window to un-minimize with a single click. * Just clicking the main application icon will not simply un-minimize all windows at once. * If there are no un-minimized windows, it will un-minimize the oldest. * If there are un-minimized windows, it will bring them all to front in relative stack order, focusing the topmost, but will not un-minimize anything.

by mtts 15y ago

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.
  - morsch 15y ago
    No, that's not what Unity does. I'm not 100% sure (work computer right now), but I think it might work like this when you click on the icon for app X: If the active window does not belong to X, make the most recently used window of X active. If the active window already belongs to X, bring all other windows to the front. In other words, if you're already working with an app, clicking the icon brings all other app windows to the front. If you're not working with the app, clicking once show the most likely useful window, clicking twice shows all others. It feels very natural for me. I specifically prefer it to the way Windows 7 does it with its window previews. Crucially, there is no dedicated interface for selecting which application window you want to use. By bringing all app windows to the front, I can just immediately use the window I was looking for (as long as I want to use the mouse).
mtts 15y ago
He may have some points, but none of them are relevant for me, personally. I don't use the dock (IMHO it's a monstrosity even in OSX), I don't care about desktop wallpapers and I also don't belong in the camp of users that think focus follows mouse is a good idea. I also doubt that any of his concerns are relevant to non-power users, who seem to be the demographic that Ubuntu tries to target.
- bluedanieru 15y ago
  There are no non-power users of Ubuntu or any Linux distro targeted at the desktop. None. Maybe that will change someday; however I think the idea should be to get people proficient with their PCs to the point that they demand more from their OS rather than just giving them any old POS that's easy to use and can't do shit, we already have Windows for that. I don't think Unity is a step in that direction. If they target "non-power Linux users", a mythical creature indeed, at the expense of power users (i.e. everyone who uses the fucking thing atm) they are more than shooting themselves in the foot, they are blowing their damn brains out. It remains to be seen what happens with Unity though, some people do like it.
  - Wilya 15y ago
    Hu ? By my count, there are quite a lot of people who have low interest in maintaining a computer and want things to just work on Ubuntu (far less so on other distributions). People who had to use linux for a school project, people who just stumbled on an evangelist at some point, and blindly obeyed the "Install linux, it's better, you will see !!" stuff. Or just people who were a little bit curious. I see plenty of people around me that don't know (and have low interest in learning) how to do much more than fire up firefox, and who still run Ubuntu. If these are power users, then I'm a sysadmin god.
    - hollerith 15y ago
      >People who had to use linux for a school project, people who just stumbled on an evangelist at some point, and blindly obeyed the "Install linux, it's better, you will see !!" stuff. Or just people who were a little bit curious. Also, wives and aged parents of Linux techies.
lucian1900 15y ago
OS X behaves identically wrt the Dock and terminals.
- nknight 15y ago
  No, it doesn't. OS X has several crucial behavioral differences. * OS X does not launch a second window if the application icon is clicked twice. Some like this (I do), some don't, but it's how the Mac UI works, and is a critical part of the window management paradigm in use. * OS X displays each individual minimized window separately in the dock, and lets you choose a single window to un-minimize with a single click. * Just clicking the main application icon will not simply un-minimize all windows at once. * If there are no un-minimized windows, it will un-minimize the oldest. * If there are un-minimized windows, it will bring them all to front in relative stack order, focusing the topmost, but will not un-minimize anything.