16 ms·

Ubuntu Unity desktop back from the dead after several years' hiatus

212 points by samizdis 4y ago

silisili 4y ago
That's exciting. I must be one of the few who actually liked Unity a lot, probably better than Gnome. From what I understand, a lot of the underlayment was 'hacky' and abandoned. While I don't like most NIH that Canonical does(snaps, upstart, mir), I really wish they'd have kept Unity.
- vorticalbox 4y ago
  I was the same until I started using popos[0] Based on gnome has tiling windows and very keyboard focused its very nice. 0 https://pop.system76.com https://pop.system76.com
  - cowtools 4y ago
    I've recently installed this plugin on my own distro. It sucks that default gnome can only tile 2 windows per monitor. This plugin is great
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
  When Gnome2 was finally removed from Ubuntu, I tried Unity desktop for a while, didn't like it and installed Gnome3... ... ... ... and after an hour decided, that Unity is actually not that bad. Almost every change Gnome3 did over Gnome2 was a change for the worse or for far worse. Unnecessary waste of space on meaningless panels, unnecessarily revamped menus, etc. Just no. I didn't dive in this matter in detail, but people were saying that Gnome3 team has a rather hostile attitude towards criticism, and it shows in the results. Anyway, after a few years of using Unity I got used to it and was sad when it was killed. Hope it gets the second chance.
  - dleslie 4y ago
    Gnome3 and Unity drove me to use MATE, and though I give KDE, Gnome, and XFCE a shot every six months or so I still use MATE. AFAICT, for someone who prefers verbosity, purposeful display usage and textual clarity over all else, it doesn't get much better on the Linux desktop than MATE.
    - Nursie 4y ago
      How is MATE these days? I switched to Xfce when the Gnome 3 debacle hit, and after spending about 10 minutes arranging things to look like Gnome 2, have never looked back.
      - 2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago
        It's a nice Gnome 2 experience. If you're set up with Xfce there's little reason to switch, but if you want to go Gnome 3 -> Gnome 2 then MATE is the best option imo.
        Nursie 4y ago
        I've just read the wikipedia page and was delighted to find they have a fork of gedit which doesn't hide the menus! That's now installed on my system.
      - dm319 4y ago
        I've been using MATE for several years now. It's very solid and they've improved and modernised it nicely since gnome 2 times.
  - rtpg 4y ago
    It might be worth trying gnome 3 again, and opening gnome tweaks. There’s a couple size settings that makes stuff feel good. I have moved onto KDE and honestly KDE is way less smart about screen real estate (it makes up for it in functionality fortunately)
    - nikodunk 4y ago
      Agreed - def worth trying again. Gnome 3.x was what - Windows Vista era? I switched back to Gnome after the 4x series was released a year or two ago. A bunch has changed for the better.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > When Gnome2 was finally removed from Ubuntu, I tried Unity desktop for a while, didn't like it and installed Gnome3... Gnome 3 was never known as an improvement over Gnome 2. But didn't Gnome 2 continue as MATE? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATE_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATE_(software)
    - Nursie 4y ago
      It was picked up by an interested party and then attracted a community, after the Gnome folks dropped Gnome 2 like a hot coal when they announced Gnome 3 (no we're not supporting it any more, it's deprecated, no, there's no way to make 3 behave like 2, no, you can't have 2 and 3 on the same box, that doesn't work). So it continued after a short period of discontinuity, during which time I think a lot of people moved to Xfce, and Mint built their "Cinnamon" DE.
    - dm319 4y ago
      There was a several year hiatus between end of gnome 2 and beginning of mate, and even longer (a year or two) before mate was solid. During this time I remember a lot of attempts at gnome 2 replacement (fallback, flashback etc) and people jumping ship to xfce. I spent a while on ubuntu 10.04 LTS beyond security support then crunchbang before hearing of the mate project, then moved to linux mint and ubuntumate, which is where I've stayed. Those years were a bit disrupted and I stopped recommending linux to friends during that time.
  - pndy 4y ago
    > Almost every change Gnome3 did over Gnome2 was a change for the worse or for far worse. At first it felt like they just went for change for a sake of change so they could be unique among the DEs but now, it seems the long-term goal wasn't just creating a combination between desktop and mobile environment but aiming at being the mobile environment first with optional support for desktops. And indeed, reading all experiences people had with devs working around Gnome nowadays it seems they forgot they're an open-source community and decided to play corporation card, where it's totally fine to ignore the end-user and their feedback.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
      > but aiming at being the mobile environment first I'd say, being 'touch environment first', not mobile. And it resulted in a very poor UX for mouse users, while touch GNU/Linux computers never appeared (except androids, but they have no use for gnome anyway).
      - dingi 4y ago
        GNOME has excellent support for keyboard based navigation BTW. Almost anything can be done with the keyboard. Most shell actions has a keyboard shortcut.
        Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
        They could have done it without taking away convenient menus. Previously all apps had standardized interface, now everyone invents the bicycle for themselves.
    - addicted 4y ago
      Gnome’s focus has been creating a desktop environment that is consistent and easy to develop for. Which requires minimal testing and is not exceedingly buggy. Which is why Gnome is extremely popular across the spectrum. With users, distros and developers. Gnome makes Linux an OS that can compete with the likes of Macos and Windows and actually best them.
  - herbst 4y ago
    If you didn't give gnome shell a second chance, maybe it's time to do so. When it was released many defaults made gnome 3 awkward to use, mostly wasting screen estate for huge icons and so on. Meanwhile it's all configureable and at least with Manjaro also comes with sensible defaults that work well on a 28" as well as a 15" notebook.
- cfn 4y ago
  You are not alone, Unity was my desktop until it was dropped by Canonical. I ended up moving to Windows after that as I did not like the replacement. The main thing I remember was that it was quite fast and worked well with Vmware which is what I used to host client's VMs. Maybe I will give it another go now.
  - zecg 4y ago
    It was always there, just apt install unity? It even asks you which greeter to use and, unlike when Canonical was trying to monetize it, you don't have to remove the adware "lenses" such as Amazon.
    - cfn 4y ago
      I was aware of that but, at the time, there was a lot of uncertainty and I value continuity and stability for my main development machine.
  - addicted 4y ago
    Gnome was always faster than Unity. Which is not surprising considering Unity was a bunch of hacks on top of Gnome.
    - ehvatum 4y ago
      > Unity was a bunch of hacks on top of Gnome Where do you get this shit? Over 11 years ago, Shuttleworth abandoned the vision of Unity as a shell for Gnome.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Unity fan as well, nowadays I use XFCE on my surviving Linux netbook.
- thecosmicfrog 4y ago
  Upstart predated systemd. I never understand the negativity that surrounds it.
KronisLV 4y ago
Unity just felt consistent, usable and boring - all qualities that I appreciate in a desktop environment, which is why some of my devices still use XFCE and there's almost nothing that I find lacking in that regard. Now, GNOME isn't necessarily bad either but it was still sad that Canonical moved on from developing Unity because it did set Ubuntu apart and by the time of the official migration away from it, was actually pretty stable and solid. Of course, the financial aspects of developing their own DE when they could just be contributing to GNOME instead also need to be taken into consideration.
- reidrac 4y ago
  If I recall correctly, both GNOME and Unity shared rejection from a number of users (I don't know if that was large group or just very noisy), and an approach to community management that was basically if you don't like, go away. In the early days, Unity was more usable than GNOME (could be my hardware, perhaps; apparently my nvidia drivers were buggy and I was told to change GPU), but back then Mark Shuttleworth wasn't the best PR person always starting flames on his blog. At the end I got tired of the almost constant drama and gave up the new desktop trend and settled on XFCE (and I couldn't be happier).
  - threatripper 4y ago
    > If I recall correctly, both GNOME and Unity shared rejection from a number of users (I don't know if that was large group or just very noisy) The GNOME redesign. The old 2D GNOME was OK. It was functional, stable and pretty (for someone who thinks that Windows 3.11 style is a good fit for a work environment). Then the old software was abandoned and the update was pushed onto users. KDE also had a transition disaster. That time was not a good time for Linux on the Desktop.
    - rob74 4y ago
      Has there ever been a good time for Linux on the desktop? I'm using Linux (Kubuntu) daily, and it works most of the time, but I still see some issues from time to time (multi-monitor strangeness, windows suddenly appearing without frames because kwin crashed, desktop wallpapers not being shown or being shown incorrectly etc.).
bitwize 4y ago
Unity was probably the most straightforward n00b-friendly Linux DE. I'm still rocking it in 2022 because I'm running a Lisp VLM on a 16.06 Ubuntu image. It's... less objectionable than GNOME and less fiddly than KDE.
antman 4y ago
I remember what happened I think. There was a thread here on HN a few years back presenting something new Ubuntu Unity related and discussion developed about how Unity was bad. Someone from Ubuntu team saw the thread and said he did not know people hated it so much and they will look into into it/change it back to gnome? Apparently forgotten and I can't find the thread to verify the details!
- knorker 4y ago
  What i remembered is that it was widely hated, and canonical was shoving it down everyone's throats and saying things like "we know that unity is objectively the best desktop environment that ever existed", allowing them to discard any critique. But eventually they had to face reality, and gave up. I'm sure there were people who liked it. I never met one.
  - lproven 4y ago
    Hi. I wrote the article at the top of this post. I am still using Unity now as I have been doing for about a decade.
- bitcharmer 4y ago
  I don't think Canonical cares at all about community input on things like that (just look at snap). It was just that unity really was that bad. No need to blame HN crowd for this.
  - antman 4y ago
    I am not blaming, the opposite.
  - lproven 4y ago
    This is incorrect. What Canonical did is exactly what HN asked them to do in this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821
    - 4y ago
skocznymroczny 4y ago
I used to dislike Unity when it came out. I thought it's weird with the global menu, close button in the top-left corner and other ideas. However, after using macOS for a longer period of time, I got used to these ideas and actually prefer them nowadays. After that Unity became one of my favorite desktop environments.
- knorker 4y ago
  The fact that unity just seemed like "let's cargo cult macos" while they were bragging about how awesome they were ("objectively the best" was thrown around) was a real turn off for me.
  - inferiorhuman 4y ago
    Hey if it worked for RedHat and Pottering it's gonna work for Ubuntu.
  - lproven 4y ago
    They did a macOS ripoff directly because Microsoft was threatening to sue everyone doing Win95 ripoffs: https://www.theregister.com/2006/11/20/microsoft_claims_linux_code https://www.theregister.com/2006/11/20/microsoft_claims_linu...
htkibar 4y ago
I remember quitting Ubuntu because they dropped unity - hah.
littlecranky67 4y ago
To provide some historic context: Unity was released in times when there was this "Netbook" trend, started by Asus EeePC with 7" display, followed by a lot of other cheap Netbooks in the 7"-10" display category. Additionally, Canonical pushed to become a mobile/smartphone OS vendor. These constrained display sizes were some of the main factors in the UX design of Unity. Fast forward to today, Netbooks were a short-lived hype to be replaced with Ultrabooks (13" and up), and Canonical failed to become a mobile phone OS vendor and went back to Gnome as a default DE.
- okasaki 4y ago
  Should be noted that compared to Unity, GNOME 3 is an even more extreme variant of the phone/netbook UI.
  - thriftwy 4y ago
    I'm wondering why more people are not using KDE. It is a honest desktop environment which does not try to pretend phone/netbook or parrot Mac OS X. Many of KDE apps are the best in a given category. Konsole certainly is.
    - bitcharmer 4y ago
      > Many of KDE apps are the best in a given category. Konsole certainly is. Have you tried Terminator?
      - thriftwy 4y ago
        No, but > Terminator on Mac OS X showing live search highlighting and UTF-8 Looks like something working around deficiences in Mac OS X's terminal app which just aren't there in modern X11 terms. Judging from its feature highlights, the only one I did not see in Konsole is horizontal scrolling.
    - Lio 4y ago
      I think I'm in a minority here but I prefer Gnome to KDE because it feels like it takes more inspiration from macOS than from Windows. Different strokes for different folks but I don't enjoy the OS/2, Windows, KDE way of doing things. I'm thankful we have choices.
shapefrog 4y ago
Must have come back for the Year of Linux
thepangolino 4y ago
For me the killer feature of Unity is the HUD[0] allowing you to simply type to find menu items. Save so much time going through options it is incredible. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_WW-DHqR3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_WW-DHqR3c
- lproven 4y ago
  I find it interesting because as a long-term Unity user, I never used the HUD at all and turned if off when I could. But I think it says good things about the environment that different users found their own things they liked about it.
- akho 4y ago
  There was also plotinus (https://github.com/p-e-w/plotinus https://github.com/p-e-w/plotinus) for a sort-of-similar thing. I think it still works, but I use too few gui applications to bother.
Bolkan 4y ago
Awesome. It was the last linux desktop I liked. Vertical appbar worked better than anything available today.
jstanley 4y ago
Kind of off-topic, but I've been enjoying Regolith[0] on Ubuntu lately. It uses i3 as a window manager, but integrates a bit more neatly with things like the Gnome Settings application so you can use the tiling window manager but still don't have to configure everything the hard way. [0] https://regolith-desktop.com/ https://regolith-desktop.com/
- fellerts 4y ago
  When Canonical dropped Unity for Gnome I also jumped to Regolith, and have been very happy for a couple years. Fell in love with the tiling aspect of i3 without the need to endlessly tinker with my OS. This truly was a set-and-forget experience.
- colordrops 4y ago
  Interesting, will check it out. I think I've read that pop shell from system76 is an i3 inspired layer on top of gnome. I'm curious if it provides even better integration than Regolith. Only problem is that the one serious attempt to port pop shell to NixOS has been aborted. Will probably move from i3/sway to one of these two at some point
- alexalx666 4y ago
  its the best!
unethical_ban 4y ago
Unity was great. Pop comes close, but unity just worked.
pabs3 4y ago
and Unity 8 was forked as https://ubuntu-touch.io/ https://ubuntu-touch.io/
- cm-t 4y ago
  Unity8 was (community) forked as lomiri https://lomiri.com/ https://lomiri.com/ ( And Ubuntu Touch is a distro that use Lomiri )
thibran 4y ago
Canonical had at some point two variants of Unity, the regulate one (slow) and a qml based one (super snappy). I'm still sad that they did not stick with the qml version. GNOME nowerdays is fine, but for years it was slow and lacking compared to what we already had with qml Unity.
- butokai 4y ago
  There's another comment below that mentions Unity 8, which has been forked and is being maintained as a mobile shell. Is that the same QML Unity you're mentioning? I remember they were going for some kind of convergence.
  - lproven 4y ago
    No. The Qt-based Unity was called Unity2D. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity2D https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity2D It was dropped when LLVMpipe rendering made OpenGL fast enough to be usable on machines without 3D hardware: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE2MTQ https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE2MTQ
sph 4y ago
"This new release doesn't come from Canonical: it's from Linux wunderkind Rudra Saraswat", a 12 years old Linux enthusiast from Bengaluru, India. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/rs2009 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/rs2009 Incredible stuff, love to see it.
- bmacho 4y ago
  I used Ubuntu Unity for a while when I realized, such a strange feeling: yeah, I seeked for, downloaded, trusted, and I am very satisfied with the work of a ~12 yo kid. Also I can recommend Ubuntu Unity. It's not that different from gnome, but works great.
- possiblelion 4y ago
  Damn, what kid! To be fair - having time and access to computer between the ages of 9-15 is something that I have come to appreciate in my life as well. Even if I didn't understand everything at the time, playing with open-source software, Linux, jailbreaking iDevices etc has definitely formed who I am today.
  - ignoramous 4y ago
    Parallels with Blake Ross [0] and Arfa Karim [1] there. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_Ross#Mozilla_and_Firefox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_Ross#Mozilla_and_Firefox [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arfa_Karim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arfa_Karim
    - johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago
      I just read Arfa Karim's wiki page. It was so sad to read such a talent passed away so soon :(
- loloquwowndueo 4y ago
  Interestingly - Canonical dumped Unity in 2017, Rudra would have been 7 years old then.
- deleted 4y ago
ttctciyf 4y ago
IMO, the lasting stability of a UI is a far greater factor in long-term user acceptance, satisfaction and facility than almost any breaking "improvements" that are imposed by developers - c.f. Firefox for a negative example. So, if you want to (re-)introduce a new desktop paradigm, give users a simple mechanism to choose to disagree.
- a1369209993 4y ago
  > any breaking "improvements" that are imposed by developers - c.f. Firefox for a negative example. Huh? Firefox hasn't released any improvements since 3.6 about a decade ago; I'm pretty sure they're dead.
waingake 4y ago
The amount of hate Unity would get on this website... Hackers gonna hate it seems. It's a shame that Canonical listened. On a positive note I'm very impressed that the reboot is being lead by a such a young developer. Thank you!
rbanffy 4y ago
It feels funny. When Ubuntu moved to the Gnome shell with their customizations, it felt strange for a couple hours, then everything made sense. I completely forgot I am not using Unity on Ubuntu - the icons are where they used to be and that's about what really feels different now from stock Gnome.
Shadonototra 4y ago
Some day i'll sit down and port unity to arch linux, but damn i got too much stuff to do already..
- lproven 4y ago
  It was done: https://github.com/chenxiaolong/Unity-for-Arch https://github.com/chenxiaolong/Unity-for-Arch I have not tried it, but Rudra Saraswat's new Unity-like desktop, UnityX, is also available in an Arch version: https://9to5linux.com/you-can-now-install-the-unityx-desktop-in-arch-linux-heres-how https://9to5linux.com/you-can-now-install-the-unityx-desktop...
  - Shadonototra 4y ago
    Yeap i saw that one, maybe that could be a good starting point As for UnityX, i don't think starting from scratch is wise
    - lproven 4y ago
      > As for UnityX, i don't think starting from scratch is wise TBH, I think I agree with you. There was Unity2D: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity2D https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity2D The source is still around. https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-2d https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-2d It was built against a now-obsolete version of Qt though. (To be fair it was discontinued a decade ago.) I think Qt 4, but I am not sure. I have no clue how much work is involved in changing a Qt4 application so that it uses Qt6. Unity3D was written as a set of plugins for the Compiz window manager, which itself is now discontinued and abandoned by its developer. https://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/sideways/ https://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/sideways/ Which suggest that Unity would now need a total rewrite to use Mutter or something... which is a substantial task. I do not know if this applies to Unity2D.
forgotpwd16 4y ago
Back from the dead as fork. The power of free software.
nothatscool 4y ago
Unity’s global menu system was wonderful and once getting used to how well it used vertical space switching to gnome was like going back 10 years. Seeing multiple empty bars across the screen makes it completely unusable to me not to mention their need to replace simple menus with seemingly random icons scattered everywhere. I’m using kde plasma now with a global menu set up. It’s good but isn’t as hassle free as Unity was. I’m really sad that canonical abandoned Unity. It was so easy to use and was really easy to recommend to people. I think it was a case of an extremely loud minority who weren’t even using it that contributed to canonical abandoning it.
- longstation 4y ago
  I am same there (using KDE Plasma with global menu). Recently, with VSCode's menu on title bar, it seems to have started a trend doing so. For example, JetBrain's IDEs are also designed that way. I found the term for that, it's called LIM (locally integrated menu). Now, Unity has done that many years ago. If I remember correctly, the behavior was: when maximized, it behaves like a global menu; when not, it's a LIM. Fortunately, there's a PR for implementing such things in KDE Plasma. Here is the discussion [1]. Right now, you can use it, but it probably won't be merged into the main branch soon. PR: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/breeze/-/merge_requests/126 https://invent.kde.org/plasma/breeze/-/merge_requests/126 There's also a KDE theme the PR draws inspiration on (which you can use for KDE now): https://github.com/Zren/material-decoration https://github.com/Zren/material-decoration
  - mikewhy 4y ago
    This seems like a weird half-step between "headerbars" / client side decorations / hamburger menus. KDE Maui is going that direction: https://mauikit.org/apps/ https://mauikit.org/apps/ Sadly it just seems to be more like a custom window decoration that only does shadows (no actual title bar) and regular KDE headers, no actual window controls / CSD.
- Veliladon 4y ago
  From the article: > As a small example, the update makes right-clicking the trashcan in the Launcher to empty it work again, without needing to open the trashcan's own window. I feel like that single line illustrates just how badly GNOME has lost the plot over the last decade.
amelius 4y ago
I still use Gnome metacity flashback because it wastes less screen space and has a nice virtual workspace switcher. I'm less happy with the configuration/tweak tools and the fact that they are only accessible from within the account and the display itself (not easy to administrate for different users). I wish there was someone keeping a list of requirements so that every new WM could avoid mistakes in the previous ones.
Yizahi 4y ago
Is it still lagging on slower machines? I'll keep using XFCE for the time being, like many other in this thread.
superkuh 4y ago
This is great as it's from a third party any not forced on users. Convergence was never a thing and it will never be a thing.
ur-whale 4y ago
Some things ought to be left buried lest they come and haunt you for years to come.
heurisko 4y ago
I loved/love Unity and kept on installing it on my desktops. It's now running on 22.04. Don't see why it needs to be changed. There are so many parts that feel a lot of thought has been spent on them.
marcodiego 4y ago
The best feature from Unity was just tapping alt and easily finding the menu option on the app I was running. This helped a lot with apps that had many or deep menu items like GIMP or LibreOffice. The new policy, however, is for apps to drop menus. I don't think a new incarnation without app developers embracing it would have the same effect. Also, for the sake of maintainability, it would be very good if this was implemented using GNOME extensions.
oldjavacoder 4y ago
Unity was OK once the global menu was disabled. Today I use KDE. It lets me configure it the way I want.
akagusu 4y ago
The feature I really miss from Unity is tap Alt and type for menu options. It was really useful when you didn't remember the menu option you want. Pretty innovative at the time.
cosmiccatnap 4y ago
I have never understood unity. For all it's faults and annoyances I have never once considered gnome, kde, or even cinnamon inferior to unity. People talk about it's consistancy in the comment section but as someone who has had to use different DE varients over the years, any features unity had a claim to fame for were implemented and then superseded by gnome a long time ago.
- lproven 4y ago
  Many people didn't get it. You are not alone. But I am typing on it right now, and it does a bunch of things better than any other desktop I've tried. The global menu bar is easy and efficient. It reduces onscreen clutter -- an unfocused window simply has no menu bar. If you click on it, it appears in the panel. I have 3 monitors here and each of them has several apps on; this means that for each monitor, there is a separate menu bar, but only when I am using it. (In this respect it is like AmigaOS, not macOS: Mac menus are always visible. AmigaOS ones only on a right-click.) Unity menus appear when the mouse is over the panel; otherwise, I see the current app title, and the window title if it's maximised. In compliant apps, menus are navigable with the keyboard alone, using the same shortcuts as on Windows. This is a win for accessibility. Sadly it's succumbing to bitrot now. With a pointing device, menus are super-easy to hit, because they are on a screen edge. This is called Fitt's Law and it is a law of ergonomics, not some preference. To hit in-window menu bars, you have to aim, and the target is vertically very small, but at least it is wide. With a hamburger menu as in GNOME, Pantheon, and modern KDE, it is a single character cell, hard to hit both vertically and horizontally, and with zero visual clue that it is important. Unlike macOS or AmigaOS, windows are manageable with keyboard shortcuts as well, and again using the same standard keys as on MS Windows. This is a boon for accessibility. If you wish you can have an MS Windows/Motif style window menu, and the buttons are easily rearranged for a Windows-like layout if you wish. The app launcher/switcher is vertical, which is more space-efficient on widescreen displays. MacOS can do this but it's an option; it's the default here. But it's better than the Mac one, because: - it shows how many windows you have open; - it's trivially easy to open a new empty window: middle-click the dock icon. Windows snap like on recent MS Windows, but not on macOS without add-on apps. So we have a happy combination of some of the best Mac, Windows and Amiga features: - a global menu bar, very easy to hit, more space-efficient on small displays and easier to hit on big displays; - keyboard accessibilty, like on Windows but unlike the Mac; - a space-efficient layout for widescreens that exceeds its inspiration; - which is also efficient on large screen and multiscreen layouts; - and a dock that has more utility than the macOS dock. It's a really good combination of the best features from Windows and macOS (and others), plus additional tweaks. Compare to the competition: - KDE, MATE, Cinnamon and LXQt can't handle vertical taskbars properly. KDE doesn't honour Windows keystrokes, and in recent versions is removing the menu bar from apps altogether. (Pictures to illustrate this point: https://imgur.com/gallery/fLeAy https://imgur.com/gallery/fLeAy ) - LXDE does do vertical taskbars and keystrokes, but the layout is rigid and can't easily be customised. - Xfce does vertical taskbars well and honours Windows keystrokes, but can't do a global menu bar. Its customisation is excellent and it's low-resource. - GNOME has its own wholly new set of keystrokes and is conspicuously poor at window management ansd multihead displays. It's not designed for people who do their own window management or want multihead; it's designed for keyboard warriors who want a few full-screen or tiled console windows. It has an empty wasted panel with a few small combined controls that can't be separated. It is poor for keyboard access, and has no menu bars by design. Features are being removed from the file manager. It's bad if you know the dominant platform's keyboard controls. It's bad if you use a screen reader. It's bad if you want rich multihead -- e.g. I can't put the panel on 1 monitor and the dock on another and the virtual-desktop manager on another. Some but not all of these things can be fixed with GNOME extensions but this 100% always breaks on a GNOME version upgrade. Extensions must and can only target specific versions of the desktop. There is no safe mode to load without extensions. Theming has been intentionally removed in version 40+. GNOME CSDs also destroy a hallmark feature of desktop GUIs since the Apple Lisa, which is that almost all human languages and scripts read from top to bottom. So you start at the top with a title, then you read the content, and then at the bottom are the buttons which you use to decide what to do with it: OK, cancel, close, apply, whatever. GNOME inverts this in all its dialog boxes: the main action buttons are at the top, before you've read the content. You must skip them, read down, decide, and then maybe click a button at the bottom and maybe go up to the top and find a button in the title bar. This is not obvious and so designers resort to making that button brightly coloured so it stands out. Unless you are using a non-GNOME non-Gtk app, in which case the buttons will probably be at the bottom, perhaps, maybe. Also, a time-honoured feature of xNix window managers since the early 1990s is that you have a 3-button mouse and can middle-click the title bar to push the window to the back of the Z-stack. GNOME CSDs break this. One of the developers promised me personally that it would not be broken; it was broken anyway. GNOME has new features that its fans love (like the overview, a combined app-search screen and tiled window preview). Non-GNOME fans find this hard to understand or see the appeal. KDE is adding it; other desktops ignore it. Would you like more?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
correct-opinion 4y ago
I have tried and still use different DEs, but for some time now Windows 10 DE is my favourite one. I think all others should just copy it, no need to reinvent the wheel.
- hu3 4y ago
  Compared to Windows 10, the Windows 11 DE is such a regression imo.
- diffeomorphism 4y ago
  Anything specifically you like about it? Tiling seems really limited, virtual desktops could still need more work, the search I have basically given up on (though "everything" is a kinda nice app for part of that), volume mixer widget is also very limited (e.g. see ear trumpet as an alternative), file manager still does not have tabs, network settings are convoluted (manual eduroam setup anyone?),... Honestly, whenever I use windows it feels "okay" but I could not point at anything to say "oh, neat".
hatsunearu 4y ago
Good. Unity was the best desktop environment on Linux by a long shot.
tambourine_man 4y ago
Any videos of UnityX in action? Couldn't find anything good
heurisko 4y ago
Does this require a PPA? As the Unity version in the main repositories is still 5.5. https://packages.ubuntu.com/jammy/unity https://packages.ubuntu.com/jammy/unity

212 points by samizdis 4y ago

That's exciting. I must be one of the few who actually liked Unity a lot, probably better than Gnome. From what I understand, a lot of the underlayment was 'hacky' and abandoned. While I don't like most NIH that Canonical does(snaps, upstart, mir), I really wish they'd have kept Unity.

vorticalbox 4y ago
I was the same until I started using popos[0] Based on gnome has tiling windows and very keyboard focused its very nice. 0 https://pop.system76.com https://pop.system76.com
- cowtools 4y ago
  I've recently installed this plugin on my own distro. It sucks that default gnome can only tile 2 windows per monitor. This plugin is great
Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
When Gnome2 was finally removed from Ubuntu, I tried Unity desktop for a while, didn't like it and installed Gnome3... ... ... ... and after an hour decided, that Unity is actually not that bad. Almost every change Gnome3 did over Gnome2 was a change for the worse or for far worse. Unnecessary waste of space on meaningless panels, unnecessarily revamped menus, etc. Just no. I didn't dive in this matter in detail, but people were saying that Gnome3 team has a rather hostile attitude towards criticism, and it shows in the results. Anyway, after a few years of using Unity I got used to it and was sad when it was killed. Hope it gets the second chance.
- dleslie 4y ago
  Gnome3 and Unity drove me to use MATE, and though I give KDE, Gnome, and XFCE a shot every six months or so I still use MATE. AFAICT, for someone who prefers verbosity, purposeful display usage and textual clarity over all else, it doesn't get much better on the Linux desktop than MATE.
  - Nursie 4y ago
    How is MATE these days? I switched to Xfce when the Gnome 3 debacle hit, and after spending about 10 minutes arranging things to look like Gnome 2, have never looked back.
    - 2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago
      It's a nice Gnome 2 experience. If you're set up with Xfce there's little reason to switch, but if you want to go Gnome 3 -> Gnome 2 then MATE is the best option imo.
      - Nursie 4y ago
        I've just read the wikipedia page and was delighted to find they have a fork of gedit which doesn't hide the menus! That's now installed on my system.
    - dm319 4y ago
      I've been using MATE for several years now. It's very solid and they've improved and modernised it nicely since gnome 2 times.
- rtpg 4y ago
  It might be worth trying gnome 3 again, and opening gnome tweaks. There’s a couple size settings that makes stuff feel good. I have moved onto KDE and honestly KDE is way less smart about screen real estate (it makes up for it in functionality fortunately)
  - nikodunk 4y ago
    Agreed - def worth trying again. Gnome 3.x was what - Windows Vista era? I switched back to Gnome after the 4x series was released a year or two ago. A bunch has changed for the better.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > When Gnome2 was finally removed from Ubuntu, I tried Unity desktop for a while, didn't like it and installed Gnome3... Gnome 3 was never known as an improvement over Gnome 2. But didn't Gnome 2 continue as MATE? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATE_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATE_(software)
  - Nursie 4y ago
    It was picked up by an interested party and then attracted a community, after the Gnome folks dropped Gnome 2 like a hot coal when they announced Gnome 3 (no we're not supporting it any more, it's deprecated, no, there's no way to make 3 behave like 2, no, you can't have 2 and 3 on the same box, that doesn't work). So it continued after a short period of discontinuity, during which time I think a lot of people moved to Xfce, and Mint built their "Cinnamon" DE.
  - dm319 4y ago
    There was a several year hiatus between end of gnome 2 and beginning of mate, and even longer (a year or two) before mate was solid. During this time I remember a lot of attempts at gnome 2 replacement (fallback, flashback etc) and people jumping ship to xfce. I spent a while on ubuntu 10.04 LTS beyond security support then crunchbang before hearing of the mate project, then moved to linux mint and ubuntumate, which is where I've stayed. Those years were a bit disrupted and I stopped recommending linux to friends during that time.
- pndy 4y ago
  > Almost every change Gnome3 did over Gnome2 was a change for the worse or for far worse. At first it felt like they just went for change for a sake of change so they could be unique among the DEs but now, it seems the long-term goal wasn't just creating a combination between desktop and mobile environment but aiming at being the mobile environment first with optional support for desktops. And indeed, reading all experiences people had with devs working around Gnome nowadays it seems they forgot they're an open-source community and decided to play corporation card, where it's totally fine to ignore the end-user and their feedback.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
    > but aiming at being the mobile environment first I'd say, being 'touch environment first', not mobile. And it resulted in a very poor UX for mouse users, while touch GNU/Linux computers never appeared (except androids, but they have no use for gnome anyway).
    - dingi 4y ago
      GNOME has excellent support for keyboard based navigation BTW. Almost anything can be done with the keyboard. Most shell actions has a keyboard shortcut.
      - Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
        They could have done it without taking away convenient menus. Previously all apps had standardized interface, now everyone invents the bicycle for themselves.
  - addicted 4y ago
    Gnome’s focus has been creating a desktop environment that is consistent and easy to develop for. Which requires minimal testing and is not exceedingly buggy. Which is why Gnome is extremely popular across the spectrum. With users, distros and developers. Gnome makes Linux an OS that can compete with the likes of Macos and Windows and actually best them.
- herbst 4y ago
  If you didn't give gnome shell a second chance, maybe it's time to do so. When it was released many defaults made gnome 3 awkward to use, mostly wasting screen estate for huge icons and so on. Meanwhile it's all configureable and at least with Manjaro also comes with sensible defaults that work well on a 28" as well as a 15" notebook.
cfn 4y ago
You are not alone, Unity was my desktop until it was dropped by Canonical. I ended up moving to Windows after that as I did not like the replacement. The main thing I remember was that it was quite fast and worked well with Vmware which is what I used to host client's VMs. Maybe I will give it another go now.
- zecg 4y ago
  It was always there, just apt install unity? It even asks you which greeter to use and, unlike when Canonical was trying to monetize it, you don't have to remove the adware "lenses" such as Amazon.
  - cfn 4y ago
    I was aware of that but, at the time, there was a lot of uncertainty and I value continuity and stability for my main development machine.
- addicted 4y ago
  Gnome was always faster than Unity. Which is not surprising considering Unity was a bunch of hacks on top of Gnome.
  - ehvatum 4y ago
    > Unity was a bunch of hacks on top of Gnome Where do you get this shit? Over 11 years ago, Shuttleworth abandoned the vision of Unity as a shell for Gnome.
pjmlp 4y ago
Unity fan as well, nowadays I use XFCE on my surviving Linux netbook.
thecosmicfrog 4y ago
Upstart predated systemd. I never understand the negativity that surrounds it.

KronisLV 4y ago

Unity just felt consistent, usable and boring - all qualities that I appreciate in a desktop environment, which is why some of my devices still use XFCE and there's almost nothing that I find lacking in that regard. Now, GNOME isn't necessarily bad either but it was still sad that Canonical moved on from developing Unity because it did set Ubuntu apart and by the time of the official migration away from it, was actually pretty stable and solid. Of course, the financial aspects of developing their own DE when they could just be contributing to GNOME instead also need to be taken into consideration.

reidrac 4y ago
If I recall correctly, both GNOME and Unity shared rejection from a number of users (I don't know if that was large group or just very noisy), and an approach to community management that was basically if you don't like, go away. In the early days, Unity was more usable than GNOME (could be my hardware, perhaps; apparently my nvidia drivers were buggy and I was told to change GPU), but back then Mark Shuttleworth wasn't the best PR person always starting flames on his blog. At the end I got tired of the almost constant drama and gave up the new desktop trend and settled on XFCE (and I couldn't be happier).
- threatripper 4y ago
  > If I recall correctly, both GNOME and Unity shared rejection from a number of users (I don't know if that was large group or just very noisy) The GNOME redesign. The old 2D GNOME was OK. It was functional, stable and pretty (for someone who thinks that Windows 3.11 style is a good fit for a work environment). Then the old software was abandoned and the update was pushed onto users. KDE also had a transition disaster. That time was not a good time for Linux on the Desktop.
  - rob74 4y ago
    Has there ever been a good time for Linux on the desktop? I'm using Linux (Kubuntu) daily, and it works most of the time, but I still see some issues from time to time (multi-monitor strangeness, windows suddenly appearing without frames because kwin crashed, desktop wallpapers not being shown or being shown incorrectly etc.).

bitwize 4y ago

Unity was probably the most straightforward n00b-friendly Linux DE. I'm still rocking it in 2022 because I'm running a Lisp VLM on a 16.06 Ubuntu image. It's... less objectionable than GNOME and less fiddly than KDE.

antman 4y ago

I remember what happened I think. There was a thread here on HN a few years back presenting something new Ubuntu Unity related and discussion developed about how Unity was bad. Someone from Ubuntu team saw the thread and said he did not know people hated it so much and they will look into into it/change it back to gnome? Apparently forgotten and I can't find the thread to verify the details!

knorker 4y ago
What i remembered is that it was widely hated, and canonical was shoving it down everyone's throats and saying things like "we know that unity is objectively the best desktop environment that ever existed", allowing them to discard any critique. But eventually they had to face reality, and gave up. I'm sure there were people who liked it. I never met one.
- lproven 4y ago
  Hi. I wrote the article at the top of this post. I am still using Unity now as I have been doing for about a decade.
bitcharmer 4y ago
I don't think Canonical cares at all about community input on things like that (just look at snap). It was just that unity really was that bad. No need to blame HN crowd for this.
- antman 4y ago
  I am not blaming, the opposite.
- lproven 4y ago
  This is incorrect. What Canonical did is exactly what HN asked them to do in this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821
  - 4y ago

skocznymroczny 4y ago

I used to dislike Unity when it came out. I thought it's weird with the global menu, close button in the top-left corner and other ideas. However, after using macOS for a longer period of time, I got used to these ideas and actually prefer them nowadays. After that Unity became one of my favorite desktop environments.

knorker 4y ago
The fact that unity just seemed like "let's cargo cult macos" while they were bragging about how awesome they were ("objectively the best" was thrown around) was a real turn off for me.
- inferiorhuman 4y ago
  Hey if it worked for RedHat and Pottering it's gonna work for Ubuntu.
- lproven 4y ago
  They did a macOS ripoff directly because Microsoft was threatening to sue everyone doing Win95 ripoffs: https://www.theregister.com/2006/11/20/microsoft_claims_linux_code https://www.theregister.com/2006/11/20/microsoft_claims_linu...

htkibar 4y ago

I remember quitting Ubuntu because they dropped unity - hah.

littlecranky67 4y ago

To provide some historic context: Unity was released in times when there was this "Netbook" trend, started by Asus EeePC with 7" display, followed by a lot of other cheap Netbooks in the 7"-10" display category. Additionally, Canonical pushed to become a mobile/smartphone OS vendor. These constrained display sizes were some of the main factors in the UX design of Unity. Fast forward to today, Netbooks were a short-lived hype to be replaced with Ultrabooks (13" and up), and Canonical failed to become a mobile phone OS vendor and went back to Gnome as a default DE.

okasaki 4y ago
Should be noted that compared to Unity, GNOME 3 is an even more extreme variant of the phone/netbook UI.
- thriftwy 4y ago
  I'm wondering why more people are not using KDE. It is a honest desktop environment which does not try to pretend phone/netbook or parrot Mac OS X. Many of KDE apps are the best in a given category. Konsole certainly is.
  - bitcharmer 4y ago
    > Many of KDE apps are the best in a given category. Konsole certainly is. Have you tried Terminator?
    - thriftwy 4y ago
      No, but > Terminator on Mac OS X showing live search highlighting and UTF-8 Looks like something working around deficiences in Mac OS X's terminal app which just aren't there in modern X11 terms. Judging from its feature highlights, the only one I did not see in Konsole is horizontal scrolling.
  - Lio 4y ago
    I think I'm in a minority here but I prefer Gnome to KDE because it feels like it takes more inspiration from macOS than from Windows. Different strokes for different folks but I don't enjoy the OS/2, Windows, KDE way of doing things. I'm thankful we have choices.

shapefrog 4y ago

Must have come back for the Year of Linux

thepangolino 4y ago

For me the killer feature of Unity is the HUD[0] allowing you to simply type to find menu items. Save so much time going through options it is incredible. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_WW-DHqR3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_WW-DHqR3c

lproven 4y ago
I find it interesting because as a long-term Unity user, I never used the HUD at all and turned if off when I could. But I think it says good things about the environment that different users found their own things they liked about it.
akho 4y ago
There was also plotinus (https://github.com/p-e-w/plotinus https://github.com/p-e-w/plotinus) for a sort-of-similar thing. I think it still works, but I use too few gui applications to bother.

Bolkan 4y ago

Awesome. It was the last linux desktop I liked. Vertical appbar worked better than anything available today.

jstanley 4y ago

Kind of off-topic, but I've been enjoying Regolith[0] on Ubuntu lately. It uses i3 as a window manager, but integrates a bit more neatly with things like the Gnome Settings application so you can use the tiling window manager but still don't have to configure everything the hard way. [0] https://regolith-desktop.com/ https://regolith-desktop.com/

fellerts 4y ago
When Canonical dropped Unity for Gnome I also jumped to Regolith, and have been very happy for a couple years. Fell in love with the tiling aspect of i3 without the need to endlessly tinker with my OS. This truly was a set-and-forget experience.
colordrops 4y ago
Interesting, will check it out. I think I've read that pop shell from system76 is an i3 inspired layer on top of gnome. I'm curious if it provides even better integration than Regolith. Only problem is that the one serious attempt to port pop shell to NixOS has been aborted. Will probably move from i3/sway to one of these two at some point
alexalx666 4y ago
its the best!

unethical_ban 4y ago

Unity was great. Pop comes close, but unity just worked.

pabs3 4y ago

and Unity 8 was forked as https://ubuntu-touch.io/ https://ubuntu-touch.io/

cm-t 4y ago
Unity8 was (community) forked as lomiri https://lomiri.com/ https://lomiri.com/ ( And Ubuntu Touch is a distro that use Lomiri )

thibran 4y ago

Canonical had at some point two variants of Unity, the regulate one (slow) and a qml based one (super snappy). I'm still sad that they did not stick with the qml version. GNOME nowerdays is fine, but for years it was slow and lacking compared to what we already had with qml Unity.

butokai 4y ago
There's another comment below that mentions Unity 8, which has been forked and is being maintained as a mobile shell. Is that the same QML Unity you're mentioning? I remember they were going for some kind of convergence.
- lproven 4y ago
  No. The Qt-based Unity was called Unity2D. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity2D https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity2D It was dropped when LLVMpipe rendering made OpenGL fast enough to be usable on machines without 3D hardware: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE2MTQ https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE2MTQ

sph 4y ago

"This new release doesn't come from Canonical: it's from Linux wunderkind Rudra Saraswat", a 12 years old Linux enthusiast from Bengaluru, India. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/rs2009 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/rs2009 Incredible stuff, love to see it.

bmacho 4y ago
I used Ubuntu Unity for a while when I realized, such a strange feeling: yeah, I seeked for, downloaded, trusted, and I am very satisfied with the work of a ~12 yo kid. Also I can recommend Ubuntu Unity. It's not that different from gnome, but works great.
possiblelion 4y ago
Damn, what kid! To be fair - having time and access to computer between the ages of 9-15 is something that I have come to appreciate in my life as well. Even if I didn't understand everything at the time, playing with open-source software, Linux, jailbreaking iDevices etc has definitely formed who I am today.
- ignoramous 4y ago
  Parallels with Blake Ross [0] and Arfa Karim [1] there. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_Ross#Mozilla_and_Firefox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_Ross#Mozilla_and_Firefox [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arfa_Karim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arfa_Karim
  - johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago
    I just read Arfa Karim's wiki page. It was so sad to read such a talent passed away so soon :(
loloquwowndueo 4y ago
Interestingly - Canonical dumped Unity in 2017, Rudra would have been 7 years old then.
deleted 4y ago

ttctciyf 4y ago

IMO, the lasting stability of a UI is a far greater factor in long-term user acceptance, satisfaction and facility than almost any breaking "improvements" that are imposed by developers - c.f. Firefox for a negative example. So, if you want to (re-)introduce a new desktop paradigm, give users a simple mechanism to choose to disagree.

a1369209993 4y ago
> any breaking "improvements" that are imposed by developers - c.f. Firefox for a negative example. Huh? Firefox hasn't released any improvements since 3.6 about a decade ago; I'm pretty sure they're dead.

waingake 4y ago

The amount of hate Unity would get on this website... Hackers gonna hate it seems. It's a shame that Canonical listened. On a positive note I'm very impressed that the reboot is being lead by a such a young developer. Thank you!

rbanffy 4y ago

It feels funny. When Ubuntu moved to the Gnome shell with their customizations, it felt strange for a couple hours, then everything made sense. I completely forgot I am not using Unity on Ubuntu - the icons are where they used to be and that's about what really feels different now from stock Gnome.

Shadonototra 4y ago

Some day i'll sit down and port unity to arch linux, but damn i got too much stuff to do already..

lproven 4y ago
It was done: https://github.com/chenxiaolong/Unity-for-Arch https://github.com/chenxiaolong/Unity-for-Arch I have not tried it, but Rudra Saraswat's new Unity-like desktop, UnityX, is also available in an Arch version: https://9to5linux.com/you-can-now-install-the-unityx-desktop-in-arch-linux-heres-how https://9to5linux.com/you-can-now-install-the-unityx-desktop...
- Shadonototra 4y ago
  Yeap i saw that one, maybe that could be a good starting point As for UnityX, i don't think starting from scratch is wise
  - lproven 4y ago
    > As for UnityX, i don't think starting from scratch is wise TBH, I think I agree with you. There was Unity2D: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity2D https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity2D The source is still around. https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-2d https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-2d It was built against a now-obsolete version of Qt though. (To be fair it was discontinued a decade ago.) I think Qt 4, but I am not sure. I have no clue how much work is involved in changing a Qt4 application so that it uses Qt6. Unity3D was written as a set of plugins for the Compiz window manager, which itself is now discontinued and abandoned by its developer. https://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/sideways/ https://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/sideways/ Which suggest that Unity would now need a total rewrite to use Mutter or something... which is a substantial task. I do not know if this applies to Unity2D.

forgotpwd16 4y ago

Back from the dead as fork. The power of free software.

nothatscool 4y ago

Unity’s global menu system was wonderful and once getting used to how well it used vertical space switching to gnome was like going back 10 years. Seeing multiple empty bars across the screen makes it completely unusable to me not to mention their need to replace simple menus with seemingly random icons scattered everywhere. I’m using kde plasma now with a global menu set up. It’s good but isn’t as hassle free as Unity was. I’m really sad that canonical abandoned Unity. It was so easy to use and was really easy to recommend to people. I think it was a case of an extremely loud minority who weren’t even using it that contributed to canonical abandoning it.

longstation 4y ago
I am same there (using KDE Plasma with global menu). Recently, with VSCode's menu on title bar, it seems to have started a trend doing so. For example, JetBrain's IDEs are also designed that way. I found the term for that, it's called LIM (locally integrated menu). Now, Unity has done that many years ago. If I remember correctly, the behavior was: when maximized, it behaves like a global menu; when not, it's a LIM. Fortunately, there's a PR for implementing such things in KDE Plasma. Here is the discussion [1]. Right now, you can use it, but it probably won't be merged into the main branch soon. PR: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/breeze/-/merge_requests/126 https://invent.kde.org/plasma/breeze/-/merge_requests/126 There's also a KDE theme the PR draws inspiration on (which you can use for KDE now): https://github.com/Zren/material-decoration https://github.com/Zren/material-decoration
- mikewhy 4y ago
  This seems like a weird half-step between "headerbars" / client side decorations / hamburger menus. KDE Maui is going that direction: https://mauikit.org/apps/ https://mauikit.org/apps/ Sadly it just seems to be more like a custom window decoration that only does shadows (no actual title bar) and regular KDE headers, no actual window controls / CSD.
Veliladon 4y ago
From the article: > As a small example, the update makes right-clicking the trashcan in the Launcher to empty it work again, without needing to open the trashcan's own window. I feel like that single line illustrates just how badly GNOME has lost the plot over the last decade.

amelius 4y ago

I still use Gnome metacity flashback because it wastes less screen space and has a nice virtual workspace switcher. I'm less happy with the configuration/tweak tools and the fact that they are only accessible from within the account and the display itself (not easy to administrate for different users). I wish there was someone keeping a list of requirements so that every new WM could avoid mistakes in the previous ones.

Yizahi 4y ago

Is it still lagging on slower machines? I'll keep using XFCE for the time being, like many other in this thread.

superkuh 4y ago

This is great as it's from a third party any not forced on users. Convergence was never a thing and it will never be a thing.

ur-whale 4y ago

Some things ought to be left buried lest they come and haunt you for years to come.

heurisko 4y ago

I loved/love Unity and kept on installing it on my desktops. It's now running on 22.04. Don't see why it needs to be changed. There are so many parts that feel a lot of thought has been spent on them.

marcodiego 4y ago

The best feature from Unity was just tapping alt and easily finding the menu option on the app I was running. This helped a lot with apps that had many or deep menu items like GIMP or LibreOffice. The new policy, however, is for apps to drop menus. I don't think a new incarnation without app developers embracing it would have the same effect. Also, for the sake of maintainability, it would be very good if this was implemented using GNOME extensions.

oldjavacoder 4y ago

Unity was OK once the global menu was disabled. Today I use KDE. It lets me configure it the way I want.

akagusu 4y ago

The feature I really miss from Unity is tap Alt and type for menu options. It was really useful when you didn't remember the menu option you want. Pretty innovative at the time.

cosmiccatnap 4y ago

I have never understood unity. For all it's faults and annoyances I have never once considered gnome, kde, or even cinnamon inferior to unity. People talk about it's consistancy in the comment section but as someone who has had to use different DE varients over the years, any features unity had a claim to fame for were implemented and then superseded by gnome a long time ago.

lproven 4y ago
Many people didn't get it. You are not alone. But I am typing on it right now, and it does a bunch of things better than any other desktop I've tried. The global menu bar is easy and efficient. It reduces onscreen clutter -- an unfocused window simply has no menu bar. If you click on it, it appears in the panel. I have 3 monitors here and each of them has several apps on; this means that for each monitor, there is a separate menu bar, but only when I am using it. (In this respect it is like AmigaOS, not macOS: Mac menus are always visible. AmigaOS ones only on a right-click.) Unity menus appear when the mouse is over the panel; otherwise, I see the current app title, and the window title if it's maximised. In compliant apps, menus are navigable with the keyboard alone, using the same shortcuts as on Windows. This is a win for accessibility. Sadly it's succumbing to bitrot now. With a pointing device, menus are super-easy to hit, because they are on a screen edge. This is called Fitt's Law and it is a law of ergonomics, not some preference. To hit in-window menu bars, you have to aim, and the target is vertically very small, but at least it is wide. With a hamburger menu as in GNOME, Pantheon, and modern KDE, it is a single character cell, hard to hit both vertically and horizontally, and with zero visual clue that it is important. Unlike macOS or AmigaOS, windows are manageable with keyboard shortcuts as well, and again using the same standard keys as on MS Windows. This is a boon for accessibility. If you wish you can have an MS Windows/Motif style window menu, and the buttons are easily rearranged for a Windows-like layout if you wish. The app launcher/switcher is vertical, which is more space-efficient on widescreen displays. MacOS can do this but it's an option; it's the default here. But it's better than the Mac one, because: - it shows how many windows you have open; - it's trivially easy to open a new empty window: middle-click the dock icon. Windows snap like on recent MS Windows, but not on macOS without add-on apps. So we have a happy combination of some of the best Mac, Windows and Amiga features: - a global menu bar, very easy to hit, more space-efficient on small displays and easier to hit on big displays; - keyboard accessibilty, like on Windows but unlike the Mac; - a space-efficient layout for widescreens that exceeds its inspiration; - which is also efficient on large screen and multiscreen layouts; - and a dock that has more utility than the macOS dock. It's a really good combination of the best features from Windows and macOS (and others), plus additional tweaks. Compare to the competition: - KDE, MATE, Cinnamon and LXQt can't handle vertical taskbars properly. KDE doesn't honour Windows keystrokes, and in recent versions is removing the menu bar from apps altogether. (Pictures to illustrate this point: https://imgur.com/gallery/fLeAy https://imgur.com/gallery/fLeAy ) - LXDE does do vertical taskbars and keystrokes, but the layout is rigid and can't easily be customised. - Xfce does vertical taskbars well and honours Windows keystrokes, but can't do a global menu bar. Its customisation is excellent and it's low-resource. - GNOME has its own wholly new set of keystrokes and is conspicuously poor at window management ansd multihead displays. It's not designed for people who do their own window management or want multihead; it's designed for keyboard warriors who want a few full-screen or tiled console windows. It has an empty wasted panel with a few small combined controls that can't be separated. It is poor for keyboard access, and has no menu bars by design. Features are being removed from the file manager. It's bad if you know the dominant platform's keyboard controls. It's bad if you use a screen reader. It's bad if you want rich multihead -- e.g. I can't put the panel on 1 monitor and the dock on another and the virtual-desktop manager on another. Some but not all of these things can be fixed with GNOME extensions but this 100% always breaks on a GNOME version upgrade. Extensions must and can only target specific versions of the desktop. There is no safe mode to load without extensions. Theming has been intentionally removed in version 40+. GNOME CSDs also destroy a hallmark feature of desktop GUIs since the Apple Lisa, which is that almost all human languages and scripts read from top to bottom. So you start at the top with a title, then you read the content, and then at the bottom are the buttons which you use to decide what to do with it: OK, cancel, close, apply, whatever. GNOME inverts this in all its dialog boxes: the main action buttons are at the top, before you've read the content. You must skip them, read down, decide, and then maybe click a button at the bottom and maybe go up to the top and find a button in the title bar. This is not obvious and so designers resort to making that button brightly coloured so it stands out. Unless you are using a non-GNOME non-Gtk app, in which case the buttons will probably be at the bottom, perhaps, maybe. Also, a time-honoured feature of xNix window managers since the early 1990s is that you have a 3-button mouse and can middle-click the title bar to push the window to the back of the Z-stack. GNOME CSDs break this. One of the developers promised me personally that it would not be broken; it was broken anyway. GNOME has new features that its fans love (like the overview, a combined app-search screen and tiled window preview). Non-GNOME fans find this hard to understand or see the appeal. KDE is adding it; other desktops ignore it. Would you like more?

deleted 4y ago

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correct-opinion 4y ago

I have tried and still use different DEs, but for some time now Windows 10 DE is my favourite one. I think all others should just copy it, no need to reinvent the wheel.

hu3 4y ago
Compared to Windows 10, the Windows 11 DE is such a regression imo.
diffeomorphism 4y ago
Anything specifically you like about it? Tiling seems really limited, virtual desktops could still need more work, the search I have basically given up on (though "everything" is a kinda nice app for part of that), volume mixer widget is also very limited (e.g. see ear trumpet as an alternative), file manager still does not have tabs, network settings are convoluted (manual eduroam setup anyone?),... Honestly, whenever I use windows it feels "okay" but I could not point at anything to say "oh, neat".

hatsunearu 4y ago

Good. Unity was the best desktop environment on Linux by a long shot.

tambourine_man 4y ago

Any videos of UnityX in action? Couldn't find anything good

heurisko 4y ago

Does this require a PPA? As the Unity version in the main repositories is still 5.5. https://packages.ubuntu.com/jammy/unity https://packages.ubuntu.com/jammy/unity