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What I am fascinated is the widespread migration caused by unity. In my circle, users have moved distributions to mint and debian, changed to using twm, dwm and

What I am fascinated is the widespread migration caused by unity. In my circle, users have moved distributions to mint and debian, changed to using twm, dwm and xmonad. The despair at unity was caused by the bugs, and the fact that the ubuntu android distro required a proper screen to be utilised properly. It was not caused by the concept, but the implementation. If the user unfriendliness caused by unity was intended to support smartphones and smaller screen devices, why does the mobile unity require an external screen? Baffling! The user decisions made were relatively permanent. The users who made changes don't seem to be swayed by assertions that more recent versions of ubuntu have better implementations of unity.

zanny 14y ago
I know I am planning on using Unity 12.04 to push desktop Linux on some relatives who still are running XP. Considering getting them over to 7 would be just as much labor and 8 is significantly worse than Unity ever was, now is prime time for switching them off the sinking M$ ship.
res0nat0r 14y ago
Why did you feel forced to switch distros? My company just switched from RHEL to Ubuntu so we developers could have a < 7 year old OS release for our daily desktop use, and Unity was installed by default on our new Ubuntu desktops. I don't like Unity, but I simply replaced it with my two favourite window managers via 'apt-get install fluxbox awesome'. There is no need to replace your whole distro because you don't like the default window manager.
- adgar 14y ago
  > There is no need to replace your whole distro because you don't like the default window manager. It's... a Google thing. I haven't gotten around to planning around Unity yet, but I'm not surprised by this. It's classic Google culture to just throw the baby out with the bathwater and build the damn thing over, (presumedly) better. Funny to see it happen on an individual level!
- jmillikin 14y ago
  Ubuntu packages are extensively modified to work with Unity. Often, the Ubuntu patches cause bugs that are not present in upstream. This is why I have moved my laptop to Debian, and will move my desktop and server when I have the spare time.
- eliasmacpherson 14y ago
  You're right in jumping to the conclusion that I also switched. I didn't feel forced to switch, but I did feel like trying something else out. I can't speak for anyone else's reasoning. I have a perception that if I'm not using the defaults, I'm more likely to run in to problems with more difficult solutions. The other question I asked myself: "If they are going to make changes in this manner, what else will they do?" I figured there'd be less hassle in future with something more stable. I put Debian on out of curiosity as to how different Debian is from Ubuntu. I'd gone with Mint before but the one I got logged me in with no password required, which was a bit unsettling.

zanny 14y ago

I know I am planning on using Unity 12.04 to push desktop Linux on some relatives who still are running XP. Considering getting them over to 7 would be just as much labor and 8 is significantly worse than Unity ever was, now is prime time for switching them off the sinking M$ ship.

res0nat0r 14y ago

Why did you feel forced to switch distros? My company just switched from RHEL to Ubuntu so we developers could have a < 7 year old OS release for our daily desktop use, and Unity was installed by default on our new Ubuntu desktops. I don't like Unity, but I simply replaced it with my two favourite window managers via 'apt-get install fluxbox awesome'. There is no need to replace your whole distro because you don't like the default window manager.

adgar 14y ago
> There is no need to replace your whole distro because you don't like the default window manager. It's... a Google thing. I haven't gotten around to planning around Unity yet, but I'm not surprised by this. It's classic Google culture to just throw the baby out with the bathwater and build the damn thing over, (presumedly) better. Funny to see it happen on an individual level!
jmillikin 14y ago
Ubuntu packages are extensively modified to work with Unity. Often, the Ubuntu patches cause bugs that are not present in upstream. This is why I have moved my laptop to Debian, and will move my desktop and server when I have the spare time.
eliasmacpherson 14y ago
You're right in jumping to the conclusion that I also switched. I didn't feel forced to switch, but I did feel like trying something else out. I can't speak for anyone else's reasoning. I have a perception that if I'm not using the defaults, I'm more likely to run in to problems with more difficult solutions. The other question I asked myself: "If they are going to make changes in this manner, what else will they do?" I figured there'd be less hassle in future with something more stable. I put Debian on out of curiosity as to how different Debian is from Ubuntu. I'd gone with Mint before but the one I got logged me in with no password required, which was a bit unsettling.