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How can you live with having to search everything? Gnome-shell gives you a nice list of all your applications and you can switch between categories. The biggest

How can you live with having to search everything? Gnome-shell gives you a nice list of all your applications and you can switch between categories. The biggest bug since the introduction of Unity besides trying hard to make you remember application names is that F1 no longer opens help. The question mark symbol has also disappeared from the top panel. After grudgingly Googling how to use Unity, I found the steps to list applications and it's absolutely horrible. Here's how: Right-click the Ubuntu logo* Choose applications Click "Filter results" The buttons presented are individual toggle-buttons, not the usual switch buttons. Turn the next category on, turn the previous category off. Madness. And on top of everything that's badly designed, it's also unresponsive. A lot of clicks are missed and this is especially noticeable with the workspace switcher. For now, there's the option of installing gnome-session-fallback. It introduces a "GNOME classic (no effects)" option in LightDM which works well and has the old, functional workspace switcher. Still no F1 for help, but it sits under Applications > Accessories so it's relatively discoverable. The panels can be customised by holding down ALT+Super while right-clicking them (thank you again, Google). Sadly, Gnome is deprecating the fallback session in favor of a software rasteriser ("llvmpipe") to run Gnome-shell where a hardware rasteriser is unavailable. The next release will also see the lock screen moved into the shell so it'll look pretty, but it better be the most stable release they've ever had since the last 2.x. Sorry to be cynical, but I doubt it. *: This doesn't work in Unity 2D. Tough.

smacktoward 14y ago
How can you live with having to search everything? (Disclosure: satisfied Unity user here) If you interact with the machine primarily through the keyboard, "search everything" is a plus, not a minus. It means you can easily launch new applications without having to take your hand off the KB and move it over to the mouse. Launching applications is much faster for me in Unity than it was in GNOME 2.x, simply because typing ALT plus the first three characters of the application name (or a generally descriptive word: ALT + "music" finds Rhythmbox, for instance) is faster than rooting around a multi-level menu. After grudgingly Googling how to use Unity, I found the steps to list applications and it's absolutely horrible This is because "listing applications" in Unity is a failure case. Users don't want to list applications; they want to launch the one application they were looking for. The point of Unity's launcher is to make digging through a long list of apps to find the one you wanted obsolete.
- brokenparser 14y ago
  So it takes Gnome Do and makes it more complex? I think that would make Ubuntu quite unique and thus back it into a corner they invented. It's not like the GUI is a new concept these days, designs have long been ironed out. Old Gnome was fine and I would've settled for something that resembles Android 3.0+, sorry to rant. "listing applications" in Unity is a failure case My desktop takes the logical next step, before I moved back to gnome-panel I simply dragged the applications I used out of the overlay thing onto the desktop. I keep the icons organised, so they're always in the same place. Anecdotal observations from "normal" people show that they use their Windows Vista/7 desktops much the same way, not even bothering with the start menu except to shut down. They get grumpy whenever anything is different at all in which icons are shown and in what order. Their allegations that I broke something weeks after I accidentally left, say, a copy of unzip on their desktop is of course laughable at best. But the concept of having shortcuts on the desktop, certainly not. Makes me wonder why Unity bothers with a separate desktop at all, it could benefit from the screen real estate when that overlay screen sits at the bottom of the stack as the root window. I loved the netbook-launcher it grew out of, too bad it was discontinued. Users don't want to list applications; they want to launch the one application they were looking for The Gnome consensus used to be that users don't care which application they're using, they just want to carry out a certain task. Which is why they all have boring names such as "document viewer" and "web browser". How is a user going to know to find evince and epiphany or firefox? In Unity, search quickly breaks because of this. If you know the name of the application, it can find it. But if you don't, it doesn't map keywords to application names. It would be impossible to maintain appropriate keywords for all applications in Debian (and by extension, Ubuntu) so it doesn't. Fortunately, all the current desktops run a terminal by pressing CTRL+ALT+T. It's the one failure mode they all support equally well, supports tab completion and isn't limited to applications with a .desktop file. This is what I do for most tasks besides web browsing, so even after all these years of developing desktop environments the main purpose is still to run multiple terminals side by side. If only twm had niceties such as network manager and removable media.
  - smacktoward 14y ago
    So it takes Gnome Do and makes it more complex? No. I had doubts last year about the wisdom of Canonical starting from scratch with Unity rather than just building on GNOME Do (see http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2011/04/ubuntu-11-04-everything-old-is-new-again/ http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2011/04/ubuntu-11-04-everything-ol...), but the last couple of releases have put my doubts to rest. Unity is everything GNOME Do is/was, but now with the possibility to extend even further into things like the new HUD (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity/HUD https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity/HUD), which does to application menu bars what Unity does to application lists. They get grumpy whenever anything is different at all in which icons are shown and in what order. Their allegations that I broke something weeks after I accidentally left, say, a copy of unzip on their desktop is of course laughable at best You seem to be under the impression that the Unity desktop can't have icons/files/launchers/etc. on it. It can, mine does. It's accessible via the usual "Desktop" folder in your home directory. If you know the name of the application, it can find it. But if you don't, it doesn't map keywords to application names. It would be impossible to maintain appropriate keywords for all applications in Debian (and by extension, Ubuntu) so it doesn't. You're incorrect here too. Unity does support searching by keywords, and all you need to do to hook into it is create a standard freedesktop.org-style .desktop file for the app (http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/ar01s05.html http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/a...) and fill in the "Keywords" field inside it. Unity will pick up those keywords and use them when searching in the application lens. Most of the commonly used applications already have the most obvious keywords provided for them. (Putting the keywords in the desktop entry file means that Ubuntu/Canonical don't have to maintain a master list of keywords for every application; app developers can just provide relevant keywords for their app in the DE file they ship, and users can tune them if needed just by editing the DE file.) I get the feeling from your complaints that you checked out Unity briefly early in its lifecycle and haven't checked back in on it lately. You should try it again now, you might be pleasantly surprised.
macco 14y ago
For Help press ALT + F1. You can see most shortcuts with holding down the Super-Key for a few seconds.
- brokenparser 14y ago
  Thanks! In gnome-panel, this brings up the left side menu. I'll try the help whenever I'm in Unity again.
- brokenparser 14y ago
  This does not actually work, it merely highlights the Ubuntu button in the dock. According to the shortcuts overview, it's "Open Launcher keyboard navigation mode". I ran unity --reset to make sure it's not just me.

smacktoward 14y ago

How can you live with having to search everything? (Disclosure: satisfied Unity user here) If you interact with the machine primarily through the keyboard, "search everything" is a plus, not a minus. It means you can easily launch new applications without having to take your hand off the KB and move it over to the mouse. Launching applications is much faster for me in Unity than it was in GNOME 2.x, simply because typing ALT plus the first three characters of the application name (or a generally descriptive word: ALT + "music" finds Rhythmbox, for instance) is faster than rooting around a multi-level menu. After grudgingly Googling how to use Unity, I found the steps to list applications and it's absolutely horrible This is because "listing applications" in Unity is a failure case. Users don't want to list applications; they want to launch the one application they were looking for. The point of Unity's launcher is to make digging through a long list of apps to find the one you wanted obsolete.

brokenparser 14y ago
So it takes Gnome Do and makes it more complex? I think that would make Ubuntu quite unique and thus back it into a corner they invented. It's not like the GUI is a new concept these days, designs have long been ironed out. Old Gnome was fine and I would've settled for something that resembles Android 3.0+, sorry to rant. "listing applications" in Unity is a failure case My desktop takes the logical next step, before I moved back to gnome-panel I simply dragged the applications I used out of the overlay thing onto the desktop. I keep the icons organised, so they're always in the same place. Anecdotal observations from "normal" people show that they use their Windows Vista/7 desktops much the same way, not even bothering with the start menu except to shut down. They get grumpy whenever anything is different at all in which icons are shown and in what order. Their allegations that I broke something weeks after I accidentally left, say, a copy of unzip on their desktop is of course laughable at best. But the concept of having shortcuts on the desktop, certainly not. Makes me wonder why Unity bothers with a separate desktop at all, it could benefit from the screen real estate when that overlay screen sits at the bottom of the stack as the root window. I loved the netbook-launcher it grew out of, too bad it was discontinued. Users don't want to list applications; they want to launch the one application they were looking for The Gnome consensus used to be that users don't care which application they're using, they just want to carry out a certain task. Which is why they all have boring names such as "document viewer" and "web browser". How is a user going to know to find evince and epiphany or firefox? In Unity, search quickly breaks because of this. If you know the name of the application, it can find it. But if you don't, it doesn't map keywords to application names. It would be impossible to maintain appropriate keywords for all applications in Debian (and by extension, Ubuntu) so it doesn't. Fortunately, all the current desktops run a terminal by pressing CTRL+ALT+T. It's the one failure mode they all support equally well, supports tab completion and isn't limited to applications with a .desktop file. This is what I do for most tasks besides web browsing, so even after all these years of developing desktop environments the main purpose is still to run multiple terminals side by side. If only twm had niceties such as network manager and removable media.
- smacktoward 14y ago
  So it takes Gnome Do and makes it more complex? No. I had doubts last year about the wisdom of Canonical starting from scratch with Unity rather than just building on GNOME Do (see http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2011/04/ubuntu-11-04-everything-old-is-new-again/ http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2011/04/ubuntu-11-04-everything-ol...), but the last couple of releases have put my doubts to rest. Unity is everything GNOME Do is/was, but now with the possibility to extend even further into things like the new HUD (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity/HUD https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity/HUD), which does to application menu bars what Unity does to application lists. They get grumpy whenever anything is different at all in which icons are shown and in what order. Their allegations that I broke something weeks after I accidentally left, say, a copy of unzip on their desktop is of course laughable at best You seem to be under the impression that the Unity desktop can't have icons/files/launchers/etc. on it. It can, mine does. It's accessible via the usual "Desktop" folder in your home directory. If you know the name of the application, it can find it. But if you don't, it doesn't map keywords to application names. It would be impossible to maintain appropriate keywords for all applications in Debian (and by extension, Ubuntu) so it doesn't. You're incorrect here too. Unity does support searching by keywords, and all you need to do to hook into it is create a standard freedesktop.org-style .desktop file for the app (http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/ar01s05.html http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/a...) and fill in the "Keywords" field inside it. Unity will pick up those keywords and use them when searching in the application lens. Most of the commonly used applications already have the most obvious keywords provided for them. (Putting the keywords in the desktop entry file means that Ubuntu/Canonical don't have to maintain a master list of keywords for every application; app developers can just provide relevant keywords for their app in the DE file they ship, and users can tune them if needed just by editing the DE file.) I get the feeling from your complaints that you checked out Unity briefly early in its lifecycle and haven't checked back in on it lately. You should try it again now, you might be pleasantly surprised.

macco 14y ago

For Help press ALT + F1. You can see most shortcuts with holding down the Super-Key for a few seconds.

brokenparser 14y ago
Thanks! In gnome-panel, this brings up the left side menu. I'll try the help whenever I'm in Unity again.
brokenparser 14y ago
This does not actually work, it merely highlights the Ubuntu button in the dock. According to the shortcuts overview, it's "Open Launcher keyboard navigation mode". I ran unity --reset to make sure it's not just me.