5 ms·

The thing is, Unity was great as a UI even on desktop. The main issue was poor performance early on.

by CarVac 9mo ago

shevy-java 9mo ago
I found it was horrible. It is similar to GNOME here - a design for tablets and smartphones. It simply does not work on the desktop computer.
- byproxy 9mo ago
  I use standard GNOME as my desktop environment and nothing about it feels like it was designed for tablets and/or smartphones. Not that it isn’t capable of being used as such, but my desktop usage doesn’t indicate that tablet/smartphone use-cases were the primary goal. Is GNOME even in wide use for those contexts?
  - abacadaba 9mo ago
    ya i was a GNOME hater for a long time after the GNOME 3 transition, switched between Mate and KDE for years. But gave up on those due to persistent video instability and went to vanilla Ubuntu GNOME and it's actually pretty nice. Not sure if it was good originally but I actually prefer it now.
    - tombert 9mo ago
      In a bit of fairness to the haters, Gnome 3 used to have a lot of graphical glitches and was unstable in a lot of its early iterations, but I broadly agree with your characterization. I think if you actually give modern Gnome a chance (and actually make an attempt to learn it), it's actually a pretty slick desktop.
      - cwillu 9mo ago
        Years of fighting to restore basic features was funny the first time, but gnome 3 was not the first time; I do not blame anyone for not trusting that gnome won't pull the rug again, and soon.
- tombert 9mo ago
  I disagree with this characterization. I don't run Gnome now (since I have more fun hacking on Sway), but I really don't think that the characterization of it being a "tablet desktop" is actually very fair. I found Gnome to be very productive, and actually extremely keyboard focused. Outside of a tiling window manager like Sway or i3, I actually have found it more keyboard-centric than any other desktop I've used. The reason I am harping on keyboard is because to me the keyboard is the signature differentiator between "desktop" and "tablet". I feel like everyone hated on Gnome because it was different. They tried it for ten minutes, didn't bother trying to actually learn how to use it, declared it as "shit", and moved on. I was one of those people. It wasn't until I decided to stick with Gnome for a few weeks (using the Antergos distro of Arch) that I came around, and now I find it to be the most productive of the "normie" desktops on Linux.
  - 3form 9mo ago
    > I feel like everyone hated on Gnome because it was different. They tried it for ten minutes, didn't bother trying to actually learn how to use it, declared it as "shit", and moved on Anecdote time. I was using GNOME for a substantial amount of time, despite all the issues that it was giving me - the regressions, removing functionality, breaking extensions every so often; but the final straw that broke the camel's back was a tablet thing. At some point I think the ability to resize the left panel in Nautilus went away? Or maybe was never there to begin with. In any case, I found a discussion about the exact issue where the outlook was that resizing the left panel will not be added, as there's no way to signal the ability to resize it on touch screens. At this point I decided that enough is enough and moved to KDE.
    - tombert 9mo ago
      You're not the people I have an issue with, sorry for the ambiguous use of the word "everyone" there. If you gave it the good college try and made an effort to actually learn how to use it and came around not liking it, then that's totally fine. It just didn't gel with you and that's ok. > outlook was that resizing the left panel will not be added, as there's no way to signal the ability to resize it on touch screens. Interesting. I hadn't heard that; maybe tablets are holding back Gnome a bit, though I still think it's fine as a desktop overall.
- dingi 9mo ago
  Vanilla Gnome user here. Gnome may look like it was designed for tablets but it has a keyboard shortcut for basically anything. So you don't do much of point and clicks if you know Gnome. You can but you don't have to. It just gets out of your way as they say.
marssaxman 9mo ago
It really was! I have never even used a tablet, but I was disappointed when they dropped Unity and went back to the old way. But I was never a Windows user, either, and I've never held the idea that there is one normal and right way to do a computer interface, so I think I was more open to it than many people are.
- anonymouskimmer 9mo ago
  I was also disappointed that they dropped Unity. I stayed on a workable Unity install on 2020.05 LTS for as long as possible, then switched to 2024.05 LTS, at which point Unity, for some reason, no longer functioned (even though I was using the Ubuntu Unity flavor). Tried Gnome for a while but what ultimately lost me was the notifications. To close out a notification without switching focus I had to, very carefully, click right on the X in the upper right corner. Otherwise it would activate the notification and switch focus. I've got a workable setup with XFCE4, the whisker menu bound to the super key, a few panel plugins to make a maximized app have the same behavior as they did in Unity, and the Plank docking program (along with a brief shell script bound to the dock that kills and relaunches Plank when it starts moving out of place). The notifications work the same as they did on Unity - clicking on them dismisses them unless you click on the "activate" button to switch focus.
  - raffraffraff 9mo ago
    Resizing windows on xfce (most themes) is next to impossible though. You have about a pixel sized border to grab. I used xfce since Unity came out. Switched to KDE Plasma about 2 years ago. Plasma is the most "sane" out of the DEs right no IMO. Not perfect by any means but good enough.
drdec 9mo ago
To me, the killer feature of Unity was the searchable application menus. Wish that was still a thing
- fao_ 9mo ago
  KDE supports this! It's called the "global menu", and has search built in. GTK app support is iffy, though
  - dualogy 9mo ago
    Since I found with searchable app menus / start menus that I don't ever navigate through menus but just start typing, I ditched the menu entirely and have KRunner bound to the Win key. Not only is it fine with any desktop app GTK or not (that packagers have ensured will install with its FreeDesktop metadata file or some such), it supports all the enabled KDE Search plugins. So I don't ever open a calc app again, either..
    - xenonite 9mo ago
      Sorry but no, the parent commenters looked for a global menu within an application (File -> Open, File -> Save, etc.) by the way, on macOS the global menu is searchable, too. Shortcut is Command+Shift+/
      - deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
      - fao_ 9mo ago
        > Sorry but no, the parent commenters looked for a global menu within an application (File -> Open, File -> Save, etc.) KDE has such a feature, and yes "Global Menu" is the term for the application menu being pulled into system dock https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/merge_requests/134 https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/merge_reque...
- Qem 9mo ago

The thing is, Unity was great as a UI even on desktop. The main issue was poor performance early on.

by CarVac 9mo ago

The thing is, Unity was great as a UI even on desktop. The main issue was poor performance early on.

I found it was horrible. It is similar to GNOME here - a design for tablets and smartphones. It simply does not work on the desktop computer.

byproxy 9mo ago
I use standard GNOME as my desktop environment and nothing about it feels like it was designed for tablets and/or smartphones. Not that it isn’t capable of being used as such, but my desktop usage doesn’t indicate that tablet/smartphone use-cases were the primary goal. Is GNOME even in wide use for those contexts?
- abacadaba 9mo ago
  ya i was a GNOME hater for a long time after the GNOME 3 transition, switched between Mate and KDE for years. But gave up on those due to persistent video instability and went to vanilla Ubuntu GNOME and it's actually pretty nice. Not sure if it was good originally but I actually prefer it now.
  - tombert 9mo ago
    In a bit of fairness to the haters, Gnome 3 used to have a lot of graphical glitches and was unstable in a lot of its early iterations, but I broadly agree with your characterization. I think if you actually give modern Gnome a chance (and actually make an attempt to learn it), it's actually a pretty slick desktop.
    - cwillu 9mo ago
      Years of fighting to restore basic features was funny the first time, but gnome 3 was not the first time; I do not blame anyone for not trusting that gnome won't pull the rug again, and soon.
tombert 9mo ago
I disagree with this characterization. I don't run Gnome now (since I have more fun hacking on Sway), but I really don't think that the characterization of it being a "tablet desktop" is actually very fair. I found Gnome to be very productive, and actually extremely keyboard focused. Outside of a tiling window manager like Sway or i3, I actually have found it more keyboard-centric than any other desktop I've used. The reason I am harping on keyboard is because to me the keyboard is the signature differentiator between "desktop" and "tablet". I feel like everyone hated on Gnome because it was different. They tried it for ten minutes, didn't bother trying to actually learn how to use it, declared it as "shit", and moved on. I was one of those people. It wasn't until I decided to stick with Gnome for a few weeks (using the Antergos distro of Arch) that I came around, and now I find it to be the most productive of the "normie" desktops on Linux.
- 3form 9mo ago
  > I feel like everyone hated on Gnome because it was different. They tried it for ten minutes, didn't bother trying to actually learn how to use it, declared it as "shit", and moved on Anecdote time. I was using GNOME for a substantial amount of time, despite all the issues that it was giving me - the regressions, removing functionality, breaking extensions every so often; but the final straw that broke the camel's back was a tablet thing. At some point I think the ability to resize the left panel in Nautilus went away? Or maybe was never there to begin with. In any case, I found a discussion about the exact issue where the outlook was that resizing the left panel will not be added, as there's no way to signal the ability to resize it on touch screens. At this point I decided that enough is enough and moved to KDE.
  - tombert 9mo ago
    You're not the people I have an issue with, sorry for the ambiguous use of the word "everyone" there. If you gave it the good college try and made an effort to actually learn how to use it and came around not liking it, then that's totally fine. It just didn't gel with you and that's ok. > outlook was that resizing the left panel will not be added, as there's no way to signal the ability to resize it on touch screens. Interesting. I hadn't heard that; maybe tablets are holding back Gnome a bit, though I still think it's fine as a desktop overall.
dingi 9mo ago
Vanilla Gnome user here. Gnome may look like it was designed for tablets but it has a keyboard shortcut for basically anything. So you don't do much of point and clicks if you know Gnome. You can but you don't have to. It just gets out of your way as they say.

marssaxman 9mo ago

It really was! I have never even used a tablet, but I was disappointed when they dropped Unity and went back to the old way. But I was never a Windows user, either, and I've never held the idea that there is one normal and right way to do a computer interface, so I think I was more open to it than many people are.

anonymouskimmer 9mo ago
I was also disappointed that they dropped Unity. I stayed on a workable Unity install on 2020.05 LTS for as long as possible, then switched to 2024.05 LTS, at which point Unity, for some reason, no longer functioned (even though I was using the Ubuntu Unity flavor). Tried Gnome for a while but what ultimately lost me was the notifications. To close out a notification without switching focus I had to, very carefully, click right on the X in the upper right corner. Otherwise it would activate the notification and switch focus. I've got a workable setup with XFCE4, the whisker menu bound to the super key, a few panel plugins to make a maximized app have the same behavior as they did in Unity, and the Plank docking program (along with a brief shell script bound to the dock that kills and relaunches Plank when it starts moving out of place). The notifications work the same as they did on Unity - clicking on them dismisses them unless you click on the "activate" button to switch focus.
- raffraffraff 9mo ago
  Resizing windows on xfce (most themes) is next to impossible though. You have about a pixel sized border to grab. I used xfce since Unity came out. Switched to KDE Plasma about 2 years ago. Plasma is the most "sane" out of the DEs right no IMO. Not perfect by any means but good enough.

drdec 9mo ago

To me, the killer feature of Unity was the searchable application menus. Wish that was still a thing

fao_ 9mo ago
KDE supports this! It's called the "global menu", and has search built in. GTK app support is iffy, though
- dualogy 9mo ago
  Since I found with searchable app menus / start menus that I don't ever navigate through menus but just start typing, I ditched the menu entirely and have KRunner bound to the Win key. Not only is it fine with any desktop app GTK or not (that packagers have ensured will install with its FreeDesktop metadata file or some such), it supports all the enabled KDE Search plugins. So I don't ever open a calc app again, either..
  - xenonite 9mo ago
    Sorry but no, the parent commenters looked for a global menu within an application (File -> Open, File -> Save, etc.) by the way, on macOS the global menu is searchable, too. Shortcut is Command+Shift+/
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    - fao_ 9mo ago
      > Sorry but no, the parent commenters looked for a global menu within an application (File -> Open, File -> Save, etc.) KDE has such a feature, and yes "Global Menu" is the term for the application menu being pulled into system dock https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/merge_requests/134 https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/merge_reque...
Qem 9mo ago