3 ms·

I dislike the dock in unity as well - I find it's too in your face, but I've heard that auto-hide and a few other aspects have been improved in recent versions,

I dislike the dock in unity as well - I find it's too in your face, but I've heard that auto-hide and a few other aspects have been improved in recent versions, so thinking of giving it another go. I do find it all very dark though, and generally preferring Mint.

RyanMcGreal 13y ago
I decided to stop worrying and love the Unity some time between 12.04 and 12.10, and I've gotten quite used to it. I use the Radiance theme, which is brighter and cleaner looking than the default Ambiance theme. (And I have my minimize/maximize/close buttons on the right side - some habits die hard.) I tried Mint but found it clunky and unstable. For a while I used Ubuntu with the gnome-classic desktop, but it got harder to make it work with everything else, which kept changing. I also tried Cinnamon but found it extremely unstable - my desktop would crash routinely. Unity is pretty good and keeps getting better. My other main request would be to make the icons smaller - the smallest default size is 24px. In unrelated news, I was happy to discover after upgrading to 13.04 that my phone, a Galaxy S3 running Android 4.1.1, now auto-mounts into the filesystem via MTP. (It occurs to me that my gratitude for something as basic as plugging a device into USB and having it Just Work may be a warning sign of Stockholm Syndrome. Yet it also occurs to me that I haven't paid a penny for Ubuntu since I first installed version 8.04, so I think on balance that my gratitude is well-placed.)
- bornhuetter 13y ago
  Thanks for the tip on Radiance - I found Ambiance too dark, but Radiance does look nicer (more similar to what I like about Mint). I think I'm going to give 13.04 another try tonight. I used to Ubuntu Tweak to change a few things like making the dock extra small, but that seems to be discontinued. Do you know of any other utility for tweaking Unity (such as moving the buttons to the right side)?
Zigurd 13y ago
It gets better. I had my LXDE phase. Unity is very usable now, and the demos of Unity Touch look usable, too. There is an irony in this: Ubuntu is past the pain-point with most of their users, and is on a conservative trajectory to blending touch with a "traditional" desktop OS. It won't be as "modal" as Windows 8. It will be more evolutionary, and unified. I don't expect the UX to be as clean as an OS and app runtime designed for touch. But it may be a lot less painful transition than Windows 8 is experiencing.

RyanMcGreal 13y ago

I decided to stop worrying and love the Unity some time between 12.04 and 12.10, and I've gotten quite used to it. I use the Radiance theme, which is brighter and cleaner looking than the default Ambiance theme. (And I have my minimize/maximize/close buttons on the right side - some habits die hard.) I tried Mint but found it clunky and unstable. For a while I used Ubuntu with the gnome-classic desktop, but it got harder to make it work with everything else, which kept changing. I also tried Cinnamon but found it extremely unstable - my desktop would crash routinely. Unity is pretty good and keeps getting better. My other main request would be to make the icons smaller - the smallest default size is 24px. In unrelated news, I was happy to discover after upgrading to 13.04 that my phone, a Galaxy S3 running Android 4.1.1, now auto-mounts into the filesystem via MTP. (It occurs to me that my gratitude for something as basic as plugging a device into USB and having it Just Work may be a warning sign of Stockholm Syndrome. Yet it also occurs to me that I haven't paid a penny for Ubuntu since I first installed version 8.04, so I think on balance that my gratitude is well-placed.)

bornhuetter 13y ago
Thanks for the tip on Radiance - I found Ambiance too dark, but Radiance does look nicer (more similar to what I like about Mint). I think I'm going to give 13.04 another try tonight. I used to Ubuntu Tweak to change a few things like making the dock extra small, but that seems to be discontinued. Do you know of any other utility for tweaking Unity (such as moving the buttons to the right side)?

Zigurd 13y ago

It gets better. I had my LXDE phase. Unity is very usable now, and the demos of Unity Touch look usable, too. There is an irony in this: Ubuntu is past the pain-point with most of their users, and is on a conservative trajectory to blending touch with a "traditional" desktop OS. It won't be as "modal" as Windows 8. It will be more evolutionary, and unified. I don't expect the UX to be as clean as an OS and app runtime designed for touch. But it may be a lot less painful transition than Windows 8 is experiencing.