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I'm a Unity & Xface (short time) user and honestly I find the latest Unity version to be well suited for my needs&habits but your recommendation made me curios

I'm a Unity & Xface (short time) user and honestly I find the latest Unity version to be well suited for my needs&habits but your recommendation made me curios but not curios enough to wipe out my current (fresh) Unity install in order to try out Gnome. I think I checked Gnome some time in the past and it didn't convince me to stay with it. If you would like to enumerate some of the (newer?) differences and strong points of Gnome over Unity it will be appreciated. Thanks.

CSDude 13y ago
I don't like Unity animations and I want to change it. The only way to do that is to change compiz plugins. However, they always break. Gnome extensions are way easier to install, and even you can code them because it is JS/CSS, for that reason there are so many extensions in extensions.gnome.org .
- leaveyou 13y ago
  For me the Unity animations are the perfect balance between the elegance I notice and appreciate when I'm in "relax" mode and the usability and snappiness I need when I'm in "work" mode shifting between many windows and workspaces. 14.04 snappiness improved noticeably and that's great !
sandGorgon 13y ago
it's mostly the UX - I really like the way Gnome gets out of your way and still is very, very slick. Plus, if you dont like certain things - you can customize it within seconds using extensions.gnome.org (for example - https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/ ) I think all the design decision by Unity are a bit jarring for me - including all the left-window-close-maximize things. BTW, if you follow my script, Unity is not really wiped out, but certain heavy applications (like Nautilus/Gedit) are replaced by lightweight alternatives (like Nemo/Geany). P.S. were you not surprised by the weird way Nautilus groups icons now ?
- girvo 13y ago
  I'm totally with you on most of your post... But how is Gedit "heavy"?
  - johnchristopher 13y ago
    On my atom n280 geany is really snappy while gedit is slow when moving around and bringing out menus.
  - sandGorgon 13y ago
    I'm not sure what was happening, but I used to have many gedit processes running in the background. Geany is much, much lighter for me. Same with Nautilus.
- leaveyou 13y ago
  I noticed Nautilus moved a menu I rarely used from toolbar into the main menu but that does not bother me much (actually "Show hidden files" is more accessible now) and they added back "backspace = up directory" feature which for me is great. I think we are lucky to have so many GUI alternatives while still being able to reuse the best tools GNU/Linux can offer. And what's great is they are evolving even if slowly and backtracking (like backspace in Nautilus :)).
- systematical 13y ago
  Agreed. It gets out of your way and looks good.
onli 13y ago
You don't need to wipe anything. Just install ubuntu-gnome-desktop and select gnome 3 on login.
- leaveyou 13y ago
  I tried that some time ago with 13.10 & xface-desktop and I ended up with some weird mix of the two (randomly some parts from unity and some fonts and menus + shutdwon splash screen definitely from xface). And I was not able to totally remove the xface packages from unity again. So I'm quite reluctant now :).
  - onli 13y ago
    Granted, that concern is valid. Just let me note that it is normally not that difficult to reconfigure unity to use its own designs everywhere, but I think as well that it is not particularly nice that this is necessary.

CSDude 13y ago

I don't like Unity animations and I want to change it. The only way to do that is to change compiz plugins. However, they always break. Gnome extensions are way easier to install, and even you can code them because it is JS/CSS, for that reason there are so many extensions in extensions.gnome.org .

leaveyou 13y ago
For me the Unity animations are the perfect balance between the elegance I notice and appreciate when I'm in "relax" mode and the usability and snappiness I need when I'm in "work" mode shifting between many windows and workspaces. 14.04 snappiness improved noticeably and that's great !

sandGorgon 13y ago

it's mostly the UX - I really like the way Gnome gets out of your way and still is very, very slick. Plus, if you dont like certain things - you can customize it within seconds using extensions.gnome.org (for example - https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/ ) I think all the design decision by Unity are a bit jarring for me - including all the left-window-close-maximize things. BTW, if you follow my script, Unity is not really wiped out, but certain heavy applications (like Nautilus/Gedit) are replaced by lightweight alternatives (like Nemo/Geany). P.S. were you not surprised by the weird way Nautilus groups icons now ?

girvo 13y ago
I'm totally with you on most of your post... But how is Gedit "heavy"?
- johnchristopher 13y ago
  On my atom n280 geany is really snappy while gedit is slow when moving around and bringing out menus.
- sandGorgon 13y ago
  I'm not sure what was happening, but I used to have many gedit processes running in the background. Geany is much, much lighter for me. Same with Nautilus.
leaveyou 13y ago
I noticed Nautilus moved a menu I rarely used from toolbar into the main menu but that does not bother me much (actually "Show hidden files" is more accessible now) and they added back "backspace = up directory" feature which for me is great. I think we are lucky to have so many GUI alternatives while still being able to reuse the best tools GNU/Linux can offer. And what's great is they are evolving even if slowly and backtracking (like backspace in Nautilus :)).
systematical 13y ago
Agreed. It gets out of your way and looks good.

onli 13y ago

You don't need to wipe anything. Just install ubuntu-gnome-desktop and select gnome 3 on login.

leaveyou 13y ago
I tried that some time ago with 13.10 & xface-desktop and I ended up with some weird mix of the two (randomly some parts from unity and some fonts and menus + shutdwon splash screen definitely from xface). And I was not able to totally remove the xface packages from unity again. So I'm quite reluctant now :).
- onli 13y ago
  Granted, that concern is valid. Just let me note that it is normally not that difficult to reconfigure unity to use its own designs everywhere, but I think as well that it is not particularly nice that this is necessary.