5 ms·

The black font over the grey window. The buttons with the cartoon icons. The hideous tray icons. Sheer ugliness. I can't believe I'm saying this, but Unity 7

by mikevm 12y ago

The black font over the grey window. The buttons with the cartoon icons. The hideous tray icons. Sheer ugliness. I can't believe I'm saying this, but Unity 7 is the most polished looking Linux desktop.

KerrickStaley 12y ago
Have you tried GNOME 3?
- mikevm 12y ago
  Not yet. Is it worth it?
  - miloshadzic 12y ago
    It is the most polished Linux desktop IMO.
    - Arnor 12y ago
      I thought Gnome 3 wasted a lot of screen real estate. I recently tried going back to XFCE and found I missed Unity. They dragged me kicking and screaming, but I've come to like it afterall.
      - rthomas6 12y ago
        Have you tried Cinnamon? It also uses gtk3 but it's a more traditional layout. Cinnamon desktop is my favorite out of the desktops I've tried.
      - miloshadzic 12y ago
        Probably all of the options waste a lot of screen by default. Elementary would be an exception. I was thinking more about just general polish.
      - andor 12y ago
        I thought Gnome 3 wasted a lot of screen real estate Fonts are quite large by default. I usually set the font scaling factor to 0.9 with gnome-tweak-tool, this also reduces the size of the top panel. Since 3.10, the tendency for apps is to save space by placing buttons directly in the window title bars. For example, this is what Nautilus looks like in 3.12: http://imgur.com/3a4zIfQ http://imgur.com/3a4zIfQ
ossreality 12y ago
I love KDE. They've completely dropped the ball so far in ditching their design baggage and starting fresh. Meanwhile, everything in GNOME 3 looks great out of the box and is just smooth and slick. But I hate client side decorations and GTK+. Come on KDE devs, this is a steal.
asolove 12y ago
You forgot to mention the blue shadow on the active window.
- scrollaway 12y ago
  What about it? Go in the settings and change it to vermillion-fuchsia with a hint of magenta if you so please. I'd like to know what's wrong with a blue shadow that indicates an active window.
  - lucisferre 12y ago
    I'll bite. It's completely over the top, looks like a radioactive comic book character.
    - scrollaway 12y ago
      It's useful. It displays what window is focused. It's not just there to look pretty, it's also functional.
      - lucisferre 12y ago
        Except it isn't pretty it's actually horrendous. Function and form are equals.
- nly 12y ago
  That's current with KDE 4.1x as well, with the Oxygen theme. Generally KDE looks a lot better with desktop effects enabled. All the gradients and halos make sense with transparency.
samyxp17 12y ago
Pretty hard to believe that this is the best that the KDE Visual Design Team - http://vdesign.kde.org/index.html http://vdesign.kde.org/index.html could come up with. Are they even trying hard enough ? This is 2014, the post PC era and they are delivering something that looks like windows 95. UX innovation == O. Boring, lame. Window 8 was clearly a mess but at least Microsoft is trying something.
- Spittie 12y ago
  Ignore everything that's not the wallpaper or the taskbar, those are the only items that got touched by the KDE VDT for now. The Windows are still using the old Oxygen theme. You can see some of the work going on in the widget/decorator theme in some blog posts of the VDT: http://wheeldesign.blogspot.se/2014/05/monday-report-14-lazyit-edition.html http://wheeldesign.blogspot.se/2014/05/monday-report-14-lazy... http://wheeldesign.blogspot.se/2014/04/monday-report-12-amazement.html http://wheeldesign.blogspot.se/2014/04/monday-report-12-amaz... http://wheeldesign.blogspot.se/2014/04/monday-report-11-go-time.html http://wheeldesign.blogspot.se/2014/04/monday-report-11-go-t...
  - pestaa 12y ago
    Do they have an ETA on these upgrades? Seems I can't find it in these reports.
    - Spittie 12y ago
      No ETA, as far as I know. I think the plan is to ship it with the second release of KDE5, but it's information gathered from the forum, not official words.
  - dvirsky 12y ago
    Awesome! That theme looks like a huge step forward. Overall KDE still feels a bit cluttered to me, but at least that clutter won't be so ugly anymore soon!
- JasonFruit 12y ago
  Do we need UX innovation? Whenever I hear about something lacking "UX innovation", the specifics just point out where it's ugly. I'd like to know what the problems are that you'd like to have solved; I've been using KDE for the last several months, and my experience as a user has been excellent.
rthomas6 12y ago
Cinnamon for me. It's a gtk3 desktop, but I can actually figure out how to do things in it.
- collyw 12y ago
  Cinnamon is nice, but it had a habit of chewing up a load of CPU for no apparent reason on my machines. XFCE is fast, easy and stable, and doesn't try to do anything too fancy.
scrollaway 12y ago
> I can't believe I'm saying this, but Unity 7 is the most polished looking Linux desktop. And I can't believe I'm saying this on hacker news but there is a difference between "polished" and "subjectively ugly". What's wrong with the "cartoon icons"? They look like Windows 7 icons. You know Windows 7, right? A lot of people called it "Microsoft's most polished desktop ever".
- jbeja 12y ago
  Yeah..those people are not me and probaly anyone i know, so don't even care.
  - mwfunk 12y ago
    The point is that this confuses a purely subjective statement that is more about the observer than the observed (such as, "I don't like the style of the icons"), with an attempted objective statement (such as, "KDE is not polished") which is supposed to be purely about the thing being discussed rather than the tastes of person making the comment. AFAICT this is at the root of pretty much all pointless arguments about anything remotely technical on the Internet. Put another way, if X is designed to do Y, you can't say "X sucks" just because Y isn't interesting to you. You might say, "X is a bad implementation of Y". You might say, "I don't like Y therefore I don't use X". You might discuss whether or not Y is a valid goal, or whether or not X does a good job of achieving Y, but any serious discussion about anything requires that everyone involved make an effort to recognize that X and Y are two completely different things. The key here is "serious discussion". If people don't want to seriously discuss this, then by all means just post opinions about whether or not something is good at what it does based on how well it matches up with your particular tastes and requirements. But the whole point of HN ought to be that everyone makes at least a token effort to seriously discuss this stuff. You can go anywhere if you just want to have conversations about what sucks and what rules and leave it at that.
    - jbeja 12y ago
      You draw a lot a words out my comment just for the sake of comment something that you got on your mind even before i commented on this thread. Regardless i am mostly agree with you. But i don't have the energy nor mood to discuss anything that i am not even involve with, and there is nothing wrong to feel that way.IMHO,if you truly want to bring a meaningful discussion go to the source of this project and with the poeople that are interested on working on it, instead something so ephimeral like this thread.
sixothree 12y ago
I really do like Unity, but I just can't stand the default choice of colors; and finding a good scheme seems difficult for me.
donniezazen 12y ago
KDE is an enormously big project. There is only one theme Oxygen that is feature full. It is a humongous task to make every element of it beautiful and it won't happen without your help.
dscrd 12y ago
When in actuality the most polished Linux desktop is the ones that give you a simplicity experience unmatched by the competition. I would look for awesome and i3. If only somebody made one of these things easier to configure, that'd be the sweet spot.

by mikevm 12y ago

KerrickStaley 12y ago

Have you tried GNOME 3?

mikevm 12y ago
Not yet. Is it worth it?
- miloshadzic 12y ago
  It is the most polished Linux desktop IMO.
  - Arnor 12y ago
    I thought Gnome 3 wasted a lot of screen real estate. I recently tried going back to XFCE and found I missed Unity. They dragged me kicking and screaming, but I've come to like it afterall.
    - rthomas6 12y ago
      Have you tried Cinnamon? It also uses gtk3 but it's a more traditional layout. Cinnamon desktop is my favorite out of the desktops I've tried.
    - miloshadzic 12y ago
      Probably all of the options waste a lot of screen by default. Elementary would be an exception. I was thinking more about just general polish.
    - andor 12y ago
      I thought Gnome 3 wasted a lot of screen real estate Fonts are quite large by default. I usually set the font scaling factor to 0.9 with gnome-tweak-tool, this also reduces the size of the top panel. Since 3.10, the tendency for apps is to save space by placing buttons directly in the window title bars. For example, this is what Nautilus looks like in 3.12: http://imgur.com/3a4zIfQ http://imgur.com/3a4zIfQ

ossreality 12y ago

I love KDE. They've completely dropped the ball so far in ditching their design baggage and starting fresh. Meanwhile, everything in GNOME 3 looks great out of the box and is just smooth and slick. But I hate client side decorations and GTK+. Come on KDE devs, this is a steal.

asolove 12y ago

You forgot to mention the blue shadow on the active window.

scrollaway 12y ago
What about it? Go in the settings and change it to vermillion-fuchsia with a hint of magenta if you so please. I'd like to know what's wrong with a blue shadow that indicates an active window.
- lucisferre 12y ago
  I'll bite. It's completely over the top, looks like a radioactive comic book character.
  - scrollaway 12y ago
    It's useful. It displays what window is focused. It's not just there to look pretty, it's also functional.
    - lucisferre 12y ago
      Except it isn't pretty it's actually horrendous. Function and form are equals.
nly 12y ago
That's current with KDE 4.1x as well, with the Oxygen theme. Generally KDE looks a lot better with desktop effects enabled. All the gradients and halos make sense with transparency.

samyxp17 12y ago

Pretty hard to believe that this is the best that the KDE Visual Design Team - http://vdesign.kde.org/index.html http://vdesign.kde.org/index.html could come up with. Are they even trying hard enough ? This is 2014, the post PC era and they are delivering something that looks like windows 95. UX innovation == O. Boring, lame. Window 8 was clearly a mess but at least Microsoft is trying something.

Spittie 12y ago
Ignore everything that's not the wallpaper or the taskbar, those are the only items that got touched by the KDE VDT for now. The Windows are still using the old Oxygen theme. You can see some of the work going on in the widget/decorator theme in some blog posts of the VDT: http://wheeldesign.blogspot.se/2014/05/monday-report-14-lazyit-edition.html http://wheeldesign.blogspot.se/2014/05/monday-report-14-lazy... http://wheeldesign.blogspot.se/2014/04/monday-report-12-amazement.html http://wheeldesign.blogspot.se/2014/04/monday-report-12-amaz... http://wheeldesign.blogspot.se/2014/04/monday-report-11-go-time.html http://wheeldesign.blogspot.se/2014/04/monday-report-11-go-t...
- pestaa 12y ago
  Do they have an ETA on these upgrades? Seems I can't find it in these reports.
  - Spittie 12y ago
    No ETA, as far as I know. I think the plan is to ship it with the second release of KDE5, but it's information gathered from the forum, not official words.
- dvirsky 12y ago
  Awesome! That theme looks like a huge step forward. Overall KDE still feels a bit cluttered to me, but at least that clutter won't be so ugly anymore soon!
JasonFruit 12y ago
Do we need UX innovation? Whenever I hear about something lacking "UX innovation", the specifics just point out where it's ugly. I'd like to know what the problems are that you'd like to have solved; I've been using KDE for the last several months, and my experience as a user has been excellent.

rthomas6 12y ago

Cinnamon for me. It's a gtk3 desktop, but I can actually figure out how to do things in it.

collyw 12y ago
Cinnamon is nice, but it had a habit of chewing up a load of CPU for no apparent reason on my machines. XFCE is fast, easy and stable, and doesn't try to do anything too fancy.

scrollaway 12y ago

> I can't believe I'm saying this, but Unity 7 is the most polished looking Linux desktop. And I can't believe I'm saying this on hacker news but there is a difference between "polished" and "subjectively ugly". What's wrong with the "cartoon icons"? They look like Windows 7 icons. You know Windows 7, right? A lot of people called it "Microsoft's most polished desktop ever".

jbeja 12y ago
Yeah..those people are not me and probaly anyone i know, so don't even care.
- mwfunk 12y ago
  The point is that this confuses a purely subjective statement that is more about the observer than the observed (such as, "I don't like the style of the icons"), with an attempted objective statement (such as, "KDE is not polished") which is supposed to be purely about the thing being discussed rather than the tastes of person making the comment. AFAICT this is at the root of pretty much all pointless arguments about anything remotely technical on the Internet. Put another way, if X is designed to do Y, you can't say "X sucks" just because Y isn't interesting to you. You might say, "X is a bad implementation of Y". You might say, "I don't like Y therefore I don't use X". You might discuss whether or not Y is a valid goal, or whether or not X does a good job of achieving Y, but any serious discussion about anything requires that everyone involved make an effort to recognize that X and Y are two completely different things. The key here is "serious discussion". If people don't want to seriously discuss this, then by all means just post opinions about whether or not something is good at what it does based on how well it matches up with your particular tastes and requirements. But the whole point of HN ought to be that everyone makes at least a token effort to seriously discuss this stuff. You can go anywhere if you just want to have conversations about what sucks and what rules and leave it at that.
  - jbeja 12y ago
    You draw a lot a words out my comment just for the sake of comment something that you got on your mind even before i commented on this thread. Regardless i am mostly agree with you. But i don't have the energy nor mood to discuss anything that i am not even involve with, and there is nothing wrong to feel that way.IMHO,if you truly want to bring a meaningful discussion go to the source of this project and with the poeople that are interested on working on it, instead something so ephimeral like this thread.

sixothree 12y ago

I really do like Unity, but I just can't stand the default choice of colors; and finding a good scheme seems difficult for me.

donniezazen 12y ago

KDE is an enormously big project. There is only one theme Oxygen that is feature full. It is a humongous task to make every element of it beautiful and it won't happen without your help.

dscrd 12y ago

When in actuality the most polished Linux desktop is the ones that give you a simplicity experience unmatched by the competition. I would look for awesome and i3. If only somebody made one of these things easier to configure, that'd be the sweet spot.