
Ubuntu 17.10: Return of the Gnome - hvo
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/ubuntu-17-10-return-of-the-gnome/
======
hristov
This certainly brings back some memories. This is what I wrote in HN when I
first encountered Unity.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2504972](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2504972)

HN tells me this was 2402 days ago. Oh how quickly the kilodays fly by. But I
am glad that after a mere twenty four hundred days Canonical finally listened
to my advice.

I have been using mostly Xubuntu during the unity years so this thing did not
affect me much. So I can look at the unity mistake not with anger but with
interest and curiosity.

And when you look at the whole thing dispassionately and with perspective, you
have to admit that this was not a mistake that Canonical made exclusively. It
was a mistake the entire computing and software industry made. It was one of
those strange turns into dead ends that happen to industries sometimes.

After the first ipad came out, the entire industry was absolutely certain that
the future was tablets. Everyone started changing their user interfaces for
tablets. And they did not care how much their customers complained, they just
forced it down their throats because that was the future darn it.

But it turned out that the tablet future never happened. Even now I had to pay
extra for a touch screen laptop because there was no other choice, when I
"use" the touchscreen option only inadvertently.

The good thing about linux is that they can never railroad you into anything.
So I switched to Xubuntu and that was that.

~~~
jdlyga
The problem is, Gnome 3 is way more of a "tablet" operating system than Unity
turned out to be. I'd take a halfway point between Gnome 3 and MATE.

~~~
ShabbosGoy
I've used Cinnamon, MATE, Gnome 2, and KDE before making the switch to i3. I
highly recommend switching to a tiling WM.

~~~
0xFFC
I am looking for tilling window manager for Wayland. Sadly I couldn't find any
stable one yet. But SwayWM seems promising.

~~~
majewsky
I'm using Sway on my notebook, but I still have Plasma as a fallback. General
window management works reasonably well, but some particular Wayland protocol
extensions are missing (for example, relative pointer motion, without which
games like Minecraft don't work).

~~~
btschaegg
This. It's easy to just hit C-M-F2 and start an Xorg server if necessary. And,
until now, I've had to do that way more often because of bad GUI applications
that ignore the possibility of there being a tiling WM instead of problems
with wayland...

------
ISV_Damocles
Absolutely not for me. When Gnome and Canonical both went crazy (Gnome 2 -> 3
and Unity even existing, respectively) I stayed with Gnome 2 for a while,
switched to Mate for a bit, and eventually found that KDE 4 had settled down
and was just as customizable as KDE 3 was (for my purposes, at least), and
have been using Kubuntu ever since.

I don't mind them experimenting with new ways of doing things at all, I just
really don't understand why this needs to be done in a way that _prevents_
people from doing things the way they've done it before if they decide they
don't like the way you're doing things.

I switched from Konqueror to Dolphin after it handled what I needed. I
switched from Virtual Desktops to "Activities" after it was also good enough
for my needs. I never used widgets in their original usage (placed seemingly
at random on the desktop) but use them inside of the task bar. I use sloppy
focus follow mouse and mouse raise only on titlebar click so I can use
windowed applications in actual nontrivial ways.

It doesn't matter if you glossed over that run-on paragraph above. tl;dr: KDE
can have opinions, so can I. At least KDE respects that.

~~~
chongli
_I don 't mind them experimenting with new ways of doing things at all, I just
really don't understand why this needs to be done in a way that prevents
people from doing things the way they've done it before if they decide they
don't like the way you're doing things._

Same reason it happened with Firefox: trying to attract more users. The
broader you want your user base to be, the less customizable you have to be.
Regular users can't handle heavy customization: it's too complicated and they
freeze up.

Power users interested in extreme customization of their environment will
always be a tiny niche. Add to that the Anna Karenina Principle [0] and it
makes even less sense to try to compete for such users.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle)

~~~
greenhouse_gas
>Same reason it happened with Firefox: trying to attract more users.

The thing is that Linux users are self-selected power users. If you want
something to just do your work, you'll stay with Windows or macOS (or whatever
your computer came with).

And while I don't need the power of i3, I don't see why my desktop can't have
a maximize button

~~~
flukus
> The thing is that Linux users are self-selected power users. If you want
> something to just do your work, you'll stay with Windows or macOS (or
> whatever your computer came with).

Not always, I had my dad using linux for years because he got a new lease of
life out of an old machine and this was a time when windows would get random
malware installed just from regular web browsing. The default solitaire that
came with Kubunutu alone satisfied 90% of his computing needs. The
configurability of KDE was a constant issue though, even when I locked the the
taskbar/desktop he found a way to screw it up.

The problem isn't configurability, just the way it's handled. KDE (at least in
my terribly outdated experience) adds all kinds of options in things like
right click menus or application menus, this confuses and scares ordinary
users. I find the gnome approach of having a dedicated app (tweak tool) for
configuration is much better for ordinary/casual users, it moves all the
clutter to a dedicated place instead of stringing it out everywhere. For power
users there is nothing wrong with putting the config in a dot file or
scripting language.

~~~
dotancohen
I too have installed Kubuntu for many, many people. Literally every week I
would have to reset someone's borked KDE settings because they accidentally
clicked or right clicked or dragged in the wrong place. After install I would
simply ` cp .kde{,.BAK}` and set up SSH to restore it when needed.

For one user I even added `cp .kde{.BAK,}` to their login script. I wish that
I remembered how, actually, because there seems to be only one way to get that
to run before KDE reads it and I can't remember now.

I love configurability and everything from my fountain pen to my car is
heavily modified. But normal people cannot seem to deal with the ability to
modify their surroundings.

~~~
prewett
If accidentally clicking or dragging results in messing up their settings, I'd
say the problem is a brittle user interface, not normal people having problems
configuring their surroundings. If normal people cannot use the user
interface, then the user interface has a design failure ("bug"), by
definition. (Unless the intended audience is not normal people, but if that is
the case for Linux, we shouldn't be installing Linux for normal users.)

~~~
dotancohen
I agree 100%. KDE 4 was terrific, and it came _so close_ to being great for
normal users. But the settings were just too easy to set.

~~~
oblio
What you're saying is actually an age old UI error, related to this:
[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/12/choices/](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/12/choices/)

Search in the page for "half the screen was grey" :)

~~~
dotancohen
I remember that page well. Joel was probably the first "blog".

------
int_19h
For the past, oh, 10 years or so, it feels like every time I try a new release
of one of the prominent Linux DEs, I keep going back to Xfce after a short
while, because it "just works", can be customized exactly how I want it to be,
and doesn't try to break my flow with every major release, because someone in
UX has a new Grand Unifying Theory of What Users Really Want (Even if They
Don't Know It).

~~~
mrweasel
I'm actually somewhat concerned that in the move to Wayland those of us who
just want the window manager, and not a desktop environment will be forgotten.
To me it seems silly to use a lot of processing power on a desktop environment
that want be seen or used most of the time anyway.

Evilwm still seems like the window manager that got thing mostly right to me.
It draws the windows and there's a keyboard short cut for opening an Xterm
(and for moving and resizing the windows), you don't really need much more
than that. Sadly it seem that the focus for the simplest window managers is
tiling, which I also to like.

Hopefully a non-tiling, dead simple window manager for Wayland will appear in
the future.

~~~
munchor
You should see if any of these fits your needs:

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wayland#Window_managers...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wayland#Window_managers_and_desktop_shells)

I too have been longing for an Openbox port for Wayland but have sticked to
Sway in the meanwhile.

------
jimnotgym
I upgraded to 17.10. I use an old small screen Thinkpad and Gnome 3 used the
top third of the screen for menus! I tried all of the plugins to no avail. I
switched back to Unity because I like to see my screen. I hope to see a gnome
3 extension to mimic the unified top bar thing

------
smhg
What I find really useful in (default?) Unity:

* Ctrl + Alt + left/right/up/down to switch workspaces

* Ctrl + Alt + Shift + left/right/up/down to move the current window to a different workspace

* Alt + Left mouse button to drag windows

* Alt + Middle mouse button to resize windows

* Drag a window to the left or right edge to resize it to that half of the screen.

No idea how much of this is Gnome/remains in 17.10. Or how easy it is to set
up. I guess I need to give it a try.

~~~
bipson
How it works on Gnome (since "shell"/3.x IIRC):

* Super + Alt + up/down to switch workspaces

* Super + Alt + Shift + up/down to move the current window to a different workspace

* Super + left click to drag windows

* Super + left/right to resize to half screen

* Super + up/down to maximize/restore

* Drag a window to the left or right edge to resize it to that half of the screen.

hth

~~~
vesak
> * Super + Alt + up/down to switch workspaces

> * Super + Alt + Shift + up/down to move the current window to a different
> workspace

These are pgup/pgdown, I believe?

------
rukittenme
I really like Ubuntu 17.10 sans Ubuntu. I'm running the default gnome-session.
Its fast and Wayland has made Gnome feel really ... fluid? It doesn't _feel_
like a Linux machine anymore. Compositing _feels_ better than a Windows or OSX
machine.

Highly recommended.

------
jdlyga
I'm holding out hope for an Ubuntu 18.04 Unity Remix. Unity 7 just handles so
many things expertly when you compare it side by side with Gnome.

------
wiz21c
FTA : "The last few Ubuntu desktop releases have been about as exciting as
OpenSSH releases"

I felt the same with the last Debian stable. But I was kinda happy about that.
Because it means it's reaching maturity.

~~~
augustl
I wholeheartedly agree. What I really want is a super conservative LTS system
that keeps the core - OS, window manager, file manager, network, etc - on
super stable and old versions, and my apps - Firefox, Emacs, Spotify, ... -
updated to the latest release. I'm tired of "new" desktop environments, and
rewrites that means I'll now have to live with years of bug fixing until I get
a stable system.

I'm hoping that Ubuntu slowly becomes this, especially with the move to the
very stable Gnome 3.

~~~
chrisper
Then use CentOS?

~~~
augustl
I should add that I also want to use the most standardized desktop environment
I can find. Which these days seems to be Win10, macOS, Ubuntu, and maybe a KDE
based one?

My argument is the same as what Linus points out in this rant (5:33):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmHRSeA2c8&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmHRSeA2c8&feature=youtu.be&t=333)

I want life to be easy for app developers, having to target a gazillion
different Linux based platforms kind of sucks.

------
dhbradshaw
I was hesitant to switch from Gnome to Unity. Interestingly, I'm now nervous
to switch back. I guess one grows accustomed to and fond of what one uses.

~~~
jeffnappi
I felt the same way, been along for the ride since Ubuntu 10.04. I just
switched to 17.10 a couple weeks ago and I'd say it's my favorite Linux
desktop I've ever used.

------
make3
"Stagnation had turned Ubuntu into just another distro; now it's interesting
all over again."

Jesus, wtf. I hate popular tech press like this and wired so much

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Yeah, it seems like a stretch to call the biggest distro "just another
distro".

~~~
baybal2
MATE has been by far the biggest distro for last 4 years

~~~
baybal2
Pfff it was MINT, not MATE

~~~
r3bl
Also, no evidence that it was ever the most popular one, other than in
Distrowatch clicks.

~~~
baybal2
I disagree, even without DW, Ubuntu should have an advantage in many many
polls, and in automated measurements. Ubuntu has a non-insubstantial corporate
install base that should've been registered in user agent statistics, while
MINT is a wholly community driven project that don't even have an official
"default" browser.

~~~
r3bl
I think you've misunderstood me. Mint is #1 on Distrowatch. That's pretty much
it. Everything else suggests that Ubuntu is more popular.

So my parent "no evidence other than DW clicks" is aimed at Mint, not Ubuntu.

------
andrewaylett
I don't understand why everyone seems to think Gnome 3 is a tablet UI. I had a
touchscreen laptop for a couple of years and my experience is that it really
isn't.

It's actually not bad as a keyboard-driven UI, though: it's a rare event that
I'll trigger the overlay with the mouse, or even interact with it at all with
the mouse beyond dragging windows into different workspaces or dragging
workspaces around (the latter being the one thing I don't think you can do
with the keyboard).

~~~
leojg
Because of the big toolbar? When I first saw it I assumed it would be mobile
oriented.

------
mpd
I use Ubuntu daily, so I ended up stepping onto this land mine. Overall, I
don't think Gnome is completely unusable, but some little things made me jump
back to Unity (which can be chosen when logging in).

~~~
jdlyga
In 17.10, Unity has better desktop scaling, performs better when doing a menu
search, makes better use of screen space, has more advanced virtual desktop
capabilities, has the best global menu on any linux desktop, and while isn't
bug free is fairly predictable.

Gnome is very customizable, is more attractive looking on Ubuntu 17.10 out of
the box, has better notifications, and doesn't generate the questionable error
messages that Unity does.

That being said, it feels like replacing a Toyota with a Buick.

~~~
dullgiulio
Yeah, just don't try to disable one extension or your desktop will freeze for
a few _minutes_.

Damn, I love javascript on the desktop.

------
yAnonymous
Gnome3 is much worse than Unity ever was.

The difference is that Unity was getting better while Gnome is getting worse.
The people at Gnome are lacking even the most basic knowledge when it comes to
UX. The whole DE is a clusterfuck.

------
sambe
Can someone explain to me what HUD means in this context? They say HUD is
gone, and GNOME developers are strongly against ever having one. The
screenshots show something looking like an overlay with global search. To me,
that's what a HUD is.

~~~
mrkipling
[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ubuntu+unity+hud](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ubuntu+unity+hud)

~~~
sambe
Ahhh they mean the per-application HUD. That is indeed tremendously useful,
like the OS X searchable menus and Sublime's command palette. I can't see why
anyone would be against that functionality.

~~~
majewsky
If I had to guess: Because GNOME devs pursue their religious quest for
simplicity ^W dumbing things down so far that they cannot acknowledge anymore
that an application might have more than 5 menu items.

------
cheez
I switched to Gnome for 17.10 (Gnome proper, not Ubuntu Gnome) and it's been
amazing.

~~~
ggreer
I've had the exact opposite reaction to the change. So many common actions
seem needlessly difficult. Take –for example– joining a wifi network. In
Unity, you'd click on the wifi icon in the upper-right, then click on the
network you want to join. Two clicks. In Gnome, you click in the upper-right,
then click on the wifi icon to expand options, then click on "Select Network",
then click on the network you want to join, then click "Connect". Five clicks!
It's absurd.

The story is similar for things like power settings or selecting sound
input/output sources. I wish the Gnome team would imitate macOS or Windows
instead of coming up with their own uniquely frustrating interfaces.

~~~
Izkata
That's... odd.

It's been a long time since I've used a full desktop environment, but back
sometime around Ubuntu 10.04 it was by default the two-click Unity version you
described. Even nowadays (on 16.04) if I start nm-applet, it's just two
clicks.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Yes, if you use nm-applet, with a tray icon (which GNOME threw out), as
opposed to what they've baked into the panel, then it works.

Progress! /s

------
onboardram
I gave a chance to GNOME 3 times in last couple of years with Fedora 24, 25
and 26 and it was equally bad everytime. Memory Leaks reduced it to a crawling
mess in a few hours of uptime, the desktop would freeze up permanently while
doing even most basic task like switching windows or bringing up their
_Expose-thing_ , mouse will start jittering and lagging anytime icons/textures
were being loaded, extensions and themes broke again and again. Who would have
though putting a Javascript interpreter in the critical pipeline of (what was
supposed to be) a reponsive animation-guided GUI would be a bad idea?

Gave KDE a shot and beside all the bloat ans slowness, the damn thing kept
crashing on my lock screen. Seriously?

I have switched to Sway now which itself is far from perfect (GTK3 apps keep
breaking now and again, visible tooltips in XWayland windows prevent workspace
switching) but at least it doesn't hang up my machine every couple of hours or
prevent me from unlocking it.

How the hell did we got here? What exactly are the priorities of people
working on this stuff? Here's hoping that XFCE gets ported to Wayland soon
enough.

~~~
megous
Well, have you reported the bugs, or helped debug them?

~~~
dilap
it's a nice theory, but in my experience most open source projects don't pay
too much attention to bug reports.

edit: sounds like bug-fixing nowadays in gnome may be better than i remembered
/ have experienced.

~~~
Klover
Anecdotal and late to the party, but I once encountered a bug in the Fedora
installer. The installer guided me through the process of reporting the bug,
including screenshot taking, including and uploading. It told me helpful tips
on writing the bug report itself. I believe it even guided me on how to create
an account, and so I got frequent updates in my spam account on how the bug
got fixed and when and what happened with it.

Recently I tried out their new Fedora 27 release, did the same steps to
reproduce the bug, and no bug encountered! I was extremely impressed, being
totally new to open source and the development of it.

Your experience may have been neutral at worst, mine was super positive. I
highly recommend you try! I got a fun experience out of that little tech
adventure.

~~~
dilap
Wow, that's a really nice experience.

I should note in fairness that many bugs I report into Apple's black hole of a
bug reporting tool also don't end up fixed. Maybe I just report weird bugs :-)

(An example of one I reported against Mac OS that got emailed as fixed, but
still happens, though less frequently: Sometimes when alt-tabbing, the system
will act as though the tab key were never released.)

------
jdonaldson
I love it. I'm back on vanilla Ubuntu.

~~~
mcjiggerlog
Glad to see an actually positive comment - I've just installed on my desktop
after being mostly a mac user for the past few years (before that unity/gnome
2), and I'm seriously impressed. Everything is so smooth and the UI is both
beautiful and functional.

Great job, Canonical!

------
igor_filippov
Last time I've used Ubuntu was about 5 years ago. And it seems to look the
same now. I wonder if anything meaningful was achieved during that time in
terms of UI/UX besides switching desktop environments back and forth.

~~~
castle-bravo
Out of curiosity, what did you use in the meantime?

~~~
igor_filippov
Well, I'm with Apple now.

------
Ologn
I upgraded from 17.04 to 17.10. The widget in my Gnome Terminal window that
shows me how many columns and rows the terminal has (if I change them)
disappeared. I posted this to the Ubuntu forums, they said Wayland kills this
feature, but if I fall back to Gnome over Xorg it would work. Which it does. I
hope they don't deprecate Xorg because I'm sure there are a lot of things like
this which work in X but don't work yet automagically with Wayland.

------
bgrohman
"It's worth noting that in my testing, GNOME uses slightly more RAM and CPU
than Unity on the same hardware doing the same things. The increase is only
about 10 percent more on the RAM, and, let's face it, neither of them are
lightweight desktops. If you want something light, try i3."

Best advice in the article ;) I did try i3 and like it a lot. I have it
running on a Chromebook now as my main machine.

------
CSDude
I just wish Gnome 2 was left as is and Gnome 3 would named Gnome Tablet
Edition with those big useless buttons on a 27" screen where I click them with
my mouse instead of my big fingers. When Unity was introduced, I learnt to use
AwesomeWM (similar to i3) and even manually configuring it was a better
experience then both Unity and Gnome 3. Alternatively, I used LXDE, which is
simple enough for me.

------
noxecanexx
One I never understood why people complained of Gnome changing their UI until
3.26 where they removed support for tray icons. Apps like deluge and megasync
became a mess(megasync refuses to work) because there's no tray icon.
Unfortunately I have been unable to find any DE that has the same navigation
style

------
dm319
The article says that Ubuntu 17.10 is exciting again.

I don't want exciting.

Particularly when they drop nice features like the HUD and the integrated
global menu and title bar.

And that's coming from a MATE user who never got on with Unity. I will hang on
to my useful places menu, my functioning file explorer and refined taskbar
thank you very much!

~~~
neverminder
Removing global menu and placing the clock in the middle was a mistake. Now I
have 2-3 lines less code in my editor, so why was wasting space considered a
good idea?

~~~
listic
I can think of having to ship in time for a "test run" 17.10 release (the one
before the 18.04 LTS) as the only justification. I hope it will be worth it
and they will be able to prepare 18.04 LTS all the better because of that. You
don't have to update the OS every 6 months, anyway.

------
mm4
Ubuntu won't succeed on the desktop until it starts shipping with cinnamon as
a default

~~~
majewsky
Poe's Law at work.

------
a3n
All distros "look" the same to me, because I use a tiling window manager. I
don't see a desktop, I just see what I'm working on. The gnome2/gnome3/unity
silliness was partly why.

------
hollander
I've tried Gnome in the past, didn't get it, and moved back to either Mate or
Unity. Then I heard that Ubuntu would move to Gnome, and I decided to make an
effort. It turned out that the default settings make Gnome into something I
really don't like, while it's really customizable into something that
resembles Mate close enough. I haven't gone back since.

The Gnome project should add two shortcuts on the desktop with scripts to set
Gnome to mimick Mate or Unity, so users get their old desktop back with a few
clicks.

------
josteink
I accidentally my whole Fedora-installation yesterday, so I guess this is a
good a chance as any to try out how Ubuntu feels on the desktop these days.

I guess that's life :)

~~~
augustl
I switched from Fedora to Ubuntu for this. All I want is a canonical (no pun
intended) Linux distro so that app developers doesn't have to target a
gazillion variations. So I really want to see Ubuntu succeed.

So far, I've had my laptop freeze completely 3-4 times a week, fans spinning,
not responding to any input in any way shape or form. This didn't happen in
Fedora. Other than that, it's basically Fedora with different colors.

------
sverige
I have read most of the comments. I find myself chuckling at the memory of
people telling me that using cwm with X is too...whatever. I haven't had to
change my workflow for something like eight years and it's still being
developed with incremental improvements. I don't understand the desire to
constantly mess with the dashboard when all I want to do is drive the car.

------
romanovcode
This must be the ugliest OS of the three main user-focused ones.

I mean even the colors are ugly, why put dark orange colors, who thought it is
a good idea?

~~~
mrweasel
Look is subjective, but I not going to argue that the default Ubuntu colour
scheme isn't absolutely horrible. A new colour scheme could make the default
Ubuntu desktop more approachable to new users.

------
reacweb
"Ubuntu's developers have put considerable effort into making GNOME
cosmetically similar to Unity". I am a "ubuntu gnome" user since the start of
unity (I have used it 2 weeks, it was unusable for me). Do you mean that I
will have to accept the defects of gnome plus the ugly misbehaving unity dock
combined ? Should I leave for fedora ?

~~~
chrisper
It's more like Gnome + Extensions = Look of Unityish. I used to use Gnome 3
Vanilla + Extensions and didn't like Unity either.

Now I am using 17.10 and this new Ubuntu Gnome thingy and I am enjoying it.

------
mtzaldo
After ubuntu announced the return of gnome as it primary DE I started looking
for another distro/ubuntu variant with a good DE. So far ubuntu MATE and
ubuntu budgie have been the better ones. So if you are in the market for a new
ubuntu flavor you should try both.

------
znpy
Kde3 was the best environment ever.

------
pkolaczk
Anyone tried it recently? How stable is it? Particularly, does it support
multiple external displays with different scaling properly on Intel with
Wayland?

Unfortunately the live USB allows to test only on Xorg, Wayland is not
available.

~~~
majewsky
As a rule of thumb, if your GPU is AMD or Intel, then if OpenGL applications
work under X11, then Wayland is going to work, too.

If your GPU is Nvidia, tough luck: [https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-
you-nvidia.html](https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html)
(this is from the lead developer of Sway, a Wayland-only window manager)

------
listic
I hope feature parity with the Unity Ubuntu is a priority.
[https://youtu.be/gdX606Hjt04?t=5m24s](https://youtu.be/gdX606Hjt04?t=5m24s)

------
jwatte
I tried do-release-upgrade on 17.04, and it failed. Maybe they should work on
that first?

(The reason it failed was that I have the arm64 architecture installed to get
cross tools, and those repos somehow return 404.)

------
listic
Can we still use 32-bit Ubuntu? Is it just 32-bit _iso_ that has been
discontinued?

I find it dodgy to discontinue 32-bit Ubuntu, as I remember it has been
promised to exist until 18.04.

------
chj
Can't one just get a paid version without the amazon search? I know it can be
uninstalled, but still, feels better that no such thing exists in the first
place.

~~~
suby
It's literally just an affiliate link.

~~~
rgbrenner
It's not though.. because of how it works. When you enable online searching,
it sends those searches off to Ubuntu's servers and 3rd parties.. and Ubuntu
explicitly says they will collect and store everything you type into the dash
along with your IP address.

And because of how central the dash is to Ubuntu... it's a huge piece of
spyware.

 _Depending on whether you have opted in or out (see the “Online Search”
section below), we may also send your keystrokes as a search term to
productsearch.ubuntu.com and selected third parties so that we may complement
your search results with online search results from such third parties
including: Facebook, Twitter, BBC and Amazon. Canonical and these selected
third parties will collect your search terms and use them to provide you with
search results while using Ubuntu._

 _By searching in the dash you consent to:

    
    
        the collection and use of your search terms and IP address in this way; and
    
        the storage of your search terms and IP address by Canonical and such selected third parties (if applicable).

_

[https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-
poli...](https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy)

~~~
smacktoward
The key words here being " _when you enable online searching._ " The Amazon
affiliate integration has been off by default since Ubuntu 16.04.

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gcb0
it is worth of note that gnome 3 only now is getting to 90% of what it was
during gnome 2. what was that? six years too? I have no idea. I am a KDE user
now.

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O_H_E
I can't get why mate/kde is more usable/user friendly that Gnome. While Gnome
have have Redhat & GNU behind them

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james43534
"sudo apt-get install xfce4" has worked awesomely so far.

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thewhitetulip
Yay!!! I have always hated Unity (No offence to the devs behind it) but it was
always a PITA. I am glad that Gnome is back!

But that being said, Gnome3 has a lot of chrome space.

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dingo_bat
I just want to say that the music in the video is _horrible_. I cannot believe
they went with it. It sounds like a scammy kickstarter page!

