
Ubuntu 13.04: Getting Excited About Ubuntu Again - jdabgotra
http://penguinwebdevelopment.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-13-04-getting-excited-about-ubuntu-again
======
spindritf
I have always been a big fan of Unity. The only changes I don't like are the
ones introduced under pressure from users.

Namely, removing the "dodge" option for the launcher and disabling the scroll
on it[1][2]. It now allows you to switch between windows of the same
application on the same desktop which has to be in the running for the most
useless UI function ever devised.

I haven't really noticed HUD for quite a while but a few days ago I tried it
frustrated with GIMP's cleverly hidden sub-menus and was blown away by how
easy it is to jump straight to the desired function if you know (or can guess)
the name. Invoking "Arbitrary Rotation..." doesn't even take a second. I was
like a magician, I wasn't using the system, it was an extension of my being.

[1]
[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/1173623](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/1173623)

[2]
[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/1149092](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/1149092)

~~~
seclorum
I'm curious - as a long-time Ubuntu user who is totally resisting any effort
to switch to Unity - how does one 'learn' the menu functions available for a
new app with the HUD? I don't know anything about it, but is it possible still
to see all the menus/submenus with the HUD somehow, or does one have to poke
with the app to see the menus? As a naive outsider looking at Unity, I'm not
sure I find the appeal of the HUD to be applicable .. maybe as an experienced
user you could bridge this gap for me?

~~~
takluyver
As others have said, you can look through the normal menus - the HUD is an
addition, not a replacement. You can also guess: e.g. in GIMP, if I want to
crop an image, I can just hit Alt, 'crop' to see what's available.

In most applications, I don't use the HUD very often, but for editor
applications with complex menus - like GIMP or Scribus, it's very useful, and
it works well.

------
mike-cardwell
I started using Ubuntu because it was "Debian with a nice GUI". I started
using Debian again when Ubuntu demonstrated that they don't care about
privacy. I was pleasantly surprised to see how far a Debian Wheezy desktop has
come. Out of the box, it seems as nice as Ubuntu nowadays.

~~~
kragen
I did the same thing, but I'm using xfce, default configuration, since both
GNOME and KDE have decided to break Alt-Tab. (Alt-tab is really the only
fucking thing I want from my fucking window manager. Well, and Alt-F4.) My
only gripe about xfce is that I have to open a file-browser window to get it
to mount USB pendrives.

~~~
femngi
They _fixed_ Alt-Tab when I had never before realised it was broken. The new
paradigm just makes so much more sense: Alt-Tab switches between applications
and Alt-` switches between individual windows of that application.

When I have to use a desktop without this functionality I am now painfully
aware of how cumbersome and slow the old behaviour was when I have plenty of
windows open.

~~~
kragen
Listen, I don't know what you're using your computer for, but I have five
terminal windows open. One of them is IRC, one of them is reorganizing my
videos, and one of them is running mtr so that when I notice a network problem
I can see how long it's been going on and where it is. These windows have
nothing to do with each other. It is not beneficial for the mtr window to be
lumped in with the IRC window. If I'm switching back and forth between IRC,
reorganizing my videos, and my browser, I do not want to deal with mtr. I do
not want to deal with the window where I was running the compiler yesterday. I
am not interested in the fact that the window where I'm reading a man page is
"one application", the window where I'm reading Server Fault is "another
application", and the window where I'm looking at a PDF about LVM is "a third
application"; I'm interested in what I'm trying to get done, not what program
happens to have opened the window that I'm doing it in. If I'm switching back
and forth between the LVM PDF and the pvs man page and the shell window where
I'm actually running LVM commands, I do not want to have to deal with the
other fifteen unrelated terminal windows I may have open. I don't want to have
to think about which kind of windows I'm switching between every time I switch
windows, especially on this ten-inch netbook, where I run everything
fullscreen.

In short, for the way I use my computer, the Alt-`/Alt-Tab dichotomy doesn't
make sense. It turns what used to be a zero-effort action — switch back to the
previous window — into an error-prone action that is likely to take me to
something unrelated to what I'm trying to do. And now it's a zero-effort
action again, since I stopped trying to use GNOME or Unity.

How do you use your computer that this makes sense to you? I don't mean to
imply that you're insane, since I recognize that people do not all use their
computers the same way, but I can't imagine how you're using your computer
that enforcing this dichotomy is actually helpful to you.

(Note: I do use tabbed browsing, because, sad to say, Firefox still takes five
seconds to open a new window. That's _seven billion clock cycles_ , one clock
cycle for every man, woman, and child alive today.)

~~~
hahainternet
For what it's worth. Gnome is designed to make this choice easy for you.
[https://extensions.gnome.org/](https://extensions.gnome.org/) hosts a large
number of javascript extensions which change the functionality of the desktop.

Fixing alt-tab is one of the first things I do.

~~~
e12e
Oh, thanks for that! I don't use unity -- I'm too prone to RSI to really use
anything with a mouse -- and I'm too stingy on my screen estate (I run
xmonad). But either way it's nice to be aware that there are extentions... the
result page(s!) for alt tab was both encouraging and a little scary...

~~~
hahainternet
This is the one I prefer:
[https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/)

It correctly switches and changes order based on your alt+tab history, and it
splits alternate workspaces up into an end section which switches workspace
for you, so 'shift + alt + tab' becomes 'go to the last app on another
workspace i used'. Very nice.

------
6d0debc071
> If we obey stubborn users set in their ways, user interfaces would never
> advance and evolve.

But neither would they catch genetic defects - the mutation rate would just go
to 0. To be an advocate for evolution, at least to be one that I'll listen to,
you need to point me to strong selection pressures in favour of a desirable
outcome. How does this improve information management, how does it improve
workflow? That sort of thing. What are you using to vet? And I'm not seeing
that with unity.

Some hand waving about how it's 'largely ineffable' just isn't going to cut
it. Let's be honest here: They stuck the launcher, which other OSes allow you
to move anyway, on left hand side of the screen. I can get all my options on
the same side of the screen just by dragging the launcher there. And yet...
most people don't choose to keep their launcher on the side of the screen when
given the option.

Talking that up as some big advantage is just... yeah. Not buying it. It seems
to me like forcing a way of using the computer on people that they've elected
not to use and that there are the capabilities that it ought to have naturally
arisen as the way they'd use it if it was superior.

HUD's a nice idea, mind.

~~~
jdabgotra
You are right that the "largely ineffable" feeling needs to be cashed out. But
I use that phrase largely because the psychology of UI interactions and
usability that would justify my like of Unity is a new, inexact, and
developing science. So, I'm starting with the basic observation that after
giving Unity a try, it grew on me, as it did with others, to the point where
we actually prefer something new. Part of it is increased simplicity. Another
part is more screen space. Another part is that the OS doesn't get in your way
(like KDE does). Another part of it is that is the tendency to place things of
importance in the upper left which is, in our Western culture, where we tend
to start looking for things (like when reading a book).

As far as evolution is concerned, my point is that I often notice, say, when
Facebook changes their interface that users complain because they have to
learn something new -- they are lazy, but if you force them into something,
they may end up preferring it later. It is true that we shouldn't redesign
things if they work well. But the way things are designed the first time may
not be the best possible way.

The new features in Unity might not be molded by some process like natural
selection. But there is some argument to made that it is. Creating one
platform for all devices and levels of users would have enormous advantages,
and is a response triggered by changed in the computing environment -- mainly,
the widespread use of touch phones and tablets.

Aside from that, all I can say is that Ubuntu does do some user testing, and I
hope they are listening to their users. They also have to take some chances
and try out new things and see what users respond to. But I agree that their
interface changes should respond to real needs, not imagined needs.

~~~
pyre

      | which is, in our Western culture
    

So Ubuntu aims to only be used 'in the West?' ;)

~~~
jdabgotra
Haha, no, but English is becoming the global language, I should have also
mentioned. So Western culture is dictating global usability standards - be it
good or bad, its happening.

~~~
pyre
English isn't necessarily becoming the global language. I would wager that
Chinese has a good shot at the future depending on things play out.

~~~
ColinWright
Out of interest - which "Chinese"?

~~~
jfoster
Mandarin is by far the most widely spoken. Others don't even come close.
Cantonese is the other one that people consider common, but...
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=mandarin+%7C+cantonese](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=mandarin+%7C+cantonese)

------
incompatible
I notice a tendency with new interfaces that you need to know "secrets" in
order to use them effectively. Things that aren't visible in the user
interface. E.g., in unity, to open two instances of an application, you need
to shift-click the launcher. It seems to me that the more minimalistic the
interface tries to become, the more you need to know to be able to use it.

It also seems to take more effort to get what you want. It's easier to pick a
program from a menu that to open a search panel, type the name, if you
remember it, and find it in the search results.

I use xfce on Ubuntu. The particular dislikes I have for Unity include the
shifting of window toolbars so that the buttons are nowhere near the window
that they relate to, and the launcher that doesn't function well as either a
launcher (it doesn't have every program I may want to use) nor a way to
quickly switch between open windows (without combining mouse clicks with
keyboard modifiers).

~~~
khyryk
You can middle-click to open additional instances of applications.

I think it takes longer to find something when one has completely forgotten
its name and description, but this isn't a problem 99% of the time, at least
for me.

Ubuntu makes much more sense when I'm using my laptop without a mouse
available, primarily due to the super+# application switching, whereas I am
usually more efficient with Xfce when there's a mouse around; I have both
installed.

------
dpratt
By all accounts, Unity continues to improve and actually innovate across
releases, but the Canonical guys need to fix one simple thing - the out of the
box appearance of Ubuntu is frankly _hideous_. They are doing some very
interesting things w.r.t. human interaction, but the design is nearly an
immediate turnoff to everybody I've shown it to.

I'm well aware that it's infinitely customizable, but that's not a solution.
When a large fraction of your userbase makes their very first action after
installation to change the color scheme/theme of your OS, you should go back
to the drawing board with your designers. The actual paradigm they present to
the user is fantastic, but the color scheme is repugnant.

~~~
jiggy2011
I have never understood why it has such enormous fonts out of the box. The
default size of the launcher fills up about 1/4 of my laptop screen.

~~~
vacri
Ubuntu were the folks who made a printer test page in colour that made giant
filled boxes of colour - apparently whoever created it has never purchased
printer ink.

It has (thankfully) regained some sanity.

------
aristidb
If Ubuntu hadn't abandoned Gnome 2, I might never have switched to XMonad. So
thank you, Ubuntu.

I'm also a bit surprised that the author of the article finds Mir to be a good
idea. If they think a new display server is needed, they should contribute to
Wayland, IMHO. Or at least fork Wayland if there would be irreconcilable
differences, but as far as I can tell that's not the actual problem, they just
want to do their own thing, which for a display server seems like the worst
idea. Display servers are pretty fundamental low-level building blocks of a
system, and for that reason one of the few that has resisted fragmentation in
the Linux world. (I don't think fragmentation is bad per se, I just think it's
bad for display servers.)

~~~
switch007
I have a Macbook Air and when it first arrived, I thought I'd give Mac OS X a
try. One day I lasted! I missed dear XMonad so, so much. Made me appreciate it
a whole lot more.

I originally switched because I was so sick of using the mouse to arrange my
windows all the god. damn. time.

~~~
scribu
I decided to give OS X an honest try after Ubuntu started crashing for no
apparent reason.

I wouldn't have lasted much either, if a friend hadn't pointed me to a neat
little application called BetterTouchTool [1]. It lets you re-arrange windows
using keyboard shortcuts.

[1]: [http://www.boastr.de/](http://www.boastr.de/)

------
staunch
Ubuntu 13.04 is quite good. A bit buggy, but quite good. What I really want
from Ubuntu is to be able to run it on my phone. I want Linux, real Linux, on
my pocket computer.

~~~
deafbybeheading
I'll take talking to my phone as a first step. Getting simple file transfers
to my SIII has been a pain, not to mention anything more sophisticated...

~~~
kukkukb
Get AirDroid for your Android device. You'll never look back.

~~~
mikevm
Thanks for that!

------
AndyKelley
"Every time I came back to Unity I grew to like the interface more"

This is telling. I empathize with the author. Here is what he is saying: I
really, really _want_ to like Unity. I'm giving it a huge benefit of the
doubt, and yet I simply cannot stomach it. I am compelled to go elsewhere. It
seems to be getting better but _I still cannot use it_.

This entire blog post reads like someone trying desperately to convince
themselves something of which they don't truly believe.

~~~
jdabgotra
I think we can separate the design and the performance when evaluating Unity.
The design is something innovative and gets a lot of things right. It doesn't
mean its the desktop environment of everyone's choice, but it can still be an
effective one. Then, there is the performance, which has been getting better,
and it may catch on. Second, sometimes I've been annoyed with Unity, but I do
like using it most of the time, some comments have shown a similar reaction. A
lot of times the reasons I don't like using Ubuntu can be for potentially
temporary reasons, like bugs, or lack of polish and maturity. But the reasons
I do like it aren't as temporary, they are a set of good decisions already
made. And the other reasons I do like it is the software availability, the
stability and speed under the environment, using it as a web server, my own
history of knowing how to use it -- all more established pros for Ubuntu. So,
I can use that, or Gnome, or the Fallback, or any other environment really but
in the switching back and forth it was ultimately Unity that seemed most nice
to be on. I will, however, try out Cinnamon again. And I like using other
environments as well, but there are negatives to them all. The ol' Windows 95
panel with a user's open app buttons (small icons and window titles) are
arranged by when the apps were launched by the user. But they should be pinned
icons that don't vary their location -- and launchers shouldn't be separate
icons from these buttons, its superfluous -- that's my intuition now,
especially after using Windows 7 and Macs, and Unity. I have my issues with
Docky and Cairo and AWN is dead. So Ubuntu I think gets a lot of things right,
adapting to some usable alternatives to the old Windows 95 desktop I
discovered 15 years ago. It has a good dock, good global search, more screen
space. But I like other environments too, I'll give it a fuller exploration
when I have the time. The good thing about Unity is, it not being too
customizable right now, I don't waste time trying to customize my desktop like
I would on KDE.

------
belgianguy
As a long-time user, I must say they've come very far already. I'm one of
those who always appreciated Unity and never got the whole hate thing. I
really like the experience on my HP Elitebook 8740w.

But I recently thought about installing Steam, for which I needed to use the
proprietary graphics drivers to be able to play its more demanding games.

I thought my entertainment to be just another 'apt-get install' away. I have
never been so wrong. Canonical should start handing out medals to people who
survived replacing their graphical drivers with those provided by AMD/ATI.
It's a hellish experience, taking your heart and mind on a rollercoaster of
emotions, only to see the tracks end right in front of you when the installer
fails and then get catapulted into the dark void that is a system with a
broken graphics driver.

Digging about in the root shell was the only option left. Adding insult to
injury, their uninstall scripts usually only work halfway, breaking any
further installs because it never uninstalled fully. Which then pretty much
leaves no other option then to start 'forcing' installs and hoping for the
best.

And lo and behold, after wrestling with some packages, purging everything that
remotely looked like it knew fglrx, I had my desktop back. But what a chore it
was.

So I would really love it if those hardware manufacturers provide a better and
less-volatile experience when Mir launches. Perhaps the oft-rumoured SteamBox
could accelerate said process even further...

Installing a graphics driver shouldn't be a fight between life and death for a
system.

------
u2328
I'm a big advocate for the Linux desktop, but at this point, as long as
Canonical has Ubuntu ship off desktop search results to Amazon by default, I
would _even_ advocate for users to use other operating systems, even Mac OS X.
It's no bastion of freedom respecting software, but at least doesn't ship off
your desktop search results to a third party for profit.

Ubuntu is no longer freedom respecting software.

~~~
jiggy2011
The counterpoint of course is that with open source there can always be forked
versions with egregious features removed.

If OS X decided to record all of your search results you'd be SOL.

~~~
kunai
Not really... pretty much every aspect of OS X is removable, it just isn't as
straightforward as Ubuntu and may break portions of the system. You can remove
Spotlight and Notification Center with ease, and I doubt it would be difficult
to disable recording.

Although I highly doubt Apple would risk the backlash by putting a malicious
feature like that in without an option to turn it off.

~~~
oblique63
> _Although I highly doubt Apple would risk the backlash by putting a
> malicious feature like that in without an option to turn it off._

Really? Wasn't Apple the one tracking iphone users wherever they went? [1]

I get the concern about Ubuntu sending data to amazon _by default_ (i.e. can
be disabled), I really do, but going out of the way to recommend something as
proprietary as either Apple or Microsoft _out of spite_? This is what really
bothers me about the OSS community. How about helping Mint/Fedora out and
recommending them instead? I know some do, but even the OP here flaunted that
an OSX recommendation seemed more viable than Ubuntu. As much as I would want
not to be tracked, at least with Open Source _SOFTWARE_ we can be more aware
of it, or even have a say in it; not always so with proprietary stuff! So no,
I do not believe either Windows or OSX are better than Ubuntu in this regard.

Not to mention that Canonical isn't a big company, so if they need help
bootstrapping by doing some stuff with amazon for now, then so be it. I would
hold off judgement on their actions until they're actually in a position of
real financial power, cause right now it just seems they had to resort to such
ad placement deals because the generous donations weren't cutting it. It's
really not clear whether it's actually that big of a deal right now.

[1] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/20/iphone-
trac...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/20/iphone-tracking-
prompts-privacy-fears)

------
donniezazen
I have tried and failed. The simple bottom bar, app menu on one side and
system tray on the other side is an unbeatable desktop paradigm. I don't think
desktop, specially with large screens, should be forced to use full screen and
one app at a time.

Ubuntu has done commendable work on 13.04. Power consumption and overall
experience is phenomenal. But is hard to get excited about Ubuntu anymore. I
was reading a bug report on Transmission torrent client bug tracker where they
were discussing if they should support Ubuntu's appindicator or Gnome's
message tray or just simple system tray. This divide is only going to increase
putting both developers and users in an impossible position. When we free-
software-guys don't give Android a hard time, there is no reason to create
noise around Ubuntu.

------
stormbrew
I used to use Xubuntu, got frustrated with the ways that it hasn't really kept
up integration-wise, and tried to switch to straight Ubuntu with 13.04 and...
couldn't stand it.

I'm glad I found Mint after that. Cinnamon is by far the best experience I've
had with the linux desktop yet.

~~~
vacri
Cinnamon is in Ubuntu and has been at least since 12.10 - this is what I use
at work. It's also in Debian unstable.

~~~
stormbrew
I haven't tried just using the basic cinnamon packages from an installed
Ubuntu system, but I have tried it from an installed Xubuntu system and it
definitely doesn't work as well as a full Mint install.

At any rate they're all ubuntus in the end, but the whole package of
Mint+Cinnamon is what I was referring to.

~~~
vacri
In hindsight, I'm incorrect. There is a PPA for cinnamon in 12.10. I just
upgraded to 13.04 today and ran into the PPA issue.

------
alexanderh
For me its all about the performance issues.

To design responsive web applications, you need to see the (browser) windows
content on re-size. This is not default in Ubuntu/Unity, you cannot see a
windows contents when you are resizing. You can enable it, but its slow and
not very useful. The content in a window needs to re-flow fluidly and quickly,
especially the browser.

Its as simple as that for me. Until Ubuntu has hardware accelerated window re-
sizing, i simply cannot use it as a development platform. Responsive Webdesign
isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and responsive apps/websites are a chore to
effectively debug on Ubuntu compared to other OS's

~~~
leephillips
I see responsive websites reflowing quickly when I change the browser window
size using Ubuntu. I don't see the problem.

~~~
alexanderh
What version of Ubuntu? Last time I tried was 12.04, and even with a
proprietary binary graphics driver properly installed, it was very slow and
un-usable.

If this is something they've fixed in more recent version, color me excited to
try Ubuntu again.

But I've definitely seen others w/ this same issue:
[http://askubuntu.com/questions/297146/live-window-
resizing-i...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/297146/live-window-resizing-is-
very-slow-ubuntu-12-10)

~~~
leephillips
I'm running 12.04.1 at the moment. On a Thinkpad t60, which came out in 2006
or so. The screen redraws as fast as I can move it. Perhaps this has something
to do with the fact that I don't use Unity or any other desktop environment.

------
reedlaw
I liked Ubuntu and Unity until I found this release to be so unstable on a
Thinkpad T410 that I was forced to look for something else. First I tried
Xubuntu but I quickly began to miss many of the niceties of a more featureful
desktop environment. Feeling a general dissatisfaction with Ubuntu I decided
to try Arch Linux. It was quite a task to configure a base system with video
drivers, networking and other hardware working at a similar level that you
would get out of the box with Ubuntu. But in the end I'm extremely pleased. I
went with the Gnome 3 desktop because it handled a lot of things for me such
as drive mounting and managing the network. I actually prefer Gnome 3 to
Unity. It's more visually pleasing and minimal. The only thing I miss is the
HUD for accessing deeply-nested menu items. The best thing about Arch Linux is
that most packages are the absolute latest stable versions. You don't have to
wait 6 months for an update to the official package. And if there's no
official package, the AUR system for building packages from source is better
than Ubuntu's PPA which requires you to trust binaries compiled by 3rd
parties.

~~~
milhous
Just picked up a refurbed T410 with integrated graphics and installed 12.04
LTS. So far so good, but I'd like to drop an SSD in here, so maybe the distro
will change again. But I figured that LTS would be a good place to start.
13.04 did seem a tad buggy.

I'd like to try FreeBSD, but am impatient at the moment, and not sure how good
wifi control and hardware support is. Would love to know if anyone's running
it on their notebooks.

Going to try Gnome 3 now.

------
joe_the_user
I used Unity for three months or more.

While it had lots of cosmetic issues that I'm sure could be improved and will
improve, what infuriated me was that it seemed to revolve around the
assumption that I would only about five, well-known GUI apps. This might be a
point of, uh, Unity for Newbies and programmers who "live in the shell" but it
completely excludes me and I think it excludes some portion of Linux users.

~~~
spindritf
> I would only about five, well-known GUI apps.

Nah, you can have as many apps pinned to the launcher as you like. I have 18,
and some of them probably have dozens rather than thousands of users. Plus,
you can easily search for applications from the dashboard, though that's a bit
laggy.

~~~
StavrosK
I've never needed a launcher or menu since I installed gnome-do, years ago.
It's instant and amazing.

------
josteink
While this piece seems to be reasonably balanced, well informed and above all
_honest_ about the Ubuntu-experience, this one sentence about launcher-support
for web-apps stood out as plain wrong:

> These are not only innovative but great ideas that are being offered from
> the world of Linux, not by Microsoft or Apple, in a new way never seen
> before the Unity experiment.

The ability to pin web-applications to the launcher was really introduced in
Windows 7, with ability for the web-site to add custom-actions or shortcuts to
the icon, accessible through a right-click context-menu.

Chrome allows you to create application launchers without all the browser
Chrome, which to the OS looks like normal apps. Afaik this was even based on
some third-party app which did the same thing (although with Webkit and
Safari) on OS X.

We've also had this ability to add shortcuts to web-apps as "normal" apps on
our mobile devices for quite some time.

To me his statement basically seems very uninformed. Or am I missing something
crucial here?

~~~
Drakim
Unity is a lot of things, but an "innovative experiment" is not one of them.
Unity is more a collection of various ideas and concepts from other modern
UIs.

------
mcintyre1994
Unity runs terribly on my laptop that runs Windows 7 perfectly fine. It's
probably more important in a technical sense that I can just use a different
desktop environment, and Cinnamon works brilliantly for me. In terms of a less
technical audience though, that won't be an answer and performance woes really
should be a priority.

------
pcx66
I love Ubuntu. Been a fan from, lets see, 5.04. It's been a long sweet
experience. But lately I've got many areas which I vehemently disagree with
them.

I guess the most important issue with Ubuntu nowadays is the one of privacy.
With the recent revelations of mass surveillance, exposing desktop searches to
a 3rd party by default is a catastrophic decision. I can't understand how the
folks at Canonical could accept such a feature. They could have made it opt-
in, with flashing popups and shit, asking you to signup. But making it default
is a nightmarish situation. I was able to recommend non-technical users (like
my parents and relatives) to install Ubuntu by themselves, arguing there was
nothing to change that would need someone with know-how. But not now with
stuff like this. I don't think the major chunk of the user-base (home users),
would understand the implications of this feature.

------
Siecje
I don't like that you can't move the unity launcher to the bottom. Vertical
space is not as import as horizontal space.

I don't like how I have to click the small window that is not near the top and
then go to the top to access the File menu etc.

I don't like that unity doesn't have snap to the right and left side.

~~~
broodbucket
\- you can autohide the launcher so it only shows when your mouse hits the
left side at an intensity of your choice

\- you can disable the global menu

\- Unity has aero snapping to the left and right, and can have it in every
corner if you change Compiz settings

~~~
MisterBastahrd
Canonical doesn't want me to use Ubuntu, because they won't allow me to put
the launcher where I want, which has been a feature of umpteen different
window managers for at least the last 10 years. I don't care that it can
autohide. That feature has been around for well over a decade. I care that it
isn't where I want it to be, and that they won't give me the option to put it
where I want it.

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ausjke
I use ubuntu 12.04 for server, I don't get it why desktop is that important
anymore, 90% of my time is with browser and vi these days, the rest is with
vlc and a little open office, that's about it.

------
dubcanada
I just cannot stand Unity, I understand the whole tablet experience thing, but
I'm not using it on a tablet. The first thing I did with Ubuntu 12 was remove
Unity and install
[http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/](http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/) for people
coming from a Windows platform, it's like a nicer start menu.

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D9u
Sadly, this article is stuck on GNOME vs Unity, when the base system runs so
much better without all that extraneous UI stuff.

I'd rather start off with a minimal install, and build it up as I want, rather
than tearing apart someone else's mess, in the quest for my preferred balance
of frugality and productivity.

------
ensmotko
I just tried the latest daily build. For some reason Unity dash stops working
smoothly once I change the resolution from 1024x768 to 1680x1050. Might be
because of my dated graphics card (ati firegl).

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mariuolo
They can keep it.

------
jaequery
just switch over to macs

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zenocon
that font....

~~~
courier

      What? You don't like monospaced text?

