
Unity is the end of Ubuntu  - darkduck
http://www.jemmatzan.com/2011/10/unity-is-the-end-of-ubuntu.html
======
ot
> Why does Unity suck so much? Because it assumes you're a complete retard who
> can only click shiny buttons.

What most techies don't get is that _this is an extremely reasonable
assumption_. Well, to be more fair, that most users _don't care_.

Everything that's hidden behind contextual menus, magic key combinations,
endless configuration checkboxes or, for god's sake, _command line_ , simply
_does not exist_ , because the average user doesn't want to spend hours to
learn the "Right Way" to do something as long as he can find one way to do it,
however much inefficient.

~~~
suivix
Linux requires that you use the command line anyways. For example, you can't
even format a USB disk unless you spend an hour looking up an obscure command.

~~~
Jach
Have you ever used Linux? I don't even need to do that on _Gentoo_ , my main
system. Right click, format, choose a format type, format. Exactly the same as
Windows.

Ed: from your other comment in this thread, I think you haven't. I don't think
anyone has ever been required to use the command line to install things in
Ubuntu (that are in the package manager which contains most things most users
care about), but my memory only goes back to Dapper.

~~~
sp332
You don't even need a command line to install random packages you've
downloaded. Just double-click them, the system package manager will show you
what's inside and ask if you want to install it.

------
abyssknight
Ubuntu was always about giving the every-man a usable operating system.
Describing the typical new user as "a complete retard who can only click shiny
buttons" is extremely rude and misguided. Not everyone is a terminal guru, and
not everyone uses Ubuntu. If you don't like the distro, slipstream yourself a
new copy with your favourite WM. I don't understand how anyone can complain
about progress like this -- if you don't like convention over configuration,
maybe Ubuntu isn't for you.

~~~
TylerE
Ubuntu has been losing that plot for a long time. Remember when they shipped a
version with essentially broken audio? Because they decided to switch to
PulseAudio?

~~~
rbanffy
Which was subsequently fixed. That's how things get done with open-source. You
make a big change, lots of stuff break at first, then they get fixed over
time. Audio has been working flawlessly for a couple years here.

~~~
TylerE
Yes, but when you're trying to make an "end-user" product, you don't throw in
huge changes a few weeks before release. Which is what they did with Pulse.

------
fader
Summary: "I hate change. Because this is different than what I personally am
used to, it can't be useful for anyone anywhere, and was probably created
specifically to annoy me."

"It assumes you don't care what is going on in any programs except the one you
currently have focus on."

Aside from the really nice features for automatic window sizing and
positioning that were introduced with it (with both mouse and keyboard
bindings!) and the fact that window management otherwise works exactly as it
did previously, sure.

"Unity hates Google Chrome (the browser I use most) so much, it buried it
three levels deep in a ridiculously oversimplified, slow-loading, nonsensical
menu system."

Or, you know, you could add it to the launcher. Or make it your default
browser, in which case it has an enormous button right in the dash. (But
right, you're not "a complete retard who can only click shiny buttons".)

"It assumed I wanted every LibreOffice program in my application dock"

Oh noes! Sensible default launchers in the default configuration, my heavens!
If only you could right-click on those and remove them or drag them out of the
launcher. Oh right, you can.

Yadda yadda, I don't have the patience to address every single one of these
one by one. But they all boil down to "this is different than what I had
previously so it must be terrible for everyone". ("I am not complaining that
Unity is different from traditional GNOME." Er, yes you are. That's exactly
what this rant is.)

It took me a week or so to get used to it, but I really like Unity now. It
works better for me than GNOME 2 ever did. I just get tired of people
insulting those who have different preferences. If you want GNOME 2, great!
Feel free to keep using it. But demanding that other people support you for
free and never advance is childish and petulant.

~~~
sp332
"It assumes you don't care what is going on in any programs except the one you
currently have focus on."

The menus for all programs are hidden. To even see the menu for the current
app, you have to mouse-over the top bar. You have to select a window before
you can see its menu.

------
yock
Delightful bit of complete bullshit. The complaints range from "I don't want
these icons!" to "I can't find my favorite program!" If this blogger couldn't
find Google Chrome, despite the _gigantic_ search bar in the applications
menu, then maybe he personifies the pointy-clicky-user he so rudely insults.

Moving on now...

~~~
drndown2007
Actually, I agree with it. I'm a Linux noob, and even I (the target idiot?)
can't find anything in the latest version of Ubuntu without having to
constantly search. The older version was quite discoverable for me though. I'm
also looking around for something more useable.

~~~
narad
I am a linux n00b too. Last weekend, I installed Ubuntu 11.10 is a shiny new
Intel i3 machine. Just started learning the Unity interface. It is very
difficult. The alt-tab does not show the each window of the open apps. The
windows of the same program are clubbed together. WTF, how do I select them?

To me, Unity is a usability nightmare. As I have recently migrated from
WindowsXP, this seems to be very hard. I hope I can learn to live with Ubuntu.

Also tried Gnome 3 shell, but quickly reverted to Unity as Gnome shell was
even more horrible.

~~~
jcastro
When you get to the app you want, hit alt-` (or you can hit alt-` directly if
you're already on the app you want) and then you'll get a preview of all the
individual windows.

I made a video on how it works here:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHFNnygpvcM>

~~~
drndown2007
This made me chuckle after just reading a rant about someone leaving Linux and
going back to Windows because of all the secret handshakes and tribal
knowledge required.

------
IgorPartola
Why is this so hard on everyone? There is Xubuntu which provides a fantastic
interface. There is also Kubuntu if you are just jumping on the Ubuntu band
wagon and don't care about Qt vs GTK, etc. You always have the option to
install classic GNOME and this is _easy_ to do. In the time it took him to
write that blog post, he could have done it 10 times.

Look, Unity is not a great choice for everyone, clearly. It took me a while to
get used to it, after using Xubuntu for 4+ years exclusively. But this is not
Windows or Mac OS X. There is nothing preventing you from trying an entirely
different environment that is only a single apt-get away. You have _choices_
and if the default does not suite you, change it.

EDIT: To answer my own question, perhaps it is a failing of Canonical. Maybe
they should do a better job explaining the different types of desktops you
will get with different flavors of Ubuntu, instead of just telling you that
"Ubuntu" == latest Unity-based UI, and others are on the fringes.

~~~
ominous_prime
> You have choices and if the default does not suite you, change it.

Why do so many techies feel like Ubuntu _owes_ them something, and when they
don't like a design choice, it's a personal insult? I _almost_ like Unity, but
I think I like the direction gnome 3 is going better. No big deal, I can use
either, and I don't have to rant about it.

(that username sounds familiar - Hi from Boston ;)

~~~
IgorPartola
Agreed. Also... do I know you?

~~~
ominous_prime
Mostly by proximity - had an adjacent cubicle for a while. I'm in SysEng at
111

\--jim

------
nissimk
I run ubuntu on my asus netbook. Because the screen is so small, I like to run
everything maximized, so I really don't mind unity. Unforunately, VNC server
(vino) doesn't work properly in unity. I switched to unity 2D which fixes the
VNC issue, but then I can't shrink the icons in the launcher (there's a hack
to show smaller icons, but the launcher still doesn't resize to be the same
width as the icons).

I think I'll try LXDE next. I like ubuntu because there is a lot of
documentation in the google index. I feel like it's always best to have the
largest user base because then it is most likely someone else has already
encountered your issue. It's too bad that there's such a split now on the
default desktop environment.

Also, it's too bad that X is so far behind windows and OSX. On my home machine
I use a laptop with 2 external screens, one is connected through a displayLink
USB device. In windows it was plug and play. I'm sure that under Linux it will
take me a really long time to set it up and even then it won't work as good.
It's too bad because I really would prefer to only run windows in a VM.

~~~
isbn
There is a ppa that makes the Unity-2D launcher the same size as the icons:
ppa:lucazade/ppa at <https://launchpad.net/~lucazade/+archive/ppa>

I use it and have no problem or crashes.

------
gmodena
While I agree that to this day Unity still has a long way to go, I firmly
believe that in the long run all the effort and focus Canonical is devoting to
UX could become ubuntu's unique selling point.

What is left to see is how long this "long run" will be, but as a rule of
thumb and as far as Unity goes I think it is more fair to consider non LTS
releases as experimental builds.

I am very positive about initiatives such as
[http://design.canonical.com/2010/11/usability-testing-of-
uni...](http://design.canonical.com/2010/11/usability-testing-of-unity/)

The sole existence of a design group within Canonical [1] singles them out -
AFAIK - from other major distro vendors. In a way, though I generally dislike
this kind of comparisons, I can see ubuntu as the potential osx/nextstep of
the linux ecosystem: full blown unix user space coupled with a distinctive,
reliable look & feel and a consistent UX.

I know many long time *nix users that switched to osx for this reason [2] and
I'd like to see a linux distro able to appeal this audience. Actually I would
really like to know if there exist studies or data points that show whether
such a market share indeed exists.

Ultimately the only thing I can say is kudos to Canonical for the courage
shown in taking a somewhat radical decision and keep up the good work :)

[1] design as in UX and interaction desing, not limited to artwork or wm
themes. [2] this is not intended as a statistically significant statement.

------
NickM
It's amazing to me how many people write articles bashing Unity and openly
admit right in the article that they only used it for less than a day before
deciding it was terrible. How long did it take you to reach your current level
of productivity in your current WM?

As it happens, Unity has a ton of convenient keyboard shortcuts, and it does
take some time to get used to them. I was also inefficient the first day I
tried it, but I gave it a fair chance and I actually feel I'm more productive
now than I was in Gnome.

People complain about it being "dumbed down", but a lot of the features seem
geared toward power users to me. For instance, menu bars at the top: how often
do you actually find yourself clicking on a menu item with the mouse vs. using
the keyboard shortcut? 99% of the time I use the shortcut, so it ends up
saving a lot of screen real estate taking the menu bars out of all the
windows. That's just one example, but there are little touches like that all
over the place in Unity.

~~~
slowpoke
>How long did it take you to reach your current level of productivity in your
current WM?

Half an hour to learn the keybinds, because tiling window managers (XMonad)
are extremely intuitive.

~~~
bryanlarsen
That's not the question he asked. It took me about 10 minutes to learn the
Unity keybinds, but a few days to reach my current level of productivity. For
instance, I experimented with a few tiled arrangements of console, emacs
windows & firefox. The best turned out to be different from before because of
the ctrl-alt-numpad shortcuts. They sound like something a tiling manager
would have -- Unity really gives me the feeling of stealing from the best.

------
regularfry
That dock-fixed-to-the-left thing is _really_ annoying. It's an infinitely
large button which wants to expand _over_ my actual target 9 times out of 10.

If I'm using an app and my cursor hits the left edge, what's a reasonable
assumption? That I want to do something in the app, or that I want to switch
apps? The implicit assumption has _always_ been that I'm interested in my
current task. That's why the File menu, the Back button, the application
toolbar (if you're into that sort of thing) are there.

It's completely unreasonable to just assume that if my cursor happens to drift
out of the active window while I'm seeking a target within it, then it's ok to
expand a system window _over_ the target I'm actually looking for to force me
to wait and re-seek while it hides again.

About the only way this could be more annoying is if it were on the right,
next to the scroll bar.

------
splicer
I primarily used Gnome for the last 10 years, but now I prefer Unity. Why?
Because I _love_ the keyboard shortcuts, especially Alt-tilde. It's still
fairly buggy (i.e. behavior is often inconsistent and non-deterministic), but
no more so than Mac OS X Lion's new windowing model. So long as it continues
to improve, I'm sticking with it.

~~~
jcastro
Can you give me some detail on which parts of alt-~ are buggy to you? I'd like
to pass it on the team (And yeah, me too, it's my favorite).

~~~
splicer
There are many bugs I've spotted with alt-tab and alt-backtick; I'll try to
compile a list of unit tests for you as soon as I have more spare time. Here's
one to start:

1) Open 3 windows of the same application (e.g. Terminal). Make sure each
window has different content so you'll be able to tell them apart. Let's call
these windows A, B, and C, from top to bottom.

2) While holding down Alt, hit ` twice.

Expected result: window C is now on the top of the stack. The order of the
windows is now C, A, B.

Actual result: window A is still on the top of the stack. The order of the
windows is still A, B, C.

------
tartuffe78
I actually like Unity a lot better, probably because I was never a gnome power
user. I used Ubuntu in college because Linux was what we did but I never fell
in love, and I've just recently returned to it for Python development.

Honestly I'm sick of people posting these UI critiques that are so rash. He's
mad that Libre Office is in his toolbar? Removing those takes about 15
seconds. He makes valid points but when he throws on those tiny insignificant
details it makes him seem like any little change would piss him off.

------
achristoffersen
what ever. Linux is about diversity and freedom. I personally don't like the
path ubuntu is forking, but hey - it will suit a lot of people fine. And I
think it will benefit the linux community that e.g. macolytes and windoves
will find gnome3 and unity nice too look at. Then later they can open the
pandora box of beastly beauty that is linux.

tl;dr: It's good that ubuntu experiments and lives on the cutting edge. If you
don't like it install mint or fedora or debian or arch ...

------
moondowner
I can happily recommend Kubuntu.

For those thinking that it's not stable, it is. Kubuntu (or more precise KDE)
is stable since 10.10, so those rant's are over.

For those thinking that GTK applications can't fit in KDE, there's a new GTK
Theme oxygen-gtk which gives the same look and feel to them. Also there is
QtCurve, etc etc...

And the notifications from GTK applications are shown as native KDE
notifications. All of them are on one place.

KDE is a usable environment, highly configurable and for those saying "it's
too bloated and full of glossy things yada yada" if you spend half an hour you
can make it as minimalist as you wish.

I use Kubuntu on a daily basis, and I use a lot of GTK apps in it too,
including GIMP, DeaDBeeF, Firefox, etc etc...

And, one of the most noteworthy things in the new Kubuntu are the new Muon
Package Manager - something of a Kubuntu alternative of the new Ubuntu
Software Center, and second, a package named Low-Fat Settings can be
installed, with settings for computers with lower performance. More on this
stuff here: <http://www.kubuntu.org/news/11.10-release>

~~~
jwingy
+1

The only bad thing I can think of is that I usually run kde with all the
special effects turned off and the look of apps and whatnot in this mode is a
bit of an ugly grey. However, if you do turn on all the fancy graphical stuff,
I would say KDE looks just as good as anything out there (for linux).

------
jcfrei
I considered updating tonight, but this will keep me from doing it. preventing
users to switch back to a working, classic gnome gui is beyond ridiculous and
downward ignorant of a large userbase. I'll probably stick with 11.04 and
switch to xubuntu sometime in the future.

~~~
IgorPartola
Nothing is prevented. sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback

~~~
jcfrei
thnx, will try that

------
BenoitEssiambre
I've been using Ubuntu for 5 years and I absolutely love Ubuntu 9. Every time
I have to use windows vista/7 or osx I want to tear my hear out.

Unity is basically adopting the most annoying parts of OSX, namely that
windows aren't individually referenced in the desktop toolbar for easy one
click switching and that switching desktops or 'spaces' is a multiple step
process with no thumbnail preview, things that have been working perfectly
well in Linux since the beginning of the 1990s.

They shouldn't release a product until these are fixed and certainly not
impose it on users. It's like they assumed we wouldn't notice because we're
all Apple fanboys used to a slow and ineffective UX.

------
silon3
I like unity in many ways, except for:

    
    
        1. app centric alt+tab (100% showstopper, will not use).
        2. menu on top (almost as bad)
        3. hard to start multiple terminal windows
    

Can't really say more, because of #1.

~~~
rocha
For #1, you can use ALT-`. I didn't know about it until I saw it here:
[http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/what-are-unitys-
keyboar...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/what-are-unitys-keyboard-and-
mouse-shortcuts)

For #3, you can also use CTRL-ALT-T to start multiple terminals, and then
CTRL-ALT-NUMPAD # to tile them around in your workspace. It is not the best
workflow, however.

~~~
fader
Also, to start a new instance of a window you can middle-click on its icon in
the launcher. This works with more than just the terminal (browsers, word
processors, etc.).

------
jrussbowman
I actually like Unity. Was disappointed when 11.10 Unity didn't work well on
my laptop. Fortunately recent updates fixed that.

I think the main difference may be that I swap back and forth between a Linux
desktop and OSX desktop. Switch between OSX and Unity seems to be pretty
intuitive.

Note: I bought my first Mac this year. So I made the switch to OSX and Unity
around the same time. Maybe that was actually helpful. Before my Mac, I
generally bounced back and forth between Gnome and KDE based on the
distribution I was using at the time. I also primarily work with a Terminal.
For work lots of ssh, for home use lots of vim for coding.

------
cs702
FWIW, I had been using Gnome 2.x full time on my desktop since 2004, had tried
Unity several times in 11.04 and kept coming back to Gnome, and most recently
switched full-time to Unity with 11.10. Now I really like it.

Unity is _very_ keyboard friendly: [http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/what-
are-unitys-keyboar...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/what-are-unitys-
keyboard-and-mouse-shortcuts)

Everything I need is now only a few keystrokes away, and I like that Unity
'gets out of my way' at all other times.

------
akmiller
On the contrary, Unity is the very beginning of Ubuntu. For the first time I
feel that Ubuntu is the easiest to use of all 3 major OS's I use daily (OSX,
Win7, and Ubuntu).

------
macavity23
Whatever one thinks of unity, taking away the ability to keep the old desktop
environment seems extremely misguided. One of the best things about open
source is the knowledge that once you get a working setup, you'll always be
able to keep it.

I'll soon be returning to using a linux box as my primary machine after a year
stuck on laptop-only. I'll give Ubuntu a first shot out of loyalty, but if my
experience is anything like this guy's, it'll be back to Debian for me...

~~~
robin_reala
_One of the best things about open source is the knowledge that once you get a
working setup, you'll always be able to keep it._

You can keep it – no-one’s forcing you to upgrade. Or are you saying that
every open source project should keep every option and setup it’s ever had ad
infinitum?

~~~
regularfry
A lack of security updates for an old system, when it happens, _is_ forcing an
update.

~~~
cas
Security fixes are back-ported regularly for Ubuntu releases and if you are
really concerned then use the LTS version that will have 3 years of support.

<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS>

~~~
regularfry
So if I'm on 11.04 and don't want Unity, my best bet is to downgrade to 10.04?

~~~
cas
Why do that when 11.04 is supported until the end of 2012 and 10.04 would only
extend that by 6 months.

A lot can happen in a year and I'm sure someone will create a flavour of
Ubuntu to you liking based on 12.04 LTS.

~~~
regularfry
Do I have this straight? Your response to someone complaining that they are
being forced to upgrade would be that they should upgrade?

~~~
cas
Which, as I said, would be at least another year away.

My response was to you bringing up the topic of security so I simply addressed
that with details of Ubuntus LTS. Other than that there would be no reason to
upgrade however even then you could update any software package found to have
security issues on an individual basis through PPA, debs or source. That is
the flexibility of opensource.

No operating system can be supported forever but funnily enough Ubuntu have
just announced an extension to 5 years for 12.04 LTS.

------
sofuture
If you don't like the default window manager, use a different one! Arguably
that's _the point_ of running Linux.

Ubuntu is _so much more_ than it's default window manager.

------
GvS
I really tried to get used to it and gave it a week, but in the end it was
impossible. It's just full of bad design decisions and slows me down a lot. I
think it has some potential and I tried to configure it but coudn't find any
options so I googled "ubuntu unity remove" and I was back to gnome after
reboot.

------
larrik
The problem is that Gnome2 is awesome, and both Unity and Gnome3 are just ways
to try and make Linux into OS X.

Guess what? Gnome2 plus stuff like Avant Window Navigator beats the shit out
of OS X in terms of ease-of-use and productivity.

Gnome3 and Unity? OS X is better.

(I'm a Linux programmer by day and an iPhone programmer by night.)

------
pessimizer
Gubuntu. Luckily, Unity starts with 'U' already, so everything works out in
the end.

>Switch to Linux Mint, which is Debian-based and appears to use the "old"
GNOME 2

Linux Mint isn't Debian-based, but Ubuntu-based. He may be referring to Linux
Mint Debian Edition, which tracks Debian Testing.

------
one-man-bucket
I had the same thing happen to me a couple of days ago when I did the upgrade.

My old gnome2 desktop was set up so that I almost never had to use the mouse.
I used gnome-do for application launching (excellent software!) and various
compiz plugins for window placement with the keyboard (dual monitor setup).

I gave unity a try when I upgraded to 11.04, but it felt so "unfinished" back
then that I figured it would take at least a year for me to give it any
serious consideration. And it lacked all the configuration required to get to
a mouseless setup. And it still does.

Oh, and it made X really sluggish and I've had at least one compiz crash every
day since I upgraded (the ui crashes and reloads, putting all windows in the
top left workspace).

~~~
jsvaughan
gnome-do works perfectly well under 11.10, unity has keyboard shortcuts for
window placement (e.g. Ctrl-Alt + Numpad e.g. Ctrl-Alt-6 = window to the RHS
of the screen)

IMO unity much improved in 11.10 over 11.04

~~~
one-man-bucket
You're probably right that it improved, but it's still not nearly polished and
robust enough (compared to gnome2).

You get the exact same window placement stuff by activating the Put compiz
plugin (which is more customizable than unity).

Yes, gnome-do worked in unity in 11.10 once you disable the launcher bar
shortcut.

I guess my point is that unity made everything much more sluggish and
introduced crashes/buggy behaviour without really adding anything for a power
user who doesn't use the mouse.

------
vrode
> Suck

> Retard

Stopped reading.

~~~
dragthor
Yup. Me too.

------
bunderbunder
Unity strikes me as a cargo cult desktop environment. It tries to create a
solid user experience by merely copying the _appearance_ of a highly-regarded
user experience. Because it goes about things in this way, it's doomed to fall
flat: Unity's fundamental failure is focusing on superficial characteristics
when what really creates a solid user experience is the underlying
_mechanics_. It doesn't matter how it looks if it's confusing, frustrating, or
clunky. Microsoft illustrated that with Windows Vista. And now Ubuntu is
illustrating that with Unity.

------
sp332
Is there any good way to use multiple applications side-by-side in Unity? I
understand that it's optimized for little netbook screens, but wasn't any
consideration taken for big desktop monitors?

~~~
fader
Yep, several:

1\. If the windows are maximized, unmaximize them by clicking on a button or
by dragging the window down from the top of the screen. Arrange as you please.

2\. Drag a window to the left or right side of the screen. It will resize and
snap to the edge of the window taking up 50% of the display. (Great for having
two windows side-by-side.)

3\. Use Ctrl+Alt+[number pad key] to place windows in multiple configurations.
E.g. Ctrl+Alt+9 will place a window in the upper right corner. Pressing it
multiple times will cycle through various sizes.

Plenty of consideration was taken for larger screens -- Unity has much better
support for them than GNOME 2 did. It might need to be advertised a bit
better.

~~~
igouy
> 1\. If the windows are maximized

Please Unity stop maximizing the window!

> 2\. Drag a window to the left or right side of the screen. It will resize
> and snap to the edge of the window taking up 50% of the display. (Great for
> having two windows side-by-side.)

How do I stop Unity from resizing and snapping the window?

I spend more effort and suffer more distraction undoing Unity's "helpfulness"
than I ever spent on window management before, on any OS.

~~~
sp332
You'll have to install the package compizconfig-settings-manager, and disable
the "Grid" plugin.

~~~
igouy
Thanks. I've just installed compizconfig-settings-manager and now - before I
had a chance to disable the "Grid" plugin kkkrrsh - the launcher won't appear,
there's no menu bar at the top of the screen, and I kind of hope the desktop
will magically fix itself when I reboot the machine.

Edit: Nope, the desktop is toast. So now I have to figure out how to open a
terminal window, and how to reset Unity, before I can even try to stop Unity
being a control-freak.

I feel so lucky to have a Windows partition that might allow me to be
productive in the meantime!

Edit2: Better and better - I can open a terminal window, I can type 'unity
--reset' and then after a dozen lines the script hangs.

Unity: What is there not to like?

~~~
igouy
In a terminal window

ccsm

and check that the Ubuntu Unity plugin is enabled.

------
deleo
I think Unity is useless because these kind of inexperienced users almost
don't exist anymore. Everybody got used to the "ugly" interface made of
contextual menu and "hard" to adjust settings and those who didn't could live
with sensible defaults that could always be overridden.

But with Unity it's like if they went out there to replace QWERTY keyboards
with friendlier layouts without paying attention that none of the current
users already got so used to the on-purpose-unfriendly layout you're actually
slowing them down now.

------
__alexs
I started using Unity because 11.10 broke my Gnome 2 + xmonad config. It's
actually rather nice and has a fairly complete set of key bindings for window
management tasks.

------
swah
With Xubuntu, I couldn't get the external monitor to other mode than "clone".
Searching for how to solve this mentions xrandr... and then I went back to
Windows.

------
Symmetry
"Why does Unity suck so much? Because it assumes you're a complete retard who
can only click shiny buttons."

To answer snark with snark: No, it assumes you either like to click shiny
buttons or you know how to use a keyboard. Unity works a lot better for my
keyboard-centric workflow than Gnome2 did, and it was enough to lure me away
from tiling window managers for weeks, way more than I expected to spend in
it.

------
robotfuel
> Why does Unity suck so much? Because it assumes you're a complete retard who
> can only click shiny buttons.

Unity allows you to drive most of the UI with the keyboard. Which makes easier
to use, after you learn them. See: [http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/what-
are-unitys-keyboar...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/what-are-unitys-
keyboard-and-mouse-shortcuts)

------
Kliment
I found this pretty useful. It tells you how to fix the worst annoyances and
how to get a decent desktop back.

[http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/things-to-tweak-after-
install...](http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/things-to-tweak-after-installing-
ubuntu.html)

------
tep
This is not the end! I regard it as the worst update myself. But that doesn't
matter. We have to learn, that other peoples needs are quite different.

My suggestion/demand would be this: Please implement a "God Mode" where us
freaks can tweak details that are important to us.

------
rbanffy
The only valid complain is about the hidden launcher on the left - I often
open it when all I wanted was the back button or resize a maximized window
from the left margin.

As to recommend him another OS? Get a Mac. This way you'll complain to Apple
and I won't pay attention.

------
SlipperySlope
I'm a multi-monitor desktop software developer needing the features of Gnome
classic in 11.10. I performed apt-get install gnome-classic-fallback , then
edited /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf to set user-session=gnome-classic.

I plan on upgrading two Ubuntu servers the same way.

------
jszmajda
I like unity, but it doesn't work on my quad-monitor setup. I know I'm in the
extreme minority, so I stick with Xinerama and broken window managers for the
most part. It mostly works, and I'm productive on four screens. Good enough.

------
dragthor
I am sick of rants and/or dire predictions. No one cares as much as you think.

------
dlitz
> While you can install that package and get a half-working GNOME menu system,
> you cannot get your taskbar or configurable panels back.

Configurable panels: Alt+rightclick the panel Taskbar: I dunno, it works fine
for me.

------
jenhsun
I have similar experience. After two times Ubuntu 11.10 fresh installation, I
rush to find my MacOSX snow leopard DVD for Hackintosh preparing. However, I
lost that DVD long ago. Damn.

------
tintin
People hate changes. I think Canonical underestimates this.

(I switched to Xubuntu so in my mind things didn't change very much. Only that
Xubuntu is way faster and is using less resources than Ubuntu.)

~~~
kitanata
I couldn't agree more. xubuntu or moreso XFCE4 rocks.

------
mvts
After upgrading to 11.10 I kinda raged for about one hour. Then installed KDE.
And I am looking out for an alternative distro that fits my needs.

------
randy909
Here, this will solve all your problems:

<http://awesome.naquadah.org/>

------
ilcavero
what's wrong with ubuntu 10.04? it's still in support and has gnome 2.X I will
use it until either gnome shell or unity until get mature enough, there is no
need to change OS every 6 months.

------
xinuc
I feel the pain. Now I use arch linux with xmonad.

