
Ubuntu’s move to Unity is the best thing that ever happened to Linux - kht786
http://kumailht.com/2011/11/ubuntus-move-to-unity-is-the-best-thing-that-ever-happened-to-linux/
======
daliusd
I consider myself power user. I am developer, I have experience with Windows,
Mac OS X, BSD OSes and Linuxes. I have actually tried various desktop
environments and WMs (including several tiling managers, I have used awesome
WM for half a year). Overall I really love experimenting with software to the
very deep level.

I have tried Unity and I really like it. It is simple and it does what I need.
It respects my screen estate without taking functionality and clarity. I
really don't understand what other power users are missing.

P.S. I don't like that Unity has some bugs but those are minor problems.

~~~
danking00
Thirded,

 _Geeks are coding away at some application feature, managing servers,
updating designs, watching some TV show, browsing the web, discussing project
goals over skype with team members and other mundane things – all this on a
slow day._

I disagree. I have three windows open. Google Chrome (with, unfortunately for
my productivity, Hacker News open), Emacs, and a Gnome Terminal (I X forward
my Emacs session from my home machine to my work machine).

Even if I did have skype open rather than an IRC session (in ERC/irssi), I
don't see how Unity is better or worse than the normal Gnome set-up. Alt-Tab
still works. Same goes for other applications that are distracting me from my
editor.

What part of alt-tabing and application launching does Unity do so terribly
compared to the old Gnome interface + Gnome-Do (I hated the menus, I tab-
complete in the terminal, why can't I tab-complete in my application
launcher?).

~~~
Anderkent
Alt-tab works, but alt-shift-tab does not - or at least did not work for me
when I upgraded. Not wanting to waste time looking for a workaround, I just
reverted to my backup and forgot about Unity.

~~~
hamoid
With Unity you can press Win+1, Win+2 ... Win+N to directly jump to an
specific open window. Much faster than alt+tab.

~~~
felipehummel
After I discovered this feature/shortcut I started not caring anymore about
Unity bugs. Navigating applications this way is much faster than alt+tabbing.
Another useful shortcut is alt+` (backtick). It cycles through open windows of
the same application. If you have 10 PDFs open, you can cycle through them
with alt+`.

------
gbog
> The non geek will [...] love the gloss that Unity brings to Ubuntu.

I don't know. It seems common sense that "non geeks" (hear, common people)
like glossy things. After all, the Miss Universe thing has some success and is
pure gloss. But I think it can also be an observation bias, or the result of a
self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing.

For instance, we check what people like to watch on TV, but what the people
are fed with on the TV is already the result of some presupposition over what
they like.

Some counter example exist, showing that people do not always like
preformatted content, or glossy interface. Two different cases come to mind:

In France, there was a movie called Etre et Avoir, about a teacher in a remote
countryside village. No professional actors, no story, just some shots in a
school. Who would have bet on it? Is it not obvious that spectators want
action, glamour, movie stars? Well in this case it was not true: the movie has
been widely successful.

Another case, closer to HN interest: Is not Wikipedia the most successful
(rich) content website ever? Who could say without laughing that Wikipedia has
a glossy interface?

So I think one need to avoid clichés and presuppositions about "non geeks".
They may or may not like Unity. If they do, it could be because it looks
"glossy", yes, maybe, but it could also be because it just works, or because
it is cheap, or because it is fast, or for some other reason.

~~~
kmfrk
I also think that he is mistaking "gloss" with "UX that won't make you want to
pull your hair out".

Creating a good experience has more to do with creating some good interface
metaphors that look good and work well than to just emulate known platforms
like Windows and Mac.

~~~
jiggy2011
Entirely agree, I think pherhaps when people describe apple products for
example as "glossy" or "shiny" a large part of that is because they like the
overall experience of the hardware + software but don't know enough Computer /
UI jargon to describe exactly why they like it so they pick up on something
concrete that they like such as colours and materials.

It's like if you ask somebody why they find a woman attractive they are more
likely to talk about her breasts , smile or legs rather than mentioning things
like distance between the eyes, nose shape or cheekbone structure.

------
supar
I have experienced quite the opposite. A lot of colleagues that were once
found of Ubuntu switched in flocks to other distros starting with Ubuntu
Maverick.

With Ubuntu 11, friends personally asked me how to switch back to the previous
system, or to dump linux completely because the system got too slow with
updates. And, sadly, that's true: the experience of the Ubuntu desktop,
performance-wise, has degraded to the point of being significantly slower than
windows xp or 7.

I have witnessed netbooks (decent netbooks running either android or ubuntu
with unity) considered as "crap" by several non-tecnical people talking in the
building, simply because they don't work "as expected" and thus being almost
unuseable by them.

The way I see it, most people expect a standard windows-like interface. I've
long stopped being a "go-to guy for computers" so I don't enter these
discussions anymore, but that's very sad for me to realize that Ubuntu had
_everything_ two years ago for both technical users and new users, while now
people simply flock away.

Even at work, I'm seriously considering to dump Ubuntu LTS on servers due to
the increasing (unfixed) issues we have on large systems, mostly due to Ubuntu
changes compared to debian and/or ubuntu projects such as upstart. Bugs on
launchpad (let alone the crappyness that is launchpad itself) don't get fixed,
but are simply "waited for" from upstream (either debian or source author).

I'm disappointed, really. Having the choice of the interface would have been
so damn easy.

~~~
technomancy
What makes you think you don't have a choice? I'm running Ubuntu with xmonad,
and before that was on xfce; it's super easy to switch. I will probably switch
to Debian soon, but that has more to do with Ubuntu pushing nonfree software
than Unity.

~~~
supar
In theory yes, however alternative desktops are not supported. The choice of
desktop is the primary difference between Ubuntu and (say) Debian which
doesn't worship any. Not that "support" exists anyway, but there's no point in
using Ubuntu if you use a different desktop.

I also agree about your non-free software argument. Plus all the useless,
additional services ubuntu is trying to push (Apple-style).

~~~
fader
How are other desktops supported less under Ubuntu than they are under Debian?
(The "useless, additional services" bit confuses me too, TBH. Could you
provide some examples?)

------
Atropos
I'm probably a non-geek by HN standards, I primarily use my computer for
internet, writing documents, media consumption etc... I have been using Ubuntu
for 5 years or so and for my purposes it is "like windows, but better":
(Practically) no viruses, no strange bugs, easy to reinstall/upgrade/backup.
Personally I didn't like Unity and the changes at all and I didn't want to
bother to learn / get used to it. Which of course is no problem, since Xubuntu
works fine for me too.

Where I don't agree with the author is the image of the "average joe". The
characterization is possibly correct if you are talking about non-computer
literate users ages 40+ or so. But in the age group <25 there are alot of non-
geeks that go from InternetExplorer->Firefox/Chrome,
MicrosoftOffice->OpenOffice without considering "gloss" at all.

------
cs702
Despite the occasional glitches, I've come to like Unity a _lot_.

Unity is invisible when I'm working. It shows up only when I invoke it with
the <super> key. It uses screen real estate very efficiently. It lets me open
my most often used apps with only two keystrokes (I've mapped <super><0> to
<super><9> to my most used apps). It makes everything else quickly reachable
with a few keystrokes via <super><a> and <super><f>. It lets me quickly divide
screen real estate among windows with <Ctrl><Alt> and the numeric keypad. The
next version (12.04) looks set to add many features specific to multi-display
setups.

It's great for people who want their desktop environment to get out of their
way and prefer to use keyboard instead of mouse.

------
arocks
There are two reasons why an average person learns computers and uses a
particular OS:

* Even if it is not very intuitive, it is universally used (Windows) * Even if it is not universally used, it is intuitive (Mac OS)

Linux is currently, IMHO, in the middle. This brings up a lot of issues from
an average Joe's perspective: some hardware configurations do not work
perfectly (especially laptops), time spent in learning an interface cannot be
applied in other environments (like office) and some tools are not intuitively
named especially for a beginner (what is GIMP? Evolution?)

Just to be clear, I use Linux everyday and as an advanced user I love the
freedom it offers. For the latter reason, I don't prefer Unity. Now, when a
beginner uses Unity, they will approach someone like me. But since I dislike
the unorthodox UI, I might be able to help her. But I am sure a fellow Unity
enthusiast would be more than willing to help.

So my feelings are mixed and not as upbeat as the OP thinks.

~~~
karterk
> Even if it is not universally used, it is intuitive (Mac OS)

I often hear people saying that the Mac is intuitive. Is there actually proper
proof for this?

~~~
jiggy2011
I'm not sure about intuitive (when I use OS X I still have to lookup on google
how to do things) but it is more discoverable in my limited experience. There
are just less buttons and menus than there are in Windows, Linux desktop sort
of has this advantage too although often many of the things that would have
been done with the extra buttons are done with the Terminal.

Also OS X is generally allot more consistent in it's interface than Linux is.

~~~
technomancy
I think most of the time when people say "intuitive" they mean "discoverable".
I'm not even sure "intuitive" is a property software can possess.

~~~
jiggy2011
I think what I meant was that it is more discoverable usually just because
there are less buttons not _necessarily_ because those buttons are located
better.

------
andyking
It's been "the year of desktop Linux" every year since about 2006 for me. Who
cares what everyone else is using? Just find a system you're happy with and
stick with it.

~~~
dextorious
"""Who cares what everyone else is using?"""

A lot of people. It's called "network effects": if more people use my OS of
choice, I get more stuff for it, from support to applications to resources to
see it develop faster.

The real question is "who cares what _YOU_ are using?".

Why there always has to be one guy in every discussion of desktop Linux, going
"I use it on my desktop just fine"?

We don't care, and it's not what's under discussion. Some people also use QNX
or Plan 9 in their desktops just fine. That's not the f*n point.

~~~
burgerbrain
_I_ care about what _I_ am using, and _he_ cares about what _he_ is using. We
don't care what _they_ are using. Any of your arguments as to why we should
would apply equally well to _cars_ , but you never see people have that
conversation.

~~~
jiggy2011
The car analogy doesn't work so well here because cars are far more
interchangeable, although if you use a less popular type of car perhaps it is
more difficult get parts for it for example.

The advantage of using a common OS is that other people have probably had the
problems before you have , often on Linux I feel like I may the first person
to experience a particular problem. More users = more software generally, cars
don't require "extra" stuff that is designed for a specific car in order to do
their job.

~~~
burgerbrain
In the _vast_ majority of cases, computers (software and hardware) are quite
generic. It is only the people with exotic cars and computer setups (Linux on
the desktop for example) that have a concern.

~~~
jiggy2011
hardware in many cases yes, software less so. There are very few cases where
one piece of software is a good substitute for another and where they are they
are usually trivial pieces of software.

~~~
burgerbrain
Approximately 80% of the time, the software that works on one computer will
work on another. In most of the remaining cases, the software will _still_
work on the other computer, or at least have an acceptable substitute. For
example, Microsoft Office works on a high 90's percent of all personal
computers.

It is only if you have an exotic car^W computer that you'll have trouble
finding parts^W software.

------
bigfoot
"As for Unity; its incomplete, buggy and complicated." -- four lines later:
"The non geek will love Unity. Its simple to use [...]". The author fails to
be consistent even in a single paragraph. Even the post's title contradicts
its content.

~~~
sp332
Note the present tense in the first quote and the future tense in the second.
Unity will be a _very_ user-friendly system once they fix more of the bugs.

~~~
jiggy2011
The problem is, by the time they have fixed the bugs and made it nice they
will spot something else shiny and start again.

So you'll get 2 or 3 nice stable releases before being baptized by fire again.

~~~
jeltz
Indeed, look at all the work canonical spent into speeding up boot and how it
a couple of releases later regressed heavily almost back to where we started.
Stories like this gives me little faith in Canonical managing to keep on
improving Unity.

------
wildmXranat
Ugh, that is hype and nothing more. I've been using ubuntu since version 4 or
so, and Unity has made me switch the windowing manager. Simple as that. It
impedes my workflow and it doesn't even come close to what a simple, developer
centric manager should be in my point of view. I installed the WM that comes
with Lubuntu and unless Unity changes for the better, it will not be on my
workstation.

I can also say, that many developers I work with feel the same way. It wasn't
as if we didn't try to get used to it.

~~~
mst
And there's precisely the point: "it will not be on my workstation".

Unity is aiming for the desktop market, not the workstation market.

My desktop is Windows, because it allows me to consume media, browse the web,
shove stuff onto my iPod with iTunes, and at no point do I actually have to
think.

My workstation is debian with fvwm2.

Ubuntu is "linux for human beings", not "linux for development workstations".
This is not necessarily a problem.

------
technomancy
This almost seems plausible until you realize that Gnome 3 has all the polish
of Unity but none of the immediately obvious bugs. If they had simply
contributed to Gnome 3 instead of breaking off into their own thing, the
result would be far ahead of what they have now.

~~~
rbanffy
I am not alone thinking Gnome 3 is not as comfortable to work with as Unity.
Unity was born because Canonical wasn't happy with the directions Gnome was
taking with 3, and, after using 3 for some time, I have to agree - lots of
polish, true, but it's not as clean and direct as Unity.

Unity has its bugs. In the end, they'll be dealt with. It's a 1.0 release,
after all.

------
Newky
I really want to know how these "non-geeks" are going to get a chance to like
Unity. I'm all for bringing Linux closer to people, and looking at the work
that Android has done, it clarifies that with a correct marketing and
technical drive, Linux' openness is something which can attract a large range
of users.

Worth noting that Android for all intents and purposes is fighting a closed,
one-device (or at least one brand of device) Apple iOS. Commanding a place on
desktops (not sure the relevance of this is still the same) will be arguably a
different fight than on the mobile space.

Windows runs on all hardware, its a familiar albeit crappy at times interface.
What tells me most that Linux as a viable desktop for non-geeks is a fairytale
never going to happen is the fact that right now, apart from a select group of
pc vendors, the only way for anyone non-technical to get access to a ubuntu
install is to install it themselves.

It doesn't matter if its such a simple install, users are frightened to
install a simple application at times.

On this note, I always find it mystifying who all these non-geeks we are
trying to appeal to are, I'm all for a slicker, easier to use desktop but why
not target it at the market which have stood by and held up Linux for all
these years.

------
hamoid
I think the only thing wrong with Unity is that it came without instructions.

My dad, a non computer expert, updated to a recent Ubuntu and wondered where
did all the menus go to. He called me saying that he needed help.

Even I'm a power user, it also took me time to adapt. The first days I was
trying to do things the old way. For example trying to find the applications
by clicking instead of typing. After I realized, I think I'm now faster than
before. I was already used to Quicksilver and Launchy, so pressing the start
key, typing a few letters and pressing enter feels fast and easy.

I was also annoyed by windows maximizing when I dragged them to the top. No
one told me what was that about. Today I realized that I can easily drag
windows to the left or right borders for having two windows side by side,
which I find very useful.

So I think what's missing is a welcome video tutorial that explains the
changes and tells us how to be productive with Unity.

I wonder about one thing though: aren't geeks doing most things with the
keyboard? I don't think you notice Unity much if you stay away from the mouse.

------
nextparadigms
Maybe Unity isn't the best possible UI they could've made, but the strategy is
definitely a good one. They need an UI that's as easy as possible to use if
Linux will ever be destined for regular consumers.

On the other hand, they might've done this too late. Android will probably be
the popular solution on all devices and machines that could have been running
it.

------
asto
Alienating current users (geeks) for prospective users (non-geeks) is always a
bad move regardless of what the product is.

~~~
jiggy2011
Very true, Apple does a fair job (mostly) in avoiding this and even Microsoft
aren't _terrible_ at it. There's just as many hardcore developers who love
their macbooks as there are english lit students.

The idea that you have to somehow have an apartheid for users is silly.

If I trade an economical Toyota for a Ferrari the mission statement of the car
may be very different but the basic interface (wheel + 3 pedals) is the same.
Apart from knowing that the gas is going to be way more responsive on the
ferrari you don't really need to re-learn driving just to switch.

------
guard-of-terra
There is no indication whatsoever that Ubuntu will be able to reach "average
joe", and building a product for audience you can't reach is pretty pointless.
The only audience really using Ubuntu is one consisting of coders and geeks.

There's a famous russian chinese saying: When a rhino stares at the moon - he
is wasting his spleen flowers.

~~~
rsheridan6
They did (sort of) reach a mass audience through Dell's Ubuntu laptop program
in 2007. It didn't quite work out then because Ubuntu wasn't ready (I owned
one, it was not ready for prime time). It still isn't, but it's closer. If it
was ready, then avoiding the Windows tax would be a good enough reason for
retailers to push Ubuntu.

~~~
flomo
The issue with pushing Linux onto unwitting users is many don't understand
it's incompatible with their Win32 software and end up returning the computer.
Therefore Dell had to put up a big "here be dragons" page in front of the
Ubuntu systems.

If this were to actually work, they would need some sort of huge mass
marketing campaign which convinced people they actually want or need Linux on
their computer, which is very unlikely. Defining your audience as people who
want to save the 5% cost of a Windows license cost from their already cheapass
PC is never going to amount to much.

~~~
rsheridan6
Your point is valid, but it's becoming less so. The web is taking over more
and more of what used to be desktop territory, and the OS is becoming a device
driver for the internet. There are plenty of people now who just need
something that will run a web browser (granted, there are also still plenty
who have to have MS Office or whatever).

The more cheapass the PC, the more of a difference the Windows Tax makes. $50
out of $1000 is only 5%, but $50 out of a $115 Walmart computer[1] is pretty
substantial (not that Walmart is likely to be paying that much for a Windows
license, but at the low end a little bit of money makes a big difference).

[1] <http://www.walmart.com/ip/IBM-40GB-8183/16880171>

~~~
flomo
The point wasn't whether people do or don't need Windows software, it's that
you can't just throw Linux systems on the market unless the consumer feels
they have some compelling reason to buy one.

And MS does scale their license prices based on the system costs, but I think
you've demonstrated one can always find a cheaper PC without switching to
Linux.

~~~
rsheridan6
A cheap PC would be cheaper without an MS tax, unless MS was willing to give
Windows away for free to keep Linux from getting a foothold. Sure, the money
may not be much, but if you don't perceive a difference in quality, you'll buy
the $.98 can of beans over the $.99 one. $115 is hardly a theoretical lower
bound to the price of a PC.

There are also large organizations that would like to cut costs wherever they
can, and can't be expected to make up the Windows tax by installing crapware
like a vendor can. The city of Munich is the most well-known example of a big
player switching to Linux. The effort was not a complete failure but was
something of a disappointment - I don't think Munich ended up saving any money
when you consider the labor costs, etc. But if Linux had been ready and the
transition had been more successful, you'd see a lot of imitators following
Munich's lead.

But it's probably a moot point anyway. I think Android will end up swallowing
the PC market like a classic disruptive technology and stealing Linux's
thunder anyway.

------
cavilling_elite
One of the things I think is keeping any desktop from being "the one" is the
lack of true developer interoperability. You can program in gtk or qt (or many
many others) but for a single distro your "best" programs span a number of
different ways to do the same thing (and many flame wars).

This is the greatest thing about Linux, and its curse. In Windows you have the
Windows API, in OSx you have Cocoa. Sure you can add more to the mix but most
of it is the main API.

I enjoyed the direction gnome2 was going, slowly filling in the niches needed
to create a complete system. Then it seems they scratched that and went with
gnome3. I like a lot of things about gnome3, but I wish gnome2 would not be
defunct.

The same goes for kde, slowly building a complete system of tools for most
users.

Both gnome and kde are the reason people would choose gtk or qt for their
development.

What Unity needs (and I am not sure if it is in the works) is a true Unity
API. Build apps for Unity with Unity specifics. Of course this goes against
the Linux way, but if one really wants "the year of Linux on the desktop" we
have to stop being a moving target.

------
jiggy2011
The only constructive thing I take from this discussion is that on Linux
everyone has a _completely_ different way of working.

Accommodating this requires either multiple WMs or ones which are very
flexible. The problem with Unity is that it dilutes the work available for
other window managers reducing the number of quality choices but it does not
replace this with enough flexibility in itself.

------
jjm
I held off until couple days ago on installing 11 with Unity and was very
frustrated... I didn't want to believe it, but it was way too dumbed down for
me. I was almost insulted...

If I want pretty GFX and UI I'll just use my mac.

Yes, you can disable Unity... But the issue for me is a lot of man power will
be spent on it. Manpower that could be put to use on other things.

~~~
fader
I see the "dumbed down" complaint a lot, but I don't understand it. What is
missing from Unity that you could do before? Or is it that if something is
pretty or simple it is automatically worth less somehow than something ugly or
complicated?

For me Unity is far more powerful out of the box than GNOME 2 was. Being able
to position and tile windows with the keyboard and having 10 applications
easily and automatically bound to a keystroke are huge timesavers for me.

------
jiggy2011
Urgh, where to start?

Unity isn't going to drag any joe-average users to suddenly want Linux on
their PC. It's neither consistent with what their used to nor does it create
any kind of superior paradigm to what already exists.

Sure you can browse the web , play music and do the odd spreadsheet etc with
it , big whoop we've been doing this for years , it would have been exciting
in the late 90s not now.

The barrier for Ubuntu is not really it's UI. It's problems like having a
really horrible flash player, poor selection of applications for many tasks
(not to mention games). Not to mention other nasties like
pulseaudio,networkmanager,dependency problems etc.

Ubuntu is so desperately trying to be a cut price apple, now they want to move
to tablets.. Ok so they will have the same problem they have had on the
desktop for the last 20 years, lack of consumer applications.

~~~
sixtofour
"Unity isn't going to drag any joe-average users to suddenly want Linux on
their PC."

'What comes with the PC at the store' is what joe-average is always going to
use. Always. What a Linux desktop looks like and aspires to be and how
well/whether it works means nothing in this context. Nothing.

Numbers-wise, people using Linux on the desktop are: geeks (an insignificant
percentage of PC users) and friends/parents of geeks (an insignificant
percentage the former).

We're like flies buzzing around a very small pile of elephant dung (but it's
really good dung); meanwhile the elephant has lumbered off, out of site.

~~~
jiggy2011
Not totally sure, yes there is always going to be a big advantage to whatever
comes with the PC. I think if there was a clear sales pitch that could be used
to sell Linux desktop as an alternative to Windows there would be enough
people willing it try switching to give it critical mass which would then
cause OEMs to ship it with some of their computers.

Linux tends to be well used in dedicated electronics (routers, GPS , phones
etc etc). We really need to think about what "Linux on the desktop" _actually_
means. What it _really_ seems to mean is a system where the majority of the
components are released under a GNU (or similar) license , so that includes
the Desktop environment etc.

Let's say for example that apple decided to rip the darwin kernel out of OS X
and replace it with Linux 2.6.x but kept everything else as it was would we
suddenly cry "woo it's the year of the Linux desktop" , what real quantifiable
difference would it make?

It seems that in order for Linux to succeed as a mass market desktop OS it
needs some company to plug big gaps (as has happened with android) at what
point would the "Linux people" decide they no longer wanted to be associated
with it?

------
yummies
So to sum this article up: 'unity is awesome and will finally let non geeks
use linux, but any current linux users should move on to other distros.'

despite how illogical that sounds, that may very well be cannonical's game
plan.

~~~
jiggy2011
This is a pretty horrible plan, all the power users who helped report & fix
bugs + answer questions on forums/wikis for ubuntu will move onto something
else so canonical will be on their own for providing testing and support which
will either slow down their release cycles allot (no bad thing). Or they will
keep pushing buggy untested software straight into the hands of peoples
grandmas.

------
rbanffy
I am a developer and I don't know what he's talking about. Sure Unity is a bit
unpolished around the edges, but I barely use it. Most of the time of a
developer is spent in shells and editors (and, occasionally, a browser). All I
see of it is when I have to launch something and, quite frankly, hitting the
windows key and typing is much faster than menueing around.

Of course 2012 won't be the year of the Linux desktop and he nails it when he
says we really don't want it. Give me power and stability. Give me power-user-
friendliness, not grandma-friendliness.

------
molecule
"I can no longer remember Ubuntu’s release names and numbers. I had to look it
up for this article, apparently its at 11.10."

YY.MM of release date.

------
drivebyacct2
Jesus. A decent, level headed article, ended with the same fear mongering of
every other article where the author doesn't like Unity. For some reason, if
Ubuntu has Unity has the default launcher, you must choose a different
distribution in order to use a different DE. Because a distro's DE is more
important than it's package management, community, available random software,
etc.

------
andreadallera
I've tried Unity and I didn't like it. But that was to be expected, since I've
been using xmonad for more than a year now.

Power users like myself will always find a way to get their favourite system
up and running. I agree with Canonical and their policy of "fuck you, we're
doing that no matter what you tell us", since their current user base is
almost 100% power users and you can't really grow out of that niche if you
don't take bold decisions. We will probably leave ubuntu because of it (I'm
already on Arch Linux on most of my machines) but if they manage to attract a
good slice of the market it will be a great thing for Linux as a whole.

They probably shouldn't try to sell themselves as a "cheap mac", but that's
another story.

------
billpatrianakos
I think this am excellent point. Every time I've seen this brought up it turns
into an argument over which features of Unity suck worst.

So normal people have Ubuntu and Unity and the rest of us have a million other
options. Hell, I even used Ununtu for development for a while. It was nice for
a month but then the novelty wore off and Unity got in my way. But I hope more
people realize that Ubuntu is not for you, it's for everyone (if everyone
means you aren't a big power user). What's wrong with that?

------
jenhsun
I already switch one of my production PC to Hackintosh due to Unity. I believe
OP's just a propaganda anyway.

------
pg7
I am a geek and I like Unity. It's like emacs of the world of UI's. The first
modern GUI you don't need to use a mouse to work with it. I find it very
productive.

~~~
jiggy2011
What do you use to work with it? I didn't try it for very long but I didn't
find it especially conductive to keyboard use.

Or are you referring to touchscreen usage? How many people are actually
_using_ multitouch with Ubuntu?

~~~
fader
[http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/what-are-unitys-
keyboar...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/what-are-unitys-keyboard-and-
mouse-shortcuts)

You can launch or switch to any of the first 10 applications on the launcher,
resize/maximize/minimize a window, _tile multiple windows_ , switch
workspaces, or bring up the dash with a single keybinding for each. The only
one of those I remember being able to do in GNOME 2 was switch workspaces.

~~~
DanBC
> _resize/maximize/minimize a window,_

(<http://k12linux.mesd.k12.or.us/docs/gnome/ch01s02.html>)

    
    
        Alt-spacebar    Opens the Window Menu.
    
    

etc etc.

~~~
fader
Alt-spacebar requires multiple keystrokes and does not allow easy tiling or
snapping to corners/center.

