

Ubuntu 11.04 will use Unity UX instead of GNOME Desktop - kleiba
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/10/25/ubuntu-11-04-natty-narwhal-unity-gnome-default-shell/

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wyclif
In the article, I think they are confusing the GNOME shell with the GNOME
desktop, which are not the same things at all.

~~~
roqetman
I think this clarifies things: "There is going to be some questions about this
decision in relation to GNOME. I want to make something crystal clear: Ubuntu
is a GNOME distribution, we ship the GNOME stack, we will continue to ship
GNOME apps, and we optimize Ubuntu for GNOME. The only difference is that
Unity is a different shell for GNOME, but we continue to support the latest
GNOME Shell development work in the Ubuntu archives" From:
[http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/10/25/ubuntu-11-04-to-ship-
uni...](http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/10/25/ubuntu-11-04-to-ship-unity/)

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tzury
if you want to experience it now on your desktop do the following:

    
    
        $ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:canonical-dx-team/une
        $ sudo apt-get update
        $ sudo apt-get install unity
    

Log Off, and then choose the Unity session before logging in.

I did it in the past and did not like it much. But perhaps it is far better
now, and would be even better in the future release

~~~
buro9
I just tried this and I think it's a much better desktop in terms of UX.

However, I'm running on a mere 16GB 16-core MacPro and performance was
appalling with it really suffering and the end result is practically unusable.

If performance can be brought up to Gnome levels then I'll probably be happy
as it is really nice.

~~~
kevinherron
16-core? Since when is there more than a 12-core Mac Pro?

~~~
buro9
Good question, and I don't know.

I just went by cat /proc/cpuinfo and htop which both show 16 independently
operating cores. Maybe I have an octo-core and it has hyper-threading? I can't
say I pay a great deal of attention to the specifics of the machine I'm hot-
desking at, but I suspect that even if it is 8 cores hyper-threaded that Unity
should still run smoothly.

~~~
kevinherron
That sounds about right.

And yes, I agree, Unity should still run smoothly :x

I think Unity for the desktop is in beta though so hopefully they get things
worked out in time for the 11.04 release.

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zecg
My money is on Ubuntu 12.10 defaulting to xmonad and triggering the
apocalypse.

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vanschelven
Discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1830372>

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twymer
Unity is the default in the 10.10 Netbook version of Ubuntu. It runs terribly
slow and I found it unusable because of this. I was thinking it seemed like
they made something that expected you to be on a desktop but marketed it
wrong, I guess I was right..

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drblast
With wide screens, there is a scarcity of vertical screen space, especially on
netbooks.

Windows 7 actually solves this problem best; I can move the task bar over to
the right and have the full screen height for applications.

Windows XP had the nice benefit of the application buttons' text being
horizontal so a wide start bar on the left or right could list about 15-20
open applications without cropping the application name.

Even though they're going to a side bar, moving the top bar in Ubuntu out of
the way results in ugly, buggy wierdness.

I'd imagine it's impossible to move the menu bar in Mac OS X, but since
there's no Mac netbook, it's probably not a problem.

~~~
akent
"results in ugly, buggy weirdness" <\--- care to elaborate?

I've happily been removing the top bar in Gnome for many consecutive Ubuntu
releases without problems?

~~~
drblast
Sure I'll elaborate. By the way, if you have any way to fix these problems via
configuration, please let me know.

Minor complaint: the default theme is a fixed-pixel gradient that doesn't
rotate when you move the bar to the right, so the vertical bar looks like
closed venetian blinds. I can change the theme, but the default should be
better.

Bigger complaints: The status icons and notification area don't rotate and/or
crop themselves so you can't access most of the important icons.

The application buttons DO rotate the text 90 degrees, but (my preference at
least) they should be the only thing that doesn't rotate. The problem with
horizontal application buttons is you quickly run out of space; I move the
task bar vertical to eliminate that problem -- this is a problem with Gnome's
implementation, not Ubuntu.

I'd be happy to remove the top bar, but a lot of functionality (wireless
configuration menus) is difficult or impossible to access without it.

I normally have the terminal, browser, and emacs set to hotkeys as F1, F2, and
F3, so I don't need an application menu other than to start apps I use
infrequently. A context menu would be sufficient.

Perfect world: What I'd really like is a blank screen with some method of
seeing running applications that remains hidden most of the time, and a way to
easily start applications, see wireless config, and log out.

The last desktop I had that worked exactly the way I wanted it was FVWM, where
everything was accessed via hotkeys and root window context menus.

Unfortunately a lot of the niceness of Gnome, like the wireless config stuff,
battery notifications, auto-mounting of USB Drives, and status icons you'd
typically expect are dependent on using the Gnome/Nautilus interface. (At
least I think that's the case.)

I'd probably be happy with FVWM again if using it didn't mean abandoning all
the configuration apps and automation that Gnome provides. Right now, I'd have
to log in to FVWM, and start a bunch of scripts to configure wireless, start
the 50,000 daemons that make Gnome run like a modern UI, etc.

It's a lot of work to go through to reclaim 42 pixels from the top of my
screen.

~~~
pyre
_Unfortunately a lot of the niceness of Gnome, like the wireless config stuff,
battery notifications, auto-mounting of USB Drives, and status icons you'd
typically expect are dependent on using the Gnome/Nautilus interface. (At
least I think that's the case.)_

You can use a lot of GNOME without being on a 'GNOME desktop.' gnome-power-
manager can run on it's own (and most of the information that the battery
display applets use resides in /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0 (or BAT[1-9] I guess,
if you have multiple batteries...). gnome-screensaver doesn't need to be run
from within GNOME. IIRC the auto-mounting is shared between gnome-vfs (aka
/usr/lib/gnome-vfs-2.0/gnome-vfs-daemon on 10.04) and udev rules. The udev
rules handle things like usb-mass-storage devices, and gnome-vfs handles
things that get mounted to ~/.gvfs/ (like digital cameras). (FYI, udev rules
are at the system-level and _not_ dependent on desktop)

Wireless is managed by the network-manager daemon which is launched on Linux
boot (in Ubuntu). The controlling applet is nm-applet, which just accesses the
backend-daemon. I remember there being a console app to interface with
network-manager, but it wasn't that polished last time I looked at it. There
is nothing stopping anyone from interfacing with network-manager in a
standalone app. You could also swap network-manager with wicd
(<http://wicd.sf.net>).

~~~
drblast
You CAN do this, but it's a monumental effort to fix a tiny problem.

~~~
pyre
Maybe figuring out all of that information from scratch is, but things like
replacing NetworkManager with WICD is as simple on Ubuntu as 'apt-get install
wicd' (though I don't know off-hand if you need to add a 3rd-party repo, but
it's not like Canonical hasn't added GUI interfaces for doing that -- rather
than mucking around in /etc/apt/sources.{d/,list})

The udev rules that do the auto-mounting of usb-mass-storage devices are
already there on your system. Unless you need to mount special devices like
Bluetooth filesystems or digital cameras over USB, then you may not need
gnome-vfs (and it may launch automatically once you first start nautilus, I'm
not sure). Note, that in the past this auto-mounting was done by GNOME or KDE-
specific daemons, udev has replaced them (at least on Ubuntu, and I assume
Debian).

Launching gnome-power-manager is as simple as adding "gnome-power-manager&" to
whatever your startup script is. With someone that has the relevant
information, these things are relatively easy. bbs.archlinux.org is a good
resource too (since it seems lots of Arch users go for alternative desktop
environments -- even if 'desktop environment' just consists of a window
manager).

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SkyMarshal
Why are we still futzing around with always-visible taskbars when we've got
things like Quicksilver, Gnome-Do, Alt-Tab window switchers, and tiling window
managers.

I'd think by now that we'd get rid of any visible element that's not an app,
like menu bars, an integrate them, along with alt-tab app switching and
program (Start) menus into a single popup Quicksilver/Gnome-Do interface.

WTB one point of contact for starting/switching/stopping any app on the
system, that is hidden until you need to see it, and activated by either a
shortcut key or mouse button combo or gesture.

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grobolom
I think the biggest problem with the current version of Unity is the lack of
customization.

10.10 Unity does not allow the removal or movement of any of the desktop
elements - you cannot hide the topbar or the sidebar, both of which take up
significant space on netbooks. Less of an issue for desktop computing, but
still.

The bars are also not customizable, which to me was a big draw of Ubuntu and
the GNOME shell itself. Let's hope that they return that functionality -
otherwise, I'll be using 10.04.1 for quite a while.

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dkokelley
Probably not ready for prime time just yet. I installed Unity on my 12.1" HP
tablet and there were immediate and obvious bugs. Most notably, all menus and
several other windows were skewed about 45 degrees.

I like the concept, and I think that in order for Ubuntu to compete with other
distros and innovation among the major players (OS X and 7) a redesign of the
UI is necessary. Considering the new features OS X Lion will be bringing, I
think Unity is a necessary progression.

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sp4rki
IMO Unity is just, appalling. That being said, I like my Linuxes with a small
footprint windowing system and a decent colorscheme. I find this pretty
desktop Linuxes stuff meek.

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Ogre
Saying "This move could anger at least some open source enthusiasts" seems to
imply that they're moving to a closed source or proprietary system, but Unity
seems to be an open source project at a cursory glance. It could anger some
Gnome enthusiasts, who are presumably open source enthusiasts as well, but not
because of anything to do with the open source-ness of the project. Right? Or
is Unity not quite as open as claimed?

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xentronium
It isn't very usable/gui-customizable as of now. I'd like an ability to move
the "superbar" to other side of the screen, for example.

Visual part doesn't rock much either.

Thus, in my opinion, using it as a default in netbooks is just a little too
early. However, the vector direction is right, and we surely can have some
nice things with unity.

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bilban
I actually wish window managers would use overlays for the toolbars and menus
- if the hardware was up to it.

Then my web browser would just be a bare chrome. Touch screens, could sense my
fingers coming close to the screen and bring up icons or something. Text based
menus could also be brought up for power users. Something like that...

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chibea
An interesting side note here is that the coming Unity will be based upon
compiz, instead of relying on mutter. Canonical apparently hired the lead
developer of compiz:

[http://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/a-bright-new-
futur...](http://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/a-bright-new-future-for-
compiz/)

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tmsh
May 10, 2010 Mark Shuttleworth blogpost on Unity:

<http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/383>

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wildster
This is good news as GNOME has had it's day. The Unity interface is pretty
cool.

~~~
bad_user
Unity is just a shell on top of Gnome, which is an entire platform.

That said, Unity does look pretty cool.

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mhd
I still miss CDE. (No "glutton for punishment" comments, please.)

~~~
rwmj
Ewww, CDE :-) fvwm was nice, and of course is still available.

~~~
mhd
I think I stopped using fvwm after they switch to their 2.x branch. I still
use twm occasionally, though. (Don't care a lot about virtual desktops and
pseudo-3D window frames anymore)

I wonder whether you could still compile bowman, the fvwm fork that "begat"
the slew of NeXt-like window manager that followed…

