Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

schuay · 2010-10-26 11:40:47

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news … u-1104.ars
http://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2010/10/ … or-compiz/

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it's awesome that compiz is now backed by Canonical, on the other hand this sucks for gnome (shell) devs. Also, it seems really weird making what was originally a netbook interface the default Ubuntu desktop..

wonder · 2010-10-26 11:44:48

not only sucks for gnome shell devs, it sucks for every developer out there. That would mean they have to maintain and add support for two separated sets, gnome-shell and their new stuff, like notifications and unity+libindicator+whatever

it sucks for downstream too. i'm starting to anticipate the questions like "why unity is not in arch, why X doesn't have Y menu"

dptkby · 2010-10-26 12:02:21

wonder wrote:

not only sucks for gnome shell devs, it sucks for every developer out there. That would mean they have to maintain and add support for two separated sets, gnome-shell and their new stuff, like notifications and unity+libindicator+whatever

Although Shuttleworth addresses that questions and point to freedesktop.org standards as the solution... And if this drives developers in that direction, it might actually bring about improved compatibility between KDE and Gnome apps as well. I don't know if that's just a theoretical solution or if it actually works, though.

Last edited by dptkby (2010-10-26 12:02:55)

lustikus · 2010-10-26 17:28:11

IMO the desktop system as a whole is in a deep deep self-made crisis. Since the invention of the "windows system" nobody came up with something new. It's basically the same thing with icons, windows, menues etc. for decades. I had this kind of system on my Amiga 500 and I have it on my Desktop now.
The variety of different desktop systems and their related problems is also one reason why people pay for Windows and don't use a free linux. OS X is probably the most user-friendly unix system out there.
Apple is now bringing some of the things they learned from iOS to OS X, Unity is also in this direction. Perhaps this way we will get used to a new desktop system.

qchapter · 2010-10-27 01:39:05

Ubutu's goal is to dumb down their linux desktop experience. Which is fine with me. I don't use it. The freedom of choice is a beautiful thing. Arch + xfce4 FTW. ;-)

Last edited by qchapter (2010-10-27 01:39:25)

dolby · 2010-10-27 04:54:08

wonder wrote:

not only sucks for gnome shell devs, it sucks for every developer out there. That would mean they have to maintain and add support for two separated sets, gnome-shell and their new stuff, like notifications and unity+libindicator+whatever

This is a very interesting point.
Would you be willing to (potentialy) patch the rest of GNOME in order to have Unity as an option in your distribution?

Allan · 2010-10-27 05:01:57

Percentage of gnome-shell code written by Red Hat by lines 91%
Percentage of Unity code written by Canonical by lines 100%

Source: http://mjg59.livejournal.com/128650.html

So it is a battle between Linux big guns...

Foucault · 2010-10-27 09:33:15

Although I've abandoned Ubuntu for the fact that they were taking bold moves after each release, I must admit that I'm not negative towards such changes. Maybe, just maybe, Ubuntu will succeed in actually bringing linux to the desktop (yes, the very same "linux on the desktop" thingy I've been hearing for since my first touch with linux). And for Canonical to be able to shape and promote a new, and most importantly, imo, coherent desktop experience (I hate the word "experience" but I can't come up with a better one atm) digression from upstream may be required. Sure some people will not like it (many of us ex-Ubuntu users here probably did not) but these are able to choose something else. In the end, open source software is just about choice. I just hope this won't lead to new users equating Linux with Ubuntu in the long run.

pseudonomous · 2010-10-28 00:52:18

I kind of like that the Ubuntu folks are trying something different; I mean there's very little real differentiation between the major desktop distributions ... and here's something quite different. For the end-user it's nice, because they have a choice between this new interface, which sounds like it has some promising features (I read Ars' review, but I haven't tried it out myself), using GNOME shell, using traditional, GNOME, or KDE, xfce, one of the many window managers.

It may stink a bit for some developers, but with the slew of DEs and WMs already available, I don't really see how this changes the situation. I mean, if you're an upstream developer and you don't want to make sure your software works with unity, don't do it, and let Ubuntu packagers deal with the problem.

I'm interested to see if maybe things will start coming together on the 11.04 release; I mean Ubuntu has been making some decisions that seem like real head scratchers to me (like moving the window controls to the left), but maybe they actually have a plan. I suppose we'll find out, eventually.

ngoonee · 2010-10-28 01:29:10

pseudonomous wrote:

It may stink a bit for some developers, but with the slew of DEs and WMs already available, I don't really see how this changes the situation. I mean, if you're an upstream developer and you don't want to make sure your software works with unity, don't do it, and let Ubuntu packagers deal with the problem.

The danger there for upstream is that Ubuntu may just have enough clout to drop their application . Politics is always a factor.

Gullible Jones · 2010-10-28 23:35:34

I put 10.10 on my USB stick and booted it...

All politics and whatnot aside, the main problem with Unity is that it is very sluggish. The obvious rendering delays when searching for applications are not going to be appreciated by end users.

IMO the main problem can be put very simply: netbook hardware sucks with OpenGL. These Intel chipsets can do DirectX stuff just fine, but even simple stuff like antialiasing a bunch of text in OpenGL will bring them to their knees. As long as OpenGL is a problem for cheap hardware, netbook interfaces based on OpenGL will be nonviable. Period.

flamelab · 2010-10-29 00:36:36

Even though I don't really like the idea of Unity, I would wait till the first 11.04 snapshot which will include Unity with Compiz 0.9 instead of Mutter. Well, Compiz runs ~OK~ on Intel cards, doesn't it ? (I have almost zero experience on Intel gpus)

ngoonee · 2010-10-29 02:31:51

Gullible Jones wrote:

I put 10.10 on my USB stick and booted it...
All politics and whatnot aside, the main problem with Unity is that it is very sluggish. The obvious rendering delays when searching for applications are not going to be appreciated by end users.
IMO the main problem can be put very simply: netbook hardware sucks with OpenGL. These Intel chipsets can do DirectX stuff just fine, but even simple stuff like antialiasing a bunch of text in OpenGL will bring them to their knees. As long as OpenGL is a problem for cheap hardware, netbook interfaces based on OpenGL will be nonviable. Period.

Isn't performance on a LiveCD a crapshoot anyway, whatever hardware you have? I recall my first time running Ubuntu's LiveCD, it was just painful waiting for menus to open up.

A fair test would be to install and boot it.

Gullible Jones · 2010-10-29 03:42:57

I used a live USB stick... And yeah, that is suspect. On the other hand you normally don't get super-slow scrolling, or tooltips taking several seconds to render, even when using a live medium.

I should also note that MeeGo, which uses a similar interface, is ludicrously faster as a live USB system. Didn't occur to me at the time, but maybe using OpenGL has nothing to do with it? Hmm.

Last edited by Gullible Jones (2010-10-29 03:43:27)

anonymous_user · 2010-10-29 05:44:32

There's Little Love For Ubuntu's Unity Desktop

The announcement of Ubuntu dropping the GNOME shell in favor of their own Unity interface that came during Mark Shuttleworth's keynote to kick off their Ubuntu 11.04 development summit has not been welcomed by many Linux users.
Of the three pages of comments (and it continues to grow) within our forums, there isn't anyone that's actually happy to see Unity coming to the Ubuntu Desktop rather than the GNOME 3.0 Shell. Many users have already tried the current Unity desktop used by Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition and there's just lots of complaints.
The comments within the Phoronix Forums range from "I've heard nothing but complaints (mostly about speed) from people that have tried Unity. Now I have even more reason to recommend Kubuntu instead." to "If this isn't a April's fool and finally Ubuntu make this move I will move to Fedora or ArchLinux again..." It's just not within our forums where users are feeling unhappy, but there's anti-Unity sentiment at most places today discussing this major Ubuntu 11.04 announcement.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n … &px=ODcxNg

ngoonee · 2010-10-29 05:45:38

Gullible Jones wrote:

I used a live USB stick... And yeah, that is suspect. On the other hand you normally don't get super-slow scrolling, or tooltips taking several seconds to render, even when using a live medium.
I should also note that MeeGo, which uses a similar interface, is ludicrously faster as a live USB system. Didn't occur to me at the time, but maybe using OpenGL has nothing to do with it? Hmm.

Hmm... well it does need more testing then. I doubt Ubuntu would release something that slow OOTB, its just bad marketting and publicity. And whatever the complaints to be made against the distro and company, they ARE good at those bits.

archman-cro · 2010-10-29 09:39:38

flamelab wrote:

Well, Compiz runs ~OK~ on Intel cards, doesn't it ? (I have almost zero experience on Intel gpus)

Runs nicely on my 945GM.

drcouzelis · 2010-10-29 14:17:15

anonymous_user wrote:

There's Little Love For Ubuntu's Unity Desktop

Your quote got me thinking... Tell me if this is right: People are upset that a future version of Ubuntu will use Unity, which almost nobody uses and the announcement of which was not well received, instead of GNOME Shell, which almost nobody uses and the announcement of which was not well received.

schuay · 2010-10-29 15:24:18

anonymous_user wrote:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n … &px=ODcxNg

So is Phoronix fudging the facts again? These people are complaining that the *mutter* Unity is slow, and Canonical is explicitly switching to compiz because mutter is too slow?

Awebb · 2010-10-29 16:24:09

drcouzelis wrote:

anonymous_user wrote:
There's Little Love For Ubuntu's Unity Desktop
Your quote got me thinking... Tell me if this is right: People are upset that a future version of Ubuntu will use Unity, which almost nobody uses and the announcement of which was not well received, instead of GNOME Shell, which almost nobody uses and the announcement of which was not well received.

Exactly. They both look like they're going to suck. Old desktop concepts get boring. They might be stable and work well, but some folks get tired of it. So the development of the free desktop looks like the history of rap music... we got the old, stable but boring classic ones and the hip modern new ones, which look like they were developed for and by people with a lack of oxygen. Our children will grow into a society in which you only use your finger to touch a colorful icon. They will think of us as ancient freaks riding on dinosaurs.

All this will lead to the point where I sell all my electronics and go to the forest and work out to kill my time.

Duh.

archman-cro · 2010-10-29 16:28:36

Awebb wrote:

All this will lead to the point where I sell all my electronics and go to the forest and work out to kill my time.

At least we wouldn't be so frustrated if we really did that.

Awebb · 2010-10-29 16:43:18

archman-cro wrote:

Awebb wrote:
All this will lead to the point where I sell all my electronics and go to the forest and work out to kill my time.
At least we wouldn't be so frustrated if we really did that.

I'm not sure. There are so many bugs in the forest.

sitquietly · 2010-10-29 18:51:20

lustikus wrote:

IMO the desktop system as a whole is in a deep deep self-made crisis. Since the invention of the "windows system" nobody came up with something new. It's basically the same thing with icons, windows, menues etc. for decades. I had this kind of system on my Amiga 500 and I have it on my Desktop now.....

I agree with the bunny (lustikus). Well, I don't know if it's a crisis. Maybe it's just a long stagnation. I have two reference points to consider and one question:

1) In the early 90's I was a software engineer for an industrial control system that ran on i486 and M68000 processors with our custom i/o boards (on Multibus). The boot eeprom ran our code and our small team of a handful of Germans and Americans wrote the entire operating system and drivers and control logic and user interface (in assembler and forth). It was great fun. Really My point is that a 486 processor could control a dozen servo motors (PID control in software), monitor many hundreds of digital and analog i/o, monitor a custom operator interface and keyboard and update a graphical display (non-overlapping windows, like a tiling WM). The maximum latency seen by any of the hundreds of tasks was less than 5 microseconds. Having seen what a lowly worm 486 cpu can do, I wonder what my Intel Atom 330 is doing with its 4 cores running at 1.6 GHz!?! Why is the best audio recording latency I can achieve more than 5000 microseconds? Clearly we've lost sight of the goal and gotten caught up on the trivia. At some point don't we need to throw out most of the code that we've written and finally use what we've learned to write it clean and simple?

2) The computer screens of the future don't seem to show overlapping windows, mice or menus. Just look at the future interface in any good sci/fi movie. I've been trying to figure out how they mock up those screens and it seems to me that a lot of them use a tiling window manager, conky, and "simple stuff". My point is that when creative people try to imagine those highly trained, scientifically competent humans of the future who've "got a job to do" to save the planet, the universe, or themselves, they don't show them using the gnome or kde start menu and dragging and resizing windows on the screen Not even with 3d swirling and warping windows.

?) My question: can anyone here point us to a design for the computer interface of the future that is not just an elaboration of our 30-year old interface? I've been looking around for "white papers" and some good ideas. Google hasn't been giving me anything. I could use some encourgement... Any pointers? (thanks)

I applaud Ubuntu, and especially Shuttleworth, for trying to imagine something that is more beautiful and more utilitarian. At least they're giving the worn-out interface a shake up and maybe getting upstream to question themselves about their vision. It would be helpful if they would discover xmonad and start patching applications to co-operate in a tiling environment.

drcouzelis · 2010-10-29 20:42:43

sitquietly wrote:

?) My question: can anyone here point us to a design for the computer interface of the future that is not just an elaboration of our 30-year old interface? I've been looking around for "white papers" and some good ideas. Google hasn't been giving me anything. I could use some encourgement... Any pointers? (thanks)

I can think of two problems with trying to imagine the user interface of the future.

Current user interfaces are based on the idea that an application runs inside a "window". No matter how it's arranged (Windows 3.1, Windows 7, Mac OS X, iOS, Haiku, NeXTSTEP...) it's still different ways of showing an application window. I don't think a new user interface paradigm can be created without new applications, and new applications won't be created for a user interface paradigm that doesn't exist.

One of the reasons computers are so incredible unique (and unlike anything else in the world) is that they can be made to do anything. A computer can play a video game, be a web server, show a movie, be a word processor, and connect to countless hardware devices to accomplish even more tasks. Are all of those different tasks going to be taken into account in the user interface of the future? Or, will there be subsets of user interfaces?

JezdziecBezNicka · 2010-11-03 11:04:45

Ubuntu keeps focusing on the wrong aspects of their distro. First they broke the system tray. Next they kept polishing the look, leaving the rest buggy and unfinished. It stopped being a user-friendly distro and become a Frankenstein's experiment.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-10-26 11:40:47

Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#2 2010-10-26 11:44:48

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#3 2010-10-26 12:02:21

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#4 2010-10-26 17:28:11

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#5 2010-10-27 01:39:05

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#6 2010-10-27 04:54:08

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#7 2010-10-27 05:01:57

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#8 2010-10-27 09:33:15

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#9 2010-10-28 00:52:18

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#10 2010-10-28 01:29:10

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#11 2010-10-28 23:35:34

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#12 2010-10-29 00:36:36

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#13 2010-10-29 02:31:51

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#14 2010-10-29 03:42:57

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#15 2010-10-29 05:44:32

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#16 2010-10-29 05:45:38

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#17 2010-10-29 09:39:38

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#18 2010-10-29 14:17:15

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#19 2010-10-29 15:24:18

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#20 2010-10-29 16:24:09

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#21 2010-10-29 16:28:36

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#22 2010-10-29 16:43:18

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#23 2010-10-29 18:51:20

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#24 2010-10-29 20:42:43

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#25 2010-11-03 11:04:45

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

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