Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

sand_man · 2010-11-04 04:39:44

As far as compiz goes, Ubuntu has been using compiz for a few years now so I don't see how compiz development productivity is going to increase.

Misfit138 · 2010-11-04 14:20:56

I never liked Gnome, and unity looks uninteresting.
Canonical/Ubuntu is still, in my view, failing. If they want to bring GNU/Linux to the masses by making it easy to install and use, then they should stick to that goal and achieve it.
This is just another example of their '2 steps forward and 2 steps back' development model which could also be described as 'how to reinvent the wheel in 64,152,497,380^8 easy steps'.

sand_man · 2010-11-05 06:50:33

Misfit138 wrote:

I never liked Gnome, and unity looks uninteresting.
Canonical/Ubuntu is still, in my view, failing. If they want to bring GNU/Linux to the masses by making it easy to install and use, then they should stick to that goal and achieve it.
This is just another example of their '2 steps forward and 2 steps back' development model which could also be described as 'how to reinvent the wheel in 64,152,497,380^8 easy steps'.

I agree. They have done well to get as far as they have but now it seems they are venturing into unknown territory which could make or break them. Then again, the same could have been said about KDE 4 when it was first released. Speaking of which, users can always use another Ubuntu variant without gnome if they really don't like unity.

Last edited by sand_man (2010-11-05 06:51:12)

skanky · 2010-11-05 10:24:04

Looks like Ubuntu will also move (largely) from X to Wayland:

We're confident we'll be able to retain the ability to run X applications in a compatibility mode, so this is not a transition that needs to reset the world of desktop free software. Nor is it a transition everyone needs to make at the same time: for the same reason we'll keep investing in the 2D experience on Ubuntu despite also believing that Unity, with all it's GL dependencies, is the best interface for the desktop. We'll help GNOME and KDE with the transition, there's no reason for them not to be there on day one either.

See: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551

Last edited by skanky (2010-11-05 10:25:43)

RaisedFist · 2010-11-05 13:57:10

I'm not sure how big Canonical is, but isn't it a little too dangerous to say they'll move to Wayland? I mean it's not a simple thing to do and Wayland is just a "baby". I don't think they'll do anything important about it in less than two years. They'd need a big team of people getting involved in this... am I right or not?

Misfit138 · 2010-11-05 15:28:35

sand_man wrote:

Misfit138 wrote:
I never liked Gnome, and unity looks uninteresting.
Canonical/Ubuntu is still, in my view, failing. If they want to bring GNU/Linux to the masses by making it easy to install and use, then they should stick to that goal and achieve it.
This is just another example of their '2 steps forward and 2 steps back' development model which could also be described as 'how to reinvent the wheel in 64,152,497,380^8 easy steps'.
I agree. They have done well to get as far as they have but now it seems they are venturing into unknown territory which could make or break them. Then again, the same could have been said about KDE 4 when it was first released. Speaking of which, users can always use another Ubuntu variant without gnome if they really don't like unity.

Yes, good points.
Somewhat off-topic, but in hindsight, the KDE4 transition could have been a little smoother, but also could have been a lot worse. It seems that most distros didn't adopt it until v4.2, effectively relegating 4.0 and 4.1 to alpha and beta status respectively. I think a large part of the confusion and frustration was due to the 'dot-o' perception.

One annoying factor for me is why this is even considered big news in the first place. It is a shame that the closest thing to a fire-and-forget distro for the masses is under the misguided and obviously inept leadership of Shuttleworth and co.
In my view, if you take ANY beginner distro and give it the backing of a billionaire entrepreneur, there is no excuse for such abysmal failure other than incompetence.
This is version 11.04, everyone
Stuff like this should have been on the drawing board before there was even a 1.x.

$.02 cha-ching

syltman · 2010-11-07 20:11:44

The 10.10 unity is supposedly buggy which is probably why everyone is aginst the idea of making it default in 11.04 but they got 6 months to make sure it's stable.

Although I really like that they do new stuff considering how all distros are look-a-like right now they need to make sure to release things when they're ready. They can't keep pumping out buggy stuff and 6 month will hardly be enough I think.

Zeist · 2010-11-07 20:29:53

Is it just me or is Unity looking a lot like OS X with the dock on the left?

I think that the fact that Ubuntu will use a different layer on top of a DE is a non-issue. Besides from the duplication of effort between Canonical and the Gnome team why do people actually care?

The interesting part in my mind is that they will be going to Wayland. That is going to suck for some projects for a while, but it is hopefully going to mean that we will eventually get a better X server for Linux in general.

I think they should slow down their release cycle for Wayland though, I really doubt it will be polished in april. Since there are options (like Arch) for people who want to be on the bleeding edge they don't really have to rush things.

gorudonu · 2010-11-08 01:06:30

@Zeist: I think that wayland *may* be in ubuntu 11.10 not 11.04.

akephalos · 2010-11-11 14:00:03

Awebb wrote:

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.

That does have a name already, doesn't it? Entertainment. And it's very profitable, too.

Awebb · 2010-11-11 14:08:35

akephalos wrote:

That does have a name already, doesn't it? Entertainment. And it's very profitable, too.

Yes it is. Let's say I won't start feeling uncomfortable about such things unless they don't release any more source code. This way the masses have their easy zero-cost desktop and the orignal style linux users can fork nice features they might love to see. Something like... background opacity for console windows. And stuff. You know :-D

pseudonomous · 2010-11-17 02:38:41

Zeist wrote:

Is
The interesting part in my mind is that they will be going to Wayland. That is going to suck for some projects for a while, but it is hopefully going to mean that we will eventually get a better X server for Linux in general.

Sorry to nitpick; it's probably what you meant but Wayland isn't an Xserver. It's a display server with a non-X11 protocol.

taavi · 2010-11-25 08:37:15

Offtopic note about Gnome & Ubuntu. I used Ubuntu many years with growing love to its desktop environment. I knew Gnome before Ubuntu, but didn't use it much and saw it irrelevant to me. But then when using Ubuntu I found out countless nice features & I thought: "hmm, nice thing Ubuntu does to Gnome patching it like that". I really thought those little features that I grew to like, were Ubuntu patches. Then I installed Gnome on my Arch and discovered it was all vanilla Gnome doing those nice things. So very arrogant and ignorant of me. I love Gnome. Hope only that 3.0 will not become party pooper as KDE4 was and still is to me.

As for topic. I say go Ubuntu. Get that Unity out and Wayland. It's actually Wayland that may become real candy here, because after XFree/Xorg there hasn't been any other noticeable attempts to make low level GUI. And for me Xorg is as much as I like its features, 20th century software.

b9anders · 2010-11-25 11:29:53

I applaud this. Let's be honest, the differences between Fedora, Ubuntu et al are negligible. I think it's great that Ubuntu are trying to distinguish their own distro. Diversity is and remains a feature of the open-source world and having a high-end alternative to the standard GNOME/KDE rivalry is great news to me.

ngsupb · 2011-03-30 18:44:38

bah a lot ppl don't like Unity

Personally I found Unity much more user friendly vs Gnome-shell or gnome-panel. I am not going to use Gnome-Shell until the devs add some hot-key support to the fav applications and faster switching between active applications (nevertheless I like the gnome-shell look).

Moving mouse around all the time (zoom in zoom out)or use alt+tab is MUCH slower vs Unity' hot keys to switch between applications.
It is the first time I am thinking to set Ubuntu as the main after using Arch+gnome for the last 3 years. Nothing is wrong with Arch, but Unity wins the battle for me atm. After trying Unity can't image how to work without the window switching they implemented. Love it.

They got me lol

Mark certainly has a plan.

Leonid.I · 2011-03-30 19:41:37

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)

CLI seems to be universal In my opinion, the problem is that casual users are sooooooo ignorant, and want to stay that way, about the (fascinatingly) sophisticated systems, which they call 'stupid laptop/smartphone'. Unless this attitude is changed, there'll be not major shift in deskto paradigm, you are implying.

freemind · 2011-03-31 18:50:41

I would say the evolution is a mixture between GUI and CLI. The problem with the current CLIs is that they're too hard for end users to use and they take some time to learn, and the end user shouldn't have to waste time learning it just to use the computer casually.

There's a project with those goals, but the development is going very slow. You can read more about it here:
http://wiki.delphos.zimmic.com/en/Presentation

Leonid.I · 2011-03-31 20:56:18

Hmm... those people really have to have a look around. From the webpage:

* A new window manager specially designed for it, with transparency for windows out of focus.
* Radial menus, to launch applications graphically and to replace the usual taskbar.
* Session system, so a configuration of the windows open can be saved, which will be loaded automatically at the begining of a new session.

Here only "radial menus" is new, but I think it's similar to usual context menus. In my opinion, the only trully ergonomic desktop is CDE (or xfce w/o all the effects); *box family already lacks a lot of functionality), KDE/GNOME are too bloated and distracting, while tiling WM's are bad for small screens.

litemotiv · 2011-03-31 21:09:49

Leonid.I wrote:

tiling WM's are bad for small screens.

Did you mean to say 'window decorations are bad for small screens'?

pseudonomous · 2011-03-31 22:02:05

litemotiv wrote:

Leonid.I wrote:
tiling WM's are bad for small screens.
Did you mean to say 'window decorations are bad for small screens'?

I realize I'm not Leonid.I but I think you can phrase his statement more accurately as

"tiling window managers provide limited additional utility over floating window managers on small screens".

If you can't comfortably fit two windows on the screen, there's no utility from the "tiling" aspect of tiling window managers. Of course, window decorations aren't particularly useful in that case either, and since many tiling window managers omit them, you might still find benefi to using them, for that feature. Alternately, you could just make all your windows full-screen by default.

Gullible Jones · 2011-04-01 01:56:06

Some tiling WMs have an auto-maximize mode. IMHO Awesome is the best of these, since it actually has a taskbar. WMII in stacking mode is pretty good too, if you don't mind the window title bars taking up screen space.

ngoonee · 2011-04-01 02:00:58

pseudonomous wrote:

litemotiv wrote:
Leonid.I wrote:
tiling WM's are bad for small screens.
Did you mean to say 'window decorations are bad for small screens'?
I realize I'm not Leonid.I but I think you can phrase his statement more accurately as
"tiling window managers provide limited additional utility over floating window managers on small screens".
If you can't comfortably fit two windows on the screen, there's no utility from the "tiling" aspect of tiling window managers. Of course, window decorations aren't particularly useful in that case either, and since many tiling window managers omit them, you might still find benefi to using them, for that feature. Alternately, you could just make all your windows full-screen by default.

That depends very much on the windows/apps being used. Part of the problem is that alot of 'modern' apps (and webpages) like to assume they're full-screen. Hence lots of fixed-size bars or panels (firefox without vimperator/pentadactyl for example).

Use apps which prioritize screen usage (zathura instead of okular/evince) and you'll see that no matter how small the screen tiling can still make sense.

Leonid.I · 2011-04-01 16:16:56

pseudonomous wrote:

If you can't comfortably fit two windows on the screen, there's no utility from the "tiling" aspect of tiling window managers.

Exactly

Awebb · 2011-04-01 16:34:12

Since I started to care about how my GUI operates, I tend to be unsatisfied with everything GUI-relevant. Back in my Windows days everything sucked but I got along with it, because I knew it would be too much trouble to change they way things work. Now I have the choice and this constant feeling that a) it could be better than it is right now and b) all those devs of major DEs tend to go away from what I prefer in big steps.

I was also skeptical at first, but after trying out the recent evolution of gnome-shell, I can only applaud to anyone trying to create something else (better|different|less annoying).

DustinCasler · 2011-04-04 00:25:04

I've installed every version of Ubuntu since 8.04 just to see what's going on with it. But i'm pretty positive this will be the first time I don't. I might play around in a live cd so I can say i've used it. But I seem to have no further interest in installing the newest version of Ubuntu just to get rid of it in a week or three.

Arch Linux

#26 2010-11-04 04:39:44

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#27 2010-11-04 14:20:56

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#28 2010-11-05 06:50:33

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#29 2010-11-05 10:24:04

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#30 2010-11-05 13:57:10

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#31 2010-11-05 15:28:35

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#32 2010-11-07 20:11:44

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#33 2010-11-07 20:29:53

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#34 2010-11-08 01:06:30

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#35 2010-11-11 14:00:03

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#36 2010-11-11 14:08:35

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#37 2010-11-17 02:38:41

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#38 2010-11-25 08:37:15

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#39 2010-11-25 11:29:53

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#40 2011-03-30 18:44:38

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#41 2011-03-30 19:41:37

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#42 2011-03-31 18:50:41

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#43 2011-03-31 20:56:18

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#44 2011-03-31 21:09:49

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#45 2011-03-31 22:02:05

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#46 2011-04-01 01:56:06

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#47 2011-04-01 02:00:58

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#48 2011-04-01 16:16:56

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#49 2011-04-01 16:34:12

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

#50 2011-04-04 00:25:04

Re: Unity shell default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04

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