Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Out; Unity Gets a Second Chance

An anonymous reader writes with this enthusiastic review of the latest from Canonical: "So how does Ubuntu Precise Pangolin (12.04) fare? I will say exceptionally well. Unity is not the same ugly duckling it was made out to be. In Ubuntu 12.04, it has transformed into a beautiful swan. As Ubuntu 12.04 is a long term release, the Ubuntu team has pulled all stops to make sure the user experience is positive. Ubuntu 12.04 aka Precise Pangolin is definitely worthy of running on your machine."

Not convinced yet

[Anonymous Coward]

I've test-driven Unity in the past but despite being told "the ugly duckling has grown into a beautiful swan" TFA doesn't give any information about what, if anything, they did about those horrible hiding scroll bars, auto-showing side bar, 1-pixel wide window edge focus, so-called "smart" volume control that controls headphone volume on low settings and speaker volume on high settings (instead of allowing me to control them independently).

I couldn't care less about all the "touch screen friendly" features they've added. I'm not using one. Thus, my most important question still is (and remains unanswered by TFA): how can I *switch off* Unity in 12.04LTS?

Re:Focus Follows Mouse

[ledow]

I tried it for the first time this week.

All I wanted was to make a "kiosk"-type computer that ran Opera and nothing else.

After 2 hours, I got bored of switching options and the fecking side-bar thing popping up and just put the system in place (its only for temporary usage anyway, to replace a "classic" Ubuntu machine running the last LTS release).

Seriously, I couldn't find any options that I went hunting for and all the tutorials on the Internet to get rid of the thing were basically "uninstall all that crap and install Gnome".

I can understand needing to hide functionality from dumb users but, seriously, I'd just installed, just in as my first and only user and I could not find any options to hide, say, the network connection information, the mail icon, the side-bar, nothing. I couldn't see any options for a screensaver at all (apparently, all that's "old hat" now but I also couldn't stop it blanking the monitor when it felt like it). Hell, it took me several minutes to realise the side-bar WAS the program launching menu too even though it looked more just a taskbar. It took me a good few minutes to even get near a terminal.

All the things I've read basically say remove it. I can see why. If I installed that crap over my last big deployment of Ubuntu (on 50 netbooks for a school), then I'd be fired. It is literally that bad and unconfigurable.

Ironically, I now use Ubuntu LTS for a server and Slackware for desktops...

Launcher covers back button

[tepples]

I've been using Unity on my netbook for a little more than a year now.

So how did you keep from mis-clicking when you'd reach for the back button in a maximized web browser and the auto-hidden launcher would pop up, especially after 11.10 which replaced touching the top left corner with touching anywhere on the left side at all?

Re:Really? Pangolin?

[Dot.Com.CEO]

I don't understand the hate. It's actually a very usable, very beautiful WM. I didn't use it before 12.04, but on the current Ubuntu it's easily the best desktop experience I've ever had on Linux.

Ex Unity basher to Unity lover

[Anonymous Coward]

I absolutely hated unity with the 11.X platform when I test drove it on an old desktop but as a power user running ubuntu on a laptop with multiple monitors I've always been extremely frustrated with the fact that some things just didn't work right. Last week after they dropped updates to my legacy ubuntu think it was a 9.x version I stumbled upon this Ubuntu multi-monitor design spec: http://bit.ly/IS7SKx read it and loved it. I decided to try out the 12.04 beta and have not looked back. Granted there are a couple of things I would like to change but some of the features are really cool and feel for the first time I have a 1st class linux OS working on my laptop.

Re:Buttons on the wrong side... still.

[CubicleZombie]

Okay, go back and read the comments for yourself [slashdot.org]. Whenever the "Ribbon" comes up in a discussion, more than half here seem to think it's a dandy idea. It leaves me wondering if I clicked the wrong bookmark and I'm actually reading a Microsoft forum.

Re:Unity - good for masses, bad for power-users

[Eponymous Coward]

Multitasking is different under Unity. Here's [blip.tv] a short video demoing one way to get things done.

Powerusers tend to be more keyboard than mouse centric simply because it's often the quickest way to accomplish something. Using Unity from the keyboard is actually a pretty good experience and once you develop the muscle memory, you start to miss the Unity features when using other desktops (and who doesn't have to use more than one desktop these days?).

Re:Really? Pangolin?

[gfxguy]

Actually, with 11.04, I tried it for several months before giving up. Around the same time I was trying to adjust to the Mac I got at work, too. They suffered (IMO) from the same problems - problems that are not easily fixed; the unified menu paradigm, for example, only works if you don't use sloppy focus (focus follows mouse). I like sloppy focus... sometimes I don't want to raise a whole window to block another one just to type a single command in it. Sloppy focus will NEVER work with a unified menu.... that's just the way it is.