Ubuntu Unity: The Great Divider 729
Barence writes "Canonical's decision to impose the new Unity interface on Ubuntu 11.04 users appears to have split the Linux distro's users, according to PC Pro. Features such as a moving Launcher bar and invisible scrollbars have angered many users, with one claiming that 'Ubuntu is doing a great job throwing away years of UI experience.' The rush to meet the six-monthly release schedule also appears to have harmed the release, with many users reporting graphical glitches with the new user interface."
Some annoyances (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not "angry" or anything, but there are some things that are annoying about the interface. My main problem is the title bar. I love the idea of trying to make the client area as large as possible -- and I love that Firefox takes up nearly the entire screen. However, to make that work, they have really goofy title bar logic. The menu and title bar are basically sharing the same area. If you mouse over the title bar, it turns into the menu. However, if the window isn't maximized, then the menu is still at the top of the screen (like Mac OS). If you have two windows open, one maximized under a non-maximized window, then the title bar looks like it belongs to the maximized window, but it really belongs to the window with the focus.
My other complaint is that the icon bar is stuck on the left. I'd prefer it on the right, or on the bottom. It's also annoying because it doesn't always stay out -- sometimes it hides, sometimes it takes multiple clicks to get something launched, sometimes it pretends to poke out, but then goes away... It's not as simple as "when I put my mouse over there, stay open until I move my mouse away". There seems to be other logic going on that I can't figure out.
Lastly, my Wi-Fi broke upon upgrading (BCM4322). I had to do some command line modprobe stuff to get it back running. Not a Unity issue, but still annoying, and hurts usability.
Re:No problems here - No option to use Unity (Score:2, Informative)
You can install a package called "unity2d" to get Unity with your graphics hardware.
Re:Absurd (Score:5, Informative)
This is an entirely configurable option. Users who like it will keep it, users who don't will switch it. Anyone complaining is just doing it to hear his own voice.
Gnome 2 goes away in the next release of Ubuntu. Then it's a choice between Unity and Gnome 3, which both appear to be following similar 'you will do things the way we want you to because we know best' philosophies, or KDE which is OK but just feels blah whenever I try a new release.
Doesnt even work! (Score:5, Informative)
I admit its not the latest hardware, but I regularly use older hardware. The VGA card is on the motherboard, and is probably rubbish too. It draws a solid colour areas over the tops of windows you are trying to use, and hides the bar which would enable you to logout!
Once you manage to get back to "classic, without effects" its OK. But for bad user experience, I'd still give it 10/10.
Compiz configuration tool (Score:5, Informative)
Go nuts.
Re:Switch to KDE (Score:3, Informative)
I actually began the switch on my laptop to KDE this weekend. I updated using the automatic dist-upgrade button and when my laptop rebooted, Unity had failed to load and it didn't revert to classic automatically. Logging out and back into classic failed as well. If I were a less technical user, I'd think I needed to do a complete rebuild and lose all my data.
Luckily (and oddly) I could switch to another tty and run unity. Somehow, unlike other managers, it loaded on the GUI terminal instead of giving me an error stating that it couldn't find the display.
Unluckily, I found out that I hated the "Fisher Price" feel of what I'm going to call the Ubuntu Start Menu with all it's 128 pixel icons, fat borders, and Win7 like search feature. Add that to the stupid auto-hide (I HATE auto-hide!) sidebar that didn't always show itself when you had your mouse on that edge of the screen. The simplistic interface lead me to believe there was no customization options, so I removed it and went to KDE since gnome was no longer loading properly and I didn't feel like messing with it. Also, the close buttons got pushed to the left again! /smackhand "Leave it on the right."
They messed up something big with this switch and it's left a terrible taste in my mouth regarding Ubuntu. I'm considering going back to Debian and dumping the KDE/Gnome setups and digging into OpenBox or something. I dreaded doing it before because the default Gnome 2 desktop was great and I have a feeling they are going to GnomeShell/Unity like (or planning on it.)
Unstable (Score:5, Informative)
Compiz crashes 2-3 times a day for me. Evolution crashes as soon as I start it (hangs fetching messages) and I have to do 'evolution --force-shutdown' on the command line because for some reason xkill is gone. Had to switch to Thunderbird, because Evolution was unusable.
I also uninstalled the appmenu because there were situations involving VirtualBox and Java/Swing apps where it would just go blank and stay that way, so I would have no menu at all. Plus, when you combine the app menu with Gnome's propensity to steal focus and raise windows to the foreground regardless of what you happen to be doing at the time, it's almost unusable.
After 4 days of tinkering and disabling things I'm to the point where I can actually do something (barring the compiz crashes, which require a reboot). Overall this is the glitchiest, most unstable Linux instance I've ever dealt with. I'll probably go back to KDE this upcoming weekend.
Re:Absurd (Score:5, Informative)
Gnome 2 goes away in the next release of Ubuntu. Then it's a choice between Unity and Gnome 3, which both appear to be following similar 'you will do things the way we want you to because we know best' philosophies, or KDE which is OK but just feels blah whenever I try a new release.
or XFCE (Xubuntu) or LXDE (Lubuntu) or . IMHO, XFCE is now very similar to GNOME2; close enough that if I were a GNOME2 user who'd rather switch than whine, that would be my first choice. Personally, I prefer LXDE.
Re:unity (Score:5, Informative)
Re:unity (Score:4, Informative)
God I hope not because Gnome 3 is not ready for prime time as well. It's nice but in terms of polish it's back 10 years to where you have to configure it by hand. That's an epic fail.
and both unity and Gnome 3 forgot that people have laptops so their management of backlight and sleep functions all got flushed out the toilet. I'm back to Laptop annoyances from 5 years ago.
Unity and Gnome 3 are early alpha releases and NOT ready for use by users as a stable release.
Re:Absurd (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Perhaps for other distros. (Score:4, Informative)
One of the first distros with a decent default configuration that "just worked' was Mandrake, now Mandriva.
They gad a brief hiccup due to poor management but Mandriva 2010.2 was one of their best releases ever. Again, it "just worked" and had a huge software repository. And again, they had a management hiccup and most of their devs left to start Mageia, which promises to carry on all the best that was Mandriva/Mandrake including sane and useful default settings and configurations. Mageia is now just in in final beta before their first release, but Mandriva 2010.2 is done, polished and constantly updated. You should try it if you are dissatisfied with the lack of user choice provided by Ubuntu.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mandriva [distrowatch.com]
Re:unity (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, there's an Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS and 6.06.2 LTS, and 10.04.1 LTS and 10.04.2 LTS as well. Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS comes out on July 28th.
The LTS releases are supported for 3 years/5 years on the desktop/server, so the CD images are rerolled with updates every 6 months.