[wplug] Unity

[Weber, Lawrence A]

When I first saw Unity it reminded me of my old MAC desktop turned sideways.  I worked with it for a couple of weeks and then went back to the “classic” Gnome interface.  My first complaint was that it did not work as described.  The launcher bar would not hide and when I tried to drag and drop new apps onto it, the icons would not display (black areas).  After a day of trying they would not drop onto the launcher at all.  So I reinstalled 11.04.  Now they drop but the top menu bar of every window, including the main window is missing.  Reinstalled again.  Now most everything on the interface seems to work.

I typically need to work with multiple terminal windows open.  I found that the launcher will on start one terminal window at a time.  Also being vertical, you can only add a few new apps.  I need to figure out how to shrink the icons.

Finding apps is a chore and I have to resort to the classic-like menu found on the upper right corner.  The Apps window is confusing as it lists too many apps that are available or can be purchased.  There is little organization for the apps that are installed.

Ubuntu 11.04 installations had so many other problems that I had to go back to retry 10.04, and then back to Fedora.

From: wplug-bounces+lawrence.weber=ansaldo-sts.us at wplug.org [mailto:wplug-bounces+lawrence.weber=ansaldo-sts.us at wplug.org] On Behalf Of Dave Ostroske
Sent: Saturday, May 21, 2011 8:25 PM
To: General user list
Subject: [wplug] Unity


On May 21, 2011 6:36 PM, "L. A. Weber" <laweber at verizon.net<mailto:laweber at verizon.net>> wrote:

> By the way, what are the member's opinion of Unity?

Here's my two cents.

I installed Natty Narwhal (Ubuntu 11.04), upgrading from 10.10, a few days after its release. I have an older laptop, so I wasn't ready to upgrade until I was sure that it wouldn't make my machine sluggish. A review from ZD convinced me to go ahead with it.

So far, I'm impressed. After a flawless net upgrade and some arrangement of the launcher buttons, it's been a joy to work with. I tend to use the keyboard a lot, and will avoid using the mouse if possible, but Unity has still been a net gain in my user experience.

The launcher buttons present themselves with their own positional keyboard shortcuts. (You can define your own shortcuts but I haven't delved too far into how to do that.) I like the top-pane menus, though I don't love the Mac experience much. The menus are slightly inconsistent, though. Most apps (freedesktop.org-inspired apps primarily) use the top pane for the menu, but apps like LibreOffice and Chromium (which I both love) don't yet, and a recent add-in for LibreOffice menus is not yet up to snuff. That may be resolved sooner than later, though.

The app indicators have completely replaced the system tray, which is a grand improvement. I have indicators for both Ubuntu One and for DropBox. A decent system stats indicator would be nice to have. There's one out now which is text-based, but I'd much prefer a more graphical approach.

There are links online for tweaking Unity's interface, and I used a special desktop wallpaper to learn all the keyboard shortcuts for the first few weeks.
http://www.webupd8.org/2011/04/things-to-tweak-fix-after-installing.html

Try a few of the tweaks, installing them one at a time. If a tweak doesn't work for you, remove it.

One final note: Unity doesn't replace GNOME. On the contrary, it enhances it. This is GNOME 2 that I'm referring to, by the way. I don't know if GNOME 3 will underlie the system in future releases, but it seems like they'd make a good fit.

I'd like to know what other Ubuntu users think. I'm not expecting a mass exodus to Debian or Mint quite yet, tempting as it may be to some folks. For now, I'll stick with Ubuntu.

-- Dave Ostroske
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