[wplug] Unity

[Dave Ostroske]

On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 7:18 AM, Weber, Lawrence A <
Lawrence.Weber at ansaldo-sts.us> wrote:

> 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).
>

I'm curious to see how you started having your problems with Unity. Did you
perform an upgrade or just a clean install? Did you use a beta of 11.04 or
just the release candidate?

On my setup, the launcher bar moves back when other windows are moved over
top of it. When an app is maximized (which is how I normally work), the bar
disappears. I've had some one-off situations where the bar wouldn't hide,
but in those cases, I'd hover over and off the bar, and then it would hide
itself.

Where are you dragging icons onto the bar from? I've not encountered this
problem.

[...]

> 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.
>

Each time that you press Ctrl-Alt-T, a new terminal window instance will
open.

For shrinking the icons, do this:
- Install the CompizConfig Settings Manager. Instructions are in the link at
the bottom of my message/
- Run it. You'll find a Desktop plugin for Unity. Click on that and open it
up.
- You'll see two tabs, Behavior and Experimental. Go to Experimental.
- Adjust the Launcher Icon Size slider to the left. The icons will shrink.

You can also reach icons below the bottom of the screen by moving the cursor
to the bottom-left corner, or by rolling the mouse wheel up, so that the
launcher scrolls up.


> 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.
>
>
I do find that bothersome, too. That's probably not going to go away with
GNOME 3, from what I've seen of it.

I typically press Super-A to bring up the Apps lens, then start typing the
name of the app that I want to run. I wish this function acted more like
keystroke launchers like GNOME Do or Launchy, or whatever the latest hotness
in launchers is. I like seeing the list of apps available for installation,
but that's me.

For sake of minimal setup, I've avoided installing keystroke launchers for
the time being. (In fact, I uninstalled "Do" just to stay clean.) But if I
ever start using fairly obscure apps on a regular basis, I'll likely install
such a launcher in the near future.

The only app organization you're likely to see if you're running Unity is
the categories in the Ubuntu Software Center. That's not a decent solution
to the organization question, especially if you experiment with a lot of
different apps and tend to forget what you've 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.
>
>
Harsh. But if you got something that works for you, there isn't any reason
to change.


>
>
> *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
>
> [...]

> 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.
>

-- Dave Ostroske
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