Submitted by Well, this is sure to raise a few eyebrows here and there. Today, at the Ubuntu Developer Summit, Mark Shuttleworth held his keynote speech, and in it, he announced that Ubuntu will switch to the Unity user interface come release, for both the netbook as well as the desktop, leaving the GNOME user interface behind (but keeping the GNOME platform).
Unity was introduced with the recently released Ubuntu 10.10 as a user interface for netbooks. Now, however, Shuttleworth has announced that Unity will become the default user interface for desktop users as well, hopefully in the next release (11.04). He claims that users love it, OEMs love it, and it will, uh, unify both netbook and desktop.
With Unity being a netbook environment, a lot of work needs to be done on tailoring it to the desktop, as well. “A lot of work to do around windows management”, as Shuttleworth noted, calling it the “most significant change ever” and acknowledging it will be a “risky step”.
That’s only half the story, though. The direction GNOME has taken as of late did not sit well with Ubuntu. For instance, Ubuntu is not happy with the Mutter window manager, which, according to Shuttleworth, could not deliver acceptable performance (huh, a major Free desktop environment writing a window manager that doesn’t deliver performance-wise? Sounds familiar). For Unity, Ubuntu uses Compiz, which already has a proven track record.
Another problem is GNOME’s dismissal of Zeitgeist, something Ubuntu would love to have. “Zeitgeist is a sophisticated framework that tracks and correlates relationships between the user’s activities so that it can supply applications with contextually relevant information to present to users,” Ars Technica details, “Zeitgeist was once considered to be a key part of the roadmap for GNOME 3, but was rejected by the upstream community due to cultural differences in its development model. Shuttleworth says that GNOME would benefit from greater receptiveness to outside innovation and is disappointed that the Zeitgeist project isn’t being embraced by the upstream community.”
There’s more, though, as Shuttleworth told Ars. The design goals, mostly set by other, less-desktop focussed distributions, for GNOME Shell are fundamentally different from Ubuntu’s. Shuttleworth cites GNOME’s rejection of the global menubar as an example of these differences.
What will this mean for GNOME? According to Jono Bacon, Ubuntu’s community manager, Ubuntu remains a GNOME distribution. “There is going to be some questions about this decision in relation to GNOME,” he notes, “I want to make something crystal clear: Ubuntu is a GNOME distribution, we ship the GNOME stack, we will continue to ship GNOME apps, and we optimize Ubuntu for GNOME. The only difference is that Unity is a different shell for GNOME, but we continue to support the latest GNOME Shell development work in the Ubuntu archives.”
All this was bound to happen. I haven’t been able to test Unity yet, but with Ubuntu being pretty much the only home desktop-focussed distribution, it makes sense that GNOME’s goals, mandated by the majority (i.e., corporate and server-oriented distributions) would eventually diverge from Ubuntu’s.
I am afraid, though, that this will mean that the next Ubuntu release will be one heck of a buggy mess. Clairvoyance? No – experience.
I don’t know what this “Unity interface” looks like, but GNOME sure does suck!
I don’t know anything about this but I wanted to take a crap here.
Well at least my comment is more relevant than yours. I’m saying GNOME is crap and has to go. You’re just whining about my post.
Umm, no, that was not a relevant post. A relevant post would have been something constructive like “I personally don’t like the direction that Gnome is going in. I would rather have seen Ubuntu switch to KDE” or something like that.
Ever heard of Kubuntu?
whoosh!
Umm no that would be constructive criticism.
His post was relevant, whether or not you thought it was a quality post is a different matter.
Wow mods, lighten up please! Modding down the original comment by the original poster was questionable, and punitively modding down his other more elaborate comments is unfair, but modding down this third party for merely politely disagreeing with the previous poster is just silly.
Mod parent off topic. Hell, mod me off topic too!
Great grandpa was a troll. He did what trolls do. Saw GNOME in the title, and couldn’t resist the urge to say teh GNOME sucks. Fair enough methinks. I mean the comment that follows it, and the -10 moderation.
Edited 2010-10-26 15:04 UTC
Mod this off topic too!
The thread starter is arguably a troll, yes, but the post I replied to by nt jerkface was not and did not deserve any kind of negative mod.
I can’t believe I’m defending nt jerkface… after all the mod points I’ve spent against him.
I see. It must be your conscience then
I widely disagree with some of his comments, sometimes argue with him, very rarely mod people down. I haven’t checked your moderation balance, but when I see people whose moderation is <50% positive, I always think that those are the kind of people that use moderation as a way of expressing disagreement. Not cool. As a rule, I only moderate someone down if he is factually wrong and misleading on purpose, and typical flamebaits of course.
I only mod down if I think the comment has absolutely no merit and should not be read by anyone. Information hiding is a vile sin as to abuses the freedoms of others.
The problem is that Ubuntu has ditched the default Gnome desktop shell environment for one that it is creating itself. To a greater or lesser extent that means that the Ubuntu developers feel that Gnome sucks. This mess really does nothing to expose the parent of this thread as a troll. In fact, it gives him ammunition.
What with the question being raised regarding using Qt as a development platform for Ubuntu people need to be asking what the state of Gnome is when it comes to Ubuntu and why it isn’t doing what they want.
Indeed (as to the last part of your comment
The question is, why is this happening? Is Unity completely different from Gnome Shell? If they have completely different design philosophies, this move is understandable. However, this is not the first time some party decides that it is better to do it on their own instead of working with GNOME (as a project). Nokia, Intel and Novell comes to mind. See this:
http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2010/10/25/ubuntu-to-move-to-unity-as-…
Ironic, isn’t it – I’ve been hearing that GNOME is more corporate friendly than KDE for years, how it has better corporate support than KDE… and now look how the tables have turned! The corporations cited above seem to use the GNOME framework, but not for working on GNOME (the desktop environment) itself. KDE got Nokia however, then Intel came on board. Granted, their focus is more on the toolkit than on KDE, but much of the capabilities and features of KDE depend on the toolkit.
So the question – why is this happening? My own theory is the closed development model of GNOME and politics. It seems to me that major UI decisions are made by a handful of people that disregard input from the community. This is just an impression, and in some cases, development works better this way. KDE tried another path, and even today it is being flamed for their early release of KDE4. Once KDE4 became API stable, they released it, got tremendous input from the community, worked on refining every aspect of the desktop (including the toolkit itself)…
[/q]
GNOME Shell, the most visible part of the changes in 3.0 (for the users anyway) is being ditched by one of the most prominent GNOME supporting distro. The release itself is being pushed back for the Nth time (KDE backlash?). And their response? Snarky remarks on Planet GNOME from their prominent developers:
So we are in a situation when almost none of the “traditional” GNOME supporting vendors work with the project. And yet, Michael Meeks (and others, I’m sure) seem to think that its their own fault. Intel’s fault, Nokia’s fault, Novell’s fault (indeed, how retarted were they to develop compiz) and now, Canonical’s fault. They should take the time and consider that maybe, just maybe there must be something wrong with the way they manage the project instead of pointing fingers to everyone else.
Mod down parent, his avatar displeases me.
Read what I said. I said “my comment is more relevant”.
“GNOME sure does suck” in a thread about GNOME replacement is CERTAINLY more relevant than “I wanted to take a crap here”.
I feel justified in saying “GNOME sure does suck”. I’ve had GNOME crash on me 15 times in a day. I can consistently and repeatedly crash GNOME, just by doing basic things. (and yes, I’ve submitted bug reports)
The #1 problem with Linux is the incredibly hostile response to anybody who complains about something. It’s like Nazi Germany.
Edited 2010-10-25 19:59 UTC
and you are like gestapo!
With all the questions a ask, all the complaints and sugestions I made at the Linux community I NEVER got a hostile repsonse.
But if you communicate to them as you communicate here I’m you have to search the fault closer to home.
I would have to agree. My experience has also been a positive one.
Now you are justified in saying “GNOME sure does suck”. Before you didn’t say why you thought it did suck.
No, the #1 problem is ridiculous comments like first one, and then acting surprised when no one wants to hear them and losing the conversation vis a vis goodwin’s law.
He should not have to justify his opinion. I think GNOME sucks, too, and I don’t need every commenter who agrees to spell out exactly what his problems with GNOME are. This should not be a prerequisite to participation.
That is not the kind of commentary that I find productive. Its an intellectual dead end, and an invitation to a flame war.
Flame wars are not unproductive. If you think this then you’re already far off base. They’re just not very civil and not the *most* productive form of debate.
To berate someone and mod them down for stating an opinion which is not an extreme one or off topic, just because the person did not happen to supply a sufficiently elaborate explanation for his opinion in the same post, is an extremely hostile type of behavior. You are stifling the free exchange of ideas. If you want a “justification” for his opinion you can reply and ask for one. Here’s a template: “I think you’re an idiot and wrong about FOO. Care to try and explain why you think it IS/ISN’T so GOOD/BAD?” And then you’ll get the kind of explanation you apparently think must be supplied up front as some kind of debate entry fee.
Point #1: I’m not berating anyone.
Point #2: That’s exactly what I would have done, politely asked him why he felt that way. I would have done it because I’m usually a rational person who does not respond to agitation with agitation, or at least I delude myself into thinking I would like to be such a person. However, most people are not so even keeled, fuelling the flames. I’m not asking for a white paper, graphs, or a code level analysis. Just a I dislike product X because of Y.
PS. You really think flame wars are productive? Its like US politics in a microcosm, everyone shouts their opinion past each other assuming ill intent from all.
Absolutely yes. You learn many things about those involved, at the least, and I find that more truth is to be found in raw, heated exchanges than in polite discourse.
Granted, and as I said before, it’s not the most productive sort of communication, but there is certainly real merit in it.
This is a low blow–flame wars are nothing like that level of worthless.
Adding something of value is the prerequisite of participation. “GNOME sucks” is crap, plain and simple – whether you agree or not is besides the point. It doesn’t help with the discussion, it’s a flamebait (and seeing how this thread is progressing, it is quite successful as such), it’s not informative, it’s not interesting, it’s nothing but… as one commenter aptly put it – crap.
“GNOME crashes for me every 15 minutes therefore it sucks” – that’s still crap. It does not for possibly millions of users. Again, comments like that add nothing to the discussion – they merely provoke “no it doesn’t on my PC” responses, and again we end up talking about… what exactly? Surely not Thom’s article which was about Ubuntu switching to Unity.
Nonsense. I don’t like your rather bigoted attitude, if you will pardon me for saying so!
In the first place an inflammatory comment has value. In the second place even valueless people and comments are to be respected, not arbitrarily excluded. Let each reader judge what is helpful to the discussion and what is not.
Flamebait only works if you take the bait, which many did. Learning to ignore it is part of being an adult online. Hiding flamebait only serves to infatilize people.
You want to un-derail this thread and talk about Unity? Okay. Unity is an ugly piece of junk, following in the time-honored GNOME tradition of making ugly, junky UIs. It will surely be ‘popular’ in the same way GNOME has been popular: Used because they stopped shipping the better alternative. Thank goodness that Ubuntu doesn’t get to dictate the direction of other distributions.
Is that on-topic enough for you, or does it still contain too much flamebait to be blessed as “adding value” according to your own personal measuring-stick? Can I borrow that stick? I’d like to toe the line of flamebait but not go over it so you won’t attempt to stifle my ability to express my opinion. I wouldn’t want you to mod me down, but I would like to inflame as many as possible.
What version of Gnome? I’m still on 2.30 (Gentoo) but Gnome NEVER crashes on me. Are you talking about the entire desktop, X, the panel, the windowmanager, or what? Maybe it’s a distro thing or a version that isn’t working properly. The only issue I seem to have is with banshee hanging but it’s not even an official part of Gnome.
BTW comapring Linux to Nazi Germany is hyperbole to the Nth degree. It makes you look foolish. Perhaps your distro just sucks. I have very few problems with reporting bugs but I also don’t have thin skin.
I think your comment was indeed relevant to the subject matter, however you really should have elaborated, as you did in the post I’m responding to. Otherwise, you appear to be trying to start a flame war (and possibly succeeding).
I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with GNOME; I was a big fan of 1.x, when many weren’t. 2.x sucked at first, then 2.4 made my year. 2.6 went a step backwards for me, and slowly improved again from there. The majority of my experience with GNOME early on was via Slackware, then Debian and Ubuntu after Pat dropped it.
GNOME currently, to me, is like a lump of clay; it’s a pile of crap until someone (Canonical, for example) picks it up and shapes it into something useful and beautiful. Someone who never cared for it in the first place (Pat Volkerding) could make it somewhat usable and decent looking, but really didn’t put much time and effort into it, so when it became too unwieldy to maintain it had to go.
As for Unity…I don’t know. I didn’t care for it at all on my netbook, and switched to the default desktop in Ubuntu. It may turn out to be a better fit on big desktops, so there’s hope I guess. I haven’t used Gnome Shell yet, but from the look of the screenshots and text descriptions, I don’t think I’ll like it either.
I think in the future I’ll stick with XFCE. Canonical’s implementation of it is decent, and Slackware’s version is pretty much vanilla so it’s easy to customize to my liking. Hell, I may even give KDE another go, though not on the netbook; it needs a lot of screen space to really do well in my experience.
Edited 2010-10-26 01:35 UTC
I have to agree with this sentiment to a degree. I felt the same way about early Gnome and the transition to where we are now. I love Gnome now but not in its default incarnation. I don’t use all the standard Gnome apps, theme, or defaults but I have been able to shape it into exactly what I want. My fear is that with Gnome-Shell and possibely other parts of Gnome that are changing, it will become increasingly difficult to alter different parts of the stack.
Sure other mayor OS focused forums are full of well-informed, helpful and allways polite people.
This will really distinguish ubuntu from other desktops (win, mac android)
Let’s see if its make or break
Agreed.
I’ve tried out Unity for a few days now, and I’ve come to love the concept and design. Sure, it’s still a bit buggy (like the overlay gets buggy, and suspension issues, and when changing themes, when a window is maximized it still has Ambiance theme buttons and all it still has the sluggish performance) it needs lots of work done, but I can see each release getting better.
That and I’m hoping that the dock is a lot more customizable.
Edited 2010-10-25 19:32 UTC
You are exactly right. Its currently good, but need that final polish. This is something I think Ubuntu will now give it as it has put its (open) dev muscle behind it.
Its interesting that the windows 95/Mac os7 GUI layout is only now starting to be replaced. Users are FAR more open to different GUIs (assuming they are intuitive) than anytime in the last decade. In large part I think this is thanks to smartphones.
Maybe we are back into the age of OS wars?
p.s. I Know we arnt, but you cant blame a guy for dreaming!
Oh, it’s “make” definitely. 2010 is the “Year of the Linux Desktop”
http://tmrepository.com/trademarks/yearoflinuxdesktop/
I installed Ubuntu 10.10 on a Netbook of mine last Saturday with Unity and I have to say I have come to love it. It will be a big hit on the desktop too, but yes on the desktop more work on windows management will be neeeded.
Ubuntu is doing the right thing with Unity, it is a very promising piece or work.
Edited 2010-10-25 19:14 UTC
I have to disagree. Unity *looks* nice, but that sidebar makes it almost unusable – it eats enough horizontal space to break rendering of most websites I deal with. If it appeared only in response to mouseover, it’d be great, but as a permanent feature, it’s a usability disaster.
Amen!
I totally agree. I am a longtime Ubuntu user on both desktop and netbook. I have just installed 10.10 on my netbook, and my feeling is that Unity sucks. It has good points, but needs a lot of work, and it is totally unusable at this point.
The unified menu à la Mac is a very good thing in a netbook, as it saves space. In a desktop, I don´t care that much either way, but I think it is a good idea too. However, the sidebar, as it is, steals too much space in a netbook and makes web browsing extremely inconvenient. And I find it quite ugly too.
It needs quite a bit of polishing, and feels like rather less than beta quality. For example, the Unity file browser does not see ANY of my files, and Gnome’s file browser is so well hidden that the only way I have found to pull it out is to open the trashcan and then browse on from there. Or the virtual desktop switcher with built-in exposé-like function that shows unexisting desktops and does not belong on the sidebar, or the Programs button in the sidebar that throws everything together in an uncomfortable mess…
In all, it is unfit to substitute the previous netbook front end, which felt by far superior. That one should have received some enhancements, like the unified menu, and remained the default, with Unity left as an optional toy to tinker with while it matures.
What makes you think this? People using non-toy computers for real work are going to want a highly functional non-toy interface.
Oh wait, I get it. GNOME already had a toy interface so its users won’t notice! That explains a lot.
FLAME ON.
I said “Flame on” not “Mod me down” – you’ll never get a good flame war going if you don’t reply and tell me I’m full of shit.
Kids these days.
Don’t sweat it. It’s just the Ubuntu kiddies.
Their small brains just can’t comprehend that Ubuntu is becoming ever more marginalised by Canonical’s feeble attempts to get it more widely used, and Gnome is seriously fragmenting because they can’t accept that it won’t do what they want it to do.
I saw this coming, and it was a matter of time. But I do have to say that Unity does match up to Shuttleworth’s idea of “Windictors” in a way.
http://www.osnews.com/story/23243/Shuttleworth_Unveils_Windicators_
Well, at least when it’s maximized.
darai posted…
Ahh yes, Shuttleworth’s Windicators. I was wondering when someone would bring those up. I posted this as a part of my guide on installing Lucid on my eeepc, because the description of Windicators reminded me of an old theme in the Win9x days:
http://img831.imageshack.us/i/iconomiser.png
As I posted there:
Myself, I’m waiting for the next release of Debian to see if it looks like a good stepping off point to get off the trainwreck that is becoming Ubuntu…
–bornagainpenguin
I tried out the beta of Ubuntu 10.10 and wasn’t impressed with Unity, not at all. It was way too sluggish on my netbook (powered by Atom N450). The taskbar was also way too buggy and limited in features, although that can be sorted out in the coming months. Performance-wise I am a bit concerned.
Anyways I’m using Arch both on desktop and on my netbook so I don’t really care what the Ubuntu folks do.
Edited 2010-10-25 19:56 UTC
I agree. It is slow, buggy, takes too much screen space (horizontal scrolling while surfing sucks), doesn’t autohide and lacks alot of features. I’m concerned if they won’t fix all these issues and add more features until next release, but I can see the potential.
Just installed 10.10 on one of our Linux boxes, and running with Unity desktop. In fact, I’m typing this right now in Chromium using Ubuntu 10.10/Unity.
I’m impressed, the taskbar/dock like item is NICE. Its functionally equivalent to the Apple dock, but its definitely a unique and native Gnome element. I’ve tried some of the dock clones for Gnome and they are really pathetic copies of the dock. The Unity bar does its own thing, so it does NOT feel like a cheap rip-off.
Would be nice if I could just drag an application icon to the bar, instead of launching an app and telling the bar to pin the icon. Unity still needs a bit of polish, but I think this is one of the biggest leaps the Linux desktop has seen.
Chrome does not seem to work very nicely with Unity, gets confused as to who should draw window frame. Would be real nice if they worked on Chrome integration. Same goes for Thunderbird and Firefox.
Unfortunately I have to use this abomination called matlab, which is completely beyond any hope of fitting into ANY desktop environment. Tough call to say if matlab sucks more on Mac or Linux. FYI, matlab is a desktop app written using some bizarre home-grown Java toolkit that is completely broken everywhere. Don’t know why they don’t just use a decent toolkit like SWT which is free and works almost flawlessly on every platform, and is maintained by someone else instead of wasting all their own developer recourses maintaining their home-grown rotting pile of crap toolkit.
Enough of the matlab rant, Unity rocks. Its really nice having a global toolbar. Saves on desktop real estate, and is much more logical and intuitive always looking in the same spot for a menu. App switching is nice.
Sure, Unity is definitely buggy and incomplete, but if Canonical keeps this up, I might just have a valid Mac alternative sometime soon.
In Chrome you can select to use native window management instead of Chrome doing it by itself (which is what yours are doing). In the preferences dialog, go to the ‘personal stuff’ tab. Under the ‘Appearance’ heading, you can select to ‘Use GTK+ Theme’ and ‘Use System Tile Bar and Borders’.
Hope it helps.
New Qt + Unity + Compiz. If it’s done properly, it’s fine. Interesting, at least. Would they leave GTK behind? IDK.
What Canonical/Ubuntu does is not relevant at all.
RedHat and Novell drives Linux development because they are the ones that put the real money into it.
Until now Canonical has only put efforts into marketing. We’re going to see if this time will be different.
MARKETING!
Microsoft, HP. ASUS, Samsung, Dell and many others… all marketing for Windows. Lots and Lots and Lots of money towards Marketing.
Apple, trumps on marketing value, they spend a lot less and don’t have to try to force perspective.
Canonical and a few minor others are spending about 1% of the other group for Windows is and probably not getting the “value” out of it that Apple gets out of its budget.
Aawwwww..someone’s feelings are hurt. Jealous much?
I agree that it’s not relevant, but don’t underestimate the power of marketing. The reason that Windows is king today is one part lock-in conspiracy and three parts marketing, both to end users and to corporate types. Why did Windows beat Netware in the network OS market? Domains were easier to set up than NDS trees… oh, and marketing. Mostly marketing.
sure it does as they have the mindshare factor
I don’t buy his explanation though.
It isn’t about what the users want, if it was then he would hold a vote.
If users knew what they wanted rather than having choices made for them… Windows wouldn’t be around and Apple wouldn’t be as closed down as they are.
Users/Consumers are being *told* what they want and being given what is already being developed.
Yep! you got the point!
I really don’t like when companies makes choices for me, but guess that vast majority of users does!
Thumbs up for you
That’s not the part I have a problem with.
I have a problem with him lying about why they are switching. He should just state their (his) plans and be done with it.
Every corporation lies. They all say neat stuff like “we take care of our customers” and “we are ever so nice”. They all lie and take guesses at what people will accept. As said: people want freedom _FROM_ choice. I believe Apple’s lock-in is actually a feature for the majority.
However, I am glad someone is trying something new. Worst case? It fails and people forget about Ubuntu. It’s not like Ubuntu is the end of everything, without it we die. I mean, there are several distros out there, which all try to do their stuff and hope it succeeds.
Kinda nice not depending on one corp for all things Linux, huh?
Chill out, sit back and enjoy the show. Me, I hope they succeed. It would be nice to see something like this take off.
I’d say that’s overly cynical. There are plenty of corporations that simply make a product and sell it. They don’t bother with deceptive marketing or p.r. doublespeak.
Oh I was never emotionally agitated, I just don’t like how Shuttleworth portrays his company as community centered.
Yeah, maybe I am a bit cynical.
Not saying that every company deliberately goes out to do evil deeds, just saying that they may do some from time to time. Some more than others, granted. But I just tend to expect less from corporations than I do from individual humans. Just saying. 
Damn the internetz with their expressionless text based communications.
If they held a vote, say on their website, then mostly vocal power-users would respond, who are often afraid of change because they’ve mastered what’s there already (see the “ribbon” fears).
I assume users want an intuitive, usable interface. If that’s what they feel they have, then its what the users should get.
I expect that Gubuntu will be added to the family.
Either Gubuntu or Gnobuntu…
Unless I am massively confused (happens), Ubuntu is actually switching Window Managers, from Matacity to Unity. They are still using the Gnome Desktop environment. Are people having trouble differentiating a Window Manager from a Desktop Environment?
I read several articles on the subject, and I don’t see anyone mentioning this.
Good self diagnosis.
Let me clear some things up:
-Unity is their proposed Desktop Shell.
-Metacity is a Window Manager (current gnome)
->WM != DS
-When gnome goes to V3.0 Ubuntu will not be using the gnome 3 desktop shell it will use unity.
Currently ubuntu uses compiz as its WM if there is hardware support (metacity as a fallback, I think).They will continue using compiz instead of Mutter (which is the gnome 3 WM).
Edited 2010-10-25 20:49 UTC
So, to see if I understand what you said, they are going to diverge on shells – with Ubuntu using Unity and Gnome using the Gnome shell. Is that correct?
What would be the shell that Ubuntu and Gnome are currently using, or is there one?
Edited 2010-10-25 20:55 UTC
Nautilus for desktop background plus desktop icons and gnome-panel for panels (task list, system menus, applets, system tray, launchers, …)
Nope, Unity is changing WM from Mutter to Compiz.
Wait, did I say something wrong in the article or what?
I am really getting confused. I knew we had these layers:
XServer
Window Manager
Desktop Environment
Now it apears that we have:
XServer
Window Manager
Shell
Desktop Environment
[or is the Shell above the environment, I get confused]
“I’m talkiing Levels, Jerry – Levels!”
I think it’s like this:
Kernel+drivers+etc.
Xserver
Window manager
“Development environment” (Gtk+/Qt)
“Shell” (Unity, GNOME Shell, standard GNOME, standard KDE).
I would say:
Hardware
Kernel
Xserver
Toolkit (Qt/Gtk)
Window Manager
Shell.
The last 3 comprise the Desktop Environment. Note that I put toolkits above the WM merely because to draw something does not require a WM. Note that the WM does not really require a toolkit to manage windows.
First of all, take everything I say with a grain of salt as I’m mostly making educated guesses.
Currently, I think Nautilus is pulling double duty being both a file manager and a ‘shell’. I base this on the fact that the settings for drawing desktop icons and such are under Nautilus in gconf.
I think Gnome 3 was supposed to provide a proper separation of concerns and have a dedicated shell project.
I have Ubuntu/Unity on my netbook and I really am not fond of it. I mean, it’s alright, but I still prefer older paradigms I guess… app bar, windows… I understand that full-screen is nice on a small screen but I work with a large screen for development so I can have all kinds of stuff up for coding, documentation, server management, etc. I am guessing you CAN use windowed mode in Unity because some apps (like someone above mentioned, Chrome) do not work well with Unity.
But I will still download and try out the live disk when it is released.
Sure you can have windowed mode, all windows are really windowed. Just in unity on netbook, most windows are maximized.
I use Unity on a desktop, and have lots of non-maximised windows open. I really like the global menu bar in Gnome applications, real space saver, and for me at least, is so much more logical going to the same place (top of screen) for the menu instead of the each individual window.
Well then! You think I can build unity on YellowDog Linux, on a G5? I just might do that for fun…
Full screen like that only makes sense if you have a lot of virtual desktops and even then only for certain kinds of apps. This is one reason I can’t get used to ratpoison, for example: Sometimes I have a desktop with the GIMP on it and I want to drag windows around, resize them, etc. Sometimes I have a desktop with Firefox and I want it full screen all the time… except when I want to overlay e.g. an xterm on top so that I can read the page with examples and punch it in as I go.
Simple things are less complex then complex things, but they’re also less complex! If this doesn’t sound like nonsense to you then we should totally hang out.
Right, there is a time and a place for everything.
I haven’t tried Unity and I haven’t tried Gnome Shell, but I’ll make sure to do so when they are both ready.
On one hand, I love the ease of use of Ubuntu, but on the other hand I sometimes feel they tend to oversimplify things. The huge repositories definitely are a plus.
With such big changes going on for 11.04, I fear it’s going to be a mess to upgrade from 10.10. So if I’m going for a clean install anyway, I’ll probably end up trying 5+ distros again before I set my mind on one to use for the next semester or so. Maybe this time I’ll finally switch to OpenSuse or Fedora, or I might just bite the bullet and set up Arch.
My problem with this situation is that I like a tightly integrated desktop, and if you decide against the ‘standard’ in Ubuntu, you’re mostly out of luck (e.g. Kubuntu, although I haven’t tried it in a while). So I guess I’m just wondering what will happen if I don’t like Unity.
Edited 2010-10-25 21:30 UTC
I’ve not tried Gnome shell, but I’ve been following its progress with ever increasing dread. Personally, I think it is a usability nightmare.
I’m really really glad Canonical went this route instead of Gnome shell.
Okay then, so you don’t know anything about it. Gnome-shell isn’t that revolutionary at all and is much more of an evolution of the panel.
Mutter is running great right now and doesn’t make me want to go back to compiz.
I hate the panel, IMO the worst piece of Gnome. Before the flames and mod-downs start, I like Gnome, I like GTK–, I like it a LOT better then KDE, I just hate the panel.
WTF, I can’t even drag an app into the menu bar to have an item like I could with Win95? Need to open a “menu editor” to edit the menu?
You’d think that making a panel / taskbar would be pretty easy, MS figured it out like 15 years ago.
In all fairness, KDE’s kicker / panel is not much better.
I don’t hate it, but you have a strong point. It is not nearly as flexible and customisable as it aims to be.
Concur.
THIS! Yes! Well put and so very right.
Strongly agree on both points. Even the Win7 taskbar can be kicked into shape, the crappy icon buttons turned off, set to vertical, the Quicklaunch bar restored and generally made quite usable, if you know how.
GNOME’s can’t, though.
I was a little apprehensive about the direction the Gnome 3 shell was going in, and was thinking about switching to KDE when it came out. I always liked the way kde did things but performance was an issue the last few releases. I was just going to hope that things had stabilized by the 4.6 version. Now we have Unbuntu also ditching gnome 3 shell. But I’m not sure about Unity yet either. I disliked it for netbooks just because I preferred a ‘normal’ desktop even laptops with small screens. It will be interesting to see how they want Unity to work for a normal sized desktop. My needs are pretty simple at this point and it does look nice. I’ll just have to wait and see.
I just hope people will keep their reviews to the technical merits. All these open source flame wars I’ve seem recently are really annoying me. As an end user I don’t care about Ubuntu’s relationship with upstream as long as stuff works. And so far it has for me. I tried to give Fedora a shot recently but my wifi didn’t work, so back to Ubuntu for me again. I know there are probably people who had the exact opposite experience and thats fine. Use what works for you and stop worrying about what other people are running.
First the ugly theme from hell and now a terrible desktop environment ?
Immediately after the 10.10 I needed to change that theme, still do not understand how something that horrific made it into the default install, where there pretty beautiful themes out there.
Also tried Unity for the first time… I can understand that something like that can work for netbooks, it didn’t work for my TV since there’s absolutely nothing to configure to make it workable on a 1080p desktop. As it looks now I cannot see how Unity would work at all on a desktop.
Am I the only one who thinks this was a good idea?
Right now, Unity is full of bugs and is slow, but the concept is awesome. I really like having the main panel on the left side. My ideal desktop environment would be full-screen/tiled (but without the mandatory keyboard commands) with no title bars, overlapping windows, or desktop space between windows. It would have a Unity-like panel on the left, a menu bar or tool buttons on top, a scroll bar on the right (if applicable), and tabs on the bottom. This would maximize usage of Fitt’s law, so that you could access other applications, other tabs, the menu bar, and the scroll bar all with the mouse at the edges of the screen.
Unity is the closest thing I have ever seen to this idea, and it seems to work pretty well on my desktop. (Right now, I am running Fedora KDE with a Plasma setup designed to be very much like Unity.)
Since gnome3 has been in development there have been all these things Ubuntu have developed that don’t fit in with the progress/changes/ideas behind gnome3.
-Unity
-Application/System Indicators
-Notify OSD
They’re just tailoring Gnome to fit their own purposes and that’s fine. They could ship with awesome by default if they wanted. It’s not like they’re ditching everything, that would mean more work than Ubuntu could handle.
Maybe now people will stop kvetching about how Canonical doesn’t contribute to Linux development.
Maybe now people will stop kvetching about how Canonical doesn’t contribute to Linux development.
How is this Linux development? Linux development, before the advent of Canonical and Ubuntu, was one of co-opetition, where the major players used the same core infrastructure and just a pinch of home brew seasoning. This ensured that the majority of development efforts concentrated in upstream projects, where the joint investment in code accumulated value for everyone.
We had some defectors from this principle, but where are Corel Linux/Xandros/Linspire (etc.) now? Practically not on the radar.
Enter Canonical; backed by millions out of a private war chest. In the first years Ubuntu was just a repackaging of Debian SID. They spent an inordinate amount of time in marketing to make it visible and now they do a bait and switch and substantially diverge from what means to make a distribution. They dump the code out there with a take it or leaving stance. This is not co-operation. This is fragmenting the community codebase willfully in order to create a seperate, Canonical controlled, offshoot called Ubuntu.
The only way to “co-operate” with this way of development is to become an Ubuntu derivative. Dialog between projects doesn’t seem to be possible with Canonical. In a few years we will have Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Ubuntu. What Canonical is doing now is not growing the Linux code base. It is splintering it.
I’m not saying anything about the desirability or long-term viability of Canonical’s practices, all I’m pointing out is that for the first time it seems like Canonical is backing a serious FOSS project with significant resources devoted to coding. (Though saying that Corel/Xandros/Linspire have failed because of the development model you’ve outlined is a post hoc fallacy. I would also point out that Linspire didn’t “fail” per se, it got bought out by Xandros, and Xandros itself is still around.)
Unity seems like a major software project to me, but then again I’ve never coded an entire GNOME shell before, so maybe it is actually trivial. On the other hand, Ubuntu’s other code contributions so far really haven’t been all that grand, as in custom volume control applets, the Ubuntu Software Center, etc.
Originally the complaint was that Ubuntu doesn’t do enough to contribute code back to the Linux ecosystem. Now that they’re doing that, apparently the complaints have shifted to how they’re contributing code. AFAIK, Unity is open source, and until someone tells me “I tried to work with the Ayatana design team and the Unity devs but they didn’t want anything to do with me because Ubuntu is secretly Oracle in disguise and Mark Shuttleworth is Bill Gates’s long lost cousin”, I will assume that it is a cooperative project that other developers can sign onto.
One other point: why do people bring up Shuttleworth’s money as if it’s a bad thing? People are so locked into this false ideology that FOSS is a Panglossian utopia of eminently rational social democratic unicorns (like Thom Howlerda). Money talks. The fact that some dude is bankrolling Unity with his own cash speaks more to me than ten volunteers working for a year on the same project.
Edited 2010-10-26 15:37 UTC
Canonical is not backing a FOSS project so much as it is building something in-house which is also visible to the outside and willing to accept patches. No one else wants or needs this, so while we all cheer for the GPL you can’t really say that Ubunut is contributing to the movement. They’re adding further fragmentation and not refining the common core.
There is a real and important difference between a community-driven project and a corporate-driven project. It’s not enough to simply make it and release the code.
Agreed that there is a big difference between community and corporate sponsored code, but I dispute that the corporate path is inferior or bad. Moreover, you can’t say “this project is corporate-driven” and then link it to fragmentation or irrelevance. OOo under Sun was a great example of a corporate-driven OSS project (note that I didn’t write “FOSS”) that the world needed and that didn’t meaningfully fragment the field.
And I don’t know how anyone can assert at this point that Unity is something that “no one else” wants or needs. Not only do I not know that no one wants or needs it, but thinking in such terms isn’t conducive to innovation. Apple has a knack of designing products that we didn’t think we’d need until they make it, for instance. At least Unity shows some character and vision.
Edited 2010-10-26 16:12 UTC
No one else wants and needs unity because no one else is stepping up to join the project. Whether Canonical can prove long-term that it was something people didn’t know they wanted is debatable.
OO.o is an example that proves my point, not yours. It’s a corporate-directed OSS project that is successful, yes, but only because there exists no non-corporate equivalent. KOffice is unsuitable because it is tied to KDE and the DE warse, the old “GNOME Office” effort was just a collection of independent apps and never a serious contender. Unity is trying to present itself as an alternative to the community-directed effort. When two options exist and one is broadly accepted and supported by the community while the other is narrowly accepted and supported by a single company, the latter will fail and the former will succeed. OO.o has, as of lately, fragmented into two: OO.o proper and LibreOffice, a community driven effort. Which one would you like to put money on?
Unity is open source, and until someone tells me “I tried to work with the Ayatana design team and the Unity devs but they didn’t want anything to do with me because Ubuntu is secretly Oracle in disguise and Mark Shuttleworth is Bill Gates’s long lost cousin”, I will assume that it is a cooperative project that other developers can sign onto.
Wrong way around. Gnome is the elder project and Canonical should have sought to work with the Gnome project on the shell. Only after being completely rejected by the Gnome project, should they opt for an in-house project.
As far as we know, Canonical never went to the Gnome project with their ideas. Gnome even accused Canonical as contributing to little, which infers that they are willing to co-operate. So why is Unity a seperate project and not a set of ideas incorporated in Gnome Shell?
I will agree that this is a matter of perspective. If contributing is defined as just writing code and making it available on a public server, then this is a major contribution by Canonical. If you define contributing as writing code in collaboration with other projects as much as possible, with a long term goal of growing the commons, then Canonical is not contributing.
The fact that some dude is bankrolling Unity with his own cash speaks more to me than ten volunteers working for a year on the same project.
Difference of view point. I’ll take the underfunded volunteers anytime over the one throwing money at his own agenda’s. My agenda is long term availability and maintenance of the code. I want dependability and someone putting “easy money” into something doesn’t instill much trust in me. (Easy money, as in the lump sum gained from selling Thawte. What is a thousand more or less, if you’ve got millions?) If Shuttleworth decides tomorrow that Canonical and Ubuntu aren’t a worthwhile investment, those “easy” thousands stop flowing.
— adjusted the amount of money Mark S. has available.
Edited 2010-10-27 10:59 UTC
I believe Unity is more than what is currently seen on Netbook version of Ubuntu.
From what I can gather, “Unity” is a set of components that make up the environment. Many of which are already running on top of GNOME on the Ubuntu desktop version.
If Unity were to be further extended with it’s own window manager, file manager, system tools, etc.., it would behave more like a full desktop and Ubuntu could really have a something here. It seems this is the direction they are heading.
Seems to me that Ubuntu had a choice either go with Gnome 3 or Unity they didn’t like the direction of Gnome 3 and have chosen Unity. I tried Gnome 3 and didn’t like it much, but that was an early work in progress so I’m probably being unfair.
However, the idea of using bars at the side rather than just top and bottom as in the Unity desktop looks like a good idea to me. I and most people have a widescreen and can afford to loose more real-estate from the sides than the top and bottom (although with a 1920×1080 screen it’s not a critical problem).
If Ubuntu tries their own GUI, at least they have a CHANCE of innovating. GNOME doesn’t innovate.
fragmentation is one of the main reasons why linux haven’t yet succeded on the Desktop (and probably never will)
we just don’t need another shell.
what we need is a uniform, recognizable, homogeneous, consistent and working desktop.
That’s why Apple is succeeding. Now they’re making OSX looking like iOS. And that’s what work for users: because they like things that work in a familiar way.
we already have too many DEs, too many distributions, too many office suites, too frequent releases etc.
“fragmentation is one of the main reasons why linux haven’t yet succeded on the Desktop”
consider again if that is actually true
why should I? I wrote it because that’s what I think.
I’ll consider again when you (or someone else) gives me REASONS to do it.
People say fragmentation is holding Linux back, but then do not back up the assertion by describing *how*. As far as desktop environments and toolkits go I don’t see many third party developers who are avoiding Linux due to toolkit confusion or intimidation. You can say, in general, that more than one is fragmentation and fragmentation is bad, and we can allow that for the sake of argument–it may even be true! But to say that “Desktop Linux” is being hurt by fragmentation specifically requires that you provide at least some anecdotal evidence.
I’ll start: “My friend Timmy was going to port his friendly checkbook manager to Linux but couldn’t decide on GTK or QT, so he didn’t.” Does this makes sense? “My friend Timmy wanted to support Linux for his application but since no one would tell him the correct order for OK and Cancel buttons he didn’t.” Do you see where I’m going here?
People who want to support Linux don’t get stopped by multiple toolkits or DEs. Some really do get stopped by multiple installation mechanisms and a more get intimated by the plethora of distributions, but even those will mostly say “Red Hat only” and just do it.
Spread your FUDbutter somwhere else. Don’t repeat things you hear said just because it seems to make sense when people say it. If you have some actual facts, figures, or any kind of evidence, that suggests that Desktop Linux is being hurt by the KDE/GNOME/XFce/etc split, bring them up now.
Please, please don’t start in with “Development effort” or “wasted time” because these things don’t make any sense when talking about volunteer-driven projects with effectively unlimited pools of manpower. It’s not like in a company where I have ten developers and have assigned six to GNOME and four to KDE and could make GNOME better by reassigning those four. Nobody can be reassigned.
It doesn’t require anecdotal evidence.
Porting from Windows to two Linux distros costs more than porting to OSX, especially if the application uses sound or video. On that basis alone you can argue that fragmentation holds desktop Linux back. Keep in mind that porting for a commercial ISV include testing and support, which is further increased by distros like Ubuntu that are constantly releasing major updates.
Linux is a PITA for commercial developers and it has been that way for years. Distro differences are mitigated by releasing the source and then having package maintainers handle the porting and distribution. Once you step outside this model the costs go up.
You can’t argue that fragmentation is a net positive or neutral aspect for commercial developers when there is clearly an additional cost involved.
Yes, I do agree with the answer.
Just consider another example: packaging the same program for 20 distros waste 20 times time needed for just one distro.
Getting a specific version of an app packaged for your distro is almost impossible (so you have to use the version shipped with the distro while you could use a more recent one, if someone packaged it)
Fixing problems and helping other users supporting them is time consuming because you need to know the “internals” of every distro on the planet, which is impossibile.
Deploy working solutions requires you to test on 200zillion distro. Or at least you have to develop in the same environment where you are going to deploy (which could be hard or impossible if you need to work for several customer at the same time)
Non-professional user may not be able to use another user’s Linux machine because it may act / feel completely different from its own setup.
We can go on forever with these scenarios.
So, and I’m writing to the one who says that fragmentation is not bad, what are your evidence that is is good? (or at least, neutral?)
I actually worked on a .NET project where Linux was considered, but only because of OSX.
OSX ended up being dropped because Mono runs through X11 and the application would have required a lot of work to make it look acceptable. Monomac at least builds on Cocoa but is a work in progress. Then on top of it Mono is behind compared to the real .NET which amounts to it being unappealing for any company that wants to make a great looking Win7/Vista application. It’s better suited for in-house porting.
Mono applications look fine in Linux but a divided 1% is not an appealing platform to target, especially since there is no commitment to provide a stable platform for commercial companies.
It needs to be remembered that while a port to either Linux or OSX can be profitable the investment is typically weighed against a range of options including further investment into Windows or even web or mobile platforms.
What needs to happen is for Qt to get its remaining OSX issues resolved which will lead to more cross-platform development. When applications are designed to be cross-platform from the beginning the cost of porting to additional platforms is significantly reduced.
Mono haters should be happy to know that Windows devs are not gravitating towards it. The move to WPF has left it floating in the water. Mono bashing is not even needed. Qt will hit a tipping point and no one will care about Mono.
First “Porting to two OSes costs more than porting to one.” – Is anyone even surprised? Second, I was talking about (and we were discussing) Desktop Linux fragmentation in the form of GNOME vs KDE, not distro fragmentation.
Pick a version target and stick with it. This is why enterprise distros and Debian are good. Again, don’t change the subject: Multiple DEs are not the problem here.
Which has exactly what to do with a choice of Desktop Environment? Pick a distribution and target it, pick RHEL if you want a stable target.
All I have to show is that fragmentation is not a net negative, or that it cannot be proven to be a net negative. But I don’t even need to do that: I am not arguing against various platform problems surrounding Linux in general, I am arguing about whether GNOME vs KDE vs GNOME+Unity fragmentation is hurting Desktop Linux. It isn’t. You still haven’t even attempted to describe how it might.
That works for a database company targeting a conservative distro like RHEL but a gaming company needs to support the latest version of Ubuntu.
It makes Linux less appealing to ISVs since multiple environments increase development and support costs. Proper Qt integration within Gnome is really what is needed.
A gaming company cares less than most about Qt vs. GTK nonsense, much less the environment. Most games are full-screen affairs that care about the WM and not much else at the DE level.
I put it to you that if gaming companies ported their games to RHEL only then the RHEL versions of libs would find their way on to a lot of people’s systems, even if via chroot, and a lot more desktop users would run RHEL.
Granted that multiple desktop environments have a non-zero support and development cost, but I don’t know of any case where it’s been a deal breaker for a porting effort. Do you?
Proper Qt integration with GNOME will help a lot. What would help even more if writing Qt apps from C were painless. Or, how about a libgtkqt which can act as a run-time drop-in replacement for gtk and actually use Qt? It’s not as if emulating an API is a new concept and it would certainly be a nice way to bring a swift end to the toolkit wars.
They still have installation routines and setup dialogs that tie into the system. But the point was more that there are companies who targeted demographic wants to run the latest distro/kernel version for performance and hardware support. I suppose A/V editors would have been a better example. RHEL has a conservative update policy but is getting long in the tooth even for database servers. Perhaps the rolling distros will end up doing more to address this problem.
Well I think it’s a combined problem of distro, DE and package format fragmentation. Then you have sound issues as well. An ISV isn’t going to point to DE as a deal breaker when it isn’t the biggest problem. However I do think it has a role in discouraging ISVs. It makes the Linux desktop look like a work in progress since there isn’t a consistent look and feel.
I think a standard package format and installer would provide the most gain from the least amount of work.
I don’t believe this. A standard format doesn’t help much, and you simply *cannot* get people to agree on one. Even on Windows I see a lot of different installation mechanisms and half of the time they’re used in a broken way.
What you’re really wanting is for third party devs to package once and install anywhere, which is a worthy goal but isn’t solved just by unifying package format or even package management tool.
you should consider it again because someone is telling you to. learn to take some advice and you might learn more than that
why should I? I wrote it because that’s what I think.
I’ll consider again when you (or someone else) gives me REASONS to do it.
Because they built another shell on top of Unix?
No, because their products (iPhone, iPad and soon OSX) have the same metaphor and the same look&feel.
So, people using one of them feels comfortable using all the others.
And, by the way, they have just ONE gui for OSX, ONE toolkit, ONE window manager, and they are not even themable, so all the Desktop and all the apps looks exactly the same.
We can argue for hours and hours if this is a good thing or not, but, truth is that people like it.
And Ubuntu using the same metaphors for netbooks and PC’s then is bad because….?
What are you talking about? Just three years ago we were arguing how iOS had *no* consistency with anything before it.
Apple are successful because they pay attention to the details and don’t just say “ship it” unless it has been thoroughly scrutinised. Other companies rush themselves too much and sacrifice everything to get it out quickly. Apple do not rush (the iPad was started _before_ the iPhone).
The web has succeeded and that’s about as un-uniform and inconsistent as it gets.
Linux on the desktop doesn’t need consistency, it needs to stop shipping half-baked products. Every time I boot the latest Ubuntu, I am able to find show-stopping user experience bugs within 15 minutes.
This.
What Ubuntu was good at when it started was what I call integration, which could also be stated as “We took time to see that these things actually worked” instead of just compiling and shipping. This was refreshing at the time, but they never followed through on that initial promise.
A Linux system could be as nice as Mac OS X. All you need to do is hire a half dozen developers and some testers and designers and sit down with a set of functionality you want and a specific set of packages and bang on it until everything is nice, then ship it. What you can’t do is package $everything and you can’t ship unpatched close-to-upstream things if the upstream isn’t willing to accept patches that make their app integrate better on just your system.
It’s a lot of work and a lot of effort and when you’re done you’ll have laughably out of date versions of your software, since it will take months to properly refine each release. You’d have to have the balls to not care about this and keep focusing on a minimal feature set and high quality. It could have been done at any time in the last ~5-10 years. It hasn’t been and it probably won’t be, but there you are.
I just tried Unity and dude… I hated it.
Here comes a shitstorm that will breeze away Microsoft Vista’s days on them…
For that matter, I do believe I gotta look out for another distribution to use.
And I don’t see anything “broken” with a file manager. I guess there’ll be always somebody willing to turn software as stupid as possible to fit its stupid users.
Now what is the difference between Jolicloud and Ubuntu 11.04?
http://www.jolicloud.com/
Not quite sure why this hasn’t happened yet.
I prefer KDE4 technology, but I appreciate the gnome layout.
I usually change the default layout for KDE to make it more similar to Gnome. Ah well.
After reading some articles about the future of Ubuntu I’ve decided to stay with the 10.04 LTS version for the next couple of releases.
The next versions will decide what I’ll do in the future. Because of the LTS I have the time to wait and see.. I’m a user which really likes the ‘keep it stupid simple’ of the 10.04 for normal usage.
I’m also still using 10.04 and will upgrade when the next LTS release comes out.
with the widening gap between the stock gnome and the ubuntu desktops, i’m wondering when an ubuntu variant with gnome desktop will show up…
(unfortunately i haven’t had time to get acquainted with either unity or the new gnome developments so can’t comment on which one i prefer.)
Shuttleworth have finally have come to the terms with linux desktop being a dead horse and focused his efforts where still some money could be (tablet, netbook, server).
That’s was surely a though but a necessary decision.
If every distro around had its pet desktop customization that it develops and focuses on while also investing hard in integration and standards the linux would be much further than it is now.
dsmogor posted…
Why do I suddenly have that same dread, feel that same tenseness in the air that I felt when Be did its infamous focus shifting…?
–bornagainpenguin
I’m not sure. Will anyone really care if Canonical goes out of business in two years?
If I don’t use a netbook with Ubuntu Remix, it’s precisely because I dislike Unity. I prefer using a traditional computer with regular Ubuntu, not Unity.
It was inevitable but true. Mark Shuttleworth hired some good designers over the years and I’m sure they were frustrated with where Gnome 3.0 was going.
This will give them complete control about the look and feel of Ubuntu and respond to people’s feedback because as I’ve seen, they’re much more proactive than the Gnome Foundation.
Sometimes, you must start a “revolution” in order for stuff to change. Gnome is stuck in a server and work mentality era. Therefore, I will give Mark Shuttleworth the benefit of the doubt before judging Unity.
I hope these good designers can design a decent looking skin someday soon
I don’t really have a horse to pick on this race being an user of neither desktop shell for the most part but Canonical’s actions have been troubling me for a while and I think that this gentleman, whose incredibly insightful and timely accurate post I am copying verbatim from Ars, nailed it.
I, together with others, have been saying for a while that Canonical talks the talk but does NOT walk the walk when it comes to collaborate on a truly free and open source manner and we were sometimes treated as if we were saying some heresy here.
If Canonical wants to differentiate its products from its competitors, it is OK by me. In fact, they really should do it if they really want to stand out from the crowd. Just do not pretend to be a FOSS player because it is clear where its interests are…
I really like Gnome, however, for me, gnome-shell a failure. No disrespect to the coders who have spent a lot of time making it. In my opinion its design (in its current state) is flawed since it requires extra clicks/time to swap between tasks.
I hope that something new comes out of this DE mess. I can’t stand anymore GNOME being so stagnant, I can’t stand KDE not being more than enough, I can’t stand xfce, openbox and ratpoison. I mean… something, something needs to come out and stand for Linux, as a common, ubiquitous and modern DE.
All I want is a solid, logical and easy interface to use. Even if devs copied Windows all way round, it would be much more achieving than just produce another 4 panel equipped DE.
I hope Unity really blows minds by April, but I doubt it will. Shuttleworth crazy ideas are surfacing more and more, and obviously he doesn’t care about the repercussion, which I it is a bit unfair. Decisions like this need to be taken on a several minds paradigm, but deciding alone what is best or not for millions of users is just fulfilling his self put acronym.
Didn’t like current Unity in netbook version, didn’t like buttons moving to the left in 10.04, and I am sure I am going to not like windicators and several MacOS rip offs.
Edited 2010-10-26 21:36 UTC
What is the problem with KDE being more than enough? Just ignore, or uninstall, any bits that you do not need.
How exactly is providing more than enough, given a comprehensive selection of desktop applications right within the desktop software collection, with better performance, security and user-configurability, with multiple desktops as a feature that Windows doesn’t have, already not a great deal more achieving than just Windows?
You mean, NOT BEING more than enough? I tell what the problem is. For example: several apps with vertical text on a side-bar; confusing default K menu; slow native graphics compositing; lack of more professional themes ans styles other than Oxygen (the ones provided by Qt seems to be all Windows 95 based themes); no effort from KDE to automagically integrate GTK apps themes and fonts. TELL YOU WHAT, this SUCKS!
But to say that I am not only bashing KDE, KDE deserves to be recognized as the owner of a better technology than GNOME. A simple GTK window redraw just shows that, and personally I am tired of GTK native look and feel surrounding permanent unoptimization.
The point is that you don’t have to be exactly like Windows to be more than enough. I meant that in Windows things are simpler. Even the Windows 7 control panel is more user-friendly than KDE’s Control Center. Or even better, let’s compare Aero titlebar buttons. Tell you how much more confortable is to hit the red wider button to close a window, than to track and spot on a close-window button in Oxygene, which is by the way, grey shaded just like the title-bar… Know what I mean? Little stupid things that make Windows better. I guess there’s a reason why Linux never goes beyond the 1% ceiling of marketshare worldwide?
And you could come now and say: “But wait, GNOME also has a small close-window button in Clearlooks and Ambiance too.” or “Just change the theme”. But this is not KDE vs. GNOME thing or a change theme thing.
This is how the open-source misses on how to conquer new horizons by simply refusing to copy what is good and solidified, or not realizing that little things that improve usability should be implemented immediately instead of implement stupid concept designs conceived by 6 stupid german devs, who think this is what is the best for the whole world.
Gratuitous use of bold does not make your points any less correct.
Up to here, I thought you had a point. Then I realised you were trolling. Anyone who thinks the mess of text links in the Windows 7 Control Panel is better/easier than the logically laid out icons in System Settings in KDE SC 4 is just flat out lying, trolling, and spreading FUD.
The only, and I do mean only good thing about the Windows 7 Control Panel compared to Windows XP is that they included a search field. Without that search field, it would be impossible to find anything in the Windows 7 CP. It’s a train wreck of a UI with absolutely no flow to it.
How often do you use the “big red X” to close a window, and how often do you use the apps quit function, and how often do you use keyboard shortcuts? It would be lovely, from a helpdesk tech point of view, if people forgot all about the “close window” feature and started using the “quit app” features in the app itself. So many problems arise from people closing an app the wrong way and losing date (yes, Oracle, I’m looking at you). It would be lovely if there was a way to remove this in Windows … oh, what’s that? You can in KDE but you can’t in Windows? Yeah, Windows definitely makes life easier. :roll-eyes:
The fact that you think Windows is the pinnacle of perfect design and should be copied by everyone says a lot more about you than you realise, and really undermines your argument.
Edited 2010-10-29 16:26 UTC
Unity’s current implementation is lacking, but from my understanding, that is mostly due to mutter. switching to compiz should help clear up a lot of issues.
That said, Unity’s _concept_ is pretty great, and clearly different than gnome-shell. I think the decision was the correct one, and this is coming from a guy that is wary of canonical.
This might sound shallow, but hopefully Ubuntu’s change will move away from GNOME’s *horrible* greyness, or browny-greyness in Ubuntu form! Why have all these advanced features and new technology if your aesthetics are simply disgusting? That’s like buying a Rolls Royce and fitting a Daewoo interior!
Hopefully we can hold onto normal KDE with Kubuntu…
Key: DE = shell + Window Mgr + Display Server
gnome3 =
gnome3 +
Mutter +
XOrg/Wayland
…A way off the dangerous XOrg, 2D capable WM
u11.04 =
unity +
compiz +
XOrg
…Unity req 3D*. NVidia is bin-only
u10.10 =
gnome2 +
compiz +
XOrg
…Has Meticity WM for 2D driver fallback
All use the “latest” GTK+ libs for their time.
*3D can be accomplished with 2D drivers with LLVM-Pipe, however slowly.
Wayland requires toolkit-side rendering which is the expected implementation for Windicators.
This whole debate is, I feel, missing the point. Having seen GNOME Shell and Unity I can see no reason why these things need to be mutually exclusive.
What happened to the old rule “Mechanism not policy”? At every stage of building software each piece should strive for mechanism and not policy. Policy should be a simple configuration choice pushed as far toward the user as possible. Sometimes the distribution will make a choice for the user, which the user is permitted to change, but never should the developer make a choice for the distribution when doing so is not required.
Unity and Shell are not necessarily technologically incompatible. It seems obvious to me that if there are these two competing ideas for what the GNOME desktop interaction should be like the parties involved should work together to make sure that the cosmetic UI part is absolutely the only thing that’s different. Implement Shell and Unity atop a common core and allow the user to edit a config file to switch between them or, better, to pick and choose which bits of each will apply.
There should be no fight here. I hate to sound like a KDE partisan, which I am not even if I am down on GNOME, but in the KDE world this would never happen. They excel at building shared infrastructure and refactoring. Could Plasma be used to replicate Unity and GNOME Shell? My hunch is that you could get a large part of the way there with little or no change to the common core. If KDE can do it, why can’t GNOME?
Why must there necessarily be this divide between Unity and “The rest of the GNOME project” where the two camps make political war on each other? Come together, build your infrastructure, then Ubuntu can toggle on all of the Unity options and Fedora can toggle on all of the Shell options and I, as the user, can decide what I like and what to change.
RIP Ubuntu…