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Comment by htsh | Hacker News Reader

The thing that immediately sticks out to me is that the bottom gnome panel is no longer there. Up until now, default ubuntu (and gnome) setups have had one panel at the top and another at the bottom, and the first thing I'd do on a system is to get rid of one of the two.

This made more sense with 4x3 screens but now with many laptops at 16x9, it seems silly to waste that much screen real estate. The mac has a menu bar up top and a dock, but they also move application menu commands to the top, saving some space there.

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That does raise one question, though: Where will minimized windows go? Those screenshots don't show that. They've removed the bottom bar, but there isn't any place (that's visible at least) to select minimized windows, unless they are planning on just using the Compiz window selector entirely for that purpose (i.e. minimized windows just 'disappear' except from the window selector).

I've always put those in the same bar, reducing the ubuntu menu to just an icon (instead of the separate applications, places, & system) in a setup similar to Windows, with open windows in between the application launcher button (start or whatever) and the notification area on the right side.

I realize that one can do that, I'm just wondering what the default setup will be. Based on those screenshots, there will be nothing to show you a window list (other than the Compiz window switcher). They have to have some sort of solution or reasoning, they wouldn't leave the default setup broken until someone configured it.

Yeah, it definitely can't be broken by default like that. And I don't really see a need for the "applications, places, & system" menu if they can be reduced to one button to make room.

Makes me wonder if there may be an auto-hide dock or panel at the bottom? I'm curious to see how this shakes out.

Unfortunately, changing the bottom bar properties to place it to the left or right makes the text indicating running apps show up as ... On the Mac, I make the bottom task bar very small and place it on th left side of the screen, near the bottom - really good for saving screen real estate.

On Ubuntu, making the bottom bar show up on the right side, increase to width by about 20% so ... shows as an app icon, and turn off "expand" provides a similar experience to OS X, but not quite as nice.

Good catch. I was so distracted by the window management moving to the left, I didn't see that.

That's an important part of previewing windows. Even if that specific panel is now gone, something has do something similar (give you a visualization of what's open, how many desktops you have.)

I'm now even more eager to try this out.

I thought the same thing at first. It's cropped out, you can see a row of pixels at the bottom and the panel's shadow. The screenshot-taker probably didn't want to list their running programs.

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