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Comment by 88e282102ae2e5b | Hacker News Reader

In Ubuntu, the mouse pointer disappears after locking the screen or suspending [1], and the Fn button combo can take minutes to change screen brightness [2]. These bugs have been around for months and years, respectively. You simply cannot get non-power users to use an operating system with issues like this. Perhaps there's a more polished distro, but if the one that's touted as the beginner-friendly one has such obvious user-facing problems, it's just not feasible to get past 1% market share.

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1573454 [2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-power-manage...

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Your point is perhaps valid, but we're talking about an OS where people can even contribute bug fixes (agree that the percentage might be 0.1% or much less).

On the other hand, people get used to living with issues such as: 'High CPU use by taskhost.exe when Windows 8.1 user name contains "user"' [0]. Possibly because we've become so accustomed (slaves?) to a certain computing environment. Moreover, you can't even contribute a bug fix.

Ubuntu on Windows hasn't arrived as a service to Windows users. This is an acknowledgement of a growing threat (at least in a limited developer community).

That said, get rid of Unity and Ubuntu would suddenly so much better. Canonical might have damaged Linux lesser if it made Openbox the default WM.

[0] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3053711

That said, get rid of Unity and Ubuntu would suddenly so much better. Canonical might have damaged Linux lesser if it made Openbox the default WM.

I do not understand from where comes all this constant Unity bashing. I think that this is actually what creates the real damage.

I think that Unity is great user interface that takes the maximum out of the current distorted screens and I have used it for years as my main (and only) desktop.

I do not understand from where comes all this constant Unity bashing. I think that this is actually what creates the real damage.

It's not just Unity; anything even remotely disliked gets bashed (Gnome Shell has a history of getting criticised at every bit of news about it). I agree that it is poisonous behaviour that benefits no one, but I wonder what causes it.

Almost all the constant complaints I see fall into a couple categories:

1. forced reduced-functionality or questionable UI choices on a project 2. imported the buggy, unexpected behavior of previous Windows releases into the Linux world.

I also think it is a conflict inside a changing culture surrounding Linux.

> I think that Unity is great user interface

Yes, the interface is good but it sucks the resources out of the system. Have you noticed how much CPU and memory does `compiz` consume?

> I have used it for years as my main (and only) desktop

Only if you tried using anything else!

I used Windows as my main desktop before (till Window 7) and I must say that its UI usability degraded constantly. Windows 8 and 10 have thier own problems, but my experience is just occasional with them. I have also occasionally used some other Linux desktop, or tried to use it, but Unity feels most polished and logical for me. I do not have much experience with OSX. Perhaps I would like it, but I do not like Apple hardware.

Yes, Unity has it problems, for example some processes start to run amok time to time, but I do not notice that compiz is one of them. Considering that I usually ran my Windows installations to the ground, Ubuntu has stand the test of time for me.

I have a disk with Linux Mint.

It loads faster, but it lacks about half the keyboard shortcuts I use in Ubuntu.

ElementaryOS lacks even more. No menus in the applications (like Chrome) with lots of wasted screen state, and a broken launcher.

We have tried, and Unity was still superior for doing stuff.

Same feeling here. Long time ubuntu user here. Unity is by no mean perfect, and quite frankly very buggy (as opposed to windows). But the level of hate just does not match my daily experience.

I do think that ubuntu could be better , and that with canonical heavy focus on convergence devices and servers, the desktop side is not improving as much as i hoped.

> Perhaps there's a more polished distro

There is almost always a different distro that handles a specific issue better than the distro a given user is troubleshooting. If it were always the same distro, we would be in good shape...

Ubuntu is not Linux. Ubuntu is one option out of many.

Ubuntu is the standard bearer for "just works" for ordinary people on laptops, and it doesn't achieve that.

Can you point to an option that reliably does?

Maybe you haven't tried awesome [0]. The wiki [1] provides more information. Some screenshots here [2].

[0] https://awesomewm.org/

[1] https://awesomewm.org/wiki/Main_Page

[2] https://awesomewm.org/wiki/Screenshots

I'm a fan of Awesome, but it's just a WM, it doesn't fulfill everything that a desktop needs.

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