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Comment by s_kilk | Hacker News Reader

> We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Legitimately never thought I'd ever see this. Possibly the best thing that could happen for desktop Linux in this age.

Edit: and of course this would mean Ubuntu/Canonical and Fedora/RedHat basing their desktop OS's on the same platform, which can only mean easier development of desktop software and services.

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I'm a bit torn. I like the design of Unity more than I do that of Gnome, but I think that less fragmentation is extremely desirable.

Ultimately, I think it's a good, necessary move. Linux on the desktop will only happen when the environment is at least as uniform as that of Windows—from the perspective of application developers, at least.

Canonical bending their demonstrated ui talents may just lead to a better Gnome 3 experience.

Do I live in an alternate universe? Do people really think this looks good? http://toastytech.com/guis/ubuntu114defaultunity.jpg

they like the absence of all of gnome's chrome and the smooth animations and transitions.

me, i like gnome 3 and unity. all told i think this is really good news from canonical, for wayland, for gnome, for desktop linux in general, etc.

It certainly makes better use of space than the thick header bars that gnome ships with by default. At least one Gnome developer seems to think so too https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2015/10/17/time-to-use-he...

honestly I agree there, but I'm an i3 fanatic, gnome is much better, KDE plasma has a beautiful interface, but being able to do everything via hotkeys, and tile windows is just an amazing thing once you do it for a bit.

Yes it does. It looks much better now anyway, something like this: http://i.imgur.com/DdY4b5O.png

I really don't see much difference.

I don't think either screenshot looks particularly nice. However, this is mostly due the ugly default background and color scheme (its an ubuntu insider joke and its the first thing people change).

I personally care only about function but even if you are form-above-function guy Unity gives you many tools to make it look good:

http://imgur.com/gallery/sQFw7

(courtesy of r/unixporn )

That's a 6 year old screenshot. They've made incremental improvements since... but yes, I've grown to appreciate it. The most annoying part of unity7's interface is its alt-tab function: It toggles between apps, not windows, and that's annoying.

That's the same behaviour as OSX. At first I also hated this behaviour, coming form the Linux/Window environment. But after using it in conjunction with ALT+` (to cycle through app's Windows) I actually find it better than the standard Windows behaviour.

Yeah once you learnt to use alt-backtick to switch window apps this is a much better experience IMO. Doesn't work without that though.

My biggest issue with the macOS way is that there are edge causes when using Spaces. The biggest being "stand-alone" Chrome apps like Signal Desktop are still tied to Chrome, even though they get their own icon and a separate place on the Dock. CMD-Tab'ing to Signal Desktop might just send me to a Chrome window. Ugh.

That's why Google has been phasing out Chrome apps for a while now.

Google has been phasing out chrome apps on all platforms because alt tab is broken in osx?

I am with unethical_ban on this. Most of the time I am switching between multiple instances of the same app and this drives me crazy.

Just because OSX does it (I don't think windows 10 does this) it doesn't mean it is a good idea.

So use alt+`, which allows you to switch between multiple windows from the same app without the clutter of other apps.

Hey, what do you know. We just released this last month, but it didn't get any love from HN:

https://neosmart.net/blog/2017/easy-window-switcher/

Alt+` (or whatever key is above tab, if you have non-US keyboard) toggles between windows of the same app. I don't know if there is key combination to toggle between all windows, though.

On GNOME 3 you can toggle between Windows using Alt + Esc.

It looks acceptable, but more important than how it looks is how it works. Ubuntu has by far the most usable desktop, in the default configuration, of any linux variant. UI isn't just about the shade of purple you choose.

Furthermore, from the default configuration you can turn it to the the most usable desktop of any OS by doing this:

    Settings -> Appearances -> Behavior -> Enable workspaces

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