Ubuntu Reveal Results of Gnome Desktop Survey | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu Reveal Results of Gnome Desktop Survey

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57 pointsyannski50 comments

I've used Gnome (on Fedora) for 10+ years as my daily driver and just recently have been using the pre-installed Ubuntu 16.04 and Unity that came with my new Dell laptop. One of the things I immediately loved is the global menu. This greatly expands application space especially on small laptop screens. I figured I would wipe the laptop soon after delivery and install Fedora/Gnome but the look and integration of global menu has me staying on Unity for the time being. This was a small thing I had no idea existed after years of Gnome 2/3.

I would love for this to be an option in Gnome Shell or just the default. I've seen hints of an extension coming, hope it gets some traction.

Funny thing is that i seem to recall KDE supported that as an option back in the 3.x days. But come the 4.0 debacle i walked away. Had a long stint with XFCE, but as i increasingly had to deal with Gnome-derived "plumbing" (aka sewage) i have now moved to IceWM.

Why do you call it "sewage"?

Because it leaves a stinking mess whenever it breaks (and it seems to break worryingly often).

AFAIK you can still do it in KDE plasma

I'm not a fan of the disconnected global menu for regular windows. For maximized windows, however, the way Unity integrates/eliminates the menu and title bar feels very natural and is one of my favorite features.

This survey and the article show a remarkable amount of humility, which is something new to Ubuntu. I'm quite pleased to see this new direction for them.

I thought Ubunto has always been pretty accommodating: they accepted systemd against their preferences, they switched from Unity back to Gnome.

Maybe they finally started to learn from Unity fiasco.

Unity became usable in recent releases. But I've never been 100% comfortable with it, I've always felt like I'm interacting with my computer through a bowl of treacle. I've been using Ubuntu Mate for a few years now, I much prefer the old Gnome 2.x look and feel. And with compton it's lightning fast

Yeah the problem is it's not even proper desktop interface, it was made for touch screens i.e. tablets, also 7 years ago ubuntu was first distro on distrowatch.com hits per day ranking, today its 4th and it really goes down every month, so I'm assuming it has something to do with Unity and pragmatically it was a fiasco that was bringing Ubuntu down, I also doubt they can do much about it at this point in time.

Users are split on whether window controls should be on the left or right.

Hint: make it easily configurable.

Otherwise, you get to irritate 40-60% of your users.

I think this more suggests just pick one.

I don't think one is particularly superior to the other, and every configuration option is another thing to test, making sure everything else window related renders properly. Also every configuration option is another thing to confuse users with.

I would much prefer a single well thought out consistent interface than a "build your own" grab bag.

Right or wrong, this does seem more inline with "the Gnome way."

It's also why I stopped using Gnome (and in fact, Ubuntu all together). But I suspect I was never their target user, and that's OK. If they can make it easier for more typical computer users, good for them, and they should stick to what works.

Sadly it feels like the "target user" of Gnome (and thus Freedesktop related projects) are dyed in the wool Mac users, but the Gnome people will not admit this even as they drive away more and more existing Linux users.

They are clearly not targeting Mac users, as Gnome/GTK programs continue to insist on the Windows shortcut model of overloading Control. KDE/Qt programs are at least configurable, with effort, to the Mac (and historical Unix) model of a Meta key for GUI shortcuts and Control for control characters.

I don't have a multiple monitor setup for my Ubuntu instance, but when I am running windows on multiple monitors, the side of the taskbar (when I don't have it configured to the bottom) makes a huge difference. Depending on which monitor I have it on (let's assume I have the taskbar on the rightmost monitor), havign it on the left gives me a few pixels to hit an icon on it (and worse if it's set to hide automatically) whereas having it on the right gives me an infinite number of pixels.

IOW, the configuration is important even if there is a preferred side.

where are you defaulting? do you need to add an api to let the app developers know the window direction so they can create apps consistent with the env?

Options are a cost, are the user going to be irritated or just have a few laugh at their muscle memory for a few days (that was my reaction when I switched window control position from gnome to unity)?

> Otherwise, you get to irritate 40-60% of your users.

The survey says nothing about how strongly folks hold that preference. I may prefer Schwepps Ginger Ale, but I'm not going to be irritated when offered Canada Dry instead. That "40-60%" number is a ceiling, not a floor.

I would be very irritated if I couldn't put my bar on the left. I put it in the left on every UI I use.

The reasoning seems sound though. Where there is no strong user preference, consider making it configurable.

The only way you find out how irritated people would be without the option would be to piss them off.

Consider eclipse. It allows the user to configure every. Single. Thing. And in doing so makes configuration difficult because there are so many options. Sane defaults and a consistent environment are better, imho.

That's because Eclipse is basically an operating system like Emacs.

As a long time Emacs user I find your comment very offending.

Emacs is nothing like Eclipse. If anything, I would compare Eclipse to Vim: bare bone its useless, with plug-ins its just too big and unstable.

Yeah. A great point. I do find eclipse to be too configurable, and part of why I use IntelliJ (for Java). Apple software is generally on the other end of that spectrum, which annoys many people; although you'll notice that even there you can put the bar on the left, right or bottom.

When I opened Xcode preferences first time, I thought it was a bug or there's another real preferences dialog somewhere.

Sane defaults and extremely detailed configuration options can coexist.

Those users who like the sane defaults can just stick with them. Those users who don't like those defaults can use the configuration options to fine-tune their experience.

If you have loads of options it can be almost impossible to know the options. Even basic things can be difficult to find. This is usually "solved" by things like an "advanced" button but that means you'll just end up clicking the advanced button in loads of places.

IMO sane defaults and extremely detailed configuration go against each other. The detailed configuration makes it impossible to find the option you want.

Put them in the middle, problem solved

Design by compromise: ensuring that no one is happy.

Is this not configurable via the GTK skin?

The Gnome-Tweak-Tool is going to get this switch.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/06/gnome-tweak-tool-move-win...

Also note the design of that pie chart - 'left' is on the right, and 'right' is on the left.

Also, left should be red, right should be blue.

Ubuntu defaults to US locale, where left is blue and right is red.

Wait, seriously? I thought pawadu was joking. There's actually an accepted standard for color ordering on pie charts?

The key takeaway is _easily_ configurable. I don't want to have to drop into a shell and modify some XML file to do it.

Now that I think of it, what will happen with the Unity HUD (`alt` key brings a search hud that indexes the app's menu, kind of like Sublime/Atom/VSCode's Control+Shift+P command palette)? Will they port it as a Shell add-on?

After using that for a while and switching to another desktop, I sorely missed it.

In Gnome it's the super key which does that. EDIT: scrap that, misread your comment

It relies on various hacky patches to e.g. gtk+2.x. There's an extension to add it to GNOME 3, but it still relies on those patches. Ubuntu planned to remove as many patches as possible. So with the extension and those patches it will currently be possible, but might not in future when they remove the patches.

So basically: maybe yes, maybe no.

Of the extensions they surveyed, the only one I really see as a must have is Top Icons Plus. That weird little corner tray that Gnome puts the legacy tray icons in is, well weird. It just seems so out of place.

Of the rest of them, the only one I'd really loathe to see enabled by default is Dash to Dock. I really hate the that when I first log in to a fresh install there's a big static dock(initially filled with utter useless short cuts) eating big bite of screen real estate.

Dash to dock can be configured to disappear when a window is maximized. I personally can't use Gnome without it.

The people who have knowledge about these extensions cannot be said to be the target audience of Ubuntu Desktop. Or are they going all-in on the multiple desktop environment crowd?

I'm kinda surprised they are not aiming at making Gnome as similar to Unity as possible. I expect the majority of Ubuntu users to be familiar with Unity and not much else in the Linux Desktop ecosystem.

That expectation would be wrong. Most Ubuntu users either have a more technical friend that picked the desktop environment for them or they are developers.

I have seen hundreds Ubuntu desktops the last couple of years. Seeing unity was the exception.

Why do you think Canonical moved away from Unity? After the effort and money they invested? Its because such a large group of users was actively avoiding it (myself included - although i like many of its design elements in isolation the execution, the thing being a compiz plugin and the user iteraction design was just unbalanced).

It actually has this Vista like quality where the trade off between power users and casual users ended up worse for both. The unity desktop wasnt the best choice for any group of users, although it may have been the best compromise.

If Canonical has any sense, they just focus all their energy on being the best desktop for developers and monetize from that perspective. The years they wasted trying to compete for a market (desktop consumer) that was going to be eaten from every direction.

Well hindsight is easy i guess

As a longtime Unity user, I hope they maintain the tiling-by-keyboard function of Unity in the new GNOME (or maybe it's a part of GNOME already).

I like using the keyboard as my main input for everything except scrolling. The more I can use the keyboard on a laptop, and the easier it is to know those hotkeys (holding down Meta key on Unity), the better.

If you haven't used Unity in a while, spin up a 17.04 VM to give it an hour or so of use. Makes you appreciate how far it's come.

> tiling-by-keyboard function of Unity in the new GNOME

At the moment you can only maximize to the left or right. Depending on the work done during GUADEC the quarter tiling functionality might be ready for GNOME 3.26. It actually already was available in one unstable version, then taken out in the next version.

I'm really looking forward to better support to divide your screen. With screens such as 2560x1440 it helps to have more options than just "two on one screen". Some people also use e.g. a huge (e.g. 40") 4K monitor. Then you'd want really good window management.

If your platform needs a bunch of extensions for CORE functionality, something is wrong.

What exactly is CORE functionality?

(not really a question)

For a desktop environment?

I don't use any GNOME Shell extensions at all and I'm really happy with it.

Opinions on core functionality do vary rather a lot.

Appreciate the Ubuntu Gnome articles. Keep em coming!

Long live Gnome!

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