I realize that’s a totally subjective statement but I was surprised by some of the reactions I heard about it.
So yes, I never used Unity but I didn't ask for its demise. There were alternatives and I was happy with them. Still Canonical decided to dump Unity. Why? They couldn't make money out of it, and out of Mir and the old Convergence project. [1]
In his words
> Some of the things that we were doing were clearly never going to be commercially sustainable, other things clearly will be commercially sustainable, or already are commercially sustainable.
> The decision] meant that we couldn’t have on our books (effectively) very substantial projects which clearly have no commercial angle to them at all.
That's not because people were asking Canonical to kill Unity.
[1] https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/10/why-did-ubuntu-drop-unit...
Wish Canonical would have just created MATE themselves.
I have been using Ubuntu since 2005 and it was a rough grind on the "just-works" front in those beginning days. By 2010, desktop Ubuntu was in great shape and laptop Ubuntu was nearly there (moreso on suspend/resume, not so much on battery). People were just starting to breathe and then Unity came and threw any semblance of stability out the window.
Once I moved to the US I started using Mac and never looked back. The best thing that Apple does is that they don't try to merge desktop and tablet UX.
With all the IOS apps they keep bringing to macOS, the merging of the IOS and macOS dev teams, and the imminent release of ARM macbooks I wouldn't get comfortable
Agreed. I think a lot of it just came down to performance. Unity was ahead of it’s time, and a lot of people just didn’t have the hardware to handle it with zero lag.
2. HUD (Heads Up Display) — by just tapping Alt and typing, you could quickly select an option from almost any application's menu (saving you the time of looking through the menus and trying to remember whether the desired option was under Edit or View).
3. Not a speed benefit, but: better use of vertical space.
BTW I think that XFCE is a great DE.
Absolutely. I for one embrace (positive) change and had no problem adjusting to Unity. I liked it a lot, even more than Gnome 2, but the performance was just shockingly bad on every computer I used it on. From my Thinkpad T420s with the Intel graphics to my desktop with a GTX 970. Everything was noticeably slower than it was under any other desktop environment. I finally just quit using it. The real shame is they had a version based on Qt a while back that didn't require compositing. If they had continued with that, the performance would have been stellar. Oh well.
I remember struggling with Linux GUIs since the earliest days of Redhat and we are talking 15 years ago. Unity is comparable to my retina macbook and Win10 desktop. This is not a small achievement. Your grandmother could use it.
Internet opinion tends to be loud but may not be representative when you mix in the vested interests pushing their own desktops, astroturfers and a certain community who think they should control Linux and everyone needs their approval and blessings.
In Unity's case it was this last group with the most vicious reactions. No one can be so bitter about a desktop unless they are vested in something else. I wish Ubuntu hadn't abandoned it.