Ubuntu 11.04 will use Unity UX instead of GNOME Desktop | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu 11.04 will use Unity UX instead of GNOME Desktop

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83 pointskleiba56 comments

In the article, I think they are confusing the GNOME shell with the GNOME desktop, which are not the same things at all.

I think this clarifies things: "There is going to be some questions about this decision in relation to GNOME. I want to make something crystal clear: Ubuntu is a GNOME distribution, we ship the GNOME stack, we will continue to ship GNOME apps, and we optimize Ubuntu for GNOME. The only difference is that Unity is a different shell for GNOME, but we continue to support the latest GNOME Shell development work in the Ubuntu archives" From: http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/10/25/ubuntu-11-04-to-ship-uni...

It doesn't seem like they make that mistake at all:

It will be the first version of the OS not to ship with the Gnome shell as the default UI. Gnome will continue to be the underlying framework, as Unity is based on it, but the interface layer will look nothing like Gnome.

if you want to experience it now on your desktop do the following:

    $ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:canonical-dx-team/une
    $ sudo apt-get update
    $ sudo apt-get install unity

Log Off, and then choose the Unity session before logging in.

I did it in the past and did not like it much. But perhaps it is far better now, and would be even better in the future release

I just tried this and I think it's a much better desktop in terms of UX.

However, I'm running on a mere 16GB 16-core MacPro and performance was appalling with it really suffering and the end result is practically unusable.

If performance can be brought up to Gnome levels then I'll probably be happy as it is really nice.

16-core? Since when is there more than a 12-core Mac Pro?

Good question, and I don't know.

I just went by cat /proc/cpuinfo and htop which both show 16 independently operating cores. Maybe I have an octo-core and it has hyper-threading? I can't say I pay a great deal of attention to the specifics of the machine I'm hot-desking at, but I suspect that even if it is 8 cores hyper-threaded that Unity should still run smoothly.

That sounds about right.

And yes, I agree, Unity should still run smoothly :x

I think Unity for the desktop is in beta though so hopefully they get things worked out in time for the 11.04 release.

My money is on Ubuntu 12.10 defaulting to xmonad and triggering the apocalypse.

Discussion:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1830372

Unity is the default in the 10.10 Netbook version of Ubuntu. It runs terribly slow and I found it unusable because of this. I was thinking it seemed like they made something that expected you to be on a desktop but marketed it wrong, I guess I was right..

With wide screens, there is a scarcity of vertical screen space, especially on netbooks.

Windows 7 actually solves this problem best; I can move the task bar over to the right and have the full screen height for applications.

Windows XP had the nice benefit of the application buttons' text being horizontal so a wide start bar on the left or right could list about 15-20 open applications without cropping the application name.

Even though they're going to a side bar, moving the top bar in Ubuntu out of the way results in ugly, buggy wierdness.

I'd imagine it's impossible to move the menu bar in Mac OS X, but since there's no Mac netbook, it's probably not a problem.

You can have the Mac dock on the bottom, left or right. And you can have it so it slides away when not in use.

And the new MacBook Air 11" is close to a netbook...

yes, but you still loose the top to that menu bar

Doesn't Windows 7 have menu bars on every window?

This is one thing that I'm very glad Unity does - it removes those menubars and has a global menu like OS X. Saves so much screen space.

I think the global menu would be a huge nuisance on a multihead setting.

I was looking at the notification-osd guidelines yesterday. And in it there was an idea of your notifications moving to the screen that is selected. The way they determined this was a bit odd. I'd certainly want to change where they appeared. And I'd like a CLI equivalent, but I digress.

I abandoned multi-monitors in the end, because I got sick to death of the lack of keyboard control and the unpredictable nature of applications in that environment. Too many assumptions, like me having both monitors turned on. I'd rather think in workspaces, and be able to group apps to a workspace, or shift the menus easily to the one I was using.

I'm sure there are ways around it.

Personally the amount of times I need to use a menu and thus need to go up to the top menu bar are slim to none. Mostly when hunting for some option in Preview.

Ultimately I am a command line user overall, so keyboard shortcuts and commands are my bread and butter. I can't remember the last time I really needed the menu bar for something, so even on my dual monitor (laptop, and external screen) MacBook Pro I really don't care where the menu bar is located.

I prefer the way Apple does the UI.

I tried the netbook release 10.04 for a week on older hardware; in the end, I felt like I had to jump through another hurdle to get to an application - what I mean is that it was a two step process through the global menu. Dialogues end up a bit messy. It felt half way there - I'm glad though that Ubuntu are at least trying something different.

I removed my top panel by accident in Gnome yesterday, and was thinking about abandoning it, but I placed it back, mainly for the date and time and system resources widget thing - that I like to keep an eye on in case XYZ app gets out of control.

Notification icons are useful, but they should complement proper applications. How do you select wireless networks in Gnome without the wireless icon thing?

I'm one of those that starts to flail if I can't do it on the command line, let alone some system menu.

IIRC, it's long been possible to patch GNOME/Gtk to do this (and such patches exist).

No. Explorer, IE, Firefox (4), Chrome, Office, Windows Live foo... none of them have menu bars.

I don't know, I use XP at work and linux for everything else.

My complaint is that there's the menu bar AND there's the dock the combination really takes up alot of screen real estate

I personally use awesome WM one status bar at the top, no window decorators, maximum screen real estate for apps ( I'm also using an 11.6'' laptop)

Apple started to push for full screen apps as shown in OS X 10.7 "Lion" preview.

That's interesting, but for me a web browser only needs a width of about 80 characters! Apple owners probably have high resolution large monitors, so it would just look silly.

Indeed. They are pushing full screen apps where it makes sense for them to be full screen (iPhoto, video editing stuff, etc) not everywhere. Web browsers, like you pointed out, along with stuff like: iTunes, terminals, text editors, ftp clients, cd burning apps, etc all would be pretty silly full screen.

iTunes and Terminal are the top apps that come to mind that I wish I could full screen ala Lion. Outlook 2011 and the iWorks apps, too.

"results in ugly, buggy weirdness" <--- care to elaborate?

I've happily been removing the top bar in Gnome for many consecutive Ubuntu releases without problems?

Same here, removing the top bar is always the first thing I do on a fresh install.

Sure I'll elaborate. By the way, if you have any way to fix these problems via configuration, please let me know.

Minor complaint: the default theme is a fixed-pixel gradient that doesn't rotate when you move the bar to the right, so the vertical bar looks like closed venetian blinds. I can change the theme, but the default should be better.

Bigger complaints: The status icons and notification area don't rotate and/or crop themselves so you can't access most of the important icons.

The application buttons DO rotate the text 90 degrees, but (my preference at least) they should be the only thing that doesn't rotate. The problem with horizontal application buttons is you quickly run out of space; I move the task bar vertical to eliminate that problem -- this is a problem with Gnome's implementation, not Ubuntu.

I'd be happy to remove the top bar, but a lot of functionality (wireless configuration menus) is difficult or impossible to access without it.

I normally have the terminal, browser, and emacs set to hotkeys as F1, F2, and F3, so I don't need an application menu other than to start apps I use infrequently. A context menu would be sufficient.

Perfect world: What I'd really like is a blank screen with some method of seeing running applications that remains hidden most of the time, and a way to easily start applications, see wireless config, and log out.

The last desktop I had that worked exactly the way I wanted it was FVWM, where everything was accessed via hotkeys and root window context menus.

Unfortunately a lot of the niceness of Gnome, like the wireless config stuff, battery notifications, auto-mounting of USB Drives, and status icons you'd typically expect are dependent on using the Gnome/Nautilus interface. (At least I think that's the case.)

I'd probably be happy with FVWM again if using it didn't mean abandoning all the configuration apps and automation that Gnome provides. Right now, I'd have to log in to FVWM, and start a bunch of scripts to configure wireless, start the 50,000 daemons that make Gnome run like a modern UI, etc.

It's a lot of work to go through to reclaim 42 pixels from the top of my screen.

You can use a lot of GNOME without being on a 'GNOME desktop.' gnome-power-manager can run on it's own (and most of the information that the battery display applets use resides in /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0 (or BAT[1-9] I guess, if you have multiple batteries...). gnome-screensaver doesn't need to be run from within GNOME. IIRC the auto-mounting is shared between gnome-vfs (aka /usr/lib/gnome-vfs-2.0/gnome-vfs-daemon on 10.04) and udev rules. The udev rules handle things like usb-mass-storage devices, and gnome-vfs handles things that get mounted to ~/.gvfs/ (like digital cameras). (FYI, udev rules are at the system-level and not dependent on desktop)

Wireless is managed by the network-manager daemon which is launched on Linux boot (in Ubuntu). The controlling applet is nm-applet, which just accesses the backend-daemon. I remember there being a console app to interface with network-manager, but it wasn't that polished last time I looked at it. There is nothing stopping anyone from interfacing with network-manager in a standalone app. You could also swap network-manager with wicd (http://wicd.sf.net).

You CAN do this, but it's a monumental effort to fix a tiny problem.

Maybe figuring out all of that information from scratch is, but things like replacing NetworkManager with WICD is as simple on Ubuntu as 'apt-get install wicd' (though I don't know off-hand if you need to add a 3rd-party repo, but it's not like Canonical hasn't added GUI interfaces for doing that -- rather than mucking around in /etc/apt/sources.{d/,list})

The udev rules that do the auto-mounting of usb-mass-storage devices are already there on your system. Unless you need to mount special devices like Bluetooth filesystems or digital cameras over USB, then you may not need gnome-vfs (and it may launch automatically once you first start nautilus, I'm not sure). Note, that in the past this auto-mounting was done by GNOME or KDE-specific daemons, udev has replaced them (at least on Ubuntu, and I assume Debian).

Launching gnome-power-manager is as simple as adding "gnome-power-manager&" to whatever your startup script is. With someone that has the relevant information, these things are relatively easy. bbs.archlinux.org is a good resource too (since it seems lots of Arch users go for alternative desktop environments -- even if 'desktop environment' just consists of a window manager).

That's a lot of good points. But why not just auto-hide the topbar? Full functionality + Full space saving.

That's what I end up doing. It works, but with most apps having tabs on the top of the window (Chrome in particular), I end up fighting the hidden taskbar when switching tabs or moving windows. Plus, I like to have a clock visible on the screen somewhere.

These are such a minor complaints that they seem stupid, but on a netbook it's a huge annoyance, especially when Windows has solved it perfectly fine since Windows 98 or so. I guess my point is that if you're going to copy the Windows 95/98/XP interface, don't change the things that are obvious wins.

I've been using Linux since 1997, and I'm tired of working around obvious flaws in the interface. I used to spend hours customizing my window manager so that everything was ridiculously efficient (and making Fvwm and Enlightenment themes); now I just want a sane default.

When the first thing that happens when I move the top task bar to the right side is that there is no longer room for the notification area and half of the icons get cut off, and no way to fix this, it reeks of amateurism that should have been expunged years ago.

Thinking again, I totally understand you plight. I've got the same problem on my netbook - having an easy-access calendar/time/mail indicator is much better than having to mouse over every time.

My current solution (well, technically future - I have to remove this stupid Unity off my netbook - it does me more harm than good) is to pull the taskbar to the bottom and hide it. Sure, no clock, which sucks, but I guess I usually have my phone around for that.

It beats the hell out of having the damn thing pop up whenever you want to open a new chrome tab, but it's not a perfect solution.

I think that Unity is going the way of the Apple philosophy - screw customization, because for the 99% of users it only leads to indecision and unhappiness. Make some basic adjustments available as 'apps', but leave the core functionality untouchable.

I wish I was a fan of that - sadly, I'm not. I understand the reasons behind it, and I totally support it. But I need something more - something that is customizable but intuitive, which is exactly why I chose Ubuntu in the first place. I hope it doesn't keep going in this direction.

It's been a while but I think you can recreate the stuff from the top bar in the bottom bar. I definitely had a network manager, and I never used the top bar.

> Windows 7 actually solves this problem best; I can move the task bar over to the right and have the full screen height for applications.

I have done this -- moving the taskbar (in my case Gnome Panel) -- to the right for many years. I don't think this is not something of a Windows 7 innovation.

> [...] moving the top bar in Ubuntu out of the way results in ugly, buggy wierdness.

Please explain what you mean. As I said, I have done this for many years in Gnome, and it's just fine.

On my netbook I set the menu bar to hide and set it up to have the same height as the window title bar. This solves both problems (at least for me): a) no vertical screen clutter, b) no unfamilar menubar on the right screen border.

I used to run gentoo w/ ratpoison which had an even better solution and dispersed with the panel altogether...

> Windows 7 actually solves this problem best; I can move the task bar over to the right and have the full screen height for applications.

IIRC, Windows 95 allowed you to drag the taskbar anywhere you wanted it.

On Windows, every app has a menu, so you still have some screen real estate devoted to a menu, negating the advantage of not having a top menu bar.

On Windows, every app has a menu

No. Lots of applications don't have menus.

You may not be able to move the top bar, but that is not an issue since that is the menu bar, doesn't matter where on the screen it is located it is going to take up space, might as well be in a central location.

That being said, the Dock in OS X can also be positioned on either the left or the right side of the screen as well as at the bottom where it has always been. Not being able to move the menu bar is not an issue.

Why are we still futzing around with always-visible taskbars when we've got things like Quicksilver, Gnome-Do, Alt-Tab window switchers, and tiling window managers.

I'd think by now that we'd get rid of any visible element that's not an app, like menu bars, an integrate them, along with alt-tab app switching and program (Start) menus into a single popup Quicksilver/Gnome-Do interface.

WTB one point of contact for starting/switching/stopping any app on the system, that is hidden until you need to see it, and activated by either a shortcut key or mouse button combo or gesture.

I think the biggest problem with the current version of Unity is the lack of customization.

10.10 Unity does not allow the removal or movement of any of the desktop elements - you cannot hide the topbar or the sidebar, both of which take up significant space on netbooks. Less of an issue for desktop computing, but still.

The bars are also not customizable, which to me was a big draw of Ubuntu and the GNOME shell itself. Let's hope that they return that functionality - otherwise, I'll be using 10.04.1 for quite a while.

Probably not ready for prime time just yet. I installed Unity on my 12.1" HP tablet and there were immediate and obvious bugs. Most notably, all menus and several other windows were skewed about 45 degrees.

I like the concept, and I think that in order for Ubuntu to compete with other distros and innovation among the major players (OS X and 7) a redesign of the UI is necessary. Considering the new features OS X Lion will be bringing, I think Unity is a necessary progression.

IMO Unity is just, appalling. That being said, I like my Linuxes with a small footprint windowing system and a decent colorscheme. I find this pretty desktop Linuxes stuff meek.

Saying "This move could anger at least some open source enthusiasts" seems to imply that they're moving to a closed source or proprietary system, but Unity seems to be an open source project at a cursory glance. It could anger some Gnome enthusiasts, who are presumably open source enthusiasts as well, but not because of anything to do with the open source-ness of the project. Right? Or is Unity not quite as open as claimed?

It isn't very usable/gui-customizable as of now. I'd like an ability to move the "superbar" to other side of the screen, for example.

Visual part doesn't rock much either.

Thus, in my opinion, using it as a default in netbooks is just a little too early. However, the vector direction is right, and we surely can have some nice things with unity.

I actually wish window managers would use overlays for the toolbars and menus - if the hardware was up to it.

Then my web browser would just be a bare chrome. Touch screens, could sense my fingers coming close to the screen and bring up icons or something. Text based menus could also be brought up for power users. Something like that...

An interesting side note here is that the coming Unity will be based upon compiz, instead of relying on mutter. Canonical apparently hired the lead developer of compiz:

http://smspillaz.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/a-bright-new-futur...

May 10, 2010 Mark Shuttleworth blogpost on Unity:

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/383

This is good news as GNOME has had it's day. The Unity interface is pretty cool.

Unity is just a shell on top of Gnome, which is an entire platform.

That said, Unity does look pretty cool.

I still miss CDE. (No "glutton for punishment" comments, please.)

Ewww, CDE :-) fvwm was nice, and of course is still available.

I think I stopped using fvwm after they switch to their 2.x branch. I still use twm occasionally, though. (Don't care a lot about virtual desktops and pseudo-3D window frames anymore)

I wonder whether you could still compile bowman, the fvwm fork that "begat" the slew of NeXt-like window manager that followed…

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