First stable release of Ubuntu Unity 20.04 | Hacker News Reader

First stable release of Ubuntu Unity 20.04

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I've only ever enjoyed using Ubuntu with Gnome 2. Nothing else has come near meeting that standard.

Well, Gnome 3 is starting to grow on me.

I know you can still use gnome2 or unity but I eventually decided to stop fighting and embrace changes.

Maybe it's just me getting more comfortable with Linux, but I fell I now get more things done with vanilla 20.04.

You'd probably like MATE then: https://mate-desktop.org/

Have you tried Cinnamon[1]?

[1] https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon

Cinnamon was always to me "Gnome3 for people who prefer Gnome2"

Yeah that's literally the goal of the project.

Also sounded like what the commenter I was replying to would want.

I'm actually sad Unity 8 never shipped. I was really looking forward to seeing it develop, it had a lot of brilliant ideas.

Especially those desktop widgets. They were beautiful!

Maybe it's just me but I can't find a single link from that Twitter account to an explanation of what is "Ubuntu Unity Remix".

My first guess is that it's an Ubuntu fork with the Unity interface instead of the Gnome Shell. But the logo and icons on the Twitter page + the "Remix" inside the name suggest it may be an multimedia editing oriented distro?

it's just Ubuntu 20.04 with Unity7 https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-unity-remix-20-04/1596...

I agree, and they have no homepage or anything either. Unity was (is) a desktop environment alternative to Gnome. It used to be the default in 16.x but Gnome became the default in 18.x.

Remix is (I think) an updated, forked version of Unity that is now being maintained and advanced with the latest versions of Ubuntu. This is particularly exciting for me and other Unity lovers because I pretty much only use Unity as my DE. I have been manually installing it as a replacement for Gnome and this update is very exciting. I think Unity is a lot better.

Can you please elaborate a bit more on this "now being maintained and advanced with the latest versions of Ubuntu"?

I mean, is it really different from the Unity version you can still find and install from the 20.04 official package repository? The problem I see with this is that you have to trust a binary distribution (not just the package, but the entire OS) bundled by a not well-known team.

For me, it would be great if Unity could be maintained and developed just like any other desktop environment (i.e. XFCE) which is completely open source and you can get from your command line just apt'ing it in vanilla Ubuntu.

An Ubuntu "remix" was previously defined in the trademark policy:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070429002528/http://www.ubuntu...

I'm not sure about the current legal status of such use of the trademark, but I hope this explains what is usually meant by "Remix" in the context of Ubuntu.

"We recognise and encourage the concept of a “remix.” Remixes are derived versions of Ubuntu, and it is intended that any software and hardware certifications will apply to a Remix. Therefore the changes from official Ubuntu product must be minimal to be permitted to use the Trademarks. These changes can include configuration changes through the existing Ubuntu configuration management tools, changes to artwork and graphical themes. and some variance in package selection. In general, a Remix can have applications from the Ubuntu archives added, or default applications removed, but removing or changing any infrastructure components (e.g., shared libraries or desktop components) will result in changes too large for the resulting product to be called by a Trademark. Note that if the nature of the product's divergence from Ubuntu changes, the Remix naming and Trademark use may no longer apply."

"Therefore, if you are creating a derivative of Ubuntu, you may use the Trademarks in association with the software product provided: [some conditions]"

Why was a Twitter post to the download link posted?

Better link (still useless but at least contains a screenshot in addition to the same download links): https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-unity-remix-20-04/1596...

I heard Ubuntu 20.04 still shipped with Unity as a package, but I suppose you can't get it just installing it.

After quite some time using 14.04, I miss Unity. In fact, I always liked it, despite all the criticism it got. Compared to GNOME 3, I think those "small things" were better, like having the pidgin icon turn blue in the top right corner of your screen whenever there's a message. Now you have a popup notification every one can read if you're sharing your screen, but at the same time you can easily miss it if you weren't paying attention. The same happens with the Thunderbird integration, etc.

You absolutely can get it by installing the package!

https://itsfoss.com/use-unity-ubuntu-17-10/

That's the beauty of desktop Linux Imo. If you change your mind, you can just change whatever you want on the fly

You most definitely can.

It feels less polished because modern software releases doesn't get tested with it anymore, so occasional e.g. indicators don't work as well, and it doesn't support wayland IIRC. But it most definitely works.

When Unity was introduced I did not like it at all and now it defaults to Gnome 3, which also feels weird to me. I'm not sure but it feels like it all started with moving from Start Menu to Windows 8 and very large tiles, which was marketed for tablets and touch screens, and seems like Unity and Gnome followed. I never liked this trend and today go with Xfce or LXDE, where I found more practical and feels like a computere, or I am just old fashioned.

when I used to use linux as a desktop environment, I preferred LXDE or even just Busybox. So, you're not alone.

Another decent one is Ubuntu Mate.

I think you mean Openbox. Busybox has nothing to do with GUI.

I stand corrected. Been a while. heh

Your timeline is incorrect. Both Unity and GNOME 3 came out before Windows 8.

I also dislike the trend, but I've moved on to tiling window managers after a few months on Ubuntu/Kubuntu.

I was curious and sure enough Unity is from 2010, and came out with Ubuntu 10.10, whereas Windows 8 came out in 2012.

Unity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(user_interface)

Windows 8:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_8

Edit:

Looks like Zune had a metro based design in 2006 though:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_(design_language)#Histor...

I never had a Zune so no idea if it had icons like that at all.

I think you are mistaken, only unity 8 was designed for touch screens.

Yes, Gnome 3 might feel odd. But I noted it improved my productivity once I get hang of the win-button, virtual spaces and hot corners.

Please give it a serious try

Agreed, this is one of the common misconception of Gnome 3. Gnome 3 actually encourages keyboard driven workflow: "Ensure that every operation in your application that can be done with the mouse can also be done with the keyboard."[1].

They use 'big buttons' mostly for accessibility reasons.

Although I personally don't use Gnome 3 as DE because of lack of customizations, I agree to most of their Human Interface Guidelines[2].

1. https://developer.gnome.org/hig/stable/pointer-and-touch-inp...

2. https://developer.gnome.org/hig/stable/

Also, if you happen to be on a laptop, Gnome 3 on Wayland is a MUCH better experience for touchpad input.

Less of a gnome thing than a wayland thing, but it matters since not that many DEs support it yet.

Basically, after having moved to wayland I find it incredibly difficult to go back and use X on laptops.

The hot corners suck with multiple monitors. Moving the mouse curser to the edge of the screen should not cause all the windows to fly away. It's even worse that you need a gnome plugin to disable them.

> Please give it a serious try

Nope. Not again. Gnome3 made a simple, basic functionality, namely to delete - not reset, delete - data set by an application in a user registry nearly impossible. The only data that should be stored there is DE related configuration, but most of the gtk3 application ecosystem now stores a lot more information in dconf, and it's making one's life miserable.

No, thank you; gnome3 messed up enough things. Please choose Cinnamon, XFCE, LXDE, or even KDE instead.

That seems like a strange gripe, why would I care as a user whether configuration is stored in dconf or some config file? And even if I cared, why would that make me choose a different desktop environment? If those are your priorities, then by all means, choose a different DE, but don't extrapolate from your niche needs to everyone else.

I use the keyboard as much as practical, sometimes even the context-menu key instead of the right-mousebutton ('cause it makes a loud click sound which could wake up the little monster).

With Gnome 3 back in Ubuntu 18, I found that the Terminal's context menu has two P accelerator keys, one Preferences,another for Paste. Odd choice, now I need to walk the menu just to Paste whatever into Terminal window. It was easy in Unity.

Not sure if this has been fixed in later Ubuntu or Gnome versions.

I didn't like Unity at first either, until I got to use macOS a bit more. Got used to the things like closing windows button on left side, global menu bar, and now I actually enjoy it. Also Unity is one of the faster desktop environments on my older PC, whereas Ubuntu Gnome is very sluggish in comparison.

Not an official canonical product.

Also, a little more, but not a lot more, than a few "apt install" commands.

I guess it's useful for people who use Linux, like Unity, do not know how to "apt install" it themselves, AND trust a random googledrive/mediafire download as their main OS. I don't know any of these people myself, but I'm sure they must exist.

Cool side project for anyone who was really keen on Unity. FWIW, though, someone has a Unity-like theme available for KDE that will give you a similar layout and can be applied with one click.

I'd still say Ubuntu going w/ GNOME3 vanilla is probably the best thing to ever happen to GNOME3. It's received a ton of fixes and improvements as a result of Canonical pounding on it.

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