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Comment by CSDude | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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 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.

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.

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

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