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Comment by spiffworks | Hacker News Reader

I have to say, as an Awesome WM user, I was sceptical of Unity. But after a day of using it, I think I might never go back to Awesome. It is just ridiculously well thought out, in a way that I have never experienced on Linux before. It really is a leap, if only for the methodology they used. I hope other distros start doing this kind of deep analysis.

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Could you give examples for the features your find well thought out? Does Unity solve problems you had with Awesome?

The built-in search and launcher are killer features for me, and the multitasking with super+num is great. It also has the 'run-or-raise' capability that I've failed to get to work in Awesome. As such, the window management capabilities of Unity pale in comparison with Awesome, but the fact that I can run Matlab and get the speed and multitasking is pure win for Unity. Java apps in Awesome are a source of unlimited pain for me.

Heh, I did exactly the opposite. I'm pretty happy with it, though I may still return to Gnome 2.

My main reason to ditch Unity was the screen space that unity takes and does give good options for customization. I've been running with just a single top bar in Gnome for ages and can't stand the unity bar looming over me. I figured now is a good time to experiment. Awesome seems to pack a lot of functionality that I like so we'll see how things go.

I went from wmii to gnome-shell after trying Fedora 15. How does Unity compare with gnome-shell, especially with regard to performance?

I last tried gnome-shell when it was buggy as hell, so it's probably not a good comparison- but Unity is fast, really fast. Having used a minimalist wm for a long time, I'm generally intolerant of lag and other nonsense that gets in the way, but Unity was as fast as any wm I've ever used. A lot of it depends on the quality of the gpu, so ymmv.

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