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Comment by larrik | Hacker News Reader

As someone who's been using Ubuntu full time since 9.10 (though I'm really not a Linux "power user."), I was pretty much horrified by my upgrade to 11.10.

In tweaking a few compiz settings, through their config GUI, I managed to crash compiz hard enough to need to reboot several times.

Unity itself is incompatible with Desktop Cube for some reason, and trying to force it just breaks everything. (I like Desktop because it seems to be a more reliable desktop switcher, anecdotally.) I don't mean "force it" like changing the config directly. I mean "force it" like pressing the button that asks if I really want to activate it.

So I tried out Gnome 3 for the first time. It tries so hard to LOOK like OS X, yet it winds up being way worse than either OS X or Gnome 2.

Maybe I'll try Kubuntu. Or Linux Mint. Or just keep trying to like this new crap. I don't know.

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Any number of reasons to choose a particular distro, but let me lump them into "system administration style" and "GUI style."

If you still like or prefer Ubuntu's system administration style (apt, packages, PPA, whatever), and you're just horrified by the desktop, then use another desktop or window manager.

    - Lubuntu (LXDE on Ubuntu, similar to Xubuntu)
    - LXDE and OpenBox manually installed.
    - OpenBox by itself manually installed.
    - Xubuntu.
    - XFCE manually installed.

I went with Lubuntu, pretty happy with it. It's a little unfinished, but not terribly so. And I still have all the apty goodness that I enjoy in ubuntu.

Or go upstream to Debian, or downstream to Mint, or over a branch with Crunchbang. Or a stream over to an RPM based distro. Or over into the next valley with Arch, Slack, etc. Get some strange with FreeBSD.

If the mainstream Ubuntu desktop sucks for you (it does for me), then moving some small or large distance to fix it is going to be much easier than suffering day in and day out.

Can you have a bunch of these installed concurrently and switch between them to try them out?

Yes you can, I used to have (G)ubuntu, KDE and XFCE installed simultaneously and switch between them. The problem I saw was that the menus got really crowded.

Once you settle on one, you maybe want to start over with a backup and a fresh install.

  sudo apt-get install xfce4

It looks quite a lot like GNOME 2, and is rather more lightweight. I finally switched once 11.10 made it clear that it wasn't going to let me use a working version of GNOME anymore.

xfce isn't a package.

    sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop xfce4

Edited.

I just checked my command history, and that is exactly what I ran. Install xfce4, log out and log back in with the new WM, and everything just worked.

I have a problem with people turning from Ubuntu because they lost a pet feature. Ubuntu is changing how to look at the desktop and surely what was built around the old api will not be fully supported at first. But it's just a matter of time before it's functional again.

I'm pretty sure the Desktop Cube can be made to work seamlessly with Unity. But it's not Canonical's job to make it so. And if Canonical somehow managed to lock some of the desktop features into Unity, than we must simply pressure then into building something more flexible so as to allow other open source providers to work with a more pluggable interface.

The way you interact with the desktop environment is a pet feature?

You can still change desktops using the same shortcuts, just not using the same animation. So I'd say yes, in this case a pet feature.

> But it's just a matter of time before it's functional again.

And then another very short matter of time before it is non-functional again, since the then-current generation of developers will want to "build something new".

I'm not turning away because Desktop Cube doesn't work, I'm turning away because it completely messed up my system by simply trying to turn it on, through the GUI.

I wasn't messing with my X configuration or any other insanities. I clicked a button in the settings, and had to Google around just to get back to a working computer.

What other landmines are waiting for me? What if I install KDevelop or some other KDE-based program? Will that cause everything to break too? I don't know, but I never before had to be afraid to just try things. Now I have to worry if whatever I'm doing is "Canonical-approved," and I'm not okay with that.

(I really doubt KDE is going to cause a problem, it was just an example.)

For the record, I played with Gnome 3 a little more, and I'm willing to give it a longer chance. Avant Window Navigator is a must, though.

Overall, it just seems like Gnome 3 and Unity have all of my least favorite parts of OS X jammed into it for no good reason.

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