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Comment by gldalmaso | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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.

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