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Comment by reidrac | Hacker News Reader

If I recall correctly, both GNOME and Unity shared rejection from a number of users (I don't know if that was large group or just very noisy), and an approach to community management that was basically if you don't like, go away.

In the early days, Unity was more usable than GNOME (could be my hardware, perhaps; apparently my nvidia drivers were buggy and I was told to change GPU), but back then Mark Shuttleworth wasn't the best PR person always starting flames on his blog.

At the end I got tired of the almost constant drama and gave up the new desktop trend and settled on XFCE (and I couldn't be happier).

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> If I recall correctly, both GNOME and Unity shared rejection from a number of users (I don't know if that was large group or just very noisy)

The GNOME redesign. The old 2D GNOME was OK. It was functional, stable and pretty (for someone who thinks that Windows 3.11 style is a good fit for a work environment). Then the old software was abandoned and the update was pushed onto users.

KDE also had a transition disaster. That time was not a good time for Linux on the Desktop.

Has there ever been a good time for Linux on the desktop? I'm using Linux (Kubuntu) daily, and it works most of the time, but I still see some issues from time to time (multi-monitor strangeness, windows suddenly appearing without frames because kwin crashed, desktop wallpapers not being shown or being shown incorrectly etc.).

Isn't that just how all desktop OSes are? It works most of the time, and then sometimes you run into things that are bafflingly broken.

For me, it's the Windows desktop at work. I'm accustomed to Windows spawning windows fully or partially out of bounds, though at least that's something that you can fix with the "Move" option from the Ctrl+Space menu. But for a few weeks now, there seems to be a bug where the affected window just stops being rendered entirely. It's in the taskbar, I can start Ctrl+Space "Move" and see the movement cursor, but there's nothing there. I don't know what triggers it yet.

Meanwhile, my Linux desktop has no problems at all.

Having made a sibling comment lamenting issues with my Linux desktop, I have to sort of agree with you. Sort of because, I have seen issues like what you mentioned on Windows in the past, but not that often. I use Linux desktop not only on principle but also because of open source and the flexibility is unparalleled, but I do feel like things break more often than they do on Windows (maybe due to the amount of flexibility and therefore the use cases/scenarios it has to deal with).

Having said that, Pop!_OS was also problem free for me for quite a while until the desktop blanking issue started happening - right at the time of NVIDIA driver upgrade. Linus was right shitting on them - my next laptop would not be using NVIDIA for sure.

Yes. I had easily as many issues with Windows and OSX when each was my d at driver. I don’t really have anything bad to say about Fedora + Gnome except that occasionally, my 5k thunderbolt monitor is finicky when waking from sleep. It’s a simple enough fix, but it’s still a minor inconvenience maybe once a month.

Linux package management alone puts it ahead of both Windows and OSX in my book.

I would have disagreed with you except atleast once a day (usually more), my monitors go blank and once the display is back after few seconds, all the windows get shoved to the smaller monitor on the right, all resized to the monitor size. I move the windows again one by one to the main monitor, resize them to how they were and curse NVIDIA while praying that this doesn't happen again too soon. Even changed from Pop! desktop to KDE which didn't help (that's why my unsubstantiated choice is to curse NVIDIA instead of the DE). Cherry on top if I'm connected to the work machine over Citrix so I have some more windows to resize and reposition over there too.

Close to two decades of using Linux desktop on a daily basis and I still have to deal with these issues. As someone who doesn't have any intention to leave Linux due to these issues, I don't think there EVER will be a 100% rock-solid time for Linux desktop. Wayland will stabilize and then people will point out issues with it, come-up with another component and we will wait for that to stabilize - and on and on, forever.

Ironically, such issues rarely happened, if ever, when I was using Ubuntu Dapper Drake.

>my monitors go blank and once the display is back after few seconds,

Are you sure you aren't having power issues? I had similar problems I think I fixed with randr, but a UPS for your monitors might be a better choice. Never daily though, more storm based or once every few months.

That is an interesting point - though no other devices are affected so it is unlikely that this is related to power.

I'm only sharing my experience, but the reason I figured out it was a power thing was in the summer my AC would stop for a second too. I never noticed any problems with anything else in the winter.

I see this happening on few low-end machines (Intel core i3 integrated graphics and Celeron integrated one), not know the cause though...

I have a Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 2 with i7 processor and NVIDIA Max-Q graphics so I think the issues common on low-end machines are unlikely to apply in this case.

Yes for someone like yourself who is comfortable with a computer from 2003-2022.

The challenge is that Linux isn't a singular product its a source compatible ecosystem of parts. There has always existed a collection of excellent parts one could use to make an excellent experience. However as a user you probably don't want to build your own distro so you are going to be relying on someone else's collection and projects come and go and differ substantially in quality both between projects and over time.

For instance Ubuntu has basically from my perspective gone to hell.

I love linux but the desktops are horrendously balkanized. I support the continued development of Unity in the hopes it destroys others. I mean, it won't.... but at least Linux is trying.

We had a solid 10 years of Apple neglecting OSX and more importantly Microsoft ruining windows with their tiles dual desktop. What did Linux do? pointless rewrites that added nothing to the fundamental usability of the desktops.

The opportunity has passed. We either hope that Satella moves Windows closer to Linux/Unix, or ... desktop linux fades with desktops in general.

> KDE also had a transition disaster. That time was not a good time for Linux on the Desktop.

KDE's transition disaster came a bit earlier, with the release of KDE 4.0 in 2008. By the time GNOME 3 came out in 2011, KDE 4.x had seen 6 or 7 feature releases, and had (imo) largely recovered from all the rewrites in terms of feature parity. I was pretty happy on KDE in 2011.

That period I stopped recommending linux to friends as I felt burned by the experience of losing gnome 2. I remember going from ubuntu 10.04 beyond support, to xfce, gnome fallback, gnome flashback, linux mint cinnamon, crunchbang (stayed a while), linux mint mate then ubuntuMate, where I've been for several years now.

I'd say UbuntuMATE is functional, boring and pretty, and frankly should be the modern standard for a work environment linux.

I much prefer modern GNOME and KDE to their older counterparts. I believe modern DEs definitely lack a certain polish, but the old, clunky late-00s UI is incredibly unappealing.

I can see why existing Linux users may have resisted the change but I wouldn't have even tried Ubuntu long enoughto switch to Linux had they stuck with the old system.

Windows 3.11 is a terrible fit for productivity, Win95/98/2000 were immensely better. The Windows usability only improved until mscursed themselves with Windows 8 (with the exception of Vista which was released before it was done and was almost as buggy as modern Linux, though SP1 fixed most of that).

The biggest deal was that you couldn't have old and new and many distros with a rapid release cycle adopted new versions as soon as they became available.

For instance KDE 4.0 which wasn't really ready came out 11 January 2008. Fedora 9 came out in May.

Had simply choosing 3 or 4 beta as it might accurately have been called been possible at login I think there would have been zero issues. 4.0 wasn't actively broken but it lacked polish and it was missing features from 3.x that hasn't been implemented yet.

You memory is correct and incorrect at the same time: early Unity was rejected by many because too much rigid (like you can't move the launcher bar or the top bar) and "too alien" because at that time people was thinking in category-based menus not dashes and fear to loose the "overview ability" of menus. Than Unity mature a bit and such criticism disappear.

In the end most power users at that time already have switched to side docks observing that they fit better modern 16:10 and then 16:9 screens instead of the old 4:3. Also Android at that time offer a substantially identical graphical concept with a dash-like menu, a fixed launcher bar on the shortest side of the screen witch happen to be the bottom one on mobile, have a small fixed top bar etc.

Unity offer innovation and after much reticence people embrace it without even notice. Windows have copied Kde4 menus, most have copied Android and Unity desktop.

Gnome criticism are a far older things about absurdity like nautilus spatial view the RH management want against nobody, the new rush was for GTk3 and the choice of going web-tech, against vala crap etc after with Gnome SHell criticism add to criticisms because Gnome SHell essentially copy Unity look & feel suffering from a secondary narcissistic design that put the desktop at the center of the world instead as a silent servant who appear only when needed.

At a certain point Canonical decide that people are too reactionary and so there is no interest in innovate desktop anymore, it's time to make money and they loose much on the mobile finally find a room in IoT and server support.

Nowadays desktops are left at that evolution point, with no further advancing for generic users, while power users have rediscovered past ideas like tiling WM and document-centric UIs. Generic users desktop is pushed to be a modern WebVM improperly named browser for legacy reasons, power users goes deep in the classic glorious and far more advanced past than today dark middle age of tech. Surely some choose XFCE, Fluxbox etc simply because they are born with such WM concept in the '90s/early '00 and do not want to move from that era, as many still want '60s cars instead of something else more older or more modern :-)

I didn't hate Unity, but it had a bug (for me, and clearly a bunch of others based on the launchpad bug traffic for the bug I filed) that persisted for the entire time Canonical owned it, that meant I couldn't use it.

I could repeat it very easily, just start the application using alt+f2 and use the keyboard to launch it (terminal, chrome, whatever). When triggered a window wouldn't be accessible over alt-tab. Was running, couldn't alt-tab to it. As someone that uses the keyboard a lot for navigation, it was a show-stopper. I have to be able to alt-tab between windows.

Eventually filed in 2012, https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/951929 "Fix Released" but you know, still people reporting it later on in 16.04

In fact, even now, the number of "confirmed" bugs with long life on them on Launchpad is particularly disturbing, considering how many of them are fairly fundamentally impacting.

Like, say, https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/1126221. Filed 2013 by an at-the-time Canonical employee, confirmed in 14.xx and then 16.xx. If you had multiple displays, put a window on one and then disabled it, windows on the other screen get essentially stuck, can't be alt+tab'd to or anything.

Or https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/1619563, hey I know, let's have two actions be on alt+tab. Switch windows, and close window! What could go wrong...

or https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/49579, reported 2006, still reported 16 years later. If you have menus like the Application open, the timed screen lock won't kick in.

Over and over and over, what could have been a really good desktop experience was crippled by stubbornly ignoring the bugs filed against it (at least, I assume ignoring because the number of times engineers would actually comment on the tickets seemed to be few and far between). Canonical repeatedly shot themselves in the foot by not nailing the basics: the environment has to work.

These are legitimate criticisms and some of the only ones I've seen in all these comments.

The only thing I'd say is that as someone using Unity almost every day for a decade now, I've never encountered a single one of them.

I am not saying that they are not real or did not affect you or anyone else. Merely that they are not widespread deal-breaker problems for all users, because I've never noticed a single one of them myself.

>If I recall correctly, both GNOME and Unity shared rejection from a number of users

Of course GNOME fanboys complained that someone dared to replace their precious DE with a nicer Qt based one instead of kissing the ass of giant ego GNOME designers. Even when Ubuntu got back to GNOME Canonical listen to the users and put features back in on Ubuntu.

Actually, I think most Gnome 2 refugees eventually settles with XFCE or Mate. I did at least.

..wonder what I'll do after the Gnome team kills XFCE by enforcing Wayland for GTK.

I am not sure if most, but there were a lot of happy Unity users , but the DE got of lot of hate , much more hate then other GNOME forks or alternatives, Probably Ubuntu/Canonical haters just found another project to attack and seen it as Canonical inventing something new instead of letting RedHat inventing shit and kissing TH ass and follow them.

I profoundly dislike all that "hater" rhetoric. Sure, there will always be trolls, but by tagging any dissenting opinion as "Ubuntu/Canonical haters" I feel like there's a lost opportunity to improve.

You can't please everybody, but both Unity an GNOME shell had some very bad ideas, and it took too long to correct course (and in some cases it didn't happen). I believe some of the criticism came from people that really loved those DE, and that's why they were passionate about it.

When people don't care, they just use something else.

Come one, Arch users complaining that Ubuntu was not using SystemD was not honest, the Arch users were not using Ubuntu or Upstart to have a clue what they are talking about. And related with SystemD debate, you have alot of people that are not system admins or can't write a C program or a good bash scrip[t having an opinion because they read a blog post , I wish we all can't determine when we have no idea and just abstain. So about SystemD , I have no idea if is better or worse, my experience with init systems is almost zero so I should shut up.

There were a lot of hather, sure there were some valid criticism but you can't invalidate the fact they were haters, and if we would want to waste our time we could read those old topics and find them but we have better things to do.

I really disliked Unity, and hated the fact that Canonical was pushing it down my throat.

IIRC I used Mate as a temporary solution, and happily jumped to Cinnamon when it came out.

Nowadays I use Pop Shell because (at least when I switched) it seemed to offer better widgets for controlling audio, etc. on my System76 machine.

>I really disliked Unity, and hated the fact that Canonical was pushing it down my throat.

But we KDE users should we hate Canonical that they were pushing GNOME? I did not hated them for this though I am puzzled why not create Unity based on KDE libraries (probably there were many reasons some including Qt and C++ are ugly)

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