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Comment by jtreminio | Hacker News Reader

I'm reading conflicting reports. One place shows that people generally prefer Unity after being exposed to it, and others (like this article) are completely opposed to it.

Ubuntu is supposed to be Linux for the rest of us, not for hardcore enthusiasts, isn't it? If it is, why wouldn't it make sense to appeal to the general public?

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I've been using Natty and am currently on Oneric. The problems are probably overstated. I've used a variety of systems and didn't run into problems with Unity (different laptops and pcs).

Reminds me of Vista's launch somehow. I've also tested Vista since Beta on a multitude of systems and the only problem I ran into was caused by a wonky driver for an external audio interface.

Of course it's dangerous to extrapolate these personal experiences, but as always, discussions about operating systems tend to be exaggerated and inflammatory.

If there is group pressure to resist a change, many people will suddenly find reasons as to why they dislike something new.

Ubuntu's strategy makes sense if it actually works. So far it looks like the drop in geek users has not been compensated by much increase in normal users. Also, if all volunteer developers leave, Canonical will end up footing the bill completely for Ubuntu; it's not clear they can afford that.

Likewise, I've seen some reports that 'the rest of us' like Unity -- and some that despise it.

It's just a New Thing -- and like most New Things, it's probably a) not that polished, and b) people resist change.

And for some reason, people manage to resist change so much, that a change in the default DE requires them sprinting to a new distro, with lashing words in tail for Ubuntu. Because changing distros is easier than install xfce, or gnome-shell, or kde, or something. Never mind that choice of distro often also includes things such as community, packages available in repos, packages available for smaller one-off projects, etc.

Have you personally tried changing to xfce, gnome-shell or KDE in Ubuntu 11.10? I have, and it's decidedly non-trivial. Switching to a different distro would probably be easier.

I got gnome-shell up and working with no issues, but after a while I decided to just switch to Linux Mint, which I'm very happy with.

Edit: I should say that is just on my MacBook Pro. I haven't switched on my development box yet because I'm in the middle of some projects and don't feel like having to reconfigure everything right now.

By the way, has anyone tried the Ubuntu to Linux Mint upgrade?

I remember `sudo apt-get install gnome-shell` and then choosing it at the next login and being quite smitten. (I later upgraded to ricotz's ppa for faster updates).

Again, is this in 11.10? Or 11.04?

I did this in 11.10, then switched back to unity because gnome-shell had some bugs that kept me from getting work done. I like it's interface design better, though.

Not sure what issues you had, but 3.2 is getting some bugfixes and ricotz's ppa has some good fixes as well.

Seeing as gnome-shell isn't available in 11.04... (don't use the PPA in 11.04, it will wreck your system).

Actually, in terms of headaches available, switching distros is easier than whacking Unity with the appropriate configs to get the shell I want.

edit: I still don't have a screensaver. :(

I guess I still don't understand. Does anyone have anything concrete they can point to?

`sudo apt-get install gnome-shell` gives a new shell, entirely separate from Unity with almost zero config overlap. A few seconds of drop down boxes gets you from Ambiance to Adwaita if you prefer the stock Gnome3 look and feel. Otherwise, it's basically stock GNOME3.

Non-default configurations are never as polished.

I'm not sure I understand the strategy of targeting the everyday mobile pad user. Linux is already killing with Android. For Ubuntu to succeed, they would either need a hardware vendor to choose Ubuntu over Android (unlikely) or expect users to buy hardware that already has an OS but can be rooted and loaded with Ubuntu. I don't doubt there are power users salivating at the chance to do that, but that's basically replicating the uphill battle Linux faces on the desktop. And after the war has already been won. (Edit: missing word).

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