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Comment by yepreally | Hacker News Reader

Looking forward to 12.04. I liked Unity in 11.10 despite the community backlash. They need to move the "dock" horizontal and on bottom though, and let you reorganize the dock even after an app is locked into it. Basically, they should recreate OS X's interface except without the silly widgets. Also, the software download manager is nasty-ish in 11.10. It gets locked up quite a bit without being able to see why, and you have no way to stop download/installs other than killing it or restarting. Finally, the lack of a screensaver in Unity nor the ability to easily change display settings by right-clicking on the desktop is stupid.

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Horizontal docks waste a lot of precious vertical space on widescreen monitors.

I agree. While it might take some time to get used to at first, I think it's worth it. In the end, you will be able to use more of your screen, because honestly, most applications are not optimised for 16:9 (/10) screens.

> take some time

I boot Ubuntu almost everyday, and I still happen to position my mouse at the bottom when I want to access the application bar, before realising that nothing comes up and I went in the wrong place.

It's funny how the screen setup has become just like a reflex after years and years of practice. It's really hard to get used to new choices in design.

About how long have you been using Ubuntu with the vertical application bar for? I know it is highly personal, but I am trying to figure out a rough amount of time...

I have never really been a user of Ubuntu myself but when I (mainly) switched to Linux from Windows, it only took a couple of day to get used to it. Then again, I was never clicking the icons in the application bar before (win key -> typing -> enter).

i installed 11.10 in december, so about 3 months ago now. I should add that i use opensuse a lot on another machine, with an horizontal cairo dock, so i am not always on Ubuntu standards. I really like the win key to start programs, though.

I boot Win7 every day and OSX a few times a week. I was on a colleagues PC (winXP) yesterday and couldn't work out why when I moved my mouse to the left-hand-side of the screen there was no dock.

Seriously -- If you have a normal laptop / modern screen -- it's time to switch. It will take some time to adjust -- but it's worth it for the vertical space you reclaim.

Where is the back button in your browser?

On my keyboard.

Auto-hide FTW.

Yup, enabled by default.

It's not enabled by default in 12.04 Beta 1 (at least not on my image that I installed last night). There have been some changes with the behavior of the launcher to make it less likely to open accidentally when hidden, though; maybe the default settings have been moved around some as well.

Icons in the launcher can be moved around by clicking and holding them for a second.

>Also, the software download manager is nasty-ish in 11.10.

Truth. I still use aptitude, synaptic, and gdebi when possible. Hope they unbloat USC and speed it up in future iterations.

/second everything else, except I don't much care what they do with the dock as long as it can be set to autohide. Launchers like Gnome-do and Synapse > dock imho.

When I used OS X I put the dock on the left side to save vertical space.

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