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Comment by w1ntermute | Hacker News Reader

I'm very glad to see this happen, for a coincidental reason. Xfce is a great DE and a solid implementation of the traditional desktop UI paradigm that many of us ("us" being power users) are comfortable with and productive in. While the major players (Apple, Canonical, Microsoft) chase after the latest UI fads in an attempt to appease casual users, we're the ones getting the shaft.

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It is a matter of taste. I use Xfce because it's fast but on fast machines I have no problem using Gnome Shell with plugins that give functionality which is at least as good, if not better. Unity is less customizable but has improved some details and is quite usable; Compiz is ridiculously customizable in any case, even if you don't want the dock. And there are several good tiling WMs, etc.

Now as ever, there is no shortage of good desktops and window managers to choose from on Linux, for the 'power user' ... again, it's a matter of taste. Not a matter of some terrible betrayal by one or another distro.

It's not a matter of taste, it's a matter of performance. Unity and Unity 2D have terrible performance.

On a decent PC it's negligable.

Try running Unity in a VM on a machine that doesn't have graphics resources to spare. Try running Unity or Unity 2D in a VM on a machine that lacks VT-d. It is horrific.

All the things you like about the "traditional desktop UI" were once "the latest UI fads (...) attempt[ing] to appease casual users".

True

But not all fads survive. It's evolution!

Example: light pens

Isn't a fad that survives not a fad, by definition?

He's riffing off the parent's use of the word "fad", where the parent used it in a quote as if someone had once called it a fad, even though it turned out to be something that stayed around.

I find it quite amusing that so many self-defined "Linux power users" can't use anything that isn't pretty much an exact copy, UX-wise, of Windows 95.

"The best UI is the one you know"

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