Ubuntu 11.04, Unity and the "Desktop haters" (like me)

[Kevin Fries]

I for one am *VERY* unimpressed with unity.  I first saw it in Maverick when
it replaced a perfectly good UNR interface.  But I was excited to try it.
It lasted less than one week, and I used desktop switcher to use the full
desktop on my Starling Netbook.

Now Natty is out.  A few nights ago I upgraded that same Starling.  But now,
the even more functional, but dated Gnome interface was wholesale replaced
with unity.  With great hope that a new release would fix many of the issues
I tried it again.  30 minutes later... I was installing Gnome 3.

Unity IMHO is just awful.  And, it does not seem to be getting better.  More
stable, more comparable, but not more usable.

I for one like the Gnome 3 Shell.  It is a huge departure from Gnome 2.x and
is not 100% fully baked.  When I take a look at the two, the Gnome Shell, to
me, shows a bunch more promise.  Enough additional promise that for the
first time in about 5 years, my main desktop at home will probably be
running Fedora as soon as the Gnome 3 is stabilized.

Sorry Ubuntu, but you really missed the mark on this one.

Kevin Fries
On Apr 13, 2011 8:00 AM, "kitepilot at kitepilot.com" <kitepilot at kitepilot.com>
wrote:
> For those of you ignorant of REAL life excitement: Ubuntu 11.04 Beta is
> OUT!!!
> Oh, boy... :)
>
> The part that I hate about this frequent releases, is that they are
> consistently so much better, that I *HAVE* to upgrade.
> The part that I love about this frequent releases, is that they are
> consistently so much better, that I *WANT* to upgrade (or do I?).
>
> My first Ubuntu installation ever (I believe to recall) was 5.04 (Yes, I
am
> *THAT* old!)
> I remember that it blew my socks off, when all I had to compare it to was
> the Red Hat of the time. It was orders of magnitude better than the best
> Red Hat, Suse, Slackware or (fill in your distro of choice) of the time.
> And it was, in short and above all: USABLE!
>
> From then on, it became a love/hate relationship. At the beginning I tried

> both, flat Ubuntu (Gnome) and Kubuntu (KDE).
> At the end I settled for KDE mostly because I could not put up with the
> (unavoidable and depressible ugly!) brown Ubuntu motif.
> KDE was not only blue and soothing, it also behaved more like the M$ stuff

> that I was used to play with at the time.
> And so I tugged my happy KDE life for few years, testing and ditching the
> ugly Gnome every so often and finding specific uses for low power machines

> running XFCE and lately LXDE.
>
> Until one day...
> One day I found that KDE was getting "so helpful", that it was constantly
> busy being "helpful" while constantly ignoring the attention I craved.
They
> (KDE) installed all this indexes and daemons and hidden processes that
> rendered the performance of the machine borderline unusable (sounds
> familiar?) unless you're were running your "Desktop" on a Craig's
> supercomputer.
> Beyond my budget and beyond my patience...
>
> So one day some year-and-a-half ago I took another hard look at Ubuntu...
> And I pleasantly found out that they had diluted the horrible brown and I
> could easily manage the interface (look at a recent Mac ? ).
> I am not sure if I got smarter (highly unlikely) or they dumbed down the
> interface (entirely possible), but I could actually work with it
intuitively
> (or, as I do mostly everything: without needing to THINK!)
>
> And then I was fat, dumb and happy again (mostly dumb and fat)
> And I installed Ubuntu to all my friends and family that I help with
> computers, and they too were fat, dumb and happy (mostly happy, some fat)
> And life went on...
>
> For a geek that ignores many of the "creature comforts" of a GUI in favor
of
> doing "things" on terminals (like REAL men do! ;-), I regularly become
> inconvenienced when the GUI makes decisions for me. For instance, just try

> to install an IP address on a network adapter without the GUI in Ubuntu!
>
> So the "new" Ubuntu is (almost) out.
> And as always, I think of upgrading, but in this instance I am not that
> sure...
> You see, now Ubuntu is using "Unity" as the "Desktop" environment.
> It's GOT to be important, because even PCWorld and Znet *ARE* talking
about
> it.
>
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/223843/four_new_features_comin
> g_to_ubuntu_1104_natty_narwhal.html
>
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/the-new-ubuntu-desktop-unity/8584?pg=2
> &tag=mantle_skin;content
> Remember the days when you found "Linux" in PCWorld only as a dirty joke?
> Obviously times (and appreciations) are changing...
>
> But anyway, back to the question: Do I *WANT* to upgrade?
> Has anybody used Unity before?
> Is it an step forward in usability and "coolness", or will it become
another
> intrusive and hyperactive KDE?
> Have you use it?
> Did you like it?
> Is Ubuntu getting better or worse with this Unity thingy?
> Stay tuned, I'll fire up a virtual this weekend and will take Unity for a
> spin.
> ET
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