Ubuntu Linux losing popularity fast. New Unity interface to blame?| Royal Pingdom

[Michael Butash]

I used kde for a good year or two, back in the old 2.x days when I first 
started using *buntu having used it prior with mandrake.  I moved to 
gnome2 because it was incessantly buggy and causing memory leaks in the 
ui.  I was prepared to go back to it using 4.7 on oneiric, but there 
were enough incompabibilities with gtk apps (oxygen-gtk seems buggy as 
heck), and general ui problems I found quickly annoyed me that it didn't 
seem worth going forth with.

I tried gnome shell when first fighting with unity, and found that 
compiz with gtk3 is the large problem, as it's simply not aware how to 
deal with dual framebuffers, or at best manages them poorly.  KDE4 
wasn't much better here, still requiring some of the hackery to make it 
play nice.  The other half is ATI drivers are still a crapshoot, but the 
entire result is simply poor showing for me.

I've got Unity/GTK3 to a somewhat happy spot, meaning simply I don't use 
it (cairo-dock ftw!), but I can't hide the stupid top bar even with 
menus disabled, and instability is driving me nuts.  I've already had 
some data corruption due to it (my flippin' minecraft server I *used* to 
run from here corrupted my world - thanks ext).  I think if I turn off 
compositing, it'll probably be much happier in general, but part of the 
reason I loved ubuntu was the eyecandy with compiz.  That is the cost of 
beauty I suppose.

They should simply come out with Gubuntu, Grandma's Ubuntu, slap the 
dumbed-down, multi-touch, composited, fondleslab(tablet) Unity goodness 
all over it with UI, and let it compete (and die) with apple and 
android.  They should however not punish loyalists by imposing it on 
them without option.

I'm hoping the gtk2 fork picks up steam honestly, if it ain't broken...

-mb


On 11/30/2011 04:18 PM, Lee Reynolds wrote:
> I run a mixture of Kubuntu, Centos, and Fedora systems, along with WinXP
> and Win7.
>
> I've never used Unity, nor have I ever laid eyes on whatever the current
> version of Gnome is, except perhaps as screenshot on some webpage.
>
> I started using Kubntu back when Fedora made the switch to KDE 4, which
> was so pathetically and painfully broken at the time that the developers
> would have been sued were KDE a commercial product.  Kubuntu was still
> using version 3.5, and by the time they made the switch to 4.x, it had
> matured to the point it was usable.
>
> Today kde 4.6 and 4.7 work very well.  Kubuntu 11.10 works great, as did
> 11.04 and 10.10 and 10.04.  There are of course a few rough edges on
> this latest version, but nothing catastrophic.
>
> KDE is not particularly attractive straight out of the box, but it is
> easy to update and configure to your liking.
>
> If Ubuntu is not working well because of Gnome/Unity problems, try
> Kubuntu.
>
> If you're familiar with the Windows UI conventions you'll be right at
> home.
>
>
>
>
> Lee Reynolds
> Tech Support Analyst Sr
> ASU Advanced Computing Center
> a2c2.asu.edu
>
> GWC-178
> 480.965.9460 (Office)
> 480.458.7434 (Mobile)
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> [mailto:plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of
> Michael Butash
> Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2011 4:05 PM
> To: plug-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> Subject: Re: Ubuntu Linux losing popularity fast. New Unity interface to
> blame?| Royal Pingdom
>
> I've used every version of ubuntu since 6.04 on the desktop (and
> extensive server) full-time, and while it's always been a bit cranky, it
> was always the most together and solid linux.  Packaging was simply
> never a problem, nor were dependencies (ahem, redhat and spawn).
>
> It became quite literally perfect for me with 8.04, that everything just
> worked.  At 8.10, it began going downhill, getting more bugs and system
> problems than ever in prior perfect stable configs.  Natty was the first
> that simply pissed me off, with unity being utterly broken and unusable
> out of the box.
>
> There were some rumblings on list about Unity that got me thinking, and
> needing to replace a failing ssd and reinstalling, I would need to deal
> with it going to 11.10.  Dealing with Oneiric has been a disaster over
> the past 4 days.  Unity was just as broken out of box for me on it as it
> was on natty to the point I literally installed KDE to be rid of it.
> Even Gnome3 installed unlaunchably broken and wouldn't work on my
> hardware.  I gave up on KDE after a day and went back to conquer Unity,
> and after 2 days of hacking and digging, I've gotten it to reboot (which
> it does often) perfectly.  When it doesn't rearrange my md raid devices
> randomly and fall to initrd prompts to manually assemble the crypto disk
> at least.
>
> I really have no clue what most people would do having to face these
> problems as I've literally had to debug xwindows (thanks ati), compiz,
> unity, nautilus, mdadm, initrd, crypto subsystems, which are just things
> someone shouldn't have to do to get this working where I have had
> like-configs running for years perfectly before.  ATI and Compiz is the
> worst of it.  I also had to write scripts to start/stop compiz and
> dockbars between windows reliably, disable as much unity as possible
> because it simply doesn't work, and still minecraft and virtualbox crash
> my system hard if I resize them it in random ways.  I loves me some
> ubuntu right about now, instability sucks.
>
> Is Ubuntu slipping in popularity?  Regardless of the pain, my next
> system update absolutely won't be ubuntu after natty and oneiric.  It
> actually saddens me a bit to say it after 6 years of loyalty too.
>
> -mb
>
>
> On 11/30/2011 11:30 AM, Kevin Fries wrote:
>> On Wed, 2011-11-30 at 11:20 -0700, Eric Shubert wrote:
>>> I'm using Ubuntu LTS (10.4) on my workstation. That's due to be
>>> upgraded with 12.4, at which time I'll need to make a decision. I'll
>>> evaluate that version of Unity, but expect I might be going with
>>> GUbuntu, or else go back to Fedora. I really don't want to be
>>> upgrading my workstation every 6 months though.
>>
>> Take a serious look at PinguyOS.  Its based upon Gnome Shell, and adds
>
>> some very awesome software back in that Ubuntu has either not included
>
>> (Gloobus-preview&   Gloobus-sushi, Docky, etc) or Ubuntu has
>> discontinued (Synaptic).
>>
>> Kevin
>>
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