First Look at Ubuntu’s Unity Interface
Reprinted from International Press
Wow. This is NOT your usual interface. If your accustomed to accessing: Applications/Places/System. That’s all gone. Instead what you find are cryptic icons on the left side of the screen. Some of them you can make out, but others require you to hover over the icon to identify it.
The interface is VERY much like the Apple ipad. I.E. no multi-tasking here. I am used to opening up several instances of the terminal window to do various things. That’s gone. Like the ipad, You can only run one task occurrence at a time. And you can’t do anything to an application, except close it (X). Maximise and Minimise don’t work at all. So why have them as an option, if they don’t do anything? Task switching? NO!
And customisations. Nope, not here!
If you are like me, and accustomed to the buttons on the right side, this usually does the trick:
gconftool-2 --set "/apps/metacity/general/button_layout"
--type string "menu:minimize,maximize,close"
Nope, no way to customise the windows. It’s on the left, like it or not. Want a custom background? Not going to happen. Want to display military time, instead of AM/PM. Nope, that’s gone too!
I tried to install the ubuntu-desktop, in hopes that I’d get an option at login time. Whew it installed great! But when it came to login time, I didn’t have a choice. I was stuck with Unity like it or not. Choice is not a bad thing.
I realise that Mark Shuttleworth is trying to create the same user experience on all platforms, but removing choice options from the user, is not the optimal solution for all of us. Needless to say, Unity did NOT stay on my Netbook very long. I am installing the regular desktop edition on my Netbook, as I type this article.
Related Articles
6 users responded in this post
well the thing is that u can install gnome-desktop without a problem but the thing is that you have to get rid of all the unity crap that is installed. from what I can tell from the vids i’ve seen is that Unity is a spiffied up version of netbook remix. so when I installed netbook remix to get back to the regular desktop I had to manually uninstall each and every one of the installed programs that were applicable to netbook-remix.
Also when in netbook mode, ubuntu does not allow you to minimize or customize your distro in any way that you would want. needless to say, i would not install any netbook solution devised by cannonical. you should have a go at gnome-shell.
This is why I switched to Debian.
1) It’s a distribution that is not based on some other distribution.
2) Not company owned ie: Canonical, Red Hat, Novell etc. It’s independent made by people for people.
3) Ubuntu’s release cycle was driving me nuts too.
4) Latest version of every program is not always necessary I found when upgrading certain programs that some plugins, and functions broke, that was working before. I wanted a stable system ie: Squeeze.
This is also why I don’t go into a rolling release I just want things to work.
5) Don’t like the Unity interface as it is now in the previews. I like a regular Gnome with two panels. It’s what I am used to. However if Gnome 3 changes to Gnome-shell I may change anyways. Been playing with KDE for fun looks interesting and runs about the same memory as my Gnome with the effects taken off. I have effects taken off of Gnome too. 😈
6) You learn more in Debian because of the less hand holding involved.
Guess it’s time to move on from Ubuntu to Debian.
I think holding hand is not such a bad thing, Especially when making a distribution popular is the goal
IOW holding a hand is a choice of the kid too
Greetings
[…] If you remember my First Review of Ubuntu’s Unity interface, I was very […]
[…] If you remember my First Review of Ubuntu’s Unity interface, I was very […]