Unity on ubuntu

I am curious to know what people's opinions are on Ubuntu's Unity interface?

do you like it?
If not... what would you change about it? what features would you like to see?

Do you think it was a good move for ubuntu or a bad one?


let us know

I'm not too sure but for some reason, and I don't know why, but I'm sort of hoping Gnome3/Gnome Shell will be better. They both seem kind of similar anyways. Maybe I've used the Shell more.

I think if Ubuntu can pull it off well people will appreciate the new interface, but if not

One thing I'm not sure of, will Ubuntu/Canonical keep it (Unity) for themselves? I don't use Ubuntu and don't plan on running Unity but that's something I can't quite get my head around.

I am probably sounding a little old fashioned but I don't likeUnity or Gnome shell so I will be sticking with the traditional Gnome desktop. If that is ditched then there is always XFCE or I will switch to a tiling window manager.

I agree mate. I don't like Unity either... Not in it's current state anyways........
I like Gnome-shell a little bit more than unity, but it is still featureless and useless

I repect the fact that LinuxMint is sticking to gnome-panel. They do such a great gnome implementation.......

I switched to KDE anyways...... Gnome is going down hill by the looks of it

I've never used unity before but I do like how Canonical is making their OS different. I've switched to LXDE, and I like it the best for many reasons. I can't wait to see how it all turns out when Natty gets released.

personally i don't like the unity interface, it seems like a children's desktop environment imo.

Unity has it's place, luckilu at the GDM you can choose normal Gnome for your session type afaik, and that's what I'll be doing. I am staying on 10.04 for now.

Unity seems to be kinda good but I hate they're replacing the usable DE with a new and unfamiliar one.
To be honest the features don't appeal to me.

thelolrus wrote:Unity seems to be kinda good but I hate they're replacing the usable DE with a new and unfamiliar one.
To be honest the features don't appeal to me.

I agree, it does nothing for me.

So I've been using Unity for the past week and after bashing it in the beginning I'm really liking it! After 160 updates it's running wayyyy better then it was. I'm not saying it's not buggy but I'm digging it. Have it on all my machines. In my opinion it is going to be kick butt in 11.10!

That's it! You have a different opinion to me... You are Banned and Deleted!!!


lol

cool man. I'll give it another whirl in the near future... just bugs me that the majority of the design was taken from Osx and made to look and work like shit. IMO
I may sweeten up my bitterness in the future like I have with Gnome 3. (a little) LOL

Actually now that I have gotten used to the Global Menu and the bar, I'm getting really good workflow out of it. Again just my opinion.

GASP! I said it! Unity has good workflow!

Haha, good on you mate. I personally didn't like Unity and immediately thought to myself, similar to gotbletu, that it was a "craptastic mac os ripoff", but it's great that you and no doubt other people are having a good experience with it.

I'd give it another go if I could easily install it on Arch or something (it is in the AUR I think) but anyways, Gnome 3 has been pretty good for me. I can't believe how lightweight Mutter feels; it should be interesting over time to see how the Mutter vs Compiz thing plays out as they develop.

I finally decided to install it on my regular computer today to see if I like it, and... much to my surprise, I really do. I'm not a fan of the default settings, but once I changed the themes a bit, installed the ccsm (compiz config settings manager) and changed some of the settings... I have a desktop that's surprisingly nice.

Now, I have waited almost three months since 11.04 was released, so I'm guessing my enjoyment is coming from the fact that several bugfixes have been applied since release...

But overall... I like it alot better then I thought I would.

almigi wrote:I finally decided to install it on my regular computer today to see if I like it, and... much to my surprise, I really do. I'm not a fan of the default settings, but once I changed the themes a bit, installed the ccsm (compiz config settings manager) and changed some of the settings... I have a desktop that's surprisingly nice.

Now, I have waited almost three months since 11.04 was released, so I'm guessing my enjoyment is coming from the fact that several bugfixes have been applied since release...

But overall... I like it alot better then I thought I would.

I still haven't gotten a look at it because my POS Dell laptop won't play nice with the new Compiz. I got the 11.10 Alpha going in Virtualbox, and got to see Unity 2D, and was less than impressed. It feels awkward and alien to me.

almigi wrote:I finally decided to install it on my regular computer today to see if I like it, and... much to my surprise, I really do. I'm not a fan of the default settings, but once I changed the themes a bit, installed the ccsm (compiz config settings manager) and changed some of the settings... I have a desktop that's surprisingly nice.

Now, I have waited almost three months since 11.04 was released, so I'm guessing my enjoyment is coming from the fact that several bugfixes have been applied since release...

But overall... I like it alot better then I thought I would.

Yeah, it's really getting there now a lot of the big bugs have been ironed out. Unity in 11.10 will probably been fairly buggy to start with due to the switch to gnome 3 but I'm fairly confident that 12.04 is gonna be super polished and stable

I think unity is really good, it just needs time to mature before it's ready for general use.

I like the fact Oneric Ocelot is using Gnome 3 as it's base. Unity should hopefully be quite a bit faster because of that. I've always felt Ubuntu's loaded up Gnome 2 was getting kinda sluggish but more than anything, GTK3 will be a nice welcome.

Hmm so I've been running the Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3 the last few days, constantly upgrading it and filing bug reports when I can to try help out. I have to admit, if Unity keeps improving the way it is, it's not too bad IMO. I could certainly live with it

Unity 2D is surprisingly nice too, it's consistent visually with Unity 3D but built completely differently. And, you can use it with Compiz or Kwin or any other window manager you like...so a fair bit of potential there. I think 11.10 will be a pretty decent release.

new computer..I'm running it now. I prefer Gnome 3, but I was getting tearing issues with the fglrx drivers. The open source drivers are adequate but still inferior, so I decided to stick with Unity for now. After a couple weeks, I don't hate it as much as initially did, but I'm a long way from falling in love with it either. I think it still needs a lot of work. I'd like to see a way to burrow through the applications menu a little faster to find the program i want to run. I think Gome 3 has it beat in that regard.

eldersnake wrote:Hmm so I've been running the Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3 the last few days, constantly upgrading it and filing bug reports when I can to try help out. I have to admit, if Unity keeps improving the way it is, it's not too bad IMO. I could certainly live with it

Unity 2D is surprisingly nice too, it's consistent visually with Unity 3D but built completely differently. And, you can use it with Compiz or Kwin or any other window manager you like...so a fair bit of potential there. I think 11.10 will be a pretty decent release.

I'm curious to see what the next LTS version will be like.

I'd like to see a way to burrow through the applications menu a little faster to find the program i want to run.

windows + a will get you straight to your apps so you don't have to click on more apps in the menu. you can also search for programs in the search bar. that's fast enough for me, although I use launchy at the moment which I find even faster.

For me the quickest way is going through the categories. Sometimes I may not know which application I want to use, I might have 3 of them with similar functions. You can do that with Unity, but it takes you a few mouse clicks to get there. With Gnome-shell, the categories are right up front. Gnome-shell feels cleaner and more polished as well.

I've seen some recent improvements to the Unity interface on omgubuntu which actually looked quite good..... doubt i'll ever use Unity as my main D.E but will be interesting to try the next version

kaddy wrote:I've seen some recent improvements to the Unity interface on omgubuntu which actually looked quite good..... doubt i'll ever use Unity as my main D.E but will be interesting to try the next version

I found a few of those, a few themes as well. This "Elementary" theme went a long way in making Unity more likeable, since it got rid of Ubuntu's trademarked purple and orange ugliness.

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I still prefer Gnome-shell, just wish they'd fix the issue with the ATI drivers.
My main beef right now with Unity is the inability to add tools like "force quit" on the top panel.