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Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica)Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica)Posted Oct 26, 2010 3:31 UTC (Tue) by gdt (subscriber, #6284)Parent article: Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica)
I'm using Ubuntu 10.10 UNR now. The Unity interface is a huge step back from the previous UNR interface. Just simple things like launching a different application for a file can't be done (eg, to edit a photo rather than view it). You can't pick up a file and move it to the trash.
The interface reverts to the top view after each application. So if you want to do the same thing to multiple files you are always navigating back to where you just were.
The list of applications takes a huge chunk of small-screen real estate, all the time. The previous interface assumed that if you selected an application, you wanted to focus on it for a while and didn't mind a click to get back to the main screen.
I still haven't figured out how to add programs to that list of applications. So I have to use the application picker. Which is a rip off of the MacOS one, and one of the least thought out aspects of MacOS. MacOS rescues the situation by putting the application on the task bar, but Ubuntu doesn't do that.
The combination of these flaws is that it can take more user interface interaction to launch a program than to do the work of the program.
It's just not ready for the big time on the small screen. I'm looking to see what Fedora might have for Netbooks.
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Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 4:20 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
> I'm using Ubuntu 10.10 UNR now. The Unity interface is a huge step back from the previous UNR interface. Just simple things like launching a different application for a file can't be done (eg, to edit a photo rather than view it). You can't pick up a file and move it to the trash.
> The interface reverts to the top view after each application. So if you want to do the same thing to multiple files you are always navigating back to where you just were.
Well if you prefer to do everything in a file-manager centric way like in regular Gnome I suppose you can just put Nautilus browser in application launcher and use that instead of the zeitgeist/unr thingy. Hopefully they figure out a fix for that.
> The list of applications takes a huge chunk of small-screen real estate, all the time. The previous interface assumed that if you selected an application, you wanted to focus on it for a while and didn't mind a click to get back to the main screen.
Yeah, but most screens are widescreen now. And the horizontal screen realstate is much less valuable then the vertical. Which is something that drives me crazy about things like the OS X doc or Gnome default 2-panels. Having that sort of stuff off to the side is a big improvement, IMO.
But if your using a more square screen then I can see how it would get tiresome really quick to have that big bar on the side. Too bad nobody has perfected the 'move panel from side to top/bottom' or 'move panel from top/bottom to side' technology in Linux yet, unlike Microsoft or OS X.
> I still haven't figured out how to add programs to that list of applications. So I have to use the application picker. Which is a rip off of the MacOS one, and one of the least thought out aspects of MacOS. MacOS rescues the situation by putting the application on the task bar, but Ubuntu doesn't do that.
That's something I did not notice as being a problem, though. I suppose because it's the same as Gnome-shell and I have been using that for a long time now.
Launch the application, right click application icon and select 'keep in launcher'.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 13:09 UTC (Tue) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]
> Too bad nobody has perfected the 'move panel from side to top/bottom' or 'move panel from top/bottom to side' technology in Linux yet, unlike Microsoft or OS X.
Was that suppoesd to be sarcasm? Because certainly the "old" gnome-panel can be dragged to any side just fine.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 15:48 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
No.
Because even though the Gnome-panel can be moved to the side, it is effectively broken that way. The task bar fails to work correct, bad stuff happens when there are too many windows, the quick launch icons get screwed up, etc etc.
I use the panel on the side when I am stuck using Windows and I've tried it with Gnome, but it sucks.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 16:21 UTC (Tue) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link] Perhaps he meant the old old GNOME panel from 1.x days. It worked quite well on the side, as I recall.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 14:32 UTC (Tue) by SEMW (guest, #52697) [Link]
> Too bad nobody has perfected the 'move panel from side to top/bottom' or 'move panel from top/bottom to side' technology in Linux yet, unlike Microsoft or OS X.
Alt+dragging moves the panel. Just like moving windows (sans titlebar). IIRC it used to be that you could just drag (without pressing Alt), but presumably someone thought that it was too easy to move the panel accidentally.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 15:49 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
The panel can be moved, but it does not work well at all when. At least the traditional Gnome-panel's support for working on the side is very very poor.
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 15:51 UTC (Tue) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
> Launch the application, right click application icon and select 'keep in launcher'.
Unfortunately, this only works for a narrow, undefined set of applications, which I guess is what is present by default in whatever the thing standing for application selector is called.
Try creating a custom launcher for "emacsclient -c -a emacs".
I tried: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ayatana-design/+bug/600735
Shuttleworth: Unity shell will be default desktop in Ubuntu 11.04 (ars technica) Posted Oct 26, 2010 16:33 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
I, too, would like to have the ability to have a launcher for arbitrary commands.
This is something that is lost for both Unity and Gnome-Shell.
One of the things you can do, though, is create a *.desktop file that will communicate with the desktop environment and show it what icons and commands you'd like to be associated with a particular menu entry. Also you can use that for file associations so that instead of using 'gedit' by default when you access text files or whatnot you can use your 'emacsclient' script to launch it into your emacs session.
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