LWN: Comments on "Ubuntu 11.04 released"

Old style GNOME UI

elanthis — Thu, 05 May 2011 00:49:27 +0000

It's gnome-panel, metacity, and nautilus. They're updated, expanded, fixed, ported to GTK 3.x, and generally better, other than the default configuration being all gnome-shell-ish and also being locked down with magical nobody-but-the-special-few-knows-about-them keys to unlock.

But once you unlock, it's essentially the same as GNOME 2.x, except better.

If the numbskulls that diverted time and energy into mutter and gnome-shell had just fixed metacity's compositor and given metacity plugins, then we could have all the pluses of gnome-shell without being locked into a tiny handful of compatible chipsets/drivers with less development time and without needing to export two completely difficult looking and behaving toolkits to the user, "fallback mode" would never exist, and it wouldn't matter because all users of GNOME 3.x would be using the same software components and they could still be configured if desired for people who need a desktop OS and not iOS.

Old style GNOME UI

sciurus — Tue, 03 May 2011 21:57:57 +0000

I think Unity is very keyboard-friendly. Here are the unity keyboard shortcuts.

Old style GNOME UI

proski — Mon, 02 May 2011 19:48:41 +0000

I'm not really an expert in usability, but I believe Gnome shell is less keyboard friendly than GNOME 2.x. The "Activities" panel cannot be navigated by the keyboard, at least by default. I checked the settings and could not find anything relevant. Also, running a new instance of an application, as opposed to switching to an existing window, requires a right click and selecting "new window" from the menu.

I haven't tested Unity, but the discussion suggests that it's another UI optimized for mouse and touchscreen with very little thought of the keyboard interface.

XFCE rocks

man_ls — Sun, 01 May 2011 21:15:06 +0000

Just wanted to add a "me too" here. I switched to XFCE a few years ago, after trying Gnome, KDE and IceWM. I have never looked back. That little mouse in the corner is now very dear to me!

Old style GNOME UI

jspaleta — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 21:48:02 +0000

Sorry,

That should have read as Ubuntu 11.04 not 11.10.

-jef

Old style GNOME UI

jspaleta — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 21:43:37 +0000

Will Canonical commit to supporting the full range of GNOME 2.x APIs including the GtkStatusIcon API and associated notification area in the Ubuntu desktop environments which purport to be GNOME 2.x environments in current and future releases?

The discussion on ubuntu-devel list from April seemed to indicate that only certain applications would be whitelisted to be allowed to use the notification area via the GtkStatusIcon. But the discussion does not appear to resolve on the list. I'm assuming the discussion was taken into private Canonical communication channels for resolution.

So I need to ask the following question. Does Gnome Classic mode as implemented in Ubuntu 11.10 allow any application to make use of the notification are...as the original GNOME 2.x design was intended...or only a select few applications manually whitelisted to allowed to use it?

-jef

Old style GNOME UI

jonnyvice — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 19:49:42 +0000

That's great news that you will provide gnome 2.x interface access in future releases based on demand. That's actually a really important distinction because other distributions seem to blindly go "gtk3 is out! take out gtk2!" which is where the general unhappiness comes from.

Again, I don't know if I couldn't have made this more clear but my frustration is definitely not with distributions, it is *solely* aimed at the (in my opinion) irresponsible upstream developers for leaving distributions in a crutch (i.e. use gtk3 or use the suddenly abandoned and unsupported yet very stable and feature-rich gtk2).

In fact, that would be great news if you listen to users that are concerned with functionality and not use gtk3 at all when basing your distribution and continue to use gtk2. It might certainly force upstream to provide a real gnome 2.x fallback mode instead of the gimped out 2d gnome-shell fallback. It was puzzling to me when I heard because I'm still wondering how Unity on gtk3 would work with so many basic feature sets missing.

I've tested Unity on some machines and while it works great on netbooks and laptops, it's simply not something that suites my needs due to compositing ruining full screen opengl performance for other applications (unless of course there is a feature coming that disables compositing for full screen applications, be it gpu video decoding or opengl applications).

Gnome developers seem entirely disinterested in using suggestions in gnome-shell which is even further offputting. Instead of listening to user feedback to issue like "why do I have to create another screen for applications?", "why can't I change the font sizes that make my 1920x1080 minitor look like 800x600?", other workflow issues, etc. they seem to be in their own bubble. For the contrary, Unity developers have paid close attention to user feedback: netbook usage especially is great because Unity implemented a really nice vertical screen space saving function of inserting file menu's into the top menu bar.

But unless you can get gtk3/gnome3 devs to wake up and smell their suck (or you fork gtk2/gnome2 or continue to patch and support it which would be awesome), i'm very concerned as to what the gnome-based desktop experience will be years from now.

Old style GNOME UI

rahulsundaram — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 18:34:43 +0000

You are wrong. Fallback mode is not GNOME 2.x

Old style GNOME UI

jond — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 18:20:50 +0000

The fallback desktop for GNOME3 is essentially the GNOME 2.x desktop, afaik. It's highly likely Ubuntu will provide access to that from gdm (as Debian plan to).

Old style GNOME UI

ccchips — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 19:27:27 +0000

Replying to your question with a question.

Does this mean the new Gnome shell or the Unity interface are going to be less keyboard-friendly? I am partly blind, and I really hate being forced to use a mouse when in a graphical interface.

Old style GNOME UI

Tara_Li — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 18:44:11 +0000

Ok - I have a Gnome+Enlightenment desktop - I have two Gnome panels (with the associated bunch of applets), the various folders on my desktop I've been told are provided by Nautilus, and Enlightnment providing the window decorations/borders (minimize, maximize, close, force close, shade up/down, sticky to desktop, right-click giving me change border type (so I can resize windows that aren't re-sizable...), maximize height, maximize width, etc...

Will I still be able to do this? Or will I be left out in the cold, because if I try, my primary applications will come up without a menu, and without any way to access them? Because I sure thought the menu bar was part of the app, and not the window manager/desktop environment.

Ubuntu 11.04 released

jmalcolm — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 13:46:41 +0000

And the derivatives of those. :-)

Old style GNOME UI

jmalcolm — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 13:44:34 +0000

Also, if you are upgrading from the "Netbook Edition" make sure you disable auto-login as well.

I did not and was presented with a blank desktop where it was impossible to do anything. Luckily, I was able to bring up a virtual console and disable auto-login.

The issue was that "Netbook Ubuntu" was selected instead of just "Ubuntu" in the login menu. I switch to "Ubuntu" and all was well. It booted up into the new Unity interface.

I guess the "Netbook" desktop was removed but it was still the default for my login account.

Old style GNOME UI

jmalcolm — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 13:39:22 +0000

The "classic" interface is produced by the GNOME project. My understanding is that it will not be available in it's current form on GTK3 (on which GNOME 3 is based).

Old style GNOME UI

jmalcolm — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 13:37:38 +0000

Am I to take from this comment that the poster, that said Unity on GTK3 would mean no-more classic GNOME in Ubuntu, is incorrect?

I understand that he targets the GNOME developers with his comments because it is the choice of the GNOME project to abandon (or cripple) the classic GNOME interface as an option in GNOME 3 (based on GTK3). Was it just an assumption on his part that Unity moving to GTK3 would also mean the loss of the class interface?

I assume though that the classic interface will continue to be based on GTK2 after Unity moves to GTK3. How long is this likely to remain on option?

Old style GNOME UI

mjg59 — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 13:11:04 +0000

The Gnome 3 fallback interface can't really be described as Gnome 2, so is the aim to continue shipping the (unmaintained) 2.32 branch even after Unity is ported to GTK 3?

Old style GNOME UI

markshuttle — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 12:58:20 +0000

We're not removing Gnome 2. It will be there, a click or two away, as long as Gnome itself continues to publish it.

Old style GNOME UI

markshuttle — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 12:56:31 +0000

Just chill. GNOME will maintain the 2.x style interface a little longer, and we'll continue to make it available in Ubuntu releases as long as they do. The shift to Gtk3 is not necessarily the same as a requirement to use a whole new interface.

Old style GNOME UI

dgm — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 08:28:11 +0000

Just be cautious and disable autologin before update. If it happens that Unity is not supported in your hardware (apparently some nvidia and older intel cards like mine) you will not be offered with such an option, and will get a frozen screen instead.

Ubuntu 11.04 released

yarikoptic — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 01:55:48 +0000

Hoorray! Keep on great work, Debian! God bless your derivatives and the derivatives of the derivatives!

Old style GNOME UI

MisterIO — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 01:07:13 +0000

What does that have to do with gnome developers? Unity is made by Ubuntu.

Fluxbox

wertigon — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 00:15:22 +0000

I find that if you go with one of the *box variants, might as well go all out with awesome. :)

Just my personal op though.

Fluxbox

NightMonkey — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 18:56:36 +0000

If you have an aging laptop, may I suggest that your tweaking time may be better used with Fluxbox?

While I appreciate there is better *promised* integration in the large DMs+WMs like GNOME, KDE, and XFCE, I know that when I've tried them, there is always some hacking needed to get them right. So, I then asked myself "what's an environment that is *designed* to facilitate 'hacking to get right'?" Answer: Fluxbox. :)

Just a suggestion, please no flames. :)

Old style GNOME UI

Cyberax — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 17:28:18 +0000

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?!

I understand adding Unity as the default interface, OK. But removing GNOME2 when GNOME3 is barely released and full of bugs?

Old style GNOME UI

Felix.Braun — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 16:14:32 +0000

I've also found Xfce to be tunable to suit my expected GNOME experience rather effortlessly. I can't say that I'm missing any of the additional integration that GNOME offers. The switch has also reduced the boot time of this ageing laptop from 65 seconds down to 45.

Old style GNOME UI

tjc — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:48:47 +0000

I switched to IceWM, but it shows its age and lacks some taskbar applets I got used to while using GNOME. I tried LXDE, which is close, but not quite what I want.

I switched from Gnome 2 to Xfce 4 this past week, and it was a relatively painless process. Not everything is completely groovy, but I think it will work well enough.

I haven't tried the Gnome 3 fall-back-to-Gnome-2 mode yet, so I don't know if that is better or worse that Xfce, but the fact that it will be going away soon makes me think that I'd be better off sticking with Xfce in the long run.

I also tried LXDE, but I had a protracted and unsuccessful attempt at trying to add an terminal window shortcut with geometry settings to the panel, so I gave up on it, at least for now.

Old style GNOME UI

jonnyvice — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:32:05 +0000

It's Ubuntu's build of gnome which is for the most part a gnome experience. gnome3 and unity are both definitely not. And it's not going to be there in the next release. There is a gnome3 fallback in the distributions packaging gnome3 (i've tried Fedora and OpenSuse's gnome 3 preview to see it), but it's a gnome3 fallback (nothing can be configured, it's activities based, just doesn't use mutter) and not what we've been using for years. For Ubuntu, that gnome option for classic will not be available in the next release when they rebase to gtk3.

Old style GNOME UI

mgedmin — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:20:37 +0000

There's a "classic desktop experience" fallback session you can choose in GDM. I cannot say if it's classic Ubuntu GNOME (i.e. application indicators/notifications), or classic GNOME GNOME, since I haven't tried it myself. In fact I haven't upgraded to 11.04 yet.

Old style GNOME UI

jonnyvice — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:17:30 +0000

(Real) Classic Gnome 2.x interface complete with gnome-panels and nautilus is still available in Ubuntu 11.04 but will not be available in Ubuntu 11.10 at which point they'll be rebasing Unity on gtk3 (it's currently based on gtk2 in 11.04).

It's ridiculous. Fsck you Gnome developers.

Old style GNOME UI

lucke — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:16:30 +0000

Yes, you can choose the traditional gnome ui in gdm.

Old style GNOME UI

proski — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:13:25 +0000

Is it possible to use a traditional GNOME UI with Ubuntu 11.04? I tried Fedora 15 and found that I cannot disable or remove GNOME Shell without losing GNOME completely. I simply cannot customize GNOME Shell the way I used to, e.g. use Ctrl-Escape to open the applications menu, arrows to navigate it, Enter to run a new instance of a program. I switched to IceWM, but it shows its age and lacks some taskbar applets I got used to while using GNOME. I tried LXDE, which is close, but not quite what I want. I'm very disappointed that Fedora replaced its default GUI without leaving a fallback. Please tell be that Ubuntu didn't do the same.

Ubuntu 11.04 released

juliank — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 14:38:03 +0000

My friendly Debian Developer and tech person (aka I) says congrats and wishes everyone doing parties nice parties. The friendly Ubuntu member inside me thinks he needs to download it.