I for one am *VERY* unimpressed with unity. I first saw it in Maverick when it replaced a perfectly good UNR interface. But I was excited to try it. It lasted less than one week, and I used desktop switcher to use the full desktop on my Starling Netbook. Now Natty is out. A few nights ago I upgraded that same Starling. But now, the even more functional, but dated Gnome interface was wholesale replaced with unity. With great hope that a new release would fix many of the issues I tried it again. 30 minutes later... I was installing Gnome 3. Unity IMHO is just awful. And, it does not seem to be getting better. More stable, more comparable, but not more usable. I for one like the Gnome 3 Shell. It is a huge departure from Gnome 2.x and is not 100% fully baked. When I take a look at the two, the Gnome Shell, to me, shows a bunch more promise. Enough additional promise that for the first time in about 5 years, my main desktop at home will probably be running Fedora as soon as the Gnome 3 is stabilized. Sorry Ubuntu, but you really missed the mark on this one. Kevin Fries On Apr 13, 2011 8:00 AM, "kitepilot@kitepilot.com" wrote: > For those of you ignorant of REAL life excitement: Ubuntu 11.04 Beta is > OUT!!! > Oh, boy... :) > > The part that I hate about this frequent releases, is that they are > consistently so much better, that I *HAVE* to upgrade. > The part that I love about this frequent releases, is that they are > consistently so much better, that I *WANT* to upgrade (or do I?). > > My first Ubuntu installation ever (I believe to recall) was 5.04 (Yes, I am > *THAT* old!) > I remember that it blew my socks off, when all I had to compare it to was > the Red Hat of the time. It was orders of magnitude better than the best > Red Hat, Suse, Slackware or (fill in your distro of choice) of the time. > And it was, in short and above all: USABLE! > > From then on, it became a love/hate relationship. At the beginning I tried > both, flat Ubuntu (Gnome) and Kubuntu (KDE). > At the end I settled for KDE mostly because I could not put up with the > (unavoidable and depressible ugly!) brown Ubuntu motif. > KDE was not only blue and soothing, it also behaved more like the M$ stuff > that I was used to play with at the time. > And so I tugged my happy KDE life for few years, testing and ditching the > ugly Gnome every so often and finding specific uses for low power machines > running XFCE and lately LXDE. > > Until one day... > One day I found that KDE was getting "so helpful", that it was constantly > busy being "helpful" while constantly ignoring the attention I craved. They > (KDE) installed all this indexes and daemons and hidden processes that > rendered the performance of the machine borderline unusable (sounds > familiar?) unless you're were running your "Desktop" on a Craig's > supercomputer. > Beyond my budget and beyond my patience... > > So one day some year-and-a-half ago I took another hard look at Ubuntu... > And I pleasantly found out that they had diluted the horrible brown and I > could easily manage the interface (look at a recent Mac ? ). > I am not sure if I got smarter (highly unlikely) or they dumbed down the > interface (entirely possible), but I could actually work with it intuitively > (or, as I do mostly everything: without needing to THINK!) > > And then I was fat, dumb and happy again (mostly dumb and fat) > And I installed Ubuntu to all my friends and family that I help with > computers, and they too were fat, dumb and happy (mostly happy, some fat) > And life went on... > > For a geek that ignores many of the "creature comforts" of a GUI in favor of > doing "things" on terminals (like REAL men do! ;-), I regularly become > inconvenienced when the GUI makes decisions for me. For instance, just try > to install an IP address on a network adapter without the GUI in Ubuntu! > > So the "new" Ubuntu is (almost) out. > And as always, I think of upgrading, but in this instance I am not that > sure... > You see, now Ubuntu is using "Unity" as the "Desktop" environment. > It's GOT to be important, because even PCWorld and Znet *ARE* talking about > it. > http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/223843/four_new_features_comin > g_to_ubuntu_1104_natty_narwhal.html > http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/the-new-ubuntu-desktop-unity/8584?pg=2 > &tag=mantle_skin;content > Remember the days when you found "Linux" in PCWorld only as a dirty joke? > Obviously times (and appreciations) are changing... > > But anyway, back to the question: Do I *WANT* to upgrade? > Has anybody used Unity before? > Is it an step forward in usability and "coolness", or will it become another > intrusive and hyperactive KDE? > Have you use it? > Did you like it? > Is Ubuntu getting better or worse with this Unity thingy? > Stay tuned, I'll fire up a virtual this weekend and will take Unity for a > spin. > ET > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss