[ubuntu-studio-devel] Feature Spec Discussion: Desktop Agnostic

[Len Ovens]

On Tue, 1 Sep 2015, Timo Jyrinki wrote:

> 2015-09-01 1:15 GMT+03:00 Len Ovens <len at ovenwerks.net>:
>> on all flavours... well maybe not Unity (actually I think I did, but
>> disliked it so much, I gave up), Unity is a beautiful experience and
>> entertaining, but does not make "work" as easy for me.
>
> It depends on the user, but for me it has been the most suitable for
> work. The first reason it gives the biggest amount of screen space to

I understand that and that is why I added the "for me". The real coment I 
have about Unity though, is that it is harder to make audio work as well 
as with any other DE. It is not impossible for sure, but it is harder. KDE 
has some known DE issues with some of our (GTK based) audio apps that are 
"won't fix" at least for now. But KDE does not seem to interfere with 
audio too much... provided pavucontrol gets used to play with PA and not 
kmix. Kmix works ok but is missing some functionallity.

Studio comes with 4 workspaces and I use them all because I am often 
working on more than one project. It is not uncommon for me to have as 
many as ten windows open in any one workspace. I could use editor/terminal 
tabs, but find it much nicer to be able to directly look from one window 
to the next without having to find the right tab. I do have dual monitors 
(and would welcome another) and feel that is a common thing for the 
workflows we deal with. (a photographer I know was using dual monitors 15 
years ago in windows) Without dual monitors I would normally end up with 6 
workspaces.

> the apps which I like, and the second reason is that the Super + 1-9
> hotkeys are enough for me to quickly start + switch between key apps
> dragged to the launcher. Super + F for recent files/file search and

DE hotkeys tend to interfere with application hotkeys. This is as true for 
Ardour in Linux as it is for Protools on another platform.

> But, it depends, like said. For some/many users it's seen as clunky UI
> that's mouse driven but meant for touch screens from design
> perspective. In my opinion that's only the surface.

Clunky? no, I don't think so. Hard to make good use of, yes for me it is. 
The idea that there is no systray or that many applications are prevented 
from using it does not help either. I have one custom made one I use as 
well as qjackctl. We also ship some other applications that use the 
Standard systray. This is functionallity I would miss with unity. Not 
having a applications menu is the biggest minus. The search based 
application starting just doesn't work for me. Whatever search term I use 
always seems to be the wrong one... my brain just doesn't seen to think 
the way the search engine designer does. WHen I finally do get a screen 
that includes the app I want, the app is at the bottom of a scroll :P 
Using the bar on the left is fine, but it does not hold enough apps and 
again takes longer than a standard menu does to start things.

My other problem with loosing the menu is that a menu makes finding an 
application you don't know about easier. As a new user, I made much use of 
the menu to find out what applications there were and tried them all out. 
Unity does not provide this at all... I have tried putting xfce's menu in 
there to use but was unable to make is work in a seamless manner. If 
Studio was a one workflow distro, Unity could probably work really well... 
but so could any other DE. Unity would also need pavucontrol installed if 
I remember correctly.

--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net