[ubuntu-uk] unity & gimp

[Tony Pursell]

On Thu, 2011-06-09 at 12:37 +0100, gazz wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, 2011-06-08 at 21:30 +0100, Liam Proven wrote: 
> > On 6 June 2011 15:57, gazz <pmgazz at gmx.co.uk> wrote:
> > >
> > > Ah, dunno, haven't actually looked at Gnome 3 yet . . . if it's as bad as
> > > Unity - eeek!
> > 
> > Unity is a /lot/ more like traditional GNOME 2 than GNOME 3 is.
> > 
> > Put in the time to learn Unity. It is a pretty decent GUI, honestly. I
> > don't understand why people are whinging so much about it. It's fine,
> > it's just different.
> 
> Well, I spose this is the way things are going so I've bitten the
> bullet and switched to Unity - in any case, I'll have to be able to
> train people on it <sigh>
> 
> It has some really nice features, it's true - but it's the stubborn
> fixity of it that drives me nuts. I can't have my usual widgets and it
> really is very, very clunky having to cycle through all the open
> windows constantly. It's clunky to click both buttons on a laptop
> touchpad, don't wanna! It's much easier to point and tap). I want my
> weather widget back waaaaaaah! And I mostly use tree view in Nautilus
> - but the mountable nfs partitions I have in fstab only show under
> places view so they can be mounted in the gui. I used to solve this by
> using the disk-mounter widget on a panel but it's vanished. So now I'm
> endlessly switching between tree and places view in nautilus - unless
> I want to flip open a terminal every time I need to mount a network
> partition. (I know you're going to ask why I don't automount them -
> well, cos they're on a laptop and I don't want errors when they're not
> available). 
> 
> It's also annoyingly buggy - but, of course, that'll improve so not
> really worth whinging about now - but doesn't exactly reduce my
> overall annoyance. It has a very 'alpha' feel about it. Then there are
> niggly little things - like I can't work out how to assign an icon to
> something that I put on the launcher which clearly doesn't have a
> native launcher icon (such as sync-ui which I use a lot - I have to
> tell several buttons with just grey questionmarks on them apart by
> their position on the launcher - not good). If someone knows how to do
> this, it'd be very welcome. It took me a month of sundays to resize
> the launcher bar and autohide it - trawling all over the compiz
> settings manager is no fun either and the customisation rewards are
> small. 
> 
> On the good side - I especially like the feature where the super key
> allocates numbers to application shortcuts (although it's a pity this
> only goes up to 9 so if I want something lower down I have to start
> again with the touchpad). I like the way all the windows will tile on
> the desktop (not sure where I clicked to get it to do that though
> lol). I also really like the way you can search quickly for an app,
> whose name you know but isn't in the launcher, and launch it very
> fast. But if you *don't* remember the name of the app, it'll take you
> all week to find it . . . 
> 
> Overall, my feeling about it is that if you use your PC as an Ubuntu
> One 'toaster' it's great. If one of the things you loved about
> Linux/GNOME was the enormous flexibility of the customisable desktop
> and widgets you'll hate it. 
> 
> It feels like lego. I've been using Unity for a few days and I'm
> really experiencing it as limited and clunky - I'm using keyboard
> shortcuts I haven't bothered with for years and re-discovering the
> tedium of endlessly cycling through windows. It feels retrogressive to
> me. 
> 
> I'm finding more stuff that it *does* do all the time though, and no
> doubt I'll get more used to it - and it'll improve - but can't we have
> a bit more customisation and control - widgets and stuff? Or am I
> missing something? 
> 
> Paula

Paula

Your comments would be welcome on the Ayatana mailing list
(https://launchpad.net/~ayatana).  At least by me.  I quite like Unity,
but there is a lot missing (like your 'usual widgets').  Something I am
trying to get across to them there. 

By the way, have you discovered Super-W yet - for seeing all your
windows in one go.

Tony