(OT) Explain to me again why Unity is so great...

[Alan Pope]

On 22 April 2011 22:27, Zach <zach at zcsmith.com> wrote:
> The direction that Linux has always been about choice and you have some
> propeller heads at Canonical who have decided that Unity is the way to go
> and everything else be damned.

Steady on Zach.


>  A bit of an exaggeration perhaps but you get
> the idea.  I know just about everything in the world of computers has an
> expiration date but getting rid of something when it's far from its time to
> expire just for the sake of replacing it with some newfangled gadget is
> unproductive and in most cases, a poor business practice.
>

You (and many others) characterise the change in the desktop to Unity
as 'change for changes sake' but that seems to undermine the hard work
done by skilled 'propeller heads' as you put it. These people have
done some considerable analysis and development work to figure out
what actually might be 'better' for the end user. Whilst that's not a
utopia, best for everyone, there's certainly an argument that it could
actually be a pretty decent desktop.

I've been using Unity for some time now, and I've been as frustrated
with it as many. I've filed (and had fixed) numerous bugs. I've
experienced the crashes, had a hard time with two screens, experienced
a broken desktop, and generally had about as crappy time as anyone
else on this release. It's been a tough release cycle. Unity isn't
finished, that's pretty clear.

The good news is that there's numerous options available. Including
but not limited to:-

a) Running unity, filing bugs, helping to fix it.
b) Running classic desktop, and still doing a) when time/facilities permit
c) Sticking with 10.10
d) Sticking with 10.04
e) Switching to another distro for 6-18 months and coming back with
the dust settles
f) Switching to another distro, sad that Ubuntu doesn't fulfil your needs...

You specifically said it's about choice. The choices are there. Take them.

Al.