[11.04]-Turn Off Unity & Use Classic Gnome?

Tue Feb 15 22:56:09 UTC 2011

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 10:19 PM, Tom H <tomh0665 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 11:19 AM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 1:47 PM, Tom H <tomh0665 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> If a Gubuntu declination isn't published (not officially, like
>>> Lubuntu), you'll be able to use the regular ("Classic") GNOME or
>>> install and use gnome-shell.
>
>> Gubuntu is something else, or rather, several distros of that name
>> have been announced over the years, including a Free-software-only one
>> akin to GnuSense.
>>
>> "Ubuntu Gnome 3 Remix" is the officially-sanctioned style, I believe.
>
> Whether the above name is sanctioned or not and whether it's been
> mooted as the name for something else, an Ubuntu version with
> gnome-shell's as the default's been referred to by many as Gubuntu.

I'm not saying it's in any way official, merely that AFAIK that is
what Ubuntu Ltd want people to call remix editions, and that calling
them ?buntu is now discouraged and will receive notification of a
trademark infringement. The long-standing UbuntuLite project received
just that, for instance, after 3 or 4y in existence and development.

Got any references to this Gubuntu name? I've not seen it anywhere, on
any mailing list, blog or anything. A quick Google before my last post
threw up a gaming 'buntu and a few other stillborn efforts and nothing
to do with GNOME3.

>> But between  Unity instead of GNOME 3 and Wayland instead of X.org,
>> yes, I can see a "more mainstream" Ubuntu remix coming about in a year
>> or two, certainly, one with plain ol' x.org and plain GNOME3.
>
> While Unity's an Ubuntu-only project, Fedora's X devs are planning to
> move to Wayland too so classic, plain X'll eventually be history for
> many distros.

Well, OK, point, but there is quite a bit more to Linux than
Ubuntu+Fedora! IOW, that's a bit of a sweeping generalisation.

>> But on the other hand, I heartily approve of Ubuntu's efforts to
>> follow the "KISS principle". I kinda wish they'd get a bit more
>> radical, as Apple have with OS X - they have pensioned off large
>> chunks of the config files in /etc and so on and move things into
>> network-distributable databases, for instance. That's not what I'd do,
>> but it's an interesting approach.
>
> Moving files from "/etc/" to "/Library" and "/System/Library" (and
> possibly to "/Users/~user/Library") isn't necessarily progress! The
> uppercase letters are already moronic.

Why? Seriously, why? In these days of tab-completion and so on.

It's a handy at-a-glance way to distinguish Apple stuff, especially
GUI-level stuff, from the BSDish  underpinnings. Also bear in mind
that both OS X and Gobo tend to hide the Unixish stuff away from
casual users. Look at / on an OS X box and the Finder hides /usr and
/etc and all that.  It's there but invisible. Gobo uses a kernel
module, "gobohide", to do the same thing.

> Furthermore, OS X's config files are in PitA, crappy xml.

*Shrug* I run 4 or 5 OS X boxes and have supported many others; I've
never needed to dabble more than the *very* occasional single-line
edit, and most of that was years ago, in the 10.1-10.2 timeframe.

I see no especial issue.

OTOH, I *like* plain-text config files - I just think there's a dire
need for more centralisation, systematisation of the naming, etc.
Currently it's all over the place and is a bit of a nightmare.

>  GNOME (I
> don't know about other DEs) unfortunately also uses xml so Linux has
> already been infected (along with uppercase directories like
> "/etc/NetworkManager"). I hope that Linux'll never have any xml config
> file for an X-less box that's only accessed via ssh.

I'd probably tend to agree, but then again, if someone ripped &
replaced /etc with a big, deep, structured hierarchical tree with
modern, human-readable names, I would rejoice.

Unix is changing, now more than ever. Already we have what are
effectively "forks" taking Unix in strange new directions - the
biggest (in terms of user numbers) being OS X (both Mac & phone
versions) and Google Android.

Maybe this is a good thing and Ubuntu needs to bravely step away from
its Unix legacy roots.

>> One idea, for instance, is that the old distinction between the
>> various /bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin and so on folders are now
>> historical. Rescuing a system now means booting from optical disk or
>> USB stick, not bringing it up in single-user mode and then root going
>> poking around. I mean, they've already banished the root user
>> altogether. Time to banish its special directories, too.
>>
>> Merging them all might make life a lot simpler.
>
> You're misrepresenting what Ubuntu's done. Ubuntu's disabled root
> (just like OS X did) not banished it. There are many files owned by
> root on a default install and you're logged in as root when you use
> "sudo -i", sudo -s", or in single-user mode (with "/root" as a home
> directory with many dot files). So neither root nor its use have been
> banished - on Ubuntu and on OS X.

All right, fair enough. I thought it was an acceptable simplification,
but if you disagree, then I'll concede I went a step too far.

> Booting into single-user mode might not be your first choice, but I'm
> sure that it is for many, whether they are long-term Unix/Linux users
> or WIndows/OS X switchers (safe mode).

Er, Safe Boot is not Single-user mode. On a Mac you hold down Cmd-S
for runlevel 1 and it's much like it was in the olden days.

Scares the fsck out of Mac owners when you do it, too. :¬)

> Single-user mode isn't just
> about having only "/" mounted on a box with separate, unmounted
> partitions for "/usr", "/var", ... but also about booting into a
> (possibly read-only) system with as few daemons running as possible
> and only one user logged in (root).

Thanks for that. Tell me, what end is it best to suck an egg from? :¬)

On that note, I'd add that Debian's also done away with all the other
runlevels apart from 0, 1, 2 and 6. Personally I quite liked having 2
and 3 at least (2 = all services, no X, 3 = everything). But they've
gone & they're not coming back.

> Whilst I'm not necessarily opposed to merging all the "*/bin"
> directories into "/bin" and all the "*/sbin" directories into "/sbin",
> it's not something that I lose sleep about nor, I suspect, something
> that the Ubuntu developers would want to do without Debian doing the
> same (good luck with that happening!) because they'd have to repackage
> every deb.

Hmmm. True, possibly. I have thought that maybe a few simple simlinks
would do, but I'm sure that's a naïve view. I don't have enough
low-level Unixy knowledge to really tell.

Gobo has managed it, though, while retaining source compatibility with
a hundred thousand existing makefiles. :¬)

>  I'm not sure that I'd want the "*/bin" and the "*/sbin"
> directories merged though.

I'm curious. Why not? Is the distinction useful any more? If so, why?

I can perhaps see a distinction between OS binaries and external app
binaries, although it's a blurry one, and possibly between console
apps and X apps. But otherwise?

-- 
Liam Proven • Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven
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