Let's get our hand dirty (aka discover Unity)

[ssc1478]

On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 11:52 AM, Thierry de Coulon <tcoulon at decoulon.ch> wrote:
> OK, so I've booted 11.04. I'm running it from the CD on a netbook so I'm not
> going to discuss speed issues.
>
> So:
>
> a) it looks childish good, with big icons "a la iPhone". I don't think I would
> like that on my desktop, but it sure feels spacy on a netbook.
>
I have Unity on a HP mini netbook and a workstation with a 20"
widescreen lcd.  The desktop looks fine on both.  It did take a little
getting used to.  Before upgrading, I tried Fedora 15 which has Gnome
3.  Since they're so similar I decided to go with Unity rather than
jump ship to Fedora.  There are other things besides desktop to like
about ubuntu.

> b) some weirdness: I fired Libreoffice Writer. It loads full screen (you don't
> see Unity's side bar any more), the menus don't go in the "title bar" (but
> the windows icons do, the LO menus create a second bar under). Now if you
> choose View/Full Screen, it actually does the opposite: it comes in a window
> and the Side Bar reappears. Funy.

Menus do take some getting used to.  But it does give me more screen
real estate, which is especially nice on my HP mini.

>
> c) I can't logout. First I thought it was because there is only one user in
> the "try Ubuntu" CD mode, so I created another user. Still only  Suspend,
> Hibernate, restart and Sutdown in the menu. Is this a limitation of the CD
> mode?

That's just the LiveCD.  There is a shutdown option in the installed version.

>
> d) Is there a Unity handbook? I looked at unity.ubuntu.com but found nothing.
> Only the help included in Unity itself. Seems to me I'd need more than that
> to start feeling comfortable with the UI.

Might want to start here:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/natty/#software

>
> Bottom line: don't switch to Unity if you need your computer for productive
> work, you may need some time to get efficient with the new UI
>

It won't take much time.  And if your hardware doesn't support unity,
you can boot into Gnome 2 (called "Gnome Classic")


> Thierry
>
>

Phil