Unity and removing functions some may depend on.

[Pongo A. Pan]

On Wed, 2011-10-26 at 12:27 -0400, jimmckenzie at earthlink.net wrote:
> I may draw some flaming for this but the only way Unity will improve is
> if Canonical abandons it. It's worse than BOB (think MicroSoft Win95
> Era, Google it and cringe).

We remember.

> My complaints about Ubuntu 11.10 are as follows 
> 
> 
> 1. The new Thunderbird won't use the Add-On for Email Import/Export),
> yes I've looked, no support. I've got over 8000 e-mails I can't get to
> because of  this.

Sounds like a Thunderbird problem.  Ubuntu never did understand
Evolution (they always provided obsolete versions until now); the switch
to TB doesn't seem to have been well thought out or have been completely
done.  You can still use evo, claws, or about a dozen others.  Evo works
great for me with 11.10.

> 2. No usable screen savers.
You could always use a presentation or photo app to show a nice
slideshow.  Screensavers are like daylight saving time -- they save
nothing.

> 
> 3. No way to stop screen blanking. 

System Settings --> Screen --> Turn off after --> Never  
> 
> OK 2 & 3 are kinda nit picking but when did removing established
> dependable features become a good thing? That's one of the reasons I
> gave up on Micro$oft!
> 
> Am I alone here?

Probably not, but it's a matter of taste.  Trivial to install Gnome
Shell or Kubuntu-desktop, Xubuntu-desktop or whatever.  Whining here
does no good at all.  I think the commitment to Unity among the people
who matter is very strong and that it is part of a reasonable over-all
corporate strategy to have one look for PCs, tablets, netbooks and maybe
even telephones. 

Unity has grown on me: if you set the delay before the launcher appears
to some reasonable value, it lets you run everything very nearly
full-screen yet easily switch between screens either with the keyboard
or mouse with the launcher out of the way except when it is needed.  I
prefer the horizontal and vertical desktop wall to the vertical-only one
in Gnome Shell where I can never remember which way to go to get to some
already running application. Defining an expo edge helps with mouse
navigation. Some things still need work, like the indicators, but the
old Gnome2 panel applets are gone forever and indicators seem much
improved from 11.04 to 11.10.

If you don't like the dash and searching for things you can install a
menu indicator: I did and find that I don't really use it since it is
just as fast to tap super and type the first few letters of what I want
to open (as long as I know the name).  

Gnome2 and Michael Jackson are still dead.



-- 
pongo pan
Aurelius up 5 days, 2:50, 1 user, load average: 0.03, 0.03, 0.05
Linux 3.0.0-12-generic
Ubuntu 11.10, unity 4.22.0