Gnome replaces Unity

Mon Oct 16 17:04:03 UTC 2017

IMHO this is all subjective what works for John is a PITA for Jane!
For me Gnome 3 is useless and not even worth installing, my next upgrade
will be a sever install with openbox window manager installed!
(That's a window manager not a desktop Google the difference if you are
unsure), but that's just me!

The death of Unity is a shame for laptops and notebooks but as it was never
much use on desktop systems anyway it kinda doesn't matter. There are
plenty of alternatives out there find one that works for you and stick with
it!
Ubuntu's decision to scrap unity I personally feel it's a "downgrade" but
then I felt the same when Unity was first introduced and came around
eventually.
I will look at gnome again before 19.04 is released maybe just maybe I will
be pleasantly surprised!

Just my 2 cents

Peter Smout

On 16 Oct 2017 5:29 p.m., "Liam Proven" <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 16 October 2017 at 15:39, Colin Law <clanlaw at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I did not necessarily agree with your conclusion, as you said she must
> > not be a demanding or intensive user, without defining what that
> > meant.  I can assure you she can be most demanding (particularly if it
> > is not doing what she wants) and often uses it intensively, but I get
> > what you mean.  OK, so am I right in thinking that you agree that for
> > a user who just uses basic desktop apps, browser, office etc. that
> > Gnome (with ubuntu-dock extension) is operates and looks very similar
> > to Unity?  If so then that's fine and we can put our duelling pistols
> > away again.
>
> I never wanted a fight!
>
> On the surface, at casual inspection, yes, GNOME Shell and Unity are
> similar. When "Xen" considers Mac OS X and Windows to be similar, then
> yes, at that level, they're twins.
>
> But significant differences that bother me:
>
> * Virtual desktops.
>
> The virtual desktop mechanism is totally different.
>
> Actually, here I prefer GNOME Shell, with a dynamic number of desktops
> access via a toolbar on the right. But it is, to pick an example of
> something I _hate_, not possible on a dual-screen machine to have the
> dock thing on the left and the virtual-desktop toolbar on the right.
> They must be on the same screen, which to me is brain-damaged. No
> extension can work around this.
>
> * File manager
>
> GNOME is progressively crippling Nautilus by removing features. I'm
> with Jim Byrnes here. On Unity it is easy enough to put Cinnamon's
> Nemo in instead.
>
> * Title bars
>
> GNOME has merged title bars, toolbars and menu bars. Menus are
> deprecated (!) and the remnant stub is in the top panel.
>
> This is bizarre to me. Desktops aren't phones. That was my primary UI.
>
> * Menu bars
>
> GNOME is getting rid of them; GNOME 3 apps don't have them. Unity put
> them in the top panel. As a long-time Mac user, that's fine with me,
> although it infuriated many people. In more recent versions it is at
> least an option.
>
> * GNOME apps and accessories
>
> The GNOME project is progressively castrating all its apps, removing
> features and UI, in the pursuit of extreme simplicity. This drives me
> mad. The merged toolbar/titlebar is particularly irritating. I spend
> time hunting for where the "do your main function" button is because
> it's been moved or hidden.
>
> I have been going through my work machine, identifying GNOME apps that
> come bundled, and ripping them out, marking them as "taboo" to prevent
> re-installation, and replacing them with Xfce or Maté or Cinnamon
> apps.
>
> E.g. Gedit is now crippled.
>
> It's intentional:
>
> https://blogs.gnome.org/nacho/2014/01/15/gedit-has-a-new-face/
>
> "This made a lot of people very angry and was widely regarded as a bad
> move." (With apologies to Douglas Adams)
>
> http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/06/install-gedit-3-10-ubuntu-16-04-lts
>
> I've switched to Xed instead:
>
> https://www.fossmint.com/xed-text-editor-replacement-of-gedit-and-pluma/
>
> * Panels
>
> Dash-to-Dock makes the G3 launcher thing usable, but it shouldn't need
> such a major rework.
>
> But the top panel. G3 users praise this. I use widescreens. Vertical
> space is precious. The most precious kind of space on a widescreen. G3
> squanders it.
>
> At least in Unity the top panel is well-used -- it contains the menu
> bar, it contains multiple status icons and so on, so it's useful. And
> when you maximise an app, the titlebar merges with the panel, which
> intelligently gets the window-control buttons in it.
>
> The G3 one is almost decorative. It contains a weirdly-named textual
> button I must click to show the dock thing. (Why this is called
> "Activities" eludes me.) It contains the rump of a castrated menu bar.
> It contains an intrusive clock in the middle. And they are trying to
> minimise the icons, so there was a random auto-hiding thing at bottom
> left and the main options are collapsed into meaninglessly-grouped
> submenus.
>
> Most of its space is wasted. It's a horror. I dislike it intensely.
>
> Yes, with extensions, I can restore the icons, separate the merged
> menus, merge maximised title bars, etc., but the result is very
> fragile.
>
> And yet this is one of the most _praised_ parts of the UI. Bizarre, IMHO.
>
> * The Dock/Launcher/Dashboard
>
> Unity's is quite versatile. It has drives, virtual desktops, folders
> as well as app buttons. And those app buttons show status info like
> indicator lights for how many windows you have, progress bars for
> copies and downloads, etc.
>
> The G3 one is so vestigial, it was only when I read that it shadowed
> the icons of active apps that I fiddled with my screen settings and
> found this. It's almost invisible.
>
> It's integral but it's so limited it's almost useless.
>
> And that last line is my overall summary of G3.
>
> It makes many things I do needlessly hard, it's poorly customisable
> without fragile extensions, and many of the changes seem to be for the
> point of change.
>
> Much of its focus is on design, on brand, on a coherent identifiable
> appearance.
>
> That is rather against the Linux way, but it's a thing, yes. Unity
> made Ubuntu very characteristic and readily identifiable, and I liked
> that. Before, in the GNOME 2 days, the only way to ID Ubuntu was the
> earth-tone colour scheme, which I liked. Many did not. Now it's all
> purple and orange. I don't mind that but I preferred it the way it was
> before.
>
> The GNOME 3 devs want it to be instantly recognisable and don't want
> people to customise it much. Well, I understand and I sympathise, but
> that's not what I want. It doesn't work the way I do, I want to make
> it work the way I do, and they won't let me.
>
> Unity isn't very customisable either, it's true, but it worked the way
> I do on my Mac, so I was fine with it.
>
> Now I'm on Xfce. It's not as pretty -- G3 is very pretty, I'll give it
> that -- and it feels a little clunky, but it works. It's highly
> customisable and can be made to look and work very like the way I like
> Windows -- with a vertical taskbar. No panel wasting space. Textual
> labels for window buttons. All my indicators -- clock, volume,
> network, weather, virtual desktops, etc. -- all in one place, taking
> no vertical space only cheap plentiful horizontal space. Autohiding
> when I need it.
>
> It feels old-fashioned. It's _still_ not as good or as flexible as the
> Windows taskbar: e.g. I can't pin apps to it, I need separate
> launchers, duplicating functionality and wasting space.
>
> But it works, it's fast, it doesn't need 3D and works fine in VMs or
> over remote sessions. It'll do.
>
> GNOME 3 is one of the most resource-intensive desktops there is, and
> it does the least with it.
>
> --
> Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
> Email: lproven at cix.co.uk • Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
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