Questions about Ubuntu 18.04 live/install ISO

[Liam Proven]

On Mon, 18 Feb 2019 at 22:50, Peter Flynn <peter at silmaril.ie> wrote:
>
> On 18/02/2019 15:56, Liam Proven wrote:> Unity, like GNOME 3, needs
> hardware OpenGL. If your machine doesn't
> > have a 3D card with a working driver, then it will run badly.
>
> That would explain it. A pity the installer wasn't able to work this out.

What alternative is there? It's the only desktop on the installation media.

There _was_ Unity-2D for a while but it was killed after 12.10:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity2D

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(user_interface)#Unity_2D

It was only around for a few versions. Unlike normal Gtk-based Unity,
it was written using Qt, and could support different window managers.

But Unity was always in part a downstream project of GNOME 3. GNOME 3
needs OpenGL too. For machines without it, GNOME offered "fallback
mode" which looked like GNOME 2 but wasn't customisable. This was
politically unacceptable -- partly because people liked the old look
more, partly because it made GNOME 3 a harder sell. So to offset the
balance, GNOME incorporated software OpenGL rendering using the LLVM
compiler engine, making it possible to run full GNOME 3 on machines
with only 2D display acceleration, at the cost of higher CPU
utilisation.

Ubuntu incorporated that, so full Unity 3D could run on anything,
albeit with poor performance. But just as it enabled GNOME to kill off
its own "fallback mode" which people were choosing instead of the new
shell, it enabled Ubuntu to stop supporting 2 parallel codebases and
focus on one.

So Unity-2D got killed.

Shame really. Qt is generally regarded as more mature and pleasant to
work with than Gtk, especially Gtk 3. Perhaps Unity-2D would have been
a better bet over a longer term.

But anyway, yes, the installer had no choice on your machine. There
was no alternative.

But there are lots of Ubuntu remixes that don't need OpenGL. I
recommend Xubuntu but there's also Lubuntu and Ubuntu MATE.

> Lots of people would, but it won't happen while RMS is around. He's
> seriously one of The Good Guys, but it's his baby.

Up to a point you might be surprised.

e.g.
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-01/msg00496.html

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