[ubuntu-za] 11.04+ Unity on desktops / laptops ?

[Jonathan Carter (highvoltage)]

Hi Peter

On 08/03/11 10:42 AM, Peter Nel wrote:
> Besides that, i didn't like the new interface all that much, robbing me
> of that vertical space on the right (although i understand it will be
> able to autohide in 11.04)
> 
> Will gnome and the window environment (as it is in 10.10 desktop
> version) also be completely replaced by unity from 11.04 onwards?
> Will I have to strip it out and replace it with gnome every time?
> 
> I currently run the desktop release of 10.10 on my notebook, and got it
> just the way i like it.
> What's gonna happen?

The Unity that you saw in 10.10 is pretty much going to cease to exist.
It's being replaced by two Unities (not sure what the plural of a
'unity' is). The one that's just going to be called Unity will be a
compiz plugin and will be run if you have 3D capable hardware. It has
*greatly* improved performance over the slower clutter/mutter stuff,
plus you get to use most of the benefits that compiz provides (some
compiz features conflict with the unity plugin, unfortunately).

Then you get Unity-2D. It will be a fallback for Unity that uses Qt. It
will look and work mostly the same, some things will work and look
slightly different though. Unity-2D is still a great improvement over
the old Unity.

Then there's what will be called (at least in Ubuntu) the Ubuntu Classic
Desktop, which provides the usual Gnome interface, except that this time
round it will be using the Gnome 3 stack so you'll get gsettings instead
of gconf, the new gnome panel and all written in GTK3. Ubuntu makes some
further changes to what you get in upstrea, so you'll get the
gnome-main-menu instead of gnome-menu-bar and you have global menus and
app indicators enabled by default.

Then there's Gnome Shell, the default interface for Gnome upstream. It
won't be available in the Ubuntu archives by default, but you'll be able
to install it from a PPA. It's got similar performance issues than the
old Unity, but in design and usability it is at least a lot better. A
big drawback imho is that you can't use another window manager with
Gnome shell, so no compiz. That's a big deal for me personally.

So I'll also be clinging on to the more traditional gnome desktop +
compiz for as long as I can. Maybe I'll give KDE a go again too, I
haven't tried it since 4.3 and aparently it's now kind of usable.

Anyway, I hope that gives you some more insight :)

-Jonathan