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Unity 2D To Go Away In Ubuntu 12.10

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  • #41
    Originally posted by squirrl View Post
    This reminds me of the scene from Empire Strikes Back where Lando is talking to Darth in reference to changes to the supposed deal they made. I used to think only Fedora was a joke-in-progress as now it seems Ubuntu has become.
    So I don't believe users can keep up with Canonical's ambitious ideas.

    It's generally the amateurs that come to the table with the bright idea of throwing out everything and starting over only because they are too lazy to comprehend the code-base. You've seen these individuals at your workplace. So eager are they to suggest a new tool to redirect your attention from their lack of progress.

    I forecast RedHat staying with Gnome 2 for sometime. That means CENTOS and Scientific can still reliably provide for my own needs. Look how it is becoming.

    "Canonical is just a false prophet offering the Olive Branch dipped in poison.", me

    If this company seriously cared about humanity we'd still be using gnome 2.28 with simple bug-fixes and back-ports.
    Too bad I don't have a fortune to support my vision of a great product.

    Respectfully,.
    It's not "starting over", it's "evolution" -- they are different. Starting over means wiping the table clean and re-designing everything from scratch. Evolution means taking what you have and reusing as much of it as possible while creating something new on top. Gnome (and to a lesser degree, Unity) have performed "evolution", not "starting over". Same with Cinnamon (which you may like as a user of Gnome2, BTW).

    First of all, GTK3 and its underlying GLib library are pure evolutionary compared to their predecessors. Some 98% of GTK2 code can simply be recompiled almost as-is for GTK3. All the old GLib middleware functions are there, and in fact, GLib never even had a "3.0" release -- its version number is still in the 2.x range, so they haven't even broken ABI.

    Gnome 3's features are in direct response to repeated user requests for a desktop that can takes advantage of today's 3d graphics cards (the more long-standing request), and also which can work well with a touch interface (the much more recent request, which can be seen by e.g. users of Ultrabooks, which are x86 thin laptops with a keyboard and a multitouch screen).

    I'm sure that if you were using an Ultrabook, you would agree that Gnome 3 is more usable than Gnome 2. So what actually happened is that Gnome changed its target market away from traditional desktop users, towards mobile computing and touch interfaces and people who like eye candy.

    This is, naturally, going to alienate people who prefer to interact with their desktop primarily using a keyboard and mouse, and who don't give a crap about eye candy. But the perceived demand for eye candy and touch interfaces is so overwhelming that, essentially, Gnome doesn't care that people like you and I are still wanting the old interface.

    Well I'm sure some of the contributors to Gnome care. But overall, sacrifices in the design have been made, in order to please touch users / small screen users / mobile users, to the almost universal displeasure of workstation users. That's just the way it is. It's no big conspiracy; it's just that the projects naturally want to support the user base that is going to have the most users... and they think that is or soon will be people on mobile devices / tablets / ultrabooks with touch interfaces.

    BTW, Red Hat is one of the main contributors to Gnome. You can bet your arse that RHEL 7, which will be based on something like Fedora 16 or Fedora 17, is going to ship Gnome 3 (because that version of Fedora does). Tough luck. You'll just have to keep using RHEL 6 forever I guess, long after its 7 years of security updates have expired...

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    • #42
      I'm evaluating 12.04 in a VM to see if I want to upgrade and so far I'm not sold on Unity. I think I might be able to make it workable in a multi-tasking environment if I can get used to it. I don't know.

      But what amazes me is just how non-configurable the thing is out of the box. I guess I'll have to download all kinds of tools and crap just to get some kind of sane setup going. Kinda lame.

      I can't speak for Gnome shell -- since the few times I've tried it I've found it to be 100% unusable for anything more than just staring at the wallpaper -- but Unity looks almost embarrassingly identical to OS X. Between the global menu, big-honkin' dock and the way System Settings is laid out. It's one thing to be inspired by another... but making a carbon-copy just makes one look bad. Not that OS X doesn't look nice and polished... but I still find it kind of hard to use for anything more than basic work.

      Dash is kinda cool though... at least the search mechanism. Some of the other stuff like automated backup, ubuntu one and the software center have improved nicely over 10.10 and 11.04.

      Gnome2 is getting long in the tooth and I do want something modern, fresh and slick... even if it's different. So I might end up biting the bullet.

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      • #43
        Can someone explain what this will mean for the future of Unity-2D in 12.04? If 12.04 is an LTS release, would they drop features during the support period that were present in the initial release?

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        • #44
          Originally posted by asdx
          Can't nvidia just help improve nouveau and mesa? I mean, my understanding is that the nvidia blob is very tied to the X11 architecture and it does bypass a lot of things that the kernel provides (DRM, etc).

          So wouldn't it be easier for them to just work on nouveau instead of having to port the whole blob to another windowing system? Is that even possible with Wayland?
          I would say it's actually the opposite of what you write here. That because nvidia bypasses parts of the usual infrastructure, they are *not* tied to a specific architecture. They have their own thing, and they can adapt it to whatever. The whole driver is an adaptation from Windows to Linux, for example. But for now, there's just no incentive to adapt to anything other than X. Why should they, the Wayland protocol isn't even finished yet, and what's already there is subject to change until 1.0 is released, and even then there will probably still be changes.

          Originally posted by asdx
          Why can't we just forget about nvidia and focus on building Wayland and make it the best it can be?
          Wait, wait, are you saying here that Wayland devs are pandering to Nvidia, and that if they didn't, they'd be a lot further along? Huh?? You are aware that Weston, the reference compositor, only works on KMS/DRI2, right? At least I think that's still the case.
          So what makes you think they *aren't* doing what you say here, what makes you think they aren't making Wayland the best it can be? The Wayland protocol itself doesn't care how the mode is set, just that it is set, so implementations can very well work on something other than KMS. But that's not pandering to Nvidia, that's just plain good sense. If you think Nvidia is holding back development of Wayland, that's just dumb.

          Basically, wake up and realize that there is a real world out there, outside of your idealistic and naive views, and that this real world has real needs that have to be met, no matter how much you're saying "just get rid of X already". Like I said, why haven't you done so yet on your machine?

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          • #45
            VNC

            I hope they fix the problem with Unity 3d windows not redrawing over VNC first.

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            • #46
              Long live XFCE! (Or Xubuntu for that matter).

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              • #47
                LOOOOOOOL, you actually took that comment seriously? Dude, use your brain! I mean, did you really think developers are going "oh, we could port our DE now, but we aren't bothering because no nvidia blob"?

                Maybe this is a bit rude (then again, it's nothing compared to your colorful expressions towards the devs), but really, I can't help but just LOOOOOOL. Ah well, you're young, hopefully you'll learn.

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                • #48
                  Originally posted by russofris View Post
                  Michael,

                  We know you're capable of words with greater depth and less ambiguity than "good" and "bad". You might want to invest a larger portion of your time writing your articles. Here's an example of a 5 minute investment in that line:



                  Not only did I avoid the words "good" and "bad", I correctly avoided the missing "is" in the second half of your sentence. I still fail, because I didn't take the time to remove the first instance of "to be/is". After reading my version, the reader is reminded of what LLVMPIPE is, that only 3D game performance is insufficient, and that the composited desktops need to be OpenGL accelerated for LLVMPIPE to come into play. Yes, writing is hard. It gets easier as you do more of it, it comes out better when you spend a couple minutes figuring out what you're trying to say.

                  Asking from my own experience, have you considered an editor?

                  F
                  You only added more words, no more content. The way as it is , is better.

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                  • #49
                    So if they would have invested just a tiny little bit of manpower and contributed to LLVMPipe, they could have avoided development of Unity2D alltogether.

                    However, contributing to other open-source projects would help competiting distributions too, so it seems Canocial tries to avoid it at any cost.

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