A Look Back At The Desktop & X.Org/Wayland/Mir Milestones Of Ubuntu

[caligula]

Again Ubuntu's NIH tech fails. They have a tremendous track record with NIH software failing over and over again.

[Gapil301]

I sincerely don't wish to offend those who like Unity, but never once in any of my experiences trying to get people to switch to Linux did anyone like it. In fact most people didn't even like the modern Gnome desktop.

Well the reason is quite obvious, it is unusable.

[Delgarde]

The simple fact is that when measuring UI efficiency the good old fashioned cascading menu popularized in Windows XP and 7 simply can't be beat. I can get to every program on my Xubuntu 16.04 or Windows 7 systems in four mouse clicks or less. But with the kindergarten style interfaces GUI efficiency can't even be measured in mouse clicks. It's measured in clicking, scrolling, and even typing text in boxes like good old DOS.

On the contrary - if I'm reaching for a mouse at all, efficiency is already wasted. On both Windows 7 and Gnome 3, I work exactly the same way - hit the Windows key, and type the first couple of letters of the program name. Far easier than taking hands off the keyboard to navigate menu hierarchies...

[DanLamb]

Ubuntu was good at testing + QA'ing + integrating Debian. The weren't good at writing their own software projects. Every major Ubuntu software project was a flop.

The Ubuntu phone thing sounded ridiculous. I can't imagine anyone wanting that. Unity 8 + Ubuntu Phone + Mir have all been delayed and delayed with no success in sight. I can't blame them for finally pulling the plug.

[muncrief]

On the contrary - if I'm reaching for a mouse at all, efficiency is already wasted. On both Windows 7 and Gnome 3, I work exactly the same way - hit the Windows key, and type the first couple of letters of the program name. Far easier than taking hands off the keyboard to navigate menu hierarchies...

Hmmm ... we must use our computers in completely different ways. I navigate solely with my mouse. But if you know the programs name, or can pick it from a list when searching by category or description, then typing text can work. It seems like a lot of effort to me when I can just click once or twice, or as I said at most four times, but it's certainly a good thing that everyone's not the same. And even better that Linux offers a wide enough variety of GUIs to suite most anyone

[sarfarazahmad]

Unity actually was good. It felt somehow, complete(just like Windows UI does,(there the UI feels nicely done) and polished. This coming from a guy who shares deep dislike for the dumb and resource hog that Gnome 3 is.
Unity7 was fast (well against Gnome3 at least). I hope Unity as a DE survives this catastrophe somehow, but I get that that is highly unlikely.

[Delgarde]

Hmmm ... we must use our computers in completely different ways. I navigate solely with my mouse. But if you know the programs name, or can pick it from a list when searching by category or description, then typing text can work. It seems like a lot of effort to me when I can just click once or twice, or as I said at most four times, but it's certainly a good thing that everyone's not the same. And even better that Linux offers a wide enough variety of GUIs to suite most anyone

You say "click one or twice or at most four times" - but that's not counting moving the mouse down to the start button, then up and through the menus. For me, that's *slow* - if I want to run (e.g) PuTTY to ssh onto a Linux server, it's just Start key, P, U, Enter. I can do that pretty much instantly, and my hands are still on the keyboard when the program opens, ready to start using it. A mouse is certainly superior for some tasks, but efficient desktop operation isn't one of them.

As such, I love Gnome 3, because it has better keyboard support than any other mainstream desktop... which is also why I think people are crazy when they describe it as a tablet-UI optimised for touch-screens.

[jacob]

Unity actually was good. It felt somehow, complete(just like Windows UI does,(there the UI feels nicely done) and polished. This coming from a guy who shares deep dislike for the dumb and resource hog that Gnome 3 is.
Unity7 was fast (well against Gnome3 at least). I hope Unity as a DE survives this catastrophe somehow, but I get that that is highly unlikely.

I think the best hope is if Gnome3 can be set up to recreate the best of the Unity7 experience. If some shell extensions to do that are missing, maybe Canonical could create them, it would be a good way to make amends

[Delgarde]

Unity actually was good. It felt somehow, complete(just like Windows UI does,(there the UI feels nicely done) and polished.

Early versions were... I was a heavy user of the Netbook Remix and then the first few Unity releases. But they lost the plot a bit around 2011 or so, prompting me to switch to Fedora and Gnome 3.

Funny enough, I think Gnome Shell stole a lot of good ideas from early Unity... if you look at the evolution of Shell designs prior to the 3.0 release, you can see the influence. But for me, Unity never really delivered on the early promise... I think they got a bit distracted by some of the convergence projects like the phones and TVs, and of course, by their insistence on re-inventing wheels. They tried to do too much at once, and ended up not really doing any of it well.

[sarmad]

My expectation is that we'll continue to have both Ubuntu and Ubuntu Gnome around. Ubuntu will be using Gnome with some extensions/modifications to make it look more like Unity so that the existing user base feel at home, and Ubuntu Gnome will continue to have vanilla Gnome.