Ubuntu To Abandon Unity 8, Switch Back To GNOME

[franglais125]

Exactly. Not many. Please show me how can I (switch between apps)/(launch an app) without mouse clicks or Alt-Tab iteration, but simply by pressing a fixed key binding associated with that app. In Unity: Super+Number. For example, Super+2 for Firefox, Super+7 for evince.

As another user already answered, dash-to-dock and dash-to-panel both have this feature.

[Mez']

Myself and the rest of the pro's ("we") will be using a grown up desktop.

I don't think I've ever read anything as stupid as this in my entire life. No argument, no solid ground, condescending crap, will to make others look like amateurs/kids, not constructive, not objective, subtracted-value to the debate.

This probably is the winner.

[leipero]

You can change all of those shortcuts in GNOME (at least for all of the features it has in common with Unity). And you can use extensions like Dash to Dock to have a Unity-like dock exposed all of the time and configure the right shortcuts for that as well.

I personally avoid dash-to-dock extension, isntead i use hide-dash-x, and then install plank and use my custom theme for it..., it's much faster, Dash to dock makes "running applications" closing and starting stutter from time to time on my machine.

[aht0]

ms is dead in phones. linux already won everywhere except desktop. so maybe it is time to work on desktop, ffs

You mean Android did? Since Android =/ GNU/Linux. Android is 'just' using heavily modified Linux kernel. "Stuff" around hacked kernel has nothing whatsoever to do with your average Linux. Might as well call out "BSD has won everywhere, except for desktops and phones" because of 3-4 consoles are using it (from Nintendo and Sony). Itäd be equally fanatic and demagogic.

Unity.. ton of wasted effort, money and time. Sad.

[STiAT]

This got to me as a little surprise.

I did see the point in Unity, but I more and more saw that a few elements which made unity good workflow whise have gone into Gnome as well. Gnome3 is mature, and it is a good product. Gnome3 matured a lot over the past years (while the first versions were a pain).

Personally, I've been using KDE since 1998, and recently switched to Budgie. It fits my needs for a good looking and easy desktop with just basic features nicely. I never had that complicated workflows so that I could have made use of all the features KDE has (activities, semantic desktop etc.). I basically was driving a ferrari with 15 miles per hour not making use of anything but the very basic features.

The best news out of this is that Mir will be gone.

[Vistaus]

You mean Android did? Since Android =/ GNU/Linux. Android is 'just' using heavily modified Linux kernel. "Stuff" around hacked kernel has nothing whatsoever to do with your average Linux. Might as well call out "BSD has won everywhere, except for desktops and phones" because of 3-4 consoles are using it (from Nintendo and Sony). Itäd be equally fanatic and demagogic.

Unity.. ton of wasted effort, money and time. Sad.

Actually, most of the servers around the world are running Linux. Therefore, it has beaten BSD. I'd say it's like this:

1 Linux (there are way more servers in the world then there are desktops and phones/tablets combined and at least 75% of them are running Linux)
2 Android (because of its huge mobile market share)
3 Windows (because of its huge desktop market share)
4 BSD (because of its huge console market share)
5 OS/2 (because a lot of ATM's around the world are still running OS/2, although slowly but surely they are starting to replace some of them)
6 iOS (because of its tablet market share)

[Vistaus]

Unity was confusing and unpleasant to use, disrupting traditional desktop metaphors and harming productivity. Gnome 3 is much the same. Change != improvement. Why re-invent the wheel? The future of the productive business desktop and technical workstation is something like MATE. We don't need a phone or tablet GUI on the desktop, we need a desktop that behaves like a desktop, exactly the way professional users expect it to. Want to develop funky bizarre new GUI's? Great, make them an optional add-on - not the default install.

Yeah right. Unity is a bizarre GUI? Well, then I guess NASA (in the States), the Gendarmerie (in France) and lots of hospitals, hackers and some other professional companies here in my country all have bizarre people working for them 'cause they do like Unity...

[cynical]

Eh, what? I'm not even a GNOME user, and this has nothing to do with jealousy. It has everything to do with fragmentation. Ubuntu is the most popular distribution, whether anyone wants it or not. Experimenting is fine and nice, but you don't experiment in what is effectively the ambassador of Linux to the outside world. If Canonical had continued the Ubuntu Netbook Remix with Unity, that would have been great! You can use Mir in it too, nobody will mind. Just don't put it all in the flagship Ubuntu itself, because by doing so, you are deceiving others about what is standard in GNU/Linux. Ubuntu is the main support target of most software and games, so basing it on technologies that are incompatible with all other distributions makes it harder for either developers to make it work elsewhere, or harder for users to run the software because the developers didn't care to use vendor-neutral technology.

That said, one good thing to come out of the whole Unity situation is libappindicator, which finally, finally killed those terrible X11 systray icons.

How do you think Canonical became the ambassador of Linux to the outside world? It was by doing things differently! The idea that Mir is what is going to really fragment Linux, as opposed to the multiple toolkits, DEs, filesystem conventions, package formats, etc, is just laughable. Did someone ask permission of all the other distributions before deciding to create Pulseaudio or SystemD? Nope. It was just done and they were adopted because they were better. Somehow, it's entirely permissible to do that when you are associated with Redhat/Fedora and you are considered 'standard GNU/Linux', but Canonical is just taking things too far. What is most amusing to me is how unaware you people are of the hypocrisy of your position.

If a smaller distribution wants to do something new, you don't care because they are irrelevant. Every major distro needs to follow the leaders though, or those 'precious resources' might be wasted. Haha, jesus, if Microsoft hadn't decided to turn Windows into a data harvesting platform, I would be sorely tempted to just abandon GNU/Linux entirely....

[Iksf]

I mean, the problem was just that they bit off more than they could chew, something everyone but they recognised pretty fast. I don't buy any arguments about Canonical not being allowed to trail-blaze, that's a horrific position imo. Just sucks that the most crucial Linux player made such a large error, definitely had a role in killing off any potential our platform had. Still, don't blame them for trying something new, just sucks it didn't pan out.

I think they overvalued this "convergence" idea too. Hardly alone there, Microsoft also being bitten for this. A lot of people recognise that an optimal UI for a desktop and an optimal UI for a phone aren't that similar. They'd rather have two distinct but functional UI's than a UI which is suboptimal for both. As for open source on phones, personally I don't feel there's a solution to the ISV problem so its ultimately pointless, other than for people who are fine with only niche FOSS apps.

[duby229]

Wow, Some of you are really pessimistic. I didn't expect that. My first thought was, "I guessed that years ago!". But some of you act like your first thought was, "This is the end!". Why?

EDIT: And calling Ubuntu the "ambassador" to linux is so misguided it's stupid. Ambassador my ass. They do almost everything independently of any other linux distribution. There are very, very few specific circumstances where their distro even remotely resembles other linux distributions, and they specifically try hard not to let those situations happen.