Ubuntu Unity Existed Before The GNOME Shell?

[Awesomeness]

For the user, Unity existed before GNOME Shell.

?A preview of GNOME Shell is available in 2.28 and is available for download.?
September 24th 2009

https://help.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.28/index.html.en#rnlookingforward

[alexThunder]

It seems very clear to me. Introducing UNR to the discussion is what's muddying the water.

Oops, I'm sorry. How dare I bring in new points into a discussion. I didn't mean to disrupt a closed view.

Shell is also a simple, singular project with a code repo with clear commit dates in it. Which substantially predate Unity's. It is demonstrable that Shell was functional and recognizably Shell five months before Unity's first commit. To me, that's a pretty damn simple argument. It only gets messy when you start making this argument that Unity is somehow the same thing as UNR: that requires you to bring in questions of intent and meaning and blah blah. To turn the tables on you, you are the one who brought up the UNR connection, it is incumbent upon you to prove it. I don't actually have to sit here going through commit logs to try and prove Unity and UNR aren't the same thing, the burden is upon you, I'm just doing it because I'm insatiably curious.

Are we getting angry? You don't need to search for code when the evidence is already there and brought up multiple times now. You know, there's more to software engineering than just already having exisiting code

he says they "started" the Unity design process based on the "experience" of doing UNR. Note: experience, not code.

What's more important? Simple code or experienced developers able to write such a code? You seem to be a little shortsighted.

You're pulling a single word out of context. In context, I was clearly saying that I don't think it's a particularly difficult concept in this specific case.

And I thought we nearly got it. So, the concept is slippy as long you don't make your points there - then, of course, it's clear and a specific case. I see.

[Awesomeness]

"Unity is a combination of several years work. Inspired initially by the explosion of Linux on netbooks. "
That was in 2010.

If you look through the video, there are plenty of screenshots and references to UNR in there.

References to UNR do not make Unity based on UNR. Unity was written from scratch in 2010 but GNOME Shell's first tarball was made available in summer 2009: http://ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/GNOME/sour...me-shell/2.27/

And the use of big icons in UNR is the only similarity to GNOME Shell: http://webtrickz.com/download-ubuntu...r-eee-pc-free/

[AdamW]

I'm not getting angry, but you seem to have abandoned reasoned argumentation and started making snarky personal points, so maybe you are.

"What's more important? Simple code or experienced developers able to write such a code?"

I didn't say anything about 'importance'. We started with a massively simple question which you and others have successfully managed to obfuscate all to hell: which existed first, Unity or Shell?

They are software projects: lines of code. I don't know whether code or experienced developers are 'more important' (important to what? The Dow Jones? The price of fish?), but I sure know which one constitutes a codebase. GNOME Shell existed as a functional product at least as early as May 2009. Its codebase's existence clearly and inarguably traces to late 2008.

Unity's existence as a functional product cannot be proven any earlier than early 2010 (the first anyone outside of Canonical heard about it). Its codebase's existence cannot be traced to any earlier than 2009. This is very simple. We're not talking about who had developers thinking about UI designs or who wrote a netbook interface first. We're talking about the existence of the two projects called 'Unity' and 'Shell'. Unity is not UNR; that much is clearly demonstrated by looking at the damn code.

[duby229]

Not to mention this unprovable "who thought of it first" concept... Hell the gnome devs were discussing the future of metacity as early as mid 2007. I remember clearly conversations about how to make it work with a compositor. Whether it should be modular, or whether it should be monolithic. The idea's that eventually became gnome shell were being hashed out long before any code was written. (not that i'm defending gnome shell of course... I hate it.... but just arguing for the sake of honesty)

[alexThunder]

We started with a massively simple question which you and others have successfully managed to obfuscate all to hell: which existed first, Unity or Shell?

Obfuscated the slippy? Oh, my bad. I forgot, it's specific this time.

They are software projects: lines of code. I don't know whether code or experienced developers are 'more important' (important to what? The Dow Jones? The price of fish?),

The first question is pretty easy actually answers itself: Which of both actually creates the code? (That wasn't too hard, was it?).
The second question is even easier to answer: It's the fish.

Why are you so fixed on LoC? You know, when people tried to find good estimations for the costs of a software projects, they also came up with methods fixed on LoC. It didn't turn out to be so well. It was also tried to scale down dev time with pure man-power. Guess how that worked out.

And now think about, where would Unity have been (in terms of time), when there was no UNR before.

but I sure know which one constitutes a codebase. GNOME Shell existed as a functional product at least as early as May 2009. Its codebase's existence clearly and inarguably traces to late 2008.

Unity's existence as a functional product cannot be proven any earlier than early 2010 (the first anyone outside of Canonical heard about it). Its codebase's existence cannot be traced to any earlier than 2009. This is very simple. We're not talking about who had developers thinking about UI designs or who wrote a netbook interface first. We're talking about the existence of the two projects called 'Unity' and 'Shell'. Unity is not UNR; that much is clearly demonstrated by looking at the damn code.

We had that already. There is no need to repeat.

[AdamW]

Why are you so fixed on LoC?

Because we are discussing when two software projects existed. If we were discussing when exactly a car came into existence, we would go and look for a car rolling off the production lines, we would not start trying to divine when its designer first started thinking about a car that would look a bit like it.

If you want to know when a piece of software 'existed', go and look for the code. I don't see why you think this is a weird thing to do.

[Delgarde]

Because we are discussing when two software projects existed. If we were discussing when exactly a car came into existence, we would go and look for a car rolling off the production lines, we would not start trying to divine when its designer first started thinking about a car that would look a bit like it.

Adam, while the facts are in your favour, you're not helping yourself with that analogy. Didn't you already insist that release dates weren't important, that the only thing that mattered was when the project started?

[AdamW]

Adam, while the facts are in your favour, you're not helping yourself with that analogy. Didn't you already insist that release dates weren't important, that the only thing that mattered was when the project started?

Fair point, I should've remembered that car analogies only get you into trouble. I could edit to say "when the first test model rolled off the production line", though!

[YAFU]

I do not know if Unity was the first. But I think the precursors in Netbook interfaces for Linux were Ubuntu Netbook Remix and KDE Netbook Workspace. Maybe conceptually Shuttleworth has a point.
This I say when you consider that basically, Unity and GNOME Shell are interfaces for Netbooks (and Tablets)