A small review of Unity in Ubuntu 11.10
This is what they, at Ubuntu, have to say themselves about Unity:
Founded in 2010, the Unity project started by Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical has gone on to deliver a consistent user experience for desktop and netbook users alike. Putting great design at the heart of the project, Unity and its technologies such as Application indicators, System indicators, and Notify OSD, have strived to solve common problems in the Free Software desktop while optimizing the experience for touch, consistency and collaboration.
Ubuntu Unity interface
I used Unity for a couple of days in the past (when it was first introduced). I had a couple of issues with it back then:
- With 2 screens the Unity bar would be on the left (on the extended screen) even if there was no extended screen attached (but configured)
- I kept loosing things, active windows were harder to spot, sub windows even harder to get to (because they’re grouped into the main application)
- Applications were harder to get to
- Menu’s in applications were in the top left corner (in the top bar) even for windowed applications like a messenger client. (including the minimize / maximize / restore/ close)
All in all i went back to Gnome, which in that version was still build in and an option to choose when you logged in.
Now fast-forward to the Ubuntu 11.10 update. I no longer had the option to choose Gnome, crap now what? Well they surely made a lot of progress on Unity between when I first tested it and now, right? I figured I would give it a fair chance before I would do anything about it. So I tried it, the Unity bar was on my laptop screen! nice. However, I then figured out my second screen was no longer configured. Doh! I re-configured a second screen but didn’t hook one up, and sure enough, the bar disappeared off my screen.
So a list of issues:
- With 2 screens the Unity bar would be on the left (on the extended screen) even if there was no extended screen attached (but configured)
- I kept loosing things, active windows were harder to spot, sub windows even harder to get to (because they’re grouped into the main application)
- Applications were harder to get to
- Menu’s in applications were in the top left corner (in the top bar) even for windowed applications like a messenger client. (including the minimize / maximize / restore/ close)
But wait, doesn’t that list look a lot like the previous one? Yes, it does! It seems like not even 1 thing changed in all that time that I didn’t use it. It still goes against everything it stands for. This interface was suppose to be simpler, nicer to use, and just plain better. Well, I say, they failed!
It’s not user friendly (everything but!), it requires more mouse clicks to find things, not less. It works less smooth (the switching of virtual workplaces in Unity is laggy, it’s fine in Gnome) and overall, it’s more of a annoyance then anything else.
So I offer you a solution to get Gnome back:
sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback
Tadaa! you can use Gnome again (select it when you log in). Another solution would be to install Linux Mint (here) This is a sort of fork of Ubuntu with their own spin on the user interface. It looks pretty good and works pretty good.