The Unity user interface....

[poltr1]

In Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal), Canonical -- the makers/distributors/maintainers of Ubuntu Linux -- changed the default user interface from Gnome to Unity. And I thought, "Why? Why did they do this? I was used to Gnome, after using it for a few years. And now they make this major change. If something isn't broken, don't fix it!"

It's become a sore point un the Ubuntu community. Some have called it a bug and have submitted bug reports to that effect. But Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth isn't budging on this. He's committed Ubuntu to Unity; end of discussion.

I'm still running Maverick (10.10) on my desktop at home. I haven't upgraded it to Natty or Oneiric because of Unity.

At least I can still download Gnome from the software center, install it, and select it by clicking on the gear icon on the login screen.


So, what don't I like about Unity?
- First, I'm unfamiliar with it. I never heard of Unity until Natty was released.
- The scroll bar on the right hand side of a window is a little harder to use. It doesn't span the vertical length of the window. I need to move my mouse to the active section before the up and down arrows would appear for me to use and select.
- I have to go to the home button and type the name of a program I want to us, instead of having an icon or a drop-down menu for it.
- The launch bar, which contains icons for commonly-used applications, is on the left hand side of the screen. I can't move it to the bottom of my screen, so that it would more resemble MacOS.

And after using it for about a week, what do I like about Unity?
- It is easy to learn, and easy to use.
- I can type the first letter of a program name, and all the programs that begin with that letter will be displayed as icons. Example: if I want "terminal" (which gives me a bash shell), I can type "t" and the terminal program will show up. I can then click on the icon.
- I can put programs into the launchpad by first running the program, selecting the icon, and clicking on "Keep in launchpad".

Comments

[poltr1]

Heh. Did I ever mention the first time I tried a Mac in '85? I hated it. I was already used to the command line interface (from mainframe computing and the VAX), and thought that the Mac's graphical user interface got in the way of real computing.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

I need to apologize: I had forgotten that the laptop (with a processor north of 1GHz, but non-upgradable RAM of 384MB) actually has main line Ubuntu. I just researched how to install Flash Player onto the desktop, and then went and did it on the laptop, as well.

I understand what you mean about a GUI; I had been using PDP-10s for years before I ever saw one. Did get the hang of them fast, though. I have no desire to go back to Windows 3.1, however long I used it and however used to it I got.