Hi, I just have to post my 2 cents somewhere!
I'm not a major Linux user, I have a dual boot system that goes to
Windows XP automatically, but have been following Ubuntu since 9.10,
thinking my next PC may be primarily Ubuntu, so I'm something of an
eternal newbie.
Just upgraded to 11.04, and have suddenly become passionate about
Ubuntu. And I passionately dislike Unity! let me explain why.
First of all, as a newbie-ish sort of user, I really liked all those
drop-down menus, because I could just browse thorough all the programs -
hey, there is a photo manager, and a music player cool! and Oh wow
check out this disk partition manger in System Admin! Now, I have to
know if something is there before I can find it, and how to spell it's
name. If there is a better way to do this than that search menu thing
in the top corner, I didn't see in after a half hour with unity.
Psychologically, I really see my computer OS as a DESKTOP, with each
program running as a separate item on the desktop, like every window is
a separate piece of paper I can shuffle around, while the desktop it's
self remains constant. It just makes sense to me have the control menus
attached to the windows, those windows are physical OBJECTS to me. And
having OS-wide control/task bars across the bottom (And top and sides)
at all times is NICE. To continue the analogy, it's like having the
desk drawer I can open and pull out my calculator or notepad, no matter
what is going on with the desktop.
When I opened Firefox in Unity, the application took over the entire
screen, no window edges to manipulate, and no indication of what else
was going on with my computer. I had opened Firefox to look up commands
to configure grub so I had to open the terminal as well. (good thing I
remembered enough to search for terminal) And here is the real
kicker, probably about 80% of the work I do on a computer involves
having two or more applications or windows open, and transcribing data
from one place to the other, like looking up a command line in my
browser and then running it in the terminal. When using this unity
interface I sent my mouse over to the left side and hovered, and waited
for the tab thing to appear and then click on the terminal tab. But
here's the thing, sometimes I hovered the mouse, and nothing happened!
Not a huge deal, I bounced it and the tab eventually came back, I get
it, the computer was busy or something, but I want to emphasize the
psychological aspect of this. When I have a task bar with window tabs,
and I click on a new window, sometimes nothing happens, the computer is
thinking or something is hanging or whatever, but I feel in control,
because I know I told the computer what to do next. When I hover the
mouse over where a menu should appear, but nothing happens, I don't feel
in control, the computer is in control.
I suppose I could eventually re-train myself to get used to some of
this, but I don't want to, I've been using a virtual desktop for 20
years and it's great. I usually have a pdf reader, a spreadsheet, a
writer, a citation manager, and a web browser open at the same time and
flip between them as I work.
Basically Unity makes me feel confused (can't find anything by browsing
menus), irritated (have to go to that hover-tab every time I want to
switch windows, and heaven help me If I need to make fine adjustments to
something in a document on the left hand side of the screen) and
helpless (I tell the COMPUTER what to do, not the other way around).
Not a good feeling. This interface WOULD be good for a tablet where you
can't have more than one app running at a time away, and isn't doing
real work, but for a workhorse desktop it feels awful.
Sure, I suspect there are ways to re-configure everything back to
something that makes more sense to me, but this is my 1st impression
after 30-40 min, and you're going to make me spend an hour of my time
setting it up correctly. I have to say, if 11.4 was my first exposure
to Ubuntu I might very well use that hour to uninstall
Hope the future has a more intuitive user interface, if you ask me you
tried to fix something that wasn't broke.
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You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/648180
Title:
Unity is not an adequate replacement for Gnome2 (and sucks a little
bit less then it used to)
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