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0 pointsbarrkel13y ago0 comments

I have to use Ubuntu at work, and Unity took a lot of customization to be workable.

Compiz regularly crashes, but thankfully it automatically restarts. Now I don't need to panic when the whole screen stops updating.

The "snap" window dragging feature is broken in the presence of multiple monitors; as you drag the mouse across the monitor boundary, the mouse pointer becomes momentarily disconnected from the window location, so that you are moving the window as if by a long invisible stick, not by its original grab location.

The overlay scrollbars don't interact well with Eclipse; JUnit running tests outputs file paths that Eclipse turns into hyperlinks, and the hyperlink mouseover stops the scrollbar from from being triggered when the pointer approaches the child window border. The overlay scrollbar thing doesn't seem to have been fully thought through.

Gnome-terminal is one of the slowest terminals I've ever used; it would literally slow down development by blocking on log-verbose tests. I've gone back to my old stalwart of rxvt.

I don't understand the difference between Windows key and Alt key command prompts. I've given up trying to figure out how to register my various user-directory installed applications with the taskbar thing. So I've stopped using both, and now I start all my apps from the terminal, with shell scripts to redirect output if they are chatty.

The Alt-Tab task switcher is broken just like the OS X one is, switching between its concept of applications rather than top level windows. This means alt-tabbing between Eclipse and Firefox would bring the Downloads window to the fore, leaving the actual browser hidden behind maximized Eclipse. Usability disaster. With some difficulty and playing around with preference managers that come with warning labels, I've rebound the keys to a slightly more usable window switcher.

Oh, and the fun I had when I tried to bind Ctrl+Alt+F12 to a command in Eclipse; took me back decades to switching terminals with Alt+F keys.

In short, Ubuntu Unity is horrifically bad. Linux is completely inappropriate for the desktop, unless you are so inept you only use a browser (get an ipad instead), or you are sufficiently skilled you think nothing of switching window managers. The trough in the middle is very ill served.

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networked13y ago· 4 in thread

>Linux is completely inappropriate for the desktop, unless you are so inept you only use a browser (get an ipad instead), or you are sufficiently skilled you think nothing of switching window managers

I see how frustrating your experience with Unity was, and it certainly echoes my own, but does it warrant such a conclusion about Linux in general? For one thing, there are alternatives to Ubuntu on the desktop. For new users who are not completely helpless with computers Linux Mint LTS with MATE is likely a better choice than Ubuntu. MATE is very Windows-like; there's a lot that can be configured through the GUI in that DE and, FWIW, I have had a good amount of success converting Windows users to it.

As for those who are "so inept [they] only use a browser", well, not all of such users can afford an iPad, especially not in those parts of the world where they have both significantly higher prices on iPads and a lower average income than the US (e.g., Eastern Europe), and even Ubuntu with Unity delivers great value to them. It's an application that's not to be taken lightly, either.

Finally, Ubuntu makes it relatively easy to switch your the desktop environment. I admit I haven't seen any usability studies nor have I seen someone try to do it but I imagine a motivated middle-level user with sudo rights should be able to follow a tutorial on YouTube [1] on how to replace Unity with Cinnamon or MATE even if something more advanced replacing Ubuntu with Linux Mint is beyond him or her.

[1] Like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxJYiPFodlg and many others.

Edit: If you have access to gcc/g++ at work but not sudo rights (which is a very crappy situation to be in indeed) you can try to compile a different WM/DE in a local directory for your use and then create an ~/.xsession file to start it.

You must have done this already but for the benefit of whoever else might struggling with overlay scrollbars I'll note that you can disable them by putting

  export LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0

into ~/.xprofile.

barrkelOP13y ago

I already disabled the overlay scrollbar, it's trivial to fix with a Google search. None of this is hard for me, just enormously time consuming for all the broken things I need to fix or work around. I'm no neophyte; I've been using Linux since 1996, a copy of Red Hat 3.0.3 ("picasso", Wikipedia tells me) from a magazine cover CD.

The point is that Linux UIs are perpetually half-baked. I'm happiest interacting with Linux from Cygwin ssh. It's a fantastic command-line experience.

jebblue13y ago

>> The point is that Linux UIs are perpetually half-baked.

Even though I'm not a fan of Unity it's because I miss small thinks like being able to right click on a panel and add stuff or all the cool desktop themes which are missing in Unity.

Having said that, calling modern Linux desktops half-backed is either a clueless (and you make your case that you're not clueless) or possibly having an ulterior motives for drawing such a flawed conclusion. Modern Linux desktops are no more flawed than Windows.

Want to see a frustrating Windows UI bug? Put your start/task bar or whatever it's called at the top of the desktop. Then run Cygwin XWin and open a new X window. It will come up under the start bar/task bar. Several other programs do to. That bug has existed for like a decade from my recollection going back to at lest XP if not 2000.

Microsoft has like thousands of engineers, how hard would it be to fix that?

tga13y ago

> The point is that Linux UIs are perpetually half-baked.

I think this is touching on a good point, I would much enjoy seeing one desktop environment being kept stable in terms of UI and slowly polished to perfection, instead of continuously starting from scratch and inevitably coming up with something half-baked. And this is not specific to Linux, just look at the Windows 8 mess.

Apple comes closest, at least they keep the rough lines constant, but they have the bad habit of needlessly replacing parts of the UI and losing features along the way.

psionski13y ago

You might want to re-think the part about the fantastic command-line experience. You can't auto-complete command arguments, even if you get it working for some commands, it won't work with all of them (i.e. 3rd party tools). Of course, you can try to remember the single-letter shortcuts, but they are often illogical because the letter is already taken by some other option.

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