Ask HN: Who still misses Unity Desktop Environment? Anyone making a fork?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17045589

by budhajeewa • 8 years ago

21 15 8 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Is there a fork that is mainstream enough?

lsh• 8 years ago

oh - I gave you a mistaken upvote. I thought you meant Enlightenment: https://www.enlightenment.org/

budhajeewa2• 8 years ago

Thanks anyway. :)

neilsimp1• 8 years ago

You mean for Ubuntu 18.04? It still comes with Unity, and you can switch to it at the login screen, can't you?

budhajeewa2• 8 years ago

It does come with Ubuntu, IIRC. But its a zombie product, as there isn't a team actively developing it.

I am looking for an active fork.

friesen• 8 years ago

It does not come installed with Ubuntu 18.04. You can install it from the repo though.

webgroot• 8 years ago

Only if you upgrade from 16.04. If it's a fresh OS install, then you have to install unity separately.

Animats• 8 years ago

I don't particularly care which one, but Ubuntu ought to stay with something. Moving around the window control buttons is bikeshedding.

baldfat• 8 years ago

I seriously don't see that happening with Unity. The community justly or unjustly voiced their dismay with the project, I vote unjustly. I don't see where Unity fits in with a world of KDE, Gnome and hundreds of other DEs.

Unity was made to unify people's experience with using it on a tablet, phone or desktop. It is pretty clear that the only thing left is desktop. I don't see what is unique that would compel a developer to continue another project when they create their own or join one of the bigger projects with an already established community.

Personally I love KDE and i3. I never use anything else for years because I don't have a problem I am hoping to solve through another project. What does Unity offer for a person to switch?

If you like to customize and have lots of options = KDE

If you like things to have less options and "just works" = Gnome

If you lie _____ and ____ = Unity

bryanlarsen• 8 years ago

The Ars Technica review stated "It's community supported and seems to be active so far."

hansjorg• 8 years ago

I miss it a bit, but the desktop environment scene is too fragmented.

GNOME Shell is pretty good, and hopefully it can get even better with contributions from Canonical and the larger Ubuntu community.

dgllghr• 8 years ago

I actually like Gnome Shell, but as soon as my computer is under moderate load, everything becomes laggy, including my mouse. This is a known issue, but the devs are not planning on fixing it until Gnome 4 (years from now)?

Granted, this only happens under Wayland, but I have a hidpi display on my laptop and Xorg doesn't support a different dpi for external monitors. So I'd much prefer to be able to use Wayland.

ghba66• 8 years ago

I tried the overlay for Gentoo and it didn’t work very well.

I also loved Unity and I’m very sad to see it go, but gnome 3 with a few extensions is a worthy replacement.

meribold• 8 years ago

I do. It's my favorite of the mainstream DEs. It doesn't waste much space, it looks good out of the box (in my opinion), and it's more stable and responsive than GNOME in my experience.

chasedehan• 8 years ago

I love Unity, but am still on 16.04 so haven't "missed it". I haven't found much love for any other DEs as they haven't been very polished.

newscracker• 8 years ago

I'm still on 16.04 with Unity. I switch between Unity and Xfce (mainly because the machine is old). I hope community support stays strong and addresses some shortcomings that have been around (I don't recall what they were, but there were some even in Ubuntu 16.04). I'm not a fan of the other interfaces being similar to Windows, and I like having a better experience right out-of-the-box.

If there were a way to donate money to directly help continue Unity development and maintenance, I'd seriously consider it.

Ask HN: Who still misses Unity Desktop Environment? Anyone making a fork?

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