Linux Mint: The new Ubuntu?

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/104581-linux-mint-the-new-ubuntu

by mrsebastian • 15 years ago

238 186 15 years ago

extremetech.com

dknight2• 15 years ago

http://intosimple.blogspot.com/2011/11/decline-of-ubuntu.htm...

Andrex2• 15 years ago

Link's broken, yo.

dknight2• 15 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3225931 The author was unfortunate to have his post deleted by mistake.

vdoma• 15 years ago

What's wrong with sticking to an older version of Ubuntu - 11.04 or earlier where you're not forced to use Unity? That's what I do. And I get a lot more work done without having to worry with the latest shiny new toys in town.

pekk8• 15 years ago

What's wrong with installing xfce? It's only an apt-get away.

SlipperySlope8• 15 years ago

But I've grown use to Gnome apps and applets. I especially like the multi-tabbed terminal.

metachris• 15 years ago

What's wrong with selecting "Gnome" as a desktop rather than Unity when logging in? It's literally 2 clicks to change.

SlipperySlope8• 15 years ago

Have you tried Ubuntu 11.10? Where are those 2 clicks?

gcp6• 15 years ago

...and you get something entirely broken! Really, have you tried your own advice?

mixmastamyk2• 15 years ago

Sounds good but it will lose support in a year or so. And you cant forget about new apps without difficulty.

SlipperySlope8• 15 years ago

Linux Mint looks good for Linux developers who want a high-productivity environment based on Gnome & debian. Canonical is re-purposing Ubuntu for the casual, ease-of-use, mobile and tablet markets.

Its easy to understand why ... those markets are growing quickly. And Microsoft is going in the same direction with their Metro look-and-feel.

Alterlife4• 15 years ago

Linux Mint has put Google custom search into the distribution in order to raise revenue. It's in firefox both from the address bar, the search box, and in the quick search from the 'start' menu. It's very annoying, and it isn't just a matter of opting out. Mint doesn't support an easy way to remove it from all three locations without getting technical.

I used mint for a couple of months, the custom search engine came back every time I updated a browser, and it was very annoying to reset settings. It was a deal breaker for me.

SlipperySlope8• 15 years ago

What about if Google Chrome is one's preferred browser and Google search is one's preferred search engine. Would Mint's custom search still be as annoying?

Alterlife4• 15 years ago

Google chrome starts with Mint's custom search engine as well. And every time you update Chrome, the search engine gets defaulted to google custom search.

The problem isn't so much Google. I like Google, but the custom search is not as good as vanilla Google. Currency conversion doesn't work, the calculator doesn't work, google maps doesn't return it's places on top of the results... non of Google's enhanced features are functional.

There's a quick search from the start menu which uses custom search as well, and this seems impossible to change.

wx77• 15 years ago

This was my main dealbreaker as well and it was so annoying, especially considering how bad the google results look with the custom search.

dchest• 15 years ago

Also, this is absolutely unacceptable:

Our goal is to give users a good search experience while funding ourselves by receiving a share of this income. Search engines who do not share the income generated by our users, are removed from Linux Mint and might get their ads blocked.

http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1851

Alterlife4• 15 years ago

> Search engines who do not share the income generated by our users, are removed from Linux Mint and might get their ads blocked.

Wow, that is insane... With that sort of mentality, the next logical step is to gain market monopoly, pre-install a version of adblock with custom filters, and start charging the entire Internet to show ads.

sixtofour5• 15 years ago

"In Linux Mint 12 and upcoming releases we’re hoping to provide users with the following commercial search engines: Ask.com, Google, Amazon, eBay, and the non-commercial Wikipedia."

And I was all set to install Mint tonight.

I don't begrudge them the right to manage their distro how they want, but I really hate a distro messing with my browser and search like that.

So no, I guess.

Damn.

Indyan• 15 years ago

Why is this so unacceptable? Browsers like Opera and Firefox also have deals with Google, Bing etc. for revenue sharing.

nassosdim• 15 years ago

I tested the Mint 12 yesterday and I think that they use duckduckgo for default search engine in firefox, which surprised me.

w1ntermute2• 15 years ago

For those who don't want to shift to a new distro, Xubuntu is a great option. It's lightweight without losing any of the features you've come to expect from a fully-featured DE.

And best of all, it's not going to pull the UI rug out from under you at a moment's notice.

middus• 15 years ago

Why switch to XFCE? Can't you just install Gnome?

bretthoerner2• 15 years ago

Most people dislike Gnome 3 as much as Unity.

udp3• 15 years ago

> And best of all, it's not going to pull the UI rug out from under you at a moment's notice.

SlipperySlope8• 15 years ago

Sure on Ubuntu 11.10 I installed Gnome 2.2 (see below comment for correction) as follows. This may not be possible on the next Ubuntu release. That's why I am migrating to Mint.

How to install gnome-classic on Ubuntu 11.10

# apt-get install gnome-session-fallback

# cd /etc/lightdm # gedit lightdm.conf change user-session=gnome-classic

hold down the alt key when right clicking the menu bar to add frequency and system monitor applets.

Gormo4• 15 years ago

Gnome 3? Not if you do want incremental improvements to your desktop environment but don't want a fundamental paradigm shift from installing the latest updates. If MATE takes off, maybe that will be a viable alternative.

pekk8• 15 years ago

You can just apt-get install xubuntu-desktop. No need to reinstall everything (what a pain that would be). You can just install the xfce-* packages if you want to be more specific.

The only reason I don't use unity is that it doesn't handle multiple monitors correctly on my desktop. Otherwise, I find it satisfactory. I approve of a new design which tries to keep clutter off my screen and tries to be keyboard-driven, and I approve of compiz

w1ntermute2• 15 years ago

> You can just apt-get install xubuntu-desktop. No need to reinstall everything

Yeah, that's what I meant - you don't have to switch distros, which necessitates a reinstall.

pge• 15 years ago

Lubuntu is also a great option and lighter weight than xubuntu. I just switched from ubuntu to lubuntu and am happy with the switch.

kokey• 15 years ago

It reminds me of the die-hard KDE users and Kubuntu. I think Canonical did well with the creation of Ubuntu, which made it possible to throw a Linux desktop at a newbie user for the first time. From the sounds of it, Unity hasn't lost that angle. Since it's actively looking at tablets, I think they are here to stay. With tablet hardware getting more powerful, it could be surviving contender to iOS and Android.

gks2• 15 years ago

Extremely doubtful that we'll see Ubuntu as a contender to iOS and Android.

If you're going to run linux on a tablet-sized device, why not just use Android? It has an existing application store(s), and more importantly an existing userbase.

Look at WebOS, if there's any competition out there to compete with Android or iOS WebOS would be the best option. From everything I've seen and heard it is quite fantastic. If not slightly buggy and a little slow. It wasn't executed well by HP or Palm but there's obvious potential.

I figure, if Palm and HP can't compete with Android and iOS, there's no way Ubuntu is going to do it.

I'll happily be proven wrong if they do, but I just can't see it.

pekk8• 15 years ago

Android is 'built on' Linux but it doesn't expose Linux to users in any remotely meaningful way (contrast, for example, with Maemo).

I agree with you that it's doubtful, but if Ubuntu doesn't do it then I just don't think it can be done - Fedora and Debian aren't even going to try and most other distros don't even have the resources to start.

SlipperySlope8• 15 years ago

In my opinion its a gamble by Canonical. Patent royalty fees level the mobile and tablet playing field. Why would any hardware manufacturer use Unity/Ubuntu when they could either use Android from Google, or fork the code base like Amazon and the Chinese are doing. Likewise Microsoft will likely subsidize manufacturers to use their Metro OS, which Canonical cannot match.

A key is how to monetize content delivery and search results. I don't see what Unity/Ubuntu adds that iOS and Android don't already have

pekk8• 15 years ago

One thing Linux has is that it lets the user control and customize their system, and it lets an ecosystem develop where new system behavior can be created.

Not present on Android and certainly not on iOS.

But you probably don't value that if your concern is how to monetize content delivery.

mbq2• 15 years ago

It seems that nothing made more for the spread of minor linux distros than the introduction of Gnome 3...

DanBC6• 15 years ago

... and they knew it was going to happen, because of the annoyance that KDE caused when they went to KDE 4.0, and the number of people that moved from KDE to other desktop environments.

Gentle iteration (改善) is fine, and complete overhaul is fine, but the combination of killing off the old version and introduction of workflow-breaking new versions; with a supposedly community driven project ignoring many users has been very frustrating for some users.

nicwest2• 15 years ago

As a fairly recent main machine ubuntu convert (6 months or so), I'm actually a fan of unity. Like everyone I hated it at first, but now that I have got used to it I prefer it to regular gnome stuff.

I agree however that 11.10 has been a nightmare as many useful (but not hardcore) features have been removed from the UI of many packages for reasons such as "casual users are unlikely to need this". This is the problem that is likely to get me looking else where for distr.

pekk8• 15 years ago

I spend most of my time in a terminal and I thought Gnome 2 was a mess and was never totally happy with it. I don't think 11.10 has been a nightmare at all, I have found it to be an improvement on 11.04, where most of the 'removals' you cite actually occurred.

I originally started using Ubuntu for the driver support (after a while you want to work rather than compiling everything and editing files in /etc, which means you either roll your own de facto distro or you switch to something which has an 'out of the box' workability).

gerggerg• 15 years ago

Canonical is genuinely trying to make linux the most user friendly it's ever been and make it ready for real mass adoption. It's not going to be easy and not everyone is going to like every change but you can't get so down on them for trying so hard.

Saying the solution is to go backwards is the same as telling canonical to just stop trying all together.

There's no point in stagnating and sticking with gnome. New users aren't going to switch to ubuntu because there's a start(or applications) menu. Canonical has to genuinely create a usable, unique user experience that ubuntu can call its own. It's not there yet, everyone knows. But saying people should just switch to something else and poo-pooing all over canonical isn't going to help make (desktop, mass user facing)linux the best it can be.

If you really care, get involved. Go to askubuntu.com and answer some questions. Make blog posts that illustrate how you'd improve unity. Write some code. Ubuntu is foss. Canonical neither charges for it nor sells hardware, and I'd say they're doing pretty good in spite.

All that being said; you can install gnome in ubuntu 11.10. You don't have to use unity.

billpatrianakos2• 15 years ago

Agreed. I'd say most regular folk will just get used to it and enjoy it like they do any other system they use.

For the rest of us (power users and coders) we're fortunate enough to know how to replace Unity or improve it. Canonical has a plan and they're sticking to it. They probably know that the value these changes will make in the future are worth disappointing the people complaining. You have to make choices as a developer and sometimes it's better to make a chunk of people unhappy than to bend to their will and dilute the value of your product's future. If they didn't stand strong on this they may very well end up stuck working on these little complaints instead of focusing on the bigger picture and making the system far better, far faster.

thwarted• 15 years ago

New users aren't going to switch to ubuntu because there's a start(or applications) menu.

Perhaps, but one of the traditional excuses new users have given for not switching, or switching back after trying, is that Linux desktops are too different, even though they've traditionally not been all that different. Creating something unique, compared to tools users have used in the past, like Windows, isn't going to make people immediately productive. And being immediately productive is how the desktop UI/UX enters the background and becomes a facilitator rather than something that the user struggles with.

sixtofour5• 15 years ago

"being immediately productive is how the desktop UI/UX enters the background and becomes a facilitator rather than something that the user struggles with."

Yes, exactly. I want my interaction with the desktop to be like that with a prostitute: minimal, direct, clear, and without my having to know much at all about the other party. I don't want to have to beg and plead for the ability to alter the panel once a year on special occasions.

LarrySDonald• 15 years ago

Seconded. I showed a guy Ubuntu a bit back and it is now on his map and being used (not as primary, but it may be heading that way) because it has a start menu. He knows a tiny bit of linux (more like generic nix) and has interacted with various server solutions for fifteen years or so, but it's kind of "that thing you have to deal with" and most of the interaction involves calling me. That's ok, I'm mostly in charge of that. But Ubuntu now.. it has a start menu. And, like, through it you can find things. And they look familiar. Not all the way, but kinda. You can click them and they do stuff. He's actually finally getting into it a bit. He really, absurd as it may sound, would never have gotten anywhere if it looked exactly* like now, except with no start menu.

angersock• 15 years ago

All that being said; you can install gnome in ubuntu 11.10. You don't have to use unity.

Or, even more simply, we can install Mint. :)

pekk8• 15 years ago

I felt that Mint's defaults were the problem rather than the solution, but personal tastes do vary.

Is it really that hard to run 'sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop'? Am I missing something here?

gcp6• 15 years ago

All that being said; you can install gnome in ubuntu 11.10. You don't have to use unity.

If it were this easy, nobody would be complaining. But as far as I can tell, Gnome Classic (without HW accel) is broken by default on Ubuntu 11.10, with the default Gnome Panel being entirely messed up.

This wasn't the case in 11.04, which had a great fallback that I still use daily, and I think it's the reason the Unity complaints are getting louder: there's no longer a real alternative to it in 11.10. At least not from Canonical.

ianb• 15 years ago

If you install gnome-shell, everything works quite well.

mindslight2• 15 years ago

The problem, like everything Ubuntu, is that it may be 'user friendly' when everything works perfectly, but when you want to do something different or something fails, it's anything but. You're left fighting multiple levels of indirection, trying to figure out what the system is actually doing so you can fix it. Much of the indirection comes from Debian, but it seems Ubuntu finds a single use-case, and then builds more indirection on top of the Debian indirection.

Needing to download 5GB of intermediate packages to go from karmic -> oneiric one release at a time (way to ruin apt-get, guys), a weekend fighting remotely with what turned out to be nouveau (which given its hard locking a fresh install, shouldn't even be enabled by default), and Unity tonedeafness have signalled to me that it's time to move on.

I'm giving Arch a try, and it's refreshing that I can just edit /boot/grub/menu.lst without having to figure out the abstraction built on top to do things the "right way" (and avoid being overwritten). However, if Arch doesn't work out, I'm settled on straight up Debian. At least with Debian, the indirections actually get me something.

TylerE2• 15 years ago

I've been running Arch on a vps for a few months and I really like it. It feels like a more modern slackware + good package management. Very solid, and it doesn't pointlessly deviate from the standard way of doing things.

xyzzyz• 15 years ago

Obviously, you're not the target user of Ubuntu, so there's no point in complaining. Ubuntu is not meant for people who want to edit grub/menu.lst by hand. There are plenty of other distributions for that.

DanBC6• 15 years ago

> If you really care, get involved.

There's little chance to get involved with Unity. Shuttleworth has made it clear that he's playing his benevolent dictator card.

> Canonical is genuinely trying to make linux the most user friendly it's ever been and make it ready for real mass adoption.

Maybe. Unity is probably great for touch screen interfaces. Similar layouts have been tried on small screens - netbooks for example.

I guess the people with 2 huge monitors (and all the Linux tinkering that involves) aren't the people who need Unity; and they're probably already using something else. (Something entirely keyboard driven or minimal or whatever.)

> Write some code.

Yes, "show me the code" is a powerful message. Even if there's little room for involvement in Unity there are many other window managers and desktop environments that'd welcome people getting involved; whether that's with bug-fixing or feature implementing or language translations or documentation.

jronkone2• 15 years ago

> Canonical is genuinely trying to make linux the most user friendly

Either you, Canonical, or both are on drugs.

> There's no point in stagnating and sticking with gnome.

If the options are "stagnating" with Gnome, or going over 9000 steps backwards with Unity, I'm choosing to stagnate.

> If you really care, get involved.

Why? What's the incentive for me? Canonical has continuously proven to not care about it's current users.

> Write some code. Ubuntu is foss.

FFS, this is the same old tired propaganda of FOSS-apologists, aren't you ashamed of regurgitating it?

FOSS is doomed since it doesn't match the economic realities of producing high-quality end-user software.

rjbond3rd• 15 years ago

> FOSS is doomed since it doesn't match the economic realities of producing high-quality end-user software.

Doomed how? There are more and more high-quality, end-user FOSS apps. The world does not revolve around Canonical and Ubuntu. Simply change distros, problem solved.

jiggy20119• 15 years ago

You think people will not switch to ubuntu because there is a "start" menu? Something that has been present in windows since 1995?

I've said this before, but there are bigger problems than the UI of the main desktop. I think gnome2 is a surprisingly usable desktop , I remember when it was an infact that it was slow and buggy but the hard work has paid off and overall it's one of my favorite UIs on any platform due to it's speed and flexibility.

I don't think learning gnome2 would be a big put off for many people anyway, since it's similar enough to Windows XP which more people have experience with than newer UIs anyway.

Imagine if the time and resources spent developing Unity had been spent instead on more thorough hardware testing, fixing remaining issues in gnome2 or creating new applications for users that would make a Linux desktop a compelling choice.

I don't see what unity does that helps me be able to recommend Ubuntu it to less technical family & friends.

wyclif• 15 years ago

Yep, for example my wife is a WinXP kind of girl and GNOME 2 is not a problem at all for her. Unity? That's a different thing altogether.

skeptical• 15 years ago

I would like to add. It's not only those who are not so tech savy that have problems. I DO NOT WANT to spend time learning how a desktop UI works. I have more interesting things to do than getting used to new UIs and whatnot when the ones I use already allow me as productive as I can with a UI.

Personally all I want is a taskbar, and an application launcher. I like the combination of openbox+tint but I a lot of the application I use depend on gnome libraries anyway.

Glossy chrome elements and wobbly windows are meaningless in terms of usability, that's my opinion. Why would we want to break something that works fine? Why trashing old but reliable technology?

I would guess it's more about shipping a fancy glossy looking product than anything else.

Peaker3• 15 years ago

I think that Canonical don't have the competence/resources to innovate a new GUI that is better than the existing ones.

The result is something that people hate, not because it is different, but because it is truly sub-par.

udp3• 15 years ago

> it’s Ubuntu without someone else telling you what to do or taking the OS into a direction that you’re unwilling to follow

Debian, anyone?

pekk8• 15 years ago

Or Fedora. Or if you like tweaking things, Arch or Gentoo. Or to become more knowledgeable, a BSD.

I think part of what is happening here is that some number of people who got started in Ubuntu, as their first non-Windows OS, take it for granted (thus get outraged at change) but now feel the 'growing pains' of someone who wants to get more technical. Since their heads aren't where they were when they started with Ubuntu, it isn't as suitable for them any more.

gcp6• 15 years ago

I switched to Ubuntu coming from Debian (and some Gentoo) because I was at the point where I needed my system to be productive instead of spending all day tweaking it.

Canonical has done great things to make Ubuntu Just Work. It works great out of the box under most virtualization solutions. It's also one of the only distros that has done away with most font bugs in Linux, for example. At least Linux Mint DE still has many of those - I tried it briefly after the Ubuntu 11.10 debacle.

The outrage is there because Canonical is actively breaking workflows that used to work, in other words, forcing users to spend time tweaking their system instead of being productive. That's a recipe for disaster and user outrage. Just ask the Firefox devs :-)

levesque2• 15 years ago

I'm going for Debian, will try gnome shell to see how far it has come since it's beginnings and once I find out it sucks (most likely outcome) I will install XFCE.

senko• 15 years ago

I'm writing this on Debian Sid (unstable), which as of few weeks ago has GNOME 3. It works pretty well - has some quirks and bugs, but overall I think it's a great improvement over GNOME2. (This is on my main work computer).

notatoad2• 15 years ago

the prevailing theme in most comments regarding mint i've seen on reddit and various blogs is that people like mint because it's easy. one of mint's big selling points is that they include the ubuntu-restricted-extras package by default, rather than making people install it.

if people can't install a single package, i don't think debian is for them.

sixtofour5• 15 years ago

And yet, Mint has a version that's directly downstream from Debian, not based on Ubuntu at all.

billpatrianakos2• 15 years ago

I primarily use OS X but just recently put Ununtu on a laptop. I was totally new to Limux and hated Unity. Unity would be absolutely awesome aside from 3 major flaws:

* The dock won't auto hide until hovered over like in OS X.

* I have to search for the app I want to use most of the time. There should just be a whole menu or list

* The dock should be able to be moved different areas of the screen.

I tried to get used to it but couldn't. I switched to ElementaryOS (loved it). Then I switched to Crunchbang which runs OpenBox and I've never looked back.

Ubuntu is amazing for newbies except for those 3 flaws. Its the only distro I've seen that could make a Windows or Mac user feel right at home.

nicwest2• 15 years ago

I have to search for the app I want to use most of the time. There should just be a whole menu or list

Not sure if this is how your supposed to do it, but I just search for the program once from the dash home, then once it's open I right click on the icon and click keep in launcher.

The dock should be able to be moved different areas of the screen.

did you get the Compiz Config settings manager (sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager)? It has a bunch of settings for the dock (it's not fantastic but it helps).

dan00• 15 years ago

I had a really nice config runnig Gnome2 + XMonad. I tried for hours to get this config running again nicely with Ubuntu 11.10, without much luck.

Then I stepped back and thought for what I'm needing or want a desktop: automounting + wifi.

For automounting I'm now starting 'thunar --daemon &' in my '.xsession', and for wifi and it's config I'm using 'wicd' and otherwise just XMonad.

joeyh• 15 years ago

A one-line change to xmonad.hs to make it use xfce instead of gnome, and I was on my way.

protomyth2• 15 years ago

"The desktop seems crowded, and yet on a large monitor there’s so much real estate to get to that left menu that it’s a chore; multi-monitor just never felt right either. To make matters worse, Canonical seemed to ignore all protest, which made users feel alienated and not cared about."

When I use OS X, I do miss the NeXTSTEP menu bar. I do wonder how much research is going into large screen UIs these days. It seems like we need someone to concentrate on the workstation again.

jinushaun• 15 years ago

What I find ironic is that the developers (and designers) that work on these OSes are most likely using a giant monitor or dual-monitoring, or both. However, they're still designing for a single 1024x768 monitor. WTF?

With Aero Snap in Win7 and multi-mon taskbar in Win8, MS seems to finally start supporting some of these features.

OSX is busted on the 27" iMac. I know because I own one. OSX needs Win7-style window docking so bad... I spend way too much time managing windows on the 27" iMac.

protomyth2• 15 years ago

The one good thing about Lion has been the mission control interface. I got it rigged on pushing the scroll wheel of my trackball and it keeps me out of the window managing business.

I really think going back to the NeXT window bar would fix a lot of my hatred.

hackoder• 15 years ago

I use awesome wm on my debian laptop, but I prefer Unity and Gnome Shell to the old gnome 2 or kde or xfce. They are really starting to come together as coherent interfaces instead of having mismatched UIs.

Some tweaking tools are around anyway and more will come with time. Gnome shell extensions are pretty good and they'll mature with time.

keithpeter8• 15 years ago

I suspect that users of tiling window managers are already quite a long way along the axis that Gnome appears to be moving along.

ChuckMcM2• 15 years ago

Personally I found it a bit snarky. By the same token I find that UI wars are the most vitriolic, after all they are the way you talk to the machine day in and day out. Screwing with that, screws with everything.

I have found Ubuntu's strategy interesting because it seemed clear that while KDE was following general guidelines around Microsoft OSes to be more accessible, and Gnome was following general guidelines around Apple OSes for similar reasons, Canonical sort of 'turned left' and drove off the road to a new place.

I remember distinctly when I left Sun and had to give up my Suntools interface for what became Windows98 at the time. And it was hokey and painful and it crashed a lot, except that over the weeks and months it crashed less and less, all without a software update :-). And I realized it was not so subtley training me not to use features that failed. Of course if you use something long enough you become reasonably facile with it. When I switched my desktop to Linux I was always more comfortable with KDE for that reason, the whole 'start' menu on the lower left, the control panel abstraction, the way things laid out on the screen.

When I went to Google I got a Macbook as my laptop choice, it was different, and I struggled at first, but once I became reasonably good at navigating around I found that I was also less annoyed with Gnome.

I think the Unity strategy at Canonical will pay them big dividends. Mostly because the Linux desktop market has been such a small part of the whole desktop market as to barely merit a full pixel width in a pie chart of desktop OSes. I believe that part of the reason for that is that the strategy of being 'kinda like' MacOS or Windows in the GUI has failed Linux badly when it comes to non-technical users. It failed them because there was neither the cohesion of implementation, nor the quality of testing, in either KDE or Gnome which would ever cause a non-technical user to think the GUI was 'better' than the one they left behind. Unity breaks that cycle because it doesn't work like the GUI you used to use. and so I think users cut it some slack, they realize they are in a 'new' place and learn how to do the things that they want to do in the way that this gui does them. And there isn't a mental comparison to their previous gui because it wasn't like this at all.

Assuming, and its a big assumption, that Canonical can execute on the Unity strategy well, it will continue to be the dominant Linux distro. Further it will increasingly leave behind every other distro, because while others may trade off market share amongst the technical users, where programmers slosh from one to the next, Unity will be gaining non-technical users who won't go anywhere else in the Linux space. Ever.

Terretta• 15 years ago

I really like your phrase "drove off the road to a new place".

jronkone2• 15 years ago

"off a cliff" isn't exactly a new place. Plenty of companies have been there, done that.

oacgnol• 15 years ago

While I agree that Unity is the right step for Canonical to take with regards to Ubuntu, my main gripe is that they've taken away the old GNOME UI and has left us with no (easy) way to bring it back. This was my experience as of 11.04.

larrik• 15 years ago

The old Gnome UI was about 2 clicks away on the login screen in 11.04 (unless you didn't have a password on your account, for some reason).

In 11.10, you can manually install gnome, and then you get gnome 3, which is certainly not what you wanted (and not necessarily an improvement over unity).

Zephyr314• 15 years ago

You can still use KDE with (K)ubuntu http://www.kubuntu.org/

I find that it is a stable solution and allows you to sidestep the Gnome/Unity wars.

jamesbritt• 15 years ago

And if KDE 4 isn't for you there's also Trinity's KDE 3.5 remix (my preference).

Lot's of options out there.

jolan• 15 years ago

The GNOME/KDE development model is pretty strange. They release a new major version that changes everything so they spend years fixing and stabilizing, and then they release another major version and repeat the process.

XFCE does a better job. "XFCE4" has been around for 7 years and they provide small improvements but don't make any radical changes.

Unity was pushed out before it was ready. I understand the need to get people using it but it's still not a passable desktop for many people and probably won't be for another couple of Ubuntu release cycles. Hopefully once it stabilizes they won't repeat the mistakes of GNOME/KDE and decide to change everything again.

wmf2• 15 years ago

They release a new major version that changes everything so they spend years fixing and stabilizing, and then they release another major version and repeat the process.

This is inevitable when you either set your sights too low (and after a while realize that your current architecture will never get you where you need to be) or develop too slowly (so by the time something is finished the market has moved on).

pyre2• 15 years ago

  > Unity was pushed out before it was ready.

I think that this is the real rub here.

flomo• 15 years ago

It's a common scenario in the open source world. Projects get bogged down in personality or leadership issues, and it's a lot more fun to write something new rather than maintain some other guy's code.

It's funny that problems that have bedeviled the Linux Desktop haven't really changed over the last 10 years. Poor release QA, "almost there" hardware support, painful transitions from X to Y. Nothing ever really stabilizes.

old-gregg• 15 years ago

Great comment. But allow me to disagree on comparing Gnome 2 to OSX. In my opinion old Gnome was exactly what you're talking about: "driving off the road". It wasn't like Windows or OSX, it was its own thing, the best desktop environment, in my opinion. The only element reminiscent of OSX (only visually, not functionally) perhaps was the menu at the top.

Unity, on the other hand, is the exact replica of Gnome 3, just not as polished graphically. They both have this weird "buaaa mode" where you're typing instead of clicking on a shortcut, they both destroy virtual desktop functionality and if anything, they're basically cloning OSX bad habits: instead of switching between windows on Alt+Tab they're now switching between apps (across virtual desktops!).

So I would suggest that the opposite is happening. Instead of staying in the "new place" Ubuntu is basically trying to get on the road and follow OSX.

Frankly, I'm not even sure it's possible to "drive off teh road to a new place" when it comes to desktop UX without a significant change in hardware: we're still using basically the same computers as we did in late 80s, even the screen real estate hasn't improved much.

DanBC6• 15 years ago

> Frankly, I'm not even sure it's possible to "drive off teh road to a new place" when it comes to desktop UX

Sure it is.

3d file managers[1] never took off. With todays hardware they'd be a lot nicer to use.

Users have been limited to quite small (sorry about my incorrect terminology here, I'm going to go read some man pages) total virtual screen size within which their windows were located. Now graphics cards, and system memory, are huge; this leads to possible radical new interfaces.

Imagine a "Zoomable UI" - documents open in their own full size window; any document opens in its own window tiled next to it; the user can zoom in as far as they like to do detail work, or out as far as they like to organise all these documents. Programs would open toolbars in their own windows. Any toolbar would be able to work on any document (because it's Unix, so all input and output is text, right?) - but the result wouldn't necessarily make any sense.

That's not particularly radical; tiling WMs exist already.

[1] (http://nooface.net/3dui.shtml) {my favourite is FSV.}

silon4• 15 years ago

>they're basically cloning OSX bad habits: instead of switching between windows on Alt+Tab they're now switching between apps (across virtual desktops!).

This is THE reason why I will not touch gnome-shell/unity. Too bad, because I could get used to most other stuff (except unity's menu bar on top) and I believe it has potential. Multiple displays and virtual deskops are a minor annoyance that can be improved.

Peaker3• 15 years ago

The problem is that Unity isn't just new -- it's just too buggy to use.

dylangs10302• 15 years ago

One of Paul's imperatives is to make a few people very happy rather than a lot of people kind of happy. That in mind, I think this is a good move for Canonical to move to Unity in 11.10. If people want the user-friendliness of GNOME, they can go to other linux distributions. But Canonical is doing well with open source technology - they've actually moved linux to something beyond the more savvy users and hackers - it's accessible to anyone used to Windows, with a bit of tweaking. I don't think they should stick with what's safe just because it's ubiquitous. They can't directly compete with Apple and Microsoft, so experimenting with what Linux can be specialized in or how to make it unique are worth disappointing a few users, I think.

(EDIT): I forgot to mention, I also don't think changing UI will affect Canonical because of past history with it. Facebook has a mass of complaints every time ot changes, but it's still growing every day. The two examples don't entirely match up, but I think the same will apply to Canonical.

DanBC6• 15 years ago

> They can't directly compete with Apple and Microsoft, so experimenting with what Linux can be specialized in or how to make it unique are worth disappointing a few users,

To me this feels a bit like what Opera has churned through - first you pay; then you pay to get rid of ads (or not); then it's got great CSS (which is rigidly compliant but makes some sites look weird); then it's free; then it's got versions for mobile technology; then it's got social stuff built in; etc etc.

Opera is a great browser. Unfortunately, not many people know that it's a great browser, because they use IE or Safari or Ff or Chrome.

Facebook does get a lot of criticism from users when it changes UI. I think the difference is that you only read that if you're already using Facebook. All the furore about $LATEST_CHANGE_IN_OS is written on blogs, and that gets read by people trying to decide whether they're going to go for some Linux distribution.

Many Linux distributions aren't very good at "elevator pitches", and most users are too lazy to plough through a bunch of wiki pages to find out just why Mandriva is different from Mageia.

gcp6• 15 years ago

Opera is a great browser. Unfortunately, not many people know that it's a great browser, because they use IE or Safari or Ff or Chrome.

Operas has very good mobile market share, i.e. where it matters now. They executed well on that space.

Whatever advantages they have on desktop (questionable IMHO) don't seem to be compelling or strong enough to win users over. And just like everyone else, they now have to fight the Google Chrome advertising juggernaut.

keithpeter8• 15 years ago

"it's accessible to anyone used to Windows, with a bit of tweaking."

What? Have you tried handing a laptop running Unity to someone used to Windows 7 and asking them to complete a few tasks?

I wish Ubuntu well. Wouldn't a customised GUI stack including Wayland and Unity be great? BUT like Windows it isn't!

dylangs10302• 15 years ago

Ah, you misunderstood me. I meant GNOME and pre-10.0 Ubuntu is accessible to native Windows users. Unity I admit requires more getting used to.

qdog• 15 years ago

Sounds like the forced search from Mint would be annoying.

The real problem I have with Unity is the lack of a Focus-Follows-Mouse setting. Possibly there is some hidden settings I could change, but that's a deal breaker. Even Windows7 has a registry setting for this I use.

I installed a different windows manager on 11.10 and login with the user default from the login screen, wasn't that big a deal. I load AfterStep, but it's kind of a cluster out of the box and I'm thinking of going to something else. Back in the day spending hours getting my window manager running exactly 'so' wasn't a big deal, but it's not so fun after a decade.

windsurfer• 15 years ago

I think people are looking at these operating systems the wrong way. In the past, Ubuntu was the easy to set up but hacker-friendly linux. Nowadays, they are transitioning to being more for OEMs and other devices. Linux Mint is simply coming in to fill the gap that Ubuntu is leaving as it transitions to other markets.

unalone• 15 years ago

Well-said!

The great thing about Linux – its killer feature compared to Windows or Mac – is that it's open-source, meaning each user is free to tweak it however they see fit. Ubuntu has been an interesting experiment in whether such an open-source system can also be designed to be competitive with a casual market; they're finding that the casual market's extremely difficult to penetrate, and so they're trying to innovate and make something genuinely appealing. I'm curious to see if they succeed or not, but it doesn't really matter either way, because Linux remains the turn-into-anything choice for people who need (or just want) more control over their computing environment.

As Ubuntu makes drastic changes, a new iteration of Linux becomes the go-to for people who want a conventional installation. Maybe it would have made more sense for Ubuntu to remain the conventional brand and for a newly-branded brand name to be the one fiddling with Unity, but Ubuntu's already got a name for itself and Shuttlesworth wants to take advantage of it. I think it's beautiful how Linux is capable of branching and splitting so painlessly. I don't use it myself, but that's okay – Linux doesn't need considerable market share to remain the valuable tool that it is.

keithpeter8• 15 years ago

"I think it's beautiful how Linux is capable of branching and splitting so painlessly."

You've nailed it for me with that quote. Thanks. Points up the difference between commercially packaged OS and a free (ish given Ubuntu's binary blobs) one.

RyanMcGreal2• 15 years ago

I still can't understand why Canonical doesn't just put out a Gubuntu similar to Kubuntu, Xubuntu etc. That way, they can keep pushing Unity forward while making it reasonably easy for uses who prefer Gnome to choose that option. I know it's possible to get gnome running (I did it on my netbook, which is running 11.10 - my desktop is still on 10.10), but the method feels unnecessarily hacky.

muuh-gnu2• 15 years ago

> I still can't understand why Canonical doesn't just put out a Gubuntu

Because they guessed that not many users would switch to Unity if they can keep using a Gnome-2-like. But they _want_ them to switch to Unity so they have to basically force them by forcibly removing the Gnome-2 option.

RyanMcGreal2• 15 years ago

I thought the idea of Unity was to attract new users with a simple interface optimized for non-power users. There's no reason why such an approach has to alienate existing users who like having a more expressive interface.

DanBC6• 15 years ago

Because Gnome is breaking traditional Gnome workflows; Gnome 2.xx is only going to work for so long before dependency hell sets in; and Gnome 3 has some of the same problems for users as Unity.

clark-kent3• 15 years ago

You could have tried Ubuntu classic.

roestava• 15 years ago

There has been a huge incentive for operating systems to try to adapt to the laptops and smaller form-factors distancing themselves from the age-old desktop form-factor. We all have been affected by that push at some point. Ubuntu has been no different.

Ubuntu more than any other has tried a bit of everything. I've long settled on the Xfce version called Xubuntu. So after trying Unity for a couple of hours after installing the recent Ubuntu I could just install "xubuntu-desktop" and be done with it, back to my trusted experience.

Interestingly, many users seem to settle on the default experience and then feel cheated when it changes to something they don't like. Users coming from Windows found home in some version of Ubuntu. Then felt cheated when it changed some more.

Experienced users have all of this baggage, all the learning they have undergone... But the Linux distros namely Ubuntu want to try to make something for people who have barely used a computer, pushed by partners like Dell and so on.

Windows too has changed a lot throughout versions. The lucky ones kept on using Windows XP.

imojito• 15 years ago

I like Unity and I consider it a cheapish version of OS X gross general style guidelines. I like full screen application idea, distraction free globalmenu. Hiding maximize/minimize/close controls as an option. MeMenu it's great. Non intrusive notifications. And so.

But left taskbar and being unable to integrate Docky with Compiz effects beauty it's a continuous pain

yaix• 15 years ago

I am glad about Unity and Gnome3, because it made me try the Xfce4-Desktop. Simple, fast, without many settings and other stuff that distracts from work. It's what Gnome should be according to the original philosophy of the Gnome project.

cletus• 15 years ago

It honestly boggles my mind that people can't read things like these and see that it's "choice" here that's why Linux on the desktop is doomed to be nothing more than a niche product for us geeks.

Desktops succeed because they're consistent. Possibly the most important thing is to have a consistent API. X at this point is venerable. Nascent Linux desktops come complete with cruft. Lots of cruft.

Honestly I can understand why Canonical wants to start again (Wayland, Unity, etc). Even more honestly, I just don't see adoption of any Linux desktop going much above 1%.

I have a 6 core Xeon with 24GB of RAM on my desktop and Ubuntu still feels sluggish. Go down to 2 cores and 4GB of RAM and I'd have a better experience with either OSX or Win7.

jonpaul• 15 years ago

Sincere meta question: do you have a SSD? I've found that any machine without a SSD feels sluggish after using a machine with one. I have a MBP with 8 GB ram and a 6 GB/s SATA III SSD... it screams past any machine that doesn't have a SSD.

drivebyacct22• 15 years ago

I don't ever want Linux on the desktop to succeed then if I have to sacrifice choice. I'm thrilled with Ubuntu every day, and if I had to sacrifice any of the flexibiltiy and customization I enjoy... well, I'd just use OS X.

Also, I have no freaking idea how your Ubuntu feels sluggish. Being in Ubuntu on my Quad/8GB is vastly faster than being in Windows.

keithpeter8• 15 years ago

cletus and drivebyacct2

I've discovered recently that its the video hardware and how that interacts with the precise (sic) choice of graphics driver that governs Unity speed.

cletus: you can test my hypothesis by logging in with the Unity 2d session and seeing if the UI becomes more responsive. Scaling (super-s) will be 'ragged' without 3d effects but should be faster.

drivebyacct2: what is your graphics card and what driver? I need a new desktop box soon myself...

I'm giving Unity a try and I have to admit its a little fussy and busy. My fallback is Debian with a tiling window manager (dwm) so I've been going in the 'menuless' direction for some time.

Legion• 15 years ago

It seems to me, though, that there's room for all the people interested in developing a "for everyone" UI to rally around a single project.

The people interested in making Unity/Gnome 3/etc aren't the people interested in making ratpoison.

I wish desktop Linux would look a lot more like Rails 3: a "sensible defaults" stack that is ready-made for picking up and using, but with the ability to easily swap out SuperFriendlyDesktop for MyBadassTilingWM, the same way I might swap out ActiveRecord for DataMapper.

Of course, every distro thinks they're that, or are trying to be that. The problem is that there's no agreement on those defaults, partly because none of them are good enough (partly because they're no agreement, and around and around we go...)

The problem we're seeing with fragmentation isn't choice per se, but rather what we're seeing proven over and over again is that everyone trying to create their own "friendly" desktops results in none of the projects getting enough traction to get over the hump.

plain0x• 15 years ago

I can understand why Microsoft wants to start again (Windows 8) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windows_8_Developer_Previe...

rookiejet222• 15 years ago

I am going to take a wild guess and say the sluggishness you are encountering is caused by the IO scheduler. It's the main cause of sluggishness on my desktop. In fact it's choking /right now/ as I type this due to a large file copy process in the background. BFQ, the other desktop scheduler for linux, is not included in the default kernel, and in my use has not fared any better.

rookiejet222• 15 years ago

I could not edit, so I will reply instead. If you work from the terminal I find that prefixing commands with a ``ionice'' priority settings helps keep IO hogs from slowing the desktop.

bascule• 15 years ago

Desktop Linux users are flocking to a distro that looks like an uglier version of Windows 2000?

"Tonight we're gonna GUI like it's 1999!"

I guess if they had any aesthetic sense, they'd probably be switching to OS X...

frou_dh• 15 years ago

I've seen worse (when I played around with Arch enough to realise that the Linux world + consistently good GUI is oil + water).

jiggy20119• 15 years ago

To be fair , whilst it's not the most attractive distro out there it does have allot of usability improvements over Windows 2000. For example the compiz grid which provides the 'aero snap' type functionality of windows 7 as well as decent application search as well as applets etc. I think Windows Vista is probably closer than Windows 2000.

clark-kent3• 15 years ago

Why not run Ubuntu classic on 11.10, which uses a very polished Gnome 2 shell?

mixmastamyk2• 15 years ago

It's a dead end.

DaNmarner• 15 years ago

I stared using Ubuntu as primary desktop system from 7.04 and switched to Arch+KDE when Unity came out as the default UI.

I don't have any issue with a distro refining the user experience, trying to appeal to a more general market. However, the initial Unity was such a half-assed, buggy release that my confidence in the maker of Ubuntu was destroyed.

Pissing off base/sophisticated users in attempt to attract doesn't look like a good omen for future success.

Meai• 15 years ago

Disclaimer: I like Linux. Also very speculative.

While people argue over distributions, Gnome 3 is the silent winner. You may not see it now, but in ~2 years the choice of distribution will be mostly meaningless. Because finally: Linux is going to be standardized through a unified interface - both beautiful and stable. In fact, in 2 years the only reason people will still be running other operating systems, is because those have the app marketplaces. Why is that? MacOS is already getting cheaper each version, they do not intend to make money with it anymore. It doesn't make sense either, nobody wants to pay more than once for something, and by that, I mean that people expect to run Windows or MacOS on their phones, tablets and everywhere without having to think about something as pesky as a licence. Windows will make money by selling applications and appliances in their Windows Store, it's the freemium model we know from games. In fact, they will make more money than before. Most people don't even know that Office is a paid application suite, now they actually get the opportunity to pay for it. This may seem small, almost idiotic to us programmers but people can't pay for something they don't see. So here we have it again: Linux is going to be behind, but not because it lacks functionality, ease of use or beauty. It will lack apps.

hs• 15 years ago

i'm actually switching to archlinux after using mint for a year or so

kleiba• 15 years ago

Canonical should just start a new parallel line, GNUbuntu for the GNOME desktop (not to be confused with anything GNU-related).

dbbo• 15 years ago

I just check the stats on DistroWatch: http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=popularity

It's based on pageviews as I recall, but that's a decent metric for getting a feel for a distro's "buzz". The data suggest that Mint started to surpass Ubuntu nearly 6 months ago-- not 2 like this article's author implied.

tzury• 15 years ago

I really don't get what is the big deal about not liking unity, this sound strange on "hacker news" site where people are using keyboards rather than mice most of their time.

From my opinion, the alt+tab functionality is an improvement, the app/docs search works great and the overall look and feel is smooth and fine.

I do not pay too much attention whether my active apps are represented as rectangles in a bottom bar or as lighting dots on a left bar.

In general, when preaching about the ability to choose it is also include the ability to choose not to use gnome and use something new.

Ubuntu/Canonical/Shuttleworth owes me nothing, seriously, they have been providing me the entire Ubuntu distro platform and infrastructure for free, and in the last year alone, I have installed Ubuntu on about 500 network appliances I provided to my customer.

I, and perhaps every Ubuntu other users, owe to "Ubuntu" more than Ubuntu owe to us, so all this rant and complaining gets to my ears as a spoiled child complaining to his mama.

Bottom line, my vim is the same vim, my chrome is the same chrome and my Konsole is the same, oh, sorry, it is a bit different and better now, because I set "Ubuntu Mono 11pt." as the default font.

jmoiron• 15 years ago

Except that lots of people don't agree with you. People have already been using gnome-do (quicksilver) for fast keyboard app launching for a few years; it's faster, more focused, and less keystrokes than the Unity bar. You also can't use it without installing some extra stuff and getting unity to give up its monopoly on the mod (win) key.

As for the alt+tab functionality.. well, if you are used to OSX and its third rate window management (can't move or resize windows without aiming at a tiny bar or handle?) and broken virtual desktop implementation, then maybe this kind of impoverished behavior is a welcome change. Since I have OSX experience, global menu's aren't a big problem for me, except when they are hidden by default and show up on different screens depending on window location. An interesting compromise for multi-monitor users, but mystery-meat menu decision is mind boggling.

For people who have now had ~16 years of window-centric keyboard navigation, having no good muscle-memory way to switch among 3 windows in 2 different applications is a nightmare. Having alt-tab slide your entire desktop over is just an insult on top of that injury. We use exact same set of tools (vim, chrome, and a terminal), but you must only ever use one window each; I can't imagine how you could tolerate the new app-switcher's behavior otherwise.

Your point about the only change being the font is also interesting, since in Ubuntu 11.10 you cannot change your fonts (or any colors on your theme, or gtk2 themes which a majority of apps will still use) without installing some third party tool with a terrible UI that looks worse than anything has since gnome-2 was released. The terminal is the only program that provides a UI for changing it.

In general, I agree with the posts in this thread that say you can massage the XFCE desktop into a worse version of what gnome-2 was about 3 years ago. After trying very hard to get along in Unity and 11.10 (gvim freezes for 30 seconds on start-up if you have installed foreign language packs, a bug fedora fixed about 9 months ago but persists in ubuntu), I've given up am using XFCE w/ Compiz (which doesn't work that great but is usable) until I find a weekend where I can ditch it for something else.

The part that's sad is that I did not find Gnome3 to be much better than Unity; it still has the same "enhanced" (broken) window/app collection which I find completely unsuitable for doing real work without encountering incredible friction. So for me (and probably others), Gnome3 has joined KDE4 as some unusable tangent, essentially killing off systems I was very happy and productive with. Gnome2 is a temporary fix; it's a dead end. XFCE still feels very spartan; in the past 3 years Gnome2 has got better and better and XFCE has barely moved. Hopefully, someone (maybe Mint, or maybe the ElementaryOS guys) will raid the remnants of Gnome2 come up with a system that has a living development path.

_grrr2• 15 years ago

Yesterday I upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10, having already regretted going from 10.10 to 11.04.

In 11.04 the Gnome fall back just about worked. In 11.10 it does not. As for Unity I can't tell whether it's working as intended or is buggy.

Every progressive update from 10.04 has gotten increasingly slow to boot and respond.

As we speak I'm preparing to install Mint, with a fall back to Ubuntu 10.10.

_grrr2• 15 years ago

Having now installed Mint 11 I can say it it's a real improvement over Ubuntu 11. Fast to load and shutdown, responsive, beautiful UI.

FuzzyDunlop• 15 years ago

While I can agree with the sentiment that Unity's not ready for prime-time (by a long shot), the last paragraph of the article identifies the silver lining:

If one distro makes a change you really dislike, there are plenty of others out there to try.

Changing OS is a pretty big deal but it's nowhere near as big a ballache as it used to be, and virtualisation and live CDs are brilliant ways to try before you buy, as it were.

jezclaremurugan• 15 years ago

"your activity on the web, every search query you make and product you buy will help fund our project." - http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1851

help fund your project and sell my soul too...

Linux Mint: The new Ubuntu?

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