Linux General Questions

Citizen86 wrote:

I'm sure this has been discussed, but Ubuntu Unity. What's so bad about it?

The main practical issue that people seem to have with Unity, and with the GNOME 3 desktop as well, is its relative lack of configurability compared to the GNOME 2 desktop that Ubuntu had previously shipped as its default desktop. GNOME 2's UI was highly customisable, down to exactly how many panels appeared on screen, where they appeared, and what they contained (including "applets", little widget-like apps that ran entirely within panels -- most of the standard panel features were implemented as applets, and there were many more you could add, too).

A lot of the other complaints are more historical or political. Before Unity was even released, many people were annoyed that Canonical decided to work on its own desktop, instead of participating in GNOME 3's development (Unity still uses a lot of GNOME components, but I don't think Canonical contributes much to GNOME at all). It also had a lot of teething problems; Canonical made it the default desktop in Ubuntu before it was really ready, which annoyed even more people. More recently, Canonical has run in to controversy over its decision to send search queries to Amazon by default.

I'm predisposed to not like Unity due to some of those political reasons, but (largely because of those) I haven't really used it much, so I don't have much of an opinion on whether or not I like it, practically-speaking. If it works for you, though, great! Linux users do sometimes get a bit carried away with telling others what they should and shouldn't use, and while I think it's worth checking out other options, I don't think you should avoid something you like just because other people don't like it.

Unity is fine. It's great for a lot of people.

One of my biggest complaints is that the dock bar is not configurable to use the bottom of the screen. They're very dead set on it being on the side of the screen, with little regard to how much that sucks in a multi-monitor environment (now my dock is no longer up against a hard edge, but floating out in space on the edge between my center and left monitors).

It was definitely made the Ubuntu default well before it was ready. Kind of a chicken-and-egg thing, though, as being made the default really pushed development and bug reporting into gear. Unity wouldn't be as far along now if not for that.

The thing that drives me absolutely bats about Unity is the way the window controls just randomly move around. Sometimes they're on the window, sometimes they're in the bar.

The whole design of the system seems to be saving screen space, which I think is a fairly useless goal for a desktop machine.

Good feedback guys, it's true a lot of it is political. I heard a few crazy things this weekend at the Expo, the thing I most disagreed with was a presenter who was going to talk about free games on Linux, but started by talking about why we try to get Windows users to convert to Linux but keeping games. Ok, so maybe Wine isn't a great choice, or virtualization... but he continued by talking about how bad Steam is, because by purchasing software or games we're not supporting free and open source software.

Yeah, ok, indirectly I suppose you're correct. But come on, why does everything need to be open source and free? What is the opposition to paying people for their hard work? I posted an article on Twitter today about how free and open source does mean "free" as in speech, and that means choice. Don't call down evil upon others for choosing to purchase software or games.

/rant, and I know practically everyone would agree with me here, since, well, we all purchase games...

Malor wrote:

The thing that drives me absolutely bats about Unity is the way the window controls just randomly move around. Sometimes they're on the window, sometimes they're in the bar.

The whole design of the system seems to be saving screen space, which I think is a fairly useless goal for a desktop machine.

I could be wrong, but I think that's almost fully been fixed, IE. minimize, close is always on the left, and it's on the program window, UNLESS it's full-screen, then it's in the very top left of the top bar. And the options are always in the very top bar. There may be certain programs that haven't been updated to use this, but I don't recall seeing this in 12.04 or 12.10

I do find it funny though, I first installed Ubuntu in 2008, and soon after that they released Ubuntu Netbook Remix, which was the very first Unity. So in essence, it was created to use 100% of the screen. In fact, at the very beginning, there wasn't even an option to have a screen NOT be fullscreen, you needed to enable it via text editor if you wanted that option.

Pfft. UIs.

You are better men than I

But I'm trying. I bought this

Citizen86 wrote:

You are better men than I

But I'm trying. I bought this

It's a good way to start. I've heard the book is a great introduction.

athros wrote:
Bonus_Eruptus wrote:

Pfft. UIs.

Seriously. I don't get it either.

tmux, Mutt, Finch, Lynx, vim, ssh, Midnight Commander - everything I need in a day, no UI needed.

You know, if you were talking about Graphical UIs that would make sense. Unless you're running a fully automated system of course.

Scratched wrote:
athros wrote:
Bonus_Eruptus wrote:

Pfft. UIs.

Seriously. I don't get it either.

tmux, Mutt, Finch, Lynx, vim, ssh, Midnight Commander - everything I need in a day, no UI needed.

You know, if you were talking about Graphical UIs that would make sense. Unless you're running a fully automated system of course.

I missed a bloody G. I will edit. That should read: "everything I need in a day, no GUI needed."

*mutter*

Bonus_Eruptus wrote:

Pfft. UIs.

Seriously. I don't get it either.

tmux, Mutt, Finch, Lynx, vim, ssh, Midnight Commander - everything I need in a day, no GUI needed.

#Insert flippant remark about being happy to just not have to use Mac OS X

trueheart78 wrote:

#Insert flippant remark about being happy to just not have to use Mac OS X

Weird, you don't see half as many people complaining about Mac OS X. I'm just used to the Windows only complaints I guess.

On a side note, it makes me a little sad when anyone other than Apple tries to use the phrase "it just works". It annoys me when anyone says it, but even moreso when you're copying or trying to be as good as Apple, or whatever the reason is.

We just got done setting up a MacBook Pro for development. The simple fact of having to install Xcode just to be able to use HomeBrew is crazy enough (there's more than that, but I won't bore you). It then amazes even more me the amount of brokenness alone that people will put up with just to upgrade their OS to the newest release that Apple pushes out.

Dont get me wrong, I understand people's arguments (commercial applications not available on Linux, etc), I just don't agree with them. I'll take Linux with Windows in a VM before I would ever take Mac OS X.

Yeah, I've stayed back on the prior OS X release, because this one breaks so many things. They're going to stop supporting me soon, and I'm not sure what I'll do.

I like OS X, but I have come to hate Apple with a deep and abiding passion (which is a major change from before they shipped the iPhone, lemme tell ya). Even OS X is gradually being corrupted into something else.

I don't, though, mind installing XCode. A Mac, as it ships, is primarily a content-consumption device. XCode gives you a ton of dev utilities, and a huge amount of what I consider the basic Unix plumbing, so I think of it as an extra step in the OS installation process, not really as a separate thing.

It's not necessary to install all of XCode for Homebrew, either. The ~100MB "Command Line Tools" package is all that is needed.

That only came into existence around 10.6 or 10.7. Before that, the full XCode install was indeed necessary.

*Legion* wrote:

It's not necessary to install all of XCode for Homebrew, either. The ~100MB "Command Line Tools" package is all that is needed.

That only came into existence around 10.6 or 10.7. Before that, the full XCode install was indeed necessary.

Which is weird, because the recent walkthrough for setting up Homebrew (I think it was recent *shrugs*) talked about the full Xcode download. Live and learn, I guess. Glad I can finally get a compiler for less than 4GB though

As for Ubuntu...
I rather enjoy Unity, but that's just me: I'm weird (ask anyone). I've long since moved away from bars at the bottom of my screen for task switching. I much prefer a taskbar across the top (in Windows) or the Unity bar with multi-desktop support (love the 2x2 grid layout for them, works great for my day job).

With that being said, is there another window manager for Linux that gets rid of the pesky bottom bar?

trueheart78 wrote:

As for Ubuntu...
I rather enjoy Unity, but that's just me: I'm weird (ask anyone). I've long since moved away from bars at the bottom of my screen for task switching. I much prefer a taskbar across the top (in Windows) or the Unity bar with multi-desktop support (love the 2x2 grid layout for them, works great for my day job).

With that being said, is there another window manager for Linux that gets rid of the pesky bottom bar?

I don't mind Unity all that much either, but I definitely understand the complaints against it. You could configure Gnome 2 to remove the bottom task switcher bar in just a few seconds, and though I haven't used it in nearly a decade, I would be surprised if you couldn't do the same with KDE.

For the record, my previous woes with a fresh Ubuntu install were not a fluke. I went to the trouble of installing it again just in time for my TF2 tux buddy, and the same problems were all there. The very first thing I click on (Firefox) crashes the Xserver and I'm back to the login screen. Installing the proprietary nvidia drivers only make things worse because it needs the kernel headers to build its extension but it doesn't have an apt dependency set.

But I did get past all that, and now I have to wrestle with the issues of multi-monitors being a hot mess and gamepad support for a PS3 controller.

psoplayer wrote:
trueheart78 wrote:

As for Ubuntu...
I rather enjoy Unity, but that's just me: I'm weird (ask anyone). I've long since moved away from bars at the bottom of my screen for task switching. I much prefer a taskbar across the top (in Windows) or the Unity bar with multi-desktop support (love the 2x2 grid layout for them, works great for my day job).

With that being said, is there another window manager for Linux that gets rid of the pesky bottom bar?

I don't mind Unity all that much either, but I definitely understand the complaints against it. You could configure Gnome 2 to remove the bottom task switcher bar in just a few seconds, and though I haven't used it in nearly a decade, I would be surprised if you couldn't do the same with KDE.

For the record, my previous woes with a fresh Ubuntu install were not a fluke. I went to the trouble of installing it again just in time for my TF2 tux buddy, and the same problems were all there. The very first thing I click on (Firefox) crashes the Xserver and I'm back to the login screen. Installing the proprietary nvidia drivers only make things worse because it needs the kernel headers to build its extension but it doesn't have an apt dependency set.

But I did get past all that, and now I have to wrestle with the issues of multi-monitors being a hot mess and gamepad support for a PS3 controller.

I've been dealing with the proprietary Nvidia drivers on my W520 and the most recent kernel update killed their usefulness, so I've gone back to the Intel option for now.

Those are some crazy problems you're having psoplayer. How many monitors are you trying to hook up? I had my TV connected yesterday to my laptop, and it plugged in via HDMI without a hitch. Loaded up a movie, set it to always be on top and on every desktop, and I carried on working while a movie played.

Not to discount what you are saying, but it seems to work for some of us... perhaps you can live vicariously through me?

The multi-monitor issues aren't as much problems with Ubuntu as they are with each individual program that manages to get it wrong. I have two 24" widescreen monitors, one 16:9, the other 16:10. They are offset vertically, so only half of their vertical edges line up for a transition window between the two. I can't find a way to change which monitor is the "default", and the majority of programs will initially appear on the 16:9 screen off to the side and have to be pulled back to my main screen for comfortable use. Several games will go full screen on first launch, and will use the entire desktop space as the game resolution, stretching across both screens leaving large chunks of the game in places where there is no screen. In some cases this makes it impossible to access the settings and change to some other mode.
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/BDzRBt2.png)

Watching a video with flash player full screen will only use the main screen and won't stay open if it loses focus. These are problems flash player had 3 years ago, but they are mostly solved on windows at this point.

Oh yeah, I tried Hulu and I was having the Flash player problem. It's frustrating, but I can safely assume that's Adobe not supporting it anything like they do on Windows and OS X.

Yeah I see you're having more interesting issues than just getting it hooked up. I'm not sure about setting a default screen, it seems like that should be an easy setting. I'm not sure though...

Thanks again to boogle for introducing me to Vagrant.

Just wiped my main drive. My computer is now 100% Linux. Except for those pesky VM's. Feels good... and a little scary.

....I might have to install Windows again when I play all the games available on Steam.

As much as I'm enjoying Ubuntu, I think I'm headed to Manjaro for, if nothing else, testing it out in a VM. Hear nothing but great things, the forums / community look to be quite helpful too . Be a nice change up for awhile.

Having not put any more research into this than glancing at the website, it looks like Arch Linux with Cinnamon desktop, which I loved.

Manjaro? Huh? Never heard of it.

On another note, I installed Fuduntu in a VM. Looks nice, they have extended Gnome 2 surprisingly, although a big part of that is the Cairo bar. If you are looking for a change from Debian or Ubuntu and all their derivatives, Fuduntu uses Fedora but tries to sit somewhere between Ubuntu and Fedora.

edit: Just looked up Manjaro. I remember the website, it's based on Arch. I like Arch a lot, so might be worth looking into.

Arch is a lot of fun, but unfortunately it just takes time to get set up.

Manjaro looks to be more friendly with the Nvidia Optimus setup, too, and Ubuntu has been a pain with it. While I've enjoyed what I've learned using Ubuntu, I'd like something a little more friendly to my current laptop without having to spend ages investigating, hoping, etc.

I'll report back

Not exactly intuitive, but so far, rather digging it.

Canonical's latest bout of dickishness has definitely got me looking for an Ubuntu alternative again, so I may have to check out Arch again -- I tried it briefly on my laptop, but I don't actually use Linux on my laptop all that much, so I didn't end up spending a lot of time with it.

I was running Debian on my desktop for a while, but it just feels too much like you're at the mercy of the release timeline. Stable is, of course, fairly crazy on a desktop, but even testing and unstable are fairly static at the moment, while the developers are in a freeze ahead of wheezy's release. Once wheezy is out, we'll hopefully see more regular updates to both unstable and testing, but that might not happen for a couple of months; meanwhile, unstable is still rocking GNOME 3.4, even thought 3.6 has been out for months.

Just a heads up, if you hold off for the 0.8.5 version (pre-release right now), it actually has a graphical installer. I didn't get that, and I got the "fun" way... (terminal menus).