I am a little behind schedule with posting a rant post about how much I think Unity sucks. Earlier this year I installed Ubuntu 11.04 and was shocked to see such drastic changes. My initial thoughts after installing was that I accidentally downloaded Ubuntu Netbook Edition. Later on after trying to figure out what the hell happened, I discovered that Ubuntu replaced Gnome with Unity.
Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition:
Ubuntu 11.04 With Unity:
Unity is terrible! Finding things are extremely difficult. I don’t have time to research and learn why Ubuntu switched to Unity. My guess is that is was a move towards making Linux even more user friendly. The problem with Unity though is that they dumbed it down too much. To me it seems like even the most computer challenged people will have trouble using Ubuntu.
I poked around the net for a few minutes and didn’t find any answers yet, but I am curious if Ubuntu will be using Gnome by default again in the 12.04 release. If anyone know the answer to this, please drop a comment below. Well, it’s obvious what I think about Unity. There’s no hiding that. However, I really want to know what you think about it. Also, what are your thoughts about Unity in the upcoming 12.04 LTS?
[...] terrible. Kinda reminds me of being the Windows Vista equivalent of Ubuntu. I really hope that Gnome becomes the default again when Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is released. Comments [...]
I’ve been a user of Ubuntu since 4.10. The decision to use Unity in 12.04 has me looking for another distro. Ignoring experienced user’s such as myself is going to, and has eroded the core base of supporters for Ubuntu. The loss of basic GUI options such as Panels and their customization makes Unity useless to me. I’m sticking with 10.04 LTS until I find a suitable upgrade. Unity is a major downgrade from Gnome 2.3. From the little I’ve looked at Gnome 3, it appears to have lost much of the customization I’m used to also. Neither adds any useful functionality to 2.3. What’s the point? Change for its own sake is stupid. I will not go back to Windoze, but this kind of change is very disappointing.
I agree with Scott. Compiz and Unity don’t work well together. Enabling one over the other ends up breaking things and I can’t stand unity. I like the ability to type what you want, but forcing a bar on the left side just doesn’t fly for me, especially when I run alot of full-screen VMs.
FWIW, I am now looking at Linux Mint and a few other distros. I am also at 10.04 and tried 12.04 but do not like it.
Have you tried simply installing the Xubuntu 11.04 or 11.10 package over the top of Ubuntu? You get all your “old” options back, and in the Xubuntu control panel you can even choose to use both Gnome and KDE lib’s.
You could also do this with Edubuntu which has both turned on by default.
Forgot to say, you can choose NOT to use unity right at your login screen, pick an alternative session manager.
I ran the live CD of Xubuntu 12.04 RC2 and I like it. Installing it on a test box right now. Thanks very much for the suggestion!