I've used kde and Gnome on ubuntu since 7.04. When Miguel de Icaza wrote his piece on the death of desktop Linux a few months ago, discussions on Unity as the "doom" of Ubuntu crept back up and I got curious about it enough to give it a try and see for myself. My conclusion is that although many people feel the way you do and are pretty vocal about their discontent, they apparently don't represent a majority and some of the comments are increasingly out of touch and are even becoming misinformative.

I've ranted about the dumbing down of UIs previously on HN (re: Windows 8 Metro/WinRT, OS X Launchpad), but none are as terrible as Unity. It's impossible to find what you're looking for with it, it's terribly unintuitive, it hinders productivity more than any of the other offerings, makes it impossible to find out what applications you have

This is an example. It's been my experience as a full-time user that the launcher does a great job to help you find what you're looking for. Not only can you simply type keywords and suggestions are most of the time pretty accurate, but if for some reasons you don't find what you want, you can use filters.

For example, to find applications the old-fashion way (nowadays, most people just ask what they want and it comes up):

- press super (brings up the launcher)

- click the Applications button (2nd button). The app filter is now on

- click on the second sub-header where it says "Installed" for installed applications. You should see all your apps.

- if you need to further filter by type or other, open the filter and pick one (games, internet, education, etc).

Otherwise, to do like everybody else, to launch firefox:

- super

- type fir[efox] <enter>

or

- super

- type int[ernet]

- click on firefox icon

I'd like to share this little comment that I found the day I moved to Unity. It reflects pretty much my experience http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=12042350&postcoun...

It's not to say that Unity is perfect, far from it, the thing still needs work, but I think it's more than time for some Unity critics to accept that maybe they're opinions are becoming non-constructive, especially when they don't address the real issues of the desktop.

> It's impossible to find what you're looking for with it

Huh? You press the windows key, and start typing in the name of what you want to look for. I find it far easier to find things with Unity than before.

> it hinders productivity more than any of the other offerings

I was planning on installing a tiling window manager when I first installed Ubuntu 12.04, as I really want the desktop environment to not get in my way. I stuck with Ubuntu because contrary to your experience,to me it's the most productive UI I've used in the last 20 years+.

> makes it impossible to find out what applications you have (since software store apps and normal apps are held separate)

"dpkg -l" like in any Debian based system. I find this a ridiculous complaint from someone who has gone back to Debian, though - any way you can find this info in Debian is available to you in Ubuntu.

> once Gnome fallback is disabled/no longer ships, will be shoved down users' throats more than WinRT or Launchpad are.

As long as Debian ships alternatives, going back is fairly easy. But as it stands, there are plenty other alternatives for Ubuntu too, shipped by the community.

Personally, 12.04 with Unity was what truly sold me on Ubuntu, and I suspect the same will be true for far more users than they lose over it.

Good addressing of concerns raised.

>> Personally, 12.04 with Unity was what truly sold me on Ubuntu, and I suspect the same will be true for far more users than they lose over it.

This is a correct observation (at least my own anecdata verifies it too).

I strongly agree. As an example try to create an Launcher for Eclipse, it is a usability nightmare.

Windows:

  Right click > Pin to Taskbar

Mac:

  Right click > Options > Keep in Dock

Ubuntu:

  gedit ~/.local/share/applications/opt_eclipse.desktop

  [Desktop Entry]
  Type=Application
  Name=Eclipse
  Comment=Eclipse Integrated Development Environment
  Icon=** something like /opt/eclipse/icon.xpm **
  Exec= ** something like /opt/eclipse/eclipse **
  Terminal=false
  Categories=Development;IDE;Java;
  
  nautilus ~/.local/share/applications
  chmod +x ~/.local/share/applications/opt_eclipse.desktop

In Unity:

1. Open your program of choice. 2. Right-click on the Unity's icon. 3. Check "Keep in Launcher"

Enjoy!

Unity has finally caught up. Have you tried Unity in Ubuntu 12.10? I was a big Gnome 2 fan for years and couldn't stand unity until 12.10, Unity has become productive and more than usable for a programmer.

I find that the interface design is fine (comparing like to like with metro, gnome shell) but you do need a fast machine, and laptop power draw is not too hot.

Haven't had any trouble with replacing Unity with Gnome 2/3. The one time I stuck with Unity for a bit and discovered you could snap windows to the side of the screen (a la Win7), I was instantly sold.

I am currently using Ubuntu 12.10 with Cinnamon and it's much better than the Unity experience. You should give it a try, it feels refreshing.

Well, I agree with you about Amazon. Your info on Gnome is a month or two inaccurate though. As for Unity, have you used it recently? It's a wildly different thing than it was a year and a half ago.

> Ubuntu has become far too dumbed down for me.

You know you can run Ubuntu without Unity, right?

I mean, does anyone on Earth know that?

I can't be the only one running a non-Unity desktop environment on Ubuntu. (Window Maker)

The point is if you run Ubuntu without Unity that it breaks a large amount of functionality. Wireless for instance becomes a complete pain. Lots of stuff like xorg config is now embedded in unity.

I run Ubuntu without Unity on both a laptop and desktop (my window manager is ion3/notion). Both work fine. Wireless on the laptop just requires "docker & nm-applet &". (That was in 11.10, I'm not even sure if it's still needed.) I'm even using nvidia drivers on the desktop, though I did use some gui stuff to install them.

I've been doing 'sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop' and getting rid of Gnome/Unity since 8.04 - no pain involved. Maybe it does not apply to XFCE/LXE/others (I don't know) but it's one command to stick KDE on top of Ubuntu.

I have zero problem with wireless under gnome-shell, xfce or lxde (and if you can function without NetworkManager, console too) so my question is how you even got that idea.

Nonsense. I've been using Ubuntu exclusively for a year, and alongside with Windows for at least three years before that, and I've never used Unity. First I've ditched it for Gnome Classic, then for Gnome Shell and finally for Cinnamon, and I've never had any problems that would arise from the lack of Unity.

Running gnome-shell here, apart from the odd maybe-breakage for a few minutes after OS upgrades, everything works perfectly.

> The point is if you run Ubuntu without Unity that it breaks a large amount of functionality. Wireless for instance becomes a complete pain. Lots of stuff like xorg config is now embedded in unity.

Absolutely none of this is true. I don't even know how you can say it, because it has no factual basis.

You must really think I'm dumb. I run Ubuntu without Unity on a daily basis and everything works. The fact you think you can lie to my face about my own setup is simply astounding.