GNOME 3 vs Unity: Which is right for you?
With so much controversy surrounding the recent release of GNOME 3 and Canonical’s Unity, there’s only one way to resolve things: a head-to-head battle royale. Gareth Halfacree investigates which next-generation desktop environment might suit you better to set the record straight once and for all…
GNOME 3 and the GNOME Shell have their fans, who castigate Canonical’s Unity – and vice-versa. There are also those who decry both, claiming that a move to icon-based launchers represents a dumbing-down of the classic GNOME user interface. Worries over compatibility and extensibility cause further concerns, until nobody is quite sure what’s going on any more.
It’s time to set the record straight, and we here at Linux User think the best way of doing that is with a good old-fashioned head-to-head challenge. We’ve taken the reference implementations of both GNOME 3 and Unity – the official Live CD and Ubuntu 11.04 respectively – and given them a good going over, ranking them on familiarity for existing GNOME users, performance, compatibility, features, and extensibility.
We’ve also spoken to those in the know to get the insider view on matters. For GNOME there’s Federico Mena, co-founder of the project and GNOME 3 developer. Fighting for Unity we have Neil Patel, Canonical’s technical lead for desktop experience. Both will be offering their own insights and opinions to help settle the matter once and for all…
We’ve broken down the feature into the key areas of usability GNOME 3 and Unity move away from the GNOME 2.x (not to mention KDE) ‘norms’. You can use the links below to jump through sections…
Familiarity - Both GNOME 3 and Unity are very different beasts to GNOME 2, but which takes the most learning?
Performance and Compatibility - Having a whizz-bang user interface is great, but not if it comes at the cost of performance…
Features – With the problems out of the way, which of the two offers the most feature-rich user experience?
Extensibility – Devs and advanced users will be pleased to hear that both offer possibilities for customisation – but which wins out?
And the winner is… – we’ll round-up the pros and cons of each, but there’s got to be a winner. This is it…
Continue to Page 2: GNOME 3 vs Unity – Familiarity
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I will not be using Ubuntu anymore since Unity came along. There are plenty of other Debian derivitives that use Gnome. Fedora, Mandriva and OpenSuse look good as well. Maybe a total shift away from Gnome alltogether, to Bodhi with “Enlightenment” for example, would remove any anxiety about Unity or Gnome?
One might try to feed the us vs them spectacle using Gnome 3 and Unity, but it’s early days for both of them. None of them are matured sufficiently yet. Both need at least 12-18 months before they become interesting wrt maturity and functionality. The “rundown” is all about gloss and hardly anything else.
My questions are:
How will these desktop environments help me in terms of improving my collaboration with others?
How will these desktop environments help me catering for improved workflow?
How well does related applications integrate wrt functionality and UI logic?
Does it help me with a good, sensible communication?
Linux on desktop needs desperatly:
Distros specialising on 1 and only 1 desktop environment.
Distros specialising on desktop and only desktop.
The principle of “everybody trying to deliver everything and anything to anyone” should be abandoned. If I want a server i should get a server distro. No need to spend resources on that when the audience is desktop users. Time is better spent improving the parts that matters for desktop users.
The trouble is that both changes have come so close together that there is no “familiar” desktop anymore installed by default…those seeking this comfort zone would have to revert to the old Gnome. This synchronicity could have a very negative effect in the confidence of those that seek an unchanging envrironment… I guess change is better in the long term than a status quo, but in the short term difficult. Windoze users experience this with Vista, and the Ribbon in Office….why should Linux Desktop be any different? Both transitions have been adopted and users have adapted. With Gnome 3, Unity and even KDE 4 we do have Innovations, and growing pains…but most of all, we have choice and users, like their desktops will continue to evolve.
From the text:
Canonical’s Neil Patel in support of Unity. “I believe it has helped in producing a user experience that is very easy to get to grips with, which looks great, but also offers a user experience that doesn’t alienate power users.”
You sure alienated this one!
Another comparison:
http://www.go2linux.org/linux/2011/06/unity-and-gnome-3-what-good-and-what-evil-1090.html
Gnome3 or Unity?, I say KDE4
Personally I prefer Gnome 3. There’s not much you can do with Unity in terms of customization, the keyboard shortcuts are lacking, and the speed is mehhh. It was fun to play with for a while but at the end of the day I still found myself installing Fedora 15 with Gnome 3.
I won’t be using either one of them! Anyone that makes such a non-ergonomic layout as Ubuntu with Unity and by the same token, Gnome 3 for such things as it’s massive use of hotkeys doesn’t deserve my business! I’ll use KDE or Xfce before I’ll go back to Gnome or Ubuntu!
Just gave up on both unity and gnome 3 – but thought the latter had the best shot at success.
1. both are lousy on 17 inch displays and above
2. both are lousy on old hardware – even in classic mode – RHEL will never use unity/gnome
3. both require downloading various config files – to make them suitable for working
And on the humor side – I am using fedora 13 again on my 22″ desktop and loving it – but after using gnome 3 for about a month I find myself moving my mouse up and into the upper left hand corner of the display and waiting to get something to pop up – it takes a long time to break yourself of that wasteful and silly habit.
I have a Xoom and really like the touch display with android. Maybe touch displays with unity/gnome3 will be workable but forget both of them with a mouse – takes at least 3 clicks on opposing ends of the display to make just about anything work – and I lose focus after two clicks ;-)
Luckily, in the real world there are more than just those two choices. I choose the “neither” option, please. I’d much rather use KDE (either 3.5 or 4) or Xfce than Gnome or Unity.
My main problem with Gnome3 is mutter. It’s performance leaves a lot to be desired on netbooks, and it seems to crash more often (I’ve experienced that since the first iteration of Unity). Compiz is way more stable on my netbook (a rather underpowered machine), and that simply is the reason to choose it.
Seriously, How about stop fooling around, and just change something that doesn’t work, and keep everything that “actually” work well. instead of force yourself to creative something New? Sure we might be able to learn something from it. But Application is not about “Learning”. What user really Need, is something that Works as the best as there can be. If you just want to look it better or newer. Just change the Graphic.
I don’t get why people keep treating Ubuntu and Unity as mutually inclusive. In fact, Gnome classic is an option in GDM and other desktop environments are installable via Synaptic or apt-get. I hate to be a bit off topic, but before someone complains about Synaptic being excluded from the default list of packages included in the iso image I would like to say that if you’re a knowledgeable enough user that makes use of Synaptic’s advanced features then you have the appropriate skill to type ‘apt-get install synaptic’ into your command line and press enter.
But back on the DE topic. Canonical clearly stipulated that Gnome classic could be chosen from GDM. And you have to keep in mind about how new users usually get introduced to Linux – someone else tells them about it. And if that particular someone is spreading news about Ubuntu via word-of-mouth then he, or she, can include the fact that Gnome classic is selectable via the login manager.
As far as Gnome 3 is concerned, in my opinion, it is far too immature as a project. Its current release should be an alpha release with its base components developed well and new features should be being piled on. I don’t care how arrogantly the Gnome development team dismisses its user bases’ opinions – Gnome 3 has poor design choices in many areas and it lacks many crucial features that many users enjoy. I won’t list the poor choices for the sake of brevity, go to one of the many, many blogs that chastise Gnome 3 if you want to hear them. I’m not saying that the core idea is bad, not at all; the way Gnome 3 handles workspaces and includes search capabilities into an ‘overview hub’ is a nice desktop methodology.
Unity, on the other hand, feels more polished. Not in the way of stability, but just more thought out. It’s more extensible and there is better backwards compatibility with Gnome 2. It still needs a lot of work though. If a proponent of the argument that Ubuntu is going the wrong direction with Unity looks at my post, then just let me say this: Unity (and Gnome 3 for that matter) is not done. Right now Unity sucks on a dual monitor setup, perhaps that will change in the future. Until then, you can select Gnome classic through GDM. Only time will tell what will happen – which leads me to my next point.
The DE Ubuntu is shipped with *now* isn’t going to affect its popularity in the long run. Ubuntu became popular because it was easy to use. That isn’t going the change. Unity, even though it is radically different, is still easy to use and it doesn’t sacrifice usability like G3 does. If Unity fails, then I don’t know what they’ll do. Drop it obviously, but what about after that? If Gnome 3 changes and does well, then they could use that DE. But, if not, then Canonical would have to choose a UI that is still palpable to new users and old.
Oh, and I installed Elementary OS on my mother’s laptop. She is loving it.
Both were so bad I originally switched to KDE4, but that was too different from gnome2 so I ended up going to LXDE which is just plain awesome.
It does exactly what you expect it to do, without getting in the way.
LXDE FTW!
I did the upgrade from fedora 14 to Debian squeeze, yes this is the upgrade – upgrade to stability, performance and even beauty – i hate being on the edge with every day changes, issues and madness, i want to do my work not to worry about new Gnome or PulseAudio stupid issues or even about upstart vs. systemd inits.
Debian, Scientific-6.x , CentOS-6.0, Ubuntu LTS or any enterprise system is the best solution to instability of being on the edge.
and i chose Debian, the real universal operating system, on laptops, desktops and servers.
Answer: NEITHER
I don’t know how they got the idea that what people wanted was a UI aimed at the lowest common denominator between a mobile phone, tablet pc, netbook and a multi-screen desktop system.
“While it’s early days in the life cycle of both projects”
Gnome Shell has been in development for almost 3 years already while Unity for just over a year.
In agreement with Antoine Martin, LXDE is certainly the way. I might otherwise try the latest KDE; but LXDE seems the top choice. As for going with the yin-yang of crap, I’ll use neither Gnome3 or Unity, and I will use Ubuntu only as long as the LTS (Lucid Lynx) is supported.
What bothers me is that Lucid was so close to an ideal OS (IMHO), and instead of improving it, they went berserk.
-Better is the enemy of good
The solution is Pardus & KDE.
There is either Kurumsal2 (Corporate) with KDE 3.5 or Pardus 2011.1 with KDE 4.6.x.
Both are stable.
sadly none period
-Regards,
http://techspalace.blogspot.com
(Not Only Ubuntu Blog)
Unity supports Alt+F2 just fine.
I didn’t tried Unity, since using Arch Linux. But GNOME3 not stable with NVIDIA graphic card. So, I use Xfce4. If GNOME3 is stable, I will consider to use it.
As timo said, Unity supports Alt+F2. You can use windows-button on the keyboard as well.
I’m not using either of them. Tried them both. They are both dumb down versions with absolutely NO value to a seasoned windows user or a newbie as you put it. Canonical and Gnome Must believe that Microsoft Windows is way to hard for the windows users to use and comprehend. This is the only explanation for such a super retarded move both sides have taken to atracked them to Linux. Giving Ubuntu linux and Gnome extra water to help it grow now just is not going to happen. Both will pay dearly for its mistakes now. Ubuntu has already started to wither away.
I played with Unity for a day or two but I could not get anything done.
Global menu really sucks. No right clicks!! Everything is a moving target. One cannot glance to find the icon for the next mouse move then move directly to it. One must actually move the mouse to the general area then click, wait for the animation, then hunt about some more. Moved straight to Classic.
From what I have read about Gnome Shell I will not be any better off.
And, as I understand it, Classic based on Gnome 2 will not be in 11.10 so I will need to find a replacement.
Maybe use the force fallback option in Gnome 3. Will that be a permanent feature?
Gnome and the wonderful flavor of Linux Mint. I absolutely hate Unity.
are you stupid or something? of course we have a choice. this is linux. there are dozens of DEs and WMs and hundreds of distros. stop clumsily promoting these two gnome-based train wrecks. this is getting very old.
None. I tired Unity when 11.04 came out and after a week I was sick of Unity so I tried Fedora 15 with GNOME 3 and it is also terrible. I finally gave up and tried KDE (still on Fedora 15) and so far I love it. It’s even better than GNOME 2. So I will be looking for the best KDE distribution in a few days. any recommendations?
I find it humorous that both Gnome 3 and Unity are shells designed for the benefit of smaller touch screen devices, like phones and tablets, and neither of them will ever appear on a commercially viable product of that nature. There will never be a Linux tablet or phone, or rather, that niche is already occupied by Android.
So, the both Gnome and Ubuntu have succeed in alienating large swathes of their user base chasing a market in which they will never be a player. Never. Way to go guys and gals.
Answer : LXDE !!!
Hi!
Tried Gnome 3 for a month. First look is nice. Using it is something else. It is way to annoying if you use several programmes at once. I then went to XFCE and was almost happy but still annoyed.
Went to KDE was dissapointed first, but after som tinkering and removal of unessesary “bling” it is quite brilliant. I even got my desktop back Hurray!!!!
So I do warmly recommend KDE. Just give it some time and I guess you will like it.
Both fundamentally flawed by design
the key question for me is: which of the 2 desktops is better in terms of keyboard support? Can I use them w/o taking my hands off the keyboard and/or define new shortcuts?
A choice between these two is very simple–any other from KDE to XFCE is far better. Junk is junk whatever you call it and however new it is.
I tried both, Unity and Gnome3. Whereas I see a clear usability concept in Gnome3, I see only a cluttered interface in Unity. Gnome3 is the clear winner here.
However, I decided to go back to Gnome2 for now. Why? In Gnome3, I miss something like the “Places” concept in Gnome2. I hope that the developers plan a logic replacement for “Places” and also and integration of “Zeitgeist” in Gnome 3.2.
Then, I will switch to Gnome3.2
Since 11.10 is no longer going to have the Classic option, I am afraid I shall have to find a replacement, non-Ubuntu solution for myself and for about 100 current Ubuntu users. With both camps having all the focus on trying to make my dual 27″ LCD panels to look and feel like an iPhone, it seems that both forgot there are users out there whose strings of productive activities have become fragile processes that break when you mess with the activity intersections. And that is what both Gnome3 and Unity have done.
Love that marketing term “richer user experience without too much learning”. Let’s think about that for a second. When does this rich new experience come into play? Only when the user has not yet done anything else or while switching from one productive activity to another! Like between running two programs, while jumping from one program to another, while leaping from content to controls. I.E. the time wasted away from productive work. Maybe it’s just me but wouldn’t the users rather elect a sub-second instant switching, reduced need for mouse clicks, reduced need to push mouse around from one end of the screen to other, and reduced frustration of too many illogical changes all at once?
My 50 years in the computer industry says that they will.
I will be honest… they both suck.
You are right about those that like Unity… I am no where near one of them
I am not a cell phone adict, and am smarter than ‘requiring’ a dumbed down version of a cash-register (at least until old age makes me senile… and am getting there)…
But, both Gnome and Unity are trying to be McDonalds cash registers.. (for people who can’t read and don’t know numbers.)
Unity shuffled around a lot of locations so ‘tweaks’ that hve worked for years, no longer work (unless you find the locations, or if the routine still exists)
If I wanted a cell phone with all the gee-gaws and bells, I would have one that did a bit more than make phone calls. (I don’t)
If I wanted a slate that did phone, photo’s and movies… I know where to buy one.
If I wanted a desktop, that I could live with, work with and do as I please… I would have loaded Ubuntu since 4.x…
As a mater of fact, I did…
I loved Ubuntu.
Note the past tense.
I am one of the many dumping it as worthless poor imitator of Redmond…
The market they are chasing, knows nothing of internals, and if you don’t know them, and your computer doesn’t load (mine too 8.5 hours once… between the two I tried, I spent 40+ to have nothing worth melting down.
They can take it and Piltdown Man it.
Gnome is dead once you go to 3.0
albinard said:
30 June 2011 at 10:43 pm
From the text:
Canonical’s Neil Patel in support of Unity. “I believe it has helped in producing a user experience that is very easy to get to grips with, which looks great, but also offers a user experience that doesn’t alienate power users.”
You sure alienated this one!
YOU SIMPLETON! Of course this neil patel is in support of unity HE WORKS FOR CANONICAL!!!!!!!!! Shuttleworth has FIRED all those who do not support this GARBAGE. You are SO SO wrong in your statement “offers a user experience that doesn’t alienate power users.” You can’t do anything from a power users view without first getting under this unity junk! Try doing a simple file search, I mean real flile search! you won’t find anything you need that is not a installed program with a dam icon! The man is going to take terminal away next! Then that will drive the knife straight through your heart. No more “locate -i folder name!!!!! Unity and Gnome 3 are junk, All the other distros out there BETTER take head NOW and open there eyes because this garbage is not going to fly in the rest of the Linux world. Shuttleworth has spoken for the ubuntu community without a vote or say. He’s a DICTATOR! Same goes for GNOME PERIOD
A stick in the eye or a hot poker up the ass, which is better?
What were they thinking when they set out to destroy the Gnome interface? The Gnome 2 interface is highly efficient and does every thing that you want it to do, it wasn’t broken so it didn’t need fixing. It’s easy to switch between virtual desktops, I have 8 on my system which allows be to keep applications on all of my physical and virtual systems in there own space. It’s trivial to create a launcher on a panel that opens a favorite app on a local or remote system. Everything is visible. Menus are easy to read. Any program can be started with a single mouse click.
Gnome 3 requires three operations to do anything. It has no menus and instead uses inefficient icons which take way to much space and convey much less information than a name a menu. Icons make sense on phones and tablets where you are forced to use your finger to start a program, but they make no sense on a workstation. A workstation has a large screen, 24″ LCDs cost nothing these days, they have a mouse and they have a keyboard. Desktop Linux is for workstations and full sized laptops, it’s not for tablets and phones. The Linux that’s going to dominate those markets is Android, if the Gnome or Canonical people think they have any chance of getting any penetration on tablets or phones then I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I would be happy to sell them.
I hope that Gnome gets forked and that the 2.x branch is continued. There is already a project to package 2.32 for Fedora, I home it succeeds. In the meantime I’m sticking with Fedora 14 . If there is no path forward with a usable interface by the time Fedora 16 comes out I’ll move all of my systems to SL6. I’m already using it for my Linux VMs and for my servers. SL6 is a little weaker as a desktop than Fedora 14, but it’s miles ahead of Fedora 15 and it will be out there with Gnome 2 for the next 6 or 7 years.
Funny that in an operating system that prides itself on providing choice, people are so utterly resistant to change and / or attempts to improve upon current designs.
I understand that the current Gnome 2 interface does have a very high level of polish and we are all accustomed to the way it now operates and work well within it’s design. But resisting change is something I had always thought was firmly in the Windows people’s domain.
I’m all for more choice, and if you want the Gnome 2 interface to continue development then, as suggested above, Fork it and put some work in yourselves. This is a community effort people.
Back in the days when “real men compiled their own drivers” – we would swear black and blue to those of the Windows world that the effort you put in to learn the new systems was worth it. Now I feel like the linux community is letting itself down and forgetting the reasons we all jumped ship to begin with.
If people have constructive criticism then by all means, provide it and contribute back to the products you use.
I am going to to continue to test and try as much of Linux as I can and settle on what works for me, not whinge at people that are trying to make a better product and contribute nothing myself.
I say kudos to all devs involved, keep up the good work, they’re obviously taking a risk in trying to make their products ready for the emerging technologies of the time, tablets and the like and it is wasn’t for people like that, we wouldn’t have the wonderful OS we have right now.
Also to be clear, I wasn’t calling everyone in this thread a whinger, there certainly are some great points made here and this helps us all get closer to the result we want. Keep it up, keep contributing and Linux will continue to grow.
I’ve just seen this argument so many times already I’m starting to get tired of the fall in attitude and community spirit, something that is IMHO the underlying reason Linux has been such a success.
But everyone’s needs are different, I for one, don’t want to run Android on a tablet, having the ability to install a distro/VM/applications of my choice empowers me and allows me to better take advantage of the device and squeeze even more value out of it in the way that suits me.
This is Deja-Vu. I remember like yesterday when KDE4.0 was released and everyone was saying KDE 4 SUCKS for making a bold change. Now look at all the people that are saying KDE is the best. Just look. And now everyone is cursing Gnome and Ubuntu for trying to make bold decisions. What I would like to know is what have any of you contributed to the Linux ecosystem? Seriously. Here we have people busting there tail to provide something that is free and all we have are whinging leeches. How about some of you that are bitching about Unity and Gnome3 sucking put some time into making it better? Novel concept eh? Or maybe you can just go out and purchase Windows 7 and install it.
Totally agree Andydread. What’s happened to our community spirit? Has it been made too easy for us now?
One last point to all those abandoning Ubuntu altogether because of Unity:
Why cut off your nose to spite your face? – The repos are huge, the community is huge, Ubuntu as an underlying system is still as good as ever.
sudo apt-get remove ubuntu-desktop && sudo apt-get install – was that so hard? Or start with ubuntu-server and build your own.
Yes, you still have a point if you want something that “just works” from install and for life, and yes, jumping a major version number is probably going to have you repeating above steps (barring the ubuntu-server method) – but Ubuntu as a whole is still solid, still a leader as far as I’m concerned. Is this newbie friendly? Not overly, that point I’ll concede. But how long have we been hearing about the “year of the Linux Desktop” – has it actually happened yet? Has Canonical ruined that from happening because of a WM change? Ridiculous, of course not.
I switched to Arch because Unity doesn’t work for me and I wanted to go back to rolling my own a-la-Gentoo style (without the compile times), and to test vanilla Gnome 3 – and I’ve realised just how much I’ve shot myself in the foot because I can no longer apt-get install nearly anything that’s out there. Don’t get me wrong, I love Arch, it’s a different philosophy and one that works for me, the repos just aren’t as big, and because of that trade off, I’ll be swapping back to Ubuntu.
Perhaps petitioning Canonical to continue or at least supply Gnome2 or an alternate WM with future installs would be a better use of our time than just telling them to stick their decisions somewhere uncomfortable.
@Jez – Quoting you, “an operating system that prides itself on providing choice”: it is precisely the disappearance of that pride and the removal of choice that set a lot of us off. According to Mark Shuttleworth, as you must know, by 11.10 release your only choice for Ubuntu will be Unity. Take it or leave it. Some choice.
What is much funnier is this. Every new or changed function to just about any open systems code goes through a thorough peer review in one form or another, followed by its early life as an optional add-on or an alternative and depending on its acceptance rate and reviews, it may then be incorporated as a standard piece of new code. This has been true for all Ubuntu projects to date. Unity is a stark exception to that pattern. It’s not even functionally complete and it has already been implemented and designated as the only choice. A bold, forward looking move? Perhaps, but the present Canonical Quality Assurance, User Review, and Change Control folks must have all blinked at the same time for quite a long duration.
I love Ubuntu and it’s passion for providing something that “just worked” for “the rest of us”. It is what enabled me to move about 100 people from mostly Windows to Ubuntu. That was my way of getting involved and contributing to Ubuntu project.
This is not whining. While the time it takes for you to recompile your own system might not be critical to you, having to do the same on behalf of and for hundred widely dispersed users in addition to teaching and assisting them individually to make sure they can still do what they needed the computer for in the first place, is more than I can possibly find either time or energy for.
Ubuntu decision to not continue providing the “Classic” interface as an option beyond 11.10 reflects badly on me for recommending Ubuntu. Among other reasons, because they were the most likely organization with sufficient intestinal fortitude and software skills to not make radical moves negatively affecting their users. And now I am standing here facing “But you said….” from a hundred different directions. Very embarrassing and humiliating and I have no means of recovery in sight.
Matt, true, I can definitely see how that would irritate the general user base. And your comments on the peer review side of Unity’s development are completely valid. I am certainly not saying it’s the necessarily the right choice, but I can also see why Mark would want to focus on one consistent DE.
I guess my interpretation of “choice” means more than it is just another option at the login manager, if it’s in the repos, I can choose to install it =)
Unless it’s being completely removed and I’ve missed a memo somewhere…
As much as anything I feel that simply dumping Ubuntu as a whole seems counter productive to getting what we want, and this is from someone who doesn’t gel with Unity at all.
I think you should re-title this article ‘Gnome-Shell vs. Unity’ – the reason being – Unity and Gnome-shell are both just shells for gnome (Unity is built on gnome2, but only for 11.04 – the future for Unity is gnomoe3).
there is a community of people using gnome3 minus gnome-shell with compiz , so i tend to think a distinction should be made between gnome-shell and gnome3.
i personally don’t use ubuntu, but if i need i probably wouldn’t use unity, just straight compiz..
Gnome Team to users: We will make you system better by removing you menu and as much customizability as possible.
Canonical to users: We’ll try to fix the mess that the Gnome Team is making. In the process, we’ll remove even more of your customizability. Oh yea, you can forget a menu here too.
Why, just why was the Gnome Panel interface considered broken? Why couldn’t they introduce the new “wiz bang” features under this interface. Even their ridiculous type to search menu system could be done (see Gnome Do) under the panel system. They could set these as the default option and leave customizability in place for the users to decide how their computers work. Look a Pinguy to see what was possible using just Docky and Gnome Do with the panels. Everything Unity and Gnome 3 are trying to do is there, but without flushing the best user interface Linux had down the toilet. I would switch to XFCE if multi monitor support would work. I guess I’ll have to test out KDE again or even give LXDE a try. I wish Ubuntu had forked the Panel system and made it work under Gnome 3 instead of re-inventing the wheel.
I too am more and more liking Pardus. It is stable and looks good. The one drawback is the size of the repos. If more apps were available in the repos it would be my primary OS. Currently Mint is my Linux of choice, but only because of the repos.
My worry is that Gnome3 and Unity will require applications to have different code if both desktops are to be well supported, i.e. integration with the task bar, notifications, the menu system. The Linux ecosystem continues to fork, and standards and compatibility are not something the developers can be bothered with.
why does everyone think gnome 3 is not gonna be good? Unity is a great system but it’s not for everyone, you as a user have a choice to either install it or not. Personally i think it’s a hugh step forward and hope they get gnome 3 working stable i would like to see change as long as they keep it open-source. Ubuntu in my opinion is one of those distro’s that wants step forward and possibly out-do other Operating Systems and everyone in the linux community no matter what distro you use knows that linux needs that next step. This is all in my opinion, sorry if no one agrees but i am for it.
Well, I can say that I gave gnome 3 a decent chance with Fedora 15, and I found that the “shell” interface got in my way more than anything else. I did find it to be mostly stable though. The interface itself is terrible for my little computer, with its 1024×600 resolution. The breadcrumbs are huge and use way more screen space than they need too.
I then gave Unity a chance, and didn’t like it either, it was just as annoying as gnome 3. Unity also ran much slower on my machine. Also, I’m a bit confused about why Unity exists. Isn’t it just a mod of the default gnome 2? If so, then isn’t it doomed to fail in the long run, as applications and updates will eventually cease to be developed for gnome 2/Unity? I don’t know, but I’ve been an Ubuntu user since 6.06 or whatever.
I tried to KDE 4.6, and found performance to be sup-par, and I thought it was still very buggy.
As for now, I am using mint 11.
If a clear winner doesn’t show itself in the near future, I will have to do the unthinkable, and dust off the 11 year old Windows XP disc I have in my basement. I’m already downloading the XP drivers for my system now…
It is unfortunately that GNOME 3 is being besmirched because of GNOME-shell. GNOME 3 running with Compiz actually provides a lighter, faster solution than GNOME 2 and Compiz. It is a step forward and alot of hard work has clearly gone into rewriting the codebase. Furthermore, with GNOME 3 it is possible to install the components you want whilst pulling less dependencies than required by a similar GNOME 2 setup.
Ultimately, when complaining about Unity, we should remember what Canonical often appear to forget; Ubuntu is really just another Debian deriviative. Theres quite a few GNOME/Debian based desktop distros out there that haven’t gotten too big for their boots. If Canonical think that pandering to the lowest common denominator phone user is a progressive direction for the desktop, leave them to it. The rest of us could benefit from this by regarding it as impetus to learn how to customise our DEs to ones own liking ;-)
I haven’t used Gnome 3 but have used Unity since the 11.04 beta release and I can honestly say I’m surprised with how I use it. At first I didn’t like it but I went and figured out the basic key-bindings I needed for a few things and I actually find myself moving around faster.
Alt+Tab as everyone knows
Ctrl+Alt+t for a terminal
Super (Windows key) + type in an application search + enter (example: Super+calculator+enter)
Ctrl+Alt+Arrow key to switch workspaces
etc…
Ever since I started using Unity I’ve used the GUI significantly less, which is, ironically, a good thing. Plus it works with my Radeon Mobility card, which was surprisingly unexpected.
One more thing, I also love the saved vertical screen space since I’m on a laptop, max resolution of 1280×800.
I played around with Unity a bit back on my my 9″ eee netbook when it was first put on the Netbook Remix. I absolutely hated it. I have not tried Gnome 3 but from the screenshots I have seen and what I have read it is not any better.
I described Unity to an on-line friend who decided to try it. (warned him actually) His take was as good a description as I could have found: The Fisher Price interface.
So for now I am staying with Ubuntu 10.10 on my bigger laptop. It will probably remain there for the life of the computer. Hopefully when it dies there will be something else.
Gnome 3 and Unity both feel dumbed down and ideally suited to an average crApple user.
Gnome 3 is not ready. Tried it in F15 and it does not feel right. I mean its supposed to speed up the user interaction with the desktop but changing wallpapers is a hundred clicks away (I may be exaggerating). Also, where is the trash icon? emptying the trash takes a command line to do,. Where is the minimize button on the windows? You have to right click on it to show up then click again. Gnome 3 to me is a confined space and lacks functionality for desktop users. It is more for touch portable devices.
Unity still provides me with the functionality that i need and a lot faster than gnome 3 with my shortcuts and sidebar.
These 2 are still in their early stages and currently there is no winner yet, lets give it a few months or so and we will find out.
But GNOME was better than this before… They changed the interface utterly like asking users to walk with hands from now on… and shave with feet..! because it is version 3… and there is surprising changes as expected.
I’ve toggled between Gnome or KDE as my exclusive personal OS for about 4 years… have done the multiple distro thing, mass customization, blah blah blah… but do not consider myself a computer geek… just a side hobby. I am not bitter at all about the changes occurring… in fact has provided me more new tweaks to learn about. I was finding Gnome 2 boring and stale, in all candidness Here in mid-September, both new systems have had numerous updates to help shake out a lot of the daemons. And my winner is: Gnome Shell. Many of the benefit points have been covered above and in the article (by all that have pointed out the benefits… other than saying it’s snappiness us much better than Unity and blows away KDE on my old system, for which I give 2 thumbs up!!), so won’t restate. My only real issue with Unity, and it is fundamental, is the hide & seek panel just is not intuitive enough… it frequently pops up when I’m just trying to close a window, or does not pop up when i want… this “feature” really annoys me. For me, gnome shell delivers consistency of intended action, and that is a fundamental requirement for my OS.
Just a comment on Greg’s comment!
Is too radical to completely abadon ubuntu for unity!
after all uo can install gnome and relog in in gnome desktop using the command:
{> sudo apt-get install gnome}
you can add to gnome a launcher or docking bar like docky, cairo or awn.
Ubuntu is’nt only about a desktop! its is about the best hardware support and best repository applications.
Nasser
My only problem the change lately, is the wifi, I’ve tried both and there there a new feel to linux, but with different cards to see what people on forms and sure enough it seems everyone of the issues there is a issue I can revert to a version with gnome 2 on it and it works like clock works, I think to some degree they rushed unity and gnome 3 on us to evolve with the displease meant of windows and the high dollar mac’s but I think were still a long ways off before they can get people to care. Don’t get me wrong I still plan on building a eco friendly htpc off of linux to save money but till they get bugs fixed and such I’m on a stand still
I have become a fan of GNOME 3 :P I dont know but the basic idea of keeping it all simple has been thrown out in Unity.. I find it too hard to configure. With GNOME 3, I dont want to configure (except the fonts and the basic theme).
GNOME 3 surely wins hands down :)
I have no idea what gnome 2 or 3 are and as a non power user (linux newbie) I can say I just want my d$%^m computer OS to work. Unity was a pain for me to use. Too inflexible and non intuitive. I loaded linux mint, enjoy the way it lays out the programmes for me to find. And thats the key thing Ubuntu has lost sight of with unity. They seem to have tried too hard to make a ‘new’ UE, rather than making it intuitive for your average user. Good luck to them though.
And its 12.04.. waited an entire year…
If i could came to see a GNOME3/UNITY developer.. I’ll buy (imagination) him/hur a car with touch screen gear SHIfT INTERFACE mounted on the topmost ceiling (not detachable, it is hard copper wired software! soldered..!! way under to some BGAs). And force to drive that wonderful -latest-version- thing for a while and wud tell.. enjoy.. there is no going back. And, wait for the next big version (4) with touch screen steering control… ass well.
AWKWARD.
obuntoo.. you became the distro queen.. and bitch-distructing it all..? Whohhh… please… no more F-fleatures please. Since 11.04… freeze the F-upgradato routine… and feeds the downloaded ISOs to /dev/null, INSTEAD, all the alpha, beta and gamma versions, desperately.
Don’t swallow that ‘normal’ interface, that i were avid using for so many years. It is so difficult to switch the interface to some nice crap. Please read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29
M$ paid.. drama? (suspicion)
Gnome 3 vs Unity
And the winner is…
KDE4!
It can’t be XFCE, etc. Why? Because GTK versions before 3.0 are dead now thanks to GNOME.
I’m still running Ubuntu “Lucid Lynx”, which has Gnome 2.
When support for it ends next year, I will probably switch to Debian, and that after more than 5 years of Ubuntu. I don’t like Unity and I don’t like Gnome 3.
Wait, Debian “Wheezy” is going to be Gnome 3? Dang.
And so, GNU/Linux turned into Microsoft Windows… giving the “end user” no longer a choice.
They both suck!
KDE is the best!
I have been using Fedora + Gnome since FC1, and before that, on Redhat. My old laptop can’t handle GNOME3 graphics and now I use Fedora 17 + LXDE.
LXDE is perfect for me.
Hello, GNOME, Unity, all DE in Linux take my interest enough. I am a Linux desktop enthusiast. Now I collect the ideas for them on my new blog http://linuxdreambox.wordpress.com.
My opinion: it is best if there is 1 distro with 1 absolute desktop environment with 1 user experience. This type of OS is needed by so many newbie user who don;t care with system (only care “jobs done”). Similiar with Jack said on 2011 above.
However, for me, privately, I can use all desktop environment. I like new technology and it is not like such people, I accept GNOME 3 as is. Hey, at least, GNOME is still free. And I am relax user :) Haha.
Thanks :D
I tried Gnome-shell for some time when I noticed that Audacity was extremely slow and sluggish. Since I’m a musician and need it daily, I tried Unity and the problem was solved. Behind the surface Gnome-shell had severe problems.
After using Unity (12.04-12.10) for over a year, I got it to do most of what G-s has to offer, sometimes better, and with complete stablility (exposé on a corner and launcher auto-hide more efficient than g-s).
I recently tried G-s remix (12.10) and was surprised at the lack of tools for theme customization. I reinstalled Unity 12.10 and Gnome-shell. When I tried to edit panel.ccs to get transparency: it broke G-s beyond repair!! I got rid of it.
I have to admit that ATI is partly to blame because their driver for HD4200, not bleeding edge, does not support 12.10 (it’s version of xorg) !!!
But Unity works fine under 12.10 (with or without proprietary driver). G-s may be fine when stable.