The Unity Desktop in Ubuntu

[woodsmoke]

Re: The Unity Desktop in Ubuntu

Ok
The old woodsmoker is not very bright.

I'm just learning the Plasma Desktop and am finding that it provides about the same efficiency for me that Compiz has in the past.

I have read many articles on "Unity" and came to the conclusion that the "big idea" for it was that it can be used as a "touch screen" situation for netbooks.

So..............could somebody please tell stupid old me:

a) For the desk machine.... is it basically going to work kind of like the present Plasma desktop does?
b) There is some discussion as in this:

http://blogs.computerworld.com/17224...gnome_to_unity

That it gives BOTH.... netbook and desk environment.

I have a lot of students who are walking into the class with netbooks and not as many with laptops...

So....if a student buys a netbook:

a) if it has a "touch screen" the unity will work with it.
b) if it does NOT have a touch screen it has "one" screen as per the above linky.

Is this image a "typical" example of how the Unity desktop might look?

[img width=400 height=234]http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/unitystandard_thumb.png[/img]

If somebody could kind of give a "big picture" for folks I think it would maybe allay some fears or maybe make people happy.

I'm WAY out of the loop on this.

woodsmoke

[Detonate]

Re: The Unity Desktop in Ubuntu

Your screenshot looks a lot like my screen in unity. This is on a desktop PC. No touchscreen here. Everything responds to the same old mouse clicking you've always used. And I would assume it would also respond to touchpad input on a laptop. As Ubuntu intends to make Unity the default in future releases they must make it fully compatible with all types of machines.

[woodsmoke]

Re: The Unity Desktop in Ubuntu

What do you, personally, think of the bar to the left?

woodsmoke

[Detonate]

Re: The Unity Desktop in Ubuntu

It's OK. I have not played with it enough to see if the bar can be moved. Right clicking on the bar does not open a menu to adjust settings.

[kapil]

Re: The Unity Desktop in Ubuntu

infact my kubuntu desktop has the task bar on left. and i love it that way.
its personal pref though..

[Detonate]

Re: The Unity Desktop in Ubuntu

I will open up Unity later today and see if I can figure out if the task bar can be moved. I have too much going on. I have Gnome and KDE and Unity to choose from. I also have the new Fedora 14 on another partition I'm getting set up. And some time between playing with all that I still have a life to live.

[Detonate]

Re: The Unity Desktop in Ubuntu

OK, I'm in Unity now. I can't find anyway to change anything. It basically uses your Gnome settings for fonts and other things, but not everything. Can't change the desktop background. Can't find any way to change any desktop settings. The Menu Bar appears to be populated by whatever items I have in my Gnome panel. But none of the Gnome applets are present, such as my temperature monitoring applet. This is, as is, not going to be my desktop of choice.

Added: Clicking on "File and Folders" opens your home folder with no way to navigate to the entire file system and no way to show hidden files and folders. I was hoping to find some kind of configuration files that might be edited manually but now way to show hidden files and folders. No way to switch from icon view to list view.

Added: By clicking on "Applications" I was able to open Gnome Commander, which I have installed, and access the file system, but I could not find any configuration files. The only way I could find to open dolphin or nautilus, both of which are on my system was from the command line.

[woodsmoke]

Re: The Unity Desktop in Ubuntu

WOAH!!

woodsmoke

[kapil]

Re: The Unity Desktop in Ubuntu

unity for netbook that is.
unity for desktop is yet to enter into alpha.. (as far as i know)
in unity desktop they are supposedly giving option to move the side bar. and many other changes.

i follow omgubuntu, found that, there are going to be many changes in natty. but gnome is still using the patched up old thing. where as kde was brave to introduce major change from 3.* to 4.* which made kde so beautiful.
i hope gnome follows the kde lead. though i doubt how much it will affect the unity.

with chrome OS releasing this monthend (or atleast till yearend) it is going to be unix/linux based all the way in coming decade..yey!

[Detonate]

Re: The Unity Desktop in Ubuntu

Yes, the current Unity is the netbook edition. When the final desktop edition is released I am sure it will be a lot different. Much more robust in its ability to control the desktop. As soon as 11.04 becomes available in beta, I will be trying it out.

[Detonate]

Re: The Unity Desktop in Ubuntu

I have been doing a lot of reading lately about Unity and Wayland. I highly recommend that when this becomes available, do not abandon your current 10.10 or 10.04 install. This is going to be a buggy release. Install it in a different partition. There will be a lot of unresolved issues. It is not clear if our current drivers for video are going to work correctly. Nvidia in my case. Both Unity and Wayland are too new to have a lot of time for bug resolution. The X video system has been around for 23 years, and most of the bugs have been resolved. Not so with these new systems. Hang on to the tried and true. That's my opinion. I may be using 10.10 for a long time.

[kapil]

Re: The Unity Desktop in Ubuntu

just to be safe.. i am getting myself familiar with linux_mint.
linux mint 9 KDE 64bit gave problem on my old laptop. waiting for linux mint 10 kde 64bit..

can someone tell.. Will unity be default in kubuntu also?
have anyone of you tested the daily builds of kubuntu?

[oblivion]

Re: The Unity Desktop in Ubuntu

can someone tell.. Will unity be default in kubuntu also?
have anyone of you tested the daily builds of kubuntu?

Unity is, as Mark Shuttleworth himself stated, "a Shell for GNOME", so I don't think that it'll be default in Kubuntu, which uses KDE by default. And I don't see any reason for a such move either. KDE with its plasma is a higly flexible and configurable technology. But I am convinced that Kubuntu needs make-up, namely an original, consistent Kubuntu window + plasma theme.

I have been doing a lot of reading lately about Unity and Wayland. I highly recommend that when this becomes available, do not abandon your current 10.10 or 10.04 install. This is going to be a buggy release. Install it in a different partition. There will be a lot of unresolved issues. It is not clear if our current drivers for video are going to work correctly. Nvidia in my case. Both Unity and Wayland are too new to have a lot of time for bug resolution. The X video system has been around for 23 years, and most of the bugs have been resolved. Not so with these new systems. Hang on to the tried and true. That's my opinion. I may be using 10.10 for a long time.

I understand your concerns about Wayland, but as far as I know, it will not be included in 11.04 or 11.10. Maybe in 12.10?

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item&px=ODc1Ng

As to Unity interface, in its current state I think it is awful even on netbook.

Regards.

[GreyGeek]

Re: The Unity Desktop in Ubuntu

just to be safe.. i am getting myself familiar with linux_mint.
linux mint 9 KDE 64bit gave problem on my old laptop. waiting for linux mint 10 kde 64bit..

can someone tell.. Will unity be default in kubuntu also?
have anyone of you tested the daily builds of kubuntu?

I am running the Linux Mint KDE 4 in a VM. It's nice, but I am not giving up on Kubuntu yet because, IMO, it is Shuttleworth's fall back position, or "ACE" in the hole.. He would be stupid to put all of his eggs in one DE.

And no, Unity cannot be the "default" in Kubuntu any more than Gnome can. You can't have two DE's running at the same time unless one of them is in a VM.

Wayland is just a replacement for Xorg, but with more power and flexibility. Check this organizational structure:
[img width=274 height=400]http://wayland.freedesktop.org/x-on-wayland.png[/img]
You can even run Xorg on top of it, although I'd imagine that an xclient running on an xserver running on Wayland isn't going to be the zippiest render on the block.

[MoonRise]

Re: The Unity Desktop in Ubuntu

Will KDE's Plasma system run with Wayland? I mean KDE already has it's own compositing system so that to me would be redundant and pose issues as well.