Why Ubuntu Unity Will Suck
Ubuntu 11.04's Unity Interface
Now before you get all emotional on me, I just want to let you know that I personally love Ubuntu, and I use it everywhere, on all my computers, and even my servers. However that may be about to change. Ubuntu 11.04 codename Natty Narwhal, which will be released in April, will implement many new and drastic changes to the OS, and they all have to do with one thing…Unity.
What is Unity?
Before I can talk about that, you need to know that Ubuntu currently uses GNOME, a graphical environment which makes up mostly everything that you interact with by default. Unity is a shell interface for GNOME, which is written by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu.
So what’s happening?
Canonical, is replacing the regular GNOME shell with Unity. Canonical already did this to their netbook OS last year, but is now going to do the same with their regular desktop OS too.
Why is this bad?
The whole reason that I, (and lots of other people) use Ubuntu and other distributions of Linux, is that the OS is freely open to customization and modification. Unity is entirely locked. Nothing about the interface can be changed at all. You cant even move the dock from one side of the screen to the other, and you can even to that in Windows! Regardless of customization options, the interface is not suited for desktops at all. It was designed for netbooks and it should stay on netbooks. Once you get past the ooohs and aaahs of the graphics, it really isn’t all that useful. Besides, if you don’t have 3D GL acceleration on your system, Unity is just a waste. Unity is also proprietary to Ubuntu, so not all applications will like it, and neither will all developers support it. Unity will make application development more difficult, as developers will have to support more than one interface. The only good news is that Ubuntu will still have the capability of running the regular GNOME interface.
My advice: when 11.04 comes out, make it your first priority to remove Unity.
April 16th, 2011 at 12:03 pm
Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. Also I’d like to use Gnome 3 on Ubuntu 11.04, but it seems it won’t work good.
April 28th, 2011 at 7:56 am
Why did they do that?!
I can understand that it can be handy on a netbook but why on a normal desktop?
May 2nd, 2011 at 4:12 am
Time to move to Linux Mint
May 10th, 2011 at 11:33 am
Thankfully you can switch back to Gnome, because Unity is absolutely wretched IMO. Maybe subsequent updates will improve it, but for now….I hate it.
June 1st, 2011 at 5:50 am
Have just run and played with 11.04 unity on my test PC – awful – I must make sure my customers don’t hit the upgrade button until I explain that they can switch back to Gnome.
I don’t know what the thinking behind Unity is. I upgraded to it from 10.10 couldn’t believe how bad it was so ran a new install (remember this is a test machine) to realise this is what was intended!
Just another example of dumbing down?
September 30th, 2011 at 11:39 am
Install gnome-session-fallback and you’ll be fine. Also you may want to know that Gnome is NOT the only DE, install LXDE, KDE or XFCE and you will also be fine.
October 17th, 2011 at 9:45 am
“Unity – Dumbed-down Linux for Dumbed-down users.”
It makes my computer look like a Fisher-Price toy. And almost as useful.
October 26th, 2011 at 2:12 pm
Can I just suggest that the only rational explanation for how horrible Unity and Gnome 3 are is that Microsoft or other terrified proprietary competitors have planted moles on the dev team to destroy this once awesome interface and cause the slow death and abandonment of Ubuntu. Nothing less could explain this unspeakably horrible trainwreck of an “upgrade” to such a previously awesome system. I am being completely serious here- nothing this unbelievably horrible has a benign origin- this is enemy action.