Initial Ubuntu 12.04 Beta 2/Unity thoughts (x-posted from own journal)

[blnchflr]

When was Unity first offered in Ubuntu? Well, I spent the time since then worried about when I could no longer avoid it, and then it's easy-peasy to get a long with! I don't know if it's because:

1. It was always easy to use.
2. The usability of Unity has come along way since everyone hated it.
3. I needed the time to get used to the thought of something radically different from Gnome.
4. Having an iPhone and using a touchscreen part of the time at work, I've adapted to the idea of a touchscreen-aimed OS/UI.
5. I'm an incredibly open-minded and adabtable kind of person!

Either way, I like it! It works fine, I can find things easily enough so far. And? I can see this on a tablet! In fact, I really want a tablet with a Linux OS. Now.

Biggest complaint so far: Firefox seems slow, even though I have hardly any add-ons installed. You're not the fast thing you once were, Firefox. But you still do everything I want you to, and exactly how I want you to do it (only, a bit slow), so I'm not quite ready to give you up yet.

Oh, and I may look into whether it's at all possible to shift the Close/Minimize/Maximize buttons to the right in Unity, because they're even more far away now, all the way over there above the Dash.

I still have some files to transfer, settings to change, and keyboard shortcuts to set up, but I'll get to them, when things start annoying me too much, *g*. I have my most important files transferred, though, and consider this my primary OS now, even though I know you're not supposed to with Betas. But I'm biased because of how well the Lucid Beta worked, which I kept running for months after the final release came out, so… Eh, whatever.</Famous last words>

Comments

[dragonwolf]

You can solve both of your user-friendly issues with Gnome Tweak Tool and an extension. The date in the clock thing is available without an extension, in the "Shell" menu of Gnome Tweak, and the Shut Down thing can be activated by installing the "Alternative Status Menu" extension (note - ASM crashes some versions of Gnome if you don't have a user picture, so if it crashes, enable a user picture by clicking on the user picture square in the status menu and setting it to something; this may be fixed by now, but I don't know what version Ubuntu is on, so just FYI).

And hai fellow Gnome fangirl! ^_^

[jewelfox]

O hai. ^.^ I'm actually on Fedora right now, but that's useful to know. Thanks!

[dragonwolf]

I'm on Fedora, too, actually. Switched when Ubuntu first went to Unity (I don't know if it changed, but Unity was hugely hostile to dual monitors, making it pretty much a non-starter for me).

The ASM issue was something I ran into right after upgrading to Verne, so if you're on Verne, too, then it's definitely something to watch out for. Other than that, the repos have a ton of extensions (I just did "yum install gnome-shell-extensions*" to get them all, since their names are stupid long), and you can turn them on and off with Gnome Tweak Tool, making it super-easy. :)

[jewelfox]

I'm on whichever Fedora 16 is. >.>b

I feel like the clock thing ought to be an extension, since that seems to be the "official" way of making GNOME Shell do stuff ... of course, gnome-tweak-tool seems to be the most convenient way of installing extensions right now.

And I'm a fan of Goldenwolf's art too. >.>b

[dragonwolf]

F16 is Verne. :)

As for the clock thing, you could consider it a "bundled in" extension. :D

And yes, Goldenwolf is a fantastic anthro artist.