Unity or how Ubuntu turned itself into a Windows

igornuk — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 00:10:44 +0000

I still remember early 2004 and my discovery of Ubuntu. Those days I wanted badly to move away from the Windows. I could not handle anymore operating system that had turned out my at that time state of the art laptop into an old wreckage. I felt like still sitting in front of the old i386 despite all those gigahertz of processing power and gigabytes of storage. Slow booting, endless loading of services, easily fragmented disk, registry that would break the system if more than ten programs were installed and poor user experience were alarming reasons for a change. I was bored using a computer. I could not use it how I wanted.

What were alternatives? Actually not many. Since for me apple mac was not an option I have decided to look in the open source world. I have tried one linux distribution, then I have tried another one, and another one and so on. Few times installation process would simply freeze, on other occasions sound would not work or I could not find a driver for the network card. Fortunately, at some point I stumbled upon Ubuntu. Everything just worked in a first installation attempt. My computer was reborn and using it was again fun and exciting. I liked it for being an open source, developed in Africa. I liked the meaning of its name that stands for humanist philosophy.

Beauty of the linux concept is that one can really tweak it, customize it, automate it and change it to any possible degree. And there is something that I really like about most of the software developed by the open source community. And that is the following concept: one software package one function. Simple and powerful! And Ubuntu managed to put together power of the linux, thousands of software either already installed or available via software repositories and made everything just work.

So where is the problem? Why this is not a story with a happy-end? Well, it looks to me and as well to number of other Ubuntu users that Canonical, company behind Ubuntu, decided to move in direction of the concept of “one operating system and one interface for all” by pushing their own desktop environment called “Unity”. Unity appeared first time as the option in Ubuntu 10. In version 11 it became default desktop but it was possible to turn it off and switch back to another desktop manager. In the lasted Ubuntu version Unity is the only choice.

What is so wrong with Unity? First of all, there is no choice not to use it. This is so not linux. Second, level of its customization is minimal and I would say unacceptable. Third, on a desktop computer with a large screen unity makes interaction with ubuntu’s functions and applications a horrific and painful experience. Does unity look good? Yes, it looks good, it is a candy. Does it work well on a tablet? I don’t know, I have not yet heard about tablets running ubuntu/unity. Does it work well on laptops? Let’s put it this way: it is not as bad as on desktop machines. Does one notice similarity between Ubuntu with unity and the upcoming version of Microsoft Operating Windows 8? I do and do not believe it is going to work. I am aware that I am not a typical user who needs a device with a simplicity of an appliance to do a few common activities such as connecting to the Facebook, watching movies, listening to the music and getting skype with friends. But hey Canonical, be at least honest with your community if you do not want to listen to us. If you knew already few years ago that your main target audience will not continue to be traditional linux desktop users you should have told us that clearly. Open source world is vast and there are hundreds, if not thousands of linux distributions for everyone’s taste and needs.

To conclude. I wanted to move away from windows and I had found Ubuntu. Ubuntu has changed, and I need a change too. I need to experience fun of computing again. So good bye Ubuntu and hopefully see you again and see you soon.

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Unity or how Ubuntu turned itself into a Windows