Unity interface

[Michael Haney]

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 5:06 PM, J <dreadpiratejeff at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 16:54, Michael Haney <thezorch at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Technically, Gnome is supposed to be flexible so you can pretty much
>> make it look like whatever you want it to look like.  Which is why
>> stock Gnome looks like the Windows UI but the Ubuntu implementation is
>> more Mac OS X-like with the menus at the top left of the screen.  In
>> fact, some distros remove the bottom panel with the application task
>> bar and put Gnome Do in its place.
>
> Yeah, but for that matter you can do the same thing with Windows...
> and there are even Docky like apps for Windows, IIRC...
>

Yes and No.  You can put the taskbar at the top of the screen but you
can't change its look significantly or behavior without a 3rd party
app like Window Blinds.  Gnome doesn't require 3rd party apps to do
that.

> But in general, with the exception of OSX and now Unity, the most
> common GUIs have used the same format Windows has used.  A task bar at
> the bottom of the screen with some sort of "Start Menu" or "Main Menu"
> in the corner with widgets on the opposite corner that indicate
> date/time, and status of certain things.
>

There are some other DEs that do it differently.  Like Enlightenment.

> And that bar is usually movable, there may or may not be a second
> one... the menu structures are even usually fairly similar.  Granted,
> the last few KDEs completely changed how the menu structure is laid
> out, but historically, both KDE and Gnome used basically the same
> style and positioning by default that MS has.
>
> Oh well.. heh... now back to seeing how my Lucid -> Maverick -> Natty
> upgrade went on my test system :)
>

Well, unlike Windows, the Ubuntu menu structure in Gnome put software
in categories so you could find them easier.  The Start Menu in
Windows has no such hierarchy by default.  The user has to make those
changes themselves manually, and for the layman Microsoft doesn't make
that easy to do.  For a techie like me I can do it easily.

-- 
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
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