Unity and 11.04 (I know -- yawn -- another opinion)

[Darcy Casselman]

On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 8:52 AM, Russell McOrmond
<russellmcormond at gmail.com> wrote:
>  I hope that Ubuntu plans to actively maintain the "classic"
> interface.  I would hate to see "Unity" become the thing that divides
> the community, and pushed people like me to move to another
> distribution.

Gnome 2 will be around forever.  tvm is still in the repos.  You can
use it right now if you really want to.  I don't see why Gnome 2 will
be any different.

"Ubuntu" won't be maintaining it, but I have no doubt it will be
maintained by "the community."  Linux Mint is going to stay on Gnome
2, which means that Mint developers will be focused on keeping it
working on top of Debian.

Unity requires existing users to work differently.  Like I mentioned
earlier, I'd recommend "power users" check out Jorge Castro's Power
User Guide to Unity:
http://castrojo.tumblr.com/post/4795149014/the-power-users-guide-to-unity.
 There are cool power-user features in Unity.

I consider myself a power user.  I use Unity.  I kind of like it,
actually, although I'm not entirely sold on everything.  Like the
global menu.  But since I grew up on the Amiga, a single menu at the
top of the screen isn't entirely foreign to me.

But if you don't want to have to re-learn how to use the desktop and
you just want to get on with it, Gnome 2 is still there.  Xubuntu is
also there.  Ubuntu Studio has announced that they're switching to
XFCE because their users just want to get on with it.  There are
alternatives.  It's free software.  There are always alternatives.

As for community, I have a pretty broad view.  You can not like Unity
and still be part of the Ubuntu community.  Kubuntu is part of the
Ubuntu community.  So's Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, and a bunch
of other related projects.  I consider Debian part of the Ubuntu
community, although I'm sure they see it the other way around. :)

Darcy.