Explain to me again why Unity is so great...

[Thierry de Coulon]

On Saturday 23 April 2011 09:24:07 am Graham Watkins wrote:
> On 23/04/11 06:17, Cybe R. Wizard wrote:
> > On Fri, 22 Apr 2011 16:38:48 -0500
> > Shaun Jones<mister.s.jones at gmail.com>  wrote:
> >> Xubuntu will give you the classic style your looking for plus there
(...)
> >> Mister Jones
> >
> > For an alternative desktop environment to GNOME, KDE and XFCE4, I
> > suggest trying out LXDE.  It's in the repositories, just like the
> > others and all those window managers.  There are ways around /having/
> > to use Unity, even after the move to GNOME 3 and Unity.
> >
> > Cybe R. Wizard

There are lots of environments and that was not the OP's question, which was: 
what's so great in Unity. Obviously on this list the answer is: nothing 
special. I've watched the Jorge O. Castro video and it boils down to: easier 
multitasking for him, as he works. Given what _I_ would loose in usability 
it's hardly tempting.
If Unity is "yet another UI" great, as long as switching to another is not 
made complicated (SuSE used to let you choose when installing, and if 
installed you get the choice at loggin anyway, so whats so wild with Unity 
being the default?).

> Everything I've read about Unity makes it seem like something I would
> wish to avoid.  However, my experience of gnome-shell (which seems like
> KDE4 all over again - a total smegging disaster) suggests that Unity may
> be the lesser evil. 
(...)
> takes me back to my old Mandriva days.  My ideal solution however, would
> be for someone to bring out something similar to Trinity Maverick, but
> using Gnome 2. Anyone know of such a project?
(...)
> Cheers,
>
> Graham

The error with KDE 4 was they killed KDE 3 to _force_ users to move on. AFAIK 
Gnome 3 won't (Gnome 2 stays, at least for the moment).
KDE 3 is basically different from Gnome, I mean in the way it works. One 
probably could give Gnome 2 a KDE 3 look, but it would not be KDE 3 (for 
example what keeps me with KDE 3 is KDM and Konqueror as a file browser. I 
never really tried Gnome on KDM - should be possible - but I think Gnome 2 
needs Nautilus, which can be lived with, but is no way as good (IMHO) as 
Konqueror).

I think there is nothing to win in a UI war, the great thing with Linux is (as 
others pointed out) that we (should) have  the choice, and if it's easy to do 
even better. Maybe when Unity is "finished" someone can show its more than a 
multitasker for tablets and touchscreens, otherwise it's dead for me before 
it's really born.

Thierry