Ubuntu 12.04 LTS removing unity and installing GNOME

[Robert Spanjaard]

On Mon, 04 Jun 2012 08:44:40 -0500, Jim Byrnes wrote:

> OK since you asked.  Here are the main reasons I have not upgraded from
> 10.04 to 12.04 on my desktop.  I have had Unity running on my laptop
> since it was released trying to "get used to it".
> 
> I like having the panel at the bottom of the screen where I can see at a
> glance what I have running and in what window it is running.  I haven't
> been able to do this in Unity yet.
> 
> I like the menus to be on the apps window not disconnected at the top of
> the screen.  If I have a small sized window at the bottom of the screen
> it seems foolish to have to move the cursor to the top of the screen to
> activate a menu.
> 
> I don't like the HUD idea.  If I am starting to use a new program the
> first thing I do is pulldown all the menus to see what is available and
> then look at the preferences to see what is configurable. It seems to me
> HUD would make this difficult.
> 
> Those are specific reasons. In general I just don't want to have to
> remember another bunch of keystrokes to operate the OS. Typing and
> searching is all well and good if you know what you are looking for.  If
> you don't seeing it in a menu sure helps.

I second that. And to add some more: when you have a single application 
with multiple windows, or need to work with multiple workspaces, Unity's 
sidebar is slower than the old panel. With the old panel, a single click 
was enough to activate any window or workspace. Unity takes two clicks, 
and a pause in between, because you need to bring up the overview of 
windows first.
I regularly work with multiple windows in a single application (most 
notably Gimp, Nautilus and Firefox) so Unity really slowed down my 
productivity.

Unity 3D also slows down the graphics card (an old onboard HD3200 on my 
desktop). With Unity 3D, OpenGL-apps were noticably slower, and my 
computer was unable to play HD-movies smoothly. This was no problem in 
10.04 (Gnome 2). I tried Unity 2D for a while which fixed this problem, 
but all the other problems mentioned above persisted.

Also, while this wasn't an issue on my desktop, Unity was a real resource 
hog on my netbook (N450, 1GB), even the 2D version. The netbook runs much 
smoother with Xubuntu because it uses less memory, and therefor less 
swap. And because I wanted to use the same DE on both systems, I switched 
the desktop as well.

So for me, Unity was a good reason to switch to Xubuntu, after having 
used Ubuntu for seven years. I gave it a fair chance, tried it for about 
a month, but for me Unity really was a step *backwards*.

-- 
Regards, Robert                                      http://www.arumes.com