[plug] Ubuntu Unity

[home at oranges.id.au]

On 13 July 2011 15:58, Carl Gherardi <carl.gherardi at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> I've decided to take the plunge and try Unity for at least a fortnight
> full time to see if I can actually function.
>
> Two immediate annoyances.
> 1) Alt-F2 (10+ years of motor memory for console/workspace 2) switches
> workspace, but also kicks up a modal 'Run' dialogue that i can't seem
> to find how to disable.

Strange. Alt-F2 has always been 'Run' in Ubuntu (I think 6.06 was my
first use) for me. Alt-F1 used to be the apps menu, now it seems it
switches to the Unity bar (or whatever it's called), and Super pulls
up the Ubuntu-logo menu (hmm, kicker? or is that KDE terminology).

> 2) No perma-visible toolbar. I really want my cpu/network/disk/mem
> usage graph always in view. Also geyes

I don't love or hate the self-blanking menu bar. I guess it just makes
the top area of my screen look like it's wasted real estate until I
want a menu. Not sure how they could do it better... too much
animation annoys me.

> x) Clicking an application in the left bar doesn't launch the
> application again (ie. multiple terminals) - Solved - middle mouse
> button behaves as i want

Ah, thank you. I've been using a slower more painful method of
left-click, choose an existing window, then use the given app's 'new
window' process (ctrl-shift-n in gterm, ctrl-n in firefox etc)


> I did a search on the list and didn't find any discussion yet so...
> What tips. tricks and frustrations do you have with Unity/Gnome shell?

Finding apps in the menus is pretty painful, unless you really know
what you're looking for. I suspect I'll get used to it just like I got
used to the 'new' Windows XP Start Menu - I am actually very pleased
with the 'most recently used' app displays... but definitely not used
to it yet.

I'm confused by the integrated email/IM/broadcast accounts under the
username button in the top right, and haven't bothered to work through
it yet. It seems like a nice attempt, but I'm comfortable with my own
apps (mostly pidgin, gmail, thunderbird).

No other complaints so far, but my use of GNOME has been off and on
since I started maybe five years ago (switching between Windows &
command-line-only Linux), so getting really comfortable with it only
began with my current Ubuntu 11.04 installation.


-- 
Gregory Orange