After working with unity in beta2 over the last week, I'm not a fan. (And I realize this is beta, and things may have changed. But... We'll see tonight when I get a chance to muck with it)
My current project is to put together a little machine for the kids (2,4,7). So, I need to limit options, and generally not put in anything that's going to confuse them. For reference, I've got a 10.04 desktop and 10.04 Netbook remix, as well as various OSX and IOS devices around. Ideally, I'd like something like 10.04 NBR, but with current flash/web stuff, and works with the wifi dongle I have. (This is replacing a 1st gen ppc mini that's got hardware issues. Yay for kids flash games turning off the machine)
For a machine that's got constrained purposes, for lack of a better word, I find the netbook launcher interface is really good. There are a bunch of categories on the side, there are a handful of apps for each category, and everything launches full screen. I can cut back on most of the clutter, so that they don't accidentally click on something that's going to lead them astray.
Unfortunately, the netbook launcher is end of lifed at 10.04 with gnome 2, and unity is the way forward. In my brief time with unity I've:
* had the dock not autohide, and had firefox launch fullscreen, with the left half inch under the dock.
* gotten all the windows to launch behind dash. Only visible blurred. Had to ssh in and restart.
* completely killed the unity system, no sidebar, no top bar, only nautilus running. This persists through logout/login. Or rather, restart, since I can't figure out how to logout without finding terminal in the filesystem and rebooting.
There are also some design head scratchers:
* There are categories of apps when you look at internet apps in dashboard, but not when you look for more apps.
* How do I change the big three apps on the dash screen?
* unity keeps offering to install apps. I don't want that. Maybe it's cause I'm a sudoer, but I don't really want this for the other users. And it's really confusing to be looking for something to change a setting, but having the wrong name for which there are no hits, and have the top line be things to install, and not things that are on the drive already.
* why does the menu bar sometimes appear, and sometimes it's the name of the app?
And then, there's probably a hardware issue: for some reason, my desktop thinks that it has a laptop panel mirroring at 1024x768, so the 20" lcd starts up at that resolution. I know about xrandr, It can't do anything about the phantom panel.
Some of this can be traced to "It's not the netbook launcher", some to "It's not even as well thought out as the nbl", and some to "It looks like you have grand designs on my desktop, and you're not telling me what they are, so the decisions look really strange right about now".
Sometimes, I think I should have just spent the extra $500 for a mini. It would have been smaller, quieter, lower power, and it would have worked out of the box.
My current project is to put together a little machine for the kids (2,4,7). So, I need to limit options, and generally not put in anything that's going to confuse them. For reference, I've got a 10.04 desktop and 10.04 Netbook remix, as well as various OSX and IOS devices around. Ideally, I'd like something like 10.04 NBR, but with current flash/web stuff, and works with the wifi dongle I have. (This is replacing a 1st gen ppc mini that's got hardware issues. Yay for kids flash games turning off the machine)
For a machine that's got constrained purposes, for lack of a better word, I find the netbook launcher interface is really good. There are a bunch of categories on the side, there are a handful of apps for each category, and everything launches full screen. I can cut back on most of the clutter, so that they don't accidentally click on something that's going to lead them astray.
Unfortunately, the netbook launcher is end of lifed at 10.04 with gnome 2, and unity is the way forward. In my brief time with unity I've:
* had the dock not autohide, and had firefox launch fullscreen, with the left half inch under the dock.
* gotten all the windows to launch behind dash. Only visible blurred. Had to ssh in and restart.
* completely killed the unity system, no sidebar, no top bar, only nautilus running. This persists through logout/login. Or rather, restart, since I can't figure out how to logout without finding terminal in the filesystem and rebooting.
There are also some design head scratchers:
* There are categories of apps when you look at internet apps in dashboard, but not when you look for more apps.
* How do I change the big three apps on the dash screen?
* unity keeps offering to install apps. I don't want that. Maybe it's cause I'm a sudoer, but I don't really want this for the other users. And it's really confusing to be looking for something to change a setting, but having the wrong name for which there are no hits, and have the top line be things to install, and not things that are on the drive already.
* why does the menu bar sometimes appear, and sometimes it's the name of the app?
And then, there's probably a hardware issue: for some reason, my desktop thinks that it has a laptop panel mirroring at 1024x768, so the 20" lcd starts up at that resolution. I know about xrandr, It can't do anything about the phantom panel.
Some of this can be traced to "It's not the netbook launcher", some to "It's not even as well thought out as the nbl", and some to "It looks like you have grand designs on my desktop, and you're not telling me what they are, so the decisions look really strange right about now".
Sometimes, I think I should have just spent the extra $500 for a mini. It would have been smaller, quieter, lower power, and it would have worked out of the box.