moving on

There will be no Unity desktop in Ubuntu 18.04. Mark Shuttleworth announced today that "...we will end our investment in Unity8, the phone and convergence shell. We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS." (See: "Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, rather than Phone and convergence")

Good decision. I'm not one of those Unity-haters; I came up with a Unity setup that works for me, and I have no problem using it to get things done. That being said, I actually prefer using GNOME Shell instead of Unity, so I always add GNOME to Ubuntu. I'd even been thinking that maybe I'd want to try Ubuntu GNOME next year, instead of going on to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Today's announcement, I'm guessing, spells the end of the Ubuntu GNOME spin...

Anyway, I'll enjoy logging into Unity over the next year or so, then I'll bid it farewell. Unity was never the greatest Linux desktop, but I never thought that it was all that bad.

By the way: Check out the Ubuntu Vibes piece, "Why is Ubuntu Popular? End Users Share their Opinion".

quicklist in 15.10

I found that I was able to set up a quicklist for the Unity launcher in Ubuntu 15.10 using the same type of approach that I've used in the past in Ubuntu 11.04 (see "unity quicklists"), Ubuntu 12.04 (see "shaping up") and Ubuntu 14.04 (see "trusty screenshots").

First, I created ~/.local/share/applications/utilities.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Exec=
Name=Utilities
Icon=/usr/share/icons/Humanity/categories/48/applications-other.svg
X-Ayatana-Desktop-Shortcuts=Chromium;Nautilus;GNOMECalculator;Characters;Screenshot;Geeqie;Mirage;UnityTweak;SystemSettings;Synaptic;

[Chromium Shortcut Group]
Name=chromium
Exec=chromium
TargetEnvironment=Unity

[Nautilus Shortcut Group]
Name=nautilus
Exec=nautilus
TargetEnvironment=Unity

[GNOMECalculator Shortcut Group]
Name=gnome-calculator
Exec=gnome-calculator
TargetEnvironment=Unity

[Characters Shortcut Group]
Name=gucharmap
Exec=gucharmap
TargetEnvironment=Unity

[Screenshot Shortcut Group]
Name=gnome-screenshot
Exec=gnome-screenshot -i
TargetEnvironment=Unity

[Geeqie Shortcut Group]
Name=geeqie
Exec=geeqie
TargetEnvironment=Unity

[Mirage Shortcut Group]
Name=mirage
Exec=mirage
TargetEnvironment=Unity

[UnityTweak Shortcut Group]
Name=unity-tweak-tool
Exec=unity-tweak-tool
TargetEnvironment=Unity

[SystemSettings Shortcut Group]
Name=unity-control-center
Exec=unity-control-center
TargetEnvironment=Unity

[Synaptic Shortcut Group]
Name=synaptic
Exec=synaptic-pkexec
TargetEnvironment=Unity

Then I found the Utilities icon in the Dash and dragged it to the Unity launcher. Changes to the utilities.desktop file take effect immediately upon saving the file. Screenshot:

making the smart move

Sensible decision by Canonical. Will Cooke, the Ubuntu Desktop engineering manager, writes that "we’ve taken the decision to gracefully retire some aspects of the Unity 7 online search features."

Here's what Cooke says is changing (see "Online searches in the dash to be off by default."):

First of all online search will be off by default.  This means that out-of-the-box none of your search terms will leave your computer.  You can toggle this back on through the Security & Privacy option in System Settings.  Additionally, if you do toggle this back on then results from Amazon & Skimlinks will remain off by default.  You can toggle them back on if you wish.  Further, the following scopes will be retired from the default install and moved to the Universe repository for 16.04 LTS onwards:

Audacious
Clementine
gmusicbrowser
Gourmet
Guayadeque
Musique

The Music Store will be removed completely for 16.04 LTS onwards.


I've griped a few times before about the Unity Online Search being on by default -- see "shopping crap", and see "canonical: make it opt-in!", where I wrote, "I find it hard to believe that Canonical can't see the sense in reversing course on this issue. Keep complaining, people."

Canonical could have spared itself a lot of criticism if, from the beginning, they'd left it up to the user to turn on the online search stuff. Water under the bridge; good news.

ubuntu 15.10; fvwm-crystal in debian

Installed the new Ubuntu 15.10 release yesterday; first time I've tried a non-LTS release in a while. They've made some nice improvements here and there. Installation took only about 15 minutes even with choosing to download updates during the install; Ubuntu's still great for getting up and running quickly. Spent a few hours after that adding apps and tweaking things to my tastes, though.

A shot of the default Ubuntu 15.10 desktop:

And, after a bit of tweaking:

My only complaints so far:

- Couldn't find an option in the installer for not installing grub rather than installing it to the MBR or to the / partition.

- Still had to go through and turn off the Unity online stuff -- any of that should be opt-in rather than opt-out. This is the price you pay for using Ubuntu -- you have to know to go into the Settings to turn that crap off.

- Speaking of price, when you download Ubuntu from their web site, they try to get you to donate money right before the download begins. Two shots here show the top of the page and the bottom of the page:

You can say "Not now" and the download proceeds. I guess there's really nothing wrong with any of that, but I don't like it.

- History in Synaptic (had to add Synaptic since Ubuntu doesn't include it by default anymore) is broken. If you bring up Synaptic's History, the window is blank, no text at all in there.  Here's what it looks like:

That's messed up! Yeah, there are bug reports on this. Plus, an older bug is still present -- the left part of the window isn't showing like it's supposed to, unless you use the cursor to drag the bar over to the right:

Anyway, everything that's supposed to show up in that window can be found in the files in the /root/.synaptic/log/ directory, so this isn't quite a deal-breaker.


Even with those few complaints, I ended up with what looks like another great Ubuntu installation. I still have Ubuntu 14.04 installed on another computer, for the moment. 15.10 is supported for only nine months, but by then the next LTS release will be out, and I'll certainly be moving on to that.

...

On separate note, I installed the window manager fvwm-crystal in Jessie Xfce. Here's a shot of the desktop (default, for the most part):

Took me some time to (kinda) get a feel for how things work. Given more time, I might warm up to fvwm-crystal, but at the moment I don't like it very much and I'm wondering, "Why bother with all that when there's Openbox?" To which the next guy might reply, "Why bother with Openbox when there's Xfce?" :)

trusty screenshots

I finally decided to go ahead and install Ubuntu 14.04 ("Trusty Tahr"), Ubuntu's latest LTS release. Here's what my default desktop looked like:

I went to System Settings > Security & Privacy and basically turned everything off, and that pretty much took care of the online search stuff and all that. Easy enough.

I added compizconfig-settings-manager (haven't used it, though), Nautilus-Actions Configurations Tool (haven't used that yet, either), Ubuntu Tweak, Unity Tweak Tool, Synaptic, SpaceFM, Variety wallpaper changer, and a bunch of other things.

Overall, Trusty looks pretty good, but not perfect. These LTS releases tend to get better with time, though. This screenshot shows the "Utilities" quicklist that I added in Unity:

I also added GNOME Shell:

I spent a lot of time tweaking, but for the most part I've got things set up nicely. I'm definitely having a lot of fun with Ubuntu 14.04; looks like it'll be great to use over the next few years.

still rockin' unity

Hm. After playing around this weekend with the recently released Linux Mint 16 and Cinnamon 2.0 (see Jim Lynch's in-depth review over at Desktop Linux Reviews), I ended up back in Ubuntu 12.04, with Unity.

I still like Ubuntu better than Mint; and, Unity trumps Cinnamon, in my opinion.

Different strokes for different folks. We Linux users may have never-ending arguments and disagreements about distros and desktop environments, but the beautiful thing is that with Linux, we have choices. Don't like what you see? Change it. Or switch to something else. Be happy.

canonical: make it opt-in!

People are outraged: Linux Outfit Canonical Launches Campaign to Silence Privacy Critic

About the title of the article: I'm fine with calling it what it is, but not so much with making something out to be what it isn't. From the same article:

The editor of the Ubuntu news site, OMG! Ubuntu!, says that Canonical’s email to Fixubuntu.com “does make for uncomfortable reading,” but Joey-Elijah Sneddon believes that the company is trying to preserve its trademark rights, not silence critics. Although OMG! Ubuntu has been critical of the privacy issues, Canonical hasn’t sent him a nastygram. Were “Canonical really out to suppress criticism, they’d have given me a bit of a prod before now,” he said in an email interview.

As for the underlying issue, however, I agree with Micah Lee (see https://micahflee.com/2013/11/canonical-shouldnt-abuse-trademark-law-to-silence-critics-of-its-privacy-decisions/):

Canonical employees: If this still bothers you, there’s a simple thing you can do to make me completely shut down the website. You can require users to opt-in to you collecting information about what they’re searching for on their own computers and then displaying ads to them about it, rather than violating their privacy by default. If people didn’t need to find websites that teach them how to opt out, there would be no reason for me to run fixubuntu.com.

This is what I would like to see happen, but I've seen no indication that Canonical intends to go this route. I do hope that folks in the Linux community will continue to pressure Canonical to change this to an "opt-in" thing. Maybe Canonical will end up changing it; I figure they can't be enjoying the bad press.

In the meantime, the information that Lee provides at fixubuntu.com may be useful, and is worth repeating here:

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Lenses remote-content-search none; if [ "`/usr/bin/lsb_release -rs`" \< '13.10' ]; then sudo apt-get remove -y unity-lens-shopping; else gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Lenses disabled-scopes "['more_suggestions-amazon.scope', 'more_suggestions-u1ms.scope', 'more_suggestions-populartracks.scope', 'music-musicstore.scope', 'more_suggestions-ebay.scope', 'more_suggestions-ubuntushop.scope', 'more_suggestions-skimlinks.scope']"; fi; echo | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts; echo 127.0.0.1 productsearch.ubuntu.com | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts;

What does this do?

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Lenses remote-content-search none -- Turns off "Remote Search", so search terms in Dash don't get sent to the internet

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Lenses disabled-scopes "['more_suggestions-amazon.scope', 'more_suggestions-u1ms.scope', 'more_suggestions-populartracks.scope', 'music-musicstore.scope', 'more_suggestions-ebay.scope', 'more_suggestions-ubuntushop.scope', 'more_suggestions-skimlinks.scope']" -- Turns off other remote Dash scopes, just in case (for Ubuntu 13.10 and newer)

sudo apt-get remove -y unity-lens-shopping -- Uninstalls Amazon ads built-in to Ubuntu (for Ubuntu 13.04 and older)

echo | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts; echo 127.0.0.1 productsearch.ubuntu.com | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts -- Blocks connections to Ubuntu's ad server, just in case


Also, users might want to take a look at Dedoimedo's review of Ubuntu 13.10 ("Ubuntu is back with Saucy Salamander!"), where he says this:

As always, you can tweak the privacy options with a single toggle, so I don't see what the big fuss in the media about evildoing and privacy violations is all about really. People do themselves more harm just by using Facebook.

"Linux is about choice," people like to say. Folks can choose not to use Ubuntu -- nobody's being forced to run it. Or they can choose to use Ubuntu, but to run some other environment besides Unity and sidestep the entire issue. I'll probably choose to keep running Ubuntu, either by switching "Include online search results" off or by following steps similar to those mentioned by Lee.

Anyway.

I find it hard to believe that Canonical can't see the sense in reversing course on this issue. Keep complaining, people.


Update -- from Mark Shuttleworth (https://plus.google.com/116812394236590806058/posts/5jdibY5iR9b):

This was a bit silly on our part, sorry. Our trademark guidelines specifically allow satire and critique ('sucks sites') and we should at most have asked him to state that his use of the logo was subject to those guidelines. 

Update: Steve George from Canonical had already responded at http://blog.canonical.com/2013/11/08/trademarks-community-and-criticism/ 

We are obliged to have SOME agreement in place with anyone using the Ubuntu logo. Rules for nominative use are subjective and thus a policy and agreements are required if we want Ubuntu to remain a defensible mark. It's a pain but that's the system. 

In this case we should just have said 'you may use the mark if you say that you are doing so with permission'. I guess a new guy made a bad call, but that happens and there's no point in beating Canonical up over an inadvertent slip.

shopping crap

As I've mentioned before, I'm still running Ubuntu 12.04, so I haven't yet had to deal with the Unity shopping lens issue.

To remove it in 12.10 and 13.04, it was this simple command:

$ sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping

There's no "shopping lens" to remove in Ubuntu 13.10 because the whole thing is part of the Unity Smart Scopes project. Individual "scopes" plugins can be disabled. And to disable all shopping results:

$ gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Lenses disabled-scopes "['more_suggestions-amazon.scope', 'more_suggestions-u1ms.scope', 'more_suggestions-populartracks.scope', 'music-musicstore.scope', 'more_suggestions-ebay.scope', 'more_suggestions-ubuntushop.scope', 'more_suggestions-skimlinks.scope']"

A few relevant links:

http://www.mybookmarks.ro/desktop-ubuntu/how-to-disable-amazon-shopping-suggestions-and-other-unity-scopes-in-ubuntu-13-10/

http://linuxg.net/how-to-deactivate-the-shopping-lense-on-ubuntu-13-10-saucy-salamander/

http://askubuntu.com/questions/366238/how-do-i-remove-only-shopping-searches

So, even though it still amounts to a simple copy-and-paste procedure, they made it more difficult, and now I'm ticked off.

I'll wait and see what happens with 14.04. There's a lot I like about Ubuntu, and I have a lot of options available that would allow me to continue enjoying the things about it that I like.

I could run the above command to disable the shopping results. I could add GNOME Shell or something else and use that instead of Unity. I could go with Kubuntu or Xubuntu or Linux Mint or Ubuntu GNOME to avoid the whole issue. I could just keep running 12.04.

Or I could just get away from anything related to Canonical. I've made sure not to let myself get too tied down to any one distro (besides Debian, I guess). I can take it or leave it.

I'll see how I feel next year, I guess. But I'm not so sure anymore that I'll be continuing on with Ubuntu.

tint2 and unity

tint2 has become one of my favorite panels to use in Openbox. I was browsing around this morning and stumbled upon this article: Running Tint2 under Unity (a Lightweight Taskbar)

Interesting idea. I haven't tried it yet; I'm okay using Unity without adding another panel. Might be useful to others, though.

spacefm and the global menu

I like using the SpaceFM file manager, but in Ubuntu 12.04's Unity, SpaceFM's menus don't show up in Unity's Global Menu (on the top panel) when the cursor hovers over the Global Menu area. They also don't show up where SpaceFM's menu bar would normally be:

That kinda cripples SpaceFM. The menus are supposed to show up on the Unity's top panel like they do here for gnome-terminal:

One work-around is to use the following to run SpaceFM:

$ UBUNTU_MENUPROXY= spacefm

Or, you can edit the "Exec" line in /usr/share/applications/spacefm.desktop. Here, the default was:

Exec=spacefm %F

I changed that to:

Exec=env UBUNTU_MENUPROXY= spacefm

That works nicely, but in researching this issue, I started wondering: Why bother with the Global Menu at all? There are a few different ways of getting rid of it. One solution I've seen:

$ sudo apt-get autoremove appmenu-gtk appmenu-gtk3 appmenu-qt

After looking over man apt-get, I'm not totally sure why "autoremove" would be used in this command instead of "remove." I'd probably run the following instead:

$ sudo apt-get remove appmenu-gtk appmenu-gtk3 appmenu-qt

Even after removing those packages, Firefox and Thunderbird's menus still show up in the Global Menu, as I understand, so you'd have to run the following for those apps:

$ sudo apt-get remove firefox-globalmenu thunderbird-globalmenu

More web searching turns up another command for getting rid of the Global Menu:

$ sudo apt-get remove indicator-appmenu

I like that one better, so that's what I used here. To get the Global Menu back, just run:

$ sudo apt-get install indicator-appmenu

Getting rid of the Global Menu puts the menus back on the application's menu bar, which is what most people are used to:

Removing indicator-appmenu also works for Firefox. For all maximized windows, the window control buttons (close, maximize, minimize) still show up on Unity's panel, but that's fine with me:

I don't hate Unity's Global Menu, but it can be irritating at times, so I'm kinda glad to be rid of it. There was supposed to be a GUI option for disabling it in Ubuntu 12.04, but I guess that didn't happen. In any case, it's gone from here, and I don't think I'll be missing it.

opt out?

If you use Ubuntu 12.10, you may want to opt out of the Dash online search "feature." Here's Canonical's "legal notice" about it:

         Searching in the dash - Legal notice

This search function is provided to you by Canonical Group Limited (Canonical). This legal notice applies to searching in the dash and incorporates the terms of Canonical's legal notice (and privacy policy).

Collection and use of data

When you enter a search term into the dash Ubuntu will search your Ubuntu computer and will record the search terms locally.

Unless you have opted out (see the “Online Search” section below), we will also send your keystrokes as a search term to productsearch.ubuntu.com and selected third parties so that we may complement your search results with online search results from such third parties including: Facebook, Twitter, BBC and Amazon. Canonical and these selected third parties will collect your search terms and use them to provide you with search results while using Ubuntu.

By searching in the dash you consent to:

1. the collection and use of your search terms and IP address in this way; and
2. the storage of your search terms and IP address by Canonical and such selected third parties (if applicable).

Canonical will only use your search terms and IP address in accordance with this legal notice and our privacy policy. Please see our privacy policy for further information about how Canonical protects your personal information. For information on how our selected third parties may use your information, please see their privacy policies.

Online Search

You may restrict your dash so that we don’t send searches to third parties and you don't receive online search results. To do this go to the Privacy panel and toggle the ‘Include online search results’ option to off. The Privacy panel can be found in your System Settings or via a dash search. For a current list of our selected third parties, please see www.ubuntu.com/privacypolicy/thirdparties.

Changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Canonical may change this legal notice from time to time, and at Canonical's sole discretion. Please check this page from time to time for any changes to this legal notice as we will not be able to notify you directly.

How to contact us

Please submit any questions or comments about searching in the dash or this legal notice by contacting us at the following address: Canonical Group Ltd, 5th Floor, Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark Street, London, England, SE1 0SU.

https://ubuntuone.com/13SGu7nK2SuqlgiR8zkmXF

Concerned Ubuntu users may want to drop a line at the address in that last paragraph.

here we go again

Another six months, another controversial move by Canonical. This time, it's about including Amazon search results in Unity's Dash. Yawn.

Mark Shuttleworth discusses it at his blog: "Amazon search results in the Dash"

He continues the discussion in the comments that follow that blog entry, as well as in the comments section following this OMG! Ubuntu! article on the subject.

Okay, folks, Ubuntu is still Linux, last I checked. If this turns out to be something I really don't care for, I have any number of options, to include:

- Narrowing the scope of my Dash searches to exclude any online results.

- Removing the shopping lens (sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping).

- Using something else in Ubuntu besides Unity (How about GNOME Shell? How about Openbox?).

- Using another distro instead of Ubuntu.

- Sitting in front of my computer and whining and wringing my hands.


Or, I guess I could ask Canonical for a full refund of the $0.00 that I forked out to use Ubuntu. I worked hard to earn that money.

ubuntu DE usage

Over at Ubuntu Vibes, there's a post with some interesting stats on Ubuntu desktop environment usage, compiled from Ubuntu Popularity Contest stats. Here's a link:

http://www.ubuntuvibes.com/2012/08/ubuntu-desktop-environment-usage.html

The stats don't tell the whole story. For one thing, as the post's author notes:

Not all Ubuntu users have popularity-contest enabled. It's disabled by default and most Ubuntu users have likely never heard of it. So this will not show a true picture of DE usage on Ubuntu. Also the results may not be 100% accurate.

The author also mentions other factors that should be considered when looking at the data; read the entire article, and also check out the comments that follow.

In any case, here's the table that appears at that web page:

DE	Package Name	Total Users	Recent Users (used in last 30 days)
Classic Gnome	gnome-panel	1527309 (59.96%)	62875 (28.24%)
Unity	unity	397130 (15.59%)	71106 (31.94%)
KDE	kdesktop	237579 (9.32%)	50369 (22.62%)
XFCE	xfce4-panel	238688 (9.37%)	10165 (4.56%)
Gnome Shell	gnome-shell	106107 (4.16%)	24626 (11.06%)
LXDE	lxde-common	29589 (1.16%)	1375 (0.61%)
E17	e17	10696 (0.41%)	2076 (0.93%)

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it doesn't show usage for Openbox, which is a window manager that I often use in Ubuntu.

so much for that bet

Back on August 24, 2011, an Ubuntu forum member offered a bet that in 18 months, Unity would be "history."

My reply: "I think you'd lose that bet."

We "symbolically" shook hands on a bet over "a few symbolic beers."

Sadly, in October 2011 the guy's forum account was disabled (at his request) over a dispute with the forum administrators.

And I won't be able to "collect" on my bet, which was looking more and more like a sure thing -- especially with today's news at OMG! Ubuntu!:

Unity Desktop Available for Fedora

unity - showing windows

Here's a shot of a kinda messy workspace in Ubuntu 12.04's Unity, with four windows opened up:

I've got three Nautilus windows open and one Geany window open. So, on the left edge, on the launcher, there are three ticks to left of the Nautilus icon, and one tick to the left of the Geany icon. You'll note that there are no icons on the top panel showing open application windows, which is a common complaint about Unity, but you can tell by the ticks on the launcher's icons which apps have open windows running.

But what happens if you open up one of the Nautilus windows full-screen?

Great. Now how are you supposed to get back to one of the other windows?

Well, you can click on the Geany icon on the launcher, and that'll bring the Geany window back up. You can also use Ubuntu Tweak to set up a screen edge action to show the windows from the current workspace:

Here, I've moved my cursor to the bottom left corner:

But here's something I didn't know until today: If there are multiple windows of one app running, clicking on its launcher icon will show all the windows of that app:

So even if one window is at full-screen, there are still a few different easy ways to get at the windows hidden behind it.

Another way, of course, is good old Alt+Tab:

If you keep holding the Alt button down, you can press Tab to move over the Nautilus icon. Then, still holding the Alt button down, you can Tab over to the Nautilus window you want to go to:

Not that any of this will make the Unity-haters happy, but ya can't please everyone!

12.04 manual

Getting Started with Ubuntu 12.04 is called a "comprehensive beginners guide for the Ubuntu operating system," but may also be "suitable for all levels of experience" -- looking through it, I've already picked up a few tidbits that I didn't know before.

The manual includes installation instructions, tips on using "the Ubuntu desktop" (Unity), info on software management and troubleshooting, a "Ubuntu for advanced users" section, and more. You can download it in .pdf form from the Ubuntu Manual Project site, and either save it for future reference or view it in your web browser.

unity - getting work done

Of the three GNOME 3 "shells" I've used (and, I'm not aware of more than three at this time), I like GNOME Shell the most for when I've got several windows open -- when I've got a lot going on and I'm trying to get things done. Unity and GNOME Shell don't have a "traditional" panel; Cinnamon has one, but it doesn't show running apps from all workspaces -- only the current one. When I've got several windows open, usually across multiple workspaces, I'll use GNOME Shell's Activities overview to quickly get around from one window to another. Likewise, in Cinnamon, Expo mode is often more helpful to me than the panel.

In Ubuntu 12.04, Unity's Launcher shows running applications from all workspaces. A running app is indicated by an arrow on the left side of a Launcher icon. If it's a "solid" arrow (really a triangle), the app is running on the current workspace; if it's a "chevron," the app is running on another workspace. Two triangles means you've got two windows from the same app running on the current workspace.

An arrow on the right side of a Launcher icon indicates the active application -- the one you're working in at the moment.

I find it frustrating that the Unity Launcher can't be moved around. I've had a hard time getting used to it being on the left side of the screen. Sometimes I wish it was like a "traditional" panel, at the bottom of the screen, or something that I can freely drag around, like the Xfce panel.

I've tended to set it to "auto-hide" (System Settings > Appearance > Behavior tab > "Auto-hide the Launcher"), but I'm finding that this mode hinders me when I've got lots of apps running -- I can't see which apps are running at a quick glance, and I have move the cursor to the left edge of the screen to un-hide the Launcher so I can get around to different windows quickly. I finally realized that it's better for me to have "Auto-hide" turned off so that I can fully take advantage of the Launcher, especially when I've got a lot going on.

Supplemental to the Launcher, I use a few other tools to get around the Unity desktop. One of these is the Workspace Switcher:

Another is to "Present All Windows" (from the current workspace):

Then there's good old Alt + Tab to get to running apps in the current workspace:

The Workspace Switcher can be brought up by clicking on its icon on the Launcher, or by using the Super + s ("Windows" key + s) keyboard shortcut. You can Present All Windows (from the current workspace) with the Super + w keyboad combo.

With the Ubuntu Tweak tool installed, you can set screen edge actions to bring up those two things. I have the upper-left corner set to bring up the Workspace Switcher; moving the cursor to the lower-right corner will Present All Windows (from the current workspace).

Often, I find it helpful to hold down the Super key to bring up a list of keyboard shortcuts:

Of course, you can also find lists of Unity keyboard and mouse shortcuts on the internet; for example, at this page.

So, those are the main tools and approaches I use for "getting work done" when I'm using Ubuntu's Unity. In addition, I take advantage of a couple of useful things I've written about earlier: The "quicklists" on the Launcher icons, and the desktop right-click menu (customized using Nautilus-Actions).

Ubuntu's Unity is a different animal, and it requires a different mindset. It takes awhile to get used to, and to figure out how to do things. In the end, I've become just as comfortable working in Unity as in any other desktop. I also think it's quite beautiful.

As always, YMMV. :)

how soon they forget

I don't quite understand the attachment so many people have to old GNOME 2.

We've got MATE and Cinnamon in Linux Mint. The former is apparently nothing but GNOME 2 revisited. The latter is a shell for GNOME 3, but tries to look somewhat like GNOME 2.

And now we've got SolusOS. SolusOS 2, still in alpha, is built on top of GNOME 3.4, but it's "heavily tweaked to behave and look the same as Gnome 2."

Well, I'm all for people using what they're most comfortable with. I actually like Cinnamon (I have it installed in Fedora 16), although I don't prefer it over GNOME Shell. And SolusOS appears to be shaping up as a great distro -- might turn out to be better than Mint, if it isn't already.

But with all the negativity being heaped on "the new GNOME" lately, especially in regards to Unity and GNOME Shell, an ironic flashback to 2005 is in order:

I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE. This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do. Please, just tell people to use KDE.

Yeah, that was Linus Torvalds, the "Father of Linux," back in 2005, talking about GNOME 2. LOL!

misc.

 It never ceases to amaze me that so many Linux folks go on and on and on about all the things they hate about Ubuntu, about Unity, about GNOME Shell, about... Here's an idea: If you don't like it, don't use it. Problem solved.

...

For the most part, the GNOME Shell Extensions concept seems like a good idea, especially for folks who feel that they need to add tools to make GNOME Shell more like a "traditional" desktop. Still, I prefer to stick pretty close to the default set-up in GNOME Shell, and have no problems with using that to get around the desktop and get my work done. The only extensions I use are Alternative Status Menu and Quit Button.

If you go to the GNOME Shell Extensions site, currently you'll find 12 pages of extensions. The site could use a little organization; you can sort the extensions by popularity, name, recent additions, or downloads (I'm assuming that the difference between "downloads" and "popularity" is that the latter represents how many people actually have a particular extension turned on, but I'm not sure about that). It would be helpful if the extensions were categorized in some way.

I've tried out a handful of the extensions; usually, I end up feeling like they just add clutter to my desktop and don't really make things any easier for me. Seems like a lot of them are buggy.

Some of them come close to being something I'd want without being exactly what I'd want. For example, I'd like to have the Panel-Docklet extension simply show me icons for each running application. Nothing else. I messed around with the extension's settings for a long time, but couldn't find a way to get it to do just that. It gives me an icon for the running apps on the current workspace; I can set it to show running apps from other workspaces when the mouse cursor is hovering over the extension, but that isn't what I want.

Seems like it would be better to just add xfce4-panel with only the icon box on the panel, set to show icons from all workspaces. But with GNOME Shell's Activities overview, I feel like I don't need to bother with adding something like that. Keep it clean, use it like it was designed, I'm fine.

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Fedora 17 was released today. I currently have F15 (KDE) and F16 (GNOME) installed; I'll be replacing the former with F17 (KDE). I like having both of the two most recent Fedora releases running here, and I've been happy with what they do with both KDE and GNOME, so I'll just continue going with KDE for the odd-numbered releases and GNOME for the even-numbered ones.

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I use SalineOS, which comes with Xfce; one of my Debian Stable installations is the Xfce version; and, I've added Xfce to Mepis 11 to use sometimes as an alternative to the default KDE.

There's plenty to love about Xfce. I often wonder why folks who hate the never environments (KDE4, GNOME Shell, Unity) don't simply switch to it and get on with their lives.

I add a few things to Xfce to make things more pleasant for me: Dolphin and KSnapshot from KDE (better than Thunar and Screenshot), the Geany text editor (better than Mousepad), and Desktopnova for automatic wallpaper changing.

When using Xfce, the only things I can think of that I miss: Some kind of screen edges/hot corners action; a desktop/workspace grid; and a nice, simple menu editor.

But Xfce is so light and easy to configure that it's no surprise that many people don't want or need any other DE. For my money, it has the best panel in the business (it's my panel of choice for Openbox, by the way). Seems like there's no need to worry about any dramatic changes coming in the future. Kinda seems like the ideal default DE.

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The distros installed here include Mepis, SalineOS, PCLinuxOS, and Semplice Linux. All of these are either based on or spun from "larger," more established distros. All of them fall under the "one-man distro" category. And all of them are nice distros.

I played around with the idea of dropping all of them and just sticking with the "big boys" that I run -- Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, and openSUSE -- but I finally decided that I enjoy using those spin-offs and following the projects over time, enough that I'll probably keep them all (not sure about Semplice -- Debian Sid or anything based on it is too much of a hassle for my tastes). But going forward, I don't think I'll be adding any more of those types of distros to my lineup.

Overall, I think "major" distros are a lot better. Their documentation is better; and, they're more likey to be around five years from now, pretty much sticking with the same philosophies. On balance, I feel that the "spin-offs" don't offer that much in the way of advantages over the "major" distros, while the idiosyncrasies of the spin-off distros and their (lone or few) devs can be quite irritating at times.

So, even though I'm reading all kinds of wonderful things about Linux Mint 13, Crunchbang, and SolusOS, among others, I think I'll pass.

two custom tools

I added a couple of tools to my Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise) desktop that help make it a bit easier to open up some of my frequently-used applications.

For Unity, I added a "quicklist" that contains entries for several applications. I wrote about this in my "shaping up" post on May 5th. The instructions are basically the same as what I used for Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty) (see  "unity quicklists").

Next, I installed nautilus-actions and used it to add some entries to my desktop right-click menu. This works for Unity as well as for GNOME Shell. I first posted about this back on May 25, 2011 (see "GNOME desktop right-click menu"); since then, a newer version of nautilus-actions has been released, so the instructions are slightly different.

I ran nautilus-actions-config-tool. Here's how the GUI looks now:

They've added a few more tabs than they had before.

On the Action tab, I selected the selection and location boxes and gave the context label a name. I tried to add icons as well, but the icons didn't show up in the resulting desktop right-click menu, so maybe that part doesn't work.

On the Command tab, I gave it a label and a command. On the Schemes tab, I created a new scheme called “x-nautilus-desktop,” selected “Must match one of,” and deleted the default scheme that was there. 

Sometimes, changes take affect right away, but I think most of the time it's necessary to start a new session.

The new menu entries show up in the desktop right-click menu under the sub-menu “Nautilus-Actions actions.” Here's a screenshot:

Setting up these tools gives me an alternative to using Unity's Dash (and, in the case of the desktop right-click menu, an alternative to GNOME Shell's Activities Overview as well) to open up my favorite applications. Takes a little bit of work to set them up, but I think it's time well spent.