Unity mess

Unity mess.

As I have mentioned in my previous posts, I started out with Ubuntu 10.10 as my first distro. This was sometime around December 2010, so 10.10 had been out for quite some time. The desktop environment (DE)in use was of course Gnome 2.x.

Ubuntu 11.04 came out around April 2011, with the new Unity DE from Ubuntu. At the same time, The Gnome team also released the new Gnome Shell interface (Gnome 3.x). Both DE's were completely different than what most users were used to in Gnome 2.x. This caused up a lot of stirs in the Ubuntu Community. Some Gnome users liked Unity, some preferred the new designs of Gnome 3, and most users didn't like them both one bit.

For each of the DE offered in Ubuntu, there is a specific *buntu release for it. For example, Xubuntu for XFCE, Kubuntu for KDE. However, when 11.04 came out, there was no Gnome-specific release. Canonical pretty much push Gnome 2.x out, ignored Gnome 3, and replaced it with Unity.

This caused major shifts in user distributions among distros and DE's. Those who liked Unity, stayed with Ubuntu. Those who liked Gnome 3 went to other distros, such as Fedora. The majority of course went to another distro called Mint. Mint offered what I feel a lot of users missed in the new DE's; consistent desktop experience. To achieve this, they came up with their own DE called Cinnamon. Plus, Mint has all the media codecs you might need out-of-the-box.

It was not until when Ubuntu 12.10 came out, that someone packaged Ubuntu specifically with Gnome 3 as the default DE. Now, it is an official Ubuntu flavor. So, if you liked Gnome 3, you can try that out.

During all this commotion, a lot of users still liked the simplicity that was in Gnome 2.x (aka Gnome Classic) and didn't like the new look of Gnome 3. At some point, someone decided to fork the Gnome 2.x, and thus the Mate DE was born. Mate is offered in several Linux distros including Mint and Fedora.

KDE users were probably mostly untouched by all this, but some users who didn't like these changes probably went to try KDE as well. Hooray for potential increase in user share!!!

The way I write this post makes it look like all this was Ubuntu's fault for releasing Unity. That's not necessarily true. However, they did release Unity, and that angered a majority of its users, who then went to other distros. That's the beauty of Linux, I guess. If you don't like it, try an alternative. But, it is also possible that Unity might attract new potential Linux users to try Ubuntu as their first distro.

Previously, when bringing new members to try Linux desktop, we can suggest them 1 of 2 DE to try. Either Gnome or KDE, a simple choice. I believe, those two DE's are easy starting points for new users. They can then explore on their own all the other types of DE's that appeals to them. However now, when trying to introduce new users, we are faced with too many choices. "Here, try Unity, or Cinnamon, or Gnome, or maybe Mate. Oh wait, this distro still ships with Gnome 2, try that. Hey, why not KDE?". Now there's too many choice. But, maybe I'm wrong, there has always been too many choices when it comes to Linux.