back to article Ubuntu Qt equality promised post Narwhal

Ubuntu is getting enhanced support for Qt tools, paving the way for wider deployment of the Linux distro on a range of devices. Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth has blogged that Canonical is driving development of dconf bindings for Qt and that it's working with dconf expert Ryan Lortie. The idea is that with a release of …

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  1. crowley
    FAIL

    Unity==POS

    Am I the only one worrying that it might come time to change distro?

    Unity just litters the screen with shit I'm not using, probably aint interested in using, and hides the stuff I do want. Ha, and try losing that screen real estate on a netbook!

    What rational was used to go from the ease of 3 clicks through a hierarchical Gnome menu to scrolling down a bloody great list, or typing in the name in a bloody search box?

    Even as a touch-screen user, I think I'd hate it. Disable it. And scale up the gnome menu with the accessibility controls to help those with impaired sight.

    Gnome Shell 3 on the other hand, zooms out to the stuff you're already using.

    No contest.

    Oh, Qt? Probably a good move actually. (for phones at least)

    1. K. Adams
      Linux

      Unity != Mandatory

      With regard to GNU/Linux desktop environments, I used to be a big fan of KDE running on SuSE and/or PCLinuxOS until the KDE (SC) 4.x series came out, then briefly switched to Xubuntu and XFCE 4.x, then finally settled on Linux Mint under GNOME 2.2x/2.30.

      The reasons? Well, there are a bunch, actually, but they can (mostly) be summed-up like this:

      -- -- 1. KDE (SC) 4.x uses more resources compared to KDE 3.5 (the last major revision in the KDE 3.x series). KWin seems to be top-heavy, especially when compared to Compiz/Compiz-Fusion.

      -- -- 2. KDE (SC) 4.x visual elements do not appear (to me) to be as polished and elegant as those that are provided with KDE 3.x, GNOME 2.2x/2.30, or XFCE 4.x; they have too much of a "cartoonish" feeling to them. The K Menu is visually jarring, and often doesn't seem to blend-in well with certain themes. I'm also not a fan of having to use a desktop gadget ("Plasmoid") in order to display the contents of the Desktop (or any other) folder.

      -- -- 3. XFCE 4.x, while having the advantage of being both lightweight/fast and providing built-in Compositing, had the disadvantage of not having a central user preferences store and configuration dispatch system like GNOME has with GConf (although this is changing with the development of Xfconf, and may make XFCE worth another look in the future).

      -- -- 4. XFCE 4.x had some pretty serious memory leak/stack smashing bugs a while back that rendered the environment almost unusable if you left the system logged-in constantly; after about 36 hours of continuous operation (whether or not a screen-saver was active), and with no apps open (other than panels/applets), XFCE would end up eating all available RAM and start forcing the system to swap heavily (this was on a system with an Intel Q6600 and 2GiB of memory).

      So, given my experiences with both KDE and XFCE, I was left with either GNOME or LXDE. After playing around with a few GNOME- and LXDE-based distros, I decided to go with Linux Mint, and haven't looked back. The advantage of sticking with Linux Mint is that Clement LeFebvre has decided that the "traditional" desktop doesn't need fixing, and that they will forego both Unity **and** GNOME Shell. In Clement's words, they are looking at building a Linux Mint that uses the GNOME 3.x back-end framework and libraries, but not GNOME Shell:

      -- -- Linux Mint Not To [sic] Switch To Unity

      -- -- http://www.muktware.com/n/09/2010/440

      So don't worry, I'm sure there will continue to be at least one distro going forward that lets us "traditionalists" both have our cake and eat it...

      1. Mediocrates
        FAIL

        KDE 4

        I, too, was a KDE user but it has become apparent with the release of the 4.X series that the KDE devs have been drinking bleach.

    2. Steven Raith
      Stop

      Or you can...

      ...log into Classic Ubuntu instead, and get your Gnome fix there. As I currently am on the Natty alpha. Same as you would swap between KDE/GNOME/etc.

      I don't have a problem with Unity from what I have seen, but I needed to do some work tonight and couldn't be arsed learning a new ecosystem. It looks promising though, and the 'loss of screen estate' on a netbook isn't a problem, provided it's lost from the sides, not the top and bottom.

      Vertically overdrawn windows are the only thing that annoy me about netbook usage at the moment, and NBR is better for that than Windows 7 IME, so it can't be that bad.

      I'm going to give Unity a proper whirl soon and see how it goes...

      Steven R

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Tell me:

      What rationale led you to use the word 'rational'

      Its irrational.

      1. crowley

        Re: Tell me:

        Well, given some of the comments this site gets, I thought people could bring their own E?

        (ok, ok, it was just a typo)

        P.S. Please don't ration my ale.

  2. ArmanX
    Linux

    Remember, this is Linux, not Windows

    If you don't like the default, install something else; I've been using KDE for years, via KUbuntu, as I can't stand the Gnome interface. I know people who only use XFCE, or for that matter, nothing but the command line...

    Like I said, this isn't Windows. Just go into whatever frontend for apt you like, tell it to install the interface you want, and go with it.

    1. crowley

      Re: Remember, this is Linux, not Windows

      My use of the words "Disable it" should hint that I'm aware of retaining a choice.

      It's just a pain in the arse...

      But, my apologies - talking about changing distro was indeed a tad overdramatic...

      ...Ctrl-Alt-F1 to banish it from the screen and change it might be just dramatic enough?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    KDE

    They should just switch to KDE. Better integration & no mono.

    Time for evil/good Shuttleworth incons?

  4. tom dial Silver badge
    Linux

    Back to the roots ..

    I installed Debian first about 15 years (pre buzz/1.1), and tried various other distributions, including Slackware, Red Hat, Gentoo, and Ubuntu) both before and after, but always returned to Debian for its stability and easy upgradability. Distinctly hands-on in the early years, the installer has been refined successively and now is not appreciably tougher than Ubuntu. The result is not notably inferior to Ubuntu except that "non-free" packages may be a bit harder to find.

  5. Change can be good
    Alien

    Versatile Ubuntu gets more flexible & all accepting

    "It's been Shuttleworth's mission to put Ubuntu in a greater number of embedded devices, such as in-car systems."

    Good, I waiting for Ubuntu to be running in my appliances from my toaster to robots.

  6. Paul
    Boffin

    meego?

    if ubuntu like QT so much, just adopt meego.

    and I agree that unity is terrible - fails badly without accelerated drivers. the old netbookremix was fine.

  7. elderlybloke
    Happy

    I was worried

    that this could be the end of civilisation as we know it.

    However I find that if I don't like the new look , it will only take a click (or two) to get what I want.

    Assuming that is that will want the old way and not the way of the future.

    God bless Saint Mark.

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