Reply to post: History and all

Ubuntu UNITY is GNOME-MORE: 'One Linux' dream of phone, slab, desktop UI axed

keithpeter Silver badge
Pint

History and all

@thames

Thanks for a good outline of the history - I think that I remember a spat about notification libraries as being one of the reasons for the decision to build Unity as an alternative shell as well as concerns around basic usability.

In addition to Cinnamon, there are a couple of other UIs that provide an alternative to Gnome Shell. The Chinese distribution Deepin Linux and the modifications that Trisquel used to make to Gnome spring to mind. I think Trisquel is moving its UI away from Gnome now. Deepin provide source for their UI and Arch users have in the past succeeded in packaging the code.

It is worth mentioning that Canonical Design actually carried out and published the results of usability studies, albeit with basic tasks and subjects new to Ubuntu. There appears to be very little usability research published for gnome shell that I can find; some work was carried out by an intern one summer. If anyone has references, I'd love to see them.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon