Featured Comments: Week of 2013 June 2

There was one post this past week that got a handful of comments, so I will repost most of those.

How-To: Make Xfce Like Unity

Reader Mike Frett shared, "That's why I use XFCE, very customizable. I don't particularly like Unity, but I enjoyed the article. Incidentally, you could have turned the Opacity down a bit on your Dock to match Unity's. I use Xubuntu, when I do I always delete the Dock on the bottom and drag the top bar down to the bottom. I add some spacers and launchers and such till it looks like *that* classic OS from around '98. It's just my preference because it's simple and stays out of my way. I use the Shiki-Brave and Classic Ambiance themes. Nothing in my System Tray on the right except the clock, weather update and Network Monitor (Bars only). And Dots style separators. I like it =p Point is, it's very customizable to anyone’s liking. But it annoys me they still call XFCE a 'light' WM when it's resource usage is the same as Gnome 3 and KDE; and they STILL don't have even basic effect's like fade-in and out or Min-Max animations."
Commenter Morten Juhl-Johansen Zőlde-Fejér had this bit of support: "This is an excellent documentation of the level of customization that is possible. I seem to recall another site where they did a Vista and MacOS X redesign - it was quite impressive."
An anonymous reader said, "Unity's screen layout is actually OK. But if Unity was just a reorganization of an on-screen dock and panel, then it wouldn't have generated so much controversy. Canonical eliminated the start menu, replacing it with a cumbersome search function; they also adopted the Mac's one-menubar-for-all-programs style, took away many customization options, and put all of that in a package that requires high-end graphics capability to even run. I don't know why anyone would want to emulate any of that. With Xfce, you can put a launcher in the dock that opens the "application finder", which is a nicely laid out menu of installed programs, organized by program type (graphics, internet, etc.). Alternatively, the launcher could run "thunar /usr/share/applications", which would produce a very Mac-like display of clickable icons of all installed applications. I imagine one could do this with Unity, in effect restoring the start menu (but I haven't tried - Xfce works just fine). And I still haven't found a simpler way to switch desktops than Xfce's trick of just moving the mouse off the right or left screen edge. No mouse clicks at all! Gnome 2.x had the same thing, I think; gone the way of the Dodo bird..."
Another anonymous commenter countered, "I'm with Innocent Bystander. I switched to Xfce 3 years mainly to get away from what I saw coming down the pike with GNOME 3 and Unity. While it's interesting to know that this can be done with Xfce, this article begs the question: WHY would anyone in his/her right mind WANT to do this? As someone who likes Xfce the way it is due to the Xfce team sticking to tried and true intuitive GUI design that has stood the test of time, I consider this article to be completely and utterly pointless."

Thanks to all those who commented on that post. I'm back on campus, but because my UROP (and graduate school preparations) are a bit less hectic than the normal semester, I'll probably be able to put out a review this week. Anyway, if you like what I write, please continue subscribing and commenting!

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How-To: Make Xfce Like Unity

This is more or less the sequel to this post. It came about because I wanted to see if it would be easy to make Xfce look like Apple's Mac OS X; I figured that Unity looks similar enough, so I might as well write about that. Follow the jump to see how to do it. I would have added more pictures if I had more time, but I'm heading back to campus tomorrow, so I can only make this a quick post in the meantime.

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Featured Comments: Week of 2012 January 22

There was one post that got a few comments this week, so I'll repost most of them.

How-To: Make KDE Like Unity

Reader decentralist.wordpress.com had a few suggestions for KDE itself: "The main things I want to fix is being able to start a dash/menu/takeoff with just the meta/super/windows key and not need key combinations in KDE. I'm told this would require a change to Qt itself. I also want KDE to be able to use CTRL+ALT+ arrow keys to switch desktops instead of CTRL+Function keys. Don't think this can be fixed currently either."
An anonymous commenter responded to this, saying, "I did this a couple of months ago on openSUSE and Debian. The CTRL+ALT+ arrow keys is in the convoluted UI somewhere, I just don't remember where. I have also have gotten the super key to launch Kicker, I believe I added something to .xinit. Google is your friend, er maybe not. :)"
In the context of KDE being a refuge for people who don't like the Unity UI, another anonymous reader asked, "Why?"

Thanks to all those who commented on this past week's posts. This coming week, I don't really have much planned, but I'm sure I can think of something to write about. In any case, if you like what I write, please continue subscribing and commenting!

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How-To: Make KDE Like Unity

I was going to do a review of PC-BSD, but unfortunately, that didn't work out (more on that later), so I'm doing this instead, though I had planned this for next week.

Vanilla KDE

Many months ago, I did a post on how to make KDE look more like Elementary OS. It was just one way of showcasing KDE's power and customizability. Now, I'm doing the same with regard to the Unity UI present in recent versions of Ubuntu. I know that a lot of people online have expressed displeasure with Unity along with the intention to use KDE instead. But what if you like the Unity UI but want the other features of KDE as well? Then this article is for you.

If you are using Kubuntu, this post is technically moot, because it is possible to use all of Unity 2D under KDE in Kubuntu without any issues; that is because Unity 2D is made with the Qt libraries, which also underlie KDE, so there's some compatibility there as far as I can tell. If you aren't using anything Ubuntu-based, though, then you're out of luck in terms of trying to use Unity 2D, so this is for you. I did this using a Chakra 2011.12 "Edn" live USB, so all my instructions will be based on that. If you are using another distribution, you may have to search online to see how some steps are done. Follow the jump to do it.

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Review: Edubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot"

Main Screen

Well, it's that time of year again: it's October, so another edition of Ubuntu has been released. This includes its official derivatives, like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, and Edubuntu. Today I'll be testing Edubuntu because I feel like it doesn't get reviewed enough, yet it provides the same experience and support as standard Ubuntu, aside from having a whole bunch of educational applications included in the live session (hence the name).

So what's new with Edubuntu? Version 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" came with Unity for the first time, and I reviewed Edubuntu then; I found that while I didn't encounter any stability issues, I couldn't use the interface very easily and it didn't seem that polished. Since then, version 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" has seen a few new features and revisions to the interface, along with the replacement of GNOME 2 by GNOME 3, but most of the work has gone into fixing bugs and making the experience much more stable and polished. One other thing is that the GDM login screen has been replaced by the lighter yet more polished LightDM; as the live session has automatic login, I wasn't able to see that.

The live ISO file is 2.6 GB, which is a pretty hefty download, but that can be explained by the large number of extra educational programs included. I tested Edubuntu using a live USB made with UnetBootin. I did not test the installation, but fear not, because I will test the installation procedure with either Kubuntu or Xubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot", and I hope to review those soon. Follow the jump to see what the latest version of Edubuntu is like.

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Review: Edubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal"

GNOME Main Screen

Before I get on with the rest of this post, I need to apologize for not having posted anything this week. It turned out to be a good deal busier than I anticipated, and even otherwise, there wasn't a whole lot to write about, at least at the beginning of the week. I did say in the latest "Featured Comments" article that I would review the latest release of Ubuntu — version 11.04 "Natty Narwhal". That is still happening, but for reasons that will become clearer, I will not write reviews of Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu/Lubuntu just yet, but will wait a day or maybe a little more.

JAVA Session Welcome Screen

With that aside, I find it interesting that having written this blog for almost 2 years and having reviewed Linux distributions for almost as long, I have never formally tried and reviewed Ubuntu or any of its official other editions (Kubuntu, Edubuntu) or officially-sponsored community derivatives (Xubuntu, and hopefully soon Lubuntu as well). I've reviewed quite a few other derivatives, most notably Linux Mint, but I've never tried straight-up Ubuntu itself. I guess that's because I've always sort of taken Ubuntu for granted; I installed it on the laptop of a member of my family, I've seen people put it on their computers, and I've used it at the Athena clusters here at MIT. Well, that's changing today, with a review of Edubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal".

Why Edubuntu, and not Ubuntu? As mentioned earlier, one reason will become apparent when I publish the review of Ubuntu. The other main reason is that I haven't really seen Edubuntu reviews on the Internet; that could be because of its specific target audience, but in any case, I think it deserves a review, especially given that it is an official Canonical product. For those who don't know, Edubuntu, as you might be able to guess from the name, is a packaging of Ubuntu with lots of education-related software included out-of-the-box.

Thanks to Canonical's efforts in this regard, I was able to test it in two ways: I was able to try it out online from the comfort of my current Linux Mint system, and then I tried it through a live USB made with UnetBootin. Follow the jump to see what it's like.

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HP + Linux = Ending the Microsoft Addiction?

HP has been best known for its peripheral computer devices, especially printers and scanners, though it is also well-known for its desktop computers, and, to a lesser extent, laptops and netbooks. Its printers and other peripherals are held in high regard for fully working with Linux distributions out-of-the-box, but it has never officially supported Linux among its product portfolio. Sure, it has sold business-/enterprise- and server-grade computers with SUSE (SLED, not openSUSE), but those are tucked away in dark corners of its website; even Dell, with its on-again, off-again, relationship with Ubuntu, does sort of advertise its Ubuntu-based machines. Well, that's all about to change at HP.
Today, HP first announced a couple WebOS-based phones and a new WebOS based tablet to compete with Apple's iPad. WebOS is HP's mobile operating system based on Linux; as far as I know, other than using the Linux kernel and base GNU tools, WebOS is not related to Android, and the two will probably compete in the mobile marketplace. But the most exciting part came later: HP announced that not only would WebOS come in phones and tablets, but it would also make its way into its printers and PCs. That's right: HP is introducing its own Linux-based competitor to Microsoft Windows. Sweet! This could, after all, be the oft-proclaimed year of the Linux desktop.
Of course, with this new announcement comes new responsibilities; now HP has absolutely no excuse for their peripherals not fully supporting Linux, considering many of them will run Linux under the hood. Then again, as I said earlier, HP has been pretty good to Linux so far in terms of peripheral support.
But there's another aspect to HP's WebOS announcement. If you noticed, WebOS is supposed to be a mobile platform; yet, it's being ported to conventional desktops as well. This is similar to how Ubuntu's Unity interface, originally designed for netbooks and similarly small screens, will become the default interface for desktops as well, and how future versions of Google Chrome OS will likely be very much like Android scaled up for netbooks. In addition, it looks like GNOME 3 was also designed with small form factors in mind, what with the Activities feature and the panel only being able to show the active task, and this has been scaled up for traditional desktops. I think there's a new trend here of creating new interfaces designed for mobile devices and then scaling them up for desktop use, and I think for that reason it's true that the future of end-user computing is in mobile devices. A while back I wrote a post about how Microsoft's push for Windows 7 on netbooks was misguided and that it should scale up the Windows Phone 7 interface instead to make better use of hardware resources, similar to how Apple scaled up the iPhone's iOS for use in the iPad instead of trying to cram in Mac OS X. Well, now that we're seeing mobile OSs being scaled up to full desktops and not just netbooks, I don't think Microsoft is just misguided anymore — I think they're dead wrong, and I think it's already costing them.
The only concern I have though is that WebOS on desktops and laptops may be relegated as a lightweight "instant-on"-style OS secondary to Microsoft Windows, similar to what Asus did for a while on its laptops and netbooks. Then again, HP seems to be pretty darn serious about WebOS for desktops, and not just because consumers want something fast; they recognize that consumers also want the same polish found in modern mobile OSs, so I don't think WebOS will be playing second fiddle to Microsoft Windows on future HP desktops/laptops.

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FOLLOW-UP: General Disillusionment with Ubuntu

Last week, I commented on how many Linux users are turned off by Canonical's seemingly unilateral decisions with regard to the development Ubuntu, the latest (at that time) example of which has been the decision to ship the Unity DE as the default even in the desktop edition, even though it's clear that even the standard netbook version of Unity needs a lot of work. Well, a lot of news outlets have reported that Canonical is going even further with this and that it wants to completely ditch the X/11 Windowing System.
Wow. That's a pretty bold move. Then again, it really does explain the decision to ship Unity, as Canonical probably wants to use that as a testbed for a totally new desktop environment built on the relatively new Wayland system.
So what do I think about this? Well, now I don't oppose the move to Unity as much because now I know it's just part of a bigger plan. That said, I'm not an expert by any means on windowing systems or X/11, but I'm inclined to believe the numerous statements that the reason for this switch is because X/11, dating from the 1980s, isn't getting any more streamlined and it's just getting more bloated with newer versions of desktop environments. Given that, I totally understand and do agree with the switch to Wayland, especially if it is going to be a long-term shift with support for legacy X/11 applications for a while as well. At the same time, I hope that Canonical really means it when they say that the transition to Wayland will be a much longer-term process.
Given all this, I wonder what will happen to Linux Mint and other derivatives of Ubuntu after this. In fact, now that we know that Canonical's future plan is to ship Unity or an evolution of it based on Wayland as the default environment in Ubuntu, what will happen to the official derivatives, like Kubuntu and Xubuntu? Will Canonical actually put effort into helping migrate KDE and Xfce onto Wayland from X/11, or will they just be left out to rot? I'm anxious to see what comes of all this in the coming years.
(UPDATE: The lead developer of Linux Mint has said that Linux Mint will neither adopt Unity nor Wayland in the foreseeable future, though it will remain compatible with Ubuntu. That said, it is also not likely to adopt GNOME Shell; therefore, it will remain essentially in its current state.)

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General Disillusionment with Ubuntu

There's always been murmurs of discontent in the Linux community with Canonical, the company that sponsors and manages Ubuntu. Before, I didn't really understand what all the fuss was about; it was the easy-to-use distribution and it seemed to work quite well. Having watched Ubuntu's development over the last year, I can now see why.
A large part of this is just that users are jealous that Ubuntu, and not their favorite distribution, is seeing so much success. I'm not going to go into this, because it'll likely degenerate into a flame-war.
However, the two more well-supported criticisms regard Canonical's heavy-handedness with regard to Ubuntu as well as its tendency to release new versions just to meet a release date even if the associated programs aren't exactly production-quality.
There are a couple examples of the first occur. Canonical wants to further develop the Ubuntu Software Center into a combination of APT and Apple's iOS App Store in terms of functionality. However, this combination may be going too far, as Canonical is also planning to review all application submissions similar to how Apple does this. That discomforts me as well as a lot of other users, and if this does become a reality, I'm glad to continue Linux Mint (and it may be all the more reason to switch to the Debian-based version, which is something I can say for most everything I will talk about in the rest of this post).
Canonical created a firestorm of controversy before the version 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" release with its decision to move the window control buttons to the left of the titlebar, à la Mac OS X. The criticisms were one (or more) of the following: Ubuntu was becoming a clone of Mac OS X, the control placement was unintuitive, or there was no need to change something that worked (and still works). In one reply in a particular Ubuntu mailing list, Mark Shuttleworth basically dissed the whole community (which is something I covered in a much earlier post).
There are a couple examples of the second issue. In version 9.10 "Karmic Koala", Ubuntu released Empathy (though this could have been to spur further development and refinement) and XSplash, neither of which were production-ready at that time (and XSplash disappeared after version 9.10 anyway). The most recent example of this is Ubuntu's newly announced proposal to replace GNOME Shell/Metacity/Mutter with the Unity interface even on desktops. (Unity was released in version 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" as the new netbook interface, so I'm not really sure how it'll scale up as a DE for a full-blown desktop.) The most common criticisms of this is that Unity has only been included in one release so far, and that it is very slow, buggy, and rigid (as in not customizable especially when compared to standard GNOME). Yet, Canonical is so eager to push ahead with Unity that it wants to make it an environment for the common desktop as well.
I'm not going to say anything about Unity for myself because I haven't tried it (and it will likely not happen). What I will say is that it isn't surprising to me that more and more distributions today are switching from an Ubuntu base to a Debian base, because Debian is entirely community-driven and is usually more stable. That's why my Fresh OS respins are based off of Linux Mint "Debian", that's why #! moved to a Debian base, and that's why Manhattan OS (which was based on Ubuntu not too long ago) moved to a Debian testing base (along with rebranding itself to Jupiter OS). Folks, expect to see a lot more of these types of base shifts happening in the near future, as Ubuntu starts to really chart its own course.

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