Gnome 3 and Unity

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badinsults
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Gnome 3 and Unity

Post by badinsults »

With a long weekend coming up this weekend, I figure it is high time for me to do my annual wipe my computer clean and do a fresh install of my operating system. There is a new version of Ubuntu coming out, with an interface called Unity, which despite being built on Gnome 3, is distinct. Gnome 3 is already being used in Fedora and Suse distros. I haven't looked into non-Ubuntu distros, so I am kind of curious if anyone has any opinions on Unity and Gnome 3 yet. Perhaps I could even install more than one distro and try them out.
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paulguy
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity

Post by paulguy »

If you're not sure, you could always try a virtual machine. There're free ones like virtualbox and vmware player.
Maybe these people were born without that part of their brain that lets you try different things to see if they work better. --Retsupurae
badinsults
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity

Post by badinsults »

I think both of these interfaces require 3D acceleration. I thought that the virtualization software didn't allow for that.
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paulguy
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity

Post by paulguy »

They do opengl, and maybe basic d3d.
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kode54
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity

Post by kode54 »

Actually, current VM software only does OpenGL, except for systems which support accelerating Windows Vista and newer with Aero, which accelerate Direct3D through full WDDM drivers. For instance, the Windows XP shit requires the user to install a copy of wined3d to wrap Direct3D to their OpenGL implementation.
badinsults
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity

Post by badinsults »

I tried live cds of Fedora and Ubuntu. Fedora didn't load, and Ubuntu failed to start Unity due to it not being able to successfully load the Nvidia drivers. Looks like I should wait a while for things to stabilize.
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xeemo
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity

Post by xeemo »

If you're somewhat Linux savvy I would recommend Arch. http://archlinux.org

It might take some reading of the wiki, but you can choose what you want to install. Right now I'm using XFCE with compiz, for rotating cubes and such. I have it set up to act almost exactly like I had gnome2 for quite a long time.

It might be a pain to install without a wired connection. When I install from wireless I use another computer for a wireless to wired bridge.

Also I'd recommend the net Install.

For info on how good the mirrors are check here:
http://www.archlinux.org/mirrors/status/
murderslastcrow

Re: Gnome 3 and Unity

Post by murderslastcrow »

I'll second that opportunity to try Arch. Once you're familiar with the installation method, you can do it all quite easily- they've taken a lot of steps out recently, as well. Just make sure you're using wired ethernet during installation if you want to make things easier on yourself. The Beginner's Guide in the official Arch wiki is quite sufficient for trying it out. The Arch Wiki probably has more information on Linux in general than any other source on the internet, from my experience- no need for support forums when you have everything covered (although they do have them).

Also, I should make some corrections- Unity isn't built on GTK 3, or any Gnome 3 libraries at the moment. It will be ported to GTK 3 for the following release to allow Gnome 3 as an option. Also, you can use DirectX up to version 8 perfectly, and 9 and 10 fairly well, in VirtualBox using their Direct 3D support. Also, the most recent VirtualBox has been patched to support Unity and Gnome 3. The way they get D3D support is by using Wine's DirectX implementation that reroutes calls to OpenGL- so technically you're running translated OpenGL, which is sometimes faster than the original DirectX.
badinsults
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity

Post by badinsults »

Arch Linux sounds like a pain in the ass.

I don't want to spend countless hours configuring things.
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badinsults
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity

Post by badinsults »

Ok, I went and upgraded to 11.04, and after an hour with Unity, I have to say that it is less user friendly than Gnome 2. The menu should sort by open applications (it sorts by bookmarked applications). The search functionality is broken (it only lists files that have been recently accessed, and has no apparent options to broaden the search to include all files in a folder or the filesystem). The menu bar also does not show up quickly enough after you put the mouse on the left side of the screen, and there is no option to increase the speed.

Luckily they give you the option to switch back to Gnome.
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kode54
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Re: Gnome 3 and Unity

Post by kode54 »

And also Nouveau does not provide sufficient acceleration for it to even function, so if you're installing from scratch, you have to install the binary drivers from NVidia to even see it. So solly Chalie if you're booting live media.
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