The end of Ubuntu Netbook edition

By Joey Sneddon, Published March 9, 2011

Canonical has announced that ‘Ubuntu Netbook Edition’ – the netbook-orientated version of the Ubuntu operating system – will be ‘folded’ into ‘Ubuntu Desktop Edition’ for Ubuntu 11.04, with the latter being rebranded simple as ‘Ubuntu’.

Canonical marketing manager Gerry Carr writes: -

“From 11.04 the core product that you run on your PC will be simply, Ubuntu. Therefore the next release will be Ubuntu 11.04 and you can run that, my friend, on anything you like from a netbook to a notebook to a desktop. “

So why the move?

Unlike previous editions of the operating system Ubuntu 11.04 comes with Unity as the default desktop ‘shell’. As Unity was created, originally, for Ubuntu Netbook Edition, but now adapted for use as a desktop interface, Ubuntu 11.04 is able to work just as well on a netbook screen as on a desktop.

‘Two birds, one stone’ and all that.

Carr highlights that the move should certainly not been seen as a ‘withdrawal’ from catering towards netbook users, saying that the move is the result of Canonical ‘recognising that the market has moved on’ and that ‘separate images are no longer a requirement as the much anticipated convergence of devices moves closer. “

The move does not affect Ubuntu Server Edition.

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http://twitter.com/pisandelli Pedro Pisandelli
Make sense..
http://twitter.com/Knef Knef
Since Unity made its appearance on UNE first, you could argue they are actually withdrawing the Desktop Edition.

Anonymous
Yeah the desktop edition folded in the neetbok edition. :(

http://twitter.com/Dima_Sharihin Dmitry Sharihin
Simple ‘Ubuntu’ sounds much better than ‘Ubuntu Desktop Edition’.
Also, there is unity in both platforms, so desktop and netbook editions are similar
http://twitter.com/josian_220 JosÃ© Antonio
I hope that with this new version of ubuntu everyone starts seeing linux as something else that just good for embedded systems and servers :D

http://openid-provider.appspot.com/TheMerkinman Merk
That depends on people actually seeing Ubuntu in the first place

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_W2XEHOD3AY777GM53VCK76U3H4 Anonymous
No, it doesn’t. Unity sucks as a Desktop OS. I just spent an hour trying to use it, AGAIN. Hate it, sorry. I’m back to my Arch Linux desktop on vanilla Gnome, and loving it.

https://profiles.google.com/stijnverwaaijen Freak Andelle
I still don’t understand these reactions to Unity. Just choose the vanilla Gnome when you login! You don’t NEED to use the Unity interface!

http://nicoburns.com/myopenid Nico Burns
Because with all of this focus on unity, the vanilla Gnome desktop is likely to be removed at some point, especially as it takes space on the cd.

http://twitter.com/Sephiroth_VII NCLI
Wrong. Canonical will most likely keep Gnome 2.0 in the archives for as loong as it is supported. What will probably happen is:
“With all this focus on Gnome 3.00, the Gnome devs will probably stop supporting Gnome 2.0 at some point.”
I also see no reason to remove it from the cd anytime soon, since Unity depends ton Gnome anyway. But even if Canonical does remove it from the cd, it will most certianly stay in the repos.
http://www.google.com/profiles/panajotis pH7
If that happens, it’ll be after some years (but it’ll still be in the repos) and the same will happen in other distros, so?
Eventually we’ll all die, don’t worry so much about tomorrow
Anonymous
It will be replaced on the cd id say in 11.10 by unity 2d since we are including Qt on the disk. There is no reason to keep Gnome 2 on the cd but it will still be in the archive and will still be supported along with Gnome 3.

Anonymous
Gnome is the base behind Unity. Unity cannot function without it. We didn’t just build another DE we built a Shell for the Gnome DE.
Anonymous
Hate to sound rude but I have @ubuntu.com on the end of my email address I know what technologies are in use in both versions of unity and have looked at both versions and know the code layout. Unity 3d that you probably are referring to is based on Gnome technologies and compiz as the window manager, Unity 2d which is what I was referring to is written in qml and Qt with metacity as the window manager but is more or less based on KDE technologies so you are a bit wrong.
Alaukik
@shanefaganbut ain’t unity 2d a shell on GNOME
Anonymous
@Alaukik Nope its built on Qt and qml which are KDE technologies but the window manager is still metacity which is gnome and the applications are still the default Ubuntu applications which at the moment (maybe not in 11.10) are all gnome technology based applications that use GTK+. So unity 2d is a bit of a mash up but its closer to KDE than Gnome really.

http://openid-provider.appspot.com/TheMerkinman Merk
I can’t wait for the drama when GNOME discontinues the panels

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_BXOZHKIOUQCWMLT74CGJRWF43I Ted
Meh, gnome aren’t the only source for panels.
http://twitter.com/uri_herrera Uri Herrera
yeah..hmm didn’t they already did that with GNOME Shell?

Waldir LeÃ´ncio
That thing on top of Unity may not be gnome-panel, but it looks and feel like a panel, so I believe we can count it as one crippled, no-applets-low-customization panel. Anyway, I guess it’s a philosophical question more than a technical one. XD
http://openid-provider.appspot.com/TheMerkinman Merk
GNOME Shell isn’t final yet, so GNOME hasn’t discontinued the panels yet. That’s the transition I was referring to.

Anonymous
Its not like gnome-panel will just magically vanish off the face of the earth when it is discontinued. And there are other options anyway… AWN for example.

Anonymous
Try it when it’s ready

http://twitter.com/r_mo Stephen Armitage
But will it be ready for Natty? My main gripe with having Unity as the default is that it was never going to be ready for prime time for this release. They’re setting themselves up for the worst Ubuntu release in ages, not because the user hates change but they hate buggy and incomplete software being forced upon them. Look at KDE4, a load of excited hype and positive anticipation; then the 4.0 release was awful and they lost a lot of users. As Linus said:
“I hate the fact that my right button doesn’t do what I want it to do. But the whole “break everything” model is painful for users and they can choose to use something else.”
Leave Unity to be a developers or ‘adventurous’ users toy until it’s ready!

Anonymous
Right. That’s what it is right now. Normal users are not under any circumstances to be installing Natty right now – at all. There are clear warnings for this.

Anonymous
We are near feature freeze. But let’s assume they aren’t going to apply that at all to unity. Because let’s face it, crucial functionality is still not implemented, and what is implemented isn’t anywhere near finished. From the search text not dissapearing when you click the search field, to having no keyboard control over the dash.
They may be 80% feature wise ready on the _release day_. That just leaves 0 days to test all those last-minute-features.
They are not going to make it, and I bet that they’ll switch to classic in the very last minute, or delay the release.
Anonymous
Well I don’t agree with your assumption. Not the 80% number of completion. Where are you pulling all of this from?
Anonymous
Well I don’t agree with your assumption. Not the 80% number of completion. Where are you pulling all of this from?
Anonymous
We are near feature freeze. But let’s assume they aren’t going to apply that at all to unity. Because let’s face it, crucial functionality is still not implemented, and what is implemented isn’t anywhere near finished. From the search text not dissapearing when you click the search field, to having no keyboard control over the dash.
They may be 80% feature wise ready on the _release day_. That just leaves 0 days to test all those last-minute-features.
They are not going to make it, and I bet that they’ll switch to classic in the very last minute, or delay the release.

http://twitter.com/Magnesus Magnesus
When to many people decide to try it only when it’s ready we could be very negatively suprised when it’s ready – because of low feedback to developers it could go very unexpected way (to me it’s already doing it, but well…).

Anonymous
It’s kind of hard. Many of the usability issues are so obvious, most if not everybody reasons that they are just not implemented correctly. But maybe, in the end, they really did not test that part, or consider that use-case, or didn’t assign somebody to it.
I mean we are slowly coming into the terrority where a person, albeit constantly complaining, can sort of use it. If their use-cases are quite simple. (you still can’t connect to a remote server, for example, in any obvious way).

http://zwulf.myopenid.com/ Zwulf
Yeah. “Sort of” but it is far from usability that Classic Desktop offers. And – that is for sure – most people using Linux don’t have such “quite simple” use cases.
http://zwulf.myopenid.com/ Zwulf
Yeah. “Sort of” but it is far from usability that Classic Desktop offers. And – that is for sure – most people using Linux don’t have such “quite simple” use cases.

http://zwulf.myopenid.com/ Zwulf
I think it is the concept that goes a wrong way. Maybe target audience are people who do not like working with PCs I guess. And all others have to accept that usability is going to be stone-aged.

http://twitter.com/Magnesus Magnesus
When to many people decide to try it only when it’s ready we could be very negatively suprised when it’s ready – because of low feedback to developers it could go very unexpected way (to me it’s already doing it, but well…).

http://twitter.com/me4oslav Georgi Karavasilev
I must ask this, why didn’t you just logged out of Unity session and logged on Gnome session and removed Unity? Way easier than installing another distro.
Don’t understand why everyone is people are saying Ubuntu sucks because Unity is chosen as a default interface, cuz one can use absolutely ANY DE on Ubuntu. The only diffrence is that we now have one more. This should be mentioned on every Ubuntu post on every Ubuntu blog – lol.

Euthymios S.
Because we simply don’t want to spend a week modifying our system every 6 months just to make it feel like it is some other distro.

http://openid-provider.appspot.com/TheMerkinman Merk
You need to upgrade your computer if it takes you a week to log out then back in again.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_4C7IG44ZBL7QRHS4OKTAHJ3EFM Yaseen
the problem is that how long will we be able to use gnome 2.x. From what I know GNOME 2.x will not be supported anymore after Gnome Shell is released which is in April. That leaves Unity and Gnome Shell, out of which I don’t like any… I have tried both of them. Although there are some good DE’s and WM out there nothing compares to the ease-of-use and functionality of Gnome 2.x, but I guess I will jst have to move to maybe Enlightenment or something. Also, I am not a fan of what I see as new policies from Canonical and Ubuntu so will probably move to arch linux or Debian

http://openid-provider.appspot.com/TheMerkinman Merk
GNOME isn’t going to stop support for the panels the moment GNOME Shell is released. The panels probably won’t get any new features, but should at least get security updates for some time (don’t know how long though)
http://twitter.com/me4oslav Georgi Karavasilev
Well, XFCE is becoming very gnome2-ish so you can use it.
Moving To Arch or Debian or Slack etc… (you name it) won’t help you. If Gnome 2 gets unsopprted it will happen for every distro, not just for ubuntu. Persoanlly the only think I require from a DE enviroremnt is Compiz and Synapse – lol.

http://zwulf.myopenid.com/ Zwulf
I guess your room somehow looks like a huge trash bag. At least that’s what your folder structure probably looks like.

http://mark-y-a.myopenid.com/ Mark
Kubuntu, where are you? If only that silly KDE splash goes a bit faster. Has it gone away on 4.6? It’s been almost 2 years since I last touched a KDE-run desktop.

http://zwulf.myopenid.com/ Zwulf
Maybe you should try again. Many things have changed (and I mean it). The many Tweaks they added to Dolphin/Nautilus are so useful – that were exactly the things I always missed when using Gnome. I never liked KDE much but it is really mature and fast now. And it is configurable. And you could change the look easily (unlike in Unity). And apt-get works a lot faster there. And so on… there are so many things that make KDE a lot more usable than Unity while being fast all the same.

Anonymous
Speaking to one side of this issue: any DE/WM can be used in ANY distro; that’s one of the chief reasons for Ubuntu’s switch to Unity. A significant number of people aren’t happy with the fact that they’re essentially taking GNOME3, forking it with their own “unique” replacement shell, and then saying “Look what we did! We’re contributing!” I don’t see criticisms of Unity as Ubuntu bashing, anymore than I see criticisms of the kinks of other distros as bashing or flaming, unless they’re baseless attacks. Yet the issue I have with the decision to use Unity–as with many other folks–is that it’s essentially a branding scheme, as pointed out plainly in the initial memo regarding the switch. There’s no way the Ubuntu devs could have created their own DE in the six months between Meerkat and Narwhal; they just forked GNOME–which has undergone years of work by countless people who don’t get a great deal of personal recognition (let alone financial compensation)–and created a different interface to stand out from the crowd. Usability is a different issue altogether, and I personally don’t like the sort of interface Unity offers, but to each their own. Granted, no one needs to use Unity if they choose not to, but still… It bugs me a bit.
EDIT: I feel I should point out that one isn’t required to use GNOME Shell with vanilla GNOME3, either…
http://zwulf.myopenid.com/ Zwulf
Think about: People who switch from Windows to Ubuntu and chose automatic login on install would not even know how to change the DE. And I think you know persons regularly using Windows – many give up if the smallest thing is not working. Many won’t like Unity. Many will switch back to Windows. Nobody seems to recognize this. Unity is not intuitive, you need to know how to do something before.
I think other distros will benefit from that. Especially openSUSE. (naaah.. I hate them). I love Ubuntu but why did they do that?! WHY?! *crying out*
Anonymous
Because judging by Kubuntu users, it will lack polish as right now Kubuntu (or the KDE desktop) does. Once Gnome desktop becomes second class citizen in Ubuntu, it won’t be as polished as Unity. To be clear, I never tried Unity, I’m looking forward to trying it, same for Gnome 3 (again I expect it it lack polish in Ubuntu). I like that both Canonical and Gnome foundation are trying something new and I really hope they’ll both succeed in what they are doing. But I’m under an impression that they both are making some design decisions that are often considered controversial and somehow affect usability negatively (judging by all the comments I can read all over internet). I’m using Ubuntu a bit more than 5 years, and I would hate to be forced to look for other distro, if my desktop usability suffers, not that I would have any idea which other distros might be good alternatives for my needs. I’m just a regular desktop user, nothing special in my needs, but I don’t do double booting (Ubuntu/Windows) as Ubuntu is the ONLY OS I use.

Alaukik
use it on 28 april.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FVKXZ324JEQQI4C6XCFTQSUUBQ Andrei Sun
thats my birthday :D

Anonymous
I’m using Unity as my default desktop shell since pre 10.10 and I’m happy. Maybe I’m the target audience that Ubuntu choose, others can always choose their distro.
Yi Sun-sin
We Archers will take the full blow of Gnome Shell coming right at us even before Ubuntuers are subjected to Unity. And that’s quite frightening me.We Archers will take the full blow of Gnome Shell coming right at us even before Ubuntuers are subjected to Unity. And that’s quite frightening me.

http://thealphanerd.wordpress.com/ Calvin
so i herd you like xfcekips?

Yi Sun-sin
I don’t even know what xfcekips is !

http://www.cornwall-it.co.uk Cornwall IT
I think they’re heading in the wrong direction. The average consume doesn’t want a single option, they want a whole plethora of options. Canonical should consider the following as options/versions/editions for the forthcoming Ubuntu:
+ Ubuntu 11.04 Starter Edition
+ Ubuntu 11.04 Home Basic
+ Ubuntu 11.04 Home Premium
+ Ubuntu 11.04 Professional
+ Ubuntu 11.04 Enterprise
+ Ubuntu 11.04 Ultimate

Anonymous
hahahahah classy!
Alaukik
+ Ubuntu 11.04 Pirated Edition
+ Ubuntu 11.04 Bill Gates Limited Edition (Signed by bill himself)
+Ubuntu 11.04 Steve Jobs Limited Edition(Signed by steve himself)
+Ubuntu 11.04 Virus-Prone Edition
+Ubuntu 11.04 Crashes Like Windows Edition

Akshat Jain
Lame windows and apple bashing is not funny.

Anonymous
I agree on that.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/DATA6WDNBSCFJL6JSP5OP3AADQ asedsa
Yeah sometimes I wish there was a vote down button.

http://twitter.com/fmafunenga Filipe Funenga
LooooL
(irony) and with the starter edition, the user must be obliged to use a static wallpaper => the most stupid idea ever!
Anonymous
It would frustrate you into upgrading just to get some functionality! Oh wait…

http://twitter.com/fadumpt fadumpt
Sometimes it is….

http://twitter.com/HeyAzwan gp
It is funny

Anonymous
You’re no fun ! XD
http://twitter.com/danizmax Daniel
But it is! xD
Anonymous
Windows bashing is allowed.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_LOR655GR4ZFHCMSV7FW5ROPSAA Cliff W
Yeah, it’s like picking on the handicapped.

Akshat Jain
Lame windows and apple bashing is not funny.
Akshat Jain
Lame windows and apple bashing is not funny.
Anonymous
- lame windows bashing. Windows is what it is because it is a target. The only difference is that if Ubuntu were as big a target we wouldn’t have the same problems.
http://alexsocop.tk/ Alex
jajaja you forgot
+ Ubuntu 11.04 unattended edition
+ Ubuntu 11.04 all (bad) in one
+ Ubuntu 11.04 all (crash) in one

https://launchpad.net/~mpt mpt
+ Ubuntu Server 11.04
+ Ubuntu Small Business Server 11.04
+ Ubuntu Home Server 11.04
+ Ubuntu CE 11.04
+ Ubuntu Phone 11.04
+ Ubuntu 11.04 N (version without Banshee, for sale in the EU)

Anonymous
Although the Windows bashing is lame and old, I like how you made an Ubuntu 11.04N edition :)

http://openid-provider.appspot.com/TheMerkinman Merk
Ubuntu 11.04 GNOME Edition
Ubuntu 11.04 KDE Edition
Ubuntu 11.04 XFCE Edition
Ubuntu 11.04 LXDE Edition
Ubuntu 11.04 Server Edition

http://twitter.com/Inoe_Nugroho Asmoro Budi Nugroho
I like this better rather than having Ubuntu differs to Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, etc.

Anonymous
Only Edubuntu and maybe Kubuntu are supported projects by Canonical though so they can’t really have it that way.

http://twitter.com/RkrdE Ricardo Trujillo
Like If we could just call that thing that Canonical does to Kubuntu, “support”

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001839601469 Nathan Moos
You forgot Ubuntu 11.04 Default (Unity) Edition

http://openid-provider.appspot.com/TheMerkinman Merk
With that and “Ubuntu 11.04 Education Edition” that puts the total number a 7, which is more than how many Cornwall IT jokingly posted. So in reality Ubuntu is WORSE than Microsoft in number of versions…

http://www.tux-crazy.com Tux Crazy
Actually, this might encourage Ubuntu to give more love to their KDE edition.

http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/ZCKHVTP4QZOFR3PR2AB6FE7VJ4 Dexter
That’s stupid, people will definitely start thinking that Ubuntu is copying Microsoft.

Anonymous
It was joke…

http://twitter.com/Jebril Pedo Bear
Pretty bad one if you ask me….

Anonymous
I can’t think of a way of doing that without making in proprietary which won’t happen… Ever. You obviously don’t understand what Ubuntu is as an operating system compared to any other linux distrobution. It is a kernel customization with a package manager window manager and DE as well as art work. The rest is simply Shell customizations.

http://www.cornwall-it.co.uk Cornwall IT
Yes… obviously I don’t understand what Ubuntu is as an operating system compared to any other Linux distribution. *rolls eyes*
It is more than merely a non-stock Linux kernel with a package manager, window manager and custom desktop environment with corresponding artwork. If it were just those things, it would be relatively trivial pointing Ubuntu at Debian’s repositories without hassle… however as anyone who’s tried doing that will know, it ain’t that simple.
Ubuntu *is* just another distro. Yes, it is a very popular distro, and one that has the backing of a commercial company… but then there are others that are in the same position. Ubuntu *is* just another distro, however you look at it.
By the way, it is usually considered quite rude to make statements like “you obviously don’t understand xyz”. I’m sure if you considered your statements a little longer you could have made exactly the same point without resorting to rudeness.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=536192361 Vince Tobiase
do u wrk for mcrosft?? hahaha… for sure …. 172 likes …lol
Russ Adams
I hope this was meant to be funny… otherwise I hope you get crushed under a crate full of Windows 7 Home Premium Editions next time you are at Best Buy.
Russ Adams
I hope this was meant to be funny… otherwise I hope you get crushed under a crate full of Windows 7 Home Premium Editions next time you are at Best Buy.

http://twitter.com/toxicbits toxicbits
I guess I will just wait for 11.10 to start using Unity, because I don’t want to be disappointed. The next release cycle should focus on polishing ONLY.

http://twitter.com/xellink xellink
yes, i believe it will look nicer, but sadly it is not orgasmic octopus
http://twitter.com/Emacs232 Denis Cheremisov
Polishing won’t help, it’s hopeless
http://identi.ca/LauRoman LaurenÈ›iu Roman
It likely will not focus on polishing because that is reserved for the 12.04 LTS (ideally). So fat chance of seeing a fully stable unity release before the end of the world.

http://twitter.com/Sephiroth_VII NCLI
It’s pretty damn stable now for me.

http://zwulf.myopenid.com/ Zwulf
Stable – yes. Useful – no.

anon0mouse
The end of the world won’t be until December, so we’ll be rockin’ “Persnickety Peccary” by then.
(Unless the end of the world is heralded by the next LTS…Pernicious Peccary?)

http://gehrehmee.livejournal.com/ Jeremy
LTS releases don’t get polish, they get every imaginable feature crammed into them possible, so that the release can be relevant for 3 years.

http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/ZCKHVTP4QZOFR3PR2AB6FE7VJ4 Dexter
You’re wrong the LTS do get polishes and bug fixes the normal releases get all the so called “crammed into possible” features to see if they will work out for the LTS.

http://twitter.com/DarthScape Kyle B
10.04………..amirite

Waldir LeÃ´ncio
That’s a dream of mine, a “get your act together” release, with nothing but 6 months of bug squashing.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_3YATP2IRIAY3Z5F5IJATPVDD3E Juan
If you want that, just try Debian stable.

Mohan
Makes sense that they would merge it.
Anonymous
Does that mean “wait for the Ubuntu Tablet Edition 11.10″ ? ;)
With integrated multitouch, an awesomely usable keyboard app, movement captor, the ability to use a stylus and an app to recognise your writing…
I know, I’m dreaming.

Waldir LeÃ´ncio
I believe that’s what Canonical has in mind, thus Unity being so big-iconed.
http://zwulf.myopenid.com/ Zwulf
It is a big deal for industry to sell all those touch devices. Well, if people like that and like to buy a new device twice as often (and for a price twice as much) ’cause they are damaged more often and in a shorter period of time, they should do so.
Even if I personally dislike those devices, I think Unity will be a good choice for that kind of use. We will see if it will be able to compete against Android, but I would prefer Unity. But I think this is not the case for desktop users without any touch ability but keyboard and mouse. With “traditional” PCs it is even harder to handle.

http://twitter.com/jonasdiaz JonÃ¡s DÃaz
To be honest, I’m really worried about the others desktop editions (K,X,L,….Ubuntu). I don’t see so much innovation there… Will they be discontinued too???…

Anonymous
They have always been community developed. They will likely only be discontinued if Ubuntu discontinues packaging Xfce, Kde, etc. In fact, Lubuntu has never been officially endorsed by Canonical, unless I’ve been gone too long.
Anonymous
They have always been community developed. They will likely only be discontinued if Ubuntu discontinues packaging Xfce, Kde, etc. In fact, Lubuntu has never been officially endorsed by Canonical, unless I’ve been gone too long.
Anonymous
They have always been community developed. They will likely only be discontinued if Ubuntu discontinues packaging Xfce, Kde, etc. In fact, Lubuntu has never been officially endorsed by Canonical, unless I’ve been gone too long.

http://twitter.com/chris_winter_ Chris Winter
I love all this very long overdue re-branding that ubuntu and its services (ubuntu one) are getting. this isn’t the 0′s anymore people, we need to look forward to a cleaner more user friendly ubuntu. Of course we will still be able to use the current default “session” if we wanted to so why complain?
Anonymous
This is old news if you followed the sessions at the UDS carefully you would have known all this already.
http://twitter.com/Afrodiseum N.C. Weber
Works for me. I never really call mine “Netbook Edition” anyway. Oh sure, I may type it in blog and comment posts, but I just say “Ubuntu”.
http://twitter.com/Webchuzz Daniel Nepomuceno
Unity or not, I’ll stick with the distro I currently have, which already announced that will be shipping GNOME 3 on its next release: Linux Mint baby :D

http://half-left.deviantart.com/ Sean
I don’t really see the point of running GNOME 3 and the old desktop design from the 90s., because they won’t be defaulting to GNOME Shell.

http://zwulf.myopenid.com/ Zwulf
That is what I hope! Linux Mint always was nice (walked/walks the the way that Ubuntu was going with ease-of-use more consequently imo) and I used it to install on some friend’s PCs. Because it is easy to use. Linux Mint guys seem to know. Just look on http://www.distrowatch.com/ to see that they can not be that wrong with that.
Classic Desktop (one upper panel: menu-button, appindicator, tray+indicators, system monitor) + Docky = Desktop-Love :D

http://twitter.com/Webchuzz Daniel Nepomuceno
Unity or not, I’ll stick with the distro I currently have, which already announced that will be shipping GNOME 3 on its next release: Linux Mint baby :D
http://twitter.com/thisweb thisweb
What is wrong with Gnome panel menu its perfect I find absolutely nothing wrong with it – its more informative than Unity, requires less steps to open something, takes less screen space and it looks better. I just don’t get Unity, its a gimmick without a gimmick.

http://zwulf.myopenid.com/ Zwulf
You are hitting the nail on the head. “Classic” Gnome is much more usable.

http://zwulf.myopenid.com/ Zwulf
UNE was better than Unity imo. Now I use Vanilla Gnome on my Netbook. Unity sucks.
Anonymous
Guys, I think you should stop being so negative towards Unity as of now. April hasn’t arrived yet. Besides, it looks to me that you’re all like “oh it’s not gonna work because it’s not gonna work”. Come on… Just trust uncle Mark and always remember, using our beloved Ubuntu is a privilege. It’s not like we’re paying big bucks for a user’s license. And if you’re still unhappy about a feature or lack of usability just fill a bug report, blueprint, whatever!
Anonymous
Lets be part of the solution, not the problem.
http://twitter.com/caseyjp11 Casey J. Peter
Unity is making me take a LONG hard look at Bohdi for my netbook. I’ve been using unity on it for awhile now, and I do NOT like the interface that much, whereas the E17 netbook spin of Bohdi is slick/smooth and easy to navigate.
Anonymous
In related news:
It’s also the end of Windows on HP computers :)
Polly
Breaking News: Ubuntu Netbook Edition will re-emerge as Xubuntu 11.04. :)
Anonymous
I’m likely going to get a lot of flack for this but that’s okay. I think having one well-supported distribution and then a bunch of offshoots that have a comparatively tiny user-base and get very little attention is an approach that isn’t ideal. I think the new change is great. My hope/strong belief is that it will bring the focus back to just plain Ubuntu, make the focus more clear, etc. and eventually we will end up with an Ubuntu that includes just the best of both versions of the desktop but without the bugs and with improvements.
I hate to say this because I know it will rub a lot of people the wrong way, but it always bugged me how Kubuntu seems to just be an afterthought. If that’s how it’s going to be, why not just continue to let people choose if they want to install KDE/XFCE, et. al post-setup and be done with it? I ran Kubuntu for years and never really felt like I was actually using Ubuntu.
Just my view and I know a lot of people feel differently. By no means do I think my opinion is the “right” one. It’s just that once I switched to Ubuntu Desktop, I noticed that everything felt streamlined and more usable/stable. I never planned on being a Gnome user, but once I experienced how well everything was integrated and how complete the final product felt, I never looked back.
Anonymous
Why aren’t they pushing Unity 2D as a netbook interface? It seems the logical choice.
http://twitter.com/thisweb thisweb
Another reason why Gnome classic is better than Unity or Gnome Shell, its easy to put icons on the top taskbar as well as have the apps/sys/places menu or use dockyx. All of which takes less screen space and less clicks, but crucially, one of the most aesthetically pleasing thing (if thats what we are going for here since it certainly isn’t practical) and its not found on any other OS is the cube desktop effect, wich looks stunning and is practical, Unity removes this for a lame 2d one. Why, oh why? Can someone please show me a pro vs con of classic gnome vs unity, I can’t find one anywhere because as far as I know there is not a single pro for unity. Also is it available as an opensource app for other distros to use, it seems to be breaking away from the rest of the linux community which doesn’t seem like a good idea either, practically or ethically.
https://launchpad.net/~perfect-pecker VinDSL
One is the loneliest number…
http://twitter.com/yogaxpto Diogo
At least all Ubuntu versions are still free..
trevor.purchase
How about Ubuntu 11.04 NWO version – Unity – A New World Order – I wonder if it’s sponsored by the U.N. or the Vatican or some other oppressive elite group? I like a bit more diversity aka choices, aka freedom – plus the GNOME desktop rocks, I’d hate to give that up. Although, I have enjoyed Netbook edition on my tiny ASUS 900eee! For a full size desktop, I’d prefer GNOME. Might be looking at getting off my lazy butt and heading back to a “not so polished” distro such as my old friend Slackware…
Anonymous
Still,
I’m not completely happy in this new system. Everything feels slow to
start, particularly the menu (though perhaps the new hard drive I have
coming in he mail will fix that.) Additionally, and this is the worst
thing about this for me, the classic Linux “Alt + F2″ keyboard shortcut
no longer works; forcing me to launch programs with my mouse.
http://www.cheapestusedcomputer.com
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