I have been using Ubuntu since before Unity (when this 'dash' thing arrived) and I don't think I have ever used the dash.
If I need to find a file or something on the internets I am more likely to think 'I must use Gopher for this!!!' than I am ever to think of using 'Ubuntu dash'. It is one of those helpful creations like the F1 key that is a great idea in theory but not used in practice.
In some way they have managed 'brand awareness' with the dash debacle, inevitably it was always going to fall by the wayside though. Command line tools like 'find' and 'grep' are always going to be vastly superior to these WysiWyg contraptions.
I have a backup laptop which spends almost all of its time in a closet. It's got Ubuntu 15.04 and the default stuff, dash included, because I didn't want to spend time to customize it.
I use the dash it as I use Alt-F2 on my main laptop (a gnome flashback install): I type the first characters of the program to run and that's it. I do it maybe once or twice per day, usually the few desktop applications I need are open all the time, included a fair number of terminals. It didn't seem to be particularly good at finding files but maybe it needs time to scan the disk and I gave it very little of it (time). locate seems to work better and it's more convenient as it can be grepped and parsed.
Give the recoll package (and Unity scope) a try and your opinion might change. I use this all the time and it's pretty amazing to just type a string of text into the dash and see whichever document contains that text string appear in my search results. If I already have a terminal window open I'll do grep -R "text-string" /dir/ or if not I hit the super key and type the text string for recoll, both are equally fast.
Not before time! I would occasionally use it in the Windows style "start typing the app name" use case and it was annoying enough that it seemed to prioritize the online searches making you wait for a couple of seconds before it showed the local results, but it would also often bring up weird matches for adult content too!
Call me crazy, but I really like Unity. Back on windows, I always kept by taskbar on the left side anyway, and I prefer the dash search to anything else I've seen.
Me too, I prefer unity + auto-hide taskbar. At first there were some reservations until it got familiar, now anything else doesn't cut it. I hope they don't abandon it or change it drastically as is so often the way these things go.
Re Ubuntu, it helps that it works exceptionally well on anything remotely modern (6 year old PC here with SSD, won't be upgrading until it dies), and it is getting incrementally better with each release.
I liked the idea of Unity, but they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in so many small places I get quickly enraged using it. Ubuntu Mate for me. ;)
That's what happened with me on Mint. I appreciate how quickly I can re-install Linux and get everything back to how I want it, but I want that to be by choice not by design.
I decided to reinstall Ubuntu a while ago, because I was upgrading in-place since 10.10, and I decided to create a local Ansible playbook and a bash script for whatever the Ansible playbook couldn't handle.
I added it to my dotfiles repo and it's been working perfectly. Not only for installing on a new machine, but for syncing changes across computers as well. I install some new software on my laptop, I add it to my provisioning file and commit one or two of its dotfiles, and, when I move to the desktop, its entire state is one "git pull; provision" away.
I have no idea why I haven't done this earlier. Here's the playbook, if you're curious:
Except the GUI of all the programs. I still can't use some dialogues in Eclipse because panels are cut off and buttons are outside of the not-resizable window. This stuff happens way too often in Gnome.
Yes, I hate this too. On my desktop, primarily Fedora, I often open applications by pressing hyper and then typing the partial name of the program and then pressing "enter". This takes way too long on windows, and doesn't always work.
Why would I the start menu to search? I have a web browser always open anyway!
Btw, when it's Canonical going to announce that they will stop developing Ubuntu Phone? The writing has been in the wall for months and with Mozilla's recent announcement I believe it's just a matter of time. I think the vast majority of the mobile OS market has just moved on and is pretty ok with the two most popular OS options.
I kind of feel sorry for Ubuntu[1] and Linux[2] in general, they never had a firm foot in the desktop (market share-wise) and then this tectonic shift happens where everything goes mobile, a market where they aren't even a player, and to add insult to injury people stop caring enough about the desktop to even consider changing their OS to Linux in the first place.
1. I say this as a long time Linux user.
2. I know android is a modified version of Linux but here I use it as it has been traditionally understood in the desktop space.
I've seen a few comments over the last few days speculating about us halting development on Ubuntu phone. Nothing could be further from the truth. The software development continues apace, and more devices and more ports to existing devices on the way next year.
OnePlus devices are indeed on the roadmap for community ports. If people are interested in helping with that effort, I'm sure the people working on it would appreciate it.
Android isn't a modified Linux, it just uses the very same Linux kernel as any other OS that uses Linux. Android is otherwise this userspace thing where other Linux-based systems have X11 and such with Qt and gtk and other things.
Although not perfect, this really shows the value in the name "GNU/Linux" for the desktop distros and such vs "Android/Linux"
Anyway, Ubuntu phone may not make it (seems unlikely), but it has more of a shot given the death of Firefox OS, not less. Ubuntu phone now has less competition in the alternative-mobile space.
> this really shows the value in the name "GNU/Linux" for the desktop distros and such vs "Android/Linux"
I don't really agree. For desktop users, the DE matters a lot more than who made `cp`. For server users, the distro matters more because of the particular weirdness of each.
I'm running Debian with KDE. The GNU tools are installed but by weight they're nowhere near the majority of the code on the system, to say nothing of the components I actually use. So calling that machine "GNU/Linux" instead of "KDE/X.org/Linux", given the relative importance of the individual components, would be stupid.
Fortunately, we have the nearly universally understood "Linux" instead, and weird specializations like Android can be called something else.
I agree that "naming all the things" is a bit silly. But I think GNU/Linux indicates Linux kernel, GNU libc, compiled with gcc -- which is actually kind of useful information. It doesn't say anything about the Graphical UI (if any). Similarly I think Android/Linux is useful, because it indicates something about what kind of (binary) software you can expect will work - and what will not.
I also happen to think distinctions such as Debian/kFreeBSD (a Debian distribution based around the FreeBSD kernel, as opposed to (just) the regular FreeBSD user-land) are informative.
I'm not sure what one should/would call a Linux distribution with an alternative (non-GNU) libc that relied on a non-GNU compiler chain... Probably "brandname"/Linux or "function"/Linux (eg: Linux Router Project or something)...
This isn't a technical thing for any of the major proponents, though. It's a marketing thing, because after the spectacular failure of Hurd GNU was relegated to effectively a sideline (a useful one, for sure, but a sideline). I get a lot more direct and personal value out of code not provided by GNU than I do by code provided by GNU. I don't think they merit top billing, and I don't think the two decades of holding one's breath and turning purple deserves a reward.
Look, the Linux kernel itself uses the GNU GPL, so GNU probably is the most important factor in all of this. Linux kernel under a proprietary license or even under BSD-style, you probably would never have heard of it. At any rate, basically nobody thinks HURD is useful anymore. RMS thinks time spent on HURD is a waste since it is totally unneeded now that we have the Linux kernel. GNU is a political movement about software freedom as much or more than a particular set of software, and even KDE is licensed with a GNU license. etc.
"Look," the creator of Linux could not give the faintest fart about GNU and has said he'd use a different license if he could. Why should a political movement that specializes in lousy marketing campaigns and haranguing be given a nod?
I do like that attempt, though. "Well, they used a license that GNU wrote, so GNU should get top billing!" Do you want to talk about how well Apache/Dropwizard and PostgreSQL/PostgreSQL work with Apache/Kotlin on GNU/OpenJDK8?
> has said he'd use a different license if he could
Citation?
A constantly repeated quote from Linus is precisely: "Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did." from a 1997 interview according to https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds
I've never heard Torvalds say anything regretful about using GPL. When I heard him in person just last year, he clarified his dislike of GPLv3 while emphasizing his preference and like of GPLv2.
And anyway, I didn't say anything about "top billing". The fact is, Linux itself is, admittedly, absurd billing for Linus given that he is the leader of the kernel project but is among thousands of people who make it happen. GNU is not a term that credits Richard Stallman. GNU is a community project with a particular political aim. And my point all along was just about some practical way to differentiate Android from the other primary Linux-based systems, and "GNU/Linux" is a way to do that.
This is not correct. Android has 150+ patches to Linux last I checked. It is not insignificant. There is not a good collection of patches to simply apply to a kernel of your choice either. Additionally, there are often many modifications made per-device or company (E.g. Samsung) or hardware configuration.
Finally, many of those patches are unlikely to make it upstream anytime soon, as they are usually controversial.
49 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 89.8 ms ] threadIf I need to find a file or something on the internets I am more likely to think 'I must use Gopher for this!!!' than I am ever to think of using 'Ubuntu dash'. It is one of those helpful creations like the F1 key that is a great idea in theory but not used in practice.
In some way they have managed 'brand awareness' with the dash debacle, inevitably it was always going to fall by the wayside though. Command line tools like 'find' and 'grep' are always going to be vastly superior to these WysiWyg contraptions.
I use the dash it as I use Alt-F2 on my main laptop (a gnome flashback install): I type the first characters of the program to run and that's it. I do it maybe once or twice per day, usually the few desktop applications I need are open all the time, included a fair number of terminals. It didn't seem to be particularly good at finding files but maybe it needs time to scan the disk and I gave it very little of it (time). locate seems to work better and it's more convenient as it can be grepped and parsed.
It's basically Ubuntu LTS without all the buggy slow crap like unity.
Re Ubuntu, it helps that it works exceptionally well on anything remotely modern (6 year old PC here with SSD, won't be upgrading until it dies), and it is getting incrementally better with each release.
Whatever the haters have against it, in the end I get stuff done faster and spend less time configuring my DE.
It has some critical flaws, but it's manageable. (The worst being poor workspaces support)
I use Xubuntu and it's pretty good - Ubuntu without the dumbed-down Unity stuff.
I added it to my dotfiles repo and it's been working perfectly. Not only for installing on a new machine, but for syncing changes across computers as well. I install some new software on my laptop, I add it to my provisioning file and commit one or two of its dotfiles, and, when I move to the desktop, its entire state is one "git pull; provision" away.
I have no idea why I haven't done this earlier. Here's the playbook, if you're curious:
https://www.pastery.net/ztduxp/
I guess it's hard to not try and become like MSFT, even if most of your customers use your product because it's NOT from MSFT...
Btw, when it's Canonical going to announce that they will stop developing Ubuntu Phone? The writing has been in the wall for months and with Mozilla's recent announcement I believe it's just a matter of time. I think the vast majority of the mobile OS market has just moved on and is pretty ok with the two most popular OS options.
I kind of feel sorry for Ubuntu[1] and Linux[2] in general, they never had a firm foot in the desktop (market share-wise) and then this tectonic shift happens where everything goes mobile, a market where they aren't even a player, and to add insult to injury people stop caring enough about the desktop to even consider changing their OS to Linux in the first place.
1. I say this as a long time Linux user.
2. I know android is a modified version of Linux but here I use it as it has been traditionally understood in the desktop space.
Although not perfect, this really shows the value in the name "GNU/Linux" for the desktop distros and such vs "Android/Linux"
Anyway, Ubuntu phone may not make it (seems unlikely), but it has more of a shot given the death of Firefox OS, not less. Ubuntu phone now has less competition in the alternative-mobile space.
I don't really agree. For desktop users, the DE matters a lot more than who made `cp`. For server users, the distro matters more because of the particular weirdness of each.
Fortunately, we have the nearly universally understood "Linux" instead, and weird specializations like Android can be called something else.
I also happen to think distinctions such as Debian/kFreeBSD (a Debian distribution based around the FreeBSD kernel, as opposed to (just) the regular FreeBSD user-land) are informative.
I'm not sure what one should/would call a Linux distribution with an alternative (non-GNU) libc that relied on a non-GNU compiler chain... Probably "brandname"/Linux or "function"/Linux (eg: Linux Router Project or something)...
I do like that attempt, though. "Well, they used a license that GNU wrote, so GNU should get top billing!" Do you want to talk about how well Apache/Dropwizard and PostgreSQL/PostgreSQL work with Apache/Kotlin on GNU/OpenJDK8?
Citation?
A constantly repeated quote from Linus is precisely: "Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did." from a 1997 interview according to https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds
I've never heard Torvalds say anything regretful about using GPL. When I heard him in person just last year, he clarified his dislike of GPLv3 while emphasizing his preference and like of GPLv2.
And anyway, I didn't say anything about "top billing". The fact is, Linux itself is, admittedly, absurd billing for Linus given that he is the leader of the kernel project but is among thousands of people who make it happen. GNU is not a term that credits Richard Stallman. GNU is a community project with a particular political aim. And my point all along was just about some practical way to differentiate Android from the other primary Linux-based systems, and "GNU/Linux" is a way to do that.
Finally, many of those patches are unlikely to make it upstream anytime soon, as they are usually controversial.
Please don't spread these falsehoods.
Ubuntu phone was a glimmer of hope for me, a very faint glimmer, but it was something.
I remember people saying the compact disc was dead. History makes fools of many.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP8CNp-vksc
http://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/15/06/16/apples-siri...