I am thinking of switching my distro (Ubuntu) atleast for a while till Unity is polished enough for my everyday use or get replaced with something that is easy to use. I am not happy with Unity when it comes to serious work
1. It is not easy for me to switch between instances of the same application immediately. I usually open code in 3 or 4 gedit windows and switch between them often using Alt+Tab when I am not using eclipse. This has become very hard with Unity, Most of the time my fingers starts aching after working for a while in Ubuntu.
2. Opening multiple instance of an application is also not that comfortable. Suppose I have opened a file manager to see the contents of the Downloads folder and when I click on the Home folder icon from the Unity menu it takes me to the Downloads folder which is already open. I have to select File -> New window to open another instance of the same application.
I had tried XFCE and KDE but I prefer GNOME. I did some searching and came up with two choices Fedora 16 or Linux Mint.
In these Linux Mint came as a winner and I decided to give it a try this weekend since it is debian based and it comes with GNOME2 and the promised support for GNOME2 when it switches to GNOME3.
Things that kept me away from Fedora 16 are GNOME3 (I have not tried but read some reviews on it, I read one post where Linus had expressed his distaste for GNOME3 and telling XFCE would be better) and unfamiliar package system (this is not a big excuse, rpm is also as matured as apt and I think I can learn that easily). If someone tried Fedora 16 and if they feel GNOME3 had improved plz leave a note.
I think I am not the only one and many people are thinking about migrating from Ubuntu to Linux Mint.
> 1. It is not easy for me to switch between instances of the same application immediately.
Try Alt+` instead of Alt+Tab. Alt+` limits the list to windows of the same application. You can combine the two as well.
> 2. Opening multiple instance of an application is also not that comfortable.
Middle-clicking instead of left-clicking will open a new instance of the application instead of switching to the existing instance.
IMO, the problem with Unity is that it hasn't been well-documented for power users. I was just as annoyed as the most vocal haters when I first started, but after I learnt how to use it I actually like it now.
At the risk of feeding the frenzy that is calling out each article title as link bait:
Linux Mint is the "top distro" _on Distrowatch_, which is much worse than sampling from, say, Google, which might have a more representative sample. Visitors of Distrowatch are significantly more likely to be not just tech-savvy but also interested enough to draw distinctions between different flavors of Linux. I see myself as being pretty "tech-savvy", yet I never cared enough to look into distros outside of Ubuntu 11.04.
Especially given the fact that a Facebook survey suggested 90%(!) of users are still using Ubuntu, seems like the article even discredits itself.
I think they called out the situation pretty well. It's users hitting one website, and it's views not downloads or active users.
That said, there's certainly a lot of increase in mindshare with Linux Mint lately. The biggest reason I have seen is due to Ubuntu's Unity "situation."
My guess is that people are moving in large enough numbers that it's starting to show up in places like Distrowatch.
This isn't a bad thing. From my experience "top distro" is a cycle that just so happens to have derivatives being thrown in for good measure. In the time that I've been using Linux on a desktop there have been a lot of advancements.
I personally went from Red Hat (3 i think), to Mandrake Linux, to Debian, to Gentoo, and after several years of using OS X, I have Arch Linux in a VM that I use for development.
Things are going to change. The old top distro is going to be over thrown by another until something better or more useful comes along. Honestly, with the commercial aspect to Ubuntu I never thought so many of the die hard Linux users would use it to begin with. I figured we'd see those people kicking and screaming to their graves before they used it. But a few of those people did switch and now they're switching to something else because Ubuntu has taken a turn for the worse (in their opinion).
We'll see how it plays out in the long run, but I think the simple fact that we're seeing so many stories on it here is only fueling the fire. People are looking at it because it's being linked all over the place.
1. It is not easy for me to switch between instances of the same application immediately. I usually open code in 3 or 4 gedit windows and switch between them often using Alt+Tab when I am not using eclipse. This has become very hard with Unity, Most of the time my fingers starts aching after working for a while in Ubuntu.
2. Opening multiple instance of an application is also not that comfortable. Suppose I have opened a file manager to see the contents of the Downloads folder and when I click on the Home folder icon from the Unity menu it takes me to the Downloads folder which is already open. I have to select File -> New window to open another instance of the same application.
I had tried XFCE and KDE but I prefer GNOME. I did some searching and came up with two choices Fedora 16 or Linux Mint.
In these Linux Mint came as a winner and I decided to give it a try this weekend since it is debian based and it comes with GNOME2 and the promised support for GNOME2 when it switches to GNOME3.
Things that kept me away from Fedora 16 are GNOME3 (I have not tried but read some reviews on it, I read one post where Linus had expressed his distaste for GNOME3 and telling XFCE would be better) and unfamiliar package system (this is not a big excuse, rpm is also as matured as apt and I think I can learn that easily). If someone tried Fedora 16 and if they feel GNOME3 had improved plz leave a note.
I think I am not the only one and many people are thinking about migrating from Ubuntu to Linux Mint.