[rescue] [geeks] Solaris being discontinued? Rumors flying

[Liam Proven]

On 6 December 2016 at 11:12, Jonathan Groll <lists at groll.co.za> wrote:
> On Tue, 6 Dec 2016 10:43:21 +0100, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > From a
>> > usability standpoint, in Unity desk top, I could never find anything...I
>> > found myself at the CL more than I thought I would.
>>
>> I find that very strange. Examples?
>
> A lot of the settings are hidden in tweak tools.

I don't think that's a reasonable way of putting it. They are not
hidden; they are things that are not expected to be necessary or
desirable for normal users to alter.

> Speaking purely for myself, I find some of the Unity defaults
> tiresome  - side-pinned dock, unified menu bar and unnecessary search
> results (adverts/wikipedia pages) when I'm searching for an app. The
> defaults could be more 'sane'.

Personally I think they're perfectly sane. So do a few hundred million
Mac owners and a few dozen million Ubuntu users, presumably. That's
the right place for the Dock, IMHO -- it makes efficient use of
widescreen displays, which are the norm now. So does the global menu
and as per Fitt's Law it's easier to hit than an in-window menu.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law

The web-based search results are now off by default and have been
switchable in the default UI for several versions. That was a mistake,
I agree, but the company learned and changed it.

But if you dislike it so much, there is Ubuntu MatC) edition (for the
classic GNOME 2 experience), the GNOME edition (if you want something
even less Windows/Mac-like), or it is easy to install the Cinnamon
desktop. I personally don't like this as it doesn't support a vertical
taskbar, but otherwise, it's OK *if* you have hardware 3D. And of
course there is Xfce and LXDE, plus other totally unrelated desktops
such as KDE.

> Even with my comments above, I somehow still have Unity as my default
> desktop on an Ubuntu box at home (the ones my kids use). Even though
> 'should be fine' is put in there, it really isn't all that fine on my
> 2012 era machine with 4GB RAM and Nvidia graphics and no SSD.

I am typing on a 2007 model Lenovo Thinkpad X200 with no SSD and
standard Intel chipset graphics, no dedicated GPU. Ubuntu and Unity
are perfectly usable on this spec -- which by the sound of it is a
considerably older and slower than your machine.

> I can
> only assume then that it is an assumption that it should be fine on
> older hardware?

I am using it right now -- so, yes, definitely. (OK, I do have 8GB
RAM, but that's because it was a cheap upgrade and I sometimes use
VMs. It was fine in 4GB too.)

If it is sluggish for you, something is badly wrong. Do you have a
crippled CPU such as a Celeron or "Pentium Dual Core"? Do you not have
the nVidia proprietary drivers installed? Is the machine not
up-to-date with at least the current LTS release (16.04)?

If so, I suggest you join the Ubuntu support list where we will be
happy to help. It is offtopic here and there will be complaints soon,
I am sure.




--
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