Ubuntu
unity package

Natty ~Beta 2: What "UI" is this?

Asked by floid

When I first installed a Natty alpha, I wound up with an early Unity-esque configuration of the GNOME panel, with the compact "Ubuntu Menu" applet and "Indicator Applet Application Menu" in an upper gnome-panel.

At some point later I got a message nagging that the particular hardware (Dell D600 with some early Radeon) would not support Unity and the "Classic" experience would be applied instead. But I still have the "Unity-esque" configuration and Compiz managing windows.

Meanwhile, creating a new user, I got the same warning - but that user wound up with the truly standard GNOME configuration (still nicely Compiz-managed, though).

So what exactly is "my" UI configuration vs. the current possibilities and marketechural names for them?

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floid (jkanowitz) said : 		#1

Whups, I thought I'd be able to attach a screenshot here. Pardon my lag while I wait for imagebin.ca to come back up or find a different quickie image host.

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floid (jkanowitz) said : 		#2

http://ploader.net/files/6250892ab20bfea6a3c7479c88e64c00.png

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Todd A. Jacobs (codegnome) said : 		#3

It looks like you are running Ubuntu Classic, with or without Compiz effects. "Ubuntu" is Gnome with Unity, "Ubuntu Classic" is Gnome with some Compiz effects, and "Ubuntu Classic (No effects)" is Gnome without compositing effects.

As long as you have the components installed, and your video card supports the feature set you want, you can choose your desktop setup at the login screen. You can also choose to install KDE4, LXDE, or something else altogether if you prefer.

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floid (jkanowitz) said : 		#4

Just gave a logout and went back in through gdm.

For my account, created sometime around the first alpha, I get the [GNOME] configuration pictured for the "Ubuntu" option.

The newly created account gets the regular 'Ubuntu Classic'-type GNOME experience, sans the "Indicator Applet Application Menu". (Although that applet might in fact be the only real difference...)

Both accounts got the popup about the hardware not supporting "Unity" at some point. The hardware is:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV250 [Mobility FireGL 9000] (rev 02)

I'm sure I'll get an opportunity to see what the heck Unity is all about on my more modern desktop shortly, but the difference in configurations was a puzzler. [Not that it'd be worth adding code to make gdm gray-out "Ubuntu" when the hardware doesn't support it, but getting the nag every time until you set the account default to "Ubuntu Classic" might make it more clear which 'brand' of 'experience' the user is seeing.]

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