Unity, the next generation desktop?

Why Unity?

Simply speaking, Unity is another visual representation to allow easy access to your installed programs. Compared to launching an application by using a keyboard shortcut, a menu entry, a docky/cairo/... dock icon or a graphical shortcut on the desktop, Unity uses a launchbar glued to left side of the screen plus a graphical menu where all applications are displayed as icons. Gone are the classic menus. Is this something to be afraid of? No, so technically speaking I see no reason to utter something negative about this way of representing an access method to launch applications.

So, if the change is not 'technical', maybe the 'problem' is to be found in the user/device interaction, about how users perceive input devices and how to make it easier to use those.
Currently we live in an environment where the WIMP principle reigns. It does so nearly three decades and it could be showing its age. Is the mouse as pointing device about to be replaced by fingers touching screen surfaces? This is nothing new. PDAs, mobile phones and iPad users are quite familiar with this way of interacting with their device and it works 'naturally' so to speak.
But older IT technology, typically computers - be it PC's, laptop or netbooks - still rely on a thirty year old concept. A screen, a keyboard and a mouse.
The new display interfaces will more and more include touchscreen capabilities which will render the excessive use of the mouse as a pointing device less and less important. A simple touch on the screen will replace it. The reign of the mouse is already coming to an end on laptops and netbook as the Synaptics touchpad allows more and more extra functionalities such as scrolling, 2 finger tapping, ...

So, as more and more touchscreen technology will be implemented in future displays, the need will arise to present the user an adequate interface to make the most of the new technology. Looking at what Gnome, KDE, LXDE, XFCE have to offer with regard to touchscreen interaction, one must admit that those Desktop Environments are not yet Touchscreen Ready. In comes Unity.

Unity is a new design graphical layer build from scratch showing a launcher, applications being represented by big - not to miss - icons and a top panel partly used as titlebar for running applications. I find it look more touch-inviting than click-inviting, so it seems to be more touchscreen ready than current Desktop Environments.

So, by using Unity as the default way of interacting with the user, Canonical is preparing for the next generation of computers, which will be more and more touchscreen driven as touchscreen technology will evolve in the near future.

What about the user?

Unity looks simple and intuitive, but is it something I - a domestic desktop user - could use and is it better than the Desktop Environments conceived in the previous century?

In order to answer that question, I took note of the applications that I use on a daily base today and compared those to the applications I used, say some 10 years ago.
Towards the end of the previous century, a computer user used the computer for application and data storage. On that device you had an unique application for almost every action you wanted to carry out. I had an application for sending and receiving e-mails, another for typing a letter, and another for making a spreadsheet, one for chatting, drawing, listening to music, photo editing, ... you name it, there was an application that had to be installed on your box, and all the data produced by those applications had to fit on a local data storage device.

Today, nearly half of those programs are handled by one single program: a browser. Through the browser we access our mail, we chat, tweet, type/share/store documents of all sorts, buy and listen to online music. We don't need separate applications for those anymore, nor do we need huge local storage. It can all be shared in the cloud, and Ubuntu has its own cloud, Ubuntu One.

As the modern user has/will become a cloud-bound user, Unity offers that user exactly what he needs. A simple interface and a few buttons to access the basic applications of which the browser is the most important. Less applications mean less icons/menu items so a more ergonomic way of interacting with the computer.

If Canonical fine-tunes Unity, it will have an interface that will be usable on all current and future devices, be it desktops, laptops, netbooks, tablets, pda, mobile phones and whatever will be put on the market as there will be a standard operating system cum interface to interact with those devices, while huge local data storage will be optional, as the cloud will cope with it.

I am very well aware that Unity is only a small part of the complex entity that working with computers will be, as privacy and security issues of the 'cloud' will be a factor that will prevent early adoption of cloud based computing, and one may never forget that the cloud can suddenly evaporate as Internet connections can go down, or be shut down by authorities of all kinds.
But for day to day use, Unity will prove to be a highly enjoyable interface to access cloud-based data and application.

This also implies that Canonical must provide and maintain an alternative to Unity because of the technical requirements of Unity at one side, and to prevent non-Unity minded users to jump ship and embark on other Gnome or KDE-centric distribution.

What about Ubuntu Netbook 10.10 Unity.

I read a lot of negative comments about UNE Unity. But I can hardly believe that Canonical would release an unworkable system. So, the best way to experience Unity, is to install Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook on my Samsung N210 netbook and to use it on a daily basis which I have been doing since a good week now.
 
How did I experience UNE 10.10 Unity?

Installation

Ubuntu Netbook 10.10 installation does not differ from the Ubuntu Gnome 10.10; the boot-up phase and the installation program is the same. You only see the difference when you log in into the desktop environment. Gone are the familiar top and bottom panels, new is the launcher glued to the left side of the screen which actually does not differ that much from the countless docks that many Linux users put on their desktop, so what is wrong with this new launcher? Let's find out.

The Launcher

Auto-hide is not available. This means that on a netbook where the useable area is limited to 1024x600px, many sites require the horizontal scrollbar to view the right side of the page. The top panel lacks the auto-hide too and this one bothers me more. Many programs have fixed sized windows calculated on a 1024x768px area, and thus you you cannot see the bottom of the window (See evolution setup screen). It takes some guessing with the tab-key to hit the right unvisible button.
The launcher auto-hide feature will be fixed with the 11.04 release, but I would to see vertical scrollbars so that I can move the window up, under to top panel, so that I can see the bottom of window as not everybody is familiar with the Alt + Left_mouse_click to drag the window up or down.

The launcher is not that customizable. You cannot move the icons up or down.

Right clicking on a icon allows only to delete it.

Adding an extra button can only while the application is running. For each running application the applications icon appears in the launcher. Right clicking on the icon shows a 'add to starter' menu option that allows you to insert it in the launcher.

Top panel

The top panel is not the same type of panel as the one we are used to in Gnome. There are no applets that you can add to it, so it is still very basic.
But the top panel is used as a dock for the applications menu bar, thus adding extra space to the application area, which is nice. But is the applications name is to long, the name is truncated or sometimes even overlaps the menu.

Not yet ready for prime time.
There are unexpected errors that occur at random times. I have encountered many little ones, but nevertheless an error is an error, and that is not something that you expect from a final release.
Here Plymouthd and Mutter go bonkers.

Another error that I can replicate is when I close PyRoom - which defaults to full-screen mode - both the top panel and the launcher are gone. I am looking at a 'wallpaper-only' screen. The only way to get panel and launcher back is to initiate a keysequence that forces a window to be drawn. I can fix the problem by pressing Alt-Ctrl-Del - which shows the shutdown window - or pressing the PrtSc key. The funny thing is, that this error only occurs when there is no other underlying window open.

Conclusion

Unity does have its fair share of problems and annoyances, while the whole concept should be more flexible in maintenance and usability, but with the advent of touchscreen devices, Unity has the edge on Gnome2/3 and KDE4 in their current layout..

Ubuntu Netbook 10.10 on the other hand is a far cry from what Ubuntu Netbook 10.04 LTS offered. It forces an incomplete desktop system upon the users and AFAIK we must not expect fixes for even the most blatant errors and usability problems before the release of 11.04.
I would certainly not advice netbook users to use the 10.10 netbook version but if possible to go for the 10.04 Netbook Edition which I like a lot and offers all that you need and see what the Netbook 11.04 will have to offer.

Ubuntu Netbook 10.10 the next generation desktop? Not yet.
Too early, too buggy, too ambitious...