Comment by snek_case
1 day ago
Ubuntu also tried this with Unity. They were hoping that Ubuntu would become more popular on tablets if they had a more tablet-friendly UI... They imposed this on desktop users even though nobody asked for it and basically nobody used Linux on a tablet. It was kind of a disaster. Ubuntu is a commercial entity though, so yeah, prone to the same kind of bad management decisions. as Microsoft and Apple. At least with Linux you have options. Personally I just want Linux to keep becoming more reliable over time, and have better support for energy-saving features on laptops. It's sad that Ubuntu still has issues waking up from sleep mode in 2025. Somehow those problems haven't been fixed in 20 years.
>They imposed this on desktop users even though nobody asked for it
I loved Unity on desktop, and I know many others too. But there was a very loud group of complainers who made them kill it. I still use it on some installations, bit it's obviously breaking more and more.
> I loved Unity on desktop, and I know many others too.
I loved Unity in the desktop too (I had installed Ubuntu on an old Mac mini). I was disappointed when it was killed and then I switched to XFCE.
The thing is, Unity was great as a UI even on desktop. The main issue was poor performance early on.
I found it was horrible. It is similar to GNOME here - a design for tablets and smartphones. It simply does not work on the desktop computer.
I disagree with this characterization.
I don't run Gnome now (since I have more fun hacking on Sway), but I really don't think that the characterization of it being a "tablet desktop" is actually very fair. I found Gnome to be very productive, and actually extremely keyboard focused. Outside of a tiling window manager like Sway or i3, I actually have found it more keyboard-centric than any other desktop I've used.
The reason I am harping on keyboard is because to me the keyboard is the signature differentiator between "desktop" and "tablet".
I feel like everyone hated on Gnome because it was different. They tried it for ten minutes, didn't bother trying to actually learn how to use it, declared it as "shit", and moved on. I was one of those people.
It wasn't until I decided to stick with Gnome for a few weeks (using the Antergos distro of Arch) that I came around, and now I find it to be the most productive of the "normie" desktops on Linux.
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I use standard GNOME as my desktop environment and nothing about it feels like it was designed for tablets and/or smartphones. Not that it isn’t capable of being used as such, but my desktop usage doesn’t indicate that tablet/smartphone use-cases were the primary goal. Is GNOME even in wide use for those contexts?
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Vanilla Gnome user here. Gnome may look like it was designed for tablets but it has a keyboard shortcut for basically anything. So you don't do much of point and clicks if you know Gnome. You can but you don't have to. It just gets out of your way as they say.
To me, the killer feature of Unity was the searchable application menus. Wish that was still a thing
KDE supports this! It's called the "global menu", and has search built in. GTK app support is iffy, though
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In Ubuntu MATE there's a mode that sort of emulates Unity.
It really was! I have never even used a tablet, but I was disappointed when they dropped Unity and went back to the old way.
But I was never a Windows user, either, and I've never held the idea that there is one normal and right way to do a computer interface, so I think I was more open to it than many people are.
I was also disappointed that they dropped Unity.
I stayed on a workable Unity install on 2020.05 LTS for as long as possible, then switched to 2024.05 LTS, at which point Unity, for some reason, no longer functioned (even though I was using the Ubuntu Unity flavor). Tried Gnome for a while but what ultimately lost me was the notifications. To close out a notification without switching focus I had to, very carefully, click right on the X in the upper right corner. Otherwise it would activate the notification and switch focus.
I've got a workable setup with XFCE4, the whisker menu bound to the super key, a few panel plugins to make a maximized app have the same behavior as they did in Unity, and the Plank docking program (along with a brief shell script bound to the dock that kills and relaunches Plank when it starts moving out of place). The notifications work the same as they did on Unity - clicking on them dismisses them unless you click on the "activate" button to switch focus.
This has little to do with Ubuntu and probably much more to do with proprietary hardware that makes it difficult to a write a bug-free driver for Linux kernel sleep mode.
What device is giving you the most trouble with sleep mode?
I suspect that's an Nvidia problem. Never been an issue for me using AMD.
I've had wake-from-suspend issues on plenty of non-nvidia machines, and I have had nvidia machines that have no issues.
I think it has nothing to do with the GPU and everything to do with the motherboard chipset.
Agreed. AMD just works for me on linux. My problem is that I am addicted to 6+ monitors and top end gpus... nvidia just seems to hate linux for top end setups. Which is sad, windows just handles my dumb 5060+5090 setup easily. Gaming on linux has gotten way better, but I still can't gigure out how to get some games working. So I'm stuck between using linux + sway / i3 which I looooove... and not being able to get the value out of my $6k gaming rig. Sadly this is a tale that's been going on for 20 years for me.
Linux Mint works great with nvidia cards. It has a great driver manager. It is the only distro I found after getting a laptop with a RTX card that just works. It has worked flawlessly too after 8 months of use.
It’s the only issue I have on my CachyOS install on an AMD 5900X+9070XT without additional peripherals. It seems like when I hit sleep it doesn’t manage to fully enter sleep (illustrated by the power lights) and then never wakes up anymore until a hard power reset.
I also still have tons of issues waking from sleep mode on various PCs running Win10/11 so I wouldn't be so quick to label it an OS issue.
Yeah, it is a general PC thing. Steam deck sleeps perfectly, so it can be done properly, but manufacturers are lazy.
I remember them working on a hybrid OS that would run on your phone or tablet and then you could switch it to desktop mode. Actually looks like they're still working on that
https://www.ubuntu-touch.io/
Edit:
seriously guys, can we design product pages so they actually give you a sense of how the product actually works? That page sucks.
I found a video and honestly while I love the idea it seems that the implementation is the worst of both worlds. Who thought that this pull down menu style was a reasonable idea....
https://youtu.be/BuuW5X_ukAk?t=109
Ubuntu Touch isn't a Canonical thing anymore, it's community driven and was picked up by the UBPorts foundation, which is a non-profit.
https://ubports.com
Many of the sleep issues these days are actually Microsoft's fault. They tried to impose AlwaysOn AlwaysConnected but did a terrible job of specifying it and quality controlling implementation.
I had a Dell Precision from 2020 that never woke from S3 sleep properly, because Dell didn't care about S3 because they expected AoAc (which Windows now defaults to) to actually work. Except A) people don't want laptops that act like phones, and B) it was terrible and munched so much battery it was way better to just hibernate all the time.
Switched to ThinkPad from 2020 and it has a BIOS setting for "classic sleep" and S3 sleep works perfectly.
And Fedora gets 3-4x the battery life than Windows did for general use on both, with much less heat and fan usage, right out of the box. Not to mention bullshit like Windows taking literal seconds to show a directory's contents in the file manager... I'm completely done with Windows for anything beyond gaming (but Valve is changing that rapidly), and dual-booting to a bare Windows install for corporate remote access apps or such, on everything in my house.
Keep in mind there's a whole class of touch screen laptops that did need to be serviced by Windows and Linux.
Wait, what sleep mode issues are you talking about? I've been able to wake my ubuntu machine up using my keyboard and mouse. I haven't gotten around to testing steam link wake on lan though, I'd be disappointed if that didn't work.
Wonder about power usage.
I liked Unity! Especially the global menu that macOS also has. I was disappointed when Ubuntu stopped supporting it.
yep ubuntu lost me with the tablet ui and snaps.