Dear Canonical, Dropping Unity was The Dumbest Decision You've Ever Made
I'm just gonna say this straight-up, that dropping the Unity desktop was the dumbest choice you've ever made. And here are the reasons why according to me.
1. Unity is Unity
Remember back then when Unity was introduced in Natty Narwhal (11.04) ? Back then the desktop was not as lean and as polished as how Unity in Xenial Xerus used to be. People hated the change and started their tweaks and forks here and there. But all these times going through the years, I got fond of the desktop and adore the focused workflow. Unity was the desktop where I put myself first at east, without worrying how the gtk theme crashes, looks bad, looks inconsistent, and so on. It didn't get in my way, and it's always been like that. Unity gives people the charm that this is UBUNTU, this is what's friendly, and this is what's POLISHED and PROFESSIONAL. It's as same as how Elementary OS embrace their identity with the successful Pantheon desktop interface. Going through 12.04 to 16.04 was a joyful ride for me because of Unity.
2. The Global Menu, The slim interface, ohh!
Another thing that I love about Unity is that it's very spacious. An HD laptop screen of 1366x768 resolution is a bummer when you have to cope with how chonky and big each windows, panels, and the default launcher in the latest default DE, which is the gnome desktop. It frustrated me that I would say I prefer to do my work in XFCE session because it reserves so much space for me to be able to put my work at east, not to mention the resource hungry as well, duh.
3. The HUD, Damn boy! He thicc!
As shown in my screenshot above, HUD is very intuitive and fast. Sometimes I kind of forgot which sub-menu belongs to, and HUD helps me a lot to navigate things. Too bad the only desktops that replicate this feature are KDE Plasma and Mate (specifically, Ubuntu Mate). But why I don't enjoy the same feature on Ubuntu Mate? It feels fake and 'plastic'-like. Ubuntu Mate's Mutiny feels like a real carbon copy of the original one. Everything is too stiff that sometimes I got sick looking at how green the desktop look and feel. KDE Plasma is the only one that can match this, but qt framework and how KDE looks overall is just not my cuppa.
4. Unity-fied Gnome Desktop? Meh-.
Wait wait wait, hold on-
So you guys dropped your homegrown desktop to use the commonly manufactured desktop just to give it the old unity layout minus it's greatness(es) ?!?! What the heck Canonical?! This feels like a straight-up when you order it online and when it arrives meme. Newer Ubuntu user from 18.04 would just chill about this, but a long time user since the birth of Unity like me would of course snap about this. Ugh.. Just... No thanks, I'm good with unity, and have been rocking with it since 18.04
Closing thoughts.
Look Canonical. You guys might think that I'm just being sarcastic, sassy, or bitchy, like, Ubuntu has been with Gnome 3 since 18.04 but, let me point this out that I'm sure there are so many people that agree with me as well. Gnome with Ubuntu is just feels like history. It's versatile, but it's just doesn't feel right. Linux Mint's Cinnamon desktop is the reason why I stick with Ubuntu, because why? It always reminds me of how crappy Windows 10 could be.
Unity has been Ubuntu's identity for seven years. Yeah people might hate it before, but I think it was mostly due to the amazon affiliation that didn't feel right with how any linux-based operating system should be.
The fact that you put the Unity layout back into the Gnome desktop is just a strong indication that you basically don't want to sacrifice the good old' flow of the former DE. Perhaps with wider choices of customization and improvement, I believe Unity would have been the dream desktop for most users, whether they are beginners, casual users, enterprise, or the expert ones. Not to mention that Yaru theme gives Unity a major makeover, I feel like watching Naomi Campbell on the runway with the mentioned theme on my Unity Desktop.It's just.. WOW.
The good news is, the community based Ubuntu Unity is there! #claps For everyone wanting the best of Unity with the Ubuntu, packed out of the box, this is a major life-saver. Shoutout to the ubuntuunity.org team! You guys are marvelous!
So Canonical.. Please think again, carefully :)
Thank you!
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