Fedora + Gnome 3 vs Ubuntu + Unity
[2011-03-14]Both partnerships fall short of perfect. But neither are bad.
(If you're familiar with what Gnome Shell and Unity are, you'd probably prefer to skip the intro, and go straight to the paragraph that starts "While I have".)
In Ubuntu, Canonical has created the closest distribution of Linux to the Everyman Linux. Although they didn't invent the Live CD, they were the first distribution to allow a complete and simple installation from it. The fact that each release version fits onto a single CD has allowed users to download Ubuntu quickly, with less bandwidth requirements than DVD-based distributions.
Canonical also recognised that a distribution targeting a broader user base needs to make restricted or non-free software (e.g. to allow MP3 and Flash playback) as easy to install as possible. In Ubuntu it is a matter of ticking a checkbox in the installation procedure. And to allow playback of encrypted DVDs, one need only run a single command, which one can discover from Ubuntu's own user forum.
Canonical also chose to base Ubuntu on Debian, a rock-solid distribution with excellent package management and a philosophy that epitomises the meaning of Ubuntu's name.
Over the past couple of years Canonical has been working hard on its own Unity desktop environment, which is currently based on GTK and many Gnome libraries, but will also incorporate Qt in order to be more agnostic about the way it chooses software to include in the distribution.
Unity started as Ubuntu's netbook interface, and it is simple, with an emphasis on large icons. New Linux users and anyone familiar with handheld devices are more likely to be comfortable with the Unity interface than with a more traditional Linux desktop interface. So Canonical has decided to use Unity not just as Ubuntu's netbook interface, but as its new desktop interface too, preferring it to the upcoming Gnome 3 (Gnome Shell) interface.
While I have, in the past, been squarely inside Ubuntu's target audience, now it is my daughter who is. She uses the Unity interface on her PC, and is quite comfortable with it.
Both my home PC and work PC have two monitors. Unity is not designed to work well on a dual-head display. So I have been taking a closer look at what will soon be Gnome 3.
Gnome Shell, soon to be Gnome 3, got a burst of attention recently when it dropped the minimise and maximise buttons from the window title bar. I downloaded a Live CD image to see what the fuss was about. And after messing about with it for a little while I realised I could only reach an informed conclusion if I spent more time with it. So I downloaded and installed Fedora Core 15 Alpha, which features (among other cool things) pre-release builds of Gnome 2.9.
And now I know for sure. I miss the minimise button. In the context of Gnome Shell, "minimise" is a misnomer, because the window is not minimised to a task bar. There is no task bar. So it is effectively a hide button. But I still miss it.
My recommendation would be either to replace it with a hide button, or maybe "Move to next workspace" and "Move to previous workspace" buttons. I like having a maximise button, because I set double-clicking the title bar to "shade"; its original functionality in X. But I know I'm not representative of most users, and anyone who has used Windows will expect a window to maximise when its title bar is double-clicked.
Another interesting aspect of installing Fedora Core 15 Alpha with Gnome Shell has been the "Fedora" part. I haven't used an RPM-based distribution for years. yum is OK, but it's not yet as tasty as apt. It rebuilds its cache automatically, so it doesn't require an equivalent of "apt-get update", but as a result a search can feel like it takes quite long. And to my disappointment there is no equivalent of "apt-get autoremove". You can theoretically find unused libraries using the "package-cleanup" command, but when I tried to find the unused dependencies of something I'd just installed and then removed, it didn't list what I expected. (Instead, its list of libraries included things like LibreOffice Calc.)
I've also been surprised by Fedora's almost stubborn resistance to the idea of users choosing to use non-free and restricted software. I commend Red Hat on its adherence to a free software philosophy. But my family uses my home PC to play music in MP3 as well as OGG and FLAC format. And it took more googling than I expected to find the page telling me how to add the right repository to play MP3s. ... Only to discover that it wasn't going to help me with libdvdcss2. We also use my machine to play DVDs -- the kind you buy or rent. You need to jump through slightly different hoops to get Fedora to play DVDs.
I understand that the USA is not as much The Land Of The Free as it was before the MPAA and the RIAA achieved so much success through lobbying, and I appreciate that while that's certainly none of my business, it is Red Hat's business. But if Fedora would like to be the new home of some of the post-April 2011 Ubuntu diaspora (assuming, for just a moment, that Canonical does not make it really simple to install Gnome Shell in Ubuntu 11.04), I'd strongly recommend they be a bit more helpful when it comes to the needs of law-abiding, non-US citizens.
How about, on the first user's first login, the user gets a Welcome message that includes a link to a page that informs them of how to install additional software -- including support for MP3, Flash and DVD playback? One could even include a checkbox to ensure the user understands the legal implications of what they are doing.
Other than my distaste for yum, and the fact that it took an un-Ubuntu-like effort to play a legally-purchased DVD on a legally-purchased DVD drive, I am quite liking Fedora Core 15 with Gnome Shell. I was especially impressed when Fedora detected my graphics card, loaded the nouveau driver, and configured it for dual-head display automatically. How did it know the LG monitor is to the right of the Samsung monitor? Lucky guess? Regardless, I am impressed.
☙
