Thoughts after the switch from Unity

Thoughts & Feedback
#1

Okay so i just switched to mate from unity and i love it.
well except for a few sad things.

  1. The grub menu looks nice but after selecting an item it just gets unfancy

  2. I do like the old feel. mostly just the panels but i thought there would have been improvements to the UI. the login box, the shutdown and logout dialogs. not asking for too much

  3. the power button in the top right corner there. from unity am used to having it either do a logout or a shutdown. its kind of against user experience to hide the logout far away in the menu on the other side yet its more common than shutdown. just saying

  4. The Plank dock. when you disable autohide then the bottom is all like a big black panel at the bottom. i would like for it to stay there on screen but am forced to let it hide itself

  5. I dont know if its just me or its a bug but there is a delay to respond to the mouse pad. i dont know what is happening with that

Other than that i think its a great job done. love it. thank you

2 Likes
#2

Hi
I don’t care about 1,2, 4 and I don’t experience 5.

However, I’m with you 100% about the 3.

I also have a few items of feedback / features requests of my own, in no specific order:

  1. I love the workspace switcher applet, but you gotta have a very wide panel for it to show application icons, which is sad.
  • When the workspace switcher is in a vertical panel, it’s not possible to have it show the workspaces vertically
  • When switching workspaces a miniature version appears center screen, but it’s very small
  • That switcher, as well as the ALT+TAB switcher, only ever appear on one screen (using Marco, not sure about Compiz)
  • It would be nice to be able to set a different background for each connected display
  • It would be nice when using the Screenshot application if out-of-screen parts of the image (Like when we have two displays of different resolutions) would be printed on a transparent background instead of full-black

Congrats on the 16.04 LTS release !
And thanks a lot for the hard work.
Cheers

1 Like
#3

Some of my thoughts:

  1. GRUB is mostly just a grey screen to me, I think that’ll be fixed up in 16.10.

  2. I think the login screen looks dated, but I’m fine with the logout/shutdown boxes, and lock screen.

  3. I agree. There’s been no success with bringing the indicator over neither:

4 and 5. I don’t use these, so no comment. :slight_smile:

@ouroumov: Some behaviours you describe there are different under Compiz.

2: With Compiz, you can configure the desktop layout to be 1x4 instead of 4x1 (or 2x2 if desired). Not sure if possible with Marco.
3. Compiz shows a nice preview of the desktops when switching.

#4

[quote=“Joshua_Kisb, post:1, topic:5258”]
The grub menu looks nice but after selecting an item it just gets unfancy
[/quote] The grub implementation is not representative of the polished, refined look and feel of overall UM 16 implementation. It can be changed - take a look at my grub efforts

[quote=“Joshua_Kisb, post:1, topic:5258”]
I do like the old feel. mostly just the panels but i thought there would have been improvements to the UI. the login box, the shutdown and logout dialogs. not asking for too much
[/quote] I prefer the transparent login box of straight up Ubuntu - my efforts

[quote=“Joshua_Kisb, post:1, topic:5258”]
the power button in the top right corner there. from unity am used to having it either do a logout or a shutdown. its kind of against user experience to hide the logout far away in the menu on the other side yet its more common than shutdown. just saying [/quote] I added a logout item to the panel placed middle of top bar. The power down icon located in extreme upper right can be relocated after unlocking it.
4&5 No Comment

#5

I’m wondering if the “delay to respond to the mouse pad” may just be the “disable touchpad while typing” feature getting in the way a bit?

I have noticed a slight delay for my touchpad to respond sometimes, especially when I am very quick to switch to the touchpad after typing or if I try to do a really quick ctrl + left-click (ex. to open a link in a new browser tab), sometimes it doesn’t register the click and sometimes it doesn’t register the keypress.

I’m not sure where exactly one might try to adjust some of these settings… maybe dconf-editor ? I’ll post back if I have any luck…

1 Like
#6

Thanks @lah7, but Compiz is not for me. :)

I’ve got a few more feedback items:

  • It would be nice to be able to edit the “Places” menu like the other menus.
  • I’d very much like to have the option to do Searches and Searches + Replaces using Regex matching in Pluma, this can be incredibly useful at times.
  • Pluma does not appear to have a syntax highlight for Markdown text? (.md files)
  • As @stalking mentioned in the chatroom, I don’t believe the “Add to favorites” button in the Caja drop-down menu currently has any effect?
#7

yes thanks that was the issue also just realized.
Disable touchpad while typing

#8

I just switched to MATE from Unity as well and it feels so much better, faster and intuitive. Like in the old times. However, i encounter a few problems, no big complaints:

  • I am using the Cupertino look (with the Plank dock). When connecting the laptop to an external screen, I can only see the dock on my laptop screen, but not on the external one. I think it would be nice to have some feature that enables the dock on both screens.

  • Would it be possible to hide Plank icon in the apps menu when using Cupertino? Something like leave it running in the background and be able to access to the settings menu of the dock right-clicking somewhere. Otherwise, if you accidentally close the Plank, the dock just disappears.

That’s it so far. Overall, it’s a great job what you guys have done :slight_smile: Keep it up!