Geeks are coding away at some application feature, managing servers, updating
designs, watching some TV show, browsing the web, discussing project goals over
skype with team members and other mundane things – all this on a slow day.
I disagree. I have three windows open. Google Chrome (with, unfortunately for my
productivity, Hacker News open), Emacs, and a Gnome Terminal (I X forward my
Emacs session from my home machine to my work machine).
Even if I did have skype open rather than an IRC session (in ERC/irssi), I don't
see how Unity is better or worse than the normal Gnome set-up. Alt-Tab still
works. Same goes for other applications that are distracting me from my editor.
What part of alt-tabing and application launching does Unity do so terribly
compared to the old Gnome interface + Gnome-Do (I hated the menus, I
tab-complete in the terminal, why can't I tab-complete in my application
launcher?).
I typically have Chromium, a urxvt running tmux with 5-15 "windows" (a couple of which go to remote machines), two workspaces of Emacs, and half a dozen open pdfs of journal articles that I may be looking back at. When debugging parallel jobs, I may have a few more tmux instances. I find that Xmonad offers the most efficient window management in this scenario. I currently run it with Gnome3 in legacy mode because all I want from Gnome is the toolbar and session management.
I don't think the debate is between xmonad and some WM. The debate is between Ubuntu's Gnome set-up before Unity and Ubuntu's set-up with Unity.
Ubuntu's Gnome set-up was never been like xmonad or even a tiling window manager and neither is Unity. It seems to me that, as far as you're concerned, Ubuntu's default set-up sucks just as much as it always has.
Alt-tab works, but alt-shift-tab does not - or at least did not work for me when I upgraded. Not wanting to waste time looking for a workaround, I just reverted to my backup and forgot about Unity.
After I discovered this feature/shortcut I started not caring anymore about Unity bugs. Navigating applications this way is much faster than alt+tabbing.
Another useful shortcut is alt+` (backtick). It cycles through open windows of the same application. If you have 10 PDFs open, you can cycle through them with alt+`.
Geeks are coding away at some application feature, managing servers, updating designs, watching some TV show, browsing the web, discussing project goals over skype with team members and other mundane things – all this on a slow day.
I disagree. I have three windows open. Google Chrome (with, unfortunately for my productivity, Hacker News open), Emacs, and a Gnome Terminal (I X forward my Emacs session from my home machine to my work machine).
Even if I did have skype open rather than an IRC session (in ERC/irssi), I don't see how Unity is better or worse than the normal Gnome set-up. Alt-Tab still works. Same goes for other applications that are distracting me from my editor.
What part of alt-tabing and application launching does Unity do so terribly compared to the old Gnome interface + Gnome-Do (I hated the menus, I tab-complete in the terminal, why can't I tab-complete in my application launcher?).