Mint Unity?

[Paul_Vandenberg]

Hi,

Just wondering if anyone else is running unity on Mint? I have found that I quite like Unity, but not so much the Ubuntu look. This gives me the best of both worlds. I just wish I could change the dash icon to a more 'minty' one instead of the 'Ubuntu circle of friends'.

Mint Unity.png (145.58 KiB) Viewed 2211 times

[cwwgateway]

I have tried out unity on mint, but normally I use MATE or Gnome shell with mgse. From what I've heard, and this might be one of the reasons why mint doesn't use unity by default, unity is not very customizable, so I don't know if you can change the dash icon. I'm interested if they bring customization capabilities to 12.04/12.10/13.04/etc, but they have been extremely blunt about customization so far - posts by Shuttleworth on launchpad have shown that he feels that certain options would make unity less stable with certain configs (or at least that was my understanding, but I don't really know). On the other hand, as shown in this Linux Action Show episode - http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/7902/jono-talks-natty/ - the person seems to say that they will add customization.

[Joe_Linux]

I might be interested in Unity if it had an actual menu, activity task bar, and if it was possible to shut off the annoying "wiper" on the left hand side. In lieu of that, it's a non starter for me.

[baatezuu]

I would love to know what packages you installed to get this working. I installed the unity package from the apt-get and it is available to login to but it's a blank screen. I'm running Lisa so I don't know if it will work there. I might need to install compiz I'm not really sure.

I think that it would be all kinds of humorous to be able to run unity on Mint.

Thanks in advance

[k357k9]

@baatezuu
It did not work for me until after I installed "unity-common".

[k357k9]

@Paul_Vandenberg
I have played around with Unity on LM12 a little bit, and I kind of like it. It does run sluggish compared with the others.

[tacoz]

I recently started using it... and I like it!
After months of using G3 in default and classic modes--and on occasion defaulting to Cinnamon--I still find it hard to buy into default G3 methods. Classic G and Cinnamon at the end of the day, are about getting into a G2 way of working albeit with G3. I can buy into those alternatives... but they're not stable enough and dare I add, not user friendly in the customizing department.

However... recently I had the opportunity to play with both Ubuntu and Xubuntu 11.10. Being a ex-XFCE user, it was easy to be impressed with Xubuntu but I digress... back to Unity. After playing on the live CD, I made a partition and for now I dual boot with Ubuntu. I don't yet get what the fuss is about. Ok. So their 'docky' is a 'dash' and instead of sitting horizontally it sits at the left vertical. It doesn't look cool... but it works. And their dash button--imho--works better than the one in G3. What "sluggish!?" It has more features than G3 dash like for instance, it remembers what you used... kinda like a recent shortcut history.

And yes, it is customizable with ubuntu-tweak. Its auto hide-able... change sizes and opacity, etc. While ubuntu-tweak doesn't have an option yet to change the icon, I have seen solutions for that as well or even placing it at the bottom rather than on the left. All in all I find Unity to be full of interesting surprises... that just work for me. And... you don't have to use the dash--but as I said, it has got some features that G3 lacks--try classicmenu-indicator instead... nice!

I guess at the end of the day... while Cinnamon is the way to go and hopefully it'll be a--default--session in Mint 13... for now its early days. Unity was out there before G3. It seems to me that Mint devs should've been making extensions in this space rather than fuss with G3 and reinvent the wheel. After all the rest of the Ubuntu repositories still work, apps work and for me, after some system and Nautilus tweaks, this has that familiar look-n-feel of pre-Mint 12 days.

[bimsebasse]

All that you mention and much more Gnome Shell has through extensions that can be installed from: https://extensions.gnome.org/ - if Unity has something over Gnome Shell, it's certainly not customization or configuration options.

Aaaaand Unity is a shell on top of Gnome 3, just like Gnome Shell is, and Cinnamon, they're all Gnome 3

[tacoz]

if Unity has something over Gnome Shell, it's certainly not customization or configuration options.

I concur. My experience so far is that G3 certainly has more going for it... but that was not my assertion. Rather it was that there are customizations and tweaks that can be applied in the Unity space.

Aaaaand Unity is a shell on top of Gnome 3, just like Gnome Shell is, and Cinnamon, they're all Gnome 3

I'm not so sure on this point. Unity is not Gnome3... it is instead of it. Ubuntu runs a gnome-session (obviously) but no gnome-shell. Unity is the different shell for Gnome!

[frsu]

Yesterday I installed Unity 4.?? via: "sudo apt-get install unity" in Mint 12. Works fine.
Would like to try Unity 5.0, because it is more customizable.

Anyone experience with this?

[tacoz]

I'm on 5.10!
I started promoting the use of Unity about a month after the Mint 12 rollout.
I haven't looked back and the more I use it the more I find it... just so sensible!

[frsu]

How did you install it?
What is the name in the session chooser after you installed it?

The version I have now is called: Ubuntu

[frsu]

I uninstalled 4.28, and tried to install 5.0. Enough happened, but 5.0 does not appear in my session chooser.

[bimsebasse]

Aaaaand Unity is a shell on top of Gnome 3, just like Gnome Shell is, and Cinnamon, they're all Gnome 3

I'm not so sure on this point. Unity is not Gnome3... it is instead of it. Ubuntu runs a gnome-session (obviously) but no gnome-shell. Unity is the different shell for Gnome!

A different shell for Gnome 3, yes

[frsu]

I uninstalled 4.28, and tried to install 5.0. Enough happened, but 5.0 does not appear in my session chooser.

Anyone who can help me out with this? I installed 4.28 back again hoping there is a solution.