I can't stand unity either, but some of the tools make using a GP computer mo better. My PC uses a 42" monitor attached to my living room wall and my eyesight and great, and tools like global menu both save screen real estate and make things ultimately simpler.

But yeah, I hate unity. But you really NEED things like mini/max/close buttons next to the global menu - so I made my own, very simply, using xsendkeys and three panel launchers. A vertical panel running dockbarx gives me a great launcher/task selector, and maximus makes it easy to keep track of one thing at a time when I want that without being intrusive.

Basically, the only thing that sucks about unity is the unity desktop itself. The only thing from there I miss is the text search/launcher. If that didn't take up the whole desktop it would be much better.

http://mypicturepalace.com/albums/userpics/10001/Screenshot~4.png

That's the problem. They had a GREAT web search page but then had to fuck it up with IFRAMES (web security 101: IFRAMES are not made for use outside a corporate firewall) and eight layers of javascript. I use google image search a LOT and the solution ultimately came down to me carving out a command line google grabber as a means to avoid all their bullshit.

gggrabber -a -s xga +its+britney+bitch|wget -i -

It sucks not having instant real time update on search terms, but it's a lot less dangerous to sort through a bunch of extraneous images than to use that fucked up "improved" google image search.

that's the thing, tho: the LTS releases are really no more stable than any other - in some cases it seems even LESS so becayse they seem to figure "we'll fix those problems on the next update."

And they do. 10.04.2 works pretty much flawlessly for me where 10.04 was a clusterfuck of bugs. The only thing now missing for me is hdmi audio - not a big deal, but annoying none the less when it was working under 10.10 before I did that "upgrade" to 11.04 and fucked everything up to the point I had to ffr the goddamn machine.

I hope I have learned my lesson now: the last three releases I have "upgraded" within weeks of the latest becoming available, and in each case I was forced to revert back to the previous version (a time costly procedure that inevitably leaves me still having to correct some /home settings by hand). I think from now on I will stick with lts releases ONLY at least six months after their initial release.

Except you can buy an Apple IIe motherboard that IS based on an ASIC and actually runs BETTER than the original AND uses like a tenth the power. It's also more reliable because it has, basically, one motherboard chip, one cpu, two memory chips, and not much else.

The 6800 came from Motorola. The 6502 was the successor the the 6501, both of which came from MOSTEK. Commodore may have had cpus contracted out, but the 6500 came nearly a decade before commodore hit the bigtime. MOSTEK was one of the leaders at the time because they offered experimenters a $20 "kit" that included a manual AND a 6501 CPU chip. This price was phenomenal at the time. The 6502 was the cpu that powered the KIM and SYM microcomputer kits, which were also very capable and very affordable - at $250 they were a fraction the price of the 8080 and z80 based machines of the time, and were equally capable (in fact, in many cases, much faster).

NOT a 65000, NOT a 68000, not a 6800, and so on. The 6800 was a slightly different beast, pushed by Motorola because they thought they had the power to overcome mostek's intertia because they're freaking motorola. But the 6800 was inferior in many ways, and it didn't happen until the 65xx line was long sold and dying.

Wow some of you really are nto thinking. I never said the KEYBOARD was going anywhere, nor have the UI designers. In fact, most fo the changes yall are complaining about are changes that move MORE of the UI from mouse clicks to keyboard related stuff. This also works well because anything that can be done from the keyboard can also be done UTTERING SOUNDS, which are also coming hard fast and heavy and none too soon.

I'm not mak9ing apologies for any of the mess these folks are creating. But I think some of us are learning there's a new line on the "cutting edge" and are really more pissed because we're starting to realize we're not longer "cutting edge" users. There's no real reason to upgrade your machine's OS every 6 months unless it lacks something that your present machine does, and I honestly cannot say mine lacks anything. I upgraded because I really wanted to see what all this new stuff was about, and now that I have I'm sorry - well, lesson learned: leave it to the young kids with their facebook crap and their 8-way messaging interfaces, and I'll just select the best bits and pieces from that and add it to mine as I can.

I think the problem si that we are stuck using the hardware we have been used to, while these UI designers are preparing for the hardware that is fast approaching. We're at a crossroads, and that's tough on everyone.

The paradigm we are used to is a keyboard and mouse. The paradigm that's coming is no more mouse, and keyboard and UI are all part of one unified bit of hardware - "point" with your finger to drag sliders, click buttons and such.

Think about it: if you had to operate your car going down the road by "clicking" via a mouse virtual representations of headlight switch, high beams, windshield wipers, radio buttons and so forth, it'd get old REALLY quick. Yet this is the paradigm we seem to be clinging to in the computing arena.

bullshit. I logged out, clicked my name, chose "classic session" and logged back in. Guess what? After restarting many times it's still on "classic session" - the last choice I made - by default - just like in the last previous releases.

thanks. sorry i can't blow a mod point on your heavily underrated correction, as I have posted throughout this tirade...

The apps available to day are pretty nice. One would assume that in a couple of years things will have shaken out that the new interfaces are more consistent and compatible. There's nothing wrong with 10.10, which I am about to REINSTALL soon as I burn another thumb drive.

If they fix the fuckign panel I might be able to stick with 11.04. But using ubuntu in "classic" mode has, for me, resulted in a desktop that crashes more often than a virus infected windows machine. So remind me: why did I switch to linux, again?

buttons on the left actually works if you get used to it. The menu is up there, the panel menus are there, and if you think about it most of your focus is on the upper left. Putting the buttons at varying places way out to the right is actually kind of cumbersome.

Problem is they seem to have focused so much on the new shit they forgot to qc the rest of it! Since I upgraded to 11.04 the goddamn panel has crashed SO MUCH that I have just added a custom launcher in the lower right that I can find and easily press when the panel suddenly decides to become invisible again.

There's a lot to like here, and much to despise. I've worked out enough adaptation that I'm really, really regretting the upgrade. How many months before my system is as stable as it was under 10.10? It seems a pattern is emerging here: AVOID the LTS releases until a year after release! How sad.

A little late to mod something "flamebait" when others have already shown to have found value in the conversation. Enjoy your days metamodding...

You can no more "monitor every clock cycle" with one of these than with any other. No more do you have to "guess" than with any other. Intel and AMD have both shipped chips with WELL DOCUMENTED bugs in them. Moreover, they shipped REPLACEMENT chips in many cases. Sure sounds like a "greedy corporation" to me. Think one of these socialistic corps will be able to afford that?

Too bad that, because it's an ASIC, all you can do is LOOK at that source code then try to design your code around the problem.

I'm down with open source, but this seems fantastically stupid to me. I can buy a pretty powerful CPU from a host of manufacturers at some very good prices - less than the $25 donation they request on their page, in fact.

We want to provide an alternative to the profit-hunting semiconductor giants who only provide "cost efficient prices" to large multi-national companies...

This is bullshit. This is about an agenda, not about the economic reality of "competing."