unity-design team mailing list archive

[Ryan Prior <ryanprior@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 10:35 AM, Mark Curtis <merkinman@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Unity requires 3d compositing.  For those without adequate hardware, it
> falls back to the GNOME Panels.  While I understand for this cycle effort
> should be put into getting Unity functioning, I think for the future a
> better fallback should be created. For one the GNOME Panels won't be
> supported forever so it's not a viable alternative in the long run.  Two,
> the UI change from Unity/Panels is drastic.  Look at Windows 7, if the user
> can't enable the compositing, the UI is still similar, it doesn't reset to
> an XP style of UI.

I don't agree, at least for the moment. In the future where the Unity
look is an ingrained part of the Ubuntu brand, I'd agree that there
should be a better fall-back for machines which still don't support
Unity's technical requirements. However, for the moment the
gnome-panels are part of the Ubuntu brand and Unity is the new-fangled
outlier, which some users and vocal critics consider to be inferior to
the gnome-panels. Maintaining an excellent legacy Gnome interface will
help ensure continuity from previous releases or users who cannot use
Unity, and I haven't seen any argument that creating a Unity-like
fallback which would have to pursue a moving target would be worth the
time it would take to develop.

Ryan