Canonical Comments On The Unity 2D Defenestration

[madjr]

meh 64bit !

its going to be probably superseeded by x32 anyway.

also it doesnt seem to be that popular at least on ubuntu.

I think canonical will go directly from recommending 32 to x32. Which is suppose to have all the advantages of both 64 and 32.

[Teho]

its going to be probably superseeded by x32 anyway. [...] I think canonical will go directly from recommending 32 to x32. Which is suppose to have all the advantages of both 64 and 32.

No it isn't and no it doesn't. Here's a good read about the subject.

also it doesnt seem to be that popular at least on ubuntu.

Those stats are completely flawed. It doesn't differentiate between releases so it doesn't tell you have many of 12.04 users are using x86_64 for example but rather what all people who have ever had popcon enable have ever used. Now the fact that kdedesktop package has 20% usage for the last 30 days should tell everything you need to know about popcon: the package was removed after Ubuntu 8.04 release.

[madjr]

I've seen his blog before, but no one can come up with conclusions till like a year from now where people can test the memory usage for themselves, maybe even get some phoronix benchmarks.

for now am using 32bit on my 3gb ram laptop and hope to test x32 in the future.

[Yfrwlf]

Unity is the slowest desktop environment I've ever used, just like Ubuntu Software Center. Even on a high-end machine the "lens" takes a second or two to load, USC takes forever to load, as does switching between multiple open windows of the same program zoom effect thing. Sad that you can no longer recommend Ubuntu as a cure for older computers (older distros don't count, the newest version of Firefox and other programs are needed). While I agree that DEs can afford to look nicer now days, not having the ability to "turn off" (drop to Metacity or whatever) the shinies like you can on Windows 7 is fail since they are dropping Unity 2D. You can't compare Win7 to Unity though because even with the desktop shinies on, Win7 is infinitely times faster since Win7's start menu opens instantly. What part of pre-loading all the DE's graphics libraries doesn't Unity understand? Maybe when Unity isn't such a bloated pig will more users actually like it.

[curaga]

I can still feel the lag in win7's menu too, it's not perfect nor instant.

But it's certainly faster than Unity on comparable hw, agreed.

[M1kkko]

Unity is the slowest desktop environment I've ever used, just like Ubuntu Software Center. Even on a high-end machine the "lens" takes a second or two to load, USC takes forever to load, as does switching between multiple open windows of the same program zoom effect thing. Sad that you can no longer recommend Ubuntu as a cure for older computers (older distros don't count, the newest version of Firefox and other programs are needed). While I agree that DEs can afford to look nicer now days, not having the ability to "turn off" (drop to Metacity or whatever) the shinies like you can on Windows 7 is fail since they are dropping Unity 2D. You can't compare Win7 to Unity though because even with the desktop shinies on, Win7 is infinitely times faster since Win7's start menu opens instantly. What part of pre-loading all the DE's graphics libraries doesn't Unity understand? Maybe when Unity isn't such a bloated pig will more users actually like it.

You stole my words. I've been using unity for too long and the removal of Unity 2D was the last straw. I'm currently on Openbox (it loads instantly) and not very happy with the situation.

[Artemis3]

What about when hardware-accelerated rendering does not work, it falls back to a limited Unity where certain graphical features are removed, such as shadows?

Thats what XFCE does. The compositor is optional, which is not the case with gnome3 based projects.
I switched to Xubuntu right before Unity became Ubuntu's default.

The 32 bit architecture should simply be avoided, unless the hardware demands it, or you have less than 2g of ram. If you are in that scenario, you probably need to use Xubuntu or Lubuntu anyway.

[Ansla]

"systems with decently modern CPU architectures and non-GPU accelerated hardware should be able to run Unity"

Which exactly are those? Pentium 4/Pentium M definitely not. It's too old and doesn't provide proper GPU, let alone CPU acceleration. Core Duo neither. It's too modern and pretty capable for hardware GPU acceleration. The same can be said about contemporary AMD offers. So what CPUs is he talking about?

Virtual Machines. KVM/XEN can only provide GPU acceleration through PCI pass-through, but that means having a GPU for each VM + eventually one for the host. Also Vmware ESX, for example, does not provide GPU acceleration.

[Aleve Sicofante]

Virtual Machines. KVM/XEN can only provide GPU acceleration through PCI pass-through, but that means having a GPU for each VM + eventually one for the host. Also Vmware ESX, for example, does not provide GPU acceleration.

This is definitely not the main reason why they created Unity 2D in the first place and how they sold it to the public. It was intended _mainly_ for old hardware. I don't think the purpose of LLVMpipe is _mainly_ virtual machines, although you're right that's a use case that will benefit from it.

I still hope someone from Canonical clears this up.