Green Island: A New Qt-Based Wayland Compositor

[coder543]

I don't mean to be picking on you but seriously what do you like so much about Unity or Gnome Shell? What is so much better about not having a taskbar and not being able to switch between windows in one click? For so many years we could do that now we can't. How is this better than Gnome 2? Please answer me as I am seriously trying to understand what is going on here and how can people actually like these new inventions!

I usually just alt-tab and alt-` between windows, so I don't use the bar for window switching as much, but I will give you a few examples that Average Joe may notice in Unity.

Consistent Placement: The items on the bar remain static, so you always know exactly where the application you're looking for is when you want to switch to it.

Large Icons: Having large, color-coded icons improves visual memory and also helps you identify what you're looking for significantly faster than plaintext with a small icon.

That's just to address the one concern you gave. I'll list a few others. On Unity in particular, you've got global search at your disposal, so one keypress or click and you can immediately find and launch anything by name with just the enter key. That's infinitely better than digging through Gnome 2's app menu, let alone browsing for a particular file. Gnome Shell offers a similar feature. In Gnome Shell (and Unity as I have it configured) there is a hot corner (and keyboard shortcut) that immediately exposes all windows in a fashion where you can continue on and click the one you want immediately. No reading titles and trying to identify which one is which. This is a tremendous booster. I love Unity's HUD feature personally. That's one thing I've always missed from Mac. As far as I'm concerned the only real regression is the loss of the Compiz Cube, but I'll take Unity and Gnome Shell's extremely up to date visual styles over that any day. Gnome Shell is beautiful, hands down. Unity looks about as good as Windows 7, which means that it is pleasing to the eye, just not overly amazing. By default Gnome 2 was a downright eyesore. I would spend days configuring it in order to make it acceptable with things like Emerald.