Ubuntu's nye Unity netbook shell

[b-real]

Ubuntu's new Unity netbook shell

Bilde: arstechnica.com

During a keynote at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Belgium, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth unveiled a new lightweight user interface shell called Unity. The new shell is designed to use screen space more efficiently and consume fewer system resources than a conventional desktop environment. It will be a key component of the Ubuntu Netbook Edition and a new instant-on computing platform called Ubuntu Light.

The Unity environment eschews the conventional GNOME panel configuration. It includes a dock-like launcher and task management panel that is displayed vertically along the left-hand side. The top panel will house application indicators, window indicators, and the menubar of the active window. Moving the menu out of individual windows and into a global menu bar will reduce wasted vertical screen space, leaving more room for content.

 

Window indicators (windicators) are a new concept that Shuttleworth introduced in a blog entry last week. Designed to help reduce the need for status bars, they are interactive icon-based widgets that are specific to a window. They can be used to signify that an operation is being performed, notify the user of application events, or to control application status. For example, you could use a windicator to display a progress spinner when a program is loading data.

 

In the standard Ubuntu desktop user interface, windicators will be placed on the right-hand side of the window title bar—a region that is currently empty due to Canonical's decision to move window management buttons to the left-hand side in Lucid. In the Unity environment, the windicators and window management buttons will be able to merge into the top panel when the active window is maximized. This is yet another technique for increasing the amount of available vertical screen space.

 

The Unity environment utilizes several key components of the GNOME 3 user experience. It uses the Mutter compositing window manager and the Zeitgeist activity logging engine. The Unity launcher is built with Clutter, the same rich graphics framework that is used to construct GNOME Shell. Although much of the underlying technology is similar, the Unity user interface is a completely distinct implementation and doesn't use any code from GNOME Shell. Shuttleworth contends that the Unity launcher is intended to complement GNOME Shell, offering similar characteristics but specifically tailored for lightweight computing.

 

 

Ubuntu Light

One area of the desktop market where Linux is increasingly gaining traction is instant-on computing. Companies like Phoenix and DeviceVM offer embeddable Linux environments that boot almost instantly and are shipped by hardware vendors alongside regular Windows installations. These instant-on environments are generally designed to give users quick access to e-mail, web browsing, and instant messaging. Ubuntu Light is aimed squarely at that market.

 

Individual builds of Ubuntu Light will be tailored to specific hardware for OEMs, meaning that it will not be installable as a general purpose Linux distribution. Hardware vendors that adopt Ubuntu Light will be able to choose between the Unity environment and or a full GNOME desktop. It is intended to be used in a dual-boot configuration on Windows systems. Shuttleworth views this as an opportunity to boost the visibility of Linux in markets that have traditionally been Windows-centric.

 

"Over the past two years we have made great leaps forward as a first-class option for PC OEM's, who today ship millions of PC's around the world with Ubuntu preinstalled. But traditionally, it's been an 'either/or' proposition—either Windows in markets that prefer it, or Ubuntu in markets that don't," Shuttleworth said in a statement. "The dual-boot opportunity gives us the chance to put a free software foot forward even in markets where people use Windows as a matter of course."

Resten av artikkelen.

Er det kanskje noe i denne duren vi kan forvente oss av Googles kommende operativsystem?

The interface is in the very early stages of development so do bare that in mind when trying it out but, for those who like to stay on the bleeding edgen here's how to install it: -

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:canonical-dx-team/une
• apt-get install unity
• Choose the Unity session at GDM login.

For de som vil teste dette selv kan gjøre følgende:

Endret 10. mai 2010 av b-real

[Gavekort]

Håpløst i og med at jeg har Poulsbo...