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Every time I've tried to use Unity, I get stuck with the problem of there not being any standard lists of programs—there’s no menu for things like “system tools”, there’s no way to find the terminal without TYPING “terminal”. And yes, I’m sure some of you are laughing because someone couldn't remember the word “terminal”, but I just couldn't remember at one point—I could remember “shell” or “bash” but I couldn't remember “terminal” and was scratching my head (eventually I found it with a web search). This of course applies to just about any program, and you have to admit, some programs are named VERY strange things that sometimes have nothing to do with what the program actually does.

With Unity, I can’t find AND launch programs JUST using the mouse unless they’re already in the sidebar/dock/taskbar thingy, and it’s frustrating, being a person that’s really really bad with names. I know you can find lists of things using the Software Center, but that's not for launching programs. Why do you require people memorize the names of everything?

Are there ANY plans on making the GUI easier for people who are bad with names?

Kizzume
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4 Answers4

2

Well, can't speak about the future but here's a little something that will give you a list of software that your OS knows about:

for files in /usr/share/applications/*.desktop; do grep -e "^Exec=" -e "^Name=" $files | sed 's/Exec=/Command: /g' | sed 's/Name=/Name: /g' >> ~/Desktop/mgtl.txt ; done

So, after running this code by copying (Ctrl+C) and pasting it (Ctrl + Alt + V) into a terminal and then pressing Enter, you'll find a file called mgtl.txt on your Desktop. This file will look like this (in part):

Name: Report a problem...  
Command: /usr/share/apport/apport-gtk -c %f  
Name: Audacity  
Command: audacity %F  
Name: Bluetooth Manager  
Command: blueman-manager  
Name: Catfish File Search  
Command: catfish  
Name: Composer  
Command: /usr/local/seamonkey/seamonkey --edit %U  
Name: UXTerm  
Command: uxterm  
Name: XTerm  
Command: xterm  
Name: ImageMagick (display)  
Command: /usr/bin/display.im6 %f  
Name: Document Viewer  
Command: evince %U

Notes:

  • the file is called mgtl.txt because MG&TL wrote the code :)
  • the order of Name and Command may sometimes be "off" because some .desktop files have more than one Name and Command (line starting with Exec=), but not always in the same order.
hg8
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0

Once you launch one of the programs like terminal you can pin it to the launch bar. This is a work around, not an answer to your question

pfeiffep
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I don't know about the future, but you can try another DE like KDE/Gnome3/LXDE/XFCE. However if you want the look of gnome 2, you can install gnome-panel from software center. Then log out select gnome-classic from session.

It will look something like

http://i1-linux.softpedia-static.com/screenshots/GNOME_2.jpg

This is applicable for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

jahid65
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0

This is probably not going to be part of the official releases, but to me it sounds like the old-style menu is what you mostly miss from pre-Unity Ubuntu? You can get one in Unity too as an indicator menu, without changing the desktop environment:

ClassicMenu Indicator

Open the terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T)

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:diesch/testing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install classicmenu-indicator

Then open Dash, use the search perhaps for one final time ;), and open ClassicMenu Indicator. It adds itself automatically to the Startup Applications.

classicmenu-indicator

pileofrocks
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