Unity desktop

Raised as a usability problem by 29 people on Hacker News over 12 years (2010–2021), in 25 threads.

People raised many different problems with Unity desktop, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 29 complaints

Ubuntu Natty release of Unity was nearly unusable2021-11-06
Windows get placed wrongly when switching between one to three monitors2019-02-26
Interface feels slower and worse than alternatives like XFCE or i32018-07-12
Everything feels noticeably slower to interact with than other desktop environments2018-06-09
Laggy, and mixes web, app store and file results together2017-11-22
Thumbnails of identical black terminals are indistinguishable, and window names are not shown2017-04-17
Menubar wastes space on multiple monitors and forces cursor travel to reach menus2017-03-31
Search results are slow to update as you type, and the first result isn't highlighted, making Enter ambiguous2017-03-31
Not production ready, so the commenter abandoned it for Windows2016-02-04
Switching in Unity is very slow and laggy, painful to do2015-12-28
Unity keeps adding features that follow the same UI antipatterns as GNOME 32015-07-21
Users couldn't change the sidebar icon size beyond a small fixed range2014-02-22
Menu is hidden by default and only appears on mouse hover, so users struggle to find it2014-02-22
Dash is slow to open on the first invocation, especially on slow hardware2013-11-21
Search returns internet results when users expect local-only results, violating expectations2013-11-09
Search box returns internet results, contrary to users' expectation of local-only search2013-11-08
Essential features hidden as secrets, not discoverable from the interface2013-07-08
Adding a launcher icon for a program requires near-black-magic shell script workarounds2013-05-18
Hiding, unhiding and switching between windows is painful in Unity2013-04-05
Unity's innovations don't appeal to the commenter, so they switched to Cinnamon2012-12-30
Basic actions like cut and paste, scrollbars and window resizing are broken2012-11-08
Desktop environments described as so bad the commenter switched away2012-02-07
Search doesn't learn habits, so typed-name apps aren't ranked first and need extra navigation2012-01-09
Unity interface is hard to read and interact with from a distance on TV2012-01-09
Typing to launch apps instead of clicking; Alt+Tab now switches apps across virtual desktops2011-11-11
Multiple windows of one app share a single icon, unclear which window is which2011-10-17
User had trouble adjusting to Unity when first using 11.042011-10-14
Application name is truncated in the menu bar, unlike on Mac OS X2011-10-02
Browser toolbars and bars consume a third of the vertical screen space2010-05-10