Canonical’s Unity And GNOME Shell Becoming More Alike?

By on July 30th, 2010     

Today I saw a mockup of GNOME Shell and cannot believe at how much it looks like Unity, the UI which Canonical is developing for Ubuntu Netbook Edition.

Have a look :

Unity
GNOME Shell

The current GNOME Shell interface is a lot different from this mockup. However, this mockup is interesting because it looks like it has been inspired by Unity - in fact, it looks exactly like Unity.

What I cannot understand is, why would they copy Unity of all things? Unity is meant for netbooks - you know the ones with small 10-inch - and Shell is meant to replace the traditional desktop - from 10-inch netbooks to those huge monitors in desktops. There is a big difference in what Unity is aiming for and what Shell is supposed to do.

Yes, this is just a mockup and I might be freaking out unnecessarily. Maybe it will never see the light of day.

Anyway, now that they have some extra time after GNOME 3.0 has been pushed back, I hope they improve the existing Shell interface rather than going for a new interface.

[image credit: OMG!UBUNTU!]




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  • Kenny Strawn

    Well, listen up: According to other mockups on live.gnome.org like that, the interface is actually windowed, unlike Unity. Also: Unity doesn’t have an Overview, and GNOME Shell’s Dash is built into the Overview. Unity has its dash permanently open, and Unity also makes all its windows full screen. Their looks may be similar in the future but their behavior will be different.

  • http://twitter.com/Nicekiwi Ezra Sharp

    Also Gnome shell has been in dev much longer than Unity. If anything (in the line of jumping to wild assumptions) Unity copied Gnome Shell!



Canonical’s Unity And GNOME Shell Becoming More Alike? was originally published on Digitizor.com on July 30, 2010 - 1:12 am (Indian Standard Time)