Ubuntu 11.04 and Unity

[mark-OGhnF3Lt4opAfugRpC6u6w at public.gmane.org (Shirley Márquez Dúlcey)]

On 5/10/2011 1:45 AM, Tom Metro wrote:
>
> The Windows XP-style task bar that ships by default on the bottom of the
> window is a similar fail. The user spends most of the time interacting
> with the middle to the top of application windows, yet to switch
> applications the mouse has to travel to the bottom of the screen?

But the taskbar can be moved to the side of the screen quite trivially 
on XP; all you have to do is drag it there. (On Windows 7 there is one 
extra step; you have to unlock it first as the taskbar is locked by 
default rather than unlocked.) And it behaves well there, and you then 
have an environment with no top or bottom bars. If you do the same thing 
with the GNOME task bar the task buttons don't display properly; if you 
have only one or two they're ridiculously tall, if you have too many 
they get carved up into little tiny things that are impossible to use 
instead of being scrollable in batches as on Windows. The taskbar code 
in GNOME 2 clearly wasn't designed to deal well with the case of having 
the bar on the side of the screen.

I'm aware that there are better alternatives on Linux. I was limiting my 
comments to what the stock versions of the popular window managers do, 
with setting of preferences if necessary but without installing 
additional software.