Re: [orca-list] Ubuntu 12.10 and beyond, Unity 2D will no longer be maintained.

[Thomas Ward <thomasward1978 gmail com>]

Hi Andy,

Well, I think that is a bit of a loaded question  because what is or
is not the best desktop/shell is partly personal preference.  However,
I do have some opinions on that subject based on personal experience.
Since I'm using Ubuntu 12 my opinions here will be based on that
distribution.

As far as accessibility goes I think Unity 2D is probably the best
over all option here.  That's high praise coming from me as wen I
started using Unity 2D a year ago I absolutely didn't like it.
However, a lot of time and work has gone into Unity 2D and its very
accessible and user friendly now for a VI user.

That said, I have had Unity 2D crash several times on me, and now that
Unity 2D is scheduled to be dropped I'm not sure  how good an option
it will be long term, and how much work will be put into fixing
existing bugs and issues. So I'm personally looking elswhere.

There is Gnome Classic and Gnome Fallback. These are obviously quite
accessible, like Gnome 2.x, but they too are eventually going to get
phased out. So its probably not a good idea to get to dependent on
these packages either.

In the end I settled on Gnome Shell, because its a good second for
Unity 2D. The top panel still needs some work, the Dash needs more
work as well, and there are some issues reading batteryh status, etc.
However, none of those issues prevents a blind user from using Gnome
Shell 3.4 successfully.

For example, I am right at this moment using a Toshiba notebook
computer with Ubuntu 12.04, Gnome Shell 3.4, and Orca 3.4.1.  To give
you an idea of how productive I am right now in Gnome Shell I have
Firefox open in my first workspace reading/writing e-mail. I have
Writer open in workspace 2 where I am working on some documents. Last,
I have Rhythmbox open in a third workspace playing my mp3 collection
in the background. Obviously, I can be just as productive in Gnome
Shell as Unity 2D, Gnome Classic, or anything else despite a few
complications  using the Dash and top panel. What's more Gnome Shell
doesn't crash all the time like Unity 2D does on this laptop, and
Gnome Shell apparently has a long term support life ahead of it. so
I'm personally voting for Gnome Shell as being the best for me.

On 5/10/12, Andy B. <sonfire11 gmail com> wrote:
> What is the best desktop currently to use?