Ubuntu 12.04 review

Quicklists

Canonical has also updated its Quicklists, which you get by right-clicking an icon in the Launcher. This time around, the Dash has its own Quicklist, which lets you jump to the category that you want to search. It’s considerably quicker and more convenient than having to first open the Dash, then select the correct filter button from the icons at the bottom.

The new Dash Quicklist lets you jump to the Lens that you’re interested in

We were pleased to see the Home Folder also has a new QuickList. One of our issues with the previous version of Ubuntu was that the only way to navigate to a folder was to first click the Home button to launch your home folder in the Nautilus file browser. This time around, you can right-click the icon and jump to any of your bookmarked folders, as well as common destinations, such as Pictures and Documents. It makes it a lot easier to jump to the section that you want to visit and feels like we’ve got some control back from the operating system.

The Home Quicklist makes it much easier to browse to the folder and files you want to view

Launcher behaviour

With the previous version of Ubuntu the default behaviour of the Launcher was Dodge Windows. That is, the Launcher was always visible until you put an application near it, in which case it moved off screen.

This time around the Launcher is set to be always visible and the Dodge Windows option has been removed entirely. That’s a good move, as the default behaviour of the previous version was a bit odd. If you don’t like Launcher to be always visible, you can set it to Auto-hide, which sees the Launcher slide off screen when you move the mouse cursor away from it. You can select the cursor hotspot to bring the Launcher back: top-left corner or left-hand side of the screen.

You can alter the Launcher’s behaviour, but it’s frustrating that you can’t change its position.

From these options it should be clear that Canonical hasn’t altered one of the most annoying things about the Launcher: you can’t choose where it goes. It’s frustrating that you can’t drag the Launcher to the side of the screen that you want it to appear on and you’re basically stuck with it on the left-hand side of the screen.