Ubuntu’s interface is pleasing and familiar, seamlessly melding elements of ChromeOS, macOS, and Windows. The iconography of system and application icons is consistent. Elements are clear and intuitive to navigate. Subtle animations and depth effects create a cohesive desktop environment. Microsoft’s Fluent Design System might be more polished, but it’s less consistent throughout. MacOS still wins out on design consistency, but Ubuntu is closer than ever to parity. All three now use rounded window corners.
(Credit: Canonical/PCMag)
Like the other big three OSes, Ubuntu offers a system-wide dark mode; both it and the light mode look cohesive and benefit from stylish orange accents. Like in macOS and Windows, you also get a lock screen that can show the date, battery level, and time, along with notifications from apps you specify in Settings. A Night Light mode reduces blue light for after-dark computing; you can set hours for this or configure it to automatically turn on at sunset.
If you want to customize the interface in detail, you can download the Gnome Tweak Tool. As in macOS, a persistent bar lives across the top of the screen unless you set an app to full screen. Unlike macOS, that’s no longer where you find application menus, though it does provide a few functions. Program window controls more closely resemble those in Windows, with a line, a box, and an X as the choices; they’re at the top right corner of the window.
The default Ubuntu Questing Quokka desktop. (Credit: Canonical/PCMag)
Ubuntu’s Dock shows a column of your pinned and running program icons. By default, Ubuntu places the Dock on the left-hand side of the screen, but you can change its position (bottom, left, or right) and the size of the icons to whatever you prefer. You can also auto-hide the Dock to clear up some space. Single-clicking on an app launches it, brings up the open window, or displays a preview of any open windows. A series of orange dots to the right of the application icon indicates the number of open windows (up to four).
Right-clicking (or two-finger tapping if you’re using a touchpad) on an application’s Dock icon opens a contextual menu. You can launch a new window of the app, quit any running instances, or remove it from the dock. When you right-click on some applications, you get the Ubuntu equivalent of Windows’ Jump Lists. Steam, for example, offers options for launching to specific sections of the application, such as your library or the Store, while LibreOffice Writer shows a choice for creating a document (not for opening an existing one, as Word does on Windows).
(Credit: Canonical/PCMag)
The Show Apps page, accessible from the Ubuntu logo at the bottom of the Dock, shows the icons of all the applications on the system in alphabetical order. It’s closer to macOS’s Launchpad than Windows’ Start menu and ChromeOS’s Launcher, which now closely resemble one another. Those show both documents and app icons and allow for pinning. Ubuntu offers pinning, too (though only for apps, not documents). You also get a system-wide search bar at the top of the screen. This screen supports folders, too; just click and drag one application icon on top of another to create a folder. I experienced some glitches with this menu. Sometimes, it wouldn’t let me scroll to the bottom of a folder, and other times, the icons overlapped each other.
(Credit: Canonical/PCMag)
The Activities panel (in the top left corner) opens an overview of all your active windows, the same system-wide search bar as in the Show Apps screen, and the virtual desktop switcher. It’s similar to Windows’ Task View. Click on it (or press the Windows key, which Ubuntu re-dubs the Super key) to manage open apps and virtual desktops effectively.
Speaking of active windows, Ubuntu has helpful windowing conventions. Drag a window to the side to resize it to half the width of the screen or to a corner to resize it to exactly a quarter of the screen, just like in Windows. Drag it to the top to make it fill the screen, or pull it back down to change it back to its windowed size. You can also click on the edge of a window to resize it, as well as control window sizes by pressing (on a Windows keyboard) the Windows button + the left, right, up, or down arrow keys. Ubuntu doesn’t have anything like Windows’ Snap Layouts, Desktop Peek (move your cursor to the end of the taskbar to preview active Windows), and Shake (shake the active window back and forth to clear the desktop behind it) features.
(Credit: Canonical/PCMag)
In the middle section of the top bar, Ubuntu shows the date and time; click this to see a miniature calendar, a list of notifications, and media playback controls. You can toggle Ubuntu’s Do Not Disturb mode from here (it doesn’t appear in the image below since I didn’t have any notifications).
The upper-right-hand side of the bar has two areas: one is the equivalent of notification tray icons, and the other (the system menu) offers quick access to screen brightness, network connection, sound, and settings. Ubuntu puts your computer in Suspend mode to save power after a set period of inactivity and also displays an estimate of how long your battery will last before needing a charge.
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(Credit: Canonical/PCMag)
The rest of the interface space is your desktop. You have fewer options for organizing items on your desktop compared with macOS or Windows, however. You can pin files and folders there only—not applications—though you can sort desktop icons by name, date, or type.
The Files app uses a straightforward design. It’s simpler than Windows’ File Explorer and more intuitive than macOS’ quirky Finder. As in those OSes, filenames are case-sensitive. On the right-hand panel, you see all the standard user folders (such as Documents, Downloads, Music, and Pictures), along with a Recent option. You also get the expected search and sort options. You can open multiple tabs within the same window, but File Explorer and Finder offer more tools for viewing and organizing files.
Ubuntu’s Files window doesn’t have a preview sidebar for viewing files’ contents as macOS and Windows do. With Ubuntu, your options are either a grid or three list views (though the size of icons is adjustable). You should be able to hit the space bar to get a quick preview of a file; this didn’t work in my setup since it requires installing the Sushi utility. You can also add columns of information manually and sort based on those, as well as right-click on a file or folder to compress it to a 7Z, TAR, or ZIP archive.
Flavors: Even More Interface Options
The default Ubuntu desktop is just one of many official ones. These Ubuntu Flavors, such as Kubuntu and Ubuntu Budgie, change the look of the OS by using different designs, desktop environments, and windowing systems. Kubuntu, for example, uses the KDE Plasma desktop environment that features a Start Menu of sorts. Other flavors target specific users (Ubuntu Kylin is specifically for Chinese users, and Edubuntu appeals to the education market), but most work fine as a home or work desktop environment. Lubuntu and Xubuntu are particularly lightweight versions and, thus, good options for aging computers. Each flavor requires a separate download and installation.
