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Ubuntu introduces new theme and branding

arstechnica.com

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Re: Ubuntu introduces new theme and branding

#81

Post by ori_b »

AngryParsley wrote: post #77
nailer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some respects - I switched from GNOME to OS X and I found that Nautilus respected the tree a lot more than OS X did, NetworkManager also showed signal strength before OS X's top bar network thingy did. Only reason I quit is that after speccing hardware that had OSS drivers (and was fairly underpowered to boot), drivers in Ubuntu still didn't work 100% (eg, connecting to external displays broke X render support) an…

(Intel drivers being replaced with much more unstable replacements). Ugh, I had this same problem. Every time I upgraded Ubuntu, hardware rendering got another 10x performance decrease and more bugs. Eventually I couldn't even enable vsync, so I got horrible tearing while watching videos. I partially blame Ubuntu for this, since they could have held back Intel's driver updates. Ultimately though, it was Intel's fault…

The problem is that X had a massive amount of crap in it. Getting rid of the crap is hard, and things really had to get worse before they got better.

Switching acceleration architectures to something that's not from the '80s, allowing modern hardware to effectively accelerate the UI, allowing video to interact with OpenGL and so on needed to be done, and there was really no good way to do it painlessly.

Re: Ubuntu introduces new theme and branding

#82

Post by mquander »

barrkel wrote: post #53
rbanffy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or big screens. Unix machines have traditionally been used with big monitors. It's not surprising at all Gnome uses lots of pixels. And there is nothing forcing you to use Ubuntu's default layout. You have literally hundreds of options to choose from. I tend to change look and feel more or less on a monthly basis.

I live with Windows 7 on two monitors, combined pixel area approximately 3600x1200, and it's still not enough even with Windows's more condensed by default tree views, list views, menu bars, toolbars etc. I have e.g. my desktop icons dialed down to 32x32px. I like my toolbar buttons 16x16px. I like my buttons approximately 75x25px. Information density. When running XP, as I still do on my non-Linux laptops, the total…

Unlike Windows 7, Linux has proper virtual desktop support, so you can get a big working area without actually having that huge resolution.

Re: Ubuntu introduces new theme and branding

#83

Post by antigua »

danieldon wrote: post #71
antigua wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OS X's biggest downside is the same core problem of the Windows interface: having icons, menus and windows bolted on to a desktop is incredibly inelegant, redundant and wasteful of screen space.

How does that make any sense whatsoever as a response to the OP?

Linux distributions can get all the face lifts in the world, but at the end of the day they were not designed to be cute and accessible.

Re: Ubuntu introduces new theme and branding

#84

Post by s3graham »

carbon8 wrote: post #40
nearestneighbor wrote: post #15

Am I the only one who thinks that at the GUI level Ubuntu is better than OS X? (I use Snow Leopard and Ubuntu 8.04 extensively)

Gnome's biggest downside is the same core problem of the Windows interface: having a menu bolted on to each window is incredibly inelegant, redundant and wasteful of screen space.

I find the menus ridiculous on OSX.

Re: Ubuntu introduces new theme and branding

#85

Post by volomike »

Purple and /brown/? Really? Did they have to go there? That's uuuuuugly. Blue and green. Red and black. Purple and black. But Purple and brown? That's a harsh color transition, if I don't recall. What's next? The Hot Dog theme for Ubuntu?

BTW, I'm a huge Ubuntu fan. But man, purple and brown? Geesh!

Re: Ubuntu introduces new theme and branding

#87

Post by ThomPete »

"Not emulate, but blow right past Apple in the user experience we deliver to our end users"

I fail to see how that by any metrics are related to the new theme and branding efforts.

The user experience is not defined by the look and feel but by so many other factors. It would be interesting if they had actually better ways to deal with certain metaphors such as file browsing.

But as it stands right now although I love what Ubuntu are doing they are a long long long way from being anything close to Apple standards.

Re: Ubuntu introduces new theme and branding

#88

Post by ericd »

rbanffy wrote: post #63
randallsquared wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Package management is really useful for servers, or other systems where there's a bunch of dependencies. Desktop apps hardly need it, and OSX apps in particular don't need it. The combination of the drag-to-applications-folder installing and checking for new updates to the app when you launch it solves the vast majority of this problem for the vast majority of users.

That's a circular argument. OSX apps solve the dependency problem because they have no other way of dealing with it. They have copies of the dependencies inside the app bundle because they have to be self-contained bundles. But that's not solving the problem - if you have a defective library inside a bundle, upgrading the copy that lives inside the other bundle will have no effect on the first one. Programs are on th…

Remember DLL's on Windows? Having one new app upgrade a shared DLL was the source of so much pain in other apps. In a perfect world where interfaces are rock hard and apps code to them perfectly rather than how they actually work, shared libraries are a fine idea. In the real world of desktop software, though, independently tested, self contained packages are a much more robust solution. OS X's application installation system works wonderfully, and the libraries they provide to enable publishers to push updates works well enough.

And, disk space usage from redundant code is a non-issue.

Re: Ubuntu introduces new theme and branding

#89

Post by abhiomkar »

barrkel wrote: post #28
nearestneighbor wrote: post #15

Am I the only one who thinks that at the GUI level Ubuntu is better than OS X? (I use Snow Leopard and Ubuntu 8.04 extensively)

Ubuntu's default control layout looks ridiculous to me - everything is too far apart, the margins are too big, the buttons are too big, the fonts are too big, acres of space are wasted by toolbars in the File Browser in the screenshot, etc. It looks like a toy for people with poor eyesight.

I agree. The GTK font looks big. The button color and the GTK app color is not matching well. Giving same color to Title bar and menu bar is not a good Idea IMO. But I feel, the new look is better than the previous default brownish theme. Like the new logo of ubuntu. The font is minimal & elegant.

Re: Ubuntu introduces new theme and branding

#90

Post by barrkel »

mquander wrote: post #82
barrkel wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live with Windows 7 on two monitors, combined pixel area approximately 3600x1200, and it's still not enough even with Windows's more condensed by default tree views, list views, menu bars, toolbars etc. I have e.g. my desktop icons dialed down to 32x32px. I like my toolbar buttons 16x16px. I like my buttons approximately 75x25px. Information density. When running XP, as I still do on my non-Linux laptops, the total…

Unlike Windows 7, Linux has proper virtual desktop support, so you can get a big working area without actually having that huge resolution.

I think you're missing the point. You can have as many virtual desktops as you like - and Windows does support multiple desktops, moreover there are utilities that emulate virtual desktops - but that doesn't let you display lots of information all at once.
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