I am curious to see how gnome handles hidpi. In the past gnome would only accept integer values for dpi, while Unity allows floats (ex: 1.5), which is a deal breaker for me.
Ubuntu 17.04 review
51–60 of 123 posts
Re: Ubuntu 17.04 review
#52I might start using Ubuntu pure again. I honestly never understood the switch to this interface on desktop. Microsoft tried it on Windows 8 and failed.
Please to be defining 'failed'.
Not the OP but I think hacksonx might be referring to the big squares UI. They designed an interface that one could use with their feet... elbows.... etc... And it had that Pinterest/Masonry appeal to it. I think they realized quickly that that's not how desktop users interacted with their computer. Was it a failure? I can't say I've met anyone that is trying to re-enable that interface on any other device. I do know they went back to using a more Window95-esque interface for the default Windows 10 desktop.
Re: Ubuntu 17.04 review
#53> While speed may be the single most important element of a UI, there is plenty about GNOME that is going to disappoint Unity users. The biggest gripe I have is keyboard shortcuts. Unity had them in spades. For as graphical as Unity is/was, it was also very easy to drive without taking your hands off the keyboard. GNOME lacks that level of shortcuts. Can we please fix this before the convergence? Muscle memory and Li…
what are all those shortcuts ? AFAIK, you can customize gnome easily.
3pt14159 put it well: There are more than a dozen really useful keyboard shortcuts for UI management, and tiling your windows. I mean, it's powerful - maybe one of the most standout features of Unity. You know what is really the icing on it? Hold down the "Super" key, and you get a menu showing all the UI keyboard shortcuts. It's a quick modal - no Alt-F1 help dialogs to navigate and close; no link to a website; a handy cheatsheet instantly accessible and dismissed.
I'll give GNOME a try, but everything I hear is that it's a directionless blob that makes productivity difficult.
Re: Ubuntu 17.04 review
#54Canonical/Ubuntu has practically stopped innovating for the desktop. There are a few ideas which need a big player, but nobody steps up. 1. Copy update-in-the-background from Chrome OS/Android. If you want to actually improve it, try to provide an undo button (which will never work 100% though). Either use two partitions or disk snapshots for the background system. Do the wake-up-at-night-for-update trick of Android.…
Linux users will not pay for appstore. There is no money to be made here. Just another timesink. You need to first attract significant non-developer users to Ubuntu (which is tied to making better laptops).
Re: Ubuntu 17.04 review
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
> which hints that there were enough users against it I'm pretty sure those users are a vocal minority. Personally I loved Unity. The only thing I disliked about Unity and Ubuntu's UI in general is the lack of configuration options, having to install extra buggy configuration managers to do really basic stuff, like turning Caps Lock into Ctrl. But that's a problem with the whole Gnome ecosystem and not Unity. And Uni…
Going back to why Canonical dropped it, I'm pretty sure that's because they are giving up on the Linux desktop in general. Indeed, Canonical had the same realization as Red Hat ~2000-2003: there is no money in the Linux desktop, there is a lot of money in enterprise services and support. Since Canonical has to make a profit, it is smart of them to drop unprofitable projects such as the phone.
And now Ubuntu has passed Red Hat in the # of servers metric because devs like me choose their Linux server OS based on familiarity with the Ubuntu desktop OS.
Re: Ubuntu 17.04 review
#56I never understood why Canonical's attempts to be "brave" (as Apple would call it) result in Canonical pulling out, while attempts by other companies like Apple don't. For example, Canonical made a very brave decision to switch to Unity, and now they're having to move away from Unity, which hints that there were enough users against it, and they pushed Canonical into this position (along with Canonical trying to allo…
As soon as Canonical blows something off in Ubuntu, users can switch to whatever other Linux distribution they like (or remove/replace the misbehaving component, like it happened with the Amazon thing or early-ish versions of Unity). Apple users can't very easily switch to a better version of macOS (especially when they need to migrate their data out of the walled garden it's hosted in).
Re: Ubuntu 17.04 review
#57I never understood why Canonical's attempts to be "brave" (as Apple would call it) result in Canonical pulling out, while attempts by other companies like Apple don't. For example, Canonical made a very brave decision to switch to Unity, and now they're having to move away from Unity, which hints that there were enough users against it, and they pushed Canonical into this position (along with Canonical trying to allo…
Apple/ios users don't really have a choice of hardware vendor. They're locked in, so they're stuck with what apple serves up or can feel the pain of migration (I'm in that boat).
Linux users are more fickle and can and will move to different distributions if they don't like one particular one.
Canonical needs to listen its users in a way that apple doesn't.
To be fair, we haven't seen what these changes Apple has made are going to do long term. Its clear there is some worry over there (the mac pro 2018 preview is very unlike apple)
Re: Ubuntu 17.04 review
#58As someone who uses Ubuntu on both desktop and server here are my concerns about Ubuntu and Canonical at this stage. I think Ubuntu is awesome and has done huge things for Linux, particularly on the desktop. A) Canonical's R&D investment is shifting from desktop components to server components. On the one hand I'm sure the server version will get even better which is great. But it's hard to imagine how this could tra…
I believe that the reason that Ubuntu is winning the server market is because it won the desktop market. Ubuntu is on most production servers because devs are more familiar with Ubuntu than alternatives since they use Ubuntu on their desktop. That's certainly the reason why I use Ubuntu or Debian on all the production servers I've spun up. I'm sure Ubuntu is well aware of this issue, and of course they're also dog-fo…
Indeed. Look at Microsoft. While the home desktop is not their primary focus, they still defend their position there as it is a pitch point when selling their products to corporations.
This with the argument that as potential employees are already familiar with Microsoft products from home use, they do not require as much up front training.
Re: Ubuntu 17.04 review
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes - it's very annoying. There seems to some strange interaction with Oracle Java that it just can't handle. The KDE bug reporting process is completely broken. You need an account on their system just to report a problem. I suspect that a large number of problems are never reported because the process of documenting them is just too difficult for most users. There is no automated crash reporting at all. As far as I…
It's nothing new: Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers. Or if you want to see a funny image, click this link: https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html If you're easily offended, google instead for "Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers".
Or if you're lazy, read what I copy/pasted below:
In February 2003, a bunch of the outstanding bugs I'd reported against various GNOME programs over the previous couple of years were all closed as follows:
"Because of the release of GNOME 2.0 and 2.2, and the lack of interest in maintainership of GNOME 1.4, the gnome-core product is being closed. If you feel your bug is still of relevance to GNOME 2, please reopen it and refile it against a more appropriate component. Thanks... This is, I think, the most common way for my bug reports to open source software projects to ever become closed. I report bugs; they go unread for a year, sometimes two; and then (surprise!) that module is rewritten from scratch -- and the new maintainer can't be bothered to check whether his new version has actually solved any of the known problems that existed in the previous version."
I'm so totally impressed at this Way New Development Paradigm. Let's call it the "Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers" model, or "CADT" for short.
It hardly seems worth even having a bug system if the frequency of from-scratch rewrites always outstrips the pace of bug fixing. Why not be honest and resign yourself to the fact that version 0.8 is followed by version 0.8, which is then followed by version 0.8?
But that's what happens when there is no incentive for people to do the parts of programming that aren't fun. Fixing bugs isn't fun; going through the bug list isn't fun; but rewriting everything from scratch is fun (because "this time it will be done right", ha ha) and so that's what happens, over and over again.
© 2003 Jamie Zawinski
Never heard of CADT before, but I have to admit that I've had experiences like this for sure (as the bug-reporter, not as the developer thank goodness).
Re: Ubuntu 17.04 review
#60This is a quick intro if you want to learn more about the mentioned snap package format: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLxqdf89hRo The article somewhat erroneously equates snaps and flatpaks. While flatpak focuses on GNOME, snaps are more broadly geared to any Linux software needing transactional updates (databases, Electron apps, docker/k8s, etc).
> flatpak focuses on GNOME It is developed by people involved in Gnome, but it's desktop-independent. http://flatpak.org/faq.html#Is_Flatpak_tied_to_GNOME_
These days it is damn hard to tell where Gnome ends and Freedesktop, never mind Fedora, begins.
All too often it feels like Gnome and Freedesktop is out to fix "problems" that only exist within Fedora, in the process turning every other distro they touch into a Fedora clone.