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A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

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Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#11

Post by naner »

As a long-time Linux desktop user (but Ubuntu outsider) I have been watching this unfold for quite a while. I think that Mark Suttleworth is smitten by Apple and desperately wants to create a mostly free-software OSX-ish Linux distro.

He copied the anchored menu bar, moved the window controls to the left, copied exposé, copied some elements of the OSX panel, tried to improve typography, etc. Some of these were actually good developments (the Ubuntu branded font set is nice) but most of the time it just feels like a cobbled together interface.

It also seems he is trying to copy some other elements of Apple. He is eschewing customization (ostensibly) for uniformity and simplicity. And he has made Canonical's designers the top decision makers. Programmers implement. Community gets what they're fed. Usability is their ultimate trump card (as we see in this case).

This doesn't appear to be working well, though. Apple hired world class designers and payed them tons and gave them a massive amount of power. And they had Steve Jobs who would say "this sucks" when no one else would. Canonical (probably?) has pretty good designers given near-absolute power. I'm thinking there's quite a difference between "world-class" and "pretty good". Not to mention that Shuttleworth, an amazing man in his own right, is no Steve Jobs. He probably doesn't say "this sucks" enough and maybe even doesn't know what actually does suck when it comes to design and usability.

Anyways... I wish Shuttleworth well but I'm not very optimistic about Canonical's future. And I think they'd do better if he brought his own personality, creativity, and intensity to the project instead of chasing Jobs' shadow. Or maybe he should find a new leader to take his place.

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#12

Post by goodside »

It's not reasonable to expect a design team to be able to function under the condition that whenever a user disagrees with the placement of a UI widget, they must either publicly justify their decision as being objectively correct or make the widget's position a user-configurable option.

There is an enormous class of design problems that have several appealing solutions, one of which is better than the others, but not so much better that it's worth the time to find it. "Where should the launcher be?" is very likely a member of this class: There probably actually is a best place for the launcher to be, but it's better to just have it in the wrong place than to have to argue about it on a bug tracker, and certainly better than having to make a configuration drop-down for it.

The entire reason you have a design team is because design-by-complaint reliably produces shitty software. Unity exists because every other Linux GUI has fallen victim to this process. Will it succeed in not being shitty? I have no idea. Ubuntu will sink or swim on the merits of its leadership. But the only way to avoid this one major failure mode is for Shuttleworth to ignore, as politely as possible, the complaints of his users.

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#14

Post by Sapient »

rsanchez1 wrote: post #3
annomination wrote: post #2

just install XFCE and don't worry about it. as long as the apt repositories are stable, let them play with their GUI and you can go back worry about something more interesting.

Or show Shuttleworth how wrong he is and switch to another distro, most likely Debian for those who are most comfortable with Ubuntu.

I actually switched to Mint 11 after 11.04 and found it to be a really good alternative. Specifically because it didn't break everything and has access to all the Ubuntu repos and tools.

I switched back to Ubuntu for 11.10, hoping some of the things which pushed me to Mint in the first place had been fixed, but I am again bitterly disappointed. Unfortunately, I value having a pretty interface, I find xfce ugly, and simply installing gnome 2 in 11.10 doesn't "just work".

I also tried Arch, but I found I was spending too much time getting it to work how I wanted, and I eventually gave up on it for the same reason I stopped using Gentoo.

The one thing I never considered was switching to Debian - which might be the best idea yet!

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#15

Post by hollerith »

sciurus wrote: post #13

I'm curious why any volunteers still contribute their time to Ubuntu instead of contributing to more open and meritocratic distributions.

Maybe because in addition to openness, meritocracy, democracy and equality they value other things, and they understand that insisting that all human relations be open, meritocratic, democratic or equal will hobble the pursuit of those other things.

Some participants in open-source software development underestimate the costs and the disadvantages of openness, democracy, etc. They seem convinced that if everyone would just uphold those values, everything will turn out well, and they seem impervious to evidence to the contrary.

It might be the case that if Canonical's designers and leaders get to boss the programmers around, then not enough programmers will continue to contribute to Ubuntu. But that is an empirical question that might turn on considerations other than openness and meritocracy. Maybe many programmers will continue to volunteer to help Ubuntu even if they understand that programmers and users do not have an equal voice in the direction of the project.

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#16

Post by Bo102010 »

I'm not a big fan of Unity, but I'm sympathetic to Shuttleworth in this matter.

After following open source projects for some years, it seems they're all eventually accused of some dark corruption - usually after making some UI change.

"You're betraying the ideals of the [project / community / founder]," the accusers say. "It used to be about giving users [freedom / choice / slightly less RAM usage]. Now it's just about [main leader of project / 'the developers' / the corporations]'s whims! Why not just give us [a setting / the old behavior / a large-scale feature]!"

Take a look at Firefox forums after every release, or Pidgin's bug tracker every time they tweak the GUI...

It reminds me of an older Less Wrong article - (http://lesswrong.com/lw/uu/why_does_power_corrupt/).

Now, it could be that all projects are slowly decaying into [ego / corporate / dictatorial designer]-centric tarpits, but I kind of doubt it.

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#17

Post by rfugger »

I respect that Canonical is trying to make Ubuntu an OS that regular Mac and Windows users will feel comfortable switching to. They must realize that this will alienate many long-time Linux users, but that doesn't hurt Linux as a whole, because those people can just use Debian or another distro. It's a difficult choice and I'm glad someone's doing it. I may not be using Ubuntu that much longer, but I'm not going to bitch about it.

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#19

Post by technomancy »

annomination wrote: post #2

just install XFCE and don't worry about it. as long as the apt repositories are stable, let them play with their GUI and you can go back worry about something more interesting.

Yeah, we can all agree we hate Unity, but the constant complaining about it is disproportionate to the ease with which it's replaced.

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#20

Post by rjbond3rd »

clojurerocks wrote: post #7
kiba wrote: post #5

I think ubuntu is taking too much, doing too much. It wants to be on the phone and the tablet, and the desktop, etc. It is also a server distribution. It is also trying radical changes to become the mac osx of the linux world. Well, it's not even a good distro at work. We're using the last two version of ubuntu, because everytime we upgrade, it breaks. I used archlinux and I liked what it does. I expect archlinux to…

I used ubuntu for 5 years or so and finally moved off of it almost 2 years ago. I was a huge linux fan until i used ubuntu. Which intially was great but soon became nothing but marketing hype with one buggy broken release after another. Which just became tiresome after a while. Especially since with each release they act as if THAT release will finally fix all the bugs theyve had and linux hs had. Only to find out it…

> ubuntu completely destroyed linux Because rather then there being many great distros to choose from and play with there is now really only one.

There are lots of excellent distros. The world does not revolve around Ubuntu.

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