A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity
21–30 of 134 posts
Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity
#22just 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.
If Linux ever becomes popular on the desktop, it won't be because of Unity, that's for sure. It's a resource hog and it breaks too many established UI conventions. Unity forced me to start using the keyboard for most things. I'll give XFCE a try. I don't want to leave Ubuntu, because I like the packages and I don't have to read a manifesto sized manual to install it or learn another package system.
Linux Mint uses Ubuntu's packages, and is still on Gnome. You might want to give it a shot.
Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity
#23I 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…
People should just be using Debian if they want a stable system with good package management with a large repository. Archlinux is very good, but its repository is tiny compared to Debian and I trust Debian package maintainers more than pretty much any other distribution. I'm happy to install the few packages I need up-to-date, like Firefox, manually.
I love Debian, but I wish I could find a distro that was Debian + pragmatic hardware driver packages. That was the original value proposition that Ubuntu provided.
Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity
#24just 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.
If Linux ever becomes popular on the desktop, it won't be because of Unity, that's for sure. It's a resource hog and it breaks too many established UI conventions. Unity forced me to start using the keyboard for most things. I'll give XFCE a try. I don't want to leave Ubuntu, because I like the packages and I don't have to read a manifesto sized manual to install it or learn another package system.
>Unity forced me to start using the keyboard for most things.
That's not a good thing? I haven't used Unity yet, but might try it out just on that comment alone.
Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity
#25I don't mind, nor love Unity, though I quite enjoy GNOME3 (forgiving the rash of bugs), but give this a shot: Log into Unity, Press Ctrl+T. Enjoy.
For those of us who can't do that atm, what does it do?
Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Linux ever becomes popular on the desktop, it won't be because of Unity, that's for sure. It's a resource hog and it breaks too many established UI conventions. Unity forced me to start using the keyboard for most things. I'll give XFCE a try. I don't want to leave Ubuntu, because I like the packages and I don't have to read a manifesto sized manual to install it or learn another package system.
UI conventions established by what? Other Linux desktop environments? Established among whom? Old-hat Linux users? Perhaps that's not who they're targeting.
There is already a contingent of non-power users using Ubuntu. If they alienate those users then who are they really targetting? Shouldn't they worry about user retention in addition to user acquisition?
Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity
#27It'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 no…
> Unity exists because every other Linux GUI has
> fallen victim to this process
Lets look at Alt+Tab functionality, which now in Unity (and Gnome3) switches between "apps" instead of windows. The problem with Unity/Gnome3 is that they're doing exactly what Shuttleworth claims to avoid. Quoting Mark:
> we're not that interested in matching functionality
> that was in Win95, especially if we think that
> functionality will get dropped in Windows 8 or 9 or 10.
Mr. Shuttleworth admits to be heavily influenced by Android and iOS. That's weird to me, since desktops are ultimately very different beasts. The concept of an "app" came back from the grave only because the 1st generation of mobile devices were very weak, DOS-like if you will, at multi-tasking and IPC. So... Mr. Shuttleworth picked the wrong corpse to invigorate.
In their mindless pursuit of copying everything from OSX they didn't even bother recognizing OSX own bugs like broken virtual desktops. See, Apple themselves failed to copy them properly from Unix UIs (windows from different desktops in OSX are mistakenly combined in the same useless giant Alt+tab list). But the thing about Apple, though, is that they can afford to have an obsolete window management circa 1985 because their windows are shiny and fly around without lag, while Unity just recently learned how to scroll text smoothly.
In the end, Mr. Shuttleworth really shouldn't mention Win95 at all, which now seems to emerge as a clearly superior desktop UX of all 3, nearly 20 years after its introduction.
Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity
#28These sorts of complaints seem so absurdly dramatic. I don't understand the reasoning behind them. They somehow bring up an eerie image in my head of someone holding their spouse hostage in the basement for lightly mentioning that they wanted to take a photography class. "No, dear, you're not allowed to be anything besides what you were the day I met you. Change is not in the cards for you, unless I make those changes". Creepy.
That overbearing spouse deserves to be left in the dust immediately, and maybe some of these old users do as well. Not that they would be truly left behind, considering the vast landscape of other equally expensive options available requiring just as much effort to install - or MORE, if that's your thing.
We've been talking about bringing Linux to the desktop for more than a decade. And it's not even close. So a company comes along and says: Listenting to you guys isn't working, so we're going to try something else. And now they're somehow considered the antithesis to Linux. What is "Bringing Linux to the masses" supposed to mean? Making all computer users around the world cantakerous curmudgeons who can change every pixel any graphical interface can ever hope to offer? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like that world. I like Linux geeks, and consider myself one, but I also like all the people in my life who will never even care what Linux is.
And maybe there is a way to the masses via the old ways. I implore you to invest your time and money to find out. I would honestly love to watch that unfold, and I'd probably install that version as well to see if it fits me. In the meantime, I'm going to be happily using Ubuntu everywhere, as I am now - on my 2 year old DIY desktop with 2 giant 27" monitors (worked upon first install, with no proprietary drivers - 3 screens: not so easy), on my television (DIY home theater running xbmc - hdmi audio and video - also worked upon first install - no proprietary), and on my laptop at work (thinkpad, also worked immediately), and of course, on a couple servers at various stages of deploy.
As unpopular as the opinion may be around here, I really enjoy using Unity. It's new and obviously imperfect, but it's one of the better user experiences I've found on Linux. I felt the old gnome 2 desktop was a step back from Windows 7 when I switched my media center to it last year. It looked as though I was installing software from 15 years in the past, trying to fit into a world that had an inch of dust on top of it.
I like the windows-7-like dock bar in Unity. I like that searching for apps via keyboard is king (although the sorting sucks, sorting by usage is essential). Not a huge fan of the omni-preset menu bar, but it's not really THAT big of a deal (admittedly having 2 giant screens makes that possible). I don't give a damn about screensavers, as I haven't used one since flying toasters were the in thing. Truth be told, I spend far too much making things ON Linux to care much about Linux itself. And that's the way it should be. At least that's the only way I can stand to use Linux on every single computer I own.
Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity
#29It'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 no…
> Unity exists because every other Linux GUI has > fallen victim to this process That's very debatable. According to me, Gnome 2.3 is by far the best designed UX for a desktop operating system. Like most people, I generalize based on my own limited experience, and I have seen people grow up and learn how to use a computer in Gnome who were disgusted by Windows and OSX user interfaces. Like all animals, humans can be…
Completely agreed.
It appears as though nowadays it's almost considered to be shameful if computer don't try to imitate mobile interfaces, even though it feels as if the apex of usability was reached not that long ago with usable and slick Gnome 2 releases.
Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity
#30I don't mind, nor love Unity, though I quite enjoy GNOME3 (forgiving the rash of bugs), but give this a shot: Log into Unity, Press Ctrl+T. Enjoy.
For those of us who can't do that atm, what does it do?
I am guessing he is referring to this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/8147...