A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity • Hacker News Board

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#51

Post by pak » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 6:21 AM UTC

old-gregg wrote: post #46

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say this, as every major platform migrates towards apps. Windows 8: (huge push on becoming) app centric. Mac OS X: (becoming )app centric. Android: app centric. iOS: app centric. What OS isn't? Linux. (eh, edit, this really isn't fair. Linux is as "app-centric" as I need it, though the "linux is so secure" assumption is uh, going to become fallable as its competitors approach an app-centric, isolated model. (also…

> You say this, as every major platform migrates towards apps. That's the way it goes with these damn computers. In circles. I recommend you unpack a bag of floppies, get yourself some Windows 3.1 and take a good look at Program Manager.

IDK about you, but I generally have >30 or so windows open at a time. Listing them all in [modifier]-tab would be hard to navigate (by window title?) but having the icons of all the apps is actually kinda manageable.

It goes in circles because computer technologies are bursty. With Win95, managing by window was reasonable because having >10 windows would usually crash the box. That's also why every window was a taskbar entry, as there was actually room for all of them... By WinXP, when virtual memory became more robust and RAM cheaper, you needed to sometimes collapse taskbar buttons by app to make them fit... And now in Win7, it's the default with just big icons. People leave way too many windows open now because closing them is a chore, and people are crappy/lazy memory budgeters. Apple realized this with iOS, and ported some relevant concepts back to Lion--apps should be able to close and restore at any time, and their open-ness is irrelevant to the user. So yeah, that's why we're back to thinking about apps; windows may be what you most often interact with, but they are no longer the mental unit of desktop management. It's now all about task-->app-->windows.

As an aside, let's consider how effed up MDI is, the inconsistencies in window/toolbar management between Win Office apps, and how the Mac "one window per document, palettes appear on app activation" scheme has managed to stay remarkably consistent for over a decade.

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#52

Post by midwestwebdev » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 6:35 AM UTC

I guess I'm confused about the whole issue. Personally I hate Unity, which is why I installed Gnome 2. Isn't that the point of Linux? Being able to customize it to your liking?

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#53

Post by silon3 » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 6:45 AM UTC

old-gregg wrote: post #27

goodside wrote: post #12

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 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…

>Lets look at Alt+Tab functionality, which now in Unity (and Gnome3) switches between "apps" instead of windows.

This is THE reason I will not touch Unity or gnome shell.

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#54

Post by gbog » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 6:48 AM UTC

No one seem to see that the real problem here is not Ubuntu, Unity or Gnome X.y. The real issue at stake is putting the designers on top of the decision hierarchy. It have worked well with Apple, it was in its DNA, but it is not at all in Linux DNA (neither in Google's or Amazon's or Microsoft's).

I do not mean to say design and UX and usability is not important, but still, it is a matter of priorities. If a designer decide to have transparent flapping buttons and if this make the code behind it extremely complex and if it makes impossible to customize and configure manually any parts of the system, then I would say it does not belong to Linux.

Maybe it is a case with Ubuntu. Maybe Ubuntu is a Linux for designers. Then I am wrong, and will switch to another distro. For me Ubuntu was an easy to install Linux with few driver issues, and my first step after installing it is to remove the useless Visual Effects in preferences.

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#55

Post by pnathan » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 6:51 AM UTC

I appreciate the direction Canonical is taking Ubuntu. I neither condone nor condemn it; it is a valid direction to take software development.

However, the direction does not seem to line up with typical open source hacker goals (it's very hard to adjust unity even in the smallest ways, and there seems to be some number of breaks from typical conventions, e.g., breaking xscreensaver), which is one of the key values of the Linux world. That, I believe, is the controversy here.

I use Bodhi at home, and have been real happy with it.

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#56

Post by pnathan » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 6:52 AM UTC

old-gregg wrote: post #27

goodside wrote: post #12

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 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…

Well, I disagree with your assessment of 'apps' making no sense, I personally prefer how OSX itself handles apps & windows. It makes vastly more visual sense to me than different copies of the same process sharing nothing.

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#57

Post by madrox » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 7:07 AM UTC

enobrev wrote: post #28

These 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 change…

This. Very much this.

I remember Rob Pardo reflecting on criticism World of Warcraft received before initial launch. A lot of the Everquest players thought getting to max level was too easy and didn't require enough of a time sink. Rob pointed out that there was little value in focusing on players who had that much time to spend on a game, and they had to let those players go. It's tough, from a commercial and critical perspective, to say he was incorrect. WoW brought MMOs to the masses in a way nothing else has.

Letting go of users can be hard. Being the user that's getting let go of is harder.

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#58

Post by gcb » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 7:19 AM UTC

Bo102010 wrote: post #16

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 ab…

People are vocal because they contributed their time in the past while adding something to gnone, for ex, and had the decency to expose conf parameters.

Now someone with more money does a shitty job to make the UI like he likes, and don't have the decency of adding Conf parameters because it will have to suffice for everyone. After all, it's good enough for Him.

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#59

Post by silon3 » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 7:19 AM UTC

pak wrote: post #51

old-gregg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You say this, as every major platform migrates towards apps. That's the way it goes with these damn computers. In circles. I recommend you unpack a bag of floppies, get yourself some Windows 3.1 and take a good look at Program Manager.

IDK about you, but I generally have >30 or so windows open at a time. Listing them all in [modifier]-tab would be hard to navigate (by window title?) but having the icons of all the apps is actually kinda manageable. It goes in circles because computer technologies are bursty. With Win95, managing by window was reasonable because having >10 windows would usually crash the box. That's also why every window was a taskb…

Alt+Tab is typically about switching between last 2,3,4-5 _windows_ (max). It doesn't matter how many more windows you have. For that, it's other mechanisms (dock, taskbar, window list, search, ...)

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#60

Post by sutro » Thu, Nov 03, 2011, 7:20 AM UTC

For those frustrated with Shuttleworth's attitude and with the massive step backwards in stability and usability that is Unity, try Linux Mint. I had to go through a lot of painful, time-wasting experiments to arrive at that advice.