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A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

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Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#71

Post by Someone »

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…

a concept of an "app" makes no sense on a modern desktop, and windows is what users want to manage, not "apps"

I do not disagree with you (long live OpenDoc ;-)), but as a counterpoint: users buy _apps_, not _windows_.

As long as that is the case, apps do make sense on a desktop.

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#72

Post by lwhi »

Someone wrote: post #71
old-gregg wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

a concept of an "app" makes no sense on a modern desktop, and windows is what users want to manage, not "apps" I do not disagree with you (long live OpenDoc ;-)), but as a counterpoint: users buy _apps_, not _windows_. As long as that is the case, apps do make sense on a desktop.

Personally, I think users want to manage and navigate documents (not Apps or Windows).

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#73

Post by lwhi »

This is a philosophical battle. Apple has the ability to make decisions without resorting to committee politics.

Shuttleworth is trying to gain some of this advantage for Ubuntu.

It might seem dictatorial, but I think he's got a point .. if Ubuntu is going to innovate and create differentiation from other OSs it needs to change. An element of faith is needed to allow that change to occur.

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#74

Post by gizzlon »

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…

"I generally have >30 or so windows open at a time. Listing them all in [modifier]-tab would be hard to navigate"

Stick them on different virtual-desktops and they will not show up in the Alt-tab.

I find virtual-desktops a great way to organize, that has been available for 20 (?) years

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#75

Post by Causification »

I am an irregular Linux user and am not deeply involved in the Ubuntu community, but over the past several months I have seen the general attitude of "random geeks" change dramatically with regards to Ubuntu. A year ago the standard response to a new user inquiring about Linux was "install Ubuntu, it's easy, there's lots of help available. Go get 'em tiger." Now, Ubuntu is usually spoken of with a kind of regretful contempt. I didn't much care for it myself, but Ubuntu used to be the public face of Linux, the thing 95% of the Windows/OSX users hit if they get interested in Linux. As far as I can tell, it's fallen out of the good graces of the power user community. It appears as if Ubuntu has decided to forsake the early adopters and power users in favor of the newbies and average Joes. That may be well and good on principle but I don't see it as a strategy capable of sustaining an OS ecosystem that doesn't come preinstalled on Dick and jane's new laptop.

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#76

Post by Sandman »

lwhi wrote: post #72
Someone wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a concept of an "app" makes no sense on a modern desktop, and windows is what users want to manage, not "apps" I do not disagree with you (long live OpenDoc ;-)), but as a counterpoint: users buy _apps_, not _windows_. As long as that is the case, apps do make sense on a desktop.

Personally, I think users want to manage and navigate documents (not Apps or Windows).

Could you elaborate on this further? I ask this because not every application is about document processing.

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#77

Post by lwhi »

Sandman wrote: post #76
lwhi wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I think users want to manage and navigate documents (not Apps or Windows).

Could you elaborate on this further? I ask this because not every application is about document processing.

Perhaps document was the wrong term. I think that 'content' (either via creation, management or consumption) is central to all we do with a computer. I think that a successful UI would focus on this fact.

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#78

Post by Causification »

old-gregg wrote: post #35
bostonvaulter2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know about the alt+` shortcut to switch between windows of an app? It's really nice.

I do, BTW Unity/Gnome3 copied this kludge as well and they're proud of it. This is an equivalent of launching a new computer line which throws away SSDs in favour of punch cards. See, "apps" made sense in the prehistoric times when single-threaded desktops with limited RAM were primarily used to do one thing at a time. But things changed. The concept of an "app" have not been making sense for a long time: you can run…

Modern smartphones aren't so good at it either. Think of the last time you just wanted to listen to the audio from a video file while you browsed the internet.

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#79

Post by einhverfr »

bluedanieru wrote: post #62

That's why iOS has a springboard in only one place, same for Android. These are modern interfaces, based on serious design work. Our goal is to compete with those, so 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. So they want Unity to be a GUI for tablets? How far up your ass does your head have to be, to thin…

Exactly right. I am going to state the obvious here. UI's should be designed around their input methods. If the input on a tablet and a desktop are different (mouse vs fingers) then use a different UI. Plain and simple.

Gnome 2.3 was a very, very good UI aimed at desktops. 3.0 is another kinda sorta tablet UI that only kinda sorta works on desktops (I am playing around with Gnome 3.0, XFCE, and a few others). The fundamental problem is that what works well with one in one input environment breaks badly in another. This was Apple's great contribution with the iPhone and the iPad.

Attempts to merge environments will get you with something that kinda sorta works everywhere and does not work anywhere well.

Re: A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

#80

Post by lvillani »

jff wrote: post #47
mr_dev4 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.xubuntu.org/

I never really saw the point of Xubuntu--I mean, 10 minutes in Ubuntu will give you the same thing, why have an whole separate distribution when the biggest change is the default desktop environment?

It's not a whole separate distribution. It's akin to Fedora's "spins": an ISO with a different default set of packages. Nothing prevents you from installing Ubuntu proper and then "apt-get install xubuntu-desktop" on it.

I agree, though, that this distinction is not clear enough by reading Xubuntu (or Kubuntu, Edubuntu, etc) websites.

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