Ubuntu's "Lucid Lynx" Enters Beta

ActionDesignStudios writes "The upcoming release of Ubuntu, titled 'Lucid Lynx,' has just entered the beta cycle. Alongside the usual desktop and server versions, a special version has been released that is designed to run on Amazon's EC2 cloud service. This release of Ubuntu does away with the brown 'Human' Gnome theme we've all become accustomed to, replaced by a new version Canonical says is inspired by light. The new release also includes much better integration with social networking services such as Twitter, identi.ca and Facebook, among others."

Comments

Using it since Alpha 1

[Aphoxema]

I really like what I see, but it is a little... counter-intuitive that they not only put the window controls on the left side of windows but put them in order of Maximize-Minimize-Close. No matter, I have everything maximized all the time anyways and on my Wind I've been using Maximus with Window-Picker-Applet.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[shentino]

What kind of a screwed up layout is that?

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[da cog]

Pure speculation, but it could be that their goal is to order the window buttons in *increasing* order of their impact on the window, so that the easiest to click button merely resizes the window rather than of taking it away or destroying it. This arguably makes more sense then the OSX interface where the easiest button to click of the three is the one that gets rid of your window.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Aphoxema]

It almost makes sense.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[techno-vampire]

I have everything maximized all the time anyway

Why? What's the point of having more than one window open if everything's always maximized? I've seen it many times, but I've never understood it.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as I can easily switch it back to how it currently is, I don't really care. I'm not sure what the reasoning is behind the switch besides pissing off current users.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you see, there's this thing called the "Window List" which lets you easily switch between these windows that are maximized. Also alt tab. If I don't need to be looking at more than one window at a time, what's the point in running a program un-maximized?

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

It would have made less sense to users upgrading to OS X from previous versions. The window close button has always been in the upper left corner on a Mac.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[LingNoi]

They say it was a decision from the design team however, I suspect the decision to change the window controls has to do with the new mac guy that just joined canonical. The timing is just too convenient.

Either way it's a foot meet bullet situation. I very much suspect a lot of people to move distro over this. Yes, I know you can type in a command to fix this however the point of Ubuntu was that you could install it and go. You didn't have to dick around with it and this decision is going to force people to spend time configuring their system unless they add some option at install time.

It's like Snow Leopard changing the controls on the right. How they expected to do this without getting criticised heavily for it is absurd. Not only that but Mark's Comments towards the end of this bug report posted in a previous slashdot story have really opened my eyes as to what a dick he really is when talking to his users.

There's lots of reasons to keep the close buttons on the right by default and yet Mark can't come up with one reason to move them, just a lot of nonsense about "his plans" which he doesn't want to share.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Aphoxema]

Well, you see, there's this thing called the "Window List" which lets you easily switch between these windows that are maximized. Also alt tab. If I don't need to be looking at more than one window at a time, what's the point in running a program un-maximized?

You know, so you can watch your porn while you comment on /.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[MichaelSmith]

I have everything maximized all the time anyway

Why? What's the point of having more than one window open if everything's always maximized? I've seen it many times, but I've never understood it.

It makes sense for me on my eeepc 701. The screen is small and I don't want to waste space. I need different windows open for different purposes. For example a shell window and an editor.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Aphoxema]

Here's a screenshot of my netbook...

http://operationinertia.org/SD/Screenshot8080.png

I switched to Chrome because... well, I don't know. I'm just more comfortable with it in the short time I've used it.

The nice thing about Window Picker Applet is it always keeps the close button to the right edge, so if it's the last applet on the upper panel then I can always expect the close button to be in the upper-right corner.

Maximus removes the window decoration on maximized windows and maximizes all windows windows by default (with some exceptions). Chrome, when using the GTK theme and allowing the DE to manage the decorations nests quite nicely.

I also hid all the subdirectories in the gnome menu and left just the stuff I use in the root.

I grew up using computers, but lately I've been less serious about them. Ubuntu caught me somewhere in between and it just does me right.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Aphoxema]

There's lots of reasons to keep the close buttons on the right by default and yet Mark can't come up with one reason to move them, just a lot of nonsense about "his plans" which he doesn't want to share.

I guess he just got bit by the Steve Jobs bug.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you see, there's this thing called the "Window List" which lets you easily switch between these windows that are maximized. Also alt tab. If I don't need to be looking at more than one window at a time, what's the point in running a program un-maximized?

You know, so you can watch your porn while you comment on /.

Slashdot is my porn!

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Aphoxema]

Oh, snap.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that but Mark's Comments towards the end of this bug report posted in a previous slashdot story have really opened my eyes as to what a dick he really is when talking to his users.

There's lots of reasons to keep the close buttons on the right by default and yet Mark can't come up with one reason to move them, just a lot of nonsense about "his plans" which he doesn't want to share.

He is absolutely not being a dick. Just take a look at the rubbish people are throwing his way. Nothing he's said could be considered harsh to any but the most sensitive and fragile of souls out there and it's usually those fragile fools throwing the most mud.

The design team made a decision, and they've said they'll take on board any reasonable criticisms but most of what's going on is cry babies with their, "Listen to me, I want it this way, just because, and if you don't do what I say then I'll take my bat and ball and use another distro."

It's fine to take the view that you don't like where the buttons are and it's easily changed too. Just because someone wont do what you want just by crying and screaming at them via bug reports, etc. without being reasonable is hardly unusual. If I demand you to stop reading Slashdot just cause I want you to with no good reason and being a baby while I ask would rightly be met with a no. It's not the end of the world where the buttons are now and there's a way to put them where you want. How most of the posters can justify their positions on this in any way mystifies me.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really want to make full use of your screen real estate, I suggest looking into tiling window managers. Personally, I use awesome. I love how convenient and efficient it is to be able to switch to any windows I want to display simultaneously by just hitting a couple keystrokes. They're automatically resized to fill the screen without overlapping, although I can adjust it further if necessary with just a couple more keystrokes. No need to waste time moving my hands away from the keyboard, let alone wasting time dragging windows around to reposition them, dragging to resize, etc.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[MichaelSmith]

I would be happy if I could configure the gnome window list to never minimize.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[wordsnyc]

Been using the beta since Saturday, and this thing with the buttons is incredibly annoying.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[shyisc]

A logical one. It just so happens logic in this case doesn't coincide with common practice. First there is maximize, which increases the size of the window, then minimize which hides it, then close which closes it. So the window gets bigger, smaller, disappears. The layout we are all used to puts the extremes (maximize, close) together, and the two similarities (minimize, close) apart, which doesn't really make sense if you look at the logical ordering of the buttons. In a sense, Ubuntu is actually correcting a historical mistake, and in doing that it also sets itself apart from everyone else.

The thing I don't like is the button-trough. It only adds visual clutter without adding any value, and makes it harder to customize the theme without breaking it. Aside from that, I think the new GTK and Metacity theme are pretty decent, but they could have chosen something better. Still, it makes a good foundation for the next few years, even if it's still not up to par with KDE, Windows, or Macintosh. If they could get it to look as good as the new website mock-ups and Plymouth theme then they'd really have something special. For now I think they should brighten the color of the buttons, as I find them too dark.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[skine]

That's why I have two monitors.

That is, I can have six porn videos streaming on my main display while I read slashdot at full screen on my secondary display.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Aphoxema]

Been using the beta since Saturday, and this thing with the buttons is incredibly annoying.

I don't mind the buttons on the left so much as the close button on the inside, really.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[elfprince13]

It's an unholy hybrid between Windows button ordering and OS X button alignment.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[ProfessionalCookie]

Or maybe it makes sense to have the most commonly used buttons on the corners of the window, that would be my guess anyway.

Actually I think splitting the controls (a la MacOS 9?) makes a good deal of sense, especially since you'd never really use them in sequence.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Aphoxema]

Windows orders buttons minimize, maximize then close. Same as OS X but inverted.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[shutdown -p now]

A logical one.

It's not logical at all on a platform which puts the menu bar right below the window title. Wanted to click "Edit", but hit the close button instead? Too bad.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[elfprince13]

incorrect. OS X is close/minimize/maximize

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[shutdown -p now]

The design team made a decision, and they've said they'll take on board any reasonable criticisms but most of what's going on is cry babies

There has been plenty of entirely valid, thorough, and very well argumented criticisms of the whole thing the moment first screenshot with the new button layout appeared on the Net. Plenty is in the Launchpad ticket. Plenty more can be found via Google.

At this point, frankly, "IT SUCKS" is as insightful as it gets. Because everything else got ignored anyway.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Their goal is to teach everyone to learn about gconftool.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[geminidomino]

As long as I can easily switch it back to how it currently is, I don't really care. I'm not sure what the reasoning is behind the switch besides pissing off current users.

At a guess, the hype over the past few years has convinced Canonical to try to become the Apple of the Linux world.

It's not working (much like my sound card for the past 4 versions of Ubuntu...)

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[wvmarle]

Looks nice except for that huge grey bar on top: that's a waste of screen space. I'm now using Easy Peasy (Ubuntu Netbook Remix based) and that is doing something similar except putting the title bar of the window also in the top menu bar, saving those pixes for something useful. Very important on a small screen like the EEE701 has. I'm using it much more now than when I had the stock Linux on it.

The maximising is great on those small screens but on my normal desktop monitor I don't do this: I miss the easy drag-and-drop between windows...

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

There has been plenty of entirely valid, thorough, and very well argumented criticisms of the whole thing the moment first screenshot with the new button layout appeared on the Net. Plenty is in the Launchpad ticket.

There are some valid arguments for putting the buttons back from where they came, but there are also valid arguments for leaving them where they are now.

So who gets to look at the arguments for and against and make a choice? I'll repeat the answer that Mark Shuttleworth already provided. Those who through their good works have found themselves to be a place of authority within the team. I can also tell you who doesn't get to make the choice. Those wingers who are yet to put forward some cohesive argument as to why what they have said even merits consideration in any way.

I'm all for a balanced and FAIR discussion on the relevant points but for the most part that isn't what we've been getting.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[LingNoi]

The design team made a decision, and they've said they'll take on board any reasonable criticisms but most of what's going on is cry babies with their, "Listen to me, I want it this way, just because,

That's total bullshit. What's really happening is Mark is saying "I want it on the left, just because".

READ IT. I count more then 10 reasonable reasons for keeping the buttons on the right. Now read Mark's reasons for changing it. There are none! All he says is he is planning something for that space. What!?!

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Beacon11]

Read the comments on the ticket, and you'll see plenty of good reasons. Comment 71 caught my eye quickly (it was long), but there are several others as well. What's frustrating is that beyond Mr. Shuttleworth's mysterious design idea about which he hinted (which isn't even happening until the next release), the change was made with the same attitude about which you're complaining: "Listen to me, I want it this way." I'm not moving away from Ubuntu, but as a contributing member of the community, I'd like a little love. Some explanation at least would have been nice.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

That's total bullshit. What's really happening is Mark is saying "I want it on the left, just because".

READ IT. I count more then 10 reasonable reasons for keeping the buttons on the right. Now read Mark's reasons for changing it. There are none! All he says is he is planning something for that space. What!?!

You count 10 reasons YOU think are reasonable.

Oh, and by the way. Since when did YOU get to decide whether Marks plans are valid or not?

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

The most prominent theme of "Oh noes, I'll not be able to get used to this button relocation" are really arguing against even adopting Linux in the first place. There'll be a lot more to get used to than just the position of some buttons on the screen if they're currently using Windows. Bottom line. To argue this position is to argue against the use of Linux.

Oh, and there's those who say they'll accidently be hitting the buttons while they try to click menus. Well that has holes in it aswell.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

The buttons got moved because Ubuntu has something planned for the right hand side for 10.10

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[ihuntrocks]

Not only that but Mark's Comments towards the end of this bug report posted in a previous slashdot story have really opened my eyes as to what a dick he really is when talking to his users.

There's lots of reasons to keep the close buttons on the right by default and yet Mark can't come up with one reason to move them, just a lot of nonsense about "his plans" which he doesn't want to share.

He is absolutely not being a dick. Just take a look at the rubbish people are throwing his way. Nothing he's said could be considered harsh to any but the most sensitive and fragile of souls out there and it's usually those fragile fools throwing the most mud.

The design team made a decision, and they've said they'll take on board any reasonable criticisms but most of what's going on is cry babies with their, "Listen to me, I want it this way, just because, and if you don't do what I say then I'll take my bat and ball and use another distro."

It's fine to take the view that you don't like where the buttons are and it's easily changed too. Just because someone wont do what you want just by crying and screaming at them via bug reports, etc. without being reasonable is hardly unusual. If I demand you to stop reading Slashdot just cause I want you to with no good reason and being a baby while I ask would rightly be met with a no. It's not the end of the world where the buttons are now and there's a way to put them where you want. How most of the posters can justify their positions on this in any way mystifies me.

There there, Mark Shuttleworth. You didn't have to post as AC in order to throw your temper-tantrum. We're all friends here. It's okay *soothing, cooing noises*.... You can pu

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[node 3]

Incorrect. OS X is close/minimize/zoom :)

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[shutdown -p now]

The beauty of the thing is that one doesn't have to make a "cohesive argument" at all. There are plenty of other distros to choose from.

Personally, so far I've been recommending Ubuntu to everyone who asked for a best first-time distro - not because it's all that awesome, but because it's good enough at setting basic things up (one click away from installing NVidia drivers, MP3 codecs and Flash), and because it's the most popular one out there, so support is relatively easier to get.

But with stuff out of the box working in a way that is guaranteed to confuse any user of every other OS out there, to the point where data loss is a definite possibility? No fscking way.

I only hope that Mint will have the sanity to keep things the way they are now. Then at least I can point at them. Otherwise, I guess I'll just have to tell people to use Mandrake or SUSE from this release onward.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I guess I've hit a nerve with you then lol

Can't come up with anything better than that?

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Hadlock]

Did they fix the chat notification layovers for Empathy and the several other programs that use them? That's probably my only gripe about 9.10 on my netbook. I'm excited about 10.4 UNR (or whatever they rebranded it as this time) but I don't think I am going to upgrade this time 'round; 9.10 UNR is damn fast on a N270 and until something significant breaks, or they improve full screen youtube @ 480p on the intel GMA950 I don't see a compelling reason to switch.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are seriously going to argue that then not only do you make yourself look ridiculous but you'd be better off using Windows methinks. Please, at least use a different distro.

Nobody would want you to definitely loose data.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[alexandre_ganso]

cof *regedit* cof!

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Fred_A]

It's not logical at all on a platform which puts the menu bar right below the window title. Wanted to click "Edit", but hit the close button instead? Too bad.

FWIW, I've been Unix and X for ages and I've set my window title bars this way for longer than I care to remember :

Left side : Close button, stick button, (sometimes windows icon), window title
Right side : Minimize button, maximize button

This means that the close button is typically right above the "file" menu on most applications. I don't remember *ever* hitting close when aiming for the menu.
Nowadays I can afford a comfortable screen that's adapted to the large resolutions I prefer but even when I was pushing a CRT at strange resolutions, I never had this kind of thing happen to me. So apart from Parkinson's sufferers, I think this is a complete non-issue.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Fred_A]

I have everything maximized all the time anyway

Why? What's the point of having more than one window open if everything's always maximized? I've seen it many times, but I've never understood it.

Windows users can only use one application at a time since it's not possible to work on a windows that's not on the top (always drives me crazy when I'm stuck on a Windows machine). So most of them are used to maximising everything. Of course lots of people also have small screens (if only on compact laptops).

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Neil Hodges]

I also use Awesome for that reason. It's especially nice on very large monitors because you can split a screen to have multiple windows maximized in one of several layouts rather than having to juggle them. That said, I dislike how a lot of runtimes (Java, Adobe AIR) don't work with tiling window managers so well.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Rogerborg]

A PayPal donation button.

Yes, I'm joking. Maybe.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[AVryhof]

I think it's just laziness. Rather than do it in a sensible manor, they just moved everything left. What they should do is like Win3.1 did and make it a drop down control box that closes the window when you double click.....actually on KDE, it is....so drop the short cut controls. (*I'll still maximize and un-maximize by double clicking the title bar)

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Compaqt]

>Oh, and by the way. Since when did YOU get to decide whether Marks plans are valid or not?

Sorry, why doesn't he?

He can certainly decide for himself whether he likes Mark's work or not.

He can also speak (talk, chat, e-mail, comment, blog, etc.) about his opinions.

Or can he not?

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[tendays]

I constantly need to see many windows at a time... When coding I often need a documentation window, when designing a webpage I need to see the webpage while I type the source, when making a document I need to see the rendered version, when following instructions from a webpage for doing something in a terminal I need to see those two simultaneously, etc. Also I like keeping that IRC window at the back and just showing the last line below other windows so I can see what people are talking about without interrupting my work.

I only ever maximise windows when browsing the web or doing something in the terminal that doesn't require looking at documentation...

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[tendays]

Sorry, replying to myself but I forgot this: All window managers I've tested (kde's, gnome's and ion) lets you set a keyboard shortcut to put a window full screen, i.e. hiding window decorations and task bars for when I want a window completely full screen, whether the application supports it or not.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

One again Linux shows why it's going nowhere fast.

Rather than spending time fixing the huge number of outstanding bugs or developing useful software that actually meets users real world requirements the GNOME developers decide they'd rather waste their time dicking around with, or completely breaking, perfectly good, well established things instead.

After all we can't have users expecting any sort of consistency between releases can we ?

It's quite pathetic really. Spatial nautilus all over again. It's a good job KDE is more or less functional once more or I'd be putting XP back on my Linux desktop box.

Now go ahead and me me troll whilst secretly admitting to yourself that I am 100% insightful and infomative :)~

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Expertus]

I used to think so, too. Turns out, you can turn on sloppy focus in Windows (haven't confirmed in 7, yet).

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[jreineri]

The new button layout is not really worse than the old one.
The new button layout is not really better than the old one.

The new button layout is just different than the old one.

To change just for the sake of change without improvement is just stupid.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[FictionPimp]

99% of the time, close is the only button I want to use. Putting it in a corner makes it easier on the muscle memory imho. Honestly, if this was not easily fixable by switching themes I would not use ubuntu and move to something else.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[xSauronx]

it would drive me nuts...but I like keeping lots of shit open for easy navigation. 23" 1080p lcd....i dont need *anything* maximized unless im working on spreadsheets or coding (the latter is pretty rare)

then again, I have a second monitor...for lots more stuff. I like information overload /wouldnt need a second if windows had something comparable to compiz //dont ask, its a necessity right now

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

He can certainly decide for himself whether he likes Mark's work or not.

He can also speak (talk, chat, e-mail, comment, blog, etc.) about his opinions.

Or can he not?

Yes but just because he and Mark disagree doesn't mean Mark is automatically wrong now does it.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you implying that Google Chrome and ./'s Daily WTF slashvertising code don't get along together?

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[McGiraf]

Yes i tried it in W2K and it breaks things. If i remember the task bar was the main problem.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[jijacob]

He mentioned Maximus and Window-Picker-Applet, and mentions it is on his MSI Wind. Netbooks really don't have the screen real-estate to *not* maximize everything (except maybe a buddy list).

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Fred_A]

From your link :

In Regedit, set the 0x1 bit (thanks to Sam for the clarification):
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\UserPreferencesMask

In my case, the value was set to 9E 3E 07 80 12 00 00 00. This value is little-endian, which means the least-significant-bit is first. So in hex, this is 0x0000001280073E9E. Adding 0x1, we get 0x0000001280073E9F. Reverse the bits and you get the new value: 9F 3E 07 80 12 00 00 00.

It's simpler to just increment the first bit in the sequence, but this is so you really understand what is going on.

Log off (no need to reboot) and log back in. You now have sloppy focus.

Urk. Now I know where the Gnome people get their config interface ideas from (although it's not really actually *that* bad).

I had tried this once though some powertoy or other which made the change without having to muck with regedit but while it "kind of" worked, it didn't really work as advertised (I don't remember the specifics but I remember ending up turning it off as the kludge wasn't very usable). I don't use Windows or Mac OS that often so it's no big deal to me anyway.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[DrXym]

Whatever Ubuntu's intention is (and it isn't clear they actually have one), they are pissing all over 30 years of convention that says the close button is in the corner at the top of a window. I can't think of any graphical desktop environment that didn't put the close button in either the top left or top right corner.

Aside from being convention it's predictable and convenient since its order never changes depending on if the window can be minimized and / or maximized. If there is a risk in closing a window (e.g. unsaved work), then the app can simply override the default close behaviour to allow the user the chance to cancel. This would have to happen regardless of where the close button is.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Or it could be that their goal was simply to take the upper-right-corner window controls, and slide them to the left corner without changing how they were laid out at all.

Given Linux's laser-like focus on elegant UI design, I'm guessing that's the case.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[sheph]

I don't see (sane and rational) people switching distros over this. I don't like the idea that they are going to move the buttons because I'm used to it being the way it is now. However, I'll upgrade when it's out of beta, and if I don't like it I can reconfigure it to work the old way. That's the wonderful thing about linux, if you don't like the way it works out of the box total control is at your finger tips, and only limited by your inclination to learn. If you are going to be limited to the out of the box configuration you might as well stick with Windows.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Xyde]

Fitts law only applies at screen boundaries - how are any one of the buttons easier to click than another?

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

I really like what I see, but it is a little... counter-intuitive that they not only put the window controls on the left side of windows but put them in order of Maximize-Minimize-Close. No matter, I have everything maximized all the time anyways and on my Wind I've been using Maximus with Window-Picker-Applet.

Silly of you to think that placing the buttons on the left would not be up to the user.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[FictionPimp]

I want my close button in the top left, or top right of the window. Any other location does not make sense. The top left position doesn't annoy me so much, it's the button order. Actually the top left does annoy me because there is no unified desktop for linux. Many applications will not be using the theme (kde apps for example) and thus look completely wrong.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Just Some Guy]

Looks nice except for that huge grey bar on top: that's a waste of screen space. I'm now using Easy Peasy (Ubuntu Netbook Remix based) and that is doing something similar except putting the title bar of the window also in the top menu bar, saving those pixes for something useful.

That's what his screenshot is showing, too. The "Ubuntu Home Page | Ubuntu - Google Chrome" at the top is the title bar for the current app, Chrome. The gray bar is Chrome's own tab bar with only one open tab.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[maugle]

The idea is to free up space on the right-hand side to make room for some cool stuff coming in the next version of Ubuntu.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[wvmarle]

Yes now I see it. I didn't recognise that as a tab, I'm used to FF that puts tabs under the address bar. Which makes more sense to me but that I think is mostly a matter of taste/style.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Vectormatic]

unfortunatly they havent yet reverse-engineerd the elusive RDF generator..

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[commodore64_love]

>>>they are pissing all over 30 years of convention that says the close button

In my experience that's how Linux works. Instead of "calc" my KDE install calls it "kalc" which may seem trivial but if your Programs menu is organized by letter, and you're looking under "c" it can be bothersome.

Anyway -

I looked up C=64 GEOS and Amiga Workbench, my earliest experiences with GUIs, and you're right. Even back then, the close button was the leftmost or rightmost button in the window. For Ubuntu Linux to suddenly move it seems odd, and will likely lead to alot of angry users who accidently click "close" and lose their work, when they really meant to click maximize or minimize.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Beacon11]

Agreed-- that's my problem with it, too.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Hatta]

How often is it that you really need two windows visible at the same time? Those windows in the background, really they're just using up valuable screen real estate. You could be using that space to display something in the window you're actually using.

Very occasionally, I'll need to look at a PDF with text embedded as raster images instead of fonts. Then I'll have two non-maximized windows. One for reading, the other for typing. That is just about the only use case I can come up with for having two applications visible at the same time. Any other time, you can just switch back and forth.

Remember, humans are bad multitasking. You might think you're getting more functionality by having more different things on the screen. But chances are, you're just distracting yourself.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[commodore64_love]

>>>What's the point of having more than one window open if everything's always maximized?

On the Windows OS you can have windows maximized and simply swap between them using the taskbar. On the Mac OS the dropdown Finder window marked with an Apple serves a similar function. On AmigaOS it's done with Amiga-M and N key combo. - So yeah I keep my windows maximized too. It makes it easier to rapidly and easily flip between programs.

LTS

Quesiton: This means "long term support" right? As a desktop user do I really care that 10.0 has three years support versus the later 10.1's standard length? As long as I keep upgrading I don't see why the "LTS" designation matters? (Unless I've got an old 128 megabyte machine which refuses to run later versions.)

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[techno-vampire]

On the Windows OS you can have windows maximized and simply swap between them using the taskbar.

The same is true with X, of course. Gnome, KDE, XFCE or whatever, that's always true. My point is that I don't see why you need that much screen real estate for every program. If you're (let's say) editing a config file based on suggestions on a web page, isn't it easier to keep your text editing window small enough that you can see your instructions while you're following them? Isn't that quicker and easier than swapping back and forth between two maximized windows?

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I really like what I see, but it is a little... counter-intuitive that they not only put the window controls on the left side of windows but put them in order of Maximize-Minimize-Close.

Mindlessly aping Apple interfaces has been the long term goal of Linux window managers for at least the last 5 years. I expect they'll be migrating the file menu up into that heathen upper taskbar within the next two releases or so, and hang the wasted screen space.

I don't think Ubuntu really understand where they should be going with their UI. Their goal should be to attract windows users, not play second fiddle to Apple and ultimately become a stepping stone for users on the way to their iMacs. Things like the new notifications system show how Ubuntu can be a leader in UI innovation all by itself without having to be lead around by the Apple fashion police.

I never agreed with the top taskbar and I don't agree with this. I abhorred the spatial browsing farce and the pulseaudio debacle. Every recent Ubuntu update has forced one or two more irritants down my gullet to the point where I'm seriously considering switching distros for the first time in a while. If Lynx manages to screw up the UI to the extent I think it's going to, I'm going to install Gentoo.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Just because a space is empty does not mean it is being "wasted". For example, watch as I proceed to "waste" space by leaving an empty line between this paragraph and the next one. Watch closely now.

See? There's a big gap between this paragraph and the last one. You could easily argue that this is in fact larger than the one shown in the GP's post. Now my own thinking on this is that what goes for text largely goes for UIs as well. Buttons, icons, text and windows all need some kind of "space" between them. You can't have the screen crammed with buttons widgets and interfaces with only a pixel or two between them. Especially if people are using the mouse.

Sometimes it's good to have empty space. Sometimes it's good to have a big blue window bar at the top of every window, which users know they can easily drag and drop the window with. I can't imagine the horror of replacing that with some tiny tab with has to be carefully tweezered in order to move the window. Sometimes it's good to have a big bold square "X" for closing the window right there in the top right corner, so that everyone knows they can close the program just by going to the top right corner of the screen. One thing I detest about the OSX UI is how it breaks this convention by making the close button a) small, b) in a non standard location and c) ensures it can never be in a proper corner of the screen.

I don't care what the latest fad on the UI scene is. These changes to Ubuntu suck bigtime. The reason the standard UI hasn't changed much in 30 years is because the stand UI is a good UI. It's sometimes difficult for many to accept this fact, but the system has stood the test of time because of its simplicity, utility and ergonomics. Many have tried to change it, and all have failed; yes even Apple. Ubuntu is, frankly, going to crash and burn.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[commodore64_love]

On the (very) rare times when that happens, then yes I will put the two windows side-by-side so I can follow instructions from Window 1 as I work in Window 2, but for most of my computer usage a simple copy--- switch window---and paste will do the trick to move things around.

So I keep my windows maximized so I don't feel claustrophobic (squeezed) inside a tiny window.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't used Gnome in awhile, and I'm not sure if I understand what you're referring to when you say 'the gnome window list'. IIRC, there are 2 panel applets that give you a window list. One is a single that sits on the panel, and when you click it you get a list of windows. The other gives you a series of buttons, one for each window, on the panel. By default, I believe it sets up a panel with the 2nd one. If the panel is also auto-hiding, you can change that.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Abcd1234]

Uhuh... your point being?

Oh, wait, you're one of those people that believes the very concept of the Windows register is bad, as opposed to it's horrobly broken implementation.

Of course, that's ridiculous. Well, unless you like the idea of configuration littered across myriad non-standard directories, each with their own file format, each poorly documented...

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[metamatic]

How often is it that you really need two windows visible at the same time?

All the damn time, I'm a software developer.

At a bare minimum there's my code editor, the UI of the application being debugged, and the API reference documentation.

Usually there are multiple chunks of code in multiple windows, and multiple windows of API documentation. For example, doing web development it's quite normal to have CSS, HTML and JavaScript open for editing, plus reference material for each language, plus the site being developed.

There's a reason why developers often have multiple monitor setups.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[metamatic]

I've always recommended Kubuntu. You might consider doing the same. It's closer to Windows in its default look-and-feel settings, which after all is what people are most likely to be used to. KDE 4 was ropey, but as of 4.3 it's fine. (Sure, there are some things that could be better, but nothing really frustrating.)

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[shutdown -p now]

I haven't tried Kubuntu, but I'm rather wary of it, since every time KDE4 is mentioned on Slashdot, and I mention how buggy it was last time I tried it, someone immediately replies that I must have been using Kubuntu, which ships very unstable KDE packages out of the box. I've seen similar sentiments elsewhere, too.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Aphoxema]

I expect they'll be migrating the file menu up into that heathen upper taskbar within the next two releases or so, and hang the wasted screen space.

Well, they can already do that now...

http://code.google.com/p/gnome2-globalmenu/

Problem is, it only works with GTK applications, so Firefox is out.

Personally, my adventure's in Ubuntu have only become less irritating. The only breakages I've actually faced are when I played with alphas and some issues with my Wind on 9.10; camera stopped working, something else... nothing I was worried about. 10.4's apparently fixed all the troubles I had before.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[MichaelSmith]

Yeah this is the task bar. Sometimes when I want to selected a window I click the task bar item for it and the window minimizes. This particularly happens with non gnome applications like nedit.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[metamatic]

Well, that's what I was getting at with my KDE 4 vs KDE 4.3 comments.

Kubuntu shipped KDE 4.0 and 3.5 in parallel; then for the next release they shipped with only KDE 4.1. Neither 4.0 nor 4.1 were usable, in my view.

KDE 4.3 is usable. I have had no trouble with it, running a multi-monitor setup with nVidia drivers, and a mixture of KDE and GTK apps.

(Going from earlier Kubuntu to 9.04 was a bitch because of the switch to GRUB 2 even though that's still in beta, but that affects GNOME Ubuntu as well, and shouldn't be an issue with a clean install from CD.)

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

Its amazing the power people ascribe to a Chief Operational Officer. I guess he could have withheld the pay checks from the design team, at least until the boss smacked him around a bit.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

The address bar changes when you change tabs, so it is more logical to have it underneath the tabs if you think about it. Not that I would care to change Firefox to match the way Chrome has its tabs.

Re:Using it since Alpha 1

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Their goal is to teach everyone to learn about gconftool.

Well it worked! They also got me to learn how to download "Human" through synaptic.

I remember back when it was smaller

[Anonymous Coward]

Several gigs seems a bit bloated for a text based browser, but I'll give it a try.

Re:I remember back when it was smaller

[Kitkoan]

Several gigs seems a bit bloated for a text based browser, but I'll give it a try.

So was a text based OS and GUI based OS back in the day, the times are a changing.

Re:I remember back when it was smaller

[Qubit]

Several gigs seems a bit bloated for a text based browser

Yeah, well screens are bigger now, so the text on them is much bigger, and therefore so are the fonts...

This is why I tell my friends to choose computers with a smaller screen size.

Re:I remember back when it was smaller

[Anonymous Coward]

...for the worse.

Re:I remember back when it was smaller

[Anonymous Coward]

700 megs for ubuntu.
7 gigs only if you install a metric crapton of stuff ... or you have WOW installed with wine.

Re:I remember back when it was smaller

[RLiegh]

700 megs for ubuntu.
7 gigs only if you install a metric crapton of stuff ... or you have WOW installed with wine.

Funny, normally you hear a woosh after a post like that. Must have been to far up.

Lucid what?

[tepples]

Does this mean it has a new default browser? Or that it can run old handheld games? Unlike the last few animal nicknames for Ubuntu releases (Hardy Heron, Intrepid Ibex, Jaunty Jackalope, Karmic Koala), this name is already taken by tech products with at least a cult following. Or is it a way to force Apple to step away from the big cat naming scheme for Mac OS X 10.7?

Re:Lucid what?

[jonwil]

Apple could call 10.7 OSX 10.7 Cheetah.

Re:Lucid what?

[rockNme2349]

Really, there weren't that many choices. Lucid Lemur is not nearly as exciting.

Re:Lucid what?

[0100010001010011]

10.0 was Cheetah.

Public Beta: "Kodiak"
10.0: "Cheetah"
10.1: "Puma"
10.2: "Jaguar"
10.3: "Panther"
10.4: "Tiger"
10.5: "Leopard"
10.6: "Snow Leopard"

Re:Lucid what?

[Minwee]

I'm more enthused by their upcoming Masturbating Monkey release in October.

Re:Lucid what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a not god guy and occasional fan of British humour, I personally think they should call the 10.4 release of Ubuntu 'Laughing Llama'

Re:Lucid what?

[Culture20]

Lucky Llama sounds so much better than Lucid Lynx and is happier, more funny.

Re:Lucid what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lucky Llama isn't alliterative, though, and therefore less fun to say. Also, Lucid Lynx will be harder to screw up than Karmic Koala, which I'd usually end up calling "Karmic Chameleon"...

Re:Lucid what?

[cptnapalm]

So... Cheetah II: Electric Boogaloo?

Re:Lucid what?

[Aphoxema]

Does this mean it has a new default browser?

Yeah, now to preempt EU misgivings it will have a randomly populated ballot box including a variety of open-source browsers that have little popularity, such as Edbrowse and Emacs/W3. This will give these poor, defenseless players in the browser wars a fair chance.

Re:Lucid what?

[geminidomino]

Lucky Llama isn't alliterative

Wait, what? We're talking about the english pronunciation here.

Re:Lucid what?

[mwolfe38]

Well its too bad the L release didn't come out 5 years ago, they could have used the popularity of Napolean Dynamite to help promote the "Lucid Liger"

Re:Lucid what?

[Hognoxious]

Well there's insensitive, Welsh he his, look you boyo!

Re:Lucid what?

[iwbcman]

ahh they are going to bring Bonobo back ;)

Re:Lucid what?

[Anonymous Coward]

How else they would manage to do away with that pesky Human other than with the nefarious Lucid Lynx?

Window Buttons

[anshulajain]

...and the difference between 9.10 & 10.04 Beta are the window buttons, which are now on the top left corner. Seriously, there's a major flame war on this in the "Ubuntu Blogosphere". Don't these these bloggers have anything else to do, other than obsess over the placement of window buttons? (Which can be very easily reverted back to original way)

Re:Window Buttons

[iris-n]

They're mostly complaining about the ubuntu devs: "Don't these these devs have anything else to do, other than toy with the placement of window buttons?"

Re:Window Buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't these these bloggers have anything else to do, other than obsess over the placement of window buttons?

Ubuntu is the mainstream Linux GUI and it uses windows to display applications. The way in which windows are controlled matters a great deal. As Shuttleworth says it's not a democracy and he can choose, but all software has users and if they're not convinced that changes are made for the best reasons then of course they're going to do what they're allowed to do: talk about it.

This change hasn't been justified on any grounds. It puts the 'Close' button near the 'File' menu and other drop-downs which makes it easier to misclick and close applications. It's not a common layout across WIMP GUIs. It's an unnecessary and pointless variation on what people expect.

(Which can be very easily reverted back to original way)

Very easily? So it's a multichoice box somewhere in the GUI then?

The non-easy solution was to modify or make a gconf key. Is that really the easy way of doing it?

Re:Window Buttons

[delirium of disorder]

This change hasn't been justified on any grounds. It puts the 'Close' button near the 'File' menu and other drop-downs which makes it easier to misclick and close applications. It's not a common layout across WIMP GUIs. It's an unnecessary and pointless variation on what people expect.

That looks pretty annoying and is sure to confuse any new users I try to migrate from Windows or an earlier version of Ubuntu. I hope debian isn't planning something similar, because this might be enough to make me switch back to debian for my x86 desktops.

Re:Window Buttons

[mirix]

What made you switch away from Debian in the first place?

Ubuntu seems like a dumbed down, stupidly named, broken debian as far as I can tell.

Re:Window Buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

That's probably because you're trying to externally justify internally held beliefs about the superiority and appropriate nature for all tasks of the system you choose to use over someone else's choice.

Re:Window Buttons

[L4t3r4lu5]

It's like the costume designers for Keira Knightly: She's already perfect. Their job now is to swap the earrings every so often.

Oh, and fix that smile.

N.B. I quite like her smile. It's goofy and makes her seem more human than other celebrities. This is totally off topic now, but hey... I'm thinking of Keira Knightly!

Re:Window Buttons

[bigstrat2003]

Perfect? That girl is too damn skinny. Someone send her a box of donuts, for God's sake!

Re:Window Buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not difficult to change, and a quick google search will show you how to do it already.

Google "ubuntu 10.04 change window button location"

Re:Window Buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

This comment should be modded +10,000 informative.

Following this it should form the basis of a new ritual whereby each day of the week it is inscribed on a brick which is then thrown through one of Canonical's office windows.

"Slow down cowboy ! It's been 17 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment..."

Re:Window Buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but it's a gconf change. That's not something that Grandma can easily do.

Re:Window Buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

She looks absolutely perfect to me. :-)~~~~

Re:Window Buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

Perfect? That girl is too damn skinny. Someone send her a box of donuts, for God's sake!

See, the thing is, that most people start at one size in life and then grow larger.

So while she may be small/petite now, in a decade or two (and perhaps after having kids) she'll probably end up a comfortable medium. You have to think down the road a bit. :)

It's also why, personally, I like small and perky: in twenty years things are more likely to still be perky, as opposed to having gravity grab hold. :)

At least from the physical point of view. If personality isn't there then it's a moot point.

Re:Window Buttons

[Duncan J Murray]

I would disagree with you, though I was initially concerned that they were swapping the buttons around.

Giving 10.04 a proper go, I find that the fact that these commonly used buttons placed near to other commonly used buttons (applications and places menu and menu and buttons of the application) means that there's less skirting around with the mouse. Whereas there is usually not that much of use in the top right - shutdown and restart etc...

Maybe it's a good idea.

Plus, it reminds me of another favourite OS - Workbench 3.1

Duncan.

Re:Window Buttons

[swillden]

What made you switch away from Debian in the first place?

I ran Debian unstable on my desktop and laptop for years, and I switched to Ubuntu because it gave me a slightly better compromise between stability and software age.

Debian unstable isn't "unstable" at all in the normal sense, but the constant updates do mean that it takes significant effort to keep updated, and every once in a while an update DOES break something. Testing is a compromise that gives you a little less maintenance effort and a little more stability, and now that it gets security updates it's a good option, but it still changes a lot. Stable is rock-solid, but tends to get pretty out of date.

Ubuntu sits between testing and stable on pretty much all fronts, and gives you a predictable update cycle. On Ubuntu, I know that every six months I'm going to go through an upgrade process and can schedule time for it. I schedule a day. In practice, it usually only takes an hour or so (and most of that with zero attention from me), but the predictability is very useful.

Anyway, that's why I've switched. YMMV.

Re:Window Buttons

[Vectormatic]

devils advocate here, just set up sshd on the box before you give it to grandma and ssh in to fix these kind of things..

honestly though, if there isnt a quick checkbox type fix to this, it is gonna hurt ubuntu

Re:Window Buttons

[dsmithhfx]

The way in which windows are controlled matters a great deal.

Not enough to go off frothing at the mouth... I use XP, Tiger, Leopard, and several Linux distros (including 2 'buntu releases) pretty much every day. Have done for many years. So no, the way in which windows are controlled [among these many variants] matters very litle to me on any practical, and aesthetic level. YMMV (obviously).

Re:Window Buttons

[PybusJ]

Giving 10.04 a proper go, I find that the fact that these commonly used buttons placed near to other commonly used buttons (applications and places menu and menu and buttons of the application) means that there's less skirting around with the mouse.

So far, I find two things. One that I move my mouse towards the top right, pause briefly to swear at Shuttleworth's arrogance, then veer towards the new close button location. Maybe this will change over time, but the ill-will created by the speed and manner of the change will probably last longer.

Two, I now have a concern that I will hit the close button when going for File/Edit menus (notice Mac don't have this problem as they don't locate menus at the top of application windows).

Plus, it reminds me of another favourite OS - Workbench 3.1

Onwards Ubuntu, into that UI design heaven that was the 90s...

Re:Window Buttons

[Professional Slacker]

Very easily?

Yes.

So it's a multichoice box somewhere in the GUI then?

No.

The non-easy solution was to modify or make a gconf key. Is that really the easy way of doing it?

Nope.

Just use Ubuntu Tweak and quit complaining. It's even easier than a dropdown box, you just drag the buttons around, and they change in real time. Before you complain that they're third party, think about the name for one second, the tool for tweaking Ubuntu is named Ubuntu Tweak, what more do you really want.

Just like real life

[tpstigers]

So now I'm not Human by default, but have to make a conscious decision to be Human. Just like real life.

Re:"Does away with" the Human theme?

[Kitkoan]

That's funny, after upgrading I still have Human as an option. It's just not the default for new installs.

This must be some new definition of "does away with" which actually means something completely different.

Humans are now obsolete and will be done away with, is what it means.

Used it for a few days..

[s0litaire]

... and I like it!
Boot times are FAST on my laptop down to 27s (85s booting on 9.04)

Re:Used it for a few days..

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a pity it didn't have time to load the proportional-spaced fonts before you posted your comment :(

Re:Used it for a few days..

[s0litaire]

It's a choice :P

Re:Used it for a few days..

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, so you're an attention whore then.

Obsolete

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans are now obsolete and will be done away with, is what it means.

Nothing is the way it seems
Discerning man from machines now

Dominate as to erase
Wiping man off Earth's face now

Defaced by all inept justice
Shamed by the mental abuses
Branded "inferior weakness"
Ordered to cease and to desist!

Man is obsolete!
Our world, obsolete!
Man is obsolete!
Erased, extinct!
Obsolete!

Fueling engines through deceit
To eradicate humanity

Defaced by all inept justice
Shamed by the mental abuses
Branded "inferior weakness"
Ordered to cease and desist!

Man is obsolete!
Our world, obsolete!
Man is obsolete!
Erased, extinct!
Obsolete!

Re:f1rst p0st

[techno-vampire]

Why? Fedora comes out with new versions every nine months or so and it's not anywhere near as new-luser friendly as Ubuntu.

Music Store

[headkase]

I was excited about the Ubuntu One Music Store but then I found out it is gimped in Canada: indie artists only. So once again record labels keep my money out of their pockets! ;)

Re:Music Store

[Kitkoan]

I was excited about the Ubuntu One Music Store but then I found out it is gimped in Canada: indie artists only. So once again record labels keep my money out of their pockets! ;)

It's to make sure mistakes like Celine Dion are avoided again.

Re:Music Store

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't mind it starting with a limited amount of artists. What I don't understand is why they are only offering MP3s? On Linux! When I buy music I expect FLAC and Ogg Vorbis.

Re:Music Store

[H0p313ss]

It's to make sure mistakes like Celine Dion are avoided again.

What mistake? We shipped her off to Vegas, it's all part of the plan.

Re:Music Store

[wvmarle]

Sounds like they filter all the crap out for you already, leaving only music by real musicians. You should be happy for that, less risk of making a mistake when buying music.

Re:Music Store

[skine]

Isn't she a bit...ripe, for the harvest?

Re:Music Store

[L4t3r4lu5]

Let it drop, man! After all, they did give us Snow

Re:Music Store

[donsmi]

nothing wrong with the Canadian store for me - goto the top of the page and switch the search box from "indiestore" to "7digital" Haven't made a purchase yet, but I'm seeing full albums in 320k for 9.99 and $10.99. Very nice!

Re:Music Store

[Ginger Unicorn]

According to an interview with stuart langridge on linux outlaws podcast, it's a combination of compatibility with portable playback devices, and the fact that the record companies only supply the music in mp3 format. He did express an interest in supplying flac/ogg if the record companies would cooperate, but he didn't sound optimistic.

Re:f1rst p0st

[VoltageX]

This is possibly more insightful than it seems. Canonical seem to be pushing more and more in their own direction, rather than anything the Ubuntu community does. This is good for Ubuntu, but potentially bad for users as more and more changes are made to the GNOME interface, the browser etc etc.

Glad to see

[hduff]

a major distro based on a text browser!

I'm using Lucid Lynx Beta...

[oldmeddler]

...right now. I like it fine, though some changes (moving windows controls to the left side, took a bit of getting used to. The purple scheme sucks but is easy enough to change. There is still a problem with running a fixed IP, or at least there is some trick to making it work properly that I haven't learned yet. It does seem to boot a bit faster, but fast boot times are of little importance to someone who typically runs his computer 24/7. So far, I see no significant improvements, but more importantly, no noticeable degradations, yet.

Re:I'm using Lucid Lynx Beta...

[digitalchinky]

Very user unfriendly, but if you edit /etc/network/interfaces you can give yourself a static IP address that ignores the whole gnome network manager annoyance.

Re:I'm using Lucid Lynx Beta...

[iwbcman]

Are you telling me that right-clicking on the networkmanager icon in the panel, selecting edit connections, selecting your network connection, hitting Edit and then and switching to the IPV4 Settings tab, changing Method from DHCP to Manual and the pressing Add and entering your ip Address, Netmask and Gateway and filling in DNS servers doesn't work? like it has for the past 2 years?

Re:I'm using Lucid Lynx Beta...

[oldmeddler]

Very user unfriendly, but if you edit /etc/network/interfaces you can give yourself a static IP address that ignores the whole gnome network manager annoyance.

That is the method I've been using, but it always results in damaging the networking settings. I do get a fixed IP, but after the first reboot, GRUB no longer auto-starts the system and I have to press "Enter" to get it to boot. After boot, I have to manually start Apache, Pure-ftpd, and CUPS. That's what I meant by not working properly.

Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[Statecraftsman]

gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout --type string menu:minimize,maximize,close

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[Aphoxema]

I hope they fix it so it doesn't set that value every time the Ambiance theme is loaded, it appears it currently causes all themes to put all the controls at the left.

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[Statecraftsman]

I'm also noticing that the minimize icon is shaded so it looks out of place at the usual position.

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[martin-boundary]

gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout --type string menu:minimize,maximize,close

Is this a Lynx thing or something? When I enter this in my graphical web browser, all I get is

"Server not found, Iceweasel can't find the server at www.gconftool-2.com"

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[fm6]

You're obviously not a Linux person. If you were, you'd know that the most important feature of a GUI is the icon that opens a command line window.

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[mysidia]

That would be like Microsoft getting a complaint about the Internet Explorer icon being buried in the Start menu, instead of the Quick launch bar or Desktop, where the user was comfortable with it.

And (supposing drag and drop is not implemented) offering the work around

Start > Run > Cmd

shortcut -t "%programfiles%\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" -n "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\Launch Internet Explorer.lnk"

Problem solved! Status: CLOSED, Resolution: INVALID / WONTFIX (see workaround)

See, when there is a workaround available, anyone who cares about having the icon on quicklaunch bar (even people who have limited/no internet access, and limited computer knowledge), will just know to search and find this bug, apply the workaround, and be done with it.

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[Bigjeff5]

Hey now, anybody who does any Windows administration knows this too.

It's just that Windows is so easy to use most users never need to know the command window is there. ;)

*runs*

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[SuperQ]

Yup, my quick launch buttons on my gnome panel are termina, firefox, lock screen. 99% of what I do is either a terminal or a browser window these days. Although I tend to just open them and leave them where they are and use screen or tabs in the browser.

I mostly use ion at work, I just wish it had better gnome applet integration to make it easier to run things like network-manager and that kind of thing.

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[techno-vampire]

Who need an icon for a terminal window? I just right-click on the desktop and select Open Terminal from the context menu.

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[Hadlock]

Some people have to peel back 2-3 layers to find the desktop :) Pretty sure I haven't seen my desktop wallpaper in over a year :)

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is that marked "funny"? That's absolutely right. I have an key-combo to open terminal, an icon on the menu for terminal, and an icon on the desktop. It's the most important function on my machine.

Also, I don't get all this fuss from "power" users about the order or placement of the close/maximise/etc buttons...
Don't we all use keyboard shortcuts to do these functions? I can't even remember the last time I clicked on close/maximise/minimise/etc, not on Linux or Mac or Windows - I use the keyboard shortcuts every time.
(ok, there are no shortcuts by default for max/min on Mac - but you don't use max/min on Mac, just close)

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[Fred_A]

gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout --type string menu:minimize,maximize,close

Gnome. User friendliness, redefined.

Seriously, what's wrong with those people ? Do they fear that having options will confuse users (I heard that one a lot) ? "oh no, there's a button order option, I felt compelled to click on it and now I'm in existential crisis !"
KDE lets you just move the buttons around with the mouse, seems much simpler to me, but what do I know.

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[martin-boundary]

I've never understood the fuss about window decorations either. On my system, I've disabled all the decorations in fvwm, and simply reprogrammed the functions of the 4th and 5th mouse button. Now, I can click or double click (with the 4th or 5th buttons resp.) anywhere in a window, and it moves, hides, resizes or gets killed resp. It's so much easier than the traditional approach, because I don't have to care where the mouse cursor is as long as it's inside the window. Fitt's law and all that.

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[Anonymous Coward]

Who needs a right-click to activate a CLI? I just Ctrl+Down, and yakuake pops down from the top of the screen.

(PS. There's tilda or guake for Gnome users.

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[GameboyRMH]

Thanks dude!

I can add that to:

sudo apt-get install gparted
sudo apt-get install gimp
sudo apt-get install vlc
sudo apt-get install firefox-not.old.as.fuck
sudo apt-get install whatever-the-hell-the-old-add-remove-programs-app-is-called
sudo apt-get remove fspot
sudo apt-get remove lucid-social-networking-crap

Now if I can find some commands to install Firefox plugins and set the theme to Dust, I could make a "Fix Ubuntu" shellscript!

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[techno-vampire]

I once watched somebody with about eight windows open, all maximized. Instead of clicking on the button he needed on the task bar, he was minimizing them one after the other until the one he wanted was on top. IMO, a pointless waste of time.

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[techno-vampire]

Nice. However, adding a terminal to the context menu in Gnome is simple: all you do is install a plugin and Bob's your uncle. The important point isn't how you do it; it's that you don't need an icon for it.

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[Hadlock]

Running maximized all the time is pretty silly unless you're playing a video game or watching a movie. I've usually got 4-5 browser windows that take up 80% of my screen along with some file browser windows, music player, image editor, and whatever other apps I'm working on at the time. If it's not in the top layer I'll either a) alt-tab or b) use the task bar like you suggested.

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[Hatta]

You joke of course, but quite often the CLI is the easier way to do things. Want to launch a program? With a CLI you just say what you want and press enter. With a GUI, you're searching through menus, possibly several layers deep. That's not easy.

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that may just be the KDE mission statement: Make a GUI that only requires a mouse for EVERYTHING in Linux. They are coming pretty close.

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[IICV]

Well, that's just the way it goes. *nix makes the easy things hard, and the hard things possible. Windows makes the easy things kinda hard but you've done it that way since forever, and the hard things impossible.

Apple, of course, makes the easy things easy and you don't need to do the hard things anyway.

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[Nesman64]

I keep my 4th workspace free of windows for quick access to files on my Desktop, and a view of the wallpaper.

Also, if KDE forgets my session windows, alt+space konsole enter

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[Sancho]

But now you can't open a terminal unless you can right-click on your Desktop or a Nautilus window? The toolbar will be visible more often, I'd think.

Personally, I just use a keyboard shortcut for opening the most common programs I use.

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[techno-vampire]

The toolbar will be visible more often, I'd think.

Not for me. I hardly ever maximize any window, except for certain games so there's always part of my desktop visible.

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[Sancho]

I'm talking about a general case. Most people will probably prefer an icon for that reason. Incidentally, it also doesn't require a plug-in and requires one fewer click (or doesn't require that you click-drag--I forget if you can use a right-click--drag--release sequence to open context menus in Gnome.)

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[assert(0)]

You need a context menu for a terminal window? I just type Ctrl-Alt-F1.

Re:Ubuntu One-liner of the Year: 2010

[Fred_A]

I think that may just be the KDE mission statement: Make a GUI that only requires a mouse for EVERYTHING in Linux. They are coming pretty close.

I don't know if they want to do it for everything, but they go for letting users customize their desktop which is fine by me. Gnome seems to think that like in Windows or Mac OS, the desktop is made "that way" and if you don't like it, tough (or you can go figure out some kind of arcane command to make it do what you want).

For example in KDE can easily bind mouse3 on window title/border to toggle a window between the top and bottom of the stack. Or I can set the mouse wheel on the title bar to change the transparency which is convenient for a peek under a window or (rarely but useful in those rare occasions) to work with data that is hidden and won't fit on the screen.

All this is really annoying to set up in Gnome (when it's even possible without changing the default wm) and I wouldn't even dream of trying it in Windows or MacOS.

In a desktop environment, it seems to me that the user should be free to do what he wants with his work environment according to his needs or tastes. Having to fight the machine all the time quickly gets annoying.

Re:f1rst p0st

[iris-n]

I think that the dream of a mainstream community-based OS is dead now.

At least Fedora does not have these delusions of grandeur. It is a testbed for Red Hat, I'm OK with that. I don't want my OS to be interesting, for fuck's sake. I want it very predictable and unobtrusive. Is it too much to ask?

Re:"Does away with" the Human theme?

[Anonymous Coward]

Modded Insightful?

Really? Some troll talking about how awful and evil black people are?
The guy turned the ugly brown theme into a disgusting racial rant.
For shame.

Followin Lucid Lynx will be...

[EreIamJH]

Masturbating Monkey

Re:Followin Lucid Lynx will be...

[JakartaDean]

I always thought they made a mistake with 8.10, when they could have given it a "Cheers" tribute name: Hungry Heifer

Re:Followin Lucid Lynx will be...

[Anonymous Coward]

Masturbating Mark

ftfy

Re:Followin Lucid Lynx will be...

[Aphoxema]

Masturbating Monkey

Mutilated Macaque?
Masochistic Marsupial?
Macabre Meerkat?

Re:Followin Lucid Lynx will be...

[.tekrox]

Malevolent Marmoset
Managerial Manx
Myopic Mollusk

Mickey Mouse?

Re:Followin Lucid Lynx will be...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah right, as if they will really use the word 'monkey'.

Re:Followin Lucid Lynx will be...

[moco]

I thought they were going for "Menstruating Mink"

Re:Followin Lucid Lynx will be...

[iwbcman]

Merry Minge ?

Re:Followin Lucid Lynx will be...

[natehoy]

Manic Meerkat

Re:Followin Lucid Lynx will be...

[GungaDan]

It would have been "mutated monkey" but Vin Diesel threatened to sue.

Re:Followin Lucid Lynx will be...

[DarthVain]

Morose Mongoose I bet.

Maybe Moronic Moose (Bullwinkle?)

or Metaphysical Mallard

or Mickey Mouse! (sue)
 

Re:Followin Lucid Lynx will be...

[danieltdp]

Maniac Mansion? Oh, wait, wrong tab...

Re:Followin Lucid Lynx will be...

[NeoSkandranon]

Murderous Marmot

Re:Followin Lucid Lynx will be...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mighty Mongoose.

Re:Slow News Day?

[socceroos]

You didn't complain when Windows 7 entered beta or RC. This is tech news. Get used to it or head over to digg.

Re:Slow News Day?

[Again]

OMGZZZ!!! Lucid Lynx enters beta!!! is slashdot having a slow news day today?

Ubuntu enters beta every six months. It's news for those of us who like beta-testing Ubuntu.

Just because a story appears on Slashdot front page does not mean that you have to click "Read More" and then have to come up with something to comment. Go ahead and skip an article if you don't find it interesting. No seriously, go ahead. No one is going to stop you. You won't get an achievement saying "Did not comment on articlezor!".

Re:Slow News Day?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new here.

Re:"Does away with" the Human theme?

[Anonymous Coward]

what other ugly brown humans are there?

Re:f1rst p0st

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually Fedora is released every 6th month.beAnd please specify why Fedora is not as user-friendly as Ubuntu. Both use GNOME as default desktop, so how can Fedora bl less user-friendly?

One step forward, two steps back

[Judinous]

I'm a big fan of Ubuntu, and I mostly run Ubuntu Server or Debian machines for my personal desktop usage. However, their habit of catastrophically breaking important features in their releases is really getting on my nerves. Wi-fi support, for example, has been fixed and re-broken repeatedly over the past few years. I think that this release takes the cake when it comes to breaking existing functionality, though. The first two known issues listed for 10.04:

#Because of the new alternatives system used for nvidia driver packages, the nvidia installer from NVIDIA's website currently doesn't work.
#The fglrx binary driver for ATI video chipsets does not yet support the X server in Lucid. As a workaround, users should use the open source -ati driver instead.

Both of these are pretty much show-stoppers, especially the ATI issue. Is a month long enough to sort out a problem this serious?

Re:One step forward, two steps back

[Aphoxema]

Both of these are pretty much show-stoppers, especially the ATI issue. Is a month long enough to sort out a problem this serious?

They've probably been planning around this longer than a month already. Anyways, as for ATI, x.org shouldn't have to plan around ATI's schedule, especially with their history of support.

Re:One step forward, two steps back

[Judinous]

If the ATI driver issue has something to do with x.org updates, why would Ubuntu include a version of x.org in their release that doesn't work with ATI cards? Regardless of where the finger-pointing leads, there is no reason for an Ubuntu release to have this issue, if it didn't have the issue before. If the newer x.org is the issue, ship the old one. If the newer fglrx is the issue, ship the old one. If an underlying change in the OS is the issue, they fucked up.

Re:One step forward, two steps back

[Aphoxema]

The focus for the new x.org is to provide new features such as the free drivers that ATI has failed to adequately support. Ubuntu would only show weakness in allowing proprietary drivers to determine their progress.

Re:One step forward, two steps back

[Homburg]

why would Ubuntu include a version of x.org in their release that doesn't work with ATI cards?

It does work with ATI cards, it just doesn't work with the closed-source ATI drivers. This does mean no acceleration on HD 5000 cards, and somewhat slower acceleration on other ATI cards, but it does work. The alternative would be either sticking with an older version of X (thereby foregoing important bug fixes and performance enhancements), or shipping two X servers (which would be possible, but would be a serious support headache, particularly as this is a long-term support release).

Re:One step forward, two steps back

[geminidomino]

... or shipping two X servers (which would be possible, but would be a serious support headache, particularly as this is a long-term support release).

Unfortunately, as an LTS release, it means that if a fix DOES come down the pipe, it probably won't be made available.

To canonical, LTS "stability" apparently means "what is broken at release will stay broken until the next version.

Re:One step forward, two steps back

[Kjella]

Don't forget that this is the beta. Normally these are the sort of things that are fixed by a late (for Ubuntu)/ early (for the driver) binary release. That has at least been the case several times before, I wouldn't be surprised if it is the same now. I'm pretty sure this is considered a release critical bug.

Re:One step forward, two steps back

[Pecisk]

"#Because of the new alternatives system used for nvidia driver packages, the nvidia installer from NVIDIA's website currently doesn't work."

And this affects majority of users how? Ohh right, nothing. Because most of them will use nvidia drivers from repos, including newest ones.

"#The fglrx binary driver for ATI video chipsets does not yet support the X server in Lucid. As a workaround, users should use the open source -ati driver instead."

Well, you have to specify that claim, because a) old cards who are supported by radeon/ati drivers works nicely with 3D b) packages.ubuntu.com shows that fglrx driver version is 8.721, which, according to Google, is prelease of Catalyst 10.4, so it should support newest Xorg and newest ATI cards. ATI support has always be problematic, but for last two years it is mostly territory between radeon and fglrx - t.i. older cards don't make to radeon driver in time for Ubuntu release.

About general state of affairs - I agree, it is not ideal, but for last two releases there have been efforts to stabilize hardware support, so I think Lucid will do quite good in this regard.

Re:One step forward, two steps back

[Judinous]

I find it hard to believe that the bug fixes and performance enhancements that x.org has implemented in the last 6 months (since 9.10) come even within an order of magnitude of the difference between the open-source and closed-source ATI drivers. Ubuntu has always been a distro for those who take a pragmatic approach to FOSS. We all know that the open-source drivers are currently far, far behind the closed-source drivers in terms of performance and functionality. This decision essentially removes HD video, gaming, compiz, etc. support from a huge percentage of the install base. I don't see how anyone could perceive this as an acceptable trade-off. Can you imagine the shit-storm that would occur if, say, Microsoft released a service pack that for its desktop or media center operating systems that "provided important bug fixes and performance enhancements", yet broke compatibility with ATI cards in the same way that this situation does?

These are the kind of issues that distros are supposed to insulate end-users from.

Re:One step forward, two steps back

[bigstrat2003]

Ubuntu would only show weakness in allowing proprietary drivers to determine their progress.

Fuck. That. Shit. A software developer's job is to deliver the best software possible to the end users, not to play bullshit political games with other developers.

Re:One step forward, two steps back

[Aphoxema]

Ubuntu would only show weakness in allowing proprietary drivers to determine their progress.

Fuck. That. Shit. A software developer's job is to deliver the best software possible to the end users, not to play bullshit political games with other developers.

Might as well lay down for Microsoft, then.

Re:One step forward, two steps back

[Just Some Guy]

I find it hard to believe that the bug fixes and performance enhancements that x.org has implemented in the last 6 months (since 9.10) come even within an order of magnitude of the difference between the open-source and closed-source ATI drivers.

Then be surprised. I'm using the newest X.org on my FreeBSD desktop, the new FOSS ATI drivers, and the new Mesa with the Radeon HD 3600 that came with the Dell Vostro that my company bought. Compiz works perfectly and all the GL apps I've tried run without a hiccup.

Re:One step forward, two steps back

[Anonymous Coward]

Just from what you posted, I don't get your problem. Ubuntu didn't break it, X Server project broke it. Nvidia and Ati write drivers for specific version of X Server (Duh, right?), so in theory if there is an update to X Server it would more than likely "break" any driver for Ati or Nvidia, especially if the installer or driver does any check to see if it is compatible with the current version of X Server which seems pretty reasonable to me. Are you arguing that Ubuntu should not keep up with X server unless Nvidia is ready with their non-free special purpose component, or that X Server just should not do updates?
 
I think the best solution is that Nvidia needs to build a time machine and find out what future versions of X are going to look like so they can write the driver as the same as X Server is being developed so you don't have to be pissed off or confused when your beta doesn't work perfectly.
 
As far as whether a month is appropriate amount of time, I got an idea: How about you fix it then tell us from your experience.

Re:One step forward, two steps back

[Homburg]

HD video, gaming, compiz

All of those work fine with the open source ATI drivers for any ATI older than the 5000 series.

Re:One step forward, two steps back

[bmcage]

Typing this from an old compaq laptop with ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9600.

I have 3D accell on this baby thanks to the open source ati drivers. And it is much faster and better than the closed source driver I used when I bought the laptop. So, think about the future, your ATI card is a far better choice than anything else if you want/need to use linux. Yes, you will have problems now, and you should stick to older distro's for a while. But in a couple of months/years, your pc will have all the power of your graphics card, and it will remain like that, ... always. That is the power of open source, not the fact you can run some closed source driver or not.

Re:One step forward, two steps back

[Svartormr]

I'm a long-term Debian user and administrator who's looked at Ubuntu and used it for business customers.

Ubuntu appears to be thrashing around in ways that Debian isn't. Debian usually has at least one big contentious change each release with a lot of argument within the project, usually with at least one major dev quitting in disgust. But they are about major issues--lastest big one is back-and-forth on how to get multi-architecture right--but they are usually about a fundamental issue that should be improved where there's disagreement about where to go and how to get there. Most of the UI and user issues just evolve with steady improvement. They usually follow the upstream on most major components, like Gnome and KDE. For example, wireless just works now, and that's with a laptop that's been running testing for 3 releases.

Ubuntu draws off of Debian unstable with large inputs on how to customize it. They aim to roll out a stable release of their own every 6 months. They have interesting ideas about doing some things differently. Your problems with Wi-Fi are disturbing (I haven't used Ubuntu with wireless). I think they may be going too far this time with the big changes to Gnome. You've always been able to change themes in Gnome, which can change the buttons available, but to do so in the default theme without justification seems to be courting user confusion. I wonder what Gnome thinks?

I was planning to use Ubuntu more. I'll have to test this version out and see for myself.

Re:One step forward, two steps back

[Anonymous Coward]

fglrx has not been compatible with Ubuntu's X server since 9.10, because it has dependencies that fundamentally conflict with Intel. Canonical (wisely, I think) chose to package the Intel-compatible X server. You can find the fglrx-compatible X server in ppa with a bit of Googling. I have successfully run fglrx in 9.10 for many months now. Granted, they should document this.

What I want to know is ...

[ScrewMaster]

The new release also includes much better integration with social networking services such as Twitter, identi.ca and Facebook

Why should an operating system "integrate" with a social networking service?

Re:What I want to know is ...

[Aphoxema]

The new release also includes much better integration with social networking services such as Twitter, identi.ca and Facebook

Why should an operating system "integrate" with a social networking service?

Ever hear about that "Killer App" everyone's been looking for?

Re:What I want to know is ...

[Again]

The new release also includes much better integration with social networking services such as Twitter, identi.ca and Facebook

Why should an operating system "integrate" with a social networking service?

Ubuntu provides not just the Linux operating system but also the package of applications that they deem people may find useful. Applications which provide social networking integration will be put to use for a lot of people so they are included.

Re:What I want to know is ...

[Lord Ender]

Because "operating system" means more than you think it means. It ships with a desktop manager which allows email, IM, and other communication services to access the dock. That's what "integrates" means.

Re:What I want to know is ...

[adamofgreyskull]

My fstab is stored in twitter status messages you insensitive clod!

Re:What I want to know is ...

[H0p313ss]

My fstab is stored in twitter status messages you insensitive clod!

QUICK, PATENT THAT IDEA!

Re:What I want to know is ...

[QuantumRiff]

Because Ubuntu is not an operating system. Ubuntu is a distribution, a collection of Operating system and user tools! Linux (plus the GNU tools, some would scream) are an operating system.

Gwibber actually is kind of addictive. I do like it..

Re:What I want to know is ...

[michael1221988]

Because it is not an operating system. It is a distro

Re:What I want to know is ...

[Myopic]

It should do whatever users and devs both want. There is no arbitrary limit to what the OS should do; any boundary a person could claim on what counts as an OS is arbitrary.

Maybe you and I aren't interested in integrated Twitter, but apparently others are.

Re:What I want to know is ...

[Punto]

maybe someone wrote a twitter backend for syslog?

Re:What I want to know is ...

[Dice]

lololol RT @adamofgreyskull /dev/sda5 /tmp nosuid,noexec,nodev 0 0

Re:What I want to know is ...

[RLiegh]

I'd be a lot more impressed if facebook connectivity actually worked. For me, it doesn't (gwibber simply hangs after I click 'add').

Re:What I want to know is ...

[danieltdp]

Welcome to the new age. Social networking is getting more hits than search apps *and* sex. We are obsolete, my firend...

Re:What I want to know is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The new release also includes much better integration with social networking services such as Twitter, identi.ca and Facebook

Why should an operating system "integrate" with a social networking service?

Another lesson from Canonical: learn how to not use new "features"!

But does it run lynx?

[Culture20]

No, really. Some pages render entirely differently under lynx than under (e)links.

Active Directory? What about Open Directory?

[YesIAmAScript]

Anyone able to get Karmic to authenticate using Open Directory?

If you search the net a little there are people saying it can be made to work, but I can't get the authentication to work, although I can make OD users appear in the user database with some work (i.e. I made LDAP work just not kerberos).

Re:Slow News Day?

[Culture20]

Ubuntu enters beta every six months. It's news for those of us who like beta-testing Ubuntu.

And it's more important than that for those of us that like to stick with a LTS version of Ubuntu; this is the first Beta in a while.

Re:f1rst p0st

[capnkr]

I don't want my OS to be interesting, for fuck's sake. I want it very predictable and unobtrusive.

Here, here. Glad to see someone else who doesn't give a shit that an "OS be tightly integrated with/for social networking"? Why is staring at our electronic bellybuttons so frikkin' important??? Could we be more self-absorbed, here on Planet Hollywood? {grumble grumble... slinks back off to cave...}

I'm still using Jaunty Jackalope

[Skarecrow77]

And I can't figure out why I would want to upgrade. I didn't upgrade to Koala, because the only real change I could find was they dropped pidgen for evolution or something like that. It was seriously the least impressive OS upgrade I've ever seen. Oh, and I don't have to type my name in at the login prompt anymore, I can click an icon like xp/vista?

So aside from a new theme that I'm not finding very attractive in the screenshots I've seen anyway, I haven't seen anything that really makes me want to upgrade to lynx either.

Really, the only reason I probably will upgrade to lynx is because support on jaunty runs out in October. That's about it. I am really not looking forward to seeing what the upgrade breaks either.

Re:I'm still using Jaunty Jackalope

[asdf7890]

And I can't figure out why I would want to upgrade. I didn't upgrade to Koala, because the only real change I could find was they dropped pidgen for evolution or something like that.

The main reason to upgrade if you don't care for new features/packages (or changes to existing features/packages) is security support. 9.04 officially drops out of support in October (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ubuntu_releases#Release_history) which means you are likely to stop getting patches for security issues. Lucid, being an LTS release, will be officially supported longer than most other releases so you'll be good from that PoV until 2013 (three years instead of the usual 18 months).

If you are happy with 9.04 at the moment then there is no requirement to upgrade. Beyond October that will change, at that point you should move to 9.10 or 10.04 (or 10.10 assuming the normal release pattern is continuing) to continue getting security updates. I put 9.10 on my netbook when I last rebuilt its OS setup mainly "just because", though did notice a slight performance improvement in a few places (enough to be aware of but probably not enough to specifically upgrade for, I'm guessing some of the improvement is from the use of ext4 which you'll not move to automatically when upgrading rather than reinstalling anyway). I very much doubt I'll upgrade in the near future as at this point there is not real need for me to do so until I start needing a newer version of a package (and can't be bothered to maintain my own compile of it) or 11.04 when Karmic hits its end-or-support date.

Re:Slow News Day?

[icannotthinkofaname]

Ubuntu enters beta every six months. It's news for those of us who like beta-testing Ubuntu.

I disagree, based on the current amount of time for which the beta has been out. Those of us who like beta-testing Ubuntu should have known this, oh, 4 or 5 days ago, when it happened.

For those of us who like beta-testing Ubuntu, this is olds, not news.

Re:Slow News Day?

[VGPowerlord]

Just because a story appears on Slashdot front page does not mean that you have to click "Read More" and then have to come up with something to comment. Go ahead and skip an article if you don't find it interesting. No seriously, go ahead. No one is going to stop you. You won't get an achievement saying "Did not comment on articlezor!"

Even better, click the - button next to the topic name and choose a reason that you did so ("stupid" is on the list). If enough people do so, the article will fall far enough that people can't read it. It's already low enough to hide the article summary until you click the topic name...

Re:f1rst p0st

[houstonbofh]

so how can Fedora bl less user-friendly?

Update Manager and Software Center to start with.

Brown is down?

[mrmeval]

So brown is down and white is right?

I am so glad I dumped them assholes when I had the chance.

Re:Brown is down?

[arkhan_jg]

Brown is replaced with purple and black by default. Good luck making a racist analogy with that.

Re:Slow News Day?

[Aphoxema]

I think I disabled that somehow, fortunately.

Re:f1rst p0st

[techno-vampire]

how can Fedora bl less user-friendly?

Unlike Ubuntu, Fedora doesn't automatically install any of the un-free codecs you need and getting the drivers for ATI or nVidia cards is strictly up to you. And, I might add, although Fedora started out with a six month release cycle, it's more like nine now.

Re:f1rst p0st

[Aphoxema]

fuck this shit, i'm going to fedora.

I gave it a shot but it was kind of a bitch. It didn't support my wireless card like Ubuntu has for the last 2 years, and that sort of means something these days.

Re:f1rst p0st

[Aphoxema]

I don't want my OS to be interesting, for fuck's sake. I want it very predictable and unobtrusive.

Here, here. Glad to see someone else who doesn't give a shit that an "OS be tightly integrated with/for social networking"? Why is staring at our electronic bellybuttons so frikkin' important??? Could we be more self-absorbed, here on Planet Hollywood? {grumble grumble... slinks back off to cave...}

Because in order of x sells from greatest to lowest, it is Sex, Vanity, then Convenience. Social Networking provides all three.

Re:f1rst p0st

[geminidomino]

Social Networking?

Sex?

That was a neural link I'd rather not have existing. Thanks a fucking load...

*Looks for brain bleach*

Wine window controls are still on right

[Pav]

The Wine window controls are still on the right. Perhaps I'm one of the few freaks that have to run Windows apps under Linux, but this makes the new look unbearable for me although I persisted until yesterday. I haven't checked, but perhaps this problem exists with Java apps too? I also justify my decision because it won't mean I look like a simpleton when working on customer (ie. Debian or Windows) machines.

I can see the Ubuntu UI peoples point though. Many users are being trained to think that "different to use" means "more advanced" thanks to MS Office. The window control issue is really a small inconvenience, and it achieves the Ubuntu marketing goal of jarring users into thinking it's shiney new technology. I just hope the eventual result won't be UI's evolving to look like Japanese cell phones.

Re:Wine window controls are still on right

[Anonymous Coward]

I, Personally, welcome our new Copland-OS Enterprise masters.

Re:Slow News Day?

[Bigjeff5]

No one is going to stop you.

I will, damnit!

Don't you DARE skip an article!

You don't have to actually read it, just make up some asinine comment and throw it in there somewhere, anywhere is fine.

Polish the tools, they ARE the desktop!

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the reason for the multiple locations and different forms of
similar configuration files? I've tried Ubuntu's latest release
and found the sysctl.conf file in several locations and forms,
some having to do with the ufw firewall. What is the reason for
this duplication? Is /etc placement not enough?

Why is there no GUI anymore for the control of services? I've
traced down a few messages vaguely passing off the reasons
why, but removal of this feature is not good enough, regardless of
why or how the services handling has changed!

The ufw GUI is too simplistic in its present form and does
not allow for easy configuration for more advanced options
compared to other abandoned firewall GUI projects. Why
reinvent the wheel here with poor options? When people
ask this they are told they may edit files by hand, but
this goes against Ubuntu being for human beings! Much of
today's human beings cannot or will not edit files by hand,
much less read documentation. Firestarter and Guarddog should
both be looked to and one or the other built upon by the
Ubuntu developers if they cared to fashion a quality GUI
for ufw.

Raise your shovel and wack the moles within this message for
whatever reasons you feel are justified, but there's no
excuse for the issues I've listed.

About those crazy buttons

[steveha]

As I have already commented, I think this is a horrible idea. Windows is not going to change its window buttons, I have to use Windows, and I dread this change. And, if you have to put the buttons on the left, the most-commonly-used button (the Close button) should be in the left corner, so that in the common case where I have a maximized window, it's easier to hit.

I went ahead and read through Mark Shuttleworth's comments about the bug. In summary: they want to try some new cool stuff, they want to shake things up and not be bound by the past, they have some ideas (not described) for ways to use the right-hand side of the menu bar. (He was even talking about moving the scroll bar away from the right side of the window, on the grounds that few people use it, and scroll wheels/touchscreen interfaces are becoming the big new thing. This doesn't give me the warm fuzzies either.) They are shipping the beta like this to see what actual reactions are to this idea.

I went ahead and listened to the podcast also (the relevant bit starts around 0:39 into the podcast). Ivanka Majic said many things, but IMHO did not adequately explain why they think this is a good idea. Some vague comments about how they are actually testing things. She said many commendable things, such as talking about how new users can find it really hard to even understand just what Ubuntu is. And she said something that sounded like her department was behind the "papercuts" project, of which I firmly approve. But if you are trying to understand what the heck is going on with those crazy buttons, you can skip the podcast.

So, if (like me) you dread these new buttons, the best thing you could possibly do is to actually get a copy of the Ubuntu beta and try it out; then post, not just opinions, but informed opinions supported by personal experience. "I tried to click on the Edit menu and closed my window" (if that actually happens to you) should be much more persuasive than "I looked at your screen shot and I can already tell I hate it".

By the way, check this out: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1430585

So, I'm planning to download the Ubuntu Beta ISO image, and install it (possibly in VirtualBox), and try the thing out. Then I will add my voice to those commenting on the new buttons.

steveha

Re:About those crazy buttons

[Pecisk]

"So, if (like me) you dread these new buttons, the best thing you could possibly do is to actually get a copy of the Ubuntu beta and try it out; then post, not just opinions, but informed opinions supported by personal experience. "I tried to click on the Edit menu and closed my window" (if that actually happens to you) should be much more persuasive than "I looked at your screen shot and I can already tell I hate it"."

Problem is, it is actually hard to "click on edit menu and close windows", even with buttons on left now (nevermind that practically all apps with not saved stuff will warn you about this). So I think all this boils down "bah, Windows are right, and you are left, and I can't mess my mind like that". This is laughable, because you can change position of buttons with ease. However, I tried to get used to them instead of loathing, and I must admit that it works. Suddenly I don't have to waste my time to find where right top corner is. Suddenly I can close windows faster. It works. Most argument of buttons placement is "hate", so it is emotional, not practical level.

Re:About those crazy buttons

[moonbender]

(He was even talking about moving the scroll bar away from the right side of the window, on the grounds that few people use it, and scroll wheels/touchscreen interfaces are becoming the big new thing. This doesn't give me the warm fuzzies either.)

Huh. Now that, I find interesting. It's very rare that I use the scrollbar widgets to do actual scrolling. But I'd miss the visual cue on where I am in the document and how much of it I'm seeing.

Re:About those crazy buttons

[moonbender]

Why would it be slower to find the right corner than it is to find the left? Just because some other widgets are in the left corner?

Re:About those crazy buttons

[Pecisk]

Most of the widgets. Yeah, simple as that.

Re:About those crazy buttons

[wytcld]

So, I'm planning to download the Ubuntu Beta ISO image, and install it (possibly in VirtualBox)

Be ready to customize your xorg.conf if you get dropped into 800x600. 10.04 and VirtualBox aren't entirely happy together yet (see http://forums.virtualbox.org). You can also get a kernel error if you don't patch one of the VB source files before compiling VB's kernel modules.

Once beyond that, I don't mind the button placement at all. Over the years of using Linux, I've often used themes with various button placements. Takes me no time to get used to such changes, at all. The brain stores such stuff by context. "If it looks generally like this, the buttons must be there." Since I'm running this instance on a Win7 host (an eee1001p I keep Win on for the oddball Windows program that's not happy under wine) keeping the X windows decidedly different than the Win windows, when both are open at once, keeps the context clear for other operations in them too.

On the other hand, if Canonical goes through with the reported suggestion of removing the right-side scroll bars from stuff, I'll be royally pissed. That's far more basic to functionality - actually removing a control - than just bouncing the buttons from one side to the other.

Re:About those crazy buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

His very point is that people don't use the scroll bar for scrolling anymore, they only use it for the visual cue. Therefore he feels they can move it to the left and make it a lot smaller (skinnier?) and nobody will really mind.

Re:About those crazy buttons

[moonbender]

Okay, but why not leave it on the right side where it's been since ... Atari TOS.

Re:About those crazy buttons

[Knuckles]

They were on the left side in NeXTSTEP (screenshot). The reasoning, AFAIK, was that in left-to-right languages the user is focused more on the left-hand side of windows (at least those that contain text), and so that's where the scrollbar should be. To me this makes a lot of sense.

Re:About those crazy buttons

[moonbender]

Similar to the menu bar button move then. I guess it does make sense, although that doesn't necessarily mean it really is better in practice -- for instance, while most computer windows contain text, there are often any number of things between the "main" text and the left side of the window: icons, sidebars, layout elements on web pages, etc.

Either way I guess it comes down to striking a balance between alienating existing and prospective users and designing the interface to be more ideal according to some definition. I'm just wondering if the energy spent here could not be used to optimize other parts of the OS with a similar benefit to usability but without such jarring transitions.

Re:About those crazy buttons

[Knuckles]

Well, while I don't really mind the button order in Lucid, I do have to say that the top left window corner does become a bit crammed with the menus being there, too. OSX does not have this problem because the windows don't have their own menus.

But I like the scrollbar to the left and have used it myself as far as possible, e.g., in gnome-terminal. With the scrollbar changes that are considered (mentioned in previous posts), like making it less wide because people nowadays use wheels and touch for scrolling, and the scrollbar turning into a position indicator more than an actual scrolling device, it makes even more sense to me and I'm looking forward to trying it.

It may make most sense in terminals and text entry windows because of the other stuff you mentioned.

I agree about trade-offs having to be made, but I'm not sure that it takes away from other, maybe more important changes. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, and everyone will see it differently. Shuttleworth has made his choice, so ...

Re:About those crazy buttons

[foxylad]

Agree you still need the scroll bar, but it could be very thin - maybe even part of the border. Patent pending!

[Bug 285392] Softreset failed (device not ready)

[DG]

Seriously.

There's a bug that makes reboots hang until the SATA devices reset that's been there for 3 versions that doesn't seem to get any attention, but they sure spend a lot of time arguing over window manager controls....

I may just go back to Fedora.

DG

Re:Slow News Day?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, if you keep doing that you'll go blind.

Ubuntu Switching to BSD?

[Frosty Piss]

I'm more enthused by their upcoming Masturbating Monkey release in October.

Yes, but according to your linx, "Masturbating Monkey" is an OpenBSD release. Is Ubuntu switching to BSD? That would be news...

I for one

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our new left-buttoned overlord!

Re:Slow News Day?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

this is olds, not news

Buh-dum ching!

(Sorry, I couldn't resist)

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

"It moves away from the previous style based on the colour [strikeout]brown[/strikeout], which was known as 'Human', in favour of a style that Canonical has said is inspired by [underscore]light[/underscore]."

Hmmm.

Alternative layouts

[AliasMarlowe]

I have not yet tried Lucid, but the "default" layout that we're used to is not necessarily the best. Actually, the most sensible layout I encountered was in OS/2 (using an add-on in v3 or v4, I forget), which had minimize & maximize in the upper right, and the close button on the upper left, inside from the application button. Whether I'll like the layout in Lucid is still to be determined.

Re:Alternative layouts

[Shoe Puppet]

Windows 3.x had that layout as well.

Re:Alternative layouts

[Anonymous Coward]

and kde.... well has the damn layout that YOU want and not those that some fancy developer pushes unto you /advertisement

Re:Alternative layouts

[pablomme]

the most sensible layout I encountered was in OS/2 (using an add-on in v3 or v4, I forget), which had minimize & maximize in the upper right, and the close button on the upper left

You can have it in Gnome too. Open gconf-editor, find the "/apps/metacity/general/button_layout" key, and enter "close:minimize,maximize" as the value.

Re:Alternative layouts

[bmo]

You can have it in Gnome too. Open gconf-editor, find the "/apps/metacity/general/button_layout" key, and enter "close:minimize,maximize" as the value.

This is usability?

KDE allows the user to drag-n-drop button layout.

--
BMO

Re:Alternative layouts

[pablomme]

You can have it in Gnome too. Open gconf-editor, find the "/apps/metacity/general/button_layout" key, and enter "close:minimize,maximize" as the value.

This is usability?
KDE allows the user to drag-n-drop button layout.

"Configurability", more like. It's well known that Gnome lets you configure fewer things than KDE. They try to focus on simplicity, and they think that the fewer things to tinker with in the usual setup tools, the better. By design though, Gnome's behaviour is configurable, and if you know your way around GConf keys you can tweak quite a few things.

Whether you agree with Gnome's principles or not, that's another story. I personally don't mind either way.

Re:"Does away with" the Human theme?

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed out the ayrab's!

As Lord Vetinari said....

[Anonymous Coward]

People LIKE olds - its what they're familiar with.

Why do people like Ubuntu?

[petrus4]

I know this is going to seem like trolling, but humour me here. What is it, that people honestly see in this distribution?

I used both Jaunty and Intrepid; Jaunty for probably two months. I've been using Linux for 15 years now, and I honestly feel that Ubuntu was, without any hyperbole, the single worst Linux distribution that I've ever seen. I absolutely hated it.

Why? Sound (ALSA) dropping out randomly and continually, kernel panics from nVidia drivers, and the completely non-orthagonal design, with Gnome being hard-welded to the rest of the system, were the three main reasons. I don't like Gnome at all, and when I tried to remove it, rapidly found that I couldn't. I generally use Ratpoison in either Linux or FreeBSD.

Then there's the horrid mess that is upstart, and the usual Debian tendency to change absolutely everything they can, purely for the hell of it, such that even basic things like setting up an fstab for the most part doesn't work. Hard drives get mounted some other way, that I wasn't able to find. Add to that, the "quiet splash," options in GRUB, which remove the ability to debug a faulty installation, leading to the infamous "black screen of death." I honestly felt that the overall design was seriously less transparent than Windows; and if I started really trying to change things, the entire system very rapidly started to fall apart.

Are people really so superficial, that a nice shiny Gnome theme (for the first few minutes before the system dies, at least) is the only thing that is considered important?

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[dremon]

Sound (ALSA) dropping out randomly and continually

What kind of sound hardware do you have? Never had any issues with mine.

kernel panics from nVidia drivers

Nvidia driver is a proprietary binary module that taints kernel. How is it a problem of Ubuntu?

I don't like Gnome at all, and when I tried to remove it, rapidly found that I couldn't.

Why have you chosen for the Gnome distro if you don't like it? Seems pretty stupid.

there's the horrid mess that is upstart

More details please - what is so messy about it? I find it way better than a horrid mess of runlevels and sysv init scripts different for every single distro out there.

the "quiet splash," options in GRUB, which remove the ability to debug

Most of the people don't care about boot messages and text consoles. Besides this can be easily changed, if you have 15 years of experience in Linux you should know better.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[Compaqt]

After Redhat mismanaged the discontinuation of RedHat Linux in favor of an enterprise focus, many people started fishing around for a replacement default Linux. (Yes, I know Redhat still has a desktop product, but the impression people got was that Redhat was going totally corporate.)

Add to that the legendary (even promised) instability of Fedora, which is explicitly and without apology presented as a testing vehicle.

In comes Ubuntu with the Circle of Friends imagery, the Ubuntu code of conduct, the word ubuntu itself ("open and available to others"), and the promise of "Linux for Human Beings".

The rapid growth of Ubuntu to #1 on Distrowatch was propelled by evangelism done by the same power users whose opinions are apparently not worth being listened to anymore.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[Aladrin]

It used to be better, before they decided to try a bunch of really neat shiny things. I keep hoping they will eventually figure all these problems out, but... Well, I'm starting to wonder.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[pr0nbot]

At the moment I run Ubuntu out of inertia - I installed it once at some point in the past and have just gone with the updates.

My Linux box is essentially a PC that became obsolete when I bought a laptop. I don't use it for much, just gaming with Wine (because I can shove a decent graphics card into it) and light browsing in Firefox whilst gaming.

Before I tried Ubuntu, I had tried just about every distro in the hopes of finding one that just installed and ran, by which I mean hardware stuff like: could run my monitor without me having to reverse engineer X configuration files, could drive my USB speakers without me having to take a crash course in kernel modules, could detect my wireless LAN without me having to download and compile stuff from RealTek, etc. At the time, Knoppix, Gentoo, Mandriva, Fedora, SUSE etc all failed in some way or another.

Another killer feature for me is system updates, which happen pretty unobtrusively on Ubuntu (dare I say it -- rather mac-like: a window pops up, you browse the updates & pick the ones you care about, and type in the password).

So, for people like me who are bored of learning about some distro's internals just to get to the point where audio works (say), Ubuntu does the trick. Having said all that - as your post shows, one's opinion about a Linux distro will tend to be based on how well stuff worked out of the box, which as far as I can see normally comes down to hardware support. In your case it all went horribly wrong, in my case it all went absolutely swimmingly. I suppose the popularity of Ubuntu may reflect that it works smoothly for more people than not.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[dancingmilk]

Kubuntu works great for those folks that don't care for Gnome. Perhaps you should try it before going all apeshit on the distro and complaining about it.

5 seconds of research on Google shows how to use Ubuntu without Gnome. /sigh

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[moonbender]

I like Ubuntu. I really like Gnome, so I don't feel like I have to tear it out. Most things just work for me -- including 5.1 sound --, and though some things don't, I can't imagine any other distribution (or OS, for that matter) not having its own share of issues. I don't care what init mechanism is used as long as things are running after booting. Similarly, I don't really care how partitions are mounted as long as they are, in fact, mounted. I guess I'm a luser these days. Many of the decisions that annoy me can easily be reverted (ctrl-alt-backspace in the past, menu bar buttons in the present; even removing PA apparently wasn't that difficult, even though I never tried it).

Other things I like:
  - the update cycle, which is often enough to be interesting and rare enough not to be annoying
  - the community support is really good because it seems to be sort of the default distribution these days
  - the bug tracker is nice (from a user perspective, anyway)
  - PPAs are available for popular software projects, sometimes from upstream itself, so I can get new versions or even nightly builds with updates and without compiling
  - overall, Launchpad is pretty awesome

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[Spliffster]

I'm a long time unix user. The early releases of ubuntu were just beautiful, i ran them as they came (defaults were sane).

The last releases were buggy, full of stupid changes (tomboy and mono, insane default desktop options). I have a long gconf list now which i apply on a new install. They seem to be able to break features with every release. They also change default applications with every release (im, torrent client, etc. ... new default apps don't have all of the features the older ones had).

All in all, Ubuntu 9.04 was my last ubuntu. I am sick and tired of the work i have to put in to keep it running.

Cheers,
-S

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[willyg]

Ummm... No, NOT for everyone. The Kubuntu fiasco that was KDE 4 ( Screw Yew, Cashew!!) and broken wireless card support was what finally drove me to back to Gnome. I rather miss KDE 3.5, but not enough to go back to the "Hardy Heron" version.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[xtracto]

Kubuntu is even worst than Ubuntu given that it is just a "patchwork" of KDE apt-gets into the Ubuntu distribution.

I've tested it in current distribution and previous 2 and it is horrible.

Those who want KDE desktop should look for a *real* KDE distribution (I heard Mandrake and openSUSE are options).
 

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardware problems suck, but I've been pretty lucky so far (An internal microphone in my new laptop doesn't work yet because of pulse audio, and I've had problems with the ATI closed source driver, but I like to use the open source one nowadays. Rest works, even hibernate)

The tendency to 'change everything they can' is something I kinda had to get used to with ubuntu. Some can't stand changes to these parts of linux, but personally I just tried to accept that it's different, and then thought/googled a bit to find out WHY they changed it and usually just solved the problem 'how I was supposed to' using the ubuntu wiki and forum. After solving the problem, I often saw the change as a good thing because it made stuff make more sense or way more functional than before. I still hate networkmanager, but can see why somebody would want it, and I think I know how to handle it now.

My WM is http://i3.zekjur.net/ btw, so I don't really see gnome much.

The REAL reason why I use ubuntu is ease of use. I like to customize my box usability wise (different WM, configs/plugins for programs I use often, etc), but I hate it when programs just don't work or if I need to do lots of manual and obscure things or 'unclean' customizations at the core to get them to work. I can have that with ubuntu after dealing with a few differences, and I can also have one-click-installations because many people provide packages for it or find help for my specific problem with software X on one of the million ubuntu blogs, often consisting of a little script or a step-by-step tutorial I am happy to follow even after a long day at work.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[Just Some Guy]

The [...] broken wireless card support was what finally drove me to back to Gnome.

LOLWHAT?

Umm, you do realize that WiFi is part of the kernel and has nothing to do with the desktop environment, right?

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

>

5 seconds of research on Google shows how to use Ubuntu without Gnome. /sigh

And years of reading has told me that Kubuntu is the worst KDE distribution available.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[shadowbearer]

I've been using Ubuntu for the last four distributions and have never experienced a single one of the problems you describe.

SB

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[arielCo]

Sound (ALSA) dropping out randomly and continually

Yup, I feel your pain. Right now ALSA is working with PulseAudio - after much monkeying around with sinks and mixers and modules (foot bone connected to the hip bone), which produced lots of variously ill advice in forums, turns out it was a bug in alsa-plugins, and it's fixed in the Lucid package. Now I can run FlightGear and hear my engine loop ;)

Gnome being hard-welded to the rest of the system

Is switching supposed to be straightforward? I've heard stories, but still it seems daunting.

Then there's the horrid mess that is upstart

Is it? From my user perspective, I wouldn't have noticed the change I hadn't read about it somewhere. I just read a bit about it, and this kinda gave me the willies:

Note that the job file format is not stable yet, so if you upgrade upstart later, you may need to fix existing files.

There's the usual Debian tendency to change absolutely everything they can, purely for the hell of it

Maybe the omelette+eggs saying applies to OS'es too. Are other distros this daring/merry?

even basic things like setting up an fstab for the most part doesn't work

WFM

I honestly felt that the overall design was seriously less transparent than Windows

If you mean GNOME, yes. s/regedt32/gconftool/g.

Are people really so superficial, that a nice shiny Gnome theme (for the first few minutes before the system dies, at least) is the only thing that is considered important?

Perhaps this is what the stereotypical home user can understand and appreciate. Remember what you heard in casual chats when Vista came out - all was about the new start menu, the Aero flippy thing, window chrome and maybe UAC; I remember trying to read some long articles detailing the new stuff beneath the shiny stuff but I couldn't really finish them.

I'm sure this applies to the casual Linux user too (someone who only opens a terminal to run specific commands). Let them be I say, and we who dwell in black screens will look at other news outlets for what's changed under the makeup.

Now, the spotlight on "social applications" is downright silly ;)

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[Vectormatic]

amen, i started my linux experience by ordering a 5.04 ubuntu CD (i HATE the damn codenames with a passion, i refuse to use them, especially when the version numbers are tied to their release date, making it frikkin obvious!!). I had some trouble with that (try installing an ati driver in 2005, when that is your first ever encounter with linux). But by 6.06, i used it full-on on my laptop

come to think of it, it all has gone down hill a bit since then, the 7 releases were ok, 8.x started introducing issues, and 9.x just fricking sucks sometimes. I'd say ubuntu should have continued along the line of the 6.x and 7x releases..

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right it does sound like trolling, but I'll bite. Why do I like (K)ubuntu over other distros?:

1. No monetary cost (price matters these days).
2. Large library of programs available, including "non-free" (as in freedom) versions.
3. Binary based, no time spent compiling, but you can get the source if you want.
4. Good package management = reasonably simple administration.
5. Updated regularly.
6. Sizeable user base helps with "with enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow".

In short, it doesn't always "just work", (Plymouth seems to be a plague on Lucid) but I have enough resources with Kubuntu to "make it work for me".

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is going to seem like trolling, but humour me here. What is it, that people honestly see in this distribution?

I used both Jaunty and Intrepid...

There are really, really good Ubuntu versions and there are bad Ubuntu versions. Jaunty and Intrepid is among the worst (just be glad that you didn't try Karmic Koala). I've been a rather faithful user of Ubuntu since Hoary Hedgehog (5.4) and I seriously consider switching to another distribution. Hardy Heron is currently the only good (but not exceptional) Ubuntu version still supported and its support is withdrawn soon.

Ubuntu used to have a really good user community, maybe even the best user community a Linux distribution ever had. That has been the main reason I stuck with Ubuntu. But I'm Swedish and the Swedish language Ubuntu community has been diveded into at least two (I don't care enough too keep the count any more), both with different and very crappy and constantly rearranged websites (to try to post any content to them is like trying to hit a fly with a bullet, only involvoing more bureaucracy). Now I mostly search the English, German or French language Ubuntu communities when I need help with something, and they seem to deteriorate too.

As Ubuntu develops (or whatever you want to call it), the old forum answers and tutorials gets outdated and no one creates more up to date, good ones. It is possible Ubuntu is dying of old age.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[bcrowell]

I know this is going to seem like trolling, but humour me here. What is it, that people honestly see in this distribution?

At the time when I started using ubuntu, ca. 2005, there were two reasons I liked it: (1) apt, and (2) a usable set of up to date packages (as opposed to debian's loooong release cycle).

I used both Jaunty and Intrepid; Jaunty for probably two months. I've been using Linux for 15 years now, and I honestly feel that Ubuntu was, without any hyperbole, the single worst Linux distribution that I've ever seen. I absolutely hated it.

Yes, if your experience started with Intrepid and Jaunty, then this reaction is very reasonable. They're both terrible releases.

Sound (ALSA) dropping out randomly and continually

If you can get sound to work at all, then you're one up on me. Sound is completely broken for me in Karmic.

with Gnome being hard-welded to the rest of the system, were the three main reasons. I don't like Gnome at all, and when I tried to remove it, rapidly found that I couldn't. I generally use Ratpoison in either Linux or FreeBSD.

Yep. I use fluxbox, and I'm experiencing similar problems. Lots of functionality simply doesn't work in any desktop other than gnome.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[egcagrac0]

Kubuntu is now running KDE4. KDE3.5 was acceptable (even good) performance; KDE4 sucks that right out of the box and makes everything drag. I had to switch to Gnome to get the second monitor to work (using a command-line fix every time it came out of screensaver was a pain), and to make the crashing stop, and to make the slowness stop.

As far as I can tell, Kubuntu is a second (or third) class citizen to other members of the Ubuntu family. Something along the lines of "separate, and supposedly equal, but we all know that never works."

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[egcagrac0]

LOLWHAT?

Umm, you do realize that WiFi is part of the kernel and has nothing to do with the desktop environment, right?

The program in Kubuntu that lets you do things like select which wireless network to connect to, which network key to use, etc... doesn't really work from what I've seen. That program is part of the desktop environment.

Maybe that will get fixed this time around, but I'm not holding my breath while I wait for it.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[Just Some Guy]

The program in Kubuntu that lets you do things like select which wireless network to connect to, which network key to use, etc... doesn't really work from what I've seen. That program is part of the desktop environment.

But that's just one easily-replaceable program. I had the problem where knetworkmanager (or whatever it's called) wouldn't let me enter a WEP key. An apt-get install wicd to replace it with something more functional let me happily use my Kubuntu laptop at work.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not OP, but don't feel like finding my login.

What kind of sound hardware do you have? Never had any issues with mine.

One update, sound works. Then the next, it does not. This is routine -- I used Ubuntu from Drake onward, on the same hardware, and every time I changed versions something major broke that required more time than installing Debian over it when I'd had enough did.

Why have you chosen for the Gnome distro if you don't like it? Seems pretty stupid.

I liked Gnome for a while. Now I use fluxbox because it stays the hell out of my way. But most distros have a default DE/WM without grafting it onto the system as hard as Ubuntu does. (With no gain.)

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[Martin Soto]

People like you, who obviously seem to have fun at dealing with things such as ALSA, nVidia drivers, Ratpoison, FreeBSD, upstart, fstab, disk mounting, and GRUB won't probably like Ubuntu. People who don't want to deal with such things, will probably like Ubuntu, because it does a decent job of hiding the technical details from them in such a way that they can actually use the system. So, what you seem to perceive as a lack of transparency in the system design, is deliberate and seen by many as a feature instead of as a defect.

It isn't simply a matter of people being superficially drawn to a "nice shiny Gnome". It's actually that they want to use their computer without having to understand the gory technical details of the software installed in it.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK here's the deal (at least for me): we need a leader, we need a big cheese, we need a Linux version of what IBM was, then what MS is now. Namely someone that will be so commonly used that all the app developers and hardware vendors can build for it and hope to recoup their costs.
Ubuntu has a genuine shot at being this, but if they start pulling bonehead moves like this, then they will blow that chance.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[Seq]

kernel panics from nVidia drivers

This is somewhat nvidia's fault. Now that I can't boot Lucid on my laptop due to nouveau causing some sort of freeze could probably be levelled at Ubuntu, but I'm no better off with Fedora or any other distro shipping nouveau.

and the completely non-orthagonal design

I'm not quite sure what this is implying. It seems that you think they should only be assembling pieces, whereas they have been criticised for often doing just that.

with Gnome being hard-welded to the rest of the system, were the three main reasons. I don't like Gnome at all, and when I tried to remove it, rapidly found that I couldn't.

I run a few headless Ubuntu boxes, a kubuntu box, and my regular Ubuntu workstation. Only one of those has Gnome.

Then there's the horrid mess that is upstart

I haven't seen any problems with upstart. It seems to be generally welcomed by the community, adopted by Fedora and Debian. It even also preserves sysv compatibility so you can keep your non-upstart init scripts.

(...) basic things like setting up an fstab for the most part doesn't work. Hard drives get mounted some other way, that I wasn't able to find.

I can't comment on Debian's tendancy to change stuff "for the hell of it" (they usually have a reason), but Ubuntu still uses fstab. The only change I can think of is the addition of UUID support (which may or may not have gone upstream. I didn't follow that). fstab still works the same way as it always has.

Add to that, the "quiet splash," options in GRUB, which remove the ability to debug a faulty installation

Press 'e' at grub and remove "quiet splash". Or change your grub preferences to never include it. So what if a perfectly reasonable default doesn't suit your particular desires. I don't really want to see boot messages every time I boot, but it is trivially easy to get them back if there is trouble.

So, yes. It does seem like you're trolling.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[LateArthurDent]

Why? Sound (ALSA) dropping out randomly and continually

Haven't had that problem. I guess don't use ALSA directly, use it through PulseAudio. I know there's a lot of complaints about PulseAudio, but I had problems with audio in linux for a very long time, and PulseAudio made all the problems just go away. So maybe it'd be good for you, or maybe it breaks everything like it does for some other people.

kernel panics from nVidia drivers

Haven't had that problem. If it happens for you, isn't that an nvidia issue, if you're talking about the proprietary drivers, and an issue with whoever makes the open source drivers if not? What about ubuntu would make them work differently?

completely non-orthagonal design, with Gnome being hard-welded to the rest of the system

Well, Ubuntu is not for you, then. It's designed for people who don't have much Linux experience, so they don't know that they have choices, and aren't expected to make them.

I don't like Gnome at all, and when I tried to remove it, rapidly found that I couldn't.

If you remove gnome, you're going to miss out on a whole bunch of administrative applications they've designed to work really well with gnome (again, because it's aimed for people who have no linux experience, and they never need to drop to the command-line). That said, they don't prevent you from removing it, and never have. I've removed gnome before. It also removes the gnome-desktop meta-package which automatically includes all those applications I was talking about. If you do want all the power of those options, and are annoyed by the choices they make for you, Debian is a better choice for a distro.

Then there's the horrid mess that is upstart, and the usual Debian tendency to change absolutely everything they can, purely for the hell of it, such that even basic things like setting up an fstab for the most part doesn't work.

Heh...I guess Debian's not for you, then. Although, I have to say you're insane. What the hell is wrong with upstart? It's backward compatible with init, so you don't even need to do anything differently if you want to do things by hand. And fstab not working? Debian and Ubuntu respect fstab just fine.

Hard drives get mounted some other way, that I wasn't able to find.

It's called udev. Are you still using a 2.4 kernel or something?

Add to that, the "quiet splash," options in GRUB, which remove the ability to debug a faulty installation, leading to the infamous "black screen of death."

No, it does not remove any such ability. If you know enough to debug a faulty installation, you know how to edit the grub menu at bootup and remove those. If you're a normal computer user, the text is just gibberish anyway.

Are people really so superficial, that a nice shiny Gnome theme (for the first few minutes before the system dies, at least) is the only thing that is considered important?

It's an easy-to-use system and you know where everything is. So you can give it to your computer illiterate friend as a replacement for windows, and when he calls you up with questions about how to get something to work, you don't have to ask, "are you running kde or gnome?" You can just tell him, "what do you want to do? Ah, install an office app? Go to Applications / Add-Remove Software / navigate to Office." I had my parents switch from Windows to Ubuntu years ago, and I don't have to support them nearly as much as I had to in the windows days. Hell, Windows is still installed on their machine as dual-boot, but they've been asking me to remove it next time I'm town, so they can claim the extra disk space.

Choices are great. The first choice you need to make if Ubuntu's default choices are not for you is to choose anot

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

you really look like a troll.. ratpoison ? usual debian tendency to change absolute everything ?

if you don't like gnome you are free to change to whatever other wm it's out in the repository; a quick look to /etc/apt/sources.list will show you how many other choices you have. ...and surprise, thanks to the good work of debian you won't get mad at going around to find package dependences becayse aptitude/apt/dselect will solve them as much as possible..
try to do that on fedora or other distro.. you'll get mad unless you install.. apt :-)

this is good because you can make your own laptop act like a server in a matter of few minutes (configuration excluded).

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[SheeEttin]

And it takes all of five seconds to enter the command... sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[dbc]

I'm with you, brother. Ubuntu has always seemed like obfuscated Linux to me. It's very windows-y. And broken in silly ways. And difficult to fix because it has been obfuscated. I'm currently running system with Slackware, Gentoo, Arch, and Ubuntu. And 3 OS X systems, which are of course BSD based. Ubuntu is my least favorite of all. What people see in it is beyond me.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[Abcd1234]

Sound (ALSA) dropping out randomly and continually

Works fine for me.

kernel panics from nVidia drivers

Works fine for me.

and the completely non-orthagonal design

Huh? That doesn't even mean anything.

with Gnome being hard-welded to the rest of the system

Good, I like Gnome.

Then there's the horrid mess that is upstart

Works fine for me.

such that even basic things like setting up an fstab for the most part doesn't work

WTF. Also works just fine for me.

Add to that, the "quiet splash," options in GRUB, which remove the ability to debug a faulty installation

Then just disable that (on my laptop I don't bother, but I do on my server).

Are people really so superficial, that a nice shiny Gnome theme (for the first few minutes before the system dies, at least) is the only thing that is considered important?

No. Different people simply have different experiences.

See, just like your content-free post, mine is populated entirely by anecdotes and very little actual data because, in the end, the distro one chooses is based on one's experiences. For example, I find Ubuntu works fantastically on my laptop, provides a nice integrated desktop (provided you change the WM to something more useful, like xmonad), handles closed source drivers really well, handles media wonderfully (the fact that it automatically downloads codecs was a revelation the first time I saw it), and in general *just works*. Yup, upgrading from version to version occasionally results in breakages (Jaunty -> Karmic was easily the worst... prior to that I've had pretty good experiences just upgrading in place, though I tend to re-install these days), but those issues are usually worked out fairly quickly.

Oh, and for the record, I've been using Linux for about 15 years, now, starting with Slackware, which I downloaded from a local BBS onto floppies using the modem-equipped PC at my old school, so I've seen the breadth and depth of Linux distros (not to mention BSD and Windows).

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[Knuckles]

I absolutely don't get what perceived obfuscation people are talking about. Just like the OP I've been running linux distros for 15 years and I agree that Slackware in 1995 was more transparent if one took the time to learn about it. It also did much, much less.

So yes, mainstream linux distros have become more complex. Debian in 2000 also seemed more complex than 95's Slackware. But that's because the systems actually do more on your behalf. And if you can learn how 95's Slackware works under the hood, you will also manage to understand Ubuntu 10.04. And once you do, its not any more obfuscated than things were 15 years ago.

And don't tell me there were less sound problems in 95.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[c]

> What is it, that people honestly see in this distribution?

The short answer? Jaunty was the first Linux distribution which, out-of-the-box, wasn't pure shit on a modern laptop. Now, admittedly Ubuntu may not be unique in that sense... I guess I could try Fedora again. No, wait, I couldn't.

I don't like Gnome functionally, aesthetically, or philosophically, but since the only really reasonable alternative right now is KDE4, I'm seeing it as the lesser of two evils...

c.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[egcagrac0]

Not everyone enjoys fixing the distro before they use it.

I stopped enjoying that sort of thing about 3 years ago. Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age, but I really like it when things just work... like they're supposed to. Kubuntu doesn't seem to be there yet.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[mahadiga]

Try http://wiki.lxde.org/ You'll not regret

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[rtega]

I've had none of the problems you have. For example, I'm running fluxbox on ubuntu, no GNOME. It didn't take ages to setup, just a few seconds. GNOME is absolutely not hard welded to the system, contrary to what you are saying. Probably you haven't been looking too well.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[dpastern]

People are just well...lemmings. I remember when Ubuntu came out, and all the Gnome lovers came out of the woodworks to unite under the one distro to fight off the KDE ass kicking they were getting. I'm not a fan of Ubuntu for many reasons - I believe a distribution shouldn't favour one desktop environment over another, but should offer the major ones, and let users *choose* what they like. Kubuntu has been a p.o.s since the word dot, it's utter crap. And it's not officially part of Ubuntu either, it's a fork, using KDE. It's like a afterbirth variant of Ubuntu, but not done right.

Ubuntu has a strong sense (like Gnome) of dumbing things down, to the point of reducing the users ability to have any sane reasoning when it comes to configuring. It also looks ugly (to my eyes). GTK is horrid, always has been, always will be. There's a reason why you don't see many commercial applications using GTK, but many using QT. It's far easier to work with by all accounts, far more stable, and far nicer on the eye. Ubuntu's forums are horrid. I remember trying it on my laptop around a year ago. I dislike sudo, so I disabled it, and enabled su. This broke several of the Ubuntu administration tools. So, I posted a post asking if anyone had encountered this before and had any ideas. After 5 minutes (I had just joined the forums), I got an official warning from a mod for talking about disabling sudo! WTF!!!!!!!! I basically told the mod where to shove it and promptly uninstalled Ubuntu. I don't like, or recommend it.

I remember the good old days of Libranet - v3 shitted on Ubuntu. And it had a development team of just 2! I wish it had survived, and maybe the owner (Tal Danzig) had been smarter and better priced Libranet 3.

Dave

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[Just Some Guy]

I understand that, but in the grand scheme of things, I'd rather install a single program than replace my entire desktop with something else.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[egcagrac0]

I tried installing one or two or three or four programs as fixes and workarounds. They didn't fix the issues to my satisfaction.

What I can say is that Gnome isn't nearly as terrible as I used to think it was, and the distribution that more people use seems to have more stuff working. It's like this "many eyes on the problem, many hands to fix it" stuff really works.

You can, of course, go it alone. Don't forget to carry extra oxygen; the air is pretty thin up on the high road.

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[petrus4]

>>Gnome being hard-welded to the rest of the system

>Is switching supposed to be straightforward? I've heard stories, but still it seems daunting.

Yes, it absolutely is supposed to be straightforward. When I use either Slackware, FreeBSD, or Arch, I use a ~/.xinitrc file, in which I specify a list of startup applications, and the window manager is listed last. I do not use xdm/gdm at all. If I've got two window managers on my system, I will make a new .xinitrc for each wm, and then name them appropriately; so say, .xinitrc.ratpoison, .xinitrc.enlightenment, etc.

When I want to change to another window manager, all I need to do is, "cp ~/.xinitrc.enlightenment ~/.xinitrc" and then type startx.

>>even basic things like setting up an fstab for the most part doesn't work

>WFM

This SHOULD NOT be done, via an application. It is utterly moronic; hell, even if you want to make some sort of brain-dead, plastic front end for an end user, is it really so hard to generate an fstab as that program's output?

Re:Why do people like Ubuntu?

[isorox]

The short answer? Jaunty was the first Linux distribution which, out-of-the-box, wasn't pure shit on a modern laptop. Now, admittedly Ubuntu may not be unique in that sense... I guess I could try Fedora again. No, wait, I couldn't.

My laptop has been running hardy since it came out, gutsy before then, I got it in Nov 07. Never had an issue.

Never used gnome either, I run fluxbox, with 5 virtual desktops, and a right-mouse menu of firefox, amarok and rxvt. While I've got a database browser and eclipse on there too, I tend to launch from the command line (rxvt, via Alt-Capslock - which itself is mapped to escape). If I'm doing some development which requires drag and drop, I'll load up konqueror, but it's rare.

fglrx supporting lucid already released?

[Sits]

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/lucid/+source/fglrx-installer/+changelog (2:8.721-0ubuntu1) says a working package of flgrx for lucid was released on the 17th March. Also see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fglrx-installer/+bug/494699 . Is this version not working for you?

Re:fglrx supporting lucid already released?

[Judinous]

No, I still get stuck in a crash loop on the login screen with both my 4870 and 5870 systems. There's little else that I can do in this situation to help with testing, since this occurs both on stock Desktop Ubuntu and the Server edition with xorg, fglrx, and fluxbox installed.

Re:fglrx supporting lucid already released?

[Sits]

Hmm that's unfortunate - I can only hope you find a bug in launchpad that matches your problem so at least you will get notice if something promising eventually turns up.

Your only hope is that AMD/ATI track down where the problem lies as they are the ones with the most information to do so. As Ubuntu don't have the source fglrx they are going to wait on AMD/ATI...

Harden the f*** up!

[wiresquire]

OK disclaimer first. I haven't seen it yet. I haven't seen a screen shot yet. I haven't read anything yet. I'm still running 9.04.

But I can absolutely see reasons to support this.

I recently enabled the Group and Tab Windows in Compiz.
I was staggered by the functionality and possibilities, but frustrated by the usability. Right click on title bar? Nothing. Anything in the Windowing menu (Top left under icon)? Err, nope. AFAICT, the only way to make any use of it is knowing the key stroke combos. It's like learning all over again! And this is the only way to control the GUI itself! No integration into the Windowing UI?

So, from my perspective, you need a way to control the newer MDI technologies, and if they stick it in the window bar where _/[]/X was, stick that same _/[]/X wherever you want.

Eye candy will definitely win some converts. If it's an opportunity for Ubuntu to lead and someone else to react, then what have you got to lose?

ws

Re:Slow News Day?

[Compaqt]

I agree this could have been posted a little earlier, but I disagree with those who say an Ubuntu beta isn't news for nerds.

It is.

Like it or not, Ubuntu is the top Linux distribution, including all of its variants (Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc.).

Also, saying that anybody who's interested in Ubuntu would already know about the LTS beta is nonsensical. People have a variety of interests, but that doesn't mean that they're obsessively following Google Updates for all of them. The point of Slashdot is to compile (selected) tech news.

Re:f1rst p0st

[Anonymous Coward]

So... then use Fedora?

Use whatever OS best suits your needs. For some people, that is Ubuntu, and for others there are other choices more in line with what they want.

Re:[Bug 285392] Softreset failed (device not ready

[xSauronx]

Ive been using windows again for a while (due to school requirements and personal media preferences), so I cant cite specifics, but ubuntu has so much little shit change for every release that it annoys the fuck out of me. Move this option there, change this option, remove that one altogether, rename something...and release kernel updates every 45 god damn minutes.

I miss two things about linux more than anything: software management and compiz. The windows 7 interface is an improvement over xp in a few ways, but it still doesnt match how I liked my compiz desktop.

I tried debian a while back but it was a bitch to get some of my (admittedly newish) hardware working that ubuntu had zero issues with

oh well....maybe when im done with school Ill try again.

"the brown human gnome"

[RichiH]

Selective quoting ftw!

Re:f1rst p0st

[gparent]

So, huh, it's just like Ubuntu then? I recall several useless scary warnings about unfree codecs and drivers.

Re:f1rst p0st

[GameboyRMH]

I think pretty soon we're either going to see another 'buntu variant that basically undoes the dumbing down that's been going on since Jaunty/Karmic and puts the reigns back into the hands of the community, or a mass exodus of power users to another distro and noobs going back to Windows / Apple-pliances...which would be pretty sad.

Re:[Bug 285392] Softreset failed (device not ready

[Random BedHead Ed]

This is my impression as well. They seem to be changing things for the sake of looking busy. The controversy over the button order is a good example - the new max/min/close buttons make no sense, and Canonical is getting testy about complains. I'm thinking of trying OpenSuSE the next time I install a Linux; my only gripe is that KDE4 destroyed my workflow by changing its component programs substantially. (Rather the opposite of what Canonical does with Ubuntu, but equally irritating.)

In the end it's entirely possible I'll be a Mac user.

Re:f1rst p0st

[supersloshy]

Linux Mint aims to do just that ;). I switched after Ubuntu wasn't being transparent enough since what I love most about Linux is that we're (supposed to be) a community of people (in the Free Culture sense).

By the way, here's a car analogy about the button change which pretty much explains why I switched.

Re:f1rst p0st

[Vectormatic]

a mass exodus of power users to another distro

i wouldnt consider myself a true linux power user, but ubuntu has been annoying me the past few years, to the point where i am increasingly considering jumping ship to fedora or suse (perhaps debian deserves my attention too). Ubuntu promisses ease of use/installation, yet every machine i install it on has some weird problem which requires hours of me fiddling around, or they just plain and simple fuck up the entire sound-stack to the point where it takes considerable effort to get normal stereo sound out of my computer (takes me back to messing with config.sys under dos to get my soundblaster 16 to work)

My file server will stay ubuntu for the time being, since all that thing requires is samba, and i hardly ever interface with the machine directly, but my desktop/laptop will probably be converted once i find a good distro to switch to

honestly never needed to use it

[Anonymous Coward]

lemme see, i probably first used redhat, and then used mandrake out of pragmatism due to it offering pentium binaries and redhat sticking to i386, and in between p-pro etc arch it was argued truthfully that much i386 code was smaller and actually ran faster due to the gcc being primitive mostly as we dont do that today, but primarily because of small cache sizes and that the code might be smaller, this also applies to suggestions to build the kernel with -Os etc. At that time pre 98,i used lfs before gentoo existed and loved the whole concept of the portage system (even if its inspired by ports bsd which i didnt know about prior).

and the whole time i used gnome. i did prefer it to kde. i just think that nautilus is better than knoq and although i liked the fsview and would keep konq around for that i didnt use it as much as nautilus and gnome.

after trying e16 and all the early expermental e17's. i remember being amazed at the e17 previews and trying to adopt them, and i really loved their desktop pager. and todays pagers own something for it in design and result. blackbox i used for about a year and it was perfect of my low power machines of those days. but hey if i really needed performance to get my video decoding running max speed after building everything and playing with compile flags i would also just run x with xstart and not even twm, and just run my xterm wm less and use mplayer -fs ...

managed to get divx decoding fullscreen flawlessly on many machines which would not do the same under xp that way, i think pII 233's... ha

eventually i had a 933 and became happy with gnome, what i was very happy with was the simplicity and the functionality.
, and
what i do, to this day, is i have only a single bar at the top of the screen with my app/etc, and launchers/indicators (weather, email/im, google desktop (best pdx indexer only one that supports ligatures and hyphenations and other languages charsets etc seamlessly, fast and in short it dominates everything else ive checked although i'd be happy to be told im wrong and to try something else) cpufreq (now on a 2.66 core2 6m of L2 4gig ddr2 laptop, who would have believed these would come so soon, and led backlit keyboard is awesome of programming in the backyard at night with a stout.)

finally i adopted a particular layout an auto hiding workspace switcher on the middle right edge, nothing at the bottom (your eyes are scanning top to bottom and so anything at the bottom is very wasteful and distracting, i like document to the bottom edge is just so much more relaxing when you use it. after a while using anything else is a fucking pain) and finally

in the upper right of the top panel is a list style window selector.

so i can just simply throw the mouse to the middle left and wheel through desktops, or throw it into the upper right and wheel through apps.

thats the way i roll.

i call it a zero click interface! (TM) :P

i dare you to try it and if you dont like it please tell me so (and if you have any feedback or suggestions as to why its bad please let me know too) its so relaxing that i find xp a complete pain to use after so many years of my own personal computing nirvana. ffs xp doesnt even let you scroll a windows by hover without bringing it to the forground. i really belive the xp/windows interface is all built around maximising the number of actions required to do things, which is psychologically reinforcing and addictive and eventually dependency forming, causing an intentionally increased barrier to switching or using anything else.

peace, only you can shift the trend towards humane computer interfaces, for us, rather than to make money for a company to whom we are on product to be sold to their developers.

Re:f1rst p0st

[techno-vampire]

No. Ubuntu gives you scary warnings then gives you what you need. Fedora does neither. You either have to track them down on your own or install third-party repos that have what you need. Not that it's hard, mind you, and there's lots of pointers to what you need, but Fedora is based on FOSS and only FOSS and that can be a tad intimidating for a new user. And, of course, it acts as a pons asinorum because the real lusers generally end up giving up and either going over to Ubuntu or back to Gatesware.

Question for the lusers out there.

[rcuhljr]

I'm finally getting around to setting up a webserver/ftp box and was going to throw Ubuntu on it when I ran into the following bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/521387 Now apparently it's fixed in a higher kernel used in the lynx, while the kernel I have under 9.10 is 2.6.31-20. Is there a relatively pain free way to get this fix under 9.10? or should I just stick with the centOS I put on the box instead until lynx comes out?

gconftool

[Anonymous Coward]

sorry about being sidetracked

yeah in all that i never needed to use gconftool. yeah ive run it, but for 2 secs. i dont think ive run it for years.

these days i do maths and classical em (multiscattering and optical force) with the intel compiler suite which is really sweet, has a gui debugger, profiler, etc, mulithreaded lapack, solvers (paradiseo etc), and the rest of the mkl. as well as matlab and mathematical which have first class support and performance under linux and are less painful in manyways than windows.

2nd year of a phd in maths of optical forces, and binding. looking for new complex optically bound structures, using various classical domain models, mie, cde...

basically maxwells eqns are linear so perhaps we can make mutually bound structures like molecules but made from neutrally charged matter and at least 1000's of times bigger. already found some prettyinteresting data so i'll just through out this bistable looking, which is the time evolution of two opticall bound spheres that oscillate and then chage sides, the time evolution is in the z-direction (well it can be interpreted as that. its just an x,y,z plot but because of radiation pressure they move in the z direction)

http://www.mediafire.com/?dtkrzdznhjy

cheers.

Re:Slow News Day?

[icannotthinkofaname]

Also, saying that anybody who's interested in Ubuntu would already know about the LTS beta is nonsensical.

It's a good thing I never said that, then, because I wholly agree with you. I don't expect my sister to get all excited about the next Ubuntu, for example; she's non-technical and started using Ubuntu on her netbook because I was using the netbook first while I was trying to replace my laptop (I threw UNR on there when we got it because I like Ubuntu, and she loves the UNR interface :-D ). I, however, am definitely interested in beta-testing the new Ubuntu, and I knew about this back on Friday, when it came out (for those who aren't following Ubuntu development, beta-1 was delayed by a day for whatever reason).

If you reread my post, you'll see that I never make reference to the whole population of Ubuntu users. I only talk about the subset that likes beta-testing Ubuntu.

Re:Slow News Day?

[icannotthinkofaname]

There's a website for that, y'know:

http://www.instantrimshot.com/

Re:f1rst p0st

[gparent]

I see, I thought you were saying that Ubuntu automagically installed non-free drivers without asking questions.

Re:f1rst p0st

[Sancho]

Yeah, that's a big fucking deal.

I've been using Linux for years. Back when I was in school, I didn't mind tinkering and spending hours getting things working just right. Now that I'm in the real world, I don't want to spend my free time making sure that my home computer is functional. I want something that works. Careful hardware purchases mean that you can get a computer (I stick mostly to laptops) where all of the hardware is supported by Linux. Then, if your distro supports it all, you're golden. If not, you might have to hunt down drivers, obscure patches, etc. to get everything working.

The poster who said that they want the OS to be out of the way was dead-on. Ubuntu was great because it autodetected and configured most of this for me, leaving me to worry about interface customization and getting actual useful things done. It still does that to a degree, but the changes that they're making and the long-standing bug reports that go unanswered degrade the overall experience.

I'm really enjoying Lucid.

[tthomas48]

I've been enjoying Lucid a lot. The graphical finishes are really nice, and the social integration really is the first feature that I think makes Linux a nicer GUI to use than either Windows or OSX.

Can't wait for gnome-shell. Been playing with it a bit, and while not ready for prime-time quite yet, Linux is really moving into being a leader rather than a follower for the first time.

Re:f1rst p0st

[stonewolf]

What is your problem with the idea that social networks are a good way to meet people who have a lot in common with you? Friends of friends are more likely to be compatible with you and to live near where you live than any other group of people you meet online. Meeting compatible people is the first step to love making. At least that is how it always worked for me and it seems to still work that way for my friends and children. (I've been married for 33 years so I'm not using social networking that way. OTOH, having girl friends from 35 years ago looking you up on facebook can be an "interesting" experience.)

For many people social networks now provide the social function that was filled by schools and churches. Since most of us don't go to church anymore and most of the population is not currently in school, something had to fill that social niche. Social networking seems to do that very well.

Stonewolf

Re:f1rst p0st

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want Slackware or OpenBSD, you know where to find them.

Why does Lucid remind me so much of the ...

[stonewolf]

Original Macintosh.

The first Mac was very different from the Apple II. It had a built in screen. A tiny itsy bitsy screen. It had a sealed case. You could not change anything in the hardware without actually *breaking* the case welds. It had not card slots. Card slots were very popular and one of the reasons why people loved the Apple II and why the switched to the PC. I understand the business reasons for those decisions. I also remember that it nearly killed Apple and eventually got Steve Jobs fired.

The main thing that was wrong with the original Mac was that the entire interface was designed by very young people. No one with old eyes ever tested the Mac before it was released. Jerry Pournelle wrote a scathing review of the Max and pointed out that it would never be accepted by managers, and would therefore fail, because it was designed for young eyes. The changes that were made to the Lucid UI are just like those made in the Mac UI in that they all work fine for people with young eyes and no muscle memory of how to use a UI.

Many of the people who *use* Ubuntu, like me, have been using GUI interfaces since the 1980s. I've been using an X based desktop since X11R4. I don't remember UWM, but I was using TWM before it was released to the X consortium. (Tom's cube was just down the way from mine.) The original TWM put buttons on both corners of the screen, but we quickly learned to configure it and... well I can't honestly remember how long it has been since I last used a computer with the window buttons in the upper left hand corner. I will bet that I have been using GUIs since before the designer of the new themes was in kindergarten. Maybe even longer than they have been alive. If you have not done something using a standard interface for 20 or 30 or 40 years (I've been driving for more than 40 years) you do not have any idea what a change like that can do to you. My hand knows where those buttons are. Moving the buttons actually causes me pain in my shoulder and it causes eye strain. (I thought that was very weird too.) Ok, yeah, It didn't take long to fix the problem. But, now I have learned that Shuttleworth plans to put something else in that upper right hand corner. That means I may lose the ability to fix the problem without having to do major surgery. (Which I can do, but why would I waste that much time?)

So why don't I just get used to it? Look up the concept of "muscle memory" and/or wu wei. After you have done something enough times it becomes as natural as breathing or walking. When you get to that point changing can become hard. Imagine if you suddenly found that you had to be able to drive your car you had to change your breathing so that every other breath had to be twice as long as a normal breath? Would you try to adapt or get the idea that the car company had gone insane?

The desktop theme has the same problems. The ultra bright backgrounds cause me eye strain from switching from the bright backgrounds to the neutral applications. The color choices make it hard to read text and to hard to tell the where the frames of stacked windows begin and end. So, to begin to be able to use Lucid I first have to apply a 3rd level gnome wizard spell to move the controls and then change the theme. And, I have to do that while using an interface that has become physically painful to use.

I know these changes were never checked by anyone my age or older. I see this same kind of thing all the time from students who do not understand that the wrong design choices can make a product unusable by the part of the population with the most money to spend. Of course, there is no good way to point out to young designers that they will most likely (if they are lucky) spend 1/2 to 3/4 of their entire life as an "old" person.

Getting old sucks. But, it beats the alternative.

Stonewolf

Paranoid hat on

[Anonymous Coward]

They must be trying to actually make Ubuntu less popular (maybe they are afraid of being too big at this time for some reason.)
I cannot think of any other real reason to default to something as different as this. I keep trying to come-up with a good analogy but haven't hit on one yet (in good Slashdot tradition it must of course be car based.) Sort of like switching the placement of the brake and gas pedals is the closest I can come (sure you can change it - by using a hacksaw and welding some bars to get them back in the order you want), but that doesn't quite fit (since it is just a config change.) However for novice Linux level users, this could be a deal breaker.
Are they trying to discourage those kinds of people from using their distro?

Re:Paranoid hat on

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is clear that they are not trying to discourage people from using their distro. However, they may be making the same mistake that the Coca-Cola company made with "New Coke": they relied on small-scale tests and underestimated the actual backlash from actual customers. Just as Coca-Cola really thought New Coke would be popular, Canonical really believes these changes will either be popular or will be no big deal. I'm not so sure.

I have to say, have they forgotten the fiasco with the "object-oriented" Nautilus? The GNOME guys made this big change to the default behavior of Nautilus, and everyone hated it and changed the behavior back to the old behavior, and the GNOME guys caved and changed the default back.

But I will actually try the new Ubuntu before I pass final judgement.

Re:f1rst p0st

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that the dream of a mainstream community-based OS is dead now.

At least Fedora does not have these delusions of grandeur. It is a testbed for Red Hat, I'm OK with that. I don't want my OS to be interesting, for fuck's sake. I want it very predictable and unobtrusive. Is it too much to ask?

So you installed Debian again?

Seriously reconsidering...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using Ubuntu for five years. I was most happy with it when Gutsy was around. The other day though, I dusted off my Vista partition. To be frank, I've had it with the brain-damaged decisions the Ubuntu devs make. Now, after a fresh install of Ubuntu, not only do I have to figure out how to scrub pulseaudio to get an audio system that isn't laggy as shit, I have to look up some command to fix the GUI. Both of these things used to "just work".

The reality is that many of us go back and forth between OS's and we are going to have trouble dealing with Ubuntu's latest dumb decision.

I already get "free Windows". It came pre-loaded on all of my machines. So, why should I waist my time fixing deficiencies in another OS that were artificially put there? I'm willing to learn, and I'm willing to re-compile apps to get the features I want, but I'm not willing to fix something that used to work fine, but is now broken because of the developers' need to be hip and trendy and try to "keep up with the big players".

It isn't worth my time.

Re:f1rst p0st

[Anonymous Coward]

You gotta love how they blatantly lie and say the new UI was inspired by "light". What the fuck does that even mean? They're trying to be all metaphysical and enlightened and shit.

All I see is a UI that was almost directly lifted from Linux Mint.

Mac-a-like?

[Simian Man]

New purple and grey theme, buttons on the left, an integrated music store and social networking built-in? Sounds like they are pursuing the Apple fanbase pretty hard to me. Thanks, but I'll stick with Fedora.

Re:f1rst p0st

[jmorris42]

> At least Fedora does not have these delusions of grandeur.

Sadly they do. You can't install without a graphical desktop for example. What the heck is that all about? We used to laugh at NT for that. A SERVER wasting resources displaying a graphical login nobody will ever see! Of course with Fedora having a use by date shorter than some cheese you would have to be kinda daft to put Fedora on a server anyway.

One example: So after months and months of users bitching and moaning about the loss of the minimal install that would allow a text mode install they are going to put minimal back in for F13. But NetworkManager would drag in darned near everything so they left it out, which is sensible. What isn't sensible is they refuse to fix the original network subsystem to be enabled by default if NM isn't installed. So yes you can do a minimal install but you won't have a working[1] network. Not that you can really get rid of NM anyway, they are busy little beavers wiring NM into everything. No network manager, no Firefox, evolution or whatever IM client they are shipping now because all those and probably more refuse to go online unless NM is installed, running and says it is connected. Before they are done the clowns will probably have apache hardwired into NM. Network manager is just useless cruft unless you are on a laptop; why is there such an urge to make it indespensible?

[1] Yes once we realize what the problem is us old folks can figure out that "chkconfig network on ; service network start" will fix things but dangit in 2010 a working network shouldn't be something you need a wizard around to get working. Anything other than plug cable in, light goes on and the network 'just works' is horribly broken.

Re:f1rst p0st

[geminidomino]

What is your problem with the idea that social networks are a good way to meet people who have a lot in common with you?

The associative nature of human thought. Currently, the majority of my facebook "friends" DO have something very important in common with me.

DNA.

Re:f1rst p0st

[stonewolf]

I read you reply and I really did laugh out loud. I completely understand why you reacted that.

In my case only perhaps 5% or 6% are related to me and several of those are only related by marriage. The a lot of my facebook friends are old friends from as far back as grade school, former students, folks I have worked with or been in business with.

More than half of my facebook friends are folks I practice Kung Fu and meditate with. It is amazing how close you can get with people you sweat with.

Stonewolf

beta

[Anonymous Coward]

ralink wireless in the averatec 2300 dont work very good.

Just in case you have one of these and was going to play with it.

I like because of

[mahadiga]

https://shipit.ubuntu.com/login

Why do people care about the buttons?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been coming across this massive ball of hate on the topic of the button movement for the new Ubuntu release but I don't really understand what all the hullabaloo is about. First of all, this could just be a way for Ubuntu to distinguish itself from the rest of the pack. Second of all I don't find that it affects functionality at all. At first it took some getting used to but after that it seemed natural. This move also makes sense when you think about the fact that the notifications appear in the upper right corner covering up the buttons in a standard layout. Also the indicator applet, the notification tray, and the clock applet are all situated at the right of the top panel. The indicator applet, the clock applet, the volume applet, some notification apps have drop down menus that would cover the controls if they remained at the right side (although arguably, the application list drops down on top of it now). For those people who say that they often close the application while trying to click on the edit, or file, or whatever menu they are trying to access do they really? Has computing become so much about motor memory that we don't even look before clicking? And as one of the commenters above noted, many programs will warn you that you are about to close the program before actually closing.
    I find it disheartening that this one minor, and it is minor, issue is taking away from all the good things that are coming in this release. Things that include:
      - window transparency via new gtk
      - extra pane option in nautilus (hit F3)
      - out of the box (experimental) 3d acceleration for ATI Radeon R600/700 cards
      - integration of easy access to social networking straight from the desktop
      - much faster boot speeds
  Of course it's not all good. There are some things I find in Lynx that are much greater annoyances (and unchangeable, unlike the button layout). For example:
      - Rhythmbox can no longer be minimized to the notification area
      - Proprietary ATI drivers don't mash well (not really Ubuntu's fault, heard it was a kernel or X issue)
      - Panels moved to the left or right of the screen look hideous
I would like to say that I am a relatively new convert to the Linux world, having only dabbled in it for a few years. I personally think that Ubuntu is not only growing but maturing as well. While I have found that Linux, specifically, has met most of my needs, it is not perfect. But, what operating system is. Also an a note related to this post, I've found that overall the Linux community is very supportive and helpful. One thing I do no like though is the fervour in which topics like this get argued, it does not reflect well on the community. In concluding I would like to make a few statement/questions. If people are genuinely angry about the design decisions made by the Ubuntu team they are free to use a different distribution, create a branch of Ubuntu (it is GPL'd after all), or return to windows. Was there this much fuss when apple set out the left hand button layout? Yes it's different but is different bad?