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Canonical Bringing an Instant-On Ubuntu
Today at the Ubuntu Developers Summit, Mark Shuttleworth presented a few upcoming Ubuntu projects, including "Light" versions of the operating system for "both netbook and desktop, that are optimized for dual-boot scenarios." Shuttleworth also took the wraps off Unity, a new lightweight interface that will be included in Ubuntu Light and eventually in Ubuntu Netbook Edition as well. "First, we want to move the bottom panel to the left of the screen, and devote that to launching and switching between applications. That frees up vertical space for web content, at the cost of horizontal space, which is cheaper in a widescreen world. ... Second, we'll expand that left-hand launcher panel so that it is touch-friendly. With relatively few applications required for instant-on environments, we can afford to be more generous with the icon size there. ... Third, we will make the top panel smarter." Ars got a chance to try out a prototype of Unity, saying, "Its unique visual style melds beautifully with Ubuntu's new default theme and its underlying interaction model seems compelling and well-suited for small screens."
When I saw the screenshots for Unity I was amazed. Finally defaults that make sense. I'm not a fan of dark themes, but that's easily changed. (e.g., in Lucid, switch from Ambience to Radiance.) There's no reason Unity should be limited to netbooks at all. In a world where widescreen monitors are commonplace, vertical space is always at a premium.
But Unity does more than fix the vertical spacing issue, it brings Ubuntu's default's into the 21st century with task management as well. Even Windows has moved on from it's old school taskbar into something resembling the Dock from OSX. Unity's dock is a step in the right direction and placing it on the left is a smart choice.
Unity should be what all Ubuntu versions ship with. Not just netbooks.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Widescreen monitors waste tons of horizontal space and suffer a real lack of vertical space.
I say move both tool bars to the sides. If gnome panel would rotate the words and icons I would already do this.
We wanted to be surfing the web in under 10 seconds, and give people a fantastic web experience. We also wanted it to be possible to upgrade from that limited usage model to a full desktop.
That's a strange definition of "instant." 10 seconds.
Horizontal space is cheap, unless you decide to run two applications side-by-side. This is a scenario which is extremely common for people who are writing a document (HTML, Latex, most programming languages, maybe also 3d editors) and like to have a preview of what they're writing/drawing/programming. Unfortunately, despite widescreens turning more and more popular, window managers do not seem to have caught on the trend. AFAICT, only with some obscure tiling window managers such as Awesome and Xmonad or some scripting uber-hacks can you have two applications side-by-side without resizing them manually every time (which is a PITA). Thanks Ubuntu, neat idea, but I would rather have the toolbars on the top and bottom, and some support for tiling horizzontally side-by-side two windows.
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
> Abstracting those details away from the user results in a better user experience with more ability to manage the actual content than a pure file-based interface can provide.
This reminds me of the Mac Girl that decided to burn CDs of her pictures because they were becoming too much to manage in iPhoto.
Hiding the filesystem is fine until you find that your forced alternative doesn't scale quite well enough any more.
It's absurd to get rid of a useful framework just because it's not "universal" enough.
If anything, things should go in the other direction. subsets of data and metadata should be accessable in the filesystem or to the shell with simple tools. There should be more explosure of the data rather than less. A vfs interface for the mail system could actually be a pretty handy thing. Perhaps it would even enable a "delete all text messages" feature in the iPhone.
Such an abstraction doesn't even need to be exposed to the end user most times. At least it's there, those that find the default tools lacking have some recourse.
Interesting things should not be impossible. Neither should the inevitable tech support.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
What is not a file? A big part of the whole *n.x ideology is that everything is a file.
Emails are files in the MAILDIR, database records are indeed stored in the DB files. Do you think this is magic here?
the typical scenario of playing catchup with Windows and OS X that the open-source desktops seem to usually do.
Have you used ANY of the following:
1) Compiz: way ahead of Mac of Windows. Lots of useless eye candy, but lots of useful stuff too
2) KDE 4: highly configurable, applets that can run in a panel or on the desktop, all apps can transparently open remote files of ssh, ftp, as well as tar and zip archives, CD ripping (and transcoding) through drag and drop in the file manager, embedded components so you can preview documents in the file manager. KDE 3 and Gnome have most of these, but I picked KDE 4 because that is what I use.
3) Fluxbox: tabbed windows
4) Metisse: a completely different approach to 3D desktops
5) Moblin: if that looks or works like Windows or Mac, you must be talking about a different Windows and Mac.
6) Enlightenment 16: sliding, overlapping desktops years ago - while Windows still does not have multiple desktops without an extension
7) Various tiling and keyboard driven window managers.