Gestures With Multitouch In Ubuntu 10.10

jitendraharlalka writes "Mark Shuttleworth recently announced on his blog that the first cut of Canonical's UTouch framework is ready and will be available in Ubuntu Maverick. He goes on to talk about the development of 'touch language' by the design team. The 'touch language' will allow the chaining of basic gestures to create complex gestures. The approach is quite different from the single magic gestures implemented elsewhere. In Maverick, a few Gtk applications will support gesture-based scrolling."

Comments

Re:Hardware support is still weak

[hairyfeet]

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Windows doesn't have plenty of problems. As a PC builder, repairman, and retailer I'd love to have the developers at Redmond by the ear all day just to point out problems that need addressed.

What I'm saying is, and by a fairly large margin, MSFT has tried their damnedest to put the user and their experience at the top of the list. If there is a problem? There is nearly always a nice GUI or a wizard that will hold the users hand. Problem in Linux? Oh boy are you fucked. Be prepared to spend hours digging through man pages, trawling forums (IF you are lucky enough to have a PC that works enough to surf that is) and having to "tweak" a bunch of "fixes" that frankly no user should have to deal with in the first fucking place. Oh and I hope you like staring at that God Damned blinking cursor, because the ONLY help you'll get 9 times out of 10 is "open up bash and type" this bunch of shit that rarely works without "tweaking" Yeah, that's really helpful. Thanks.

I may not say this correctly, and sorry if I get it wrong because I can't find your post, but an old Linux guy here said it best...Windows and OSX are USER centric, whereas Linux and Unix are PROCESS centric. That is whereas OSX and Windows actually try to help the user, even if they get it wrong, ALL Linux cares about is the process. Grep, pipes, Bash, it is all about the job, and frankly fuck the user if he/she don't like it. while this works fine on servers and HPCs, where you have guys with tons of degrees getting paid $$$$ to deal with that shit, on a desktop? Most folks would rather spill hot coffee on their crotch than deal with that 70s era hacker bullshit.

THAT is why I had such hopes for Ubuntu. Shuttleworth talked all this bullshit about "Linux for humans" and how he was gonna put his money behind making a real Linux desktop, and like a dumbass I believed him. My bad, as I looked at Jobs and how he took BSD and made a badass OS that now is kicking ass on laptops and cell phones. I figured if Jobs could do it, and with Shuttleworth rallying the troops (as all you hear is how Linux guys think their OS is so great and could kick ass if given a chance) we would truly get a USER centric Linux, with nice GUIs that would help even the most clueless user enjoy the enhanced security along with the ease of use of a Windows 7 or OSX. Instead what we got is just like TFA, more and more "Wow, isn't that cool!" shit that lasts exactly until the first problem, and then you are ROYALLY fucked, because as I said the first sign of trouble it is CLI city.

So believe me, I feel your pain. I have had to deal with some seriously fucked Windows, especially Windows XP and Vista. But it seems like even when they make mistakes MSFT is trying to get it better, just as Apple keeps making OSX a little better each time. But it seems like Linux is just stuck in a rut, with a bunch of ego bullshit and bad attitude holding things back. It never seems to get any better, not really. it never seems to get any easier, the same problems I ran into in early 2000 are still there in 2010 while everyone else just keeps getting better every release. Like I said simple bullshit like having drivers that work in Foo work in Foo+1 which before anyone screams "But...look at XP to windows 7!" you get on average a DECADE for Windows releases, whereas you are lucky to get a year and a half of bug fixes with most distros. Hell even Canonical on LTS leaves you with old apps more than actually getting a real long term stable OS.

Maybe I'm just a dreamer, maybe I'm just a fool that still remembers when we had real competition like Atari and Commodore and a vibrant PC ecosystem. Maybe one day Linux will get their own Gates or Jobs that'll crack the whip and truly make a "Linux for normal folks" but sadly it is pretty damned clear that Shuttleworth and Ubuntu ain't it. They just keep sticking bling bling bullshit on top of a broken OS and calling it a day. No real QA, crazy 6 month releases, hardware that works in x biting the dust i

Re:Hardware support is still weak

[ToasterMonkey]

There's my magical solution to something I hate.

I hate it, because I know it will never change.

Re:Hardware support is still weak

[hairyfeet]

I'm being a troll and Ubuntu works perfectly, really? Answer me this and answer TRUTHFULLY: when you upgraded from Ubuntu 9 to 10, did ALL the hardware continue to work, with NO errors? Because I'm betting that answer is hell no. FACT: The lifecycle in most distros, including Ubuntu, is incredibly short. Bug fixes are usually only ported to the latest and greatest, so staying on an older release is a PITA and potentially dangerous security wise. FACT: Thanks to EXTREMELY poor QA and relying on volunteers for shit you should NEVER rely on volunteers for, like drivers, the odds of you going from say Ubuntu 8 to Ubuntu 9.04 and not having hardware get fucked is practically ZERO. FACT: thanks to lack of a real hardware ABI (something Apple and MSFT have had for practically forever) drivers can, do, and often will bite it hard hard on upgrades. Meanwhile thanks to the 10 year lifecycle average on windows the odds are the hardware will be in the dumpster before it goes out of support, same with OSX and how they supported the old G4s for quite awhile.

I'm sorry, but if I was a troll I'd be posting links to RMS eating toe cheese, not practically holding up signs saying "Please fix this!" and hoping that sometime someone will actually listen. Hell I even wrote an article for LinuxInsider pointing out what as a retailer I'd need to sell your product. What I got was "Those are great ideas, you should go do that". Right, like I'm gonna close up my shop, spend 5 years and God knows how much getting a CS degree so that I can completely program my own distro and set up a giant web based business for...what exactly? when I can just sell windows and OSX and save myself about 6 years of classes and countless headaches?

Maybe one day someone will listen, maybe one day someone will come along and do for Linux what Jobs did for BSD and NeXT. But considering the Linux community's answer to everything is "La la la, I can't hear you, you must be a troll or a shill for teh man!" I seriously doubt it. enjoy your non existent desktop numbers, but don't say those of us in retail never tried to point out the problems that needed addressed, you simply refused to listen and instead spent your time on bling and yet another text editor. Sad.

Oh and your big anecdote is you bought something built for the Asian market and it didn't work in the USA? Then you might be shocked to learn you can't buy DVDs there either. Its called region lockout and has nothing to do with windows, and everything to do with companies charging different prices for different markets. Sheesh.