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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."
Unfortunately, most of Ubuntu's "innovations" are like this. Compiz is another really good example. It got a huge amount of hype just prior to its inclusion, but then when it was actually available, we found that it was damn near useless. Most of us had to actually disable it to prevent it from sucking up 100% of our CPU.
The use of GNOME is another. While we have real desktops like KDE and even Xfce, Ubuntu still insists on forcing GNOME on its users. It's clear now that GNOME 3 will probably never be released, or if it is, it'll be so behind the curve that it'll be pointless to use it.
With Ubuntu's quality slipping each release for the past few years, I've gone back to Debian. At least they don't foist all of these inferior and toy technologies on its users.
Show me FIRST the Windows where I can take a mix of totally random hardware thrown together and hand my 67 year old clueless dad the disc and have him install it PERFECTLY, without a SINGLE fuckup or hardware issue.
Your Dad buys the OEM Windows system bundle.
He can choose from 94 desktops and 187 laptops shopping Walmart.com alone.
It works out of the box or is returned to the vendor.
He may chance the free upgrade-in-place from 64 bit Vista to 64 bit Windows 7, as I did, and discover that the geek's horror stories are mostly pure fantasy.
Show me FIRST the Windows where I can take a mix of totally random hardware thrown together and hand my 67 year old clueless dad the disc and have him install it PERFECTLY, without a SINGLE fuckup or hardware issue.
"Because dad didn't want to wait until the weekend and installed Windows 7 HP without a SINGLE issue. It installed ALL the drivers automatically and even told him at first boot he didn't have an AV and pointed him to several free ones."
Please improve reading comprehension. And I have to say I agree with the GP: Windows 7 is remarkably good. It may not have all the bells and whistles that some Linux flavours do, and I miss some of them sorely, but the user experience is rock solid in a way that has never been true for Ubuntu (though some other distributions are as strong as Win7).
As for the sibling post suggesting running it on the internet for 30 minutes and then seeing how it works: are you still living in 2004?
It's obvious to anyone with a functioning brain and mainstream work requirements that desktop Linux is bogus. Its defenders are typically people who don't do much except browse echo-chamber sites like Slashdot. It's fair to compare them to Amiga defenders, gold bugs, 9/11 conspiracy people and pretty much every other crank category out there.
Yep, I MUST be a horrible troll for daring to point out the LAST thing Ubuntu needs is more bling bling bullshit, instead of saying "Gee, isn't Linux perfect and problem free? Well Biff it sure is, and Ubuntu is the bestest ever!". Yeah, I'm sure things will improve greatly if everyone pretends REAL hard. Hey, you want the specs for dad's PC? Because I'll be happy to give them to you. I know them by heart since pretty much everything but the CPU and RAM amount is a twinkie to mine so I could test new software on mine before letting it loose on his. The specs are thus....ECS Business Class motherboard with 4Gb of RAM and an HD3200 onboard, a Phenom 9650 quad I believe (that and the amount of RAM are the only differences between his and mine, I went for the Phenom II 965 quad and 8Gb) Realtek sound and networking, and a 500Gb HDD.
So I'm sorry, you can spread your FUD all you want, or stick your head in the sand and pretend Windows is still like Win98, but that simply ain't reality anymore. My dad didn't need a SINGLE DRIVER, those that Windows 7 HP didn't have it got from windows Update at first boot, He had to answer a grand total of THREE questions, and those were simple "personalize your software" type of questions, and as I said at first boot it pointed out he didn't have an AV and brought up a page with several free and pay AVs. So if you aren't trying to troll I suggest you try Windows 7. It has to be the easiest Windows I've ever had to deal with, built in disc imaging, hell everything on that OS is designed for ease of use. Webcams, even a USB TV Tuner, Windows just pops up a "hey, would you like me to get a driver for you?" and takes care of things. It even popped up a "You have plugged in a headset mike. Would you like to learn about the built in voice recognition?" and walked dad through teaching Windows 7 to respond to his voice.
So show me where you can take a random collection of NEW hardware, not some circa 1999 dumpster junk, hand a disc to a completely clueless user, and have them set it up with NO help, then I'll believe you, but until then I want to see with my own eyes just like I did with dad and Windows 7. The ONLY thing I had to do when I got there on Saturday was set up his Firefox and ABP,l since he didn't know where to go to get it (for those with clueless users I suggest Ninite with totally automated installers for most of the popular apps. Just tell them which boxes to check and run it) but everything else was done. NO yellow exclamations in device manager, NO viruses (dad followed the first run pop up and installed MSFT Security essentials) just a perfectly running PC.
As I said I hoped that Canonical would do for Linux what Jobs did for NeXT or what Ballmer has with windows 7, but it seems like it is the same old headaches, just with some new bling bling on top. It certainly isn't any easier for a new user to set up by themselves than Debian or any other Distro. I had real hopes, which is why I set up no less than 4 boxes, all with different hardware, to run Ubuntu from 6-9.04. I really believed the "Linux for humans" bull and as a retailer I hoped that Shuttleworth would open a "third way" and do for Linux what Jobs did for NeXT. Instead what we got was a whole lot of bling bling, an OS that even the OEMs can't update from the Canonical repos because of lousy QA, in short I think we all got...well not really anything.
Linux has been out there for 15 years now, and on the desktop it is still lower than the margin for error. You can lie to yourself and say it is a MSFT conspiracy, or that OEMs prefer paying Redmond, but any normal company would ask "What are we doing wrong? Why aren't we gaining numbers?" and do what they had to to address those issues. Instead you get labeled a troll for saying anything other than "Gee isn't Linux swell?" and nerds telling you with a straight face that users should be forced to "embrace the power of CLI" like it is the fucking force or something. Give me a damned break.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
It's unfortunate that every time someone wants to talk about Linux, they seem interested in only one metric: can Average Joe use it?
Other than coming across as a remarkably modern rendition of Solaris 9, what else does it have going for it? It's not even the most developer friendly OS anymore because the world largely moved on to Windows centric or Java development. Free software is easier to use on Windows or OS X. That's not a lie.
Then there's the obvious fact that this /. submission is titled "Gestures With Multitouch In Ubuntu", and you've got to wonder why NOT ask if the Average Joe can use it??
You can pick your own reason for not using it; fine. But don't pretend like you have some magical solution to fix the thing you hate so dearly.
You don't like the Average Joe nitpicking? Fine.
Here's a suggestion: repos and the "everything must be in the repo" concept exist because of the unstable nature of free software. Unstable as in constantly changing in incompatible ways. FIX IT!
There is no good reason why I can't go install the latest GIT binary on an old copy of CentOS or RHEL. Don't fix it for the sake of free software though, at least make install is an option for some people. (food for though: Is make install really an answer for those who would run RHEL?) fix it so people can write non-free software for Linux and not target a hundred platforms. Why is libstdc*-compat* even an optional install? Why does your competition have a three line answer to this problem? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1406645/building-a-backwards-compatible-os-x-app-when-a-new-api-is-present
And your biggest competitor at least has an answer: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1073509/should-i-redistribute-msvcrt-dll-with-my-application
Normally, you'd vote with your wallet on a problem like this. Free & quality is such a mind fuck.
When will the Linux community pull its head from its ass and stop repeating the "only good software is free software" BULL SHIT. It needs non-free software, period. There's my magical solution to something I hate.
I'm sorry, but what metric do wish us to judge Linux by? When your only answers are full of dogma and ideology, it's hard for outsiders to take you seriously. It's popular to personify Microsoft and Apple as emotionally charged beings wrecking havoc on your lives, just as it's popular to personify the government the same way. In politics though, we call those people kooks. Get on with business folks.
On a more cheery note, I think Linux will continue to be used where it makes sense. If you have a stake in where that is.. you MAY want to start suggesting metrics.
I probably shouldn't even be answering you, since everything that doesn't say "Gee isn't Linux swell?" gets downmodded to hell, but I was raised to not be rude. The problem, which seems to be missed completely by everyone here, isn't the INITIAL experience, okay? The initial experience is hunky dory. The problem is what happens when something goes wrong which I've found with Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular to be a damned near daily occurrence. Here is an example, using the box, which as I said I built twinkies just for testing.
First boot of Ubuntu...Video fucked. Tried to install driver vis GUI by allowing restricted drivers...fucked. Turns out to be reading the onboard and NOT the discrete, which from the looks of Ubuntu forums is yet another problem that has been there awhile and never fixed. surprise. End up in single user mode, put a bunch of CLI bullshit in (which if this was my only computer I would have been fucked, because it is kinda hard to trawl forums with no video) and finally, after 1 hour and 42 minutes, get it working. When I get it all including sound going I get the "updates waiting" or whatever it is called, and not liking unpatched machines on my network, I let it run. Guess what happens? On reboot the sound and video are borked AGAIN...ARRGH!
The problem, which everyone seems to pretend don't exist, is the driver and troubleshooting options in Linux are piss poor at best. OSX doesn't do this, hell Solaris doesn't do this, but thanks to Linus being an asshat and refusing to allow a stable driver ABI time and time again shit that works in Foo is broken in Foo+1. This is frankly unacceptable and really makes Linux look like a Mickey Mouse hobbyist OS. Everyone else can update without breaking, why can't Linux? Until there is a simple way to fix problems and deal with driver issues VIA GUI, I will continue to warn folks to stay away from Linux it is simply too much of a headache.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.