5 Out of 11 Crashed Unity In Canonical's Study

dkd903 writes "Today the results of the Default Desktop User Testing for Ubuntu 11.04 was published by Canonical's Rick Spencer. The test was done using 11 participants from different backgrounds to test the new Unity interface that Ubuntu 11.04 will have." Though the Unity interface in the upcoming Ubuntu is a moving target, the bad news from this test is that about half of the testers managed to crash it.

Comments

Surprising

[hawguy]

That's pretty surprising, I only manged to use it for 10 minutes before I ditched it and moved to Kubuntu.

Re:Surprising

[ammorais]

That's pretty surprising, I only manged to use it for 10 minutes before I ditched it and moved to Kubuntu.

In my case this week and after trying the preview of 11.4 on my main desktop,I went a little further than you from switching to kubuntu, and went back to Gentoo, since the only kde distros I've liked were Gento and Arch.
The only think I missed is ubuntu-one, that was the real reason that I've used ubuntu in the first place, to sync with my laptops, but I'm on the other hand I'm happy to use kde again.
I've had to go back to my old ssh/cron/rsync system to sync my computers but that's ok. For reference I use something like this as my Ubuntu-one alternative:

rsync -avz "/home/username/ubuntu_one" -e 'ssh -p [portnumber]' username@mydyndns:/home/username/ubuntu_one

Re:Surprising

[grumbel]

Not only it the whole interface very touchscreen-phone-ish, the thing has its own tie-in to canonical's new App Store/Android Market/OVI wannabe as well.

Yep, thats the thing that is puzzling me. What the fuck has a touchscreen interface to do on my desktop machine (its default in Natty for some stupid reason)? Its not that the interface is completely awful, it looks like it would fit well enough on a small-screen touch device, but on my large screen desktop with no touch none of the changes make any sense at all, its a downgrade in basically every way and that dock/launcher thing is completely incapable of handling more then a few apps before it gets completely overfilled and completely unusable.

On top of that Unity is full of bugs, when running with a multi-monitor setup the whole thing was completely unusable, the GUI was stretched out over both screens and full of graphical glitches, even switching multi-monitor stuff of didn't fix the glitches. I was happy that I even managed to get the machine back in a running state so broken was that thing (removing overlay-scrollbar liboverlay-scrollbar-0.1-0 unity ubuntu-netbook did the trick).

Re:Surprising

[CynicTheHedgehog]

Ditto. I hated Unity as soon as I started playing with it, and felt no different an hour later.

I was frustrated with KDE from 4.0 - 4.5, but 4.6.2 seems to have addressed most of my gripes.

Re:Surprising

[jefu]

I think I looked at it for a minute or two, clicked on a couple things, then fired up synaptic and loaded awesome. If awesome hadn't been available I might well have opted for twm, it is indeed that bad.

Re:Surprising

[greg1104]

You recycled it? That was supposed to into the compost pile! Don't you know anything about how to treat the environment?

Re:Surprising

[Nexus7]

Tried installing KDE desktop on a running Ubuntu machine the other day, it wouldn't start up from kdm. Do they have a QT-based Synpatic and a NetworkManager interface that works as well as nm-applet yet?

Sample size

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems kinda low.

Re:Sample size

[NotBorg]

You don't need a large sample size to prove a bit of software is buggy. You need a large sample size to prove that it is not that buggy. If all eleven people found no problems and loved it, then you could say that the sample size is too small to be relativly sure aobut the quality of the software.

Re:Sample size

[TheLink]

If they weren't hackers and just normal users using it "normally" it's pretty damning.

It's like 5 out of 11 people trying out a TV and having it crash/hang for them. That is terrible. Just imagine what else would be broken (just not crashing).

unity would be crap even if only 1 out of 11 experienced a crash.

1 out of 100 = ready if the boss yells "ship or we die".

1 out of 1000 = you're starting to get to the region where the hardware (other people's bugs) is more likely to crash your stuff.

Re:Sample size

[clemdoc]

What's more interesting: The count of crashes or the count of "stuff working as expected"?
With 5/11 crashes, the glass is not only "half empty", the other half is red wine spilled all over the tablecloth. And that's a bitch to get rid of.

Not that surprising, actually

[Taco Cowboy]

Unity isn't stable, it hasn't reached the "production level" yet.

Anyone know what's the reason behind Ubuntu rushing Unity out, before it's ready?

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[Anonymous Coward]

spoken like somebody who's never done graphics programming at all, let alone a desktop environment. window managers are harder to program than kernel hacking, especially when it's not yet mature (just look to the old days of red hat and you'll find ridiculously unstable kernels and that product had been out for years).

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[walshy007]

window managers are harder to program than kernel hacking

Bullshit, with kernel programming if you bollocks something up the entire machine can hang and there is very little comparatively in the way of things you can do to debug the thing. Worse yet, given a bad hardware design some hardware makes it possible to brick things.

Makes window manager programming look like childsplay.

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[nzac]

Unity isn't stable, it hasn't reached the "production level" yet.

Anyone know what's the reason behind Ubuntu rushing Unity out, before it's ready?

Because if Gnome 3 turns out to be popular it would be DOA.

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[greg1104]

Ubuntu rushes everything out before it's ready; it's impossible for a 6 month release cycle to do anything else. This whole Unity experiment is no surprise to anyone who was using in Ubuntu in 2008, when the at the time barely working PulseAudio was integrated into the "Long-Term Release" 8.04. And by LTS, they mean "supported until the developers are whipped to start working on their next 6 month deadline the week after shipping".

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[Daengbo]

I know everyone hated Pulse being added so quickly during the cycle, but there were two real travesties in that release: the Flash/Pulse compatibility layer was pulled last minute, causing all those hangs, crashes, and other problems; and F-Spot had a crasher bug on second launch, which meant that the app was unusable.

Ubuntu should have pushed off the release date a couple of months, just like they did for 6.06LTS and just like they should do this time around. Heck, this release matters less, since it's not even an LTS. Maybe they should just leave it in perpetual beta and release 11.10 as a finished product.

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[greg1104]

Adjust the release schedule just because of bugs? Never again. Besides, Ubuntu is always in perpetual beta now. I think they're trying to be like Google or something.

For me a stable release implies a focus and quantity of backports into that version that I have never seen Ubuntu do. I'm curious since I wasn't following those two: were the "travesties" (agreed) you mention in LTS 8.04 fixed to your satisfaction at any point? Or were you forced onto a new version for things to work?

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[Daengbo]

The bugs I mentioned were only on 64-bit, but they should have been release stoppers. The F-Spot bug got fixed in time for the .1 release. It was then that I said Ubuntu became a "wait for SP1" distro. The Pulse problem never really resolved itself in 8.04.

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[perryizgr8]

anybody know why ubuntu is even bothering to develop unity? cause it seems like a shameless rip-off of osx. i'd just use a mac instead of this half-baked pice of shit.

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[symbolset]

It's a throwback. They were looking for Windows Vista levels of reliability, and accidently found them.

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[Lobachevsky]

Um, people do kernel programming in virtual machines. And there's plenty of debugging tools around VMs. I know, I write kernel modules.

Also, kernels can mask interrupts and ensure a function is run "single threaded" (no context-switching out), which dramatically reduces the complexity. Not every function is set up like that, many are thread-safe, but drivers are usually written to be uninterrupted and access private memory, so they don't worry about interaction with other cpus/cores/kthreads.

Both are hard, kernel programming is hard, and the massive multi-threading in window managers is hard.

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[udippel]

Because if Gnome 3 turns out to be popular it would be DOA.

I can promise you: no need to worry about that

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[grizzifus]

Just speculating, but I'd guess it's because Ubuntu is currently right in the middle of the LTS cycle.

For those people unaware, every fourth Ubuntu release is a Long Term Support version. They're a bit like milestone versions if that makes any sense, plus the obvious longer support duration. By releasing Unity now it gets two releases worth of use before it hits an LTS. If it means having a less stable release now to ensure that the next LTS is solid then in my option it's a good move. I'm not saying I'm completely happy with the idea, even if my speculation is correct it still seems wrong to have the Unity release have conform to some release cycle. But honestly, if I were running things, I expect I'd be making the exact same decision.

I suppose I'm in two minds about it :S

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[lennier1]

Sounds more like Windows Me

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[Feltope]

Besides, Ubuntu is always in perpetual beta now.

Isn't this the excuse we hear from almost every piece of software on linux. It is in beta is the most overused excuse for poor documentation and programs being haphazardly put together with no polish.

I am not above it, I have created many little tools I only use on my local lan that will never be released.
It gets pretty old hearing anything associated with linux say this.

Notes:
1) Yes windows is better in this area. (though not by much).
2) A few (ubuntu/red hat/openSuSe/etc) have done a great job polishing up linux for the end user experience.

Question, Why are the Ubuntu guys getting all crazy and releasing stuff before it is ready? Do they have some direct monetary competition that I am not aware of? (very possible)

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[ArsonSmith]

I heard they're doing a promotion where if you have a crash they refund you the purchase price.

Seems fair to me and maybe it'll help them fix bugs.

Sure wish Microsoft would do something like that.

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you haven't figured this out yet. All of the releases between LTS's are really beta's. They don't get enough testing during the development cycle, so they use the bug reports generated from the between LTS releases to further polish the distro. It's not really much different than how fedora, or opensuse releases are testbed platforms for Redhat's and the company-formally-known-as-Novell's client software they include in their enterprise products. They need to release Unity now, otherwise their won't be enough testing and fine-tuning done in order to get everything ready for the next LTS. Slipping the ship date for non-LTS releases isn't to much of a problem, but they have to make the LTS dates on time.

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[johnsnails]

Lets not forget that Gnome-Shell was scheduled for 10.10 (The perfect 10) but Mark decided to delay it. http://techie-buzz.com/foss/ubuntu-10-10-will-not-have-gnome-shell.html Although i agree just because he correctly delayed it the first time, does not mean he correctly has decided to include it this time. KDE 4.0 all over again. Although with gnome it looks boring and we are not prepared to put up with a dysfunctional DE for 2 years.

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[ailnlv]

riskier does not mean harder, you've clearly never done either kernel hacking or graphics programming, so would you kindly do some research and stop talking out of your ass?

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[gnud]

KDE's release wasn't really that disasturous. They released their platform, which was pretty ready to start building on top of.
Now naturally all the "ultra-hip", "cutting edge" distros had to include the incomplete KDE 4 desktop, instead of the stable 3.5 one, when they could have just shipped the libraries; they can live side-by-side.

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[fwarren]

Unity isn't stable, it hasn't reached the "production level" yet.

Anyone know what's the reason behind Ubuntu rushing Unity out, before it's ready?

In a nutshell. Canonical has managed to find hardware partners like DELL that have been wooed by the siren song of Unity. So now Canonical has half a dozen parters who are willing to carry devices with Unity on it. The dream of smart-phone, tablet, netbook, laptop, to desktop, all with the same OS, all with the same interface, all with the same support team to handle all of those devices. These companies have drank the kool-aid.

Considering the beta reviews of the Unity netbook edition back in July/August last year, Canonical should have known that Unity needed a lot of work. To make it the primary interface, and make it require untested compiz plugins with hardware that has compiz support, and to do it in the next 6 to 9 month time frame was not the best idea they ever had.

The problem Canonical now faces is that any back peddling they do on Unity will be taken as a vote of no confidence by their parters and threatens their ability to ever convince them to use Unity again. If they can't make a go of it now. They just as well do away with Unity, because they have no chance of convincing the major pc sales/hardware companies of using it ever again. So with the choices of a) using Unity 3D b) using Unity 2D or c) using the standard Gnome 2 interface. They are going to barrel on ahead with Unity 3D.

What they should have done is worked out the Unity 2D interface and bugs. Once that was solid and running on all hardware in time for 11.11. Then they could worry about completely trick out Unity 3D. It should have been experimental and Canonical should be gathering information on what hardware it seems to run best on. That way when 12.04LTS, Unity 2D would be rock solid, and Unity 3D support being pretty good. Then folks who wanted to switch to Unity 3D could do so. Maybe even make Unity 3D the default for 12.11 or 13.04. But by all means not until all the bugs are worked out and it is just about impossible to crash it.

I am afraid they are going to do the same thing with Wayland. Push over to using Wayland instead of X. There will be a few good Wayland drivers, plenty of junk Wayland drivers, and a buggy and crappy layer to make X apps work with Wayland. Then Canonical will begin the push to get developers to port their programs from X to Wayland. I just don't see this working out good. I do however, eventually see Ubuntu screaming and raging like a spoiled child. With Wayland, Canonical is betting that 60% of the folks out there in 2014 will have computers made after 2010 and 95% computers made after 2008 with supported video cards.

Meanwhile developers will be left with the choice of staying with X and serving Debian/Fedora/Slackware and everyone else perfectly, and Ubuntu somewhat subpar or porting to Wayland and abandoning all the other distros out there. I am not sure how they are going to get a team who does all of their development work on Debian or Fedora to drop X and target Wayland just because Canonical says it is the way to go.

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[tixxit]

Compiz delegates pretty much all standard WM tasks to plug-ins... including "theming".

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[rrohbeck]

If you want something stable, use Debian. Yes it looks old fashioned compared to Ubuntu. But it works.

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[F.Ultra]

To be honest Pulse did work, it was all the other software that wasn't yet compatible that was the trouble. Even so, I had personally no problems with sound in 8.04 myself.

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[Sam Douglas]

Did the PulseAudio problem ever get solved? I remember putting up with problems in 8.04 (ended up hacking out PulseAudio I think), 8.10, 9.04 (IIRC it worked okay-enough) and then having PulseAudio problems on 9.10. That was the last straw, and my laptop has been running Sid since. At least that's reasonably stable.

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[Daengbo]

Pulse works well now. 8.04 was an awful release, though, and should have been delayed.

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[lpq]

So you do your 'massive multi-threading' window manager in a VM, and step through complicated functions ensuring they only run single threaded...or am I missing something?

Sorry, but devices in kernel space generate interrupts asynchronously. They come in 'whenever'. In window managers, there are no such things because all the asynchronous events are filtered by the kernel and only are passed through to the window manager WHEN the WM has programmed them to.

Sorry, but a WM doesn't have the real-time inputs from HW devices.

Depending on the WM, it may not be multi-threaded at all but done in one huge dispatch loop.

Performance tests show that a dispatch loop often beats performance of an interrupt driven system -- but in a kernel you don't have that luxury.

So if an WM is "massive multi-threaded" and complicated, it's because it was designed to be massively complicated -- not as a requirement of its function. In other words, some might call it 'bad design' if it is unnecessarily complex.

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[Sam Douglas]

Well, that took long enough.

Re:Not that surprising, actually

[walshy007]

Call me paranoid but I would not trust a VM for testing code thats intended use is for the raw metal. While I'm sure there is plenty of code where it would not matter if it was tested on a vm or real hardware it seems to me why test something in a situation it isn't going to be used for in real life.

That's not the worst about it

[Anonymous Coward]

Crashing is not the worst thing about it, but the fact that it is a worse interface than Gnome 2. It's not terrible like Gnome 3, but feels like a step backwards nonetheless.

Re:That's not the worst about it

[MBGMorden]

Indeed. KDE isn't looking much better either IMHO. It hasn't felt "right" to me in years (I used it primarily up until the early 3.0 days).

At this point I'm looking at switching to XFCE.

Re:That's not the worst about it

[Spewns]

It's not terrible like Gnome 3

I was skeptical about Gnome 3 too until I started using it. (Fedora alpha)

Re:That's not the worst about it

[w0mprat]

Frankly Unity has (or had) some promise - I've seen many people move their taskbar or dock to the left hand side of the screen, and they all swear by it. I do this now myself for heavy multitasking. It is an easier more natural way to switch apps than the universal default of the bottom of the screen.

As someone who spends a lot of time on a linux desktop, unity is pretty awful, it just can't do the obvious functional things that other interfaces can, ignoring stablity, it's just no where near well sorted KDE/Gnome + docks app of your choice, or even but OSX dock or the Windows 7 taskbar. Unity seems to have been designed without a good look at how of how the other paradigms do their thing.

Gnome has it's flaws, but it works pretty well, and if dropped for this garbage Canonical may have a problem.

Re:That's not the worst about it

[udippel]

Did it come with a pipe for you?

Re:That's not the worst about it

[tomhudson]

Alt+F2 (run command) is even cleaner, executes faster, and is a more minimalistic launcher.

It doesn't mean that it's what people want all the times. If you want lean and fast, you use xfce, lxde, or enlightenment (how times change. I remember when enlightenment used to be considered fair game for the bloatware title ... :-). However, when you get fed up with mousing around, it sure is handy.

Canonical admits that Unity was supposed to be for netbooks (a dying market, eaten alive by low-end laptops, tablets, and smartphones) and "other touchscreen devices" - a market being divided between Android and Apple.

Unity is designed for netbooks and related touch-based devices. It includes a new panel and application launcher that makes it fast and easy to access preferred applications, such as the browser, while removing screen elements that are rarely used in mobile and netbook computing.

1. Remove the parts needed for a good desktop.
2. Make it the default desktop
3. FAIL!

But it's Ubuntu - the fanbois (mostly people who never tried another linux distro) will be along momentarily to "re-educate" anyone who points out the truth. The usual crap-flood warning is now in effect.

Re:That's not the worst about it

[Draek]

1. Remove the parts needed for a good desktop.
2. Make it the default desktop
3. FAIL!

You forgot to mention that the "desktop" in step 1 refers to a "desktop computer" while the "desktop" in step 2 refers to the OS' default UI and so it's not as illogical as you make it sound to be: they're simply prioritizing giving netbooks and mobile users a good user experience over users of fully-equipped desktop PCs that already have plenty of distros catering to them.

But it's Ubuntu - the fanbois (mostly people who never tried another linux distro) will be along momentarily to "re-educate" anyone who points out the truth. The usual crap-flood warning is now in effect.

It's kind of sad how many people confuse "[their] opinion" with "the truth". You are of course entitled to it, but just because someone holds a different one doesn't mean he's a "fanboi" out to "re-educate" you.

Re:That's not the worst about it

[tomhudson]

Ubuntu managed to get Dell to dance with them for a bit, but extremely high return rates killed that, and the netbook market has since been eaten by a grue. The predictions of sales going through the roof were replaced by the reality of them dropping to the single digits - and then continuing to fall.

The "other mobile devices" would be smartphones and tablets - the same devices that spelled the end for netbooks. Apple and Android are the only real contenders right now. QNX (RIM's Playbook) is pretty much a disappointment for now, and HPs WebOS is MIA for another 8 months, an eternity in consumer electronics. The MickeyNokia phones won't be out until 2012, and Microsoft still doesn't have a tablet solution, and Microsoft's other WP7 partners are making their money with their Android offerings, not WP7 (Windows Phone market share, already in the single digits, dropped by half after WP7 was released).

So just where does Unity fit in? The only other devices are regular laptops and the desktop PC, and these usability tests show that it's without a doubt not ready at all. 6 out of 11 (not 5, if you read the actual test data) - including an experienced Ubuntu user - ended up crashing it during the 1-hour test. And this is something that they want to release in 2 weeks?

The truth is simple:
1. Their own limited testing shows it is clearly not ready for release, if more than half crash it in less than an hour;
2. There is no interest, (or room, for that matter) in the tablet or smartphone market for a Unity-based device, and if there were, this would not be the Unity they're looking for.

We see this in business all the time - a company pins their hopes on a particular project, and can't bring themselves to admit that the market has simply moved on, so they continue to throw good money and resources after bad.

The limited test proves the UI is confusing to the user, which kind of defeats the purpose of a UI. forget the bugs - Unity needs to be re-thought. Also, how did they come up with a process that lets a project get this close to release date (2 weeks to go) without discovering such basic issues? It looks like a case of "we don't need to test the concepts behind this stuff, we know what we're doing, users will see our brilliance and bow down to us". Sounds like they got the GNOME disease ...

Then again, this is the same Canonical that brought in Matt Assay with all sorts of fan-fare (the same Matt Assay who then went on to say here that he's started using Ubuntu after he found out he had the job and he thinks it's great - instead of hiring someone who was a user before his wallet motivated him), and who didn't say much of anything when he (predictably) abandoned ship later that year.

It's the same decision process, and Shuttleworth has to accept responsibility for it. So far, I don't think he has. He should look less to those who agree with him, and more to his critics, and then take a long hard look in the mirror. I'm not questioning that he's dedicated to what he's doing, but clearly, the process is broken right at the top.

Re:That's not the worst about it

[heson]

I too was sceptical at first, now I truly hate it. For thise who remember the exact name and spelling of every program its probably OK, I navigate menus like I navigate the supermarket, if the brand I'm after is out I can easily select the second choice that sits right beside it.

Them new DE's, man

[caius112]

I personally find all Unity, GNOME 3, and KDE 4.6 to be unuseable. What the hell went wrong? Why reinvent the motherfucking wheel as clumsily as possible over and over again?

Re:Them new DE's, man

[hawguy]

I agree with Unity and Gnome3, but I don't find KDE 4.6 to be any less usable than Gnome 2 (especially after I switched the launcher to classic style). What about KDE do you find to be unusable?

I really wanted to like xfce, but ran into problems with xfce in Natty beta 1 where the window manager would hang occasionally. I'll try it again after Natty is out of beta.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[caius112]

OK, you're right, KDE is by far the most useable of the three once you've disabled all the "semantic desktop" and "desktop activities" bullshit. But out of the box, it's just as jarring as the rest for me.

Of course, the mere fact that you can disable shitty features is a rarity these days. What happened to the Linux philosophy of personalization?

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Osgeld]

no, it sucks period, its unstable, stuck in windows 2000 land broken vomit and its nothing else

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Tanuki64]

Least common denominator. The more idiots use a system the more it has to be dumbed down.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[msuarezalvarez]

No, they realized (a long time ago) that writing a desktop targeted at people that do care to personalize their desktops in the sense you have in mind is a pointless exercise: they are far too few in the big picture and way too uninteresting.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[93 Escort Wagon]

No, they realized (a long time ago) that writing a desktop targeted at people that do care to personalize their desktops in the sense you have in mind is a pointless exercise: they are far too few in the big picture and way too uninteresting.

Not to mention they all switched to Enlightenment roughly 10 years ago...

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Tanuki64]

And why don't those just use Windows? Hardly any personalisation. Mainstream system. And you cannot even say Linux is cheaper since Windows is preinstalled on most systems anyway. Linux with GNOME or KDE will always be an inferior Windows replacement.

 

Re:Them new DE's, man

[degeneratemonkey]

There's nothing preventing you from customizing your Linux environment as it suits you, however in an interest to cater to the tastes of less technically-inclined users it's important to reduce the perceived level of available customization. This is the paradox of choice. As the number of available options increases, peoples' ability and willingness to make good decisions generally decreases.

I am not a fan of Apple's platforms, but there is a reason why they've become so successful. This is that reason.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[westyvw]

Choice is what I like, Unity is driving me crazy because it seems so locked down (or devoid of anything interesting all together). I agree with the ability to personalise philosophy.

KDE still rocks for me. Activities is a great concept and actually works well. If you dont want it, dont use it no big deal. Like classic menus? Use them. Like a desktop or several "workspaces"? Its your choice (or the distro managers for the default appearance).

Re:Them new DE's, man

[martin-boundary]

This is the paradox of choice. As the number of available options increases, peoples' ability and willingness to make good decisions generally decreases.

Yet a person's willingness to make decisions is completely orthogonal to whether a system allows choices to be made or not. The Gnome people are taking the choice paradox much too literally, by having the desktop environment mimic their model of a user's brain.

What's needed is a way to reduce apparent complexity, not actual complexity. Kind of like when looking towards the horizon, things become smaller and less detailed the farther they are. That's helpful as it reduces perception noise, but if necessary, you can move towards some thing of interest and the details will reappear the closer you get.

Linux desktops ought to be apparently simple, but actually complex if the user decides to focus on some aspect more closely. Instead, our software usually is either too simple, or too bewildering, or offers two modes: too simple (beginner), and too bewildering (expert).

Re:Them new DE's, man

[poetmatt]

there's always a nice, simple, straightforward command line

Re:Them new DE's, man

[muuh-gnu]

So who is now Gnome3's and Unity's target group? Idiots overwhelmed with Windows and OS X? I dont remember that the race for Desktop domination was meant to be a race to the bottom.

Gnome3 & Unity are so unusable for everyday work (from a business point of view), that they do not even seem to be desktop oriented any more at all. They both seem to bet on a (appleized) smartphone & tablet dominated future and want to get there as soon as possible.

The demise of Gnome2 will absolutely KILL desktop linux used in businesses, at least in mine. Deprecating the familiar Gnome2 workflow for no other reason than some visual art designer masturbation reeks of irresponsibility towards existing customers and _will_ have consequences. Leaving Windows and trying Linux on the desktop on a larger scale was a bet not every business was willing to make. Punishing those who did by arbitrarily destroyng familiar desktops environments will no nothing but prove linux skeptics right and linux enthusiasts wrong and seal its fate on business desktops on years to come.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[marsu_k]

Agreed on activities - it took a while for me to get my head around the concept, but at least for me it works very well. Like having virtual desktops within your virtual desktops (insert appropriate "yo dawg" here).

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Daengbo]

Stay with 10.04 until 2013. Or just log into classic mode. The menu is there. Workspaces are in the same place. All the old underpinnings are the same. No need to worry. If you really want a special workflow, start with minimal, add a window manager and a dock or panel, script it as a preseed file, mirror the repo in house, and keep your workflow virtually forever.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Gordonjcp]

I don't particularly care about customising stuff. I want to get on with actually using my computer. It took me several days of digging around to get Unity into a state where it was just about usable. The first sticking point was the nauseating drop shadow around the focused window - instant eyestrain! Here's a hint, guys - big blurry things make your eyes think they're not focused properly and they go crazy trying to pull it into focus. The utterly retarded idea of sticking the window buttons on the wrong side, that had to go - why break a convention set with just about every WIMP environment since the dawn of time (or at least bitmapped graphics hardware)?

Okay, so what else was broken? Well, there's no weather applet in Unity. "ZOMG JUST LOOK OUT OF THE WINDOW LOL" Yes, great, but I spend a lot of time working in windowless blast-proof machinery rooms and I like to see what I'm missing.

Lastly - and the most important thing - is the stupid sidebar thing. So there's a strip of little indistinguishable squares. If you mouse over them, the title of the app pops up. Are they apps that are open, or apps that can be opened? No way of telling. Double click one. An application launches. Double click it again. Some windows shrink and whirl around the screen, but it doesn't open another instance off the application. Right click? "Add to Favourites..." Okay, so another square appears. Double-click that - shrink, whirl. How the hell do you open more than one instance of the same app? *Middle-click* one of the squares. Oh, okay, so on my laptop, that's pressing both left and righ click at the same time? No, because middle-click chording is disabled by default.

Oh, and if you put a window too close to the strip with the squares, it gets scared and hides. Then you've got to move all your windows to get it back. Yeah, that's a really discoverable interface, guys...

Re:Them new DE's, man

[smash]

Yes, agreed.

I'm waiting for the dust to be blown off windowmaker, and more people to realise that they can write cross platform stuff for GNUstep/OS X.

Windowmaker plus a decent file manager / dock would give Linux a powerful, usable desktop. Unfortunately the past few years I've seen of linux desktop "development" is madly rushing to re-implement whatever useless crap Microsoft has tacked onto the latest version of Windows, or trying to look like Aqua.

The Free NIX desktop used to be BETTER because of innovation that was happening in the free software world. Lately it's just playing catchup, and poorly.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[gilesjuk]

Maybe the developers don't understand K.I.S.S. and "if it's not broken don't fix it". All they needed were refinements and improvements, mainly around appearance as they did look a little ugly in places.

Also, with the accusation that open source tends to copy the interfaces of Windows and OSX I guess they were trying to do something different?

Re:Them new DE's, man

[David Gerard]

Ahahaha, they want to remove classic mode for 11.10!

At that point I'll be switching to Mint or Debian Sid.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[m50d]

They let "usability experts" design them.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[gilesjuk]

The more configuration options you add the more testing is required and the greater the chance of an option being broken.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Billly Gates]

True with that.

I switched back to Windows. Before I get modded as a troll I have to say I still like Linux on the server and I am serious and not troll baiting. I love all the scripts, apis, and programs that Linux has.

I saw the writing on the wall with Fedora 15 after I left Ubuntu due to the lack of stability and quality software. I left Windows because of beta quality products that were terrible. Linux is less stable in my experience on the desktop with the exception of Gnome 2.8. I saw the writting on the wall again with hardware based html 5 of all the new browsers ... with the exception of a lack of Linux support.

My 3 year old laptop running Fedora 13 can not even handle some sites under Linux. Chrome is getting much better but most hardware rendering is still only available on Windows.

Gnome 3 and KDE 4 are terrible. Sun donated millions of dollars of R&D into Gnome and Opendesktop and it is stupid to throw it all away. Why? Menu's work. You may want to reduce the amount of mouse clicks to find things. For some reason Gnome decided to increase the mouse clicks for the same task?? Lets now look at the hassle to simply switch a workspace. Why is that hidden? Infact in Unity why do I have to keep clicking around to see all apps?? Ugh

Compiz with newer widgets with more functionality is where Gnome should have went.

I have virtualbox handy for Windows 7 and will look forward to using it to run Postgresql and some Lamp. For me I now use Windows and I feel like garbage for turning back 10 years of my life but I do not care what people think of as stable 10 years ago or cool. I want something that works. Seriously Firefox4, IE 9, and Chrome scream and you can run all the Unix apps with Virtualbox or a win32 version.

Lets hope gnome 3.2 fixes this and I may just come back but there is no shame of switching to MacOSX or Windows. Today's gui's remind me of poor Netscape's demise of 4.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[epyT-R]

I think the point is that these new environments are causing people who usually do not do much customization to HAVE to do a lot of it.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[danbuter]

I wish I had mod points, because I'd mod you way up. The Gnome Shell devs should all be fired. They are the reason for Unity, since SHELL is so awful.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[jimicus]

UI design is hard, and it's something seldom taught in a lot of CS courses (or if it is, it's entirely optional). Which means there's no shortage of developers, but developers who can design something you'd actually want to use are pretty thin on the ground.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[aix tom]

Actually, recently I have found that there is *a lot* of movement in certain Linux DEs to be *less* configurable than windows.

The two things that really annoyed me were first the non-configurable UI changes in Ubuntu, and then the impossibility to turn off the stupid trash can in XFCE. What annoyed me most about the latter was the "We won't make it configurable to turn it of because every user in the world expects there to be a trash" attitude when the point was discussed in the forums. When even 90% of the WINDOWS people I know completely disable the trash.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[MBGMorden]

That comment sums the current situation up about as much as I could hope to. Not being able to customize Gnome 2 was fine for me because it worked in a sane way the way I expected it to. Change that without giving me the option to tweak it means I'm going looking for something else - bitching and moaning the whole way :).

As I mentioned in another post, I'm likely going to XFCE after this. I always have used it on minimalist installs anyways.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[aix tom]

There is a pretty simple solution to that:

1) Make everything configurable via config files
2) Only include a small level of that configuration in the GUI config tools.

Or you could even have a "customization" level slider in the config tools that shows/hides more options based on how deep you want to configure.

Or like Firefox, where some configuration is in the Edit->Preferences menu, but ALL configuration is on the about:config page.
Or even like Windows, where you have some configurations that are nowhere visible in the GUI, that you can adjust them by directly editing the registry.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[marcello_dl]

You clearly don't value how booting a different system and find the familiar way of working mostly there saves in term of saving time and training.

Lots of desktops are still on xp and old office, migrating them to linux instead of win7/8 is a breeze, I see 3ghz single core machines from 6 years ago pretty speedy with debian (aptosid xfce)

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used every major.minor version of KDE from 3.2 to 3.5 and 4.0 to 4.5 and this is what I find to be unusable about KDE:

I first installed Linux with kde 3.2 on a 1.5GHz athlon with 256M of pc-133 ram and an nVidia fx5200 video card. When I first installed 4.6, the system had been upgraded to a 2.4Ghz amd64, 1G ddr-533 and an nVidia 7300gt. Now it's a dual-core athlon II, 4G ddr-533, and a gt-260 video card. Primary activities are and always have been console, file management, web browsing, and text editing. Consoles are consoles, and Konsole has never failed me regardless of version, but the others have.

With 3.x, konqueror was an effective file manager - I could open a directory with roughly 5000 files, it would seize for ~1 second reading the directory list, and would then generate thumbnails (small .jpg files) at a rate of over 100 per second. While it was doing this, I could smoothly scroll up the window up and down. This was true in every version of kde 3. In kde 4.x, every version, all of what I just said is false despite having a faster processor and enormously superior memory bandwidth. In early versions of 4.x, not only did konqueror seize but the whole system ground to a standstill for nearly 15 seconds just listing the directory and putting up blank pre-thumbnail icons. In 4.4/4.5 this has been reduced to 1-2 seconds, taking merely twice as long with 4 times the cpu resources available. The preview in 4.x is utterly unusable compared to 3.x - it randomly forgets to preview a lot of video files, and rather than going in an orderly way, it seems to fill in randomly. And again, even the new versions take longer than 3.x did on old-ass hardware.

On kde 3 with the 256M system, I once ran a browser test that began opening lots of windows. By the time I decided it was going really wrong, there were 146 windows open - 146 instances of Konqueror - and the desktop still responded well enough that I could begin closing them. On kde4, if you run out of physical memory, you can basically just ctl-alt-bksp because you'll die of old age before it finishes swapping. On 3.x, I found I could have a browser with 4-6 tabs open before the hdd first began to churn, and after that it remained responsive except that accessing a tab you hadn't accessed for a long time took a few seconds to recall from hdd cache. Once I upgraded to 1G ram, the limits were effectively lifted because I rarely open more than a few dozen tabs. On 4.x with the 1G system, I was very frustrated to find that memory use had quadrupled and performance had quartered - opening more than a few tabs choked it to death. I've since moved to Firefox because konqueror in 4.x is unusable as a web browser, to the point of randomly failing to redraw pages.

I could go on along these lines, but it's the same thing again and again - kde 4's multimedia framework and widget set are unbelievably slow, even if you're not using one byte of hdd cache. On my new system mplayer (or kmplayer, which is just a wrapper that provides a window to an mplayer process) can handily play half a dozen ntsc-resolution videos simultaneously. I try using kde's dragon player and half the time it coughs and sputters and drops tons of frames with a single one, especially if you dare to do anything else. To say nothing of it trying to decode 720 or higher.

There's only 4 primary applications that come with kde 4 that I really like to use - konsole, kontact, konversation and kwrite. Which all have in common "text mode: interactive graphics not required for use." mp3blaster, mplayer and xpdf cover the rest without the bloat. I've got kde 4 setup to look mostly like 3.x except prettier - at which point the only problem is that you'd have to spend $5000 on the hardware to make it run decently. I've used kde for a long time, and I keep trying new versions of 4.x in the clearly delusional hope that it will improve; I've started looking at installing other desktop environments now - xfwm manages to be somewhat usable even on an ancient-vintage (Indy, 150MHz R5000, 160M ram, 2M vram) SGI machine, and I've been impressed with lxde on my laptop. If KDE is the most usable of unity/gnome 3/kde, we're truly in "one-eyed king in the land of the blind" territory.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Zephiris]

It's a bit of a daft argument to begin with, that programmers (especially linux programmers) shouldn't have to be making.

"We don't expect you'll care about the choice. We arbitrarily believe most people like this, and will most likely continue to prefer it until at least 2050. We're effectively removing the choice by not putting 5 lines of configuration code in to read it as a value instead of hard coding it."

If it's a simple option, especially one of user choice and customization, especially something simple...it makes no sense to hardcode the value, or automatically assume it has to be that way, instead of being able to support at minimum the basic things users want to do with their software.

On Linux, rather than choice within an app, the choice often comes between separate programs that mostly do the same things, but have different defaults or fixed values. The natural choice, when available, becomes the most flexible thing that still does what you actually want it to do.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[aix tom]

Depends on how you want to move away from "desktop+startbutton+taskbar", and what you replace them with.

1) I don't really use anything on the "desktop"
The desktop is completely invisible from perhaps 2 minutes after I log in to the time I log out again. Anything functionality "on the desktop" will thus also be pretty useless to me.

2) I *need* a way to start new programs.
There I have seen nothing that would beat the quick launch icons for 3-5 commonly used programs and the start menu for the seldom used programs, both in a place that is always visible and click-able.

3) I *need* to see quickly which applications are running, and a way to quickly switch to them, even when they are not visible at the moment.

If you call 2) "Startbutton", "Root Menu", "Application Foundry" or "Denise" I pretty much don't care, as long as it's always in the same place and always available, and I can put the application start triggers in the place I logically want them.

For 3) I want to see which applications are open (for a reasonable amount of perhaps 5 to 10 apps) with one glance, without having to click or hover over anything, or move any windows around.

For that I have seen *nothing* that beats (a) start button(s) and the task bar. Of course there might be "more powerful" things out there, but forcing them on people is like telling them to "use a plane, it's faster" when they just want a car to drive over to the next town.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Spewns]

There is a pretty simple solution to that:

1) Make everything configurable via config files
2) Only include a small level of that configuration in the GUI config tools.

Or you could even have a "customization" level slider in the config tools that shows/hides more options based on how deep you want to configure.

Or like Firefox, where some configuration is in the Edit->Preferences menu, but ALL configuration is on the about:config page.
Or even like Windows, where you have some configurations that are nowhere visible in the GUI, that you can adjust them by directly editing the registry.

That isn't a "simple" solution. Adding that much configurability adds a lot of complexity to code, and in the end you have something like KDE anyway - a gigantic mess of unnavigable menus and GUIs, all for configuration of every last piece of minutia. If you like that, then just use KDE.

But honestly, anyone looking for personalized, super configurable desktops shouldn't even be using GNOME (which I do) or KDE. They don't exist to serve that purpose. You should install something like Arch Linux, install X, and begin perusing all the standalone window managers, taskbars, docks, launchers, widgets, etc, and you can mix-and-match them in any way you want, until you have exactly what you like. That's the unique, personalized *nix experience - many independent programs working together. (And eventually, once you get sick of maintaining all that, you can come back to something like GNOME or Unity and appreciate how much easier it makes your computing life.)

Re:Them new DE's, man

[NoobixCube]

*middle click* Hmm... *middle click, middle click, middle click* Oh, that's cool *middle click* What? *middle click, middle click*

Three hours later: *middle click, middle click, middle click*

Re:Them new DE's, man

[jimicus]

It's not just the desktop. So much F/OSS software is like using the commercial equivalent circa 10 or 15 years ago it's absurd. Makes you wonder if the people who are developing it are not just reinventing the wheel, but the only wheel they could find to reinvent was hacked out of stone.

(FWIW, I'm quite a fan of F/OSS software and I'll happily concede there are F/OSS products out there that are easily equivalent to - if not streets ahead - of commercial equivalents.)

Re:Them new DE's, man

[aix tom]

>a gigantic mess of unnavigable menus and GUIs

Where? If you don't put in in the GUI, only in the config file, what's the big difference of hard-coding something in the code versus hard-coding the default in the config file? As a developer myself I don't see any. It may take perhaps 20 line of code or so to implement a config file, (which most apps have anyway) after that it' s pretty much the same work to write SOME_VAR = 20 versus SOME_VAR = getConfig("SOME_VAR"). It even makes debugging simpler. And the user that doesn't want to bother doesn't see it, the user that does care has a way to change it.

And nothing made my computing life simpler than switching to Arch Linux and LXDE two yeas ago. NEVER had to bother with any "where the hell did they hide $THING this time" after an update, because my configuration just stays the same.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[equex]

Shrug, I haven't had Windows crash on me since 9X days. Just admit it people, Win2K/XP is the pinnacle of OS releases ever. There is not one single Linux distro who can challenge the stability and usability of Windows. (in desktop land, I'm not saying for server usage!)

Re:Them new DE's, man

[hairyfeet]

You call HIM a troll and then follow it up with a mountain of FUD? I fix Windows 6 days a week and haven't seen a non hardware BSOD in YEARS. Viruses? The users install over 90% of them so how can anyone blame Windows for that. Gonna set them up in a walled garden and take away their choices? Having choice means having the ability to be an idiot too you know.

Meanwhile you say they'll have "a thousand times better than Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows."? Can I have some of what you're smoking? It must be some good shit. I have 7 year old XP installs in the field, never needed squat as far as work. Have you had more than a single upgrade deathmarch (thank Canonical for that) where drivers didn't shit themselves? How much time did you spend in CLI in the past 6 months? Once a day? Weekly? If the answer is I used CLI at all you have failed because consumers ain't touching that 70s era term shit.

So keep spreading the FUD friend. BTW you DO know accounts are free right? I'm sure I'll get the usual Linux TMs from Linux TM repository, such as "WorksForMe(TM)" and "StableABINonsense(TM)" which BTW if you read the argument AGAINST ABIs? It is totally political, with the writer going so far as to call those that refuse to give 100% of the drivers to the devs "leeches".

When your head of kernel development says, "The Linux kernel isn't designed, it grows like a virus" You know you are in serious fucking trouble. yeah Linus it is called an STD and would get your ass FIRED anywhere else. Can you imagine going to YOUR BOSS on a million dollar project and saying "Plan? We don't need no steenkin plan, we gonna grow like a virus LOL!"? Hell even OS fricking 2 has a stable ABI for the love of Pete!

The part that pisses me off as a retailer is the community could change it if they would quit accepting the shit sandwiches and DEMAND better. DEMAND that Linus quit acting like a douche, pick a gameplan and STICK TO IT, DEMAND that the 6 month deathmarch be replaced with a solid plan for fixing bugs, DEMAND that developers quit rushing out one buggy release after another, in short do what others would do by voting with their dollars.

Because frankly if you don't the ONLY places Linux is gonna be successful is those where there simply isn't any real money to be made by the big boys. As it is a full 2/3rds of servers being sold right now are being sold with...dum dum dum...Windows, and no unlike desktop one does NOT buy a Windows server to put Linux on, the new mobile devices like pads are being dominated by...dum dum dum...Apple, which have gotten "it just works" and intuitiveness down to an art, seriously wake up man. it isn't 1997 anymore, 70s era term shit and spend time trawling forums for fixes has got to DIAF if you want to compete. This is said as someone who would love to have your product on my shelves if I could get the damned thing to run for longer than a single update without dropping to CLI and forums just to get the drivers fixed.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[David Gerard]

Or KDE 4, which might not suck by then ;-)

(I used it around 4.2 and reduced the suck to tolerable levels with much effort, but it was really slow on the box in question. Machines should be faster by then.)

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop using your mouse. Unity is *all* about search. It is about keeping your hands on the keyboard. I am *so* much faster in Unity than I have been in any other DE (prob very similar to Gnome 3, I just haven't used it much).

Want to run Firefox? Here the keystroke sequence: Win Fir
Emacs? Win ema
Synaptic? Win syn
Switch Desktop? Ctrl-Alt
See all my desktops? Win-s

I hardly *ever* need to touch my mouse, and there are more new hotkeys that I don't even know yet. If anything Ubuntu needs to provide a method to discover the hotkeys easier.

As far as HW acceleration, I can't speak to that, because things are working fine for me.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Nerdfest]

Gnome has been getting more and more like an Apple interface as time goes by, but before v3, you could still customize just about everything. Gnome 3 (and Unity) both have some core features you can't modify or disable.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Anonymous Coward]

Giving Microsoft more credit: They always put a "Switch to classic view" toggle anywhere they changed the UI. Giving users the CHOICE.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Vegemeister]

Gnome Do stomps menus and docks with regard to 2). It's a lot like start menu search introduced in Windows Vista. I don't have to care about the menu hierarchy ever again.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Junta]

I don't see WinXP/2k as fundamentally more or less reliable compared to Linux. In Vista/7 land, I'll grant their graphics driver model affords better automagic recovery from a video driver crash.

Usability wise, I suspect either the bitching and moaning is not reflective of everyone, or Gnome2 will continue and displace Gnome3. KDE3 also has an ongoing port, but ultimately KDE4 has grown into a mostly viable desktop (though it irks me in various ways by default). In Windows land, for a user like me, there is *no* innate capability that matches window title search. That quickly became my must-have feature when I got it. I also like being able to move/resize windows from anywhere inside using a modifier-click.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Hatta]

If you want personalization, try Awesome. Write your own environment in Lua.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[jmitchel!jmitchel.co]

In a different direction... over and over and over again. He's not the only hard line Linux geek to throw up his hands and go to Windows.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[udippel]

That's your opinion and your way of working. Mine is partially the opposite: I don't want 'Start'-buttons, I don't want panels, I don't want borders. I want naked full screen stuff. With a bit of tweaking KDE does this for me, and I have yet to find a lighter alternative (which I would prefer!).
So I change between (running) applications with a mouse-over-edge, and start new applications and see the time, status, notifications, launchers, on a 2-D 'panel' called 'Dashboard' that I call with a mouse-over-edge. That is all fine for me, and all that I want. Gnome 3 neither Unity do this for me, so they are DOA.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Compaqt]

You don't, and much of the time, I don't either (I use Deskbar). But it's important for normal users and sometimes even for me (quick, what's the name of that neat file diff utility - "meld", but I can't remember that offhand because I don't use it all the time).

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Reservoir Penguin]

Installed Unity about 10 hours ago on a 11.6'' notebook. So far it's simply awesome, no crashed yet, very smooth. Recommended.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[LordLimecat]

Perhaps some of us no longer can get excited about spending hours just to make our desktop useable.

Personally, Gnome2 was always better than KDE for me because it was 90% of what I wanted, and I dont WANT to spend time customizing. Being able to is great, but sane defaults are really really important, and KDE seems to think "sane defaults" means "lets throw a bazillion features and widgets at the user, Im sure he will love them!".

Not having tried Unity, and not wanting to defend something I havent tried, Im really starting to think all the folks bashing Unity, Gnome 3, etc are really users who dont WANT a GUI, they want a graphical representation of a terminal.

Guess what, if Im using a mouse, I want simplicity. If I want power and complexity, I can always drop into a full screen terminal.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Osgeld]

wow deep man, "too stupid to use a computer" how the FUCK did YOU ever think of that one

simply brilliant trolling on your part, I applaud you

Re:Them new DE's, man

[LordLimecat]

Every time I see someone bemoan "Dumb Users being catered to", it makes me glad these people ARENT driving the GUI train in the Linux world. Guess what-- OSX and the iPad arent successful because they sport super powerful, customizeable GUIs. If you want Linux adoption to increase, you need a GUI that a 50 year old accountant can pick up and start learning without RTFA'ing.

GUIs are meant to be used, not researched, and if its not easy to use it is a failure. Its like you think "usability" is bad, or something.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[LordLimecat]

You praise Linux's customizeability and variety, but left Linux because you couldnt be bothered to install Gnome 2 on one of the newer distros? The mind boggles.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[cloudmaster]

All they need to do is come read Slashdot - everyone here knows exactly what's wrong with all the desktop environments. I guess everyone here took that one-hour UI course.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[jace_d]

Recently I've been noticing very well-thought-out trolls such as these targeted at anything open source.... might just be my paranoia.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[jimicus]

I doubt it. Everyone's got a different idea of what's wrong with the desktop environments.

Myself, I suspect that good UI design is an art. Which is a fancy way of saying "nobody really knows how to do it properly, there's little in the way of definitively right or wrong ways to do it so those involved just pretend they do and you wind up with a small number of artists and a vast number of art critics."

Re:Them new DE's, man

[amorsen]

In Windows, the active window must be on top, focus cannot follow mouse, there are no virtual desktops, and the application switcher is inconvenient.

To use Windows even somewhat effectively you need as many physical screens as you have active windows.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[kvvbassboy]

For the average joe it is a thousand times better than Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows.

It's not usable for people other than the average Joe, the same people who they get their funds from. Get out of your basement (whether mental or physical), and you will realize that. Windows XP to Windows 7 transition was a big enough deal, and the basic user interface remained the same for all practical purposes. You are telling me a radical interface revamp is going to be okay for people who actually matter?

Viruses alone, lost data, and instability plague the system.

GNU/Linux is decent, and it's got much better support for stable filesystems than windows for sure. People say that it's more secure, but whether this is because of better design or lesser market share, I don't know. But stability? lol... Even Linus knows that it's not stable. Moreover, this discussion has very little to do with GNU/Linux, but more with the industry funded desktop environments that runs on top of it. You just sound like an Ubuntu fanboy, who thinks Mark can do no wrong. Go back to your forums, and stop spreading FUD.

Disclaimer: I use Linux Mint for both home and work, and I am just an extremely pissed off user seeing how I will have a less than productive environment in 6 months.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Blakey Rat]

Two points:

1) Unless Microsoft wrote the bad drivers, "bad drivers crash Windows" is not Microsoft's fault.

2) Remove the bad drivers, you idiot, if you're getting 10-15 bluescreens a week. WTF!

Re:Them new DE's, man

[MrHanky]

I'm not trolling, I'm just speculating that since you're incapable of putting together a valid claim about KDE, you must also be pretty fucking stupid, and therefore perhaps also incapable of using a computer, something which may influence your judgement. I'm just being reasonable here.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[kvvbassboy]

I am not a designer, but I can understand is an art, and requires lots of "closed beta" experiments to bring out something new *and* polished on the table. To get some perspective, Microsoft spent millions and millions of dollars on the ribbon UI in MSOffice. What Gnome folks did, "We assume that people work like this, or should work like this, so lets make DE keeping that in mind".

Re:Them new DE's, man

[jedidiah]

> like using the commercial equivalent circa 10 or 15 years ago

That would be the essential features you need without a lot of bloat and nonsense or new UI's that make the developers look like acid junkies.

So "being stuck in the past" is not such a bad thing really.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[jedidiah]

Microsoft spent millions and still ended up with CRAP and p*ssed off customers.

Infact, it's safe to say that Microsoft, Apple, GNOME and Canonical are all proceeding from the same misguided "we know best" mentality.

No one seems to really pay attention to actual users anymore.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[quickOnTheUptake]

Image someone posted at Guru3D over a year ago: http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/2577/bild1yk.jpg [imageshack.us] Saying that Windows has no potential for customization is hardly accurate.

rofl. Wow, that was so customized I couldn't even tell it was windows!



That was sarcasm btw.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Knuckles]

Shortcuts: http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/unity-keyboard-mouse-shortcuts

Re:Them new DE's, man

[dbcad7]

Nobody is forcing anybody to upgrade are they ?... Time will pass, improvements will be made, bugs squashed, usability improved.. etc.. etc.. and eventually there will either be something you can use.. or something else will develop.. I really didn't care much for Gnome 2 at first, and preferred XFCE over it for a looong time.. it's only recently that I now spend more time using it than XFCE.. This is Linux man.. do what you want.. even if it's not upgrading.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[tftp]

That isn't a "simple" solution. Adding that much configurability adds a lot of complexity to code

In Windows it is solved by the registry. The OS and applications are highly configurable, but most of the settings are preset as defauts and written into the registry.

This creates a simple user experience (nothing to configure) and at the same time allows deeper configuration, if required, with a registry editor or with 3rd party tools like TweakUI. This also removes developer's dilemmas of what color scheme to pick, what fields to show and in what order, etc. etc. - just code it with parameters and let someone else to tweak details as they like. A good part of MS's KB articles deals with fixing things in Windows by editing registry; this is possible only because these keys in the registry exist in the first place. If they are hardcoded you need a patch. But the essence of this approach is that you don't need to ship with a GUI that can change all these settings. You don't even expect to need to change most of them. But when one day the customer calls and says "you know, 4 items in the 'recent files' list is not enough" you tell him to just change a certain value in the registry.

A registry and a bunch of .config files aren't too different, in general, but the registry benefits from the shared, reused and well debugged code that manages it. There are also advantages in fact that some parts of the registry are available to drivers through a kernel level API (this is much appreciated by driver developers.) And of course the registry supports concurrent, safe, atomic access by multiple processes (try that with .config files...)

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Derek Pomery]

Yeah, noticed that too. Also explaining away the latest MS fail.
Eh. Astroturfing is accepted PR practice these days.
Gotta give those interns *something* to do...

Or it could be a real public opinion change. Who knows anymore...

Re:Them new DE's, man

[quickOnTheUptake]

This depends on what you are configuring.

if (!getconfig("alternate_behavior){
//defualt behavior
function_1();
} else {
//other behavior
function_2();
};

function_2() might be a quite completxe chunkof code that no one wants to write.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[shutdown -p now]

Gnome3 & Unity are so unusable for everyday work (from a business point of view), that they do not even seem to be desktop oriented any more at all. They both seem to bet on a (appleized) smartphone & tablet dominated future and want to get there as soon as possible.

For all the talk about how tablets will make desktop (and with it, Windows domination) irrelevant any time now - which seems to be a very popular meme in FOSS-centric communities in particular - it's a reasonable bet.

Unless, of course, the talk itself has little grounding in reality...

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Just Some Guy]

So there's a strip of little indistinguishable squares. If you mouse over them, the title of the app pops up. Are they apps that are open, or apps that can be opened? No way of telling.

If done properly, I think that's the correct approach. Although it feels natural to open an app, use it, then close it, there's not clearly the best way to use a desktop these days. In general, why do you care if an app is already running, as long as clicking its icon opens a new window into it? I can see the need to stop or restart certain very memory-hungry apps, but other than that I'd just as soon leave everything running. I mean, if I needed to launch it once, there's a very good chance that I'll want to launch it again.

That's how OS X works. It felt very strange to me for a while, but now it seems like the right way to do things.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[shutdown -p now]

While I'm mainly a Windows user myself, it seems to me that, for someone with strong Linux background and corresponding habits, it makes much more sense to move to OS X rather than Windows if you find problems with stability and/or UI flakiness. It gives you both polished UI and solid, stable system, and yet it's still proper Unix with all that entails.

As for myself, my desktop will likely keep running Windows for the foreseeable future (if only because of games), but I found that I don't use Bootcamp on my newly purchased Macbook Air nowhere near as much as I thought I would. The interface can be made to look surprisingly similar to Win7 if desired, and it works just as smooth otherwise. And all apps that I'd miss from Windows just don't make much sense to use on a laptop as small and underpowered as that.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[shutdown -p now]

The problem is that, when you start reimplementing something, you usually begin by copying the state of the art as it is today... but it takes a while to make a decent copy, especially for the bigger projects, and especially with FOSS being comparatively underfunded in terms of both money and developer time. So by the time it's done, even if the team tried to catch up as they went, they're still a few years too late.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[judeancodersfront]

Which hotkey selects the play button in a Flash window?

Re:Them new DE's, man

[jimicus]

I wasn't exaggerating when I said 10 or 15 years. That's equivalent to the state of the art in about 1996.

If you seriously think nothing has been added to commercial software since then except bloat, I suggest you install NT 4. You'll be browsing the web with either Netscape Navigator 3.0 or IE 3. Neither of which supported CSS - hell, CSS didn't exist until December 1996.

If you want an office suite, chances are it'll be Office '95.

Moving on from Microsoft products, photo editing is courtesy of Photoshop 4. You didn't have colour management - that came with version 5 in 1998. However, you did have 16 bit per channel support. Both of these are major issues which come up over and over again when there's a discussion about The Gimp.

In terms of interacting with other systems, SSH was released in 1995. But there's a strong chance you won't be using that, because a lot of business applications were still running on commercial Unixes - or maybe even VMS - which almost invariably expected you to telnet in.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[LordLimecat]

Windows7 and Vistas biggest (only, for vista?) GUI improvement was the searchable start menu. Being able to press Win+"c-h-r-o-m"+enter to launch google chrome is VASTLY better than how the start menu was in XP; and TBQH any GUI that implements that feature gets a thumbs up from me.

Searching through byzantine menus to figure out whether Chrome counts as "network tools" or "internet" or "office" may not be an issue if you spend time to intimately learn the menu layout (which, being a geek, is honestly not a gigantic deal); but being able to just tell the computer "im looking for Chrome" seems to be a heck of a lot smarter.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[theolein]

Already switched to Mint on my laptop, and it's beautiful in a way no other Linux has ever been and shows what you can do with plain old Gnome 2 if you care enough. I pity the Mint people, though, because although their base for the Gnome release has always been Ubuntu, they're going to have to look elsewhere in future. Their Debian based distro has been rapidly gaining in popularity, though as people clamour for breaking the ties with Ubuntu.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[sjames]

What demise? Did they somehow retroactively re-license the code so you can't just make a copy and use it freely?

RHEL/CentOS versions currently out there will be under support for several more years. Ig Gnome3 keeps attracting hate, someone(s) will probably take up the Gnome2 code and turn it into a more sensible next version.

This is a chance for businesses to see a big advantage of free software. No matter how nutzy cuckoo the developers get, they can't MAKE you update.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[oakgrove]

So much F/OSS software is like using the commercial equivalent circa 10 or 15 years ago it's absurd.

I'm not sure I can agree with this. Just looking at my net book here, I use Amarok 1.4 which is equal or superior to any other audio player I've seen. I use vlc, mplayer, eclipse, firefox, chromium, compiz, cairo-dock, dolphin for file management, gedit for text editing, gnome-terminal for a terminal, virtualbox for a vm, k3b to burn cd's and on and on. All of this runs on top of the linux kernel that supports preemptive multi-tasking, advanced file systems, blah blah blah. What part of this is inferior to today's proprietary software, much less 10 to 15 years ago?

Re:Them new DE's, man

[shutdown -p now]

It's very easy to build a Hackintosh these days, even with considerable variation of hardware.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[smash]

Yup, I've seen etoile. I'm keeping a fairly close eye on it. Unfortunately its still some way off being really relevant, because the unwashed masses are flocking to KDE / Gnome and no distro I've seen even includes it, let alone as a default or install time choice.

I'm definitely extremely keen to see Etoile succeed though. People look at GNUstep, OS X, etc and just see the interface. The impressive bit are the objective C frameworks running in the back end.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[smash]

Where's the mac OS X "automator" equivalent? And don't say bash some other command line shell. Yes the command line is powerful if you can be bothered spending the time writing and debugging a script. But its not integrated into desktop apps, and 90% of desktop users are not command line junkies.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[oakgrove]

Where's the mac OS X "automator" equivalent?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoHotkey

Re:Them new DE's, man

[jimicus]

I said "so much". I did not say "All".

Gimp, for instance - is a great product, but if you look at the history of Photoshop you'll find that it's missing quite a few features - both basic things like colour management and more advanced things like adjustment layers - which Photoshop has had for 10 years or more.

Scribus - like Gimp, a cracking piece of software. Using it is like using Aldus Pagemaker circa 1994 but on a higher-res screen with more colours.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[smash]

You know the definition of the word "equivalent", right? Linux has no easy way to script interaction between GUI apps. It has no services equivalent. The composting window managers are about 10 years behind Mac. The audio subsystem is about 8+ yrs behind freebsd. Point being, those working on the Linux desktop appear to be focusing on fluff (Making it look like Windows or Aqua) rather than core operating system/user interface deficiencies.

Etoile is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't get a lot of press.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[JackDW]

There's more than one sort of stability. Not crashing with a BSOD is only the most basic, essential form.

The next level is stability for developers. You have to have ABIs and APIs that don't change between versions, so that developers can use the old API and be sure it will work into the future. Linux itself has this, if you disregard the kernel's internal APIs, but desktop environments built on top of Linux typically don't.

After that, there is stability for users. You have to ensure that the new version is easily usable by people who are used to the old version. Linux desktop environments fail massively at this. Just when things have reached a stable baseline, like KDE 3.5 or GNOME 2.x, the developers decide to break everything to "improve" the user experience. The result is Unity, or KDE 4, and always annoyed and angry users.

The second and third types of stability are now a huge problem for Linux. One means that third-party applications require continuous maintenance if they're built on top of GNOME or KDE libraries, while the other means that users must relearn everything about the UI whenever a new version comes out. These are bad things.

Microsoft has always understood the second and third types of stability. When the UI of a Microsoft product changes, it's tested extensively with real users, while the APIs and ABIs remain backwards-compatible. This is a huge benefit to users and developers, and one that is simply absent from Linux, where stability just means "doesn't crash".

Re:Them new DE's, man

[jimicus]

That's not really an automator equivalent. The problem with most of those macro recording apps is they don't deal very gracefully if the behaviour of the application you're automating sometimes does something different (for instance if you feed it a specific filetype) - or if they can, you have to write something that looks a lot like code.

Automator can be entirely GUI driven and has a rich library of things it can do, those things integrate with applications like iTunes, iPhoto and each block is effectively a magic box where some sort of object goes in one end, something happens and a different sort of object comes out the other.

It's difficult to explain without actually sitting someone in front of it, but I hope this screenshot gives you an idea:

Click

Re:Them new DE's, man

[oakgrove]

I said "so much". I did not say "All".

And, I say you are cherry picking. Of course, "so much" is a weasel phrase and can mean whatever you want it to mean. To me, it implies a significant percentage, possibly a majority. If that is what you are saying, you are wrong. I can cherry pick a list of thousands of applications that have superior free versions. I use Debian and up until very recently, I was using Windows 7 at work. Finally, I had to put my foot down there. I just couldn't achieve a comfortable level of productivity on it without having a Linux desktop and Cygwin wasn't cutting it.

There are many workflow enhancing things about the Linux desktop. Alt dragging and resizing of application window, being able to scroll one window with the mouse whilst having focus remain on another window for keyboard input including different frames of the same window. Apps like tilda that have hotkey access to the terminal for code editing, file sharing with scp, scriptong, etc. "Advanced" window manager settings like tiling, configurable buttons, always on top, and so on. Any applcation I need just an "apt-get" away. Multiple desktops. The list goes on for miles. Saying windows and osx are 10 years ahead is just pure fanboy/fud BS.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[oakgrove]

Automator and autohk achieve essentially the same thing just in different ways. Autohk is more configurable being primarily script based whereas automator caters more to the click 'n' drool crowd. To say that puts automator a decade ahead of autohk is just absurd. Some would claim the opposite.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[jimicus]

OF COURSE I'm cherrypicking! Every piece of software has it's advantages and it's disadvantages, and I could just as easily cherrypick advantages to Linux and use them to query why anyone would ever run Windows.

My point is that in the F/OSS world, as a proportion of the total number of software products out there a greater number are, by and large, behind their commercial brethren. Frequently a decade or more behind. If you depend on commercial software in that category, anyone suggesting using the F/OSS equivalent is practically guaranteed to get some very odd looks.

Obviously if you don't depend on software in that category - which it sounds like you personally don't - you don't really need to care.

Refusing to even contemplate that someone else may have a point when they level criticism at your software of choice - that is fanboyism. (Note I said contemplate. I don't consider it fanboyism if your reaction to such criticism is to say "Well, maybe you're right, maybe I am. Let us examine the evidence..." and ultimately decide you're still happy with your choice.)

Re:Them new DE's, man

[oakgrove]

Refusing to even contemplate that someone else may have a point when they level criticism at your software of choice - that is fanboyism

Here is your point:

My point is that in the F/OSS world, as a proportion of the total number of software products out there a greater number are, by and large, behind their commercial brethren. Frequently a decade or more behind.

I contemplated this. I've contemplated this everyday for many years when making the choice of exactly what piece of software I would use for a particular task. Between gimp and photoshop, sure photoshop has more features, same for libreoffice writer and word. However, there are many many applications where this is precisely the opposite. I listed a few above. To dismiss reality flippantly like you have is just ignorant. I am sure that if somebody really cared, a study could be commissioned but, I can certainly say that, anecdotally, free software tends to be superior or equivalent. Is apache 10 years behind Iis? compiz behind Aero and quartz? Kde4 behind explorer? I mean seriously, come on.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[smash]

Autohk is more configurable being primarily script based whereas automator caters more to the click 'n' drool crowd

You can integrate applescript (or other scripting) into automator. If required. If not required, its a lot faster than writing shell. So basically yes, you're agreeing that they're not equivalent and that automator is superior? Automator makes simple things easy. Much more complex things are still possible though.

If you've not actually used it, i'd suggest watching some podcasts on what you can do with it. There is nothing equivalent i have seen on any platform, yet.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[smash]

No, this discussion was about how far behind open source desktop environments are slipping and how they're reinventing the look/feel wheel, when other DEs on other platforms are actually providing improved workflows.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[smash]

Window management features (when you can just as easily use alt+tab or change virtual desktops - on any half modern platform) are more "cherry picking" than mentioning something like proper colour management, which is ESSENTIAL to getting professional quality work done.

Re:Them new DE's, man

[Baki]

Hmm, there are some of us that have never stopped using twm (or ctwm, in my case).
I fail to see why I would need a "desktop environment" instead of just a windows manager.

To me, Unity netbook was better

[twilight30]

I found Unity netbook from 10.10 to be acceptable after a bit of use, but the upgrade to Natty beta was enough for me to drop it in favour of just going back to Gnome 2. I'm also trying out Gnome 3, and both these 2 as well as KDE all feel like suboptimal blind stabs at some holy grail rather than fast and practical.

Might have to try out Enlightenment again, or xfce. i dunno.

Re:To me, Unity netbook was better

[Compaqt]

I'll grant this: Unity seems to be a OK interface for netbooks and possibly touchpads.

You don't want the full desktop experience on those environments.

You don't really care or want Alt+Tab. You'll likely only be doing a few things at once.

Re:To me, Unity netbook was better

[oakwine]

Xfce better for what I do. If even that. Holy Grails are only available from commercial vendors like Microsoft, Apple, and Google. Corporations can maintain design focus while products of volunteer groups are chunky, quirky collections of everyone's ideas. Next name of Ubuntu release, Quirky Quillboar. Any further questions about why the vast majority of users are not adopting Linux?

Re:To me, Unity netbook was better

[David Gerard]

"I'll grant this: Unity seems to be a OK interface for netbooks and possibly touchpads."

No, I tried it and it sucks on netbooks too. It doesn't actually work reliably, and the bits that do work don't let you do quite a lot of stuff that the classic interface does.

Re:To me, Unity netbook was better

[Compaqt]

OK, that's a data point.

I hadn't used it on netbooks, by the way.

I guess this is going to be another my-way-or-the-highway Ubuntu fiasco, like window controls on the left, the faux-Mac design, "windicators".

Re:To me, Unity netbook was better

[DrXym]

I'll grant this: Unity seems to be a OK interface for netbooks and possibly touchpads.

You don't want the full desktop experience on those environments.

You don't really care or want Alt+Tab. You'll likely only be doing a few things at once.

My experience of Unity is it is a useful UI for netbooks. It is a compact UI. Problem is it's inflicted on EVERY desktop regardless of size and doesn't appear to have configurable settings that would make it more tolerable/useful on large desktops. I don't want the single Mac style menu or the dock on the left, or indeed the behaviour it uses to hide itself. All these things should be configurable through a UI. I'm aware there are settings in text files that control these things, but they have to be in the UI. The app menu is also entirely absent and the ordered collection of apps it offered has been replaced by a horrible unordered list of apps that must be filtered to reduce the clutter. It's just very ugly.

The consolation prize is Ubuntu still lets you drop to a "classic" desktop and I do agree with the principle of eating dogfood to iron out the bugs. I just hope they do it with Unity before releasing. Delay by a month or two and get it right. I do think GNOME 3 and Unity have the grains of a usable desktop but they need a lot of polish.

Re:To me, Unity netbook was better

[David Gerard]

If I knew that Mark Shuttleworth was personally using Unity for all his daily work, I'd feel better about it. At least then there would be someone who loved it.

Re:To me, Unity netbook was better

[Vegemeister]

Compizconfig Settings Manager lets you configure the taskbar hiding. To get rid of the awful global menu, edit /etx/X11/Xsession.d/80appmenu so that UBUNTU_MENUPROXY gets set to the empty string. Mine looks like this:

if [ -f /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/menuproxies/libappmenu.so ]
then
#NO FUCKING GLOBAL MENU, IF YOU PLEASE.
export UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=
#export UBUNTU_MENUPROXY="libappmenu.so"
fi

Re:To me, Unity netbook was better

[LordLimecat]

I guess this is going to be another my-way-or-the-highway

You do know that you can remove and add packages in Ubuntu, right? You can even switch window managers....

Re:To me, Unity netbook was better

[DrXym]

As I said I'm aware of command line hacks, but we're talking about a GUI which should offer those things in a relatively simple config dialog.

Re:To me, Unity netbook was better

[Compaqt]

Yes, I can.

But the normal humans in Ubuntu's "Linux for Human Beings" motto can't add/remove lib-foo packages.

Re:To me, Unity netbook was better

[WeatherGod]

Unity 10.10 is far worse than unity in 11.04. Just closing firefox would sometimes crash unity (note: unity would auto-restart). The movement of taskbar icons when the mouse was over it made no sense. Plus, the taskbar didn't auto-hide. On a netbook, that meant precious landscape waste. Also, firefox wasnt properly integrated with unity yet, so there was wasted space at the top due to two titlebars!

ALL of these problems were fixed (and others) on the Natty I tested two weeks ago.

Re:To me, Unity netbook was better

[LordLimecat]

Thats why theres "synaptic" and "add/remove"; and all you need to do is to install the KDE meta-package and all the necessary widgets and libraries are pulled in.

If youre going to try to argue that installing programs is HARD in linux, then I really dont know what to say. How much easier than "apt-get install kubuntu-desktop" (or its Synaptic / AddRemove equivalent) does it get?

Re:To me, Unity netbook was better

[lwsimon]

The primary difference between how I use my eeePC and how I use my 16" laptop is screen size. Plasma Netbook is doing a better job of managing that for the primary reason that it's task switch (alt+tab) is way better.

I removed Unity from my machine entirely today, actually, in favor of Awesome for coding and Plasma Netbook for general computing.

Re:To me, Unity netbook was better

[DrXym]

The new app menu in Unity are a mess. It uses massive icons, it wastes space for crap like the app store, it's not configurable. To display icons within a group equivalent to a classic app submenu means messing around with a second drop down to filter the list. Aside from the recently used list, it requires more mouse travel, more mouse clicks and more concentration than doing the same in the classic app menu. It needs reworking. It's shoddy.

Example ways it could be improved. Icon size should be configurable by a slider in realtime and remembered. The expand icon should double up as a resizer so user can toggle behaviour. App groups should be more obvious, e.g. an open step style "shelf" of groups under which the contents are shown. All spring loaded so a single click, mouse around, release launches an app. The app store group should have a close button so it's never seen again. A simple config dialog e.g. launched from a button next to the icon scaler should allow the user to restore defaults, change other relevant settings and just generally feel in control of their desktop.

It simply needs work. I believe Gnome Shell 3 and Unity have a kernel of a good idea but it needs a lot more work. Compare to Windows 7 or OS X and both have a long way to go and it's a shame. The worst edges on Unity could probably be fixed in a few weeks and if it means delaying, they should delay.

Ignore crappy blog - link to results

[Xgamer4]

Just ignore the crappy blog link. It's not really helpful at all. Here's a link to the actual results:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2011-April/032988.html

Hard to Figured Out

[dcollins]

FTA: "None of the participants could figured out what Ubuntu One."

Indeed.

Poor headline...

[osu-neko]

Not that the situation isn't bad, just that, if you read the original article, you'll see the crashing will be easy to fix compared to all the other, far more serious problems with the new UI.

Re:Seriously? This is news?

[Haedrian]

The most surprising part is that this'll ship by the end of the month...

I like Ubuntu 11.04

[Mass Overkiller]

I have to admit that when I installed Ubuntu 11.04 beta with Unity, I felt the need to repartition my hard drive to make more room for linux and less room for windows. I like the desktop, I like the bar thingie on the left (whatever it's called). I like typing "System" and having it give me an application to click rather than wade through 3 submenus. There have been a few bugs like not being able to select that bar thingie on the left sometimes, and I still don't know what that Ubuntu icon is for or why it turns blue. Also, I'd like not to have to type my password in when I boot into linux - I thought that was why I selected "auto login" as an option. I truly enjoy this latest version and I'm thinking of keeping it. Just fix the bugs. I'll adjust myself to the layout quickly enough.

Re:I like Ubuntu 11.04

[CynicTheHedgehog]

What frustrates me about Unity is the same thing that frustrated me about Windows 7. Simple tasks take longer to accomplish. Take opening a terminal, for example. In Maverick I can click Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal, or click on the terminal icon I have on my panel. In Natty I have to either:

1. Right-click on the Applications icon and select "Accessories"
2. Click "See all" to expand the list
3. Scroll down a list of gigantic icons and find the terminal
4. Click on the terminal

Or:

1. Click on the Ubuntu icon
2. Type t-e-r-m
3. Click on the terminal

Or:

1. Left-click on the Applications menu in the launcher
2. Choose "Accessories" from the drop-down in the top-right
3. Click "See all" to expand the list
4. Scroll down a list of gigantic icons and find the terminal
5. Click on the terminal

None of these workflows are intuitive and they simply do not make sense. Yes, once I open the terminal I can pin it to the launcher, but this means that in order to prevent throwing my PC out of the window I have to pin virtually everything to the launcher. Then what good is the search/menu function that comprises the bulk of new functionality in Unity?

Re:I like Ubuntu 11.04

[Reservoir Penguin]

I think it's called Launcher, and I agree it's awesome. Canonical is really pushing Gnome UI development in the right direction. About two years ago I tried one of the first releases of UNR, it sucked badly, they have really come a long way.

Re:I like Ubuntu 11.04

[Anonymous Coward]

Or just right-click and select "Keep in launcher" and then it works just like your panel icon.

Re:I like Ubuntu 11.04

[Anonymous Coward]

After you open the terminal 1 or 2 times it will show up at the top of the list, you wont have to scroll ever. The fastest method I have found to do it:

1. Press super button (the windows key)
2. Type "t"
3. Press enter

It's much faster than the menus when you use it this way. You can use tab to keyboard nav if what you want wasn't the first result.

Re:I like Ubuntu 11.04

[jedidiah]

...at least I can do it with the mouse, and it's pretty much how I've done it for 20+ years.

A visual interface (namely a GUI) should remain visual. Otherwise, you might as well just open a terminal and start typing.

Re:I like Ubuntu 11.04

[shutdown -p now]

In Maverick ... click on the terminal icon I have on my panel. In Natty ... once I open the terminal I can pin it to the launcher, but this means that in order to prevent throwing my PC out of the window I have to pin virtually everything to the launcher

What's the difference between having an icon on the panel, and one pinned in the launcher?

Re:I like Ubuntu 11.04

[danieltdp]

CTRL+ALT+T. Why do people insists in using the mouse when they ask for speed and simplicity?!

Re:Ridiculously misleading, nobody crashed it...

[Zapotek]

Scratch that, I missed the last item in the announcement -- my bad.

It's just bad UI

[cripkd]

The fact that it crashes is not the end of the world. Ubuntu 11.04 is still in beta.
What I don't understand is why Unity has made so many bad UI decisions.

1. the icons are on the left, to conserve vertical space. Ok, but I'm NOT on a netbook. Why not give me the option to move it at the top or at the bottom ?
2. The icons are on the left. Whenever you use content on a screen (in mostt western countries) you start scanning the screen with your eyes from the left to the right. Why do I have to see some brightly colored icons everytime I move to the next line? This never happens if the bar is at the bottom. The eyes focus on the content not on some list of eye-candy icons. Again, why no move it to the RIGHT at least?
3. The window title/window controls fiasco. I don't see why should I perform a specific action to either see the whole title of the window,l the window control buttons or the usual application "File" menu. The desktop is not yet an iPhone. The desktop is still another paradigm. The application menu should be visible at all times! We're not all just using firefox all day long (see Eclipse for exmple.)
4. Blurred windows menus. Why do I have to first focus the window and then hover or something to get it's menu?

PS. Speaking of usability, why does slashdot redirect to it's main page after logging in ??? I still hope unity will change a lot in the next 1-2 years,, otherwise it's just crap they put out to spite gnome.

Re:It's just bad UI

[Khazunga]

I installed 11.04 this week, and I totally disagree. I absolutely love top-level navigation taking over horizontal space instead of vertical space, as well as other vertical-space saving features, such as moving the menu onto the title bar. Naturally, I appreciate this more because my laptop has a 12" display. Were I on a 24" desktop LCD and I could spare space for the menus. However, if you are so inclined, this is just a gtk option. It's easy to move menus to their standard location, Unity does not bind you to that decision.

As for readability with icons on the left, just maximize your windows or move them to the left of the screen. It will push the icons away.

Sometimes, I think people criticize ANY change. I'm not involved with Unity and have not accompanied its development. The final result was a total surprise to me this week. I like it. There are corners to be polished, for sure, but it's an excellent first version.

Re:It's just bad UI

[Billly Gates]

Not to sound trollish but Ubuntu 11.04 is about to be released. This is very troubling that will give Linux a bad name. I used to laugh at Microsoft for such releases but I find them to be much more stable than Linux in the past decade. Windows 7 was far past beta and RC status and was stable for 98% of users with zero months before it came out. Not ... gee lets skip an RC to have it out in 2 weeks.

Come on Canical seriously? A disclaimer, I am an anti Ubuntu user with likes Fedora and has totally switched back to Windows thanks to Gnome 3 and KDE 4.

If I were Shuttleworth I would keep gnome 2.8 as default and put Unity as a technology preview until 11.10. Many Linux users will not like this and are not ready to switch. I hope gnome 3 or Unity in the case of Ubuntu evolves to something useful. In my opinion it is not ready and may not ever be.

Re:It's just bad UI

[PybusJ]

Sometimes, I think people criticize ANY change.

Yes, and the answer is to give people the options to respond to change at the pace that they can cope with. Attract them in with better interfaces, which if they are better will become apparent over time. Releasing "upgrades" to previous versions which take away functionality people are used to and doesn't offer configuration is guaranteed to annoy users. Considering the interface people have huge amounts invested in using a deprecated compatibility option which is there for hardware they don't support is not good.

Why should people have to change at Ubuntu's pace to continue to get their work done? Apple are the only company who've managed to successively transition a large number of users from one technology to another, and, on the desktop, they have a rather specific userbase (plus high quality design which only gets released when it's ready).

With their bug #1, Ubuntu always seem to be designing for the users they don't have (and will quite probably never get) rather than looking after the interests of their current users.

While I do actually like the direction of Unity as a netbook interface (where it started out in fact), I'm much less happy for my multi-screen desktop where I'm used to configuring things as makes sense to me, for my tasks, rather than in the fashion that Canonical UI designers think makes sense to them for their typical users (mostly inexperienced switchers from Windows/Mac if the testees in the article are anything to go by).

Re:It's just bad UI

[itsdapead]

1. the icons are on the left, to conserve vertical space. Ok, but I'm NOT on a netbook.

Actually, that also makes sense with the general move to 16:9 monitors (which is also annoying, but using the same size panels as HD TV is clearly going to be an economic end-of-argument). However, most sensible GUIs let you put the icon bar left/right/top/bottom to suit your preferences and monitor configuration.

Re:It's just bad UI

[c]

> There are corners to be polished, for sure, but it's an excellent first version.

Generally speaking I agree, and that's having used it on a netbook and laptop since they threw it into UNR.

However, the multi-head support is a clusterfuck. I don't know if this is just a Unity thing or something in whatever parts of GNOME it's tied into, but unplugging and switching monitors is routinely a disaster, occasionally leading to having to drop into a console to clean out sessions and configs before I can login to a graphical session (even a failsafe). Then there's the part about having the application menu on an entirely different display from the application itself...

Poor multi-head support is particularly bad for an interface intended for smaller displays like laptops and netbooks... that's where people are most likely to dynamically switch things around.

Re:It's just bad UI

[CynicTheHedgehog]

I hate that the launcher disappears whenever something is maximized. And I hate that the window title and the menu bar occupy the same space and have different functionality on mouse-over. This completely fails the grandpa test: I have no idea how I would ever walk my grandpa through a simple task over the phone when things are constantly shifting, disappearing, and changing depending on where the cursor is. Horrible interface.

Re:It's just bad UI

[Raenex]

Actually, that also makes sense with the general move to 16:9 monitors (which is also annoying, but using the same size panels as HD TV is clearly going to be an economic end-of-argument).

Besides HDTV, there's also the benefit of side-by-side windows. A single widescreen is so much nicer than futzing around with dual monitors (the trend that I never got into).

Re:It's just bad UI

[Rutulian]

Why should people have to change at Ubuntu's pace to continue to get their work done?

Um, they don't. You don't have to upgrade to the latest version. I'm still running 9.10 on one of my desktops because I needed it to be a stable machine to write my thesis on. I didn't have time to upgrade and I didn't want to spend a lot of time doing backups, repartitioning, etc. So I just left it, and it still works great. Seriously, if you don't want/need the new stuff, don't upgrade.

Re:It's just bad UI

[F.Ultra]

What really bothers me is that the applications menu is now moved to the top bar or what the hell it is called. So when I have several applications at the same screen I have to go to another place to access the menus...

Re:It's just bad UI

[cripkd]

I have a 16:9 screen and i still don't understand why do I have someone decide what's best for my desktop configuration (this is still linux, correct?).
Make the default position where it is now but give ME the OPTION to move it.
Also, again, I never had issues with vertical space (in the days where I craved for desktop space it was more for horizontal actually, due to Photoshop's old style panels), I have a mouse with an innovative UI function: the scroll wheel, that allows me to view content out of my vertical space without actually moving my hand anywhere on the screen.

Re:It's just bad UI

[danieltdp]

I had the same thought myself. Those icons should be out of my way most of the time but maybe it's dangerous to put them close to scrollbars at the right edge of windows. An old school applications menu or even a bottom-of-the-screen dock (which is one of the reasons I don't like Macs) seems a better solution to me.

There is an option that sets the bar to be shown only if you get the mouse pointer at the ubuntu logo (top left). Its way better than the default option (show if the mouse hits any part of the left edge). To people hwo don't know unity, the default option is more dicoverable, but if you already know that the bar exists, I advice you to change this behavior

Re:It's just bad UI

[danieltdp]

It was already a clusterfuck back on 10.10, when you got a usual gnome 2 UI. At least in my experience...

Re:It's just bad UI

[c]

I'm not saying pre-Unity multi-head was good by any stretch, but on a scale from 1 to clusterfuck I don't recall it being any worse than a 7.

Re:It's just bad UI

[itsdapead]

Besides HDTV, there's also the benefit of side-by-side windows. A single widescreen is so much nicer than futzing around with dual monitors (the trend that I never got into).

I'm fine with 16:10 - A 24" 16:10 will, e.g. hold 2 full-size A4 pages with space to spare top and bottom for toolbars/menu and space for a couple of sidebars or a filer window, which is pretty much the sweet spot (and I can live with small black bars if I'm watching TV on it). Now, although 24" 1920x1200 screens are still available, the trend seems to be towards 23" 1080p (bye bye vertical space for menus and toolbars), larger TVs which are still only 1080p or "arrgh! my wallet!!!" for some 2560x1440 monster. Worse for laptops where vertical resolution is more of an issue.

Re:Ridiculously misleading, nobody crashed it...

[ayvee]

"5/11 participants (P2, P3, P5, P9, P10, P11)"

Wait, so is it 5/11 or 6/11?

Re:shit article

[danbuter]

There will be no RC for Ubuntu 11.04. They just renamed it to Beta2. So it's the exact same thing as a release candidate.

Openbox

[XFire35]

I use Openbox, none of this Unity, KDE, GNOME3 rubbish for me. Are DEs really needed?

Re:Openbox

[shutdown -p now]

For some they are. Others would sneer at your choice of something as mundane as Openbox - the kind of folk that uses xmonad or ratpoison. Isn't choice great?

I hope they backport into 11.04 after release

[danbuter]

I'm sure there will be tons of fixing going on for the 11.10 release. I really hope they backport the Unity fixes into 11.04. They already backport Firefox and Office releases, so if they do Unity as well, 11.04 should improve over time. If they keep Unity locked where it is at release, that will probably cause a lot of users to either switch to Gnome Classic, if they can figure out how, or switch to another distro (maybe just staying with 10.10).

configured to unusable

[kwoff]

I upgraded to Natty a week ago, and I was so flustered with Unity that I tried to disable it somehow. Much worse than the other idiotic "design decisions" they've made recently, like with moving the window buttoms to the left. I clicked a few options, I think something to do with Compiz, and Unity seemed to crash and the desktop became basically unusuable. I tried logging back in, but was presented with an emtpy desktop where nothing happened when clicking. It turns out that I can login with the older style desktop at the login screen, though I haven't figured out how to "reset" the Unity configuration.

so...

[hitmark]

looks like i will be using XFCE for the foreseeable future. Tho if this dumbing down spreads, i may be forced to go LXDE or even FVWM...

Re:so...

[loufoque]

It's more "let's copy Windows and Mac OS X" than anything else.

But I, for one, find the Mac OS X UI unusable, and Windows is getting worse with every new version.

It seems like they're trying to turn the desktop into some media experience rather than a tool to do things with.

Re:so...

[Anonymous Coward]

XFCE or LXDE with xmonad ftw :))

Re:so...

[LordLimecat]

I have never understood why people want a GUI thats not "dumbed down". I thought the point of a GUI was simplicity?

Re:so...

[hitmark]

dunno, i guess "unobtrusive" is the word for many "power users". That is, minimal amount of graphics but with a lot of control over shape, placement and such. Oh, and the ability to remember where something was between uses.

End result is a UI that forms itself around the user rather then forcing the user to form himself around the limitations of the UI.

Re:so...

[hitmark]

funny enough the XFCE setup i use right now looks a bit like win98/win2k with a multi desktop pager added.

Re:so...

[PReDiToR]

Give E17 a try.

I've been using it for a while now after upgrading from LXDE.

Re:so...

[Bob The Cowboy]

Perhaps because what seems simple to you is horribly inefficient or impractical for someone else? People have different needs, that's why open source software is typically very configurable. Thankfully there are other environments people can use instead, though.

Re:so...

[theolein]

This is so true it isn't funny. Shuttleworth lost the plot somewhere with his benevolent dictator crap. He's still after marketshare, not aware that the marketshare of Linux will never, repeat never equal that of Mac or Windows. He used to be trying to catch up with Windows and then he discovered Macs, which meant that Ubuntu had to suffer the move of the window controls to the left hand side of the screen like Mac. Now he's discovered iOS and is crazily mixing iOS, OSX and Windows features in a way that confuses the shit out of most people trying to use Unity. The guy's an obstinate cunt, too, because the massive amount of bad PR Unity has got (thousands of people, like me, installing then rapidly looking for something else, in my case Mint) should have told him he was messing up.

Unity: one equals zero.

[David Gerard]

I have installed Ubuntu Natty Narwhal. The new Unity interface is stupidly shit. Half the stuff literally does not work on my netbook. If you woke up one day and thought:

"Gosh, I'd really like to make using my universal general-purpose computer that I can do ANYTHING with feel like I'm using a locked-down phone running an obsolete version of Android through the clunky mechanism some l33t h@xx0r used to jailbreak it, I can't think of a better user experience"

- this gets you quite a lot of the way there.

If you want it to feel a bit more like a computer, log out, select "Ubuntu Classic" and log back in and then you'll only have the Mac ripoff menu arrangements to contend with.

I actually liked the old UNR interface. I wonder where it all went horribly wrong.

Re:Unity: one equals zero.

[David Gerard]

I hereby propose that Unity be renamed "Ubuntu Vista".

Re:Unity: one equals zero.

[theolein]

Ahmen! Went to Mint myself. Willprobably stay with Mint because they actually seem to care about the user experience and less about Mark fucking Shuttleworth's fucking ego.

they degrade until redone

[r00t]

Look back to the GNOME that shipped with Red Hat 7 through Red Hat 9. It was free of distracting crap. It didn't have anything on the desktop unless you count the panel (taskbar thing) or the solid-color background. Now we get TWO panels, because Mac-oriented and Windows-oriented developers formed a committee, and loads of random shit on a desktop that would be buried under windows if you were actually using the computer.

It happened with Windows too. Never minding the rotten core, Windows 95 was actually attractive and generally had a usable GUI. Then they added that evil IE-in-the-wallpaper thing with the crazy TV-like presentation, and gradients so that only half of a titlebar has good contrast. By the time XP shipped, the formerly nice-looking start menu featured a giant garish green glob for the button. They fixed the looks for Vista, but took until Windows to fix the behavior and get the core back into a less-rotten state.

I don't know if OS X has ever gotten truly nasty, but it certainly has had to endure pointless cosmetic changes. These nearly always detract from the original design. Designs start off clean and coherent, but the marketing need for VISIBLE change means that even the theoretical ideal GUI would get changed for the next release.

Re:they degrade until redone

[udippel]

Look back to the GNOME that shipped with Red Hat 7 through Red Hat 9. It was free of distracting crap.

Interesting, but you must have gotten the numbers wrong. Because exactly there in between is where Gnome broke for the first time: from sawfish to metacity. I was totally happy with sawfish on 7.3, and suddenly with RedHat 8 there was a pre-set interface that knew much better what I wanted from a GUI. Or just not.

Re:they degrade until redone

[uglyduckling]

The 'Windows for Teletubbies' (you've seen Teletubbies, right?) look has to be the most embarrassing GUI misfire in the history of computing. How a company with the size and capital of Microsoft ever let something like that out of the door is beyond me. But, then, Vista was/is a performance nightmare, seriously slow on all but the highest-end hardware. I actually find it amazing that MS have held on (mostly) to their place in the IT world, I guess there's just never been a non-niche competitor that could offer a serious alternative.

Re:they degrade until redone

[amorsen]

I was totally happy with sawfish on 7.3, and suddenly with RedHat 8 there was a pre-set interface that knew much better what I wanted from a GUI. Or just not.

I had repressed that memory! Why did you have to bring it back?

Re:they degrade until redone

[r00t]

Sawfish was ridiculously slow, being pointlessly built around a scheme interpreter, so it had to go.

I did notice a few features that temporarily went missing in the transition, but mainly I just noticed that the GUI was no longer horribly slow. The missing features came back. I can't complain about a speed improvement that doesn't change much else.

Badness would be later releases. Focus-follows-mouse is now very difficult to enable, requiring something like a registry editor. Nautilus is now a requirement for having GNOME installed, and it always wants to start unless you resort to some pretty obscure hacking. Sound seems to require PulseAudio, which just adds latency and CPU overhead for the pointless gain of audio-enabled remote desktops. There isn't even a decent icon for an xterm anymore; icons that MY DESKTOP IS USING keep getting removed with each release.

Re:they degrade until redone

[udippel]

Sawfish was ridiculously slow, being pointlessly built around a scheme interpreter, so it had to go.

I did notice a few features that temporarily went missing in the transition, but mainly I just noticed that the GUI was no longer horribly slow. The missing features came back.

Obviously, you don't have users in mind when you write words like this. Because when users like something, you simply can't take it away. And metacity took almost all that I could do with sawfish. Like workspaces. I was told on the mailing list (too lazy to find it), that 'nobody uses workspaces' and so desktops were just enough. To give an example. Too lazy to find more.
You argue like a misguided developer. If sawfish was too slow, and scheme is not exactly what you want to base UIs on (I agree), the task is to rewrite the concept in a more adequate manner, not bring in the second choice. And I wasn't alone, by all means, many felt unhappy about the first wave of severely restricted choices by then. No good. Over.

Re:they degrade until redone

[r00t]

I guess you're the person who uses them. Weird. I don't even know how they work really; are they related to that Enlightenment feature that was similarly confusing?

I use virtual desktops, never minimizing or maximizing anything. I'm happy with either the normal style or the old view-into-huge-desktop style. I've seen people (most people actually) who maximize everything, using alt-tab or the taskbar to change stacking order. I've seen people who minimize any window they are not using. I've never seen workspaces get used.

Re:they degrade until redone

[udippel]

As I wrote, they have been taken from me since 2003 or so. Actually, I could without, but there was a number of other restrictions, that don't matter as of today any longer.
I used workspaces very much as kind of early precursors to what KDE offers as 'activities' these days. At least, that's what I was trying in those days.

aptitude install gnome?

[bl8n8r]

Just grab some Xubuntu or Kubuntu and you can have Gnome again.

One of the best things about open source is the freedom to use alternatives :)

Re:aptitude install gnome?

[udippel]

Just grab some Xubuntu or Kubuntu and you can have Gnome again.
One of the best things about open source is the freedom to use alternatives :)

Pretty unhelpful advice, because Gnome 2 is deprecated and not developed any further, and Gnome 3 is plain turd. At least as of today.

Re:aptitude install gnome?

[danieltdp]

Ditch gnome. Lubuntu, Xubuntu or Linux Mint offer alternatives (xfce and lxde) that follow the old desktop paradigm. You have options. Some people like the direction ubuntu is going...

If you are not one of those happy with ubuntu, just look elswere for the thing that makes you click. This is not intended to be a troll post. I trully believe that diversity is a strenght and in this sense, ubuntu is contributing a lot. Maybe just it's not for you.

Re:i read TFA, and the lists report (cuz the TFA)

[marcello_dl]

Try aptosid then, it supports lvm on luks (the debian way, see wiki) and the manual IIRC talks about installation of luks on lvm.

Re:Do the same with someone who has never used OSX

[grumbel]

The only weird thing with OSX is the way it handles application launch and closing, it takes a while to realize that an application with a little arrow under it is still actually running even so no windows are open. The rest of the GUI is pretty standard, just like what you would get on Linux or Windows, just a bit more consistent, better organized (you can actually find what you are searching for without going by tons of useless cruft) and simply better done in general (modal windows for example are so much nicer then anywhere else).

You probably already know this but others won't

[dbIII]

What happened to the Linux philosophy of personalization

Some of the newer gnome guys and others decided that the linux desktop needed to be standardised if it was going to compete with MS Windows (ignoring that the "start" menu can be offscreen on any side of the screen and other weirdness that can be customised in stock MS Windows). They decided we needed a common desktop environment - CDE if you like - and they were a bunch that had never been exposed to CDE on Solaris to see that almost nobody apart from the designers really wanted a standard desktop. In fact CDE probably triggered all the wildly different window managers of the 1990s that provided a wide choice - many of them are still in active development and work with the newer gnome and KDE bits.
At least you can still run a different window manager but keep the gnome or KDE taskbars or whatever.

Because what is the alternative?

[SmallFurryCreature]

You got to find your niche as a distro. You can go boring and stable, or exciting and cutting edge... of course there are those who think stable is exciting but we don't talk about BSD people here... they smell funny.

Ubuntu wants to provide a great DESKTOP user experience. This means they got to follow the edge of Linux development because Linux by itself is not all that user friendly. Just try to do a CentOS install, text mode only, at the end you select the base packages, make a wrong choice, you can do it all over again as it hangs. That is in 2011. Compared to Ubuntu, the other distro's are still stuck in 2000. Suse and Mandriva tried to be more userfriendly but failed to do it as well as Ubuntu does because they still cared about stability more then pushing out the latest.

And even Ubuntu ain't all that cutting edge.

If you don't like it? Don't use it. But that means wresting with the other distro's far less friendly install and package choices.

Was Pulse Audio to soon? Yes but on the other hand, other distro's still think OSS is cutting edge And now that Pulse Audio does work, Ubuntu is ahead of the rest. Why do you think Ubuntu is so fucking popular? All the whiners complain about Pulse Audio and STILL use Ubuntu because the rest just ain't competing. Not for the desktop.

As for long term support. Just fucking upgrade already. What are you, a windows user who still needs windows 3.1 because he is to cheap to buy new software or have it retro-fitted? No wonder the economy is grinding to a halt. Wanna bet the chinese aren't worried about keeping decade old software running? Companies replace trucks every three years because it makes no sense to keep an old truck running when a new one will save you fuel, but lets keep decade old software that is full of bugs and performs like it was written by Bill Gates himself running at all costs and never upgrade.

Ubuntu pushes the edge. Not everyone can stand that. Go back to Red Hat and enjoy software so old SCO is still sueing it.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[FudRucker]

I rather have "boring and stable" software crashing and system hanging up is not the kind of excitement i am looking for.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[FudRucker]

naw, not me,

debian stable or slackware are the only two distros i trust to use anymore,

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[SanityInAnarchy]

This is an odd rant to make it to insightful...

Was Pulse Audio to soon? Yes but on the other hand, other distro's still think OSS is cutting edge...

The distro I was using before Ubuntu had no problem with ALSA. Come to think of it, I've been wondering if it isn't time to go back to ALSA for awhile. After all...

And now that Pulse Audio does work,

For some values of "work". Loading up a web game in Chrome shouldn't be able to bring my audio system to 100% CPU.

All the whiners complain about Pulse Audio and STILL use Ubuntu because...

Because it's worked reasonably well, and because I've been too lazy to try the others.

As for long term support. Just fucking upgrade already.

This is the bit that made me reply. Really? The whole point of LTS is for you to not have to "just fucking upgrade", so that you don't need to keep up with the 6-month release cycle. I don't use it on my laptop, but I do tend to give each release a few months, because they always break something huge for no apparent reason.

Ubuntu pushes the edge.

No, Ubuntu ends up somewhere in the middle. They certainly aren't "the edge" -- they're still using dpkg, FFS -- but they do frequently push random crap that's nowhere near ready into my distro. That's not "desktop", by the way -- most desktop users would like their GUIs to be reasonably stable and consistent, and not randomly crash or lag.

If I wanted "the edge", I'd be using a beta Ubuntu, or I'd be on Gentoo or Arch, or trying something more exotic like Gobo. I certainly don't recall any of these thinking OSS was cutting edge, and that was years ago. Then again, I don't recall any of these cutting the OSS compatibility layer from the kernel so that I now have to find OSS apps and launch them with a "padsp" wrapper. Seriously, WTF are you doing forcing a desktop user to understand the difference between OSS, ALSA, and PulseAudio, and explaining why most things work, and Lugaru doesn't, and how to fix it by only launching Lugaru with "padsp lugaru" from the commandline?

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu is ahead of the rest. Why do you think Ubuntu is so fucking popular

Ubuntu pushes the edge. Not everyone can stand that.

Ubuntu isn't popular because it's "ahead of the rest", it's popular because any mouth-breathing retard can install it in 5 clicks. If popularity is measured by how bleeding edge the software available is, there's plenty of distros that beat Ubuntu hands down.

And as for "pushing the edge", I lol'd a little. Doing a shitty job != pushing the edge.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[Hatta]

And now that Pulse Audio does work, Ubuntu is ahead of the rest.

Does it make sense to anyone that Ubuntu has adopted a network transparent audio server but is planning on dropping the network aware graphical server?

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[realityimpaired]

Try Zenwalk. Basically Slackware, but with a package manager with dependancy checking. Still uses .tgz packages, though, and you can still install a standard Slackware package. You can also install a Zenwalk package on a Slackware system, too, because it still uses pkgtool as the underlying foundation for the packages.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[Compaqt]

See you're not supposed to bring those inconsistencies up.

You're just supposed to pay homage to whatever Mark imposes^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdecides.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[Hatta]

Sure, but if Wayland gets popular people are going to start writing more Wayland apps, instead of X11 apps. At which point the ability to run an X server doesn't help much.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[lennier1]

It's like Apple, but with more hardware to pick from.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[RobbieThe1st]

Seriously, I don't see the problem with Wayland. Sure, no X11 forwarding... but after having used it a few times, I still wonder what it's good for! I mean... For most everything, a simple ssh terminal works nicely(not to mention without using much bandwidth), and for everything else VNC has better compression(Seriously, what program /doesn't/ render things with bitmaps and actually uses X stuff?)
I dunno... I figure if it improves my framerate while gaming, or helps out Compiz, then more power to it. But I suspect I won't notice any difference as X only takes like 1% of one core anyway: Wine DirectX->OpenGL translaton's my bottleneck.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[LordLimecat]

Then use 1 ubuntu release back, and upgrade behind the pack. All the bugs will have been documented by the time you upgrade.

See, with 6 month releases, being 1 release behind ISNT A BIG DEAL.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[Velex]

Gentoo GNU/Linux is user-friendly to me. I decide what features my software has and what components make up my software stack. I run Ratpoison on my netbook and XFCE on my desktop. Windows 95 and Netscape 4 is user-friendly to my father. I haven't talked to him in years, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's still using that.

Lord help my employer when we need to finally start upgrading to Windows 7 (or 8 or whatever's current when it comes to pass) from Windows XP. The line-workers are going to have shit-fits.

User-friendly is a term that doesn't make any sense unless you know what users you're trying to cater to. Linux will never be user-friendly until the idea of installing binary-only software that interacts directly with the operating system goes away.

On the other hand when a friend is over and needs to quick look something up on the internet, I've found that even the most computer illiterate don't even flinch at the fact that I'm handing them a system that uses Ratpoison running under GNU/Linux. They're using Chromium, not the other stuff that makes Chromium go.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[GWRedDragon]

No, Ubuntu ends up somewhere in the middle. They certainly aren't "the edge" -- they're still using dpkg, FFS

What exactly is wrong with dpkg???

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[greg1104]

The alternative for PulseAudio was to wait one more release, so that it wasn't merged into a LTS release. Had it been pushed back to 8.10 instead, then a) the 8.04 LTS would have been much more stable, and b) the much improved PulseAudio in 8.10 wouldn't have caused as many complaints.

If Ubuntu were only a desktop distribution, the need for constant upgrades to get bug fixes wouldn't bother me. The point of my rant was that it's impossible to ever get a stable release from them. That means the server version is useless. I'm not going to adopt a desktop-only Linux; I have real work to get done, too, and having my desktop also be a deployable server install is very helpful.

As for what the other option is, I'm using Debian Squeeze now. Just got rid of all my Ubuntu systems with it shortly after it shipped. Debian now ships every 2 years, which is a very reasonable window--much faster than RHEL, which is quite out of date by the time the next rev comes out, while not being the constant rush that Ubuntu is under.

Your car analogy doesn't work because the first year of a car is normally the trouble-free part of its life, while the first year of a new piece of software is the most painful one. That's why companies upgrade auto fleets so often--get rid of them as they become more difficult to maintain.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[IceNinjaNine]

Try Zenwalk. Basically Slackware, but with a package manager with dependancy checking.

Annnnnd when they get a 64 bit spin going I'll think about it. I do think it's a nice distro though.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[clang_jangle]

Instead of reinventing the wheel I wonder why they didn't create a pared-down, qt4-based desktop by whittling some bloat away from kde -- or they could have even made a deal with Rasterman for branded E17 development. Could have been really cool, and probably a lot less effort. Not the first time they choose do things the hard way though.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[recoiledsnake]

Windows Phone 7 crashes and hangs? Huh?

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[Miseph]

But none of the hardware looks like a Swedish spaceship.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[Miseph]

"Actually, I do install my ubuntu using the alternate CD only. Never ever saw the graphical installer in my life. Thank you."

It's pretty nice. There's nothing to really see... probably the best install UI I've seen for just about anything. Most software suites have a messier installer (at least judging by what you see), and I've not encountered an easier to install OS, including OSX.

YMMV, and if you like text mode that's your prerogative... but you come across as a bit too critical of something that is not only quite good, but which you actually claim not to have seen at all.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[Stupendoussteve]

Ubuntu wants to provide a great DESKTOP user experience. This means they got to follow the edge of Linux development because Linux by itself is not all that user friendly. Just try to do a CentOS install, text mode only, at the end you select the base packages, make a wrong choice, you can do it all over again as it hangs.

Your example does not support what you said. The CentOS text installer may be broken, but Ubuntu's is not better because it is "following the (some?) edge." Ubuntu's text install is the same as Debian has used for years without problems. Aside from installation, Desktop usability does not mean or need bleeding edge packages. Sure, a web browser may be worth keeping 100% release version, but most tools are not any more user friendly just because the version number was incremented, and if they added new features there's more of a chance something is broken (just like Ubuntu as a whole tends to do). Much of Ubuntu's user friendly-ness just comes from a good default package selection and configuration, and theming.

Suse and Mandriva tried to be more userfriendly but failed to do it as well as Ubuntu does because they still cared about stability more then pushing out the latest.

I would say they failed because they don't have the marketing or "You're involved, too!" attitude that Ubuntu does. Ubuntu is good at building devotion, they created things like the LoCo Teams to evangelize and even today mail out free CDs. As I mentioned before, latest does not mean anything to most people, and the majority of desktop users want stability so they can use their computers for other things. I have found that OpenSUSE in particular has superior hardware detection to any other distro I've used. It's the only distro I've seen that will configure my TrackPoint middle scroll out of the box, and enable my fingerprint reader without pain. It's also, for some reason, the only mainstream distro that supports my hardware volume keys. My point is not trying for bleeding edge allows some more polish, and I think polish creates an overall better desktop experience (though I am not using OpenSUSE now). Stability does not have to sacrifice up to date, but there are some times a new feature should be kept back a release or two while the bugs are hammered out.

There is no excuse for releasing known broken software to meet a deadline, even more so in a distro that calls itself user-friendly.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[imnotanumber]

And now that Pulse Audio does work, Ubuntu is ahead of the rest.

Does it make sense to anyone that Ubuntu has adopted a network transparent audio server but is planning on dropping the network aware graphical server?

Because it makes sense. It is a bandwidth problem. Over a network you can easily stream audio without any problem because 2x44.4Hz@16bits = 1.4208 MBits/s. That's less than 2% of a 100Mbit network. Now for the graphics things change, why do you think that the graphic cards are on a a 16x PCI-Express slots (8GBits/s), and still must use a lot of internal RAM to cache textures? Over a network the kind of performance you get for the graphics makes you cringe.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[imnotanumber]

It's like Apple, but with more hardware to pick from.

Beware! For many, that sounds like a praise...

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[jedidiah]

> Seriously, I don't see the problem with Wayland.

Spoken like someone who's never taken off the blinders long enough to try other things and see how these ideas stolen from other companies work in practice.

Wayland? Been there and done that already. Didn't like it the first time and probably won't like it when Canonical makes a bad copy.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[lennier1]

Maybe that's the route of the year of Linux on the desktop???

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[Knuckles]

Didn't like it the first time and probably won't like it when Canonical makes a bad copy.

When Kristian HÃgsberg started the Wayland project he worked at Red Hat and I think he's now at Intel.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[imnotanumber]

Aha! Finally, the path reveals itself...

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[tyrione]

I'm using Debian going on 11 years now for Linux and I strip out all the PulseAudio I can that allows me while using KDE 4.6.1 Experimental and Gnome 3 Experimental.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[GWRedDragon]

I see. I came to Debian from Red Hat, and from that perspective dpkg was an amazing improvement. I was used to hours of computing update sets with yum/rpm, and with dpkg it seemed like all I had to wait for was the time it took to download.

It doesn't really bother me either that I have to redownload the entire package instead of getting some sort of diff. I can see how it would, though, if I had a really slow connection.

In general though, dpkg is a solid package system and I certainly have no complaints about it. I wouldn't want it to be swapped out for something else just to get something new. If something works great, don't mess with it.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[TangoMargarine]

I rather have "boring and stable" software crashing and system hanging up

I totally agree! And here I thought I was just crazy. (Hint: Here's the period you forgot: .)

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[Chuck Chunder]

The distro I was using before Ubuntu had no problem with ALSA. Come to think of it, I've been wondering if it isn't time to go back to ALSA for awhile. After all...

I'd be surprised if that were true (in general, not for your specific use case). Sounds systems on Linux have always worked reasonably well until you hit some case where they simply don't. Pulse Audio furthers the art but it also has a lot of legacy and depth of testing to catch up on. Sadly the only way some of that testing gets to happen is to have people use it.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[ThePhilips]

Sadly the only way some of that testing gets to happen is to have people use it.

Though that has not worked either - in the best traditions of Linux audio subsystem, most queries I have seen on PA mail lists were answered with "fix your config" type of replies. For documentation see ... well ask on the same forums. And btw, PA documentation is still in shambles - nobody bothered to make it useful or complete.

PA is layer which (as per RFC1925, 6a) simply added another layer to the existing mess - multiplying it by a bit - without actually adding any major features. They should throw away both PA and ALSA, and use OSS instead. That one works. (And btw the latter sounds better too: ALSA has some sort of jitter/whatever, making sound to lose in clarity.)

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[DarkXale]

We have spaceships?

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[smash]

os x's native windowing system doesn't have built in X11 forwarding either, but i can still quite happily run the X server and display remote X applications in OS X.

Re:Because what is the alternative?

[smash]

Someone should tell microsoft then, because they've got accelerated 3d working over terminal services as of well over a year ago.

Re:isn't looking much better

[TaoPhoenix]

Yeah, I poked at the whole Gnome 3 - KDE 4 split some time back, and I didn't really care for either of them.

Anyone know if the whole Right Click Experience (or whatever) is trademarked by MS? I want to right click and make new folders, cut-copy-paste text, delete & rename stuff, etc.

I haven't yet tried XFCE or any special add ons to the window managers. Anyone know?

Re:Doesn't surprise me

[Zebedeu]

"They didn't hire me, so they suck"

Seriously?

Re:Doesn't surprise me

[19061969]

Yeah, sour grapes. It's gotta be (sheesh, didn't see that one coming Einstein).

The truth is that I'm worried at all. It was a rejection, I've had a few before, I'm getting paid a shit load more doing some genuinely cool stuff elsewhere, am getting pissed off with recruiters contacting me out of the blue with shiny new offers, and am truly enjoying my work.

The experience on the team there really doesn't seem much to write home about, not when compared to the UX pros I've known and worked with. I originally thought that I wasn't good enough - no worries, there's plenty that are happy to pay me - but when this story came up and I was curious why there such a fail in the UX (judging by /. comments) so I looked at the design tea's background.

Try it - look at some genuinely good UXers on linkedin and compare.

Re:Seriously? This is news?

[RichM]

The most surprising part is that this'll ship by the end of the month...

If you subscribed to some of the official mailing lists like I do (server ones mostly because I'm a Sysadmin) then you'd realise how incredibly quickly they work.
These are a busy bunch of people, and most don't even work for Canonical.

Translate the ratios to percentages

[Cyko_01]

...and you will realize how bad unity is!

* 18% thought libreoffice calc was a calculator
* 18% thought Ubuntu Software Center was the Recycle Bin
* 36% thought the Me menu icon might be a close button
* 20% could not find a window's menus
* 50% 5/10 first tried clicking Firefox in the launcher again to open a new window
* 54% could not figure out how to change the background picture without right-clicking
* 54% could not figure out how to rearrange icons in the launcher
* 40% could not launch a game that was not in the launcher
* 88% could not add a game to the launcher
* 66% did not notice an xchat gnome notification
* 86% could not arrange windows side-by-side using the snap feature
* 50% could not delete a document and of those who did 40% were not sure if it worked
* 40% could not easily tell how many applications were running
* 50% could not reveal the launcher when a window was touching the left of the screen
* Nobody could play mp3 songs stored on a USB key because the "Search for suitable plugin?" is too geeky

* Nobody seemed to understand what the Ubuntu button was for, or the distinction between the Dash main screen and the Applications screen
* 2 users clicked in the Dash search field several times, but both concluded that the field could not be typed in
* 36% tried double-clicking on "Applications" or "Files & Folders" in the launcher, but that just made the screen flicker.
* 45% crashed Unity during one hour of testing and one user opened a zombie quicklist that stayed on top of everything and didn't respond to clicks

Re:Translate the ratios to percentages

[ploxiln]

If "Search for suitable plugin?" is "too geeky" then they're pathetic. Why is the objective of these desktop environments seem to be to require absolutely no knowledge or training? I think it's a fools errand - it's just not going to work. The "walled garden" of the iPad (akin to a "supervised living facility" for the elderly) is all these people can really handle. Don't worry, they'll be happy there.

Re:Translate the ratios to percentages

[danieltdp]

Some of theses events are really troublesome and should be adressed, but a couple of them are related to people trying to use ubuntu as if it were Windows. If you gave them OSX the outcome should be on the same spirit

Global menu

[Compaqt]

Global menu: It was sort of OK, I guess, for the original mac.

Now we have 24" and 30" screens. You can have apps in all corners of the screen, and you're supposed to mouse all the way up to the top left to access a menu?

Create one problem, and then start applying bandages everywhere: Mark's answer? Create menuless apps.

Newsflash: Not every application can be as simple as an iPhone 99 cent doodad.

And say goodbye to discoverability. Say hello to the old-style right-click menus of Gimp and Dia that everyone always complained about.

Oh, and that "document-centric" interface that hipsters are always talking about? How do you (clearly) discern which to which window a menu applies?

The farther he goes from being a usable alternative to Windows (as opposed to Bizarro Windows), the farther Ubuntu goes from being able to fix Bug #1 ("Microsoft has a majority market share").

Car analogy: It's as if the Japanese, during the 70s, hadn't presented a car with 4 wheels, steering wheel, gas + brake pedals, but some sort of weird contraption with the driver in the back or something.

Re:Global menu

[uglyduckling]

I have to say, I use my MacBook with its own 13" screen, and with my massive Cinema Display, and I never find it an issue using Mac-style menus. Actually, I find it more difficult using other systems with a large monitor because it's slower to park the mouse over a tiny (high-res) menu bar halfway down the screen than it is to just shove the pointer all the way to the top, where it automatically stops. It does come down to a matter of taste, really, but it's certainly not a given that large monitors don't work with fixed menus. For me, the muscle menu of the menu bar always being in the same place regardless of window position(s) is a big win, and another reason why MS-syle menus that hide half your options are a fail. Of course, for frequently used applications you'll memorise the keyboard shortcuts in any case.

Re:Global menu

[DrXym]

I'm sure long term Mac users don't even think about the issue. I guarantee that long term Windows & Linux users do. QT & GTK have traditionally followed the Windows paradigm of sticking the menu on the related window. I'm sure it could be argued that this makes the screen more cluttered, but on the flip side it means a LOT less mouse travel especially on a large screen. I have no objection to doing it on a netbook screen where most windows are likely to be maximized anyway.

What I do believe however is the dist must provide a simple preference screen to toggle the behaviour. Even if toggling means the user must log out and back in to see the difference. Likewise Unity's dock has some incredibly irritating behaviours that could be solved with a few settings. Some people might like their dock on the left, but others might prefer it centered on the bottom, maybe even want to move it to a second screen. If the OS X dock can offer various configuration options then there is no excuse for Unity not to either.

No crashing at all!!

[Yiannis Miliatsis]

Been working with it all day today and it delivered greatly, no crashing of any kind

Re:No crashing at all!!

[danieltdp]

Did you run all the available updates? I got beta 2 on the first day and it already had a ton of updates that polished a lot of rough edges

Re:Doesn't surprise me

[Zebedeu]

Yeah, sour grapes. It's gotta be (sheesh, didn't see that one coming Einstein).

Well, when you write "I couldn't even get an interview with them" it sounds like you're really saying "if they won't even interview me, then they surely don't know anything about UX design".

The experience on the team there really doesn't seem much to write home about, not when compared to the UX pros I've known and worked with.

How would you know what the team is like if you didn't even get so far as an interview with them?

Look, I've got nothing against you personally, and I'm not defending Unity. So far I've only seen a few screenshots of Unity, and while I'm curious to try it, I don't really know whether I'll like it or not.
I was just taken back by your justification as to why you think Unity's no good.

Doesn't surprise me

[denshao2]

It is very buggy on my laptop. The whole screen goes blank whenever I put the pointer on the left edge of the screen.

I'm fairly happy with Unity

[drinkypoo]

OK, I jumped on Natty a little while ago, alpha 3 or so. It was a bit bumpy when I got on but within a week all the biggest bugs had been ironed out and it was possible to actually use the system reliably. I went for the new kernel, which includes numerous performance improvements, to the point you can actually notice. My video card, a 1GB DDR3 240GT from Gigabyte, is amazingly well supported these days, which is nice because it wasn't even IN the driver for over a month after I bought it. That was back in Lucid or so, though.

My impression of Unity is that it needs more configurability, but is otherwise a very good effort. I want to move the bar to the right side of the screen so that it doesn't compete with all the application stuff that is put in the upper-left, for example. I imagine most of that stuff will come.

Until the last couple weeks unity-window-decorator was crashing fairly regularly, but that has been ironed out. Right now they're working on the window matching/placement daemon which is crashing for people. compiz was crashing but that was fixed long ago from my perspective.

If you're trying to run anything OpenGL on anything other than a well-supported nVidia card, give up now. That includes unity or compiz, let alone unity AND compiz.

Re:Doesn't surprise me

[19061969]

"Well, when you write "I couldn't even get an interview with them" it sounds like you're really saying "if they won't even interview me, then they surely don't know anything about UX design"." Alternatively (and this was my original belief) I was saying that "I couldn't even get an interview yet Google are happy to fly my to Zurich, I've been working in one of the biggest global agencies for *very* large corporate customers who they're eager to please etc and I'm trusted with tricky projects for them. This is without my experience with Fortune 10 companies and SMEs. Wow, they must have some real rockstars if they won't even give me an hour." But given this type of story, I was curious as to who really was working there. Hence, I looked and thought my previous thoughts. I'm negative probably because of the comments here and other places. I'm not currently in a position to run it myself so I can use or test it with others - all I have are other people's comments and they are generally quite negative here (and other places). Note quite anecdotal but not far off it, however, it's all I have to go on as I cannot find a detailed methodology used in the study from TFA. The team - it's on the canonical design team page. Having recruited in UX in the past (generally quite successfully), it's difficult to see anything that jumps out in terms of experience, qualifications or ability. Most companies are happy to mention this to demonstrate to users that they have good people doing good work but it's more of an introduction to general interests. Home pages: some are okay, but none are stellar in design terms; one home page is a flash nightmare and another one is suspended. In design terms, it's not top rate (not saying I am but I appear to have more experience than anyone and know many freelancers who could do the same even more so).

Re:Doesn't surprise me

[Zebedeu]

Alternatively (and this was my original belief) I was saying that "I couldn't even get an interview yet Google are happy to fly my to Zurich, I've been working in one of the biggest global agencies for *very* large corporate customers who they're eager to please etc and I'm trusted with tricky projects for them. This is without my experience with Fortune 10 companies and SMEs. Wow, they must have some real rockstars if they won't even give me an hour."

So this is your big test of a team's design qualifications? Send your CV and if they don't get back, that means they suck?

There are a ton of reasons why they didn't want to interview you. Out of the top of my head, maybe they weren't looking for anyone, or maybe they looked at your work and decided that they wanted a different style, or maybe they thought you'd be too expensive for them, or maybe they *gasp* didn't like your work.

I said it before -- in your posts you're coming off as an arrogant designer with sour grapes. I totally understand if this isn't your intention, but that's how it sounds to me. Dropping names and how big companies are flying you around the world isn't helping much, either.

Piece of Crap

[wisnoskij]

I used this for a while for the netbook version of ubuntu.

Wow is it a piece of crap, at at least at the time completely unfinished and really unusable.
I don't know why the Ubuntu staff have absolutely no idea how to setup a desktop for a notebook.

What I did was switch to the normal desktop version and use the normal panels (which are actually customizable) and simply set them to auto hide. Now I actully have 100% screen space and am able to correctly read web pages. (actually*, for some reason I cannot scroll my cursor anywhere)

You Picked the Least Interesting Data Point

[stating_the_obvious]

I know it's asking too much of /.ers to actually read articles, but I would hope the contributors might try for subjectivity. The crash finding of that study was the least important data point. Unity isn't stable yet, and no one expects it to be stable. Go take a spin through the bulleted highlights of results to see some interesting points on how people explore and understand a new GUI.

Re:Do the same with someone who has never used OSX

[grumbel]

Explain with real world examples please.

You want to change the MTU of your network card in Windows, you have to use regedit, you want to change it in Linux, you have to edit some config file, you want to change it in MacOSX, you just input it into your network settings. You want to run with DHCP but with a fixed IP, you click "DHCP with fixed IP" in MacOSX, in Linux you mess around with network manager, then search around Google then throw the network manager out of the window and mess around with old /etc/network/interfaces. Basically MacOSX seemed to be designed with people actually using it in mind, while Linux and Windows stuff feels like the result of a million monkeys hacking around on typewriters.

Simply put, on Windows there are always a bazillion options, made harder to reach with each version as even more layers of useless helper widget get in your way. On MacOSX there is no need for useless helper widget as somebody actually put some thought into designing a good GUI, instead of trying to fix up a bad one with clippy.

That said, MacOSX isn't perfect either, getting Timemachine backup to work after a motherboard replacement required messing around with ACLs and extended attributes on the console, needing tools that they actually removed from the latest version of their OS.

PS: This is of course a little out of date, I haven't tried Windows7, but so far everything after Windows95 felt like a downgrade, same old stuff, just now even more illogically organized. And I can't really remember a single moment where I thought something was well done in Windows, but a million ones where the design was just so awful that one had to wonder how that ever ended up in a finished product.

Well ...

[lennier1]

If you take a train wreck and strap a jet engine to its back to make it get to the destination faster it you shouldn't be surprised when it doesn't turn out to be the next concorde.

Apple proved you can gold plate unix

[fuzzylollipop]

Apple has proved you can put a beautiful useable interface that any non-computer savvy person can install and operate on Unix. Why can't the collective rest of the world do an equivalent thing with Linux?

Re:Apple proved you can gold plate unix

[shutdown -p now]

Because the collective rest of the world - at least, the part of it that is concerned with Linux - cannot decide on what the "equivalent thing" should be. Hence why you have KDE vs Gnome (and then Gnome 3 vs Unity), and several dozen smaller contenders.

Totally agree. I'm more than a bit frustrated

[aussersterne]

that the Linux Desktop suddenly decided to drive off a cliff over the last few years. I was a very happy Linux user for a very long time, and for so many years, the progress was continuous and substantive.

Then, suddenly, KDE4 happens, still a disastrous mess despite the claims of its worst-stereotypes-about-geeks users, and I leave KDEland for GNOME 2, which I finally start to feel is a great example of a desktop by 2010 or so at which point GNOME3 happens, a new disastrous mess that once again recalls JWZ's complaint about so much of OSS development, in parallel with Unity.

There is suddenly no currently under development heavyweight IDE for Linux to offer a choice to those of us that want the convenience and coherence of a Windows-like or Mac OS-like desktop that is also stable and retains the X11 infrastructure that so much software going back so many years relies on.

There is simply no choice in OSSland, apart from "stop upgrading your software/distro (and thus, your hardware, due to lack of driver support in old versions), stick to GNOME2 or KDE3, and give up on any further development in this area."

Not acceptable, and really puts a dent in the perception of OSS as a set of platforms with long-term investments in stable user interfaces.

Let me add to this that in KDE4

[aussersterne]

the behavior of nearly every item, object, menu entry, and control center option is unpredictable, for two reasons:

(1) They do not share a common conceptual framework, set of terms, or state/activity flowchart, so there is no way to intuit how one widget will behave by generalizing from the behavior of all others; none of the others are similar enough to ever make possible an idea like "the behavior of all the others." It's as if each tiny component was written by an individual with no guidance about the general structure or ethose of the UI of the system, and then they were all glued together with Krazy glue at the last moment.

(2) They are buggy as hell. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they manage to save their state information. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they are visible. Sometimes they are simply missing for no reason, only to turn up later. People kept saying that this was fixed in later versions of KDE4 but through KDE4.5 late last year on Fedora 12 everything was still as disastrous as ever.

It only looks like an integrated, coherent, usable desktop environment to someone that's accustomed to the worst traditions of the ad-hoc nature of Linux desktops; not to anyone coming from an actually "integrated" desktop environment like Windows or Mac OS.

Speaking as a die-hard iPhone user,

[aussersterne]

"The desktop is not yet an iPhone" ------ THIS. x1000. Yes, mobile computing represents a new and powerful use paradigm (I'll call it a paradigm, yes), but there is still a role for the desktop... only in order to fill this role, the desktop needs to remain a desktop, something too many in the technology world seem to misunderstand as they all rush to cause desktops to act like mobile devices, ignoring the obvious physics problems involved in this transformation.

And this is a problem because?

[pvera]

I don't get it. I would rather have a tester crash the app than an end user. With the tester I hopefully stand a chance of getting some useful information to track down the bug. With the end user it is a crap shoot.

Non-confusing use of space

[Vektuz]

To me, some of the design choices seem to be pretty poor - most specifically with the "Unified menu" thing. Now, I do like the idea of using the extra space along the top for the menu - that makes sense. Just look at firefox 4 with the menu collapsed into a button and the tabs along the top, for example. What doesn't make sense is that the close buttons and menus there appear even from non-maximized apps. This is copying apple without actual Human Interface Design justification. Its copying a bad decision for a bad reason. There's nothing wrong with folding the menus and close buttons into the top bar when the window is maximised, but when its floating those menus and close buttons need to follow the window around, like a mini top bar of its own. Otherwise it gets really confusing fast.

Re:isn't looking much better

[tomhudson]

Try LXDE. Light, fast, simple to use. Pick any 3.

When KDE 4.6 broke temporarily, I switched to it for a while, and my old desktop, which was unable to run Eclipse (too gosh-darned slow), is now able to run it just fine. That makes me wonder just how much bloat there is in a "modern full-featured desktop" that removing it makes a heavy java app seem almost light-weight.

It was actually 6 out of 11

[tomhudson]

The real reason only 6 out of 11 crashed it ... it's because the other 5 couldn't figure out how to log in ...

Seriously, it was 6 out of 11 that crashed:

5/11 participants (P2, P3, P5, P9, P10, P11) crashed Unity during their hour of testing. And towards the end of her test, P11 opened a zombie quicklist that stayed on top of everything and didn't respond to clicks.

Tester # 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 11 == 6 testers, not 5.

Other facts:

Only half of those participants figured out how to reveal the launcher when the Window is touching the left of the screen and how to rearrange items in the launcher. ... some of the participants thought that LibreOffice Calc is a calculator and that Ubuntu Software Center is the recycle bin. None of the participants could figured out what Ubuntu One is.

If you read the detailed results,

1. it's a current Ubuntu user who thought the Ubuntu Software Center was the recycle bin.
2. Not one user found where they put "system settings".
3. Only one person was able to add a game to the launch menu
4. Only half could delete a document - and about half of those who succeeded, didn't think they had actually deleted it.
5. Nobody was able to play a song stored on a USB key
6. Nobody seemed to understand what the Ubuntu button was for.
7. Less than half could rearrange items.

"Unity" is a self-referential oxymoron.

No surprise - they can't even add. It was 6/11.

[tomhudson]

From the details:

5/11 participants (P2, P3, P5, P9, P10, P11) crashed Unity during their hour of testing.

Participants 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 11 ... that's 6/11, or a majority, not "almost half."

The funniest finding? One of the two testers who thought that Software Center was the recycle bin is an Ubuntu user.

Canonical should take the hint - move Unity to the recycling bin. It's not ready, and it never will be. Admit that the 4 years (this all started with the netbook remix spin) is wasted, that mobile is now between Android and Apple (and maybe HP if webOS takes off), that tablets are also going to be going the same route, and that trying to adapt an interface that was designed for small mobile and other touchscreen devices to a regular desktop because your original market plan is as gutted as a mafia stool-pigeon is a bad idea.

2011 is THE year of Linux on the Desktop!

[Chris Tucker]

#NotIntendedAsAFactualStatement

grandma's distro

[clang_jangle]

Ubuntu isn't popular because it's "ahead of the rest", it's popular because any mouth-breathing retard can install it in 5 clicks.

Exactly. The GPP is obnoxious fanboism, which usually means he probably won't know whether to shit or go blind the first time an update breaks xorg and/or wayland. Ubuntu is the distro that liberates grandmas and corporate office droids from Windows. Using it does not make you 1337.

xbindkeys to the rescue

[jonaskoelker]

Use xbindkeys

1. Write a .xbindkeysrc file that does what you want (e.g. bind Ctrl-Alt-c to the command "xterm")
2. Make xbindkeys run on GNOME startup

Then, whenever you want to start a terminal:

1. Press Ctrl-Alt-c

And it's cross-DE. Just like most not-of-a-particular-DE tools...

Re:Do the same with someone who has never used OSX

[jedidiah]

> You want to change the MTU of your network card in Windows ...any MacOS user you ask will look at you like you are from Mars.

OTOH, figuring out how to ensure that some bit of remote storage is always mounted is rather arcane in MacOS.

Ive been loving the Xfce version....

[zaojhen]

Ive been toying with 11.04 for several weeks now, and while unity wasnt so bad after getting used to it (i prefer it on my laptop over the "classic" desktop).. I think xfce is where this release really shines... Its fast, clean and simple. Not as configurable as far as "themage" goes, but it does what I need. Its been quite stable over the last few days, and of all the desktops ive tried in the last 3 weeks (which is a considerable amount as ive been toying with a variety of distros, and their various releases) Id have to say "xubuntu" 11.04 is my favorite.

Re:isn't looking much better

[shutdown -p now]

Personally, I was a KDE hater ever since 4.x, and stuck to Gnome. But the growing move towards idiot-centric interface design as exemplified by Unity, and to an even bigger extent, Gnome 3, seem to show that Gnome is not a viable DE in the future.

That forced me to evaluate the present options, and I admit that I was pleasantly surprised with KDE 4.6 (on Debian, in case it matters). I didn't much like the previous iterations for the simple fact that I couldn't even use them for long enough to make any impression before something crashed. And when it was something especially glaring, like the Plasma desktop crashing, well... that kinda doesn't encourage one to continue the experiment. And that was as late as KDE 4.4. But with 4.6, I'm happy to report that I didn't see any crashes so far, and otherwise it looks slick and full-featured enough. Installed QtCurve to get a uniform look across Qt and Gtk apps, and it's all good.

That said, XFCE and LXDE are also good options. XFCE in particularly is very much a "Gnome light done right" these days - they have practically all useful features of Gnome, as well as the hallmark clean UI. But they're much more lightweight, thoroughly configurable, and do none of those insane UI experiments. And you can make it look practically the same as Gnome 2 if you want. It's probably as close a replacement for Gnome 2 as you can get in the foreseeable future, unless someone makes a fork.

LXDE is even more lightweight than XFCE (while still being Gtk2-based), and somewhat less configurable, but if the look and feel is precisely what you want anyway (which is quite likely, as it's the classic Win95-style "Start & taskbar" approach which many find comfortably familiar), then why would you care?

May be time to fork Gnome 2

[fnj]

I wonder if it's time to fork Gnome 2? Gnome 3 and Unity being the heaping steaming piles of shit that they are, just fucking fork it and give them the middle finger. There are plenty of rough edges and unconfigurable goofy behavior in Gnome 2 to improve. You could make the same argument about KDE 3.

Just go back to the last decent points in Gnome and KDE before they both went off the rails. For KDE, you could take 3.5.something, update the code to use the latest Qt, and you would have a wonderful starting point.

APK thinks that a suggestion is the same as code.

[tomhudson]

No, the link says thanks for suggestions - not code. Quit trying to make yourself out to be bigger than you are.

Keep jumping, fat boy

For those wondering why APK (alexander Peter Kowalski - the "hosts file guy" is so angry, it's because he's not happy that I pointed out that his hosts file does not protect people from viruses and malware, and I warned everyone that if they tried to rebut him without protecting themselves by posting anonymously, he'd do like he always does - threaten to sue them for libel (he always backs down when called on it), and stalk them on the Internet, as he's doing here, with multiple posts pretending to be various "different" anonymous posters..

Now, why would anyone do that? Well, think about it - anyone depending on a broken "solution" is ripe for exploitation. So, anyone who downloads his "solution" is advertising "Here's the IP of a machine - p0wn me!" Additionally, anyone interested can run a bit of javascript on their site to fingerprint whether his "hosts file" is being used or not.

Makes you wonder why he continues to falsely accuse me of running a botnet, doesn't it? It's typical of liars to accuse others of what they're guilty of.

BTW - he offered to stop if I would agree not to continue to debunk his stupid hosts file. After calling me a stupid c*nt? You have to be kidding ...

Works for me

[leamanc]

Since they should be getting close to the final release of 11.04, I decided to take the plunge and upgrade last night. Unity has not crashed on me, even though I've been poking around quite a bit to see what it has to offer.

I can say that it's pretty bizarre in a lot of cases, and I'm not sure that Canonical is really going the right direction here. Time will tell as polish is added, but right now Unity is far from intuitive. Getting everything set up the way I like it is proving to be a chore, but on the plus side, I don't think I will have to mess with it too much after I'm done configuring it to my liking. It should then stay out of my way and just let me use my apps.

Re:Tom why did you run then?

[tomhudson]

I've never claimed to run a botnet - and if I *did*, I certainly wouldn't give it to a stupid dummy like you.

And your latest cut-and-paste crapflood in various threads just goes to show how much I really do p0wn you!

Now, why is that? What are you so afraid of my debunking your hosts file for? Is it because anyone using it is open to certain attacks, and that it's easy to fingerprint which machines are using it by running a simple javascript on any server?

After all, you've put a lot of time and energy into spamming all sorts of web sites trying to encourage people to use it ... and certainly a lot of time into trying to shut me up when I refused your "offer" to stop crap-flooding my journal if I would stop pointing out your lies.

jump, fat boy, jump

For the record (since google doesn't index journals, index this, google! :-), Alexander Peter Kowalski's hosts file does not protect you from viruses and other malware. It didn't back in 1995, and it certainly doesn't today.

Re:Desktop Environments

[TaoPhoenix]

If I wished upon a star I'd wish for some paid devs to flesh out the desktop environments - "all five-ish of them". (Do some Project Management to roll features of #'s 6-15 into the other five).

For simplicity of naming, do a Heavy & Light version of each that you can toggle by a setting instead of five more names.

Then let's say we get Gnome 3, KDE 4, XFCE-LXDE maybe merged as Heavy-Light, Unity & Unity Light, and your choice of a fifth.

Since most users (probably including me!) barely know what an OS does behind the desktop, we can simplify the back ends too. I'd like to be down to some five distros by getting the smaller guys to work together with an approach more like Add-Ons to a backbone distro.

We've been given a relatively lot of time, but I feel we're just about to run out of it. The big companies are killing us by taking our backbones and throwing front ends onto it. Apple is the most famous, with its BSD backbone, followed by Ubuntu taking Debian into murky waters, and last but not least Google taking (something) and making Android mobile OS out of it.

Something in that just reeks of the high school nerd working for 15 years in his basement until he comes up with some cool stuff, then the Kool Kids swipe it and make millions. We're left with a weak "well, we never wanted to be cool anyway" hurt comment.

We're just about to get a firestorm of former XP machines coming off the XP market, so it really IS time for Linux on the Desktop but we have to get a grip. Bonus - we like lean coding more than the big guys too.

Re:The rumors of my death've been greatly exaggera

[webmistressrachel]

At what point on the last post you refer to, does anybody run?

I hate to tell you this, APK, but I've been following this particular trolling phenomenon for quite some time now and it seems like TomHudson is the respected, mature IT contractor and you are a trolling script-kiddie, and if you're not that then you're a damn VB Power User!

It's one or the other, so why don't you just stop the troll? The issues involved are so small to both TomHudson and the rest of us, were SICK TO FUCKING DEATH of you God-Damn HOSTS file BULLSHIT!

Most of us could write something which confounds the hell out of you in a few hours, but we're just too damn busy, and we only come across your posts in our free time so can only be bothered with an emotional, ie ranting response rather than a practical one, so no don't bother asking me for code either.

Ps TomHudson's code is available freely at www.trolltalk.com, I suggest you go have a look at that instead of lying to the lay people about your repeated requests for code and all this!

In short, shut up. You're a troll, and not even a very good one. Oh, and feel free to start your trolling campaign with me, I always wanted my very own stalker!

Rachel x

Re:Time to shut you down easily, lol, TOO easily!

[webmistressrachel]

Right,here comes my response.

First of all, regarding TomHudson trolling you - I would if I'd seen what him and everyone else has seen - you trolling anti-virus and anti-malware sites propounding the effectiveness of the HOSTS file in security, the bit that bothers me is that whenever someone challenges your solution to malware you go off the handle. HOSTS is not a particularly effective way to patch all the bugs in Windows, but you seem to think it is. Barbie and others like to point out this fact because they always get a fun flame like the one you just posted.

Gosh, you write so much it's hard to argue, I don't really have much time. As you sarcastically guessed, yes, when I chose that username I was doing web programming - in ASP and SQL back then, and now with PHP and mySQL. It should be noted that I used C and Pascal long before I touched Microsoft's snake...

As for your work, well I've seen the back-end at McD's in the UK and it's scruffy and unstable. You work is all really diverse and untracable, like so-and-so mag 1992. Like that's relevent. If you weren't a know stalker, I'd give you what you need to find out how well ranked the sites I have are, but that woud probably slashdot my servers and idiots like you would probably ring the company and create trouble for me.

I came on here to rant to be honest, but I'm not biting your woman-hating crap, I can see why TomHudson winds you up, you ask for it. Your computer security knowledge is not all that, I've seen your HOSTS crapflood myself - you go on forums and tell them they don't need the software they've written themselves!

  Even if you are correct about TomHudson you are only making things worse for the both of you. Why not answer the points about the host file?

Why not acknowledge, and stop lying about this, that I've already given you a link to TomHudson's code in the parent?

Look, I'm tired, and annoyed now. Perhaps I have been a little rash, but I do see you trollin' TomHudson rather than the other way round mostly, why cant you just leave each other alone? And before you ask, no I'm not a sock-puppet, and, my ego is not all you think it is either. Oh, and though I love cats (your last line) I don't shred them when I get angry.

Rachel

Re:a lightweight alternative

[danieltdp]

For those unaware, lubuntu runs blackbox. Its fast, *really* fast! ;-) They are trying to push the project into oficial recognition

Re:Doesn't surprise me

[danieltdp]

Same tought. Plus the "if I disagree with their design decisions they have to suck because I'm all that"

Re:Ok, what was the McD code written in (testing y

[webmistressrachel]

Some quick, civil answers and then an exit for me, thank you.

I'm not as good with quotes as you, but I'll try to answer your major points.

First of all, after having followed most of the links and read both of you trolling as AC, I'd say you were both trolling and both scrapping as bad as each other. I do, however, believe that you are the most prolific, your apps and HOSTS file stuff seems surrounded with controversy, not just here but all over. Some of your apps have been banned from download sites for having malware-like characteristics (forget links you know which one I mean).

Second, You are so quick to belittle me, my work, and my abilities, and anything else you can get a hold of. You're not a very successful human being if you can't tell the difference between inquisitiveness or plain ignorance and a deliberate troll - which mine was not.

Third. You make sweeping generalisations regarding trolls (or people who question you, it seems, in this context). You people, people like you, and so on. You have no idea who I am nor do you seem to care, or ask. You just post the same crapflood of links to the forum and abusive rants.

Fourth. Measured in commercial success alone, I bow to you l33t ness and so on. But in terms of TAKING the SHIT BAT I was given and PLAYING as good as I can, just google timber recycling. Yep, timber recycling. No quotes, in no particular country. No1, above wikipedia? That's my company. HTML, PHP and mySQL. In notepad.

Tiny, Small you may think. OK Think wider. Think Rachel Wilson Manchester. Maybe even throw in another timber into that last search. Ooo... she's stood for election. She plays a hand in urban regeneration in Britain's second city. Her company spawned a whole NETWORK of franchises doing timber re-use and recycling.

OK so financially I'm probably not as well of as you, but I'm not as obnoxious as you and I feel that my life has had a purpose, an impact. I change things, for others, for the better.

I was adopted at 4, and my adoptive parents were abusive. I bought my first PC with paper-round money (I had been stuck with an Amstrad CPC 464 from 6 (1987) until I was 14, in 1995!). This is why, if you'll read my post, I learned BASIC then assembler THEN C - because schools in the country didnt have C compilers back then!!!

Fifth point. I did not ask for sympathy because I'm a woman, at any point. I fuckin said I wasnt gonna bite your woman-hating bullshit, which is what the last part of your horrible reply to me was, all about cat fur, if I remember correctly! Actually, that was quite a good troll it actually made me laugh!!

So in the interests of being decent human beings, please let me know how you feel now you know my motives, my bacground (which I admitted above - in the realm of the $$$ you might be all that BUT look at my achievements)

I've also done numerous third-party business management, monitoring and CMS systems. I have written a system which a lot (maybe 10%) of Housing Associations use to schedule repairs.

Re:You have NOT told me what code is in McD's app

[webmistressrachel]

My only reply is

"BLOWN AWAY", "BLOWN YOU AWAY", "BLEW YOUR DOORS OFF" etc...

All this is leading nowhere, and unfortunately you seem to have a very big problem on your hands. Yourself.

Everybody reading my replies and questions knows this isn't some smart "troll", its somebody asking. Your responses make you look stupid, ignorant, and proud.

You're comments about being able to retire but working the grind cos you love CS are self-destroying - I'm already gone past that point, starting (more than just that 1) social enterprise and using my CS in wider society to enact change (in housing repairs, read my other posts).

I don't think or care about your boring grind and your endless crawling and bad pasting of links to throw at someone in a discussion, I think and care about those around me, including you, which is why I've asked you about why you do this, why your tone and attitude is so bad, if you ask me, TomHudson is doing well to remain verbose in replying to you after all this time.

I honestly believe, in summary and before signing out as requested (unless you troll me again personally or as AC), that any readers following the threads I am in, which will be rather difficult anyway since you dont answer most of my points and I address all of yours in one post or another but you then post the same copy-pasted questions into other post again), is that I'm a reasonable human being and you're a selfish, abusive person who doesn't care what others do or think, just the mighty dollar?

Anyways, as agreed, I will now stop trolling you. If you subsequently reply to any of my posts, I will reply to any new points made, and ignore questions I have already fully answered. I will also point out at that time that it is you who is trolling me, as I have agreed in this post that you may have some points, but so do I, let's not argue. IF you reply to this post civily, I will not consider that to be further trolling and as promised will not reply. If you troll any of my other posts elsewhere I will re-evaluate this position. Goodbye, err... APK. AC. Whoever.