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.

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

[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

[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.

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.

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

[Tanuki64]

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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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!

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.

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?

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

[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

[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: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.

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...

[LordLimecat]

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

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: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: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?

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: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?

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: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?

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