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Are Power Users Too Cool For Ubuntu Unity?
darthcamaro writes "There are a lot of us that really don't like Unity. Ubuntu Founder Mark Shuttleworth defended Unity today, arguing that even 'cool' power users should like usability and ease of use. Then again he admitted that some of us are just too cool even for Unity. 'There is going to be a crowd that is just too cool to use something that looks really slick and there is nothing we can do for them,' Shuttleworth said. 'Fortunately in Ubuntu there are tons of options and lots of choice and ways to skin the cat.'"
Unity is too cool for power users?
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
It's fine if you don't mind a slightly looser integration of GNOME.
Plenty of eyecandy to spare.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
But I fucking hate both GNOME 3 and Unity with a passion.
Canonical and the GNOME tools fucked up a good thing that was GNOME 2.
Now get off my lawn.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
>> 'cool' power users should like usability and ease of use
I do. Thats why I avoid Unity.
Unity gets in the way. It takes way to many actions to find and launch something compared to gnome 2.
I think the unity interface looks kinda cool, and the first thought I had was that it would be neat on a tablet. However, it does nothing for usability on my desktop. Especially when programming via multiple terminal sessions. Which, is the only time that I really ever use linux. Thanks for judging me, one of Ubuntu's previous fans, asshole.
It's not about being "too cool". It's about being sick of a crappy, poorly thought out interface that caters to users that want everything done for them. Power users and people that know what they're doing typically don't want magic - they want to know what's happening on their system and to not have an interface like Unity shoved down their throat.
-- Cameron Eagans http://cweagans.net
Is it possible to mod the base post down as flamebait?
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
The unity interface turns every computer into a netbook interface that just isn't appropriate for regular computer use or users ....
I upgraded from Ubuntu 10.04 to 11.10 and was very unhappy with Unity. Fortunately I found out about Lubuntu, which is "a variant of Ubuntu that is lighter, less resource hungry and more energy-efficient by using lightweight applications and LXDE, The Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment, as its default GUI." It is wonderful, fast and efficient! Get it here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu#Get_Lubuntu
That's the exact problem!
Unity is not usable. It is not easy to use or intuitive.
Right-clicking should allow us to alter things. Things should be consistent. We don't need have the screen taken up with giant buttons - that doesn't help and it's not easy to use! It's just annoying.
Did I blink and end up back in primary school? Does anyone who refuses to use Ubuntu have cooties too?
And how ridiculous is it to say geeks are "too cool" to use a product. What are you smoking!?!? Geeks love new things that function well and allow them to do cool things. They do not shun these things based on idiotic social protocol.
So take your poorly written crippled little interface and put it back in a dark cupboard, or if you're out of room shove it somewhere the sun don't shine!
I am sick and tired of free software developers thinking that because their product is free (in both senses) they can dictate what I do or do not like, or what features I do or do not want. If you take a feature away, either give me a way to re-enable it or suffer my ire. Firefox devs, Google, Ubuntu...that means you. Apple, Microsoft, you're not exempt because I pay for your product.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I love unity and the slick interface it provides. Unfortunately, it doesn't love me. I want the launcher at the bottom. Can't figure out how to do this. It runs slower than KDE 4 on my netbook and I could have sworn it was a netbook interface. I can't justify the lost productivity as I wait for things to load or while I fruitlessly hunt for my stuff at the bottom of the screen. In my opinion it should run faster since there is less to it. Fundamentally, I switched to Debian and realized that I'd forgotten what a fast responsive UI felt like!
I don't get why there is this push away from the program menu we have been using for over 15 years. I still like it. Just because it has been around a while doesn't mean it needs to be replaced. I switched from Ubuntu after 5 years to Mint to get away from Unity, now Mint is going to Gnome 3. I'll try that, but if it is too much like Unity, I'll probably go to Xubuntu.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
I'd say that Debian is just as easy to configure nowadays due to Ubuntu's bloat. And It's maybe easier if you want to customize things.
I like usability, but usability doesn't just mean that a dumb user can figure it out, it also means that it gets the job done with the least amount of effort and Unity just doesn't cut it right now. One thing for example really nice in Gnome2 was that i could have multiple panels, spread across different monitors and filled with the apps needed for that monitor. With Unity I can't even move the dock thing, let alone place it on a monitor of my choice. Also starting an app: Yeah, for big applications, having the icon click be turned into a 'switch to already running app' is great, however for terminals is awkward as hell and makes no conceptual sense. That's simply not how you use a terminal and the dock doesn't provide any proper way to change that behavior. Menu on-top, same issue, great when you have a small screen, awful and confusing on a big screen one, especially when an app spawns multiple windows.
There are also very basic issues with Unity, such as: Does it even work? Well, right now with my ATI drivers, no it doesn't. It produces counterless ugly graphic glitches and problems that make it unusable.
I mean in essence I don't even get why Unity exists. Desktop environments are not that complicated, you have buttons to click on stuff and they make windows open, hardly anything has changed with that in 20 years. The thing that makes the environment more usable lies in making it consistent and bug free. Throwing what we have and starting a new doesn't make it better, it just makes it different for being different sake.
Wanna make application installation easier? Don't twiggle with the start menu, fix dpkg and allow me to easily install software from third party sources across distributions and allow me to install multiple versions of the same app.
I run about 100 linux servers. Currently they are ubuntu servers and are unsupported. We are about to do a refresh and my boss asked me to get official support. I looked at ubuntu support, but honestly the direction ubuntu is going on their desktop and the way their mouthpieces act has caused my team and I to not want to risk staying with ubuntu. We are looking at Redhat.
I guess we are too cool to give them money.
Because if we were happy to have someone else dictate to us how we should use our systems, we'd have stuck with Windows or OSX. The UNIX world hasn't even managed to settle on a single window manager, much less a desktop environment that no one but the guy who created it seems to like.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Mr. Shuttleworth should stop for a moment and think: "What if they are right? What if Unity is a poor design? What if putting a smartphone-ish interface on a desktop computer is a damn stupid idea?"
Circumcision is child abuse.
The Ubuntu people better read this thread because I'm only going to say it once more..
It's a goddamn OPERATING SYSTEM!
People use it to start and control applications. It's not supposed to be shiny, wobbly and sparkly. I still set Windows7 to Classic Mode because I don't want it to use up resources for bullshit and the menus are set up sane in this mode. The only thing I somewhat liked about Unity is that you have more screen real-estate, but last time I used it, it was messing up even something as simply as Alt-Tab.
Mark Shuttleworth may classify me as 'too cool' and beyond hope of ever being pleased. But the fact is, I'm a pretty laid back user. The only thing I'm not is a 14 year old girl who wants everything to be pretty or a Mac user who values looks over functionality.
And what the hell is it with things needing to be changed for change sake? I recall most of my friends rebuilding their webpage from the ground up every 6 months, just so that it would be new. It seems Ubuntu is suffering from the same problem. Gnome2 was just fine, and if there was something wrong with it, they should've just fixed it instead of throwing it out the window. I still have to see any real advantage of Unity over Gnome2. All I encounter is a ton of things that don't work. And even if you make the argument that they are only small things, Unity is killing the user experience by a thousand cuts.
I switched to Mint and like it better than Ubuntu, mainly because a number of the programs I had to install after every Ubuntu install are already installed. That and it reminds me of 10.04 or 10.10, it just works well. Don't know what I'll do when Mint 12 comes out with Gnome 3...
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
To all those who make snide remarks about grumpy old UNIX geeks not wanting to change, I issue a challenge: Switch to a Dvorak keyboard for a week.
After all, the Dvorak keyboard is more efficient and more usable than the QWERTY one (at least according to Dvorak proponents.)
Oh, and if you are already using a Dvorak keyboard, you're obviously far too cool for Unity.
I've just installed 11.10 on an older pentium D desktop (basically my distro-testing machine), and after finding Unity to be unusable I installed the standard Gnome 3 shell. It's definitely inspired by fisher-price baby's-first-tablet UIs, but at least it's responsive and stable and doesn't make running programs inaccessible. It's worth giving Gnome 3 a try for a day or so.
And some who who tried the early unity I have got to say that it is horrible for small screens.
The normal Ubuntu interface slightly customized though is near perfect and way better then Windows.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
but it was dual bootable with win98
That says quite a bit, about the hardware (winmodem and similar?), and the state of Linux drivers at that time. If you had anything other than proper hardware, any using the OS required for what should be done by firmware, you had an adventure, and often got to do without.
I've not had a similar adventure since 2006 or so. Linux used since '98: Slackware/OpenLinux/Mandrake/Mandriva/Suse/Fedora/Slackware.
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think." - Adolph Hitler
I consider myself a power user, and I like unity. I've been using Linux exclusively for about 10 years now, and I run my own mail server, database, web server, and I tinker with sshd config files, send my emails with gpg--the works. I had switched from Debian to Kubuntu about 2 years ago, and I've used KDE from 3.1 to about 4.3. I switched away from KDE because it was slow with compositing and switching windows.
Now unity does have its issues, but it has many strengths. The 2D interface is built on metacity, and it's very fast. One thing I like about unity is that the title bar serves the dual purpose as the status bar, saving about a half inch or more of vertical screen space on every window. I use the keyboard extensively for window management, and not having a title bar in addition to a status bar is a welcome change.
The launcher stays out of the way (behind windows), and it can be easily used to launch applications with a keyboard. A number associated with each application on the launcher panel such that it'll either launch a new instance or switch to an existing instance instantly when pressed. For instance, I can press Win+1 from anywhere, and it'll take me to my browser, or open a new browser window.
That said, unity definitely still needs work when it comes to managing a lot of windows. My typical workstation has 9 desktops with up to 9 windows on each. For applications, such as Gimp, that use multiple windows, minimizing and accessing different windows can be a hassle in unity. There are also some stability issues in unity.
However, I do think that unity 2D shows great promise, particularly for users that are adept at keyboard shortcuts.
If i should get used (=learn, test, adapt) to something new, i have to understand the advantage. I switch (small erratic test phases excluded) my working environment very seldom: From 1996 to 2002 i used (c)twm, from 2002 to 2006 icewm on slower machines and gnome on faster ones. After 2006 i only used gnome on ubuntu.
So why do i switch?
a) an old system "stops working" and that means its not well integrated into the current distro and compatibilities with standard programs are not checked. I like if things like network manager just are present on the standard desktop out of the box and if programs dont give erratic messages.
b) Better, unbeatable features, like better possibilities for integration between programs.
c) daily tasks get more easy by making better use of the screenspace
In comparison to gnome Unity has a small advantage on my dell netbook, which i only used to read email, surf the web and listen to music.
If i need more than 4 icons in unity then i use gnome-do. And i figured then i can just use the menu instead....
However, none of the options (that includes Windows) IMHO beats the 1992 OS/2 WPS. I am really disappointed that, whenever i tried to use drag and drop in the last few years nothing (or something weird happend). The plethora of stupid web-packed in exe-applications made that even worse.
When Mint 12 comes out all you'll do is make a choice. The reason I'm using Mint right now is that they're taking time with the transition, so I'll be able to move to Gnome 3 (or not) when I think it's ready.
Linux Mint 12 “Lisa” will be released in November this year with continued support for Gnome 2 but also with the introduction of Gnome 3. ... Of course, we’re starting from scratch and this process will take time and span across multiple releases. Until then, it’s important we continue to support the traditional Gnome 2 desktop.
You are exactly right. Why the hell would I want to use Unity which often requires me to move my hands between my keyboard and mouse, click extra times to do the same action, or look for another one of those hidden features that were implemented in order to save 10px of space on my 1980x1200 resolution screen.
I like seeing exactly what windows I have open and ungrouped. I like using my horizontal space to display these things. I like not having my file menu potentially hundreds of pixels away when I could normally access it a very short distance away. I liked dedicating launcher menus on a separate bar from my task bar. I like visible scroll bars and I most definitely like having dedicated buttons visible at all times just one click away from me minimizing and maximizing my windows. In my opinion, Beryl/Compiz/Fusion alone offered enough eye-candy mixed with the right options to enhance my productivity while making the experience pretty.
There are very good reasons why I preferred the old Gnome 2.x desktop UI over OSX, KDE, Windows, or anything like that.
Here's a tip Shuttleworth: Don't be a Jobs. Don't think that just because we don't agree with you 100% that we're enemies or a bunch of whiners who are whining for no good reason. You have many users who know what they want, who know what they like, and who know the reasons why. Don't insult us by acting like The King of Hipster Club.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
No. The global menu on OSX sucks donkey balls too.
I was told Gentoo was the distro of choice for someone who wanted to learn Linux "from the ground up". I haven't touched Slack since my failed experimentation with it in '02 - it didn't recognize any of my hardware, X wouldn't use any sane resolutions without massive text file configuration and hours of research, and I gave up on it after a few days of hardcore effort attempting to make it work well enough to even surf the net.
Ubuntu was a godsend in '07 - pretty much everything worked "out of the box" (other than some minor audio issues that I never did resolve, and were probably due to the retarded AC97 hardware, rather than any failing of the OS). '08 was even better. In '09, I felt like there was some regression, but chalked it up to "growing pains". '10 was alright, once I got my buttons moved back to the upper-right corner... but I was beginning to feel some buyer's remorse. I recently tried out 11.04, because I felt like I should; the misgivings were not minor. Unity is damn near unusable, for anyone who comes from a Microsoft background. This is not a good thing, since Windows still makes up close to 90% of the desktop market. I haven't bothered moving to 11.10 because I feel like Canonical has lost touch with their user base. When I get around to being excited about an OS again, it will probably be because I have moved to something with a more stable interface, that actually works, with only minor tweaking necessary (instead of the hellish battle with my own computer that any Ubuntu install/upgrade has become).
I can understand wanting to change things up a bit, to make sure the users don't feel like the OS has become stagnant. What I don't understand is why Ubuntu seems to have become an experiment to see just how much change the users will tolerate with each version before chucking it in the bin.
I can also understand wanting to make OS X users feel more comfortable with the OS - but it should be an option, not the default. Apple hasn't got enough market share for Canonical to get away with making everyone feel like they're trying to use a broken iPhone instead of a PC... and to be honest, neither does Canonical.
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I'm sorry that you've had to deal with this (full disclosure: I'm a former Slackware user), but I view Slackware akin to a katana for the specialized or pro user, whereas Ubuntu is sort of a mace.. works as a bludgeon, an "everyman's" distro that allows you to operate with minimal tweaking. I like Slackware immensely, and still use it on a few specialized projects, but I really don't think it's an ideal newbie distro. People just want to get stuff done, not masturbate all over the hardware.
That being said, since so many of my work systems are RedHat based systems I find myself gravitating towards Scientific Linux for more homogeneity on the job, but am now running Arch at home for hacking on projects and playing. The whole "learning linux" argument has some merit, but if you really want to learn linux, go with Linux From Scratch for the low-level knowledge followed by an RPM based Redhat variant since that's what's used most often in the enterprise (at least where I live).