Ask Slashdot: Unity/Gnome 3/Win8/iOS — Do We Really Hate All New GUIs?

Brad1138 writes "You see complaints about the 'next gen' GUI's all over the place, but do we really all hate them? Personally, I don't like them — I tried very hard to like Unity in Ubuntu 11.04/11.10 before giving up and switching to Mint (I am very happy there currently). But is it the vocal minority doing all the complaining, or is it the majority? Are we just too set in our ways?"

Comments

So where are these "good UI designers"?

[Anonymous Coward]

So where the fuck are these so-called "good UI designers"? Where is the software that they've created?

They sure as fuck aren't working on open source software. GNOME 3, Firefox, and Unity are perfect proof of this.

They sure as fuck aren't working on commercial software. This is evident through Chrome, post-Ribbon MS Office, Windows 8 and iOS.

They sure as fuck aren't working on enterprise software, either. Much of this software makes GNOME 3 pleasant to use.

So where the fuck are they? What projects or products have these "good UI designers" worked on?

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[ArcherB]

no, silly! It's change for the sake of requiring the purchase of new hardware to run the new GUIs!

Close. The idea is to have the same interface on every device you buy.

Personally, I think that sux. See, I used to wish I could run Windows on my phone. Then, one day, I was able to vnc running on a phone... or ipad... or something small, I don't remember and was able to connect to my desktop. Again, I don't remember if it was Gnome, KDE or Windows, but I've tried them all and the results were the same. They all sucked! They sucked big time. It was impossible to bring up or pull down any menus. There was no right click, drag, or shift click. Scrolling using scroll bars or even accurate clicking was next to impossible. Well, let's just say it sucked. The problem is that the desktop OS was not made to run a four inch screen with a single touch or even multi-touch as an interface.

So, now, rather than making a desktop GUI fit on a phone, they are trying to fit the phone GUI fit on the desktop. The results are exactly what you would expect. Most of the right-click functionality is gone. In Unity or Gnome3, if you right click on the menu bar across the top, nothing happens. Gone is the right click and "Run As" dialog. Gone is the right click and "add to bar". Basically, the right click has been removed from much of the GUI functionality. Gone are the nested menus. Instead of "gnome-foot"/"start-button"/"K" -> System -> Whatever-You-Want-To-Run, you now have something like this:

Move the mouse to the left side of the screen and wait. Did anything happen? No? Move to the top left. OK, how about now? Do you see the program you want to run? I'm not sure what the icon looks like. Just mouse over everything and wait over each icon. It should tell what each app is. Is it there? No? OK, click on the top icon, click in the box, and start typing what you are looking for. Don't remember what it was called? It's like a CD Ripper but it's not called that? Hmmmm. I don't know what you'd type in. I know on the old system you would go to multimedia and look for it. Now-a-days... well, I guess you are just fucked. See, the developers that made your GUI didn't think that ABCDE was important enough to include on the main tool bar so you don't get to run it if you don't know what's it called.

Oh, but if you were on a phone, this would look awesome!

Re:It's change for the sake of change

[Grishnakh]

Gone are the nested menus. Instead of "gnome-foot"/"start-button"/"K" -> System -> Whatever-You-Want-To-Run, you now have something like this:

Everything you wrote is spot-on, except the part here about the "K". KDE is the one heavyweight Linux DE that hasn't drunk the one-UI-for-every-device kool-aid. The "K" menu is still there in the latest 4.7 release, and it isn't going anywhere. Furthermore, there's actually multiple UIs you can select in KDE; the default one for desktop PCs is "plasma-desktop" (you can see it running with "ps"). But if you're running a netbook, there's a different one that's optimized for netbooks, called "plasma-netbook". There's more coming for other devices (namely tablets; I don't think we'll see KDE on any phones soon; the tablet one will be touch-oriented as you'd expect). Unlike the other morons, the KDE guys have a totally different philosophy: they believe that different devices should have different UIs, though they can use most of the same underlying libraries and other software services.

Say what you will about KDE and their 4.0 screw-up, nepomuk, etc., but in this area, they have exactly the right idea.

Re:You're asking who?

[wizkid]

Slashdot is always going to give you a tainted answer. slashdot'rs hate everything. If your curious about it tho, check out the downloads on Linux Mint. They've had record downloads, and are zooming up on Ubuntu at a record clip, according to most webstats. I switched to Linux mint instead of upgrading Ubuntu desktop, now it's on my laptop, workstation, and I'll probably try upgrading my company workstation to it when upgrade time comes along.

I still like ubuntu server! But I hate unity with a passion. Read what they plan on doing with Gnome 3! They're talking about putting gnome 2 stuff back on top of gnome shell, and making a hybrid Gnome desktop.

The Linux desktop Developers keep thinking that making the desktop simpler is the answer. And they're doing it by taking away options. Windows is busy putting options back into they're desktop. Someone needs to go beat the Gnome and Ubuntu developers with a clue stick.

Damn, now I'm sounding like a slashdot'r RATS!

Re:You're asking who?

[hairyfeet]

And allow me to chime in from the other side of the aisle since he also mentions Windows 8. my customers are just your ordinary folks, the kind MSFT expects to sell Win 8 to. Suzy the checkout girl, Brian who runs a backhoe, everyday Joes. Now to put what I am about to say in perspective I showed screencaps of Win 7 as well as ran the beta when it became available and the reaction across the board was one of curiosity, they wanted to know what it did and how it stacked up to XP since nobody really liked Vista. oh and if everyone wants to know what killed Visa for ordinary folks, Canel/allow? constantly drove them nuts!

But I'm now up to about 130 of these normal folks that I've shown the Win 8 screengrabs to and about 20 that actually watched a little of the video and they all to a man absolutely fucking HATE it and have made it quite clear they don't give a shit WHAT it does its a giant DO NOT WANT. In fact the closest I got to an "endorsement" was this exchange by a sweet little middle aged female customer "Oh that is a nice looking cell phone picture, is it that Android? I heard that is supposed to be quite nice....what do you mean Windows? Windows what? Well that is just stupid! Why would I want a cell phone on my computer?"

And from the mouth of an ordinary person comes truth. Instead of the curiosity I saw with Win 7 the biggest question they had for me was "But if I need another Windows 7 you'll be able to get me one, right?" which I would say is a sign that Ballmer's Folly does not look to be in a good position right from the start. I didn't even see this kind of hate for Vista this early, most like myself hoped they'd fix it. Hell the only nice thing I can say about Win 8 is maybe Ballmer will be forced to "pursue other interests" and someone decent can be brought in to right the ship.

So I feel for ya Linux guys, I really do. Its like all the DE designers drank the same poorly mixed Kool Aid and became Bizarro developers "Quick things am stable and users am happy! Must make big mess, throw out years of work, and make things am confusing! Users am unhappy now? We do good!"