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Ubuntu 12.04 To Include Head-Up Display Menus
For the first few years of its existence, it would have been fair to say that Canonical was essentially polishing, packaging and publishing Debian Linux (and Gnome) to create the base Ubuntu desktop, to great acclaim. For the past few years, though, the company has pushed new looks and new applications (cf. Unity and Ubuntu TV), and refused to stick with prettifying existing interfaces. Now, Barence writes with this excerpt from PC Pro: "Ubuntu is set to replace the 30-year-old computer menu system with a 'Head-Up Display' that allows users to simply type or speak menu commands. Instead of hunting through drop-down menus to find application commands, Ubuntu's Head-Up Display lets users type what they want to do into a search box. The system suggests possible commands as the user begins typing – entering 'Rad' would bring up the Radial blur command in the GIMP art package, for example. HUD also uses fuzzy matching and learns from past searches to ensure the correct commands are offered to users. Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth told PC Pro the HUD will make it easier for people to learn new software packages, and migrate from Windows to Linux software without having to relearn menus. The HUD will first appear in Ubuntu 12.04."
"For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive - you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme."
s/radios/linux/g ; s/listening to/running/
Nearly there. Time to start spinning in your grave, Mr. Adams.
Philip
-- Any sufficiently advanced level of incompetence is indistinguishable from malice
Generally, the "Obligatory XKCD" meme requires that the XKCD in question have some relation to the subject at hand....
"Oh for fuck's sake, where are the preferences?"
*ping*
"Oh, there they are."
Summation 2
You cannot polish a turd.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
GNU-Linux started as a command based OS, various GUIs were attempted, and now we're back to typing in what we want to do.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The world doesn't revolve around me.
Blimey, there's a phrase I'd never expected to see on slashdot.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it