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."

Comments

Re:type g for .. DONT WASTE YOUR MOD POINTS HERE

[hairyfeet]

Hell i'll be happy to give 'em a target to waste mod points on, simply because this has been bugging the shit out of me for years....what is it with Linux zealots and the damned paranoia? you don't see Apple users going "ZOMFG somebody is gonna take my iShiny!" and most of us Windows users simply tried your product, found it didn't cut the mustard and moved on and frankly couldn't give a wet fart about stealing your precious freedoms okay? Right now i got two DBs loaded, a DVD burn going on, a dozen web pages, and a video playing, and this is on a PC that has had every part changed out since it had its OS loaded in Oct 09 and not a SINGLE crash, not one. Last time i tried that kind of multitasking in Linux X-Server took a big old shit and took the desktop with it. Multitasking and A/V don't mix in Linux I learned.

So what's with the paranoia? you think everybody who isn't slurping the koolaid is an "M$ Ninja" with a sekret warroom planning the downfall of your precious. You HONESTLY think Steve Ballmer gives a shit about you anymore? Wake up and smell the Android pal! He's too busy trying to "fucking kill Google" and getting seriously pissed that everywhere he turns is somebody with an iPad to give a fuck. And if you don't want anybody to complain FIX YOUR DAMNED DRIVERS ALREADY Jesus tap Dancing Christ here it is 2012 and you still can't do an apt-dist-upgrade without finding a goat to slaughter on an altar to St. iGNUious in the hope that damned Pulseaudio crap don't die or your graphics or wirelress drivers don't take a big old puke. I have tried every damned 'user friendly" distro on the planet and yet i still can't get a single one to do a standard GUI upgrade without ending up with a broken mess and don't even get me started on LTS, 3 years is COMPLETELY worthless! Hell even Enterprises by and large don't chunk every 3 years anymore because the MHz wars are over and a multicore desktop can last a good 5-7 easy peasy!

So quit with the damned paranoia as it makes your entire community sound batshit. Instead get to bitching your asses off at the damned devs who are obviously ignoring you (I'm looking at YOU Gnome and KDE!) and work on making the best damned product that actually gives the people what they want. I've said it a million times but fuck it, it needs repeating obviously, HOME USERS ARE NOT GEEKS and will NOT learn your CLI heavy fiddly bullshit geeky ways, okay? they just won't so quit acting like they will. you want to see what they want look at the iPhone, that thing is so dumbed down you could drag some head hunter out of the bush and shove one in his hands and in 20 minutes he'll be playing Angry Birds and THAT is what they want, they want simple, clicky clicky all GUI so dumbed down you could give it to someone that doesn't even speak the installed language and just by looking at the pictures they get it, and it needs a MINIMUM of 5 years support, i'd say 7 myself simply because most users aren't ever gonna stress a modern quad core.

So let go of the 90s and stop with the conspiracy theories already! Nobody carries your product because its not iPhone easy, not because Bill Gates, who hasn't even been there in a fricking decade and in his place is a big sweaty gorilla that if he had an original thought his head would asplode, is sekretly plotting to kill your precious GNU! you've got more choices than EVER before, you got X86 and ARM and handhelds and phones and routers and fricking toasters if you want to Open Source your bagel so stop with the batshit already, geez! You'd think with the "Great XP dieoff' in full swing with millions of insanely overpowered desktops and laptops hitting the market and the sweaty monkey about to treat his company like Vincent Vega did Marvin in the Bonnie situation because he has a hard on for the iPad you'd get the clue and give us a 7 year supported OS that was as simple to use as iOS and blindside the monkey but noooo..why they just need to "embrace the POWER of CLI" like its the God damned force! Never before in history has so many things been in