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Ubuntu 14.04 Brings Back Menus In Application Windows
sfcrazy writes "Canonical is bringing back menu integration with application windows. In 14.04 there will be an option for users to enable menus in application windows. That's a huge u-turn from Mark's stand on Global Menus which upset a lot of Ubuntu users."
I did not realize people still use Ubuntu.
As a big fan of focus-follows-mouse, this will finally make Ubuntu at least *usable*, if not pretty. FFM is in direct odds with global menus.
Bonus points if they label the configuration settings "be like a Mac" and "be like every other computer on the planet". Maybe this signals the end of the continual macification of Unity?
A good property of UI is to remain stable so that user can get used to it. It would be nice if they could stop changing stuff on every release.
Linux users like what they want. That might not conform to whatever your personal preferences are or what's trendy. That doesn't make Linux users "luddites". It makes them something other than mindless drones.
Beyond that, going out of your way to try and copy that other marginal player in the industry us just retarded. You will pretty much ensure that less saavy users are alienated by something that seeks to be annoyingly different for it's own sake.
You think Linux users are luddites? We're not even close to that compared to the bulk of the potential users out there.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Well it seems like in 14.04 global menus are the default, and the local menus are an option in the “Appearance” section of the Unity Control Center. That seems like a fair compromise.
I've been mostly fine with the UX of Unity, but it really is a damn laggy and slow desktop, and also buggy as heck. I thought Canonical had the resources to set things straight but the quality assurance is just horrible. The Fedora KDE spin is my current happy place in Linux world.
Is there any compelling reason for them to "stick" with something? Having the choice is a positive good. Unity's lack of options is what drove me away from it.
Muscle memory. There is nothing more significant to a good user interface than being friendly to developing muscle memory. Everything else is secondary. Once you develop muscle memory, you don't care much what it looks like because you don't look at it. If you can't develop muscle memory, you won't ever enjoy using the device.
That's why the many devices that are pure touch screen driven suck. They demand your constant attention like a mewling infant. The push to add hot spots and gestures and voice to all these touch screen devices is driven by this truth.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Agreed, but this is an opt-in. I'll develop muscle memory when I have a UI configured to my tastes rather than rewire my sinews to a forced interface.
The change *to* global menus was a few releases back, and was forced on everyone; it was not opt-in. This allows people to revert to the original, sensible behaviour.
Yes, because anyone who questions your viewpoint and politics is obviously an ignorant luddite. ..and liberals wonder why others perceive them as arrogant, totalitarian, histrionic, narcissists. Tolerance and diversity only applies to their own viewpoints and protected castes, I guess.
Global menus work ok for small desktops (1024x768 tops), but with huge desktops that have multiple windows side by side, having to select the window and move the mouse to the top of the screen to use the menu for it is a pain.
Intelligent users like configurations that work for their workflows. When they are obviously changed out just for change's sake, they become irritated. This applies to any platform. Change for change's sake has become a fad in the last 5-6 years, and it's driving people nuts.
I've never understood why we can't get the window-manager and the application to play nice, and share one bar. Usually, there's plenty of space horizontally, and too little vertically. So, why not have the combination of: ....... "The window title goes here" ....... _ [] X
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Is there any compelling reason for them to "stick" with something? Having the choice is a positive good. Unity's lack of options is what drove me away from it.
Muscle memory. There is nothing more significant to a good user interface than being friendly to developing muscle memory. Everything else is secondary. Once you develop muscle memory, you don't care much what it looks like because you don't look at it. If you can't develop muscle memory, you won't ever enjoy using the device.
That's why the many devices that are pure touch screen driven suck. They demand your constant attention like a mewling infant. The push to add hot spots and gestures and voice to all these touch screen devices is driven by this truth.
THIS! As a person who uses and supports OSX, Windows in various flavors, and Linux, I feel that I can at least make an informed analysis.
I have to do a lot of switching back and forth between various OS's, and trying to develop Muscle memory for Windows 8 has proven to be like trying to swim in Jell-O ® Even on a touch screen laptop, which allows it to "work" better, but is probably worse for power users.
Ubuntu had turned into a similarly awful product.
So we'll see. For myself I've gone to Mint 15, and don't regret it at all.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I've been okay with the dash and the side bar look of new ubuntu. It's mostly been the same for me. I switch between different desktops all the time, so I'm not particularly attached to any one or the other as long as it doesn't really impede my workflow. What I hate and still can't get used to is the global menu. I accidentally close out of so many applications because I don't realize I'm actually focused in another window. It annoys the piss out of me, and takes away the concept of the window. The window is it's own little self contained world. Menus for that window should be with that window. I still can't get used to clicking for focus on a window, and then dragging my mouse all the way back up to the top of the screen to get a menu for a window. It really only works well for a full maximized applications.
So the rest of the menu complaints are irrelevant.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Changing the user interface is absolutely no different than changing the interface to a class, and the same design principles apply for similar reasons. The Open Closed Principle (OCP) states that a class should be open to extension, but closed to modifications. User interfaces are no different. They should be able to extend it to add new features, but they should never change the existing interface to provide for backward compatibility. The reasons are identical, as well: if you don't change it, nobody else has to change in order to keep using it.
The only valid reason you should change the interface is that you should remove the old interface if it was no longer needed because the tasks it did are no longer used. Clearly, that's not the case here - people still need to search, organize, locate and execute programs. Changing the UI was a completely counterproductive action, and never had any way to actually add benefit. Offering an additional UI for people who wanted a new UI would be a perfectly appropriate approach, yet they failed to implement that way.
Instead, they poorly copied Microsoft's actions with Windows 8 and Metro, which was itself a poorly done copy of iOS's interface, with the added insult of requiring gestures even on a mouse-based machine! Apple themselves then made a shit-poor decision to change the UI for iOS 7. Unity fell somewhere in the middle of this mess, believing that "change is good because Apple and Microsoft were doing it." So they violated the OCP, and pissed off as many users as they could. That's even a bigger mistake for them, because Unity users are far less locked into the choice of Canonical than a Microsoft or Apple user.
All in all, Ubuntu has made bad decision after bad decision once they started down the path with Unity. And they don't seem to understand this is a failure at every level; instead, they blame the users for being whiny luddites incapable of dealing with change. They're wrong about that, because I can indeed change, and it looks like Mint or Kali will be my next distro instead of the next version of 'stammering shuttleworth' or whatever childish name they're assigning to it.
John
FFM is not actually fundimentally incompatible with focus-follows-mouse. Gnome 3 works around it by providing an option called 'focus-change-on-pointer-rest'. It works extremely well on a trackpad because you general lift your finger once the pointer is over a window. With a mouse, it gives a slight lag because your hand isn't as steady.
Why does this work well with global menus? Because when you use global menus, you throw the pointer to the top of the screen, using fits law.
The reason I use FFM to begin with is because I hate having to aim and make sure I hit a tiny widget or make sure I don't accidentally click a link on a webpage when trying to give focus to the window. Having menubars in windows is an extension of that problem. I would probably care less if mouse motion was actually one-to-one, but it isn't.
I don't think users have a problem with innovation or new things... they have a problem with being bound with an interface NOT DESIGNED FOR DESKTOP COMPUTERS.
Unity = Metro = Crap (on desktop)
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writi...
Goddamn right! I hate to say it, but I refuse to use ubuntu anymore because it seems like every new release is a total clusterfuck of new half finished ideas. I never liked gnome all that much, but even going back to version 2 would seem like an improvement at this point. Linux devs need to work together and produce a consistent UI, but no lets instead have different flavors of X and a million different desktop environments. Because that's so much better. Could you imagine how polished the UI would be if you combined all these teams competing to get to the same place? Go ahead. Cue all the fanboys that tell me choice is better.
zosxavius photography
That escalated quickly....
Why Apple has made the perfect UI, how could you not love the best design for DJs and Photoshoppers? There are about 10 things wrong with OSX and they are all random design crap Jobs picked -
Global menus,
Single mouse click,
Left window controls (yay for all the left handed and left eye dominant people, boo for the other 95% of the world)
Launchpad (how is the start menu missing causing a revolt and launchpad even exist? Launchpad is the initial SIN!)
Finder layout straight out of system commander circa 1988.
Crap loads of docked icons you never use be default.
A separate contact and calendar app....
General iOS crap
Hardwired application dependency locations (the whole point of application folders is to stop that!)
Scroll bars that disappear even if your mouse is near them and appear at the bottoms of pages OVERTOP content.
I could go on and complain about the apps, but lets say OSX is great for people who use a computer like they use iOS and leave it at that....
Fascinating, fascinating. And they did these tests on 2048x1536 dual-monitor setups, you say? Impressive research. Definitely relevant to modern users.
And yet it is a terrible violation of Fitt's Law, especially on large high-res monitors and multi-monitor setups. Not to mention that accessing the menu of a non-focused app requires dragging the mouse over to that window or dock icon to click for focus and then dragging the mouse all the way up to the menu bar and then back down to the window to resume work. I should install a mouse-odometer app on my Mac and my Linux box just to see how much extra movement Mac OS requires. After years of working with all three major OSes, Mac OS has quickly become one of my least favorite.
haha, MY attitude was rude? I suggest you reread your post. I simply responded in kind. Yes, of course, you should always assume people who disagree with you are trolls. That way, in your own mind at least, you won't have to face whatever challenges were brought against your views. While it denies you the chance to learn something new, at least you can stay in that nice self-absorbed realm of petty narcissistic solipsism. You do realize this attitude lives up to that negative liberal stereotype I mentioned?
It's quite easy to tell the difference between useful innovation and when someone kills needed/useful functionality to hop on a bandwagon. Grafting tablet interfaces onto desktop systems is definitely an example of the latter. The change brought about all kinds of grief for people who actually do more with their computers than use them as facebook terminals. You shouldn't hate them so much for their attitudes, because they're the ones who make the content for you to consume on your tablets (or tablet-interface addled computers).
He's welcome to have a different view and do what he wants with his company/money. Only spineless fairies like you would rush to silence criticism of yourself or others, in order to avoid feeling bad (or having others feel bad), truth be damned. This is that special snowflake syndrome that is dissolving the spine of western culture. To hell with that. I do use something else, but, I have a right to state my views, too. I realize this right offend people like you who can't handle criticism, but that's not my problem. Of course, that's why you elect politicians who'd love to stamp out free speech, right? To make it my problem, and make up for the fact your arguments are without merit?
Trust me, I played for hours and at the time it was fun. Not so much any more.
(emphasis mine; not as OT as it looks.)
I started on Linux in 1994 - Slackware, wasn't it? I had to port nearly everything from SunOS or HP-UX or AIX or Irix, or whatever. It was fun working with it, and fun watching it grow.
But eventually I got tired of constantly having to futz with everything to make it work. It was not unlike having to tune up your car every time you went for a drive around the block, and having to replace the engine and tires every time you wanted to drive across town to see grandma. Anyhow it gets tiring when it's getting in the way of doing your day job.
Then we get some of the silliness from Ubuntu trying to shove a new way down everyones' throat - new way isn't bad or good, it's the shoving-down-my-throat that I'm not so fond of. Reminds me of some of our favorite empires - MS,Oracle, ...
I've been using Windows 8 for quite some time, and without commenting on my overall opinion, I have never once done anything that I would consider a "gesture."
There is a certain gesture popular with Windows 8 users that is very commonly directed towards Microsoft, particularly before they find out about start menu replacements.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Mac OS has been like this since System 1. And it makes sense; whatever you're doing, its menu is going to be in the same place. Fitts' law indicates that the most quickly accessed targets on any computer display are the four corners of the screen.
Mac OS has supported multiple mouse buttons for at least 16 years. Even when using a now-extinct one button mouse, control-click presented a dialogue box.
Because it's easier to move a mouse up/left with your right hand, and was developed in a country that reads left-to-right.
The start menu missing is causing a revolt because Microsoft removed something and replaced it with an abomination. Launchpad - and other questionable features like Dashboard - can be completely ignored.
Column view in Finder is optional, with icon and list view still available. Also, Finder has had its sorting options greatly improved throughout OS X's history.
If you go and buy a Mac today, this is in the Dock:
- Finder: File management
- Launchpad: Access to all apps not in the Dock (And easily ignored, as previously discussed)
- Safari: A web browser
- Mail: Email client
- Contacts: An address book
- Calendar: A calendar
- Notes: Short notes
- Maps: A map of the entire planet
- Messages: Text messaging and IM
- FaceTime: Video chat
- Photo Booth: Something fun to play with on your new computer
- iPhoto: Something to talk to your camera
- Pages: Word processing
- Numbers: Spreadsheets
- Keynote: Presentations
- iTunes: Play and purchase music and TV/movies
- iBooks: Read and purchase books
- App Store: Install and purchase software
- System Preferences: Change settings on your computer
The default Dock icons cover managing your computer, using the big two features of the Internet, syncing 'organisational' information with your phone, finding locations, messaging and video chatting with other people, photography, writing, processing numbers, creating presentations, watching media, reading, and installing an app to do anything else you want your computer to do. The default Dock is a slam-dunk for covering what the majority of people use computers for, points users in the right direction to add new capabilities to the computer, and is easily customised to remove the things you don't want. (Launchpad, again...)
The Dock is setup perfectly for you to get started with your computer. Anything else you need to get to can either be accessed through Spotlight (power users) or Launchpad (for people with more experience with iOS).
Just like iOS... but also NeXTSTEP; they have always been separate apps, which makes finding what are ultimately different tasks easier *and* they also seamlessly share the same databases behind the scenes.
Integration with touchpads is great. Removing always-visible scrollbars removes needless clutter. Things like Launchpad - and pretty much anything else you don't like that reminds you of iOS - are easily disabled or ignored.
Maybe I should have just said people that are resistant to change.
The is nothing wrong with resisting pointless change. I used Unity and didn't like it. Not because it was different, but because it wasn't an improvement.
I'm someone who wants change. For example, I think Linux is dated and I would ditch it for Hurd if that thing could ever work reasonably well one day.
I tried Unity, I tried to adapt to it, but it is, for me, a step in the wrong direction. Maybe it's because I'm using three monitors (one 27" and two 22"), maybe it's because I'm using too many programs, working on too many files and doing too many tasks, but Unity doesn't work well for me.
But the thing is I think Linux fragmentation is bad. I think Linux needs a strong leader. That's why I think going with the most popular distribution makes sense and that's why I chose to switch to Ubuntu a few years ago. I guess I should now move to Mint, but I also think Canonical is in a better position to help Linux gain market share. So saying "use something else" is not a good solution for me. For me, the best solution would be for Canonical to offer more options with the UI in order to satisfy more people instead of forcing one design choice to everyone.
Actually, Apple is the latecomer to this - iOS 7 came out in 2013. Metro and Unity showed up in 2012.
Apple changed because a growing number of people were complaining that the iOS UI started looked "dated" and "static" because it hasn't changed as wildly as Android or as "fresh" as Metro on Windows Phone. Ditto OS X - people were complaining it looks very similar to the way it looked over a decade earlier.
Of course, I hate the new "flatness" that seems to be the trendy thing 0 I like my faux 3D with shading and depth and texture. I admit, iOS perhaps went a bit too overboard with stitched leather and green felt, but I liked the icons and all that.
But I guess that's the breaks. Be like Apple and try to keep things practically the same and after a little while you get accused of ossifying the UI and it looks old, dated, not trendy and ugly. Be like Microsoft and offer fresh and shiny every couple of years and you look cool. Except well, it seems to have come at the cost of functionality.
And then there's Linux where everyone wants to do everything and you end up with hideousness that is Unity.
Don't change the UI and you get accused of ossifying. Change the UI and everyone hates it.
Then we get some of the silliness from Ubuntu trying to shove a new way down everyones' throat
Oh yeah, they're REALLY forcing it down our throats...
Recognised Ubuntu flavours
These are derivatives that use Ubuntu as their foundation and contribute significantly towards the project.
Edubuntu — Ubuntu for education
Ubuntu GNOME — Ubuntu with the GNOME desktop environment
Kubuntu — Ubuntu with the K Desktop environment
Ubuntu Kylin — Ubuntu localised for China
Lubuntu — Ubuntu that uses LXDE
Mythbuntu — Designed for creating a home theatre PC with MythTV
Ubuntu Studio — Designed for multimedia editing and creation
Xubuntu — Ubuntu with the XFCE desktop environment
Other derivatives
A complete list of known derivatives is maintained on the Ubuntu Wiki Derivatives Team page.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Deriva...
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Because the optimal UI for desktop computers was a solved problem five years ago.
Because UX people need to put "mobile" on their CVs and resumes in order to get hired anywhere.
Because I'm sick of being the guinea pig for some UX weenie who only cares about his next paid gig.
Moron.
Thats why I like that windows 8.1 got rid of all that glass crap everywhere and i dont really touch any metro stuff since none of the applications i use have metro versions
so you love they got rid of that glass crap (on the desktop I assume you mean) and then you only use the desktop.
You must be a designer - every new interface is so cool, and clean, and elegant, with its fresh lines and clean interface.... as long as you don't have to the use the horrific stuff.
Diclaimer: I use Linux every day for work. I use Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I don't use Unity.
The usability problem with Unity menus is not that they are either local or global, it's the fact they they disappear every time you take your mouse away from them, please don't make me have to mouse over the window title to get the menu to appear. While this sounds simple enough to do, it causes you to haltingly mouse over the general area of the menu bar, then wait for the thing to render, then visually locate what you want, then mouse over it and click. In the good old days, one could just mouse over to the precise menu location and click-it in a single move
Unity now provides the user with a choice as to whether they would like to break your menu in either a local way or a global way, sadly the problem still exists. Please stop breaking user interfaces with stupid design!
For the record, I use MATE as my desktop because all this new fangled sausage-finger friendly crap is simply not a productive place to work
meh
Note it's been a while since I've used OSX more than some trivial playing with the newer touchpad in a Macbook Air, so I've refrained from commenting on more recent things.
This said, the post a couple above yours was specifically about *older* versions of Mac OS and I think that's still relevant.
Fitts' law indicates that the most quickly accessed targets on any computer display are the four corners of the screen
The problem with the Fitt's Law argument is it only makes sense if your computing experience ends with clicking that menu item.
For instance, if you now have to move the mouse to the window, it's now maximally far away from your cursor and not near a screen edge, and Fitts Law says you just made things a kazillion times worse.
And if you want to interact with two windows (eg. copy from one, paste in another, using menus), you've added another step to switch which menu is available. Admittedly, virtually the whole world has figured out the keyboard shortcuts for cut, copy, and paste, since those are some of the most universally useful commands.
This all means that hot corners and hot edges for the mouse should be reserved for the sort of interactions that are fairly universal between apps, and which logically terminate a sequence of actions. For instance, closing an app (debatable because of accidental clicking, but common), switching to another app that's behind the current app, that sort of thing.
Mac OS has supported multiple mouse buttons for at least 16 years.
It was supported but not really seriously encouraged until more recently than 16 years. But yes, it's an out of date argument now. Just...not 16 years out of date.
Left Window Controls
I don't believe either your argument or the GP's. I'm very skeptical that it's "easier" to move up and to the left with your right hand rather than up and right, which is directly away from you rather than going across your body. But frankly, a mouse is not hard enough to use to justify left vs. right in any way. Window control positions are basically arbitrary (so long as they are in a consistent place within the OS, eg. corner of the window as we've all settled on).
General iOS crap
Integration with touchpads is great. Removing always-visible scrollbars removes needless clutter.
Touchpads are not iOS. I can see how they might seem related, but it is a fundamentally different interaction model when you're operating on a device distinct from the screen. Minimizing input delay is not as important, pinching takes on a different aspect, different opportunities exist simply because your hands aren't covering the viewport, etc.. Don't get me wrong -- I think improved touchpad support is great. I just don't think it has all that much to do with "General iOS crap". I guess maybe the fact that people were trained on iOS to perform certain gestures?
I agreed with all of that except your comment on the scroll bars.
Scroll bars are NOT needless clutter. They are a visual cue on the amount of content on the screen vs the amount of content that you can't see. Right now with a quick glance I can see I'm only half way through reading the comments. I can't do that if the bar is hidden, and I'd need to do something like move the page.
I hate this on touchscreens as well but it's more forgiveable since any finger touching the screen will make the bars reappear. I can't do that while I'm typing on a keyboard.
I work on dual screen 1920x1200 at work and I use a 27" higher res monitor at home. Mousing to the top left of the screen in MATE doesn't require more than an inch of mouse movement with my settings on any of these machines. (medium sensitivity and a tiny amount of acceleration).
What is your mouse sensitivity set to? I'm genuinely interested rather than trying to troll you. Perhaps the aversion people feel to a global menu is something related to personal mouse sensitivity preferences and those of us who need to physically move the mouse over large distances detest the global menu.
As I said earlier, the global menu is the least of my problems with Unity, it's the fact that it keeps dissappearing to be replaced with a fairly useless window title that bugs me more
I'm still using a physical keyboard because it's better than a touch keyboard. The Windows 8 interface was an unnecessary and inconvenient change and yes I know you can do X, Y and Z to make it less annoying but then what was the point of the change? It hasn't improved anyone's experience and just puts extra, undocumented steps in that confuse everyone, even the techies. That goes double for Server 2012 where Metro is a completely unnecessary nuisance.
I'm someone who wants change. For example, I think Linux is dated and I would ditch it for Hurd if that thing could ever work reasonably well one day.
How the fuck is a discussion on user interface menus in any way relevant to the Linux or Hurd kernels ?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Mac OS has been like this since System 1. And it makes sense; whatever you're doing, its menu is going to be in the same place. Fitts' law indicates that the most quickly accessed targets on any computer display are the four corners of the screen.
I've read the question 5 and its answers about global menu superiority.
I would like to emphasize this:
- I've been using Macintosh, Unix workstations, MS PC (DOS,Win3.1 up to Win8), Linux PC with various WM/Desktop, etc.
- Global menu was fine for me on Macintosh Classic 9-inch display, for any task.
- Global menu is painful and irritating on 24-inch display, for most of the creative tasks.
I suspect that this is not only a matter of how long the cursor travel though the screen, but also about how much you have to adjust your gaze on the area requiring your attention.
Fitts' law fails to address that point, even if you can do things quicker it might not be as productive if it's uncomfortable and tiring.
Regarding GUI, Apple has failed on several points with nowdays huge displays, for instance it tooks them years to allow window size adjustment on any border (instead of a tiny triangle on bottom right). The feature comes with Lion in 2011... That's a shame.
ubuntu is a steaming turd because they tried to remove the scroll bars, I see freaking Chrome and Firefox also doing this stupid trick as well on all platforms.
It makes me want to beat developers with a sack of doorknobs.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Sometimes I think some linux users are a bunch of luddites with strong right wing conservative leanings
and liberals wonder why others perceive them as arrogant, totalitarian, histrionic, narcissists
How the fuck can people take a discussion about a UI element to fucking politics? It's not even a good political discussion, it the same stereotyped shit we read about everyday, where there are only two fucking views on each subject and they are both ludicrously inflexible. I thought for certain no one would fall for the obvious, weak flamebait of the first post, but lo and behold, the discussion has degenerated into things like
Of course, that's why you elect politicians who'd love to stamp out free speech, right? To make it my problem, and make up for the fact your arguments are without merit?
Come on, tell me the truth: you guys disliked the new design and are poisoning the content, too, so as to encourage our transition to a better place, right? Because no one can be that unproductively disruptive unless on purpose.
Application folders are as poorly thought out as Program Files was. Here's why:
;-) :D
Path inconsistency - Crack open a terminal and try to run your app from there. I'm sure environment variables have a length restriction, even if it's really long
Lack of security - try to patch all those apps using the same non-core shared libraries, you'll have one hell of a time as you'll need to either manually copy files or wait on the vendor!
Disk space wastage - see above!
Power-user hell - let's say you can do a little bit of coding, enough to work around a few small bugs; tried compiling larger XCode projects without manually replicating the dev environment?
Now for other flaws in modern OS X:
App Store - This is a poor man's APT/YUM repository. You can't mirror it so if your Internet is unavailable you can't install apps, plus you need to hand over personal info to use it!
Global menus - Modern systems have many applications running at one time, you need to activate the window before you can access the menu, thus increasing click count if multitasking.
Style inconsistency - OS X apps are inflexibly styled; so when the designers of OS X change fashion, the apps don't match. Compare this to most GTK/Qt apps, centrally rethemed easily!
Single mouse pointer - Linux and Windows can use multiple mice/tablets/touchpads independently with each having their own mouse pointers. Mac OS X assumes one pointer even today!
You can't have it both ways. If you want one strong leader, you have to go with their decisions whether you like them or not. If Canonical refuses to offer more options (because "they'd be too confusing to regular users"), then either you suck it up and deal with the poor workflow, or you abandon them and their "strong leadership" for a different choice.
"Strong leadership" is what lead to Soviet-style socialism, where everyone had maybe 5 choices for shoes and that was it. Freedom and diversity go hand-in-hand, and even though they're seemingly less efficient, you avoid people pushing one-size-fits-all solutions that don't work well for almost anyone.
I do agree that excessive fragmentation in Linux-land is bad, but it's a byproduct of the freedom available there. Luckily, there are strong attempts to consolidate things that should be, such as the recent moves to standardize on systemd. UIs do not need to be standardized so much as lower-level services. You struggling with Unity is not helping the Linux cause, unless maybe you're using it to run around and evangelize it to newbs and convert people away from the proprietary platforms.