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Canonical Finally Lets Users Move The Unity Launcher To Bottom In Ubuntu 16.04 (softpedia.com)
prisoninmate writes from an article on Softpedia: It is official, the packages needed to move the Unity Launcher of Ubuntu Linux to the bottom of the screen have finally landed in the main repositories of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system, due for release on April 21, 2016. Softpedia reported that Ubuntu users might be able to move the Unity7 Launcher at the bottom edge as a rumor in February -- but now they confirm it finally landed for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. It is not known if Canonical will implement a visual setting in the Apperance/Behaviour panel for users to easily switch between having the Unity Launcher on the left of at the bottom of the screen for the final release of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, but you can do it by running a simple command.
Nothing. When Microsoft decided to throw away decades of experience and dumb down the user interface to make it "easy to use", Canonical jumped on the band wagon and made a dreadfully stupid user interface called 'Unity'... It's lame and cannot be customized. This spawned Mint Linux, which is a fork of Ubuntu to make a distribution with a useful user interface since the Gnome idiots broke Gnome, then Canonical broke Ubuntu.
In my mind, it's all an exercise in stupidity since my 88 year old Father used Windows 7 just fine. When his computer broke, he went to buy a new one, looked at the latest Windows, and bought a Mac instead. So ... like the current presidential election, the "brains" designing User Interfaces are competing in a race to the bottom of the usability ladder.
It all makes perfect sense when you think about who has been responsible for most software UIs developed over the past 5 to 10 years: hipsters.
Let's clear up a few misconceptions to begin with. Firstly, "hipster" isn't just some vague scapegoat. It's a well-defined culture that places emphasis on design, on style, on trendiness, on being different just for the sake of being different, of putting appearance over usability, and of the practitioner having an unhealthily large ego. Secondly, as it's a culture, hipsters can be of any age. Thirdly, normal people find hipsters extremely distasteful, and normal people will go out of their way not to deal with hipsters, even if this means changing careers.
So the situation is this: from the advent of computing up until the mid 2000s, user interfaces were designed and developed by professionals. They had the best interests of their user in mind. Then around 2005 we started to see hipsters flood into the software UI field. This was initially due to the failing of the print media industry, where they had mainly been isolated before. As they collectively moved to web design and software UI design, they quickly drowned out and drove out the professionals who had given us practical, usable UIs.
These hipsters believe that the always know what's best for the user. It's not a matter of asking the user what they want, or getting feedback, or performing studies about how users use the UIs. When it comes to hipster-designed UIs, they always know exactly what's right, even when it's totally wrong in practice. If a UI doesn't work well for a user, it's not the broken UI that's at fault, it's the user, at least according to hipsters. This is why we've seen numerous UI disasters from hipsters, including Firefox, GNOME 3, Chrome, Windows 8 and 10, Unity, and Slashdot Beta.
A lot of the UI problems we encounter today would have been inconceivable in 2000, back when professionals ran the show and did the work. But that's because, at the time, we didn't realize just how backward things would get with hipsters involved. We didn't realize that there were some people (hipsters) who were so sure of themselves that they would essentially tell users to "fuck off and die" when these users brought legitimate complaints about the UIs to the table. As professionals the thought of putting the user second to ourselves never even crossed our mind. While we worked for the users, the hipsters work for themselves and the satisfaction of their own "creative needs" at the expense of the user.
Until the hipsters either leave the industry (because it has become "untrendy"), or until are driven out for the way they've treated users and professional UI designers so awfully, we will be continually subjected to terrible UIs that fail in the most basic of ways.
I have been a computer guru for 40 years, and the problem with this is ... I don't even know how to do this anymore. Sure I have been messing with Linux since it came on disks in PC Magazine, and downloaded distributions from BBS sites. Have compiled kernels and configured X. I have even written X based software. Sure, I could figure out how to do it.
But I don't care!
I installed Mint Cinnamon, and I'm done. I don't want a minimal install, because then I have to spend hours in apt-get or Synaptic or something looking for everything that should be there and isn't. Hard disk space is cheap. I install about everything and just turn off what I don't want to use. If I want it later, it's there and already partially configured.
All of this stuff was fun once. I would spend DAYS getting it just the way I wanted it, and then some new release would come out I wanted, which wouldn't install because I had changed stuff so that the installer got confused, or some bug was uncovered and something I needed didn't work. After you get used to something and then stuff doesn't work anymore because some patch you needed put stuff back to the default settings, or broke a dependency.
So for me, Ubuntu is broken and I don't want to fix it. I use Mint as a desktop, Ubuntu as a development server because it always has current stuff, and Cent OS for Enterprise reliability because it's bulletproof.
That bug report is an excellent example of how Canonical's process will bog down on trivial things and cause greater execution to be missed. To doggedly refuse to move because "reasons" and then suggest that people simply use other interfaces... well it's no wonder Unity got so little actual adoption.
Why would I want my workstation to have the same interface as a netbook that hasn't been useful for 5 years, or a phone that should have come out 5 years ago but didn't because of endless dithering and back and forth? (and I"m sure "reasons")
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Indeed! Important stuff, this.
Despite your sarcasm, I think it's "important" to Linux folks who have been repeatedly ignored by Ubuntu's trend to force its choices on everyone. (And yes, I know there are different flavors of Ubuntu, etc. But I haven't used any of them as a primary OS in nearly a decade, because I saw how broken Ubuntu's model was getting even back in 2007 or so.)
There's always a trade-off that Linux folks (and UI designers in general) debate -- more customizability and options (which often introduce more opportunities for things to break) vs. streamlining and less customizability. Apple, for example, tends to trend far toward the latter, having a "take it or leave it" attitude.
Many people were (and still are) unhappy with Unity and saw Canonical's choices in that regard as part of this "take it or leave it" attitude. Those who were willing to stick with Unity still wanted a little customizability.
Here's some minor victory for those folks. To me, I read a story like this in the context that some hope this might be a broader trend toward flexibility in Canonical's policies -- this has been one of the most requested features since the shift to Unity, but Canonical has been unresponsive.
Personally, I doubt this is indicative of a broader trend. But that's why I assume some people view this as important.
"...the packages needed to move the Unity Launcher of Ubuntu Linux to the bottom of the screen have finally landed in the main repositories"
Wow, such innovation, being able to move the launcher to the bottom of the screen. OMFG we're living in the FUTURE!!!!
Where will all this forward-thinking and amazing creativity end? Who knows what amazing ideas they'll come up with next- maybe being able to change the color of the desktop background, or making the background a picture??
The mind boggles at all these incredible new features. I mean, being able to put the launcher at the bottom...will wonders never cease??
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The fact that such a trivial customization is newsworthy tells you just how bad Unity is. There is nothing special about having a user defined layout of the desktop. Many other distros have provided such user freedom and Ubuntu did too in the past. But now the default desktop is Unity which goes out of it's way to take away user choice in the name of "unifying" the desktop between laptops and phones. Yes, you will have the same desktop and it will be crippled everywhere.
I like Ubuntu as an operating system. It's stable (if you use the LTS version), has the best and fastest security updates and is the Linux OS with the best hardware compatibility. But I can't tolerate Unity. So when I install Ubuntu, the first change I make is to go to the Ubuntu Software Center and search for xfce4 (the current xfce desktop) and install "Meta-package for the Xfce Lightweight Desktop Environment". This will let you choose which desktop you want each time you log on. You can use Unity where that is your preference and switch to Xfce when you want.
Xfce lets you define the exact size and positions of all panels. You can have docking panels on the sides, top, bottom.... wherever you want. But the best thing about Xfce is that it lets you create desktop launchers of your own. Just right click on the desktop, choose application launcher, url link, or file manager folder. And these launchers can be dragged to the panels you have created and docked there. Gnome used to let you do that, but no more. As far as I can determine, Xfce is the only desktop that empowers the user in such a useful way.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
I really don't get why anyone still thinks that menu/task bars should be on the bottom.
Because that's where I fucking want it to be, okay? Is that clear enough for you?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
There's always a trade-off that Linux folks (and UI designers in general) debate -- more customizability and options (which often introduce more opportunities for things to break) vs. streamlining and less customizability.
No. Fuck that. That is not the case for the vast majority of these types of issues.
In the majority of cases, the options were previously there, and they options still exist within the codebase, but they have removed the ability to toggle that option via a friendly configuration panel, and may go so far as to bury it further or go to extra lengths to make it difficult to re-enable. If you have to use gconf-editor, gsettings commands, chrome://flags, about:flags, about:config, gpedit.msc, opera:config, etc etc etc... then, IMO, they're doing it wrong - it's awkward, unorganized, and just a shitty way to abandon the responsibility of laying out configuration screens nicely. Some examples:
* window menu, minimize, maximize, close buttons should be easily positionable on the title bar. If they can be moved elsewhere, it should be easy to move them back and put them in any order on either side in any mix of left/right/etc. ... Help lists) should be their own menu bar. if they can be moved elsewhere or are by default (ex. to global menu bar, or integrated into the application title bar), it should be easy to move them back. It should also be easy to re-arrange them or add/remove items, but that's fine being an advanced option.
* application menu (the typical File, Edit,
* window borders should be theme-able, at least with respect to their size (from 0 to N pixels wide). Some desktop themese in the paste have had zero or 1 pixel wide side borders which makes it impossible or very difficult to grab them and resize the window. If that's what someone wants, that's fine, but leave the option to make them larger - it's almost always within the codebase already!
* docks / start menus / what-have-you should be easy to move to any edge, span the width or resize and float left, right, or center, autohide, etc etc etc. All the things they were able to do over a decade ago by simply dragging and dropping things. If it's so difficult to allow that, then there is something wrong.
These sorts of changes don't just make things difficult, they make things completely unacceptable for some very well established workflows. For me, the global menu debacle forced my hand. I've used focus follows mouse (no autoraise) for nearly 2 decades. I'm not budging on that. They have since compromised, but that was also a dumb move IMO. Just add an easy option to stick it back on its own bar and everyone would be happy (something like settings -> appearance -> window manager -> application menu placement). Why fight against your users on options that take zero additional code (they already have to have code to account for a variable number of menu bars and variable layout of said bars).