Unity isn't stable, it hasn't reached the "production level" yet.
Anyone know what's the reason behind Ubuntu rushing Unity out, before it's ready?
In a nutshell. Canonical has managed to find hardware partners like DELL that have been wooed by the siren song of Unity. So now Canonical has half a dozen parters who are willing to carry devices with Unity on it. The dream of smart-phone, tablet, netbook, laptop, to desktop, all with the same OS, all with the same interface, all with the same support team to handle all of those devices. These companies have drank the kool-aid.
Considering the beta reviews of the Unity netbook edition back in July/August last year, Canonical should have known that Unity needed a lot of work. To make it the primary interface, and make it require untested compiz plugins with hardware that has compiz support, and to do it in the next 6 to 9 month time frame was not the best idea they ever had.
The problem Canonical now faces is that any back peddling they do on Unity will be taken as a vote of no confidence by their parters and threatens their ability to ever convince them to use Unity again. If they can't make a go of it now. They just as well do away with Unity, because they have no chance of convincing the major pc sales/hardware companies of using it ever again. So with the choices of a) using Unity 3D b) using Unity 2D or c) using the standard Gnome 2 interface. They are going to barrel on ahead with Unity 3D.
What they should have done is worked out the Unity 2D interface and bugs. Once that was solid and running on all hardware in time for 11.11. Then they could worry about completely trick out Unity 3D. It should have been experimental and Canonical should be gathering information on what hardware it seems to run best on. That way when 12.04LTS, Unity 2D would be rock solid, and Unity 3D support being pretty good. Then folks who wanted to switch to Unity 3D could do so. Maybe even make Unity 3D the default for 12.11 or 13.04. But by all means not until all the bugs are worked out and it is just about impossible to crash it.
I am afraid they are going to do the same thing with Wayland. Push over to using Wayland instead of X. There will be a few good Wayland drivers, plenty of junk Wayland drivers, and a buggy and crappy layer to make X apps work with Wayland. Then Canonical will begin the push to get developers to port their programs from X to Wayland. I just don't see this working out good. I do however, eventually see Ubuntu screaming and raging like a spoiled child. With Wayland, Canonical is betting that 60% of the folks out there in 2014 will have computers made after 2010 and 95% computers made after 2008 with supported video cards.
Meanwhile developers will be left with the choice of staying with X and serving Debian/Fedora/Slackware and everyone else perfectly, and Ubuntu somewhat subpar or porting to Wayland and abandoning all the other distros out there. I am not sure how they are going to get a team who does all of their development work on Debian or Fedora to drop X and target Wayland just because Canonical says it is the way to go.
That is the problem with drama driven sci-fi like BSG, Lost and SGU. There has to be drama at all costs. Then they really have to ratchet the drama up during sweeps. They get to a point where they only way they can take it up one more notch is to kill someone important or that the audience loves.
Then comes regret and the "oh shit" moment when they realize they have to get that character back. Or the seriously screwed up personality switches they did on Heroes. Every time I start watching Heroes season 1, BSG season 1 or Lost season one, I think about what they have done to Mohinder, HRG, Kara and Locke. I have to turn the TV set off before I see any of these decent characters ruined again.
The Andy Griffith Show. 5 Season in black and white with Barney Fife, and then several more in color without. The shows with Barney are so popular, that people often turn off the set when they see the show is in color. Some station run the color episodes in black and white just to keep people from immediately turning the show off.
Why did Don Knots leave? Well Andy had said the show was going to have a 5 year run. Thats it, only 5 years. So half way though the last season, Don Knots singed a contract with a Studio to do several movie projects. By the time Andy decided to do season 6, Don Knots was already contractually obligated to leave.
The one thing I appreciate, is your not selling this as "Chrome makes the web faster" the way Microsoft did back in the 90's. By creating their own extensions, and trying to sell everybody on how much better IE5 with IIS was then Netscape with Apache.
You have added it to chrome and to google sites. Some may notice a speed difference, some may not. Meanwhile the protocol, such as it is, is free to use and implement without anyone having to reverse engineer it. Which is a pretty decent earnest money down to convince folks that the final protocol will be open, well documented, a standard, AND you are not going to try to keep moving ahead and adding to it at a clip no-one else can keep up with. AKA Embrace, Extend and Extinguish as some others have done.
I had QWEST from 1999 to 2005. From 1999 to 2001 it was rock solid, NEVER had a drop in service. Then starting in 2002 I had an outage every Sunday morning from about 7:00am to 11:00am. At some point I figured out the internet was just fine, just QWEST DNS servers were temperamental. At that point I switched to some other DNS servers and no longer had Sunday outages.
PJ pretty much says it all. In 2001 the battle was SCO fronted by Microsoft trying to destroy Linux. SCO was attacking IBM, but was also trying to take out Linux with FUD such as the $699 per cpu Linux license. The battle was on the desktop and in the server room. Groklaw was there, and combat the FUD and the community was able to defend Linux from SCO.
Now the battle is in the cloud and mobile space. Microsoft, no matter what conduit they work through is an attack on Google. Google is a large company with plenty of brains and money. They can take care of themselves.
There is truth to this, Groklaw relied on our collective memory of computer history from the 1970s to the end of the 1990's. If enough of us looked over the details SCO presented, we would notice where they got the facts wrong. This "community" will not be nearly as useful in the battle over the smartphone and the cloud.
All I can say is I enjoyed the site, it was quite a ride. Thanks PJ for keeping us geeks in the loop.
The people at Coke had done extensive testing. In a blind taste test, New Coke beat Classic Coke hands down. Every time, by a wide margin. But "Which one tastes better" was the wrong question to ask. As it turns out the correct question was, "do you like the taste of this "new coke" so well that it would be ok with you if we made "classic coke" go away, forever, so that the Coke you grew up with as a kid and your parents, and grandparents and great grandparents loved was never to bee seen again?" While the answer to the first question was "yes" the answer to the second question was something like "NO WAY! WE WILL FIREBOMB YOUR OFFICES IF YOU DO THAT"
Why do I need to read the design documents. Users are used to a desktop with icons and a panel with a menu, taskbar and tray. Sweeping all of that away is a bad idea. Who is this desktop for? Power users want options, and to tweak the desktop, they cant do that at all with Gnome 3. The average user wants the "classic" experience. Maybe tarted up a little bit, but still the classic experience.
I have shown off Enlightenemnt 16, and Fluxbox to people, for the most part, If it does not have a panel that runs 100% the width of the bottom of the screen with a start button on the left and a tray on the right, they don't want to use it.
Get the live cd and try it for a week. Put your money where your mouth is
I have, I even have an extra computer at my desk with Natty AND Fedora 15. I have ran both Unity and Gnome 3 for more than a week.
Can I use them: Yes
Will I use them on a long term basis: No
Is it a more productive workflow: No
It fails on a large screen because of how far I have to drag the fricken mouse. Way up to the left, then all the way over to the right. I can use keyboard shortcuts, but not 100%, I have to use keyboard shortcuts mixed with mouse movements. Gnome 2 was more efficient with mouse movements because I did not have to play "tag the top lefthand corner" before doing anythig else. Gnome 2 was more efficient with the keyboard because I can do more with keyboard shortcuts without needing a mouse.
And who wants a distraction free desktop? The whole move to wide screen displays for the last 10 years has been focused on getting more things onto the desktop. Be it two windows side by side, or having gadgets or whatnot running in a sidebar. Personally I am a fluxbox user and I have 8 to 10 dock apps open at all times. I have clocks, volume controls, network monitors, weather applets, mail monitors. All "distractions" that the Gnome 3 developers say I would be better without. These things do not distract me, they actually free up my attention. I don't need to switch over to an email client or chat program, wmmsg tells me if I have received any chat messages, and wmbiff tells me if I have received any email. wmaudia tells me what song is playing, wmix gives me a volume control I can access with a scroll wheel, and ZERO clicks. Is my network connection up? How fast is it? What is my ip address? Not a problem I have dock apps for that.
Because they are there, running all the time and unobtrusive, they are distraction free. The information is readily available because all it takes is a glance. Much faster than a mouse or a keyboard. Meanwhile Gnome wants me to swing my mouse back and forth across the screen and expects me to run multiple programs that I jump between to get to this same information. Really, the new workflow is NOT faster and better for everyone. I have given it a fair shake, it is not my fault that it leaves much to be desired.
Threatening me with jumping ship to XFCE is not a very effective method of getting a project to listen to your concerns
Yes, it is. Since people are voting with their feet and NOT threatening, but ACTUALLY moving over to XFCE. As long as XFCE developers are listening and willing to at least add configuration options so people can tweak the desktop to work how they like it, XFCE is going to do quite well. The question is, will Gnome ever get those users back?
The day people start going OMG! This desktop works just like my phone, I love it!!! Is the day Gnome 3 will really start picking up users. I think the defection rate will be quite high.
I can also tell you from 10 years of experience exposing people to linux. 14 out of 15 people do not want a "new" desktop experience. They want a panel, with a menu button, a taskbar and a tray. You might be able to "add" to that. Like virtual desktops, or a 2nd panel, or even panel apps. But so far Fluxbox, XFCE configured like CDE and Enlightenment 16 have all been epic fails when it comes to desktop usability. Put a new user on one of those and they will HATE it, they will HATE linux and they can't get back to windows fast enough. Properly configured Gnome 1 & 2, KDE 1, 2, 3 and 4, XFCE, and a few others work enough like widnows that users are willing to try it.
I think Gnome 3 will fail at attracting new users. New users will ask for something more like windows...or they will just use windows. Experienced Linux users will end up setting up Gnome 2, XFCE 4 or KDE 4 for there friends after they use Gnome 3 for 5 minutes. It does not matter how loud the developers shout or what usability studies they have in hand. It is just like the New Coke fiasco. Ask people if they like the flavor of this cola better than Coke, the answer was yes. As them if the liked it enough that the coke they grew up with and their grandparent drank should go away forever and be replaced with this new cola, and the answer was "YOU ARE FRICKEN CRAZY." There is a reason why Winodws, Mac, KDE, XFCE, and IceWM all have a panel, a tray, a menu and a taskbar and icons on the desktop. As long as you don't tell new users they HAVE to give that up, you have a shot. Gnome 3, without some serious reworking does not have a shot.
That right there is what is wrong with Gnome. The minute I don't like something and would like to see the possibility to have some configuration options. I am screwed. Because the truth is, if the Gnome developers really like something and want to work on it, then filing a bug report will work. Otherwise you can talk, post, chat and file bug reports till you are blue in the face. It won't do you any Good.
Even Linus Torvalds once had a debate with the Gnome folks about an option in the printer dialog box. They told him that it was not needed and if he thought it was needed, don't be part of the problem complaining, code a solution. So Linus takes 2 hours and codes it up and submits it to the Gnome developers. Where they immediately dismiss the patch and tell him that he was wrong and they are still right.
All I am saying here is Gnome is not for me. I find it to inflexible and there is nothing I can do to change that. They expect me to live in the insane asylum with them and talk crazy like them for years on end for me to even have a chance to suggest a configuration option or be taken seriously when I submit a patch to "add" something back in. There are to many other decent desktops out there for me to waste my time like that.
To bad we have lost spatial context. Right now on gnome 2 I can go to desktop 1 open up Firefox, Chrome and Opera. On desktop 2 I open up any Virtual Machines I am running. Desktop 4 is for my mp3 player and email. This leaves desktop 3 for "sluff". With this arrangement Desktop 1 is my "home" desktop. I tend to use a quick ctrl-alt-left (then right) and ctrl-alt-right(then left) to "flip" to my other desktops and back. I know where my apps are, because I have put them there. If something crashes, I just start it up again. I can use devilspie so the applications always open up on the correct desktop. I know where my apps are to my left and to my right. Much like most users use muscle memory and spatial layout cues with how their icons are ordered on the desktop. Move them around, and most users are lost. Where it is at is as important as what it looks like.
All of this is broke with Gnome 3. I would have to start up my email and mp3 player, flip to the next desktop, start up my web browsers, flip to my next desktop and start up VirtualBox, then flip back to the previous desktop. This way I can use desktop 2 as my "home". But if I ever close out all apps on desktop one, something crashes, or something causes the window to move to another desktop, BOOM! Desktop 1 is gone, Desktop 2 is now Desktop 1, Desktop 3 is now Desktop 2, and now there is a blank Desktop 3. There is no guaranteed order. Things will move around all willy-nilly and you are left with two choices. The first one being giving up on knowing where your apps are at and rely on search and flpping to different desktops to look for stuff. The second choice is to always have to remember where your stuff is at and be mindful as things open, close, crash, and move, where you stuff has now moved to.
Lets not even talk about how virtual desktops tend to be laid out left to right in most window managers, but Gnome 3 has decided to go with a top to bottom layout. Along with that the application to map keyboard shortcuts does not work yet so you can't even remap the shortcut keys. Overall the situation is abysmal.
1. How well does nautilus work in Xfce? Doesn't launching nautilus also launch the Gnome DE?
2. Is it compatible with Gnome applets (the ones you put on the panel)? I don't know if there's a FreeDesktop standard for that which is implemented by Xfce. I'm particularly interested in the Tracker applet.
3. Does Thunar performance degrade over time? Nautilus is fast in opening a folder with a lot of files in it when you first launch it. But after a few days, it gets more and more sluggish and then takes a few seconds to show you a folder.
4. Does Xfce have a UI panel thing for virtual desktops?
1. Nautilus works fine as long as it has been set up to launch with the --no-desktop --browser options. That of course is left up the the distros to take care of. You can always create a bash alias and/or modify the nautilus.desktop file. I am sure there are more ways to fix it as well.
2. No, Gnome applets are not compatible with XFCE. However it can run any application designed to minimize to the tray. You can also load wmdock into a panel so that it is possible to run dock apps like afterstep, fluxbox and openbox do. As well as XFCE panel applets
3. There is good news and bad. The good news, the performance does not decrease over time. The bad news, it is always slow opening up a folder with more than about 15 subfolders in it.
4. Yes there is a virtual panel applet, it s called the Workspace Switcher.
With up around 70% of the market is Google. With Yahoo at less than 20% and Bing at less than 10%. Microsoft has bought themselves in as the search engine for Yahoo and are still less then 25% of the market. How exactly did they beat the dominate technology company in search?
Nobody wants to "own" music anymore. Its a chore. People just want to listen to music.
I take exception to that. I want to own music. A good part of my collection is made up of rare LPs CDs and Tapes that I have converted to MP3s. They are not offered by any service out there. I am worried that plenty of what they do have, will go away because it to much bother for them to keep it online.
The only way I know of keeping all the music I like is owning it. Even if I was willing to rent it, the major labels are not willing to be land lords.
At the time Sun who $$$ paid $$$ him to give any possible objection he could to the android platform. I don't know if that was an honest opinion or not. Besides, now that he is in the camp and can offer "influence", he might like it far better.
I think we are suggesting that there will be a day when e-books are the norm, and almost no-one buys a physical copy of a book. When anyone can put their own ebook for sale at Barnes and Noble or Amazon. If you look at the publishing industry there are "rock stars" out there. If you are one of those folks, then the publisher is able to promote you, on talk-shows or billboards and such.
The renaming 98% of authors would do just fine on their own. There will be no printing, warehousing or distribution costs. There is still value in a good lawyer, editor, and someone to do cover-art. Beyond that, when everything is an ebook and you are not in the top 2% of known names, you are better off with the 70% profit per sale, with no accounting games being played on you. As opposed to a traditional publisher who will give you at best 14% AND that is after they perform some creative accounting on the numbers. And remember at this point you are part of the great unswashed 98%, whom they do not do much promotion for.
It is much like TFA says, "Going with a publisher is betting AGAINST yourself"
Route A: I believe in myself. This novel I wrote is great. I can sell it as-is, or I can INVEST in it and pony up some money for an editor to make further refinements to it. Then I can sell it online. I will get 70% of the profits from every copy I sell of it for a very long time. Thus I am betting that the novel is as good as I think it is and I can do a good job at promotion because I actually care about the material and believe in it.
Route B: I believe that a publisher can do a better job. That I can shop the book around, find a publisher to pick it up, that they will put a decent editor on it. And even though I am a small potatoes first time author, they will really put some heart and effort in promoting my book, though the person in charge of promoting it, is also promoting 100 other books at the same time. For this service I will receive up to 15% or so per copy....after the publisher has a chance to play around with the accounting numbers like the record and movie industry is known to do.
It has not happened yet but a #1 bestseller ebook by an unknown author is on its way. First ebook sales will have to surpass physical print sales. With physical print sales, the publisher is a necessary evil for actually getting your book in front of people. Once that is not the case, then it will matter if some ebook priced at 99 cents a copy jumps up in number to become the number one seller on amazon.com.
Things like this often settle out of court with neither parter admitting they did anything wrong. Thus the racket and be perpetrated again. I don't think Microsoft really has 240 patents that will stand up in court. To bad all it takes is 1.
Microsoft is not out of the game yet. I can't see a lot of people buying a WP 7 in the next 4 to 6 months, hoping that those updates do happen this year. Most of the people I know who have been WM 5 or WM 6 users have jumped ship to Android. My boss was sick and tired of having the phone lock up at the oddest times and it taking over a minute to reboot a phone. There is no excuse for that. It may very well be the fault of the hardware manufacturer, not of Microsoft, but the results are still the same. I don't know anyone with a cell phone of any type who is saying "my next phone will be WP 7" No matter how hardcore of a Windows Mobile user they have been in the past. People who would mock me for not drinking the kool-aid and being on the Microsoft bandwagon, have all jumped ship when it comes to WP 7.
Once they owned 25% of this market, and now they are under 10% and shrinking fast. They are no where near feature parity with the iPhone. In many ways Microsoft has been 2 to 3 years late to the game since 2004. I know business used to be big buyers, but lest face it. For every WP 7 phone you give to an employee, there is a spouse and 2 kids using an something that is not WP 7.
Even the marketing sucks. People know what an iPhone is. The commercials for Android products are cool. What do we get from Microsoft? That WP 7 lets you get done with Twitter and Facebook faster so you can get on with life? Seriously, that is what Microsoft has to offer. They out to put Jerry Seinfeld back out there with a Churro again for all the good it is doing them.
It is not OS 2, but there is something of the stink of death on WP 7.
No not really. If there are no apps, there are no users. Developers, Developers, Developers is the siren call of Monkey Boy. He is right. There must be developers to have applications. Even with old fashioned CE under the hood, you can run WM 6.0 or WM 6.5 apps on WP 7. So developers have to learn new tools.
There are developers, apps, the sweet smell of success and money to be made over with the iPhone/iPad.
There are developers, apps, the sweet smell of success and money to be over with the Android.
There is no guarantee with Microsoft. The devices are not out there in great numbers, the App store is empty. All the other developers are on the iPhone/Android. Since Microsoft is forcing you to learn from scratch. Would your time be better invested where you can make money today on the iPhone or Android?
Lets not forget Microsofts stellar track record in this market. WInCE apps don't run on WM 5, WM 5 apps need work to run on WM 6 and WM 6.5 and everything has to be rewritten in a new language to be used on WP 7. As a developer you can be pretty sure your iPhone 4 app will run just fine on the iPhone 5 or the iPhone 6. As a Microsoft developer there is no guarantee that your WP 7 app will run on WP 7.5 let alone WP 8.
From a developer standpoint I am just not feeling the love.
How can you help. Gnome pulled the features. You could submit patches to add them back. But Gnome is not really interested in them, are they? And as long a Canonical is a gnome shop, GDM is going to be the greeter. GDM 1 still kicks butt over GDM 2.
There is always LightDM, but you would not like that, it can be found at freedesktop.org and Dave over at Gnome has clued us in to the fact that the folks at freedesktop.org really don't have their act together.
They can have it when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
Heck, I have been porting my shortcut keys forward since the days of Windows 3.1 By the time 1998 came around I had been using the same set of hotkeys for 6 years.
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Unity isn't stable, it hasn't reached the "production level" yet.
Anyone know what's the reason behind Ubuntu rushing Unity out, before it's ready?
In a nutshell. Canonical has managed to find hardware partners like DELL that have been wooed by the siren song of Unity. So now Canonical has half a dozen parters who are willing to carry devices with Unity on it. The dream of smart-phone, tablet, netbook, laptop, to desktop, all with the same OS, all with the same interface, all with the same support team to handle all of those devices. These companies have drank the kool-aid.
Considering the beta reviews of the Unity netbook edition back in July/August last year, Canonical should have known that Unity needed a lot of work. To make it the primary interface, and make it require untested compiz plugins with hardware that has compiz support, and to do it in the next 6 to 9 month time frame was not the best idea they ever had.
The problem Canonical now faces is that any back peddling they do on Unity will be taken as a vote of no confidence by their parters and threatens their ability to ever convince them to use Unity again. If they can't make a go of it now. They just as well do away with Unity, because they have no chance of convincing the major pc sales/hardware companies of using it ever again. So with the choices of a) using Unity 3D b) using Unity 2D or c) using the standard Gnome 2 interface. They are going to barrel on ahead with Unity 3D.
What they should have done is worked out the Unity 2D interface and bugs. Once that was solid and running on all hardware in time for 11.11. Then they could worry about completely trick out Unity 3D. It should have been experimental and Canonical should be gathering information on what hardware it seems to run best on. That way when 12.04LTS, Unity 2D would be rock solid, and Unity 3D support being pretty good. Then folks who wanted to switch to Unity 3D could do so. Maybe even make Unity 3D the default for 12.11 or 13.04. But by all means not until all the bugs are worked out and it is just about impossible to crash it.
I am afraid they are going to do the same thing with Wayland. Push over to using Wayland instead of X. There will be a few good Wayland drivers, plenty of junk Wayland drivers, and a buggy and crappy layer to make X apps work with Wayland. Then Canonical will begin the push to get developers to port their programs from X to Wayland. I just don't see this working out good. I do however, eventually see Ubuntu screaming and raging like a spoiled child. With Wayland, Canonical is betting that 60% of the folks out there in 2014 will have computers made after 2010 and 95% computers made after 2008 with supported video cards.
Meanwhile developers will be left with the choice of staying with X and serving Debian/Fedora/Slackware and everyone else perfectly, and Ubuntu somewhat subpar or porting to Wayland and abandoning all the other distros out there. I am not sure how they are going to get a team who does all of their development work on Debian or Fedora to drop X and target Wayland just because Canonical says it is the way to go.
That is the problem with drama driven sci-fi like BSG, Lost and SGU. There has to be drama at all costs. Then they really have to ratchet the drama up during sweeps. They get to a point where they only way they can take it up one more notch is to kill someone important or that the audience loves.
Then comes regret and the "oh shit" moment when they realize they have to get that character back. Or the seriously screwed up personality switches they did on Heroes. Every time I start watching Heroes season 1, BSG season 1 or Lost season one, I think about what they have done to Mohinder, HRG, Kara and Locke. I have to turn the TV set off before I see any of these decent characters ruined again.
The Andy Griffith Show. 5 Season in black and white with Barney Fife, and then several more in color without. The shows with Barney are so popular, that people often turn off the set when they see the show is in color. Some station run the color episodes in black and white just to keep people from immediately turning the show off.
Why did Don Knots leave? Well Andy had said the show was going to have a 5 year run. Thats it, only 5 years. So half way though the last season, Don Knots singed a contract with a Studio to do several movie projects. By the time Andy decided to do season 6, Don Knots was already contractually obligated to leave.
The one thing I appreciate, is your not selling this as "Chrome makes the web faster" the way Microsoft did back in the 90's. By creating their own extensions, and trying to sell everybody on how much better IE5 with IIS was then Netscape with Apache.
You have added it to chrome and to google sites. Some may notice a speed difference, some may not. Meanwhile the protocol, such as it is, is free to use and implement without anyone having to reverse engineer it. Which is a pretty decent earnest money down to convince folks that the final protocol will be open, well documented, a standard, AND you are not going to try to keep moving ahead and adding to it at a clip no-one else can keep up with. AKA Embrace, Extend and Extinguish as some others have done.
Wait for Nokia to port QT to the Amiga so you can run a modern browser.
I had QWEST from 1999 to 2005. From 1999 to 2001 it was rock solid, NEVER had a drop in service. Then starting in 2002 I had an outage every Sunday morning from about 7:00am to 11:00am. At some point I figured out the internet was just fine, just QWEST DNS servers were temperamental. At that point I switched to some other DNS servers and no longer had Sunday outages.
PJ pretty much says it all. In 2001 the battle was SCO fronted by Microsoft trying to destroy Linux. SCO was attacking IBM, but was also trying to take out Linux with FUD such as the $699 per cpu Linux license. The battle was on the desktop and in the server room. Groklaw was there, and combat the FUD and the community was able to defend Linux from SCO.
Now the battle is in the cloud and mobile space. Microsoft, no matter what conduit they work through is an attack on Google. Google is a large company with plenty of brains and money. They can take care of themselves.
There is truth to this, Groklaw relied on our collective memory of computer history from the 1970s to the end of the 1990's. If enough of us looked over the details SCO presented, we would notice where they got the facts wrong. This "community" will not be nearly as useful in the battle over the smartphone and the cloud.
All I can say is I enjoyed the site, it was quite a ride. Thanks PJ for keeping us geeks in the loop.
Windows Vista was not that bloated. Microsoft was just monetizing spare CPU cycles on the Russian Black Market.
The people at Coke had done extensive testing. In a blind taste test, New Coke beat Classic Coke hands down. Every time, by a wide margin. But "Which one tastes better" was the wrong question to ask. As it turns out the correct question was, "do you like the taste of this "new coke" so well that it would be ok with you if we made "classic coke" go away, forever, so that the Coke you grew up with as a kid and your parents, and grandparents and great grandparents loved was never to bee seen again?" While the answer to the first question was "yes" the answer to the second question was something like "NO WAY! WE WILL FIREBOMB YOUR OFFICES IF YOU DO THAT"
Why do I need to read the design documents. Users are used to a desktop with icons and a panel with a menu, taskbar and tray. Sweeping all of that away is a bad idea. Who is this desktop for? Power users want options, and to tweak the desktop, they cant do that at all with Gnome 3. The average user wants the "classic" experience. Maybe tarted up a little bit, but still the classic experience.
I have shown off Enlightenemnt 16, and Fluxbox to people, for the most part, If it does not have a panel that runs 100% the width of the bottom of the screen with a start button on the left and a tray on the right, they don't want to use it.
Get the live cd and try it for a week. Put your money where your mouth is
I have, I even have an extra computer at my desk with Natty AND Fedora 15. I have ran both Unity and Gnome 3 for more than a week.
Can I use them: Yes
Will I use them on a long term basis: No
Is it a more productive workflow: No
It fails on a large screen because of how far I have to drag the fricken mouse. Way up to the left, then all the way over to the right. I can use keyboard shortcuts, but not 100%, I have to use keyboard shortcuts mixed with mouse movements. Gnome 2 was more efficient with mouse movements because I did not have to play "tag the top lefthand corner" before doing anythig else. Gnome 2 was more efficient with the keyboard because I can do more with keyboard shortcuts without needing a mouse.
And who wants a distraction free desktop? The whole move to wide screen displays for the last 10 years has been focused on getting more things onto the desktop. Be it two windows side by side, or having gadgets or whatnot running in a sidebar. Personally I am a fluxbox user and I have 8 to 10 dock apps open at all times. I have clocks, volume controls, network monitors, weather applets, mail monitors. All "distractions" that the Gnome 3 developers say I would be better without. These things do not distract me, they actually free up my attention. I don't need to switch over to an email client or chat program, wmmsg tells me if I have received any chat messages, and wmbiff tells me if I have received any email. wmaudia tells me what song is playing, wmix gives me a volume control I can access with a scroll wheel, and ZERO clicks. Is my network connection up? How fast is it? What is my ip address? Not a problem I have dock apps for that.
Because they are there, running all the time and unobtrusive, they are distraction free. The information is readily available because all it takes is a glance. Much faster than a mouse or a keyboard. Meanwhile Gnome wants me to swing my mouse back and forth across the screen and expects me to run multiple programs that I jump between to get to this same information. Really, the new workflow is NOT faster and better for everyone. I have given it a fair shake, it is not my fault that it leaves much to be desired.
Threatening me with jumping ship to XFCE is not a very effective method of getting a project to listen to your concerns
Yes, it is. Since people are voting with their feet and NOT threatening, but ACTUALLY moving over to XFCE. As long as XFCE developers are listening and willing to at least add configuration options so people can tweak the desktop to work how they like it, XFCE is going to do quite well. The question is, will Gnome ever get those users back?
The day people start going OMG! This desktop works just like my phone, I love it!!! Is the day Gnome 3 will really start picking up users. I think the defection rate will be quite high.
I can also tell you from 10 years of experience exposing people to linux. 14 out of 15 people do not want a "new" desktop experience. They want a panel, with a menu button, a taskbar and a tray. You might be able to "add" to that. Like virtual desktops, or a 2nd panel, or even panel apps. But so far Fluxbox, XFCE configured like CDE and Enlightenment 16 have all been epic fails when it comes to desktop usability. Put a new user on one of those and they will HATE it, they will HATE linux and they can't get back to windows fast enough. Properly configured Gnome 1 & 2, KDE 1, 2, 3 and 4, XFCE, and a few others work enough like widnows that users are willing to try it.
I think Gnome 3 will fail at attracting new users. New users will ask for something more like windows...or they will just use windows. Experienced Linux users will end up setting up Gnome 2, XFCE 4 or KDE 4 for there friends after they use Gnome 3 for 5 minutes. It does not matter how loud the developers shout or what usability studies they have in hand. It is just like the New Coke fiasco. Ask people if they like the flavor of this cola better than Coke, the answer was yes. As them if the liked it enough that the coke they grew up with and their grandparent drank should go away forever and be replaced with this new cola, and the answer was "YOU ARE FRICKEN CRAZY." There is a reason why Winodws, Mac, KDE, XFCE, and IceWM all have a panel, a tray, a menu and a taskbar and icons on the desktop. As long as you don't tell new users they HAVE to give that up, you have a shot. Gnome 3, without some serious reworking does not have a shot.
maybe file a bug report if they agree.
That right there is what is wrong with Gnome. The minute I don't like something and would like to see the possibility to have some configuration options. I am screwed. Because the truth is, if the Gnome developers really like something and want to work on it, then filing a bug report will work. Otherwise you can talk, post, chat and file bug reports till you are blue in the face. It won't do you any Good.
Even Linus Torvalds once had a debate with the Gnome folks about an option in the printer dialog box. They told him that it was not needed and if he thought it was needed, don't be part of the problem complaining, code a solution. So Linus takes 2 hours and codes it up and submits it to the Gnome developers. Where they immediately dismiss the patch and tell him that he was wrong and they are still right.
All I am saying here is Gnome is not for me. I find it to inflexible and there is nothing I can do to change that. They expect me to live in the insane asylum with them and talk crazy like them for years on end for me to even have a chance to suggest a configuration option or be taken seriously when I submit a patch to "add" something back in. There are to many other decent desktops out there for me to waste my time like that.
To bad we have lost spatial context. Right now on gnome 2 I can go to desktop 1 open up Firefox, Chrome and Opera. On desktop 2 I open up any Virtual Machines I am running. Desktop 4 is for my mp3 player and email. This leaves desktop 3 for "sluff". With this arrangement Desktop 1 is my "home" desktop. I tend to use a quick ctrl-alt-left (then right) and ctrl-alt-right(then left) to "flip" to my other desktops and back. I know where my apps are, because I have put them there. If something crashes, I just start it up again. I can use devilspie so the applications always open up on the correct desktop. I know where my apps are to my left and to my right. Much like most users use muscle memory and spatial layout cues with how their icons are ordered on the desktop. Move them around, and most users are lost. Where it is at is as important as what it looks like.
All of this is broke with Gnome 3. I would have to start up my email and mp3 player, flip to the next desktop, start up my web browsers, flip to my next desktop and start up VirtualBox, then flip back to the previous desktop. This way I can use desktop 2 as my "home". But if I ever close out all apps on desktop one, something crashes, or something causes the window to move to another desktop, BOOM! Desktop 1 is gone, Desktop 2 is now Desktop 1, Desktop 3 is now Desktop 2, and now there is a blank Desktop 3. There is no guaranteed order. Things will move around all willy-nilly and you are left with two choices. The first one being giving up on knowing where your apps are at and rely on search and flpping to different desktops to look for stuff. The second choice is to always have to remember where your stuff is at and be mindful as things open, close, crash, and move, where you stuff has now moved to.
Lets not even talk about how virtual desktops tend to be laid out left to right in most window managers, but Gnome 3 has decided to go with a top to bottom layout. Along with that the application to map keyboard shortcuts does not work yet so you can't even remap the shortcut keys. Overall the situation is abysmal.
A few questions:
WTF Search?
With up around 70% of the market is Google. With Yahoo at less than 20% and Bing at less than 10%. Microsoft has bought themselves in as the search engine for Yahoo and are still less then 25% of the market. How exactly did they beat the dominate technology company in search?
Nobody wants to "own" music anymore. Its a chore. People just want to listen to music.
I take exception to that. I want to own music. A good part of my collection is made up of rare LPs CDs and Tapes that I have converted to MP3s. They are not offered by any service out there. I am worried that plenty of what they do have, will go away because it to much bother for them to keep it online.
The only way I know of keeping all the music I like is owning it. Even if I was willing to rent it, the major labels are not willing to be land lords.
At the time Sun who $$$ paid $$$ him to give any possible objection he could to the android platform. I don't know if that was an honest opinion or not. Besides, now that he is in the camp and can offer "influence", he might like it far better.
I think we are suggesting that there will be a day when e-books are the norm, and almost no-one buys a physical copy of a book. When anyone can put their own ebook for sale at Barnes and Noble or Amazon. If you look at the publishing industry there are "rock stars" out there. If you are one of those folks, then the publisher is able to promote you, on talk-shows or billboards and such.
The renaming 98% of authors would do just fine on their own. There will be no printing, warehousing or distribution costs. There is still value in a good lawyer, editor, and someone to do cover-art. Beyond that, when everything is an ebook and you are not in the top 2% of known names, you are better off with the 70% profit per sale, with no accounting games being played on you. As opposed to a traditional publisher who will give you at best 14% AND that is after they perform some creative accounting on the numbers. And remember at this point you are part of the great unswashed 98%, whom they do not do much promotion for.
It is much like TFA says, "Going with a publisher is betting AGAINST yourself"
Route A: I believe in myself. This novel I wrote is great. I can sell it as-is, or I can INVEST in it and pony up some money for an editor to make further refinements to it. Then I can sell it online. I will get 70% of the profits from every copy I sell of it for a very long time. Thus I am betting that the novel is as good as I think it is and I can do a good job at promotion because I actually care about the material and believe in it.
Route B: I believe that a publisher can do a better job. That I can shop the book around, find a publisher to pick it up, that they will put a decent editor on it. And even though I am a small potatoes first time author, they will really put some heart and effort in promoting my book, though the person in charge of promoting it, is also promoting 100 other books at the same time. For this service I will receive up to 15% or so per copy....after the publisher has a chance to play around with the accounting numbers like the record and movie industry is known to do.
It has not happened yet but a #1 bestseller ebook by an unknown author is on its way. First ebook sales will have to surpass physical print sales. With physical print sales, the publisher is a necessary evil for actually getting your book in front of people. Once that is not the case, then it will matter if some ebook priced at 99 cents a copy jumps up in number to become the number one seller on amazon.com.
Things like this often settle out of court with neither parter admitting they did anything wrong. Thus the racket and be perpetrated again. I don't think Microsoft really has 240 patents that will stand up in court. To bad all it takes is 1.
Microsoft is not out of the game yet. I can't see a lot of people buying a WP 7 in the next 4 to 6 months, hoping that those updates do happen this year. Most of the people I know who have been WM 5 or WM 6 users have jumped ship to Android. My boss was sick and tired of having the phone lock up at the oddest times and it taking over a minute to reboot a phone. There is no excuse for that. It may very well be the fault of the hardware manufacturer, not of Microsoft, but the results are still the same. I don't know anyone with a cell phone of any type who is saying "my next phone will be WP 7" No matter how hardcore of a Windows Mobile user they have been in the past. People who would mock me for not drinking the kool-aid and being on the Microsoft bandwagon, have all jumped ship when it comes to WP 7.
Once they owned 25% of this market, and now they are under 10% and shrinking fast. They are no where near feature parity with the iPhone. In many ways Microsoft has been 2 to 3 years late to the game since 2004. I know business used to be big buyers, but lest face it. For every WP 7 phone you give to an employee, there is a spouse and 2 kids using an something that is not WP 7.
Even the marketing sucks. People know what an iPhone is. The commercials for Android products are cool. What do we get from Microsoft? That WP 7 lets you get done with Twitter and Facebook faster so you can get on with life? Seriously, that is what Microsoft has to offer. They out to put Jerry Seinfeld back out there with a Churro again for all the good it is doing them.
It is not OS 2, but there is something of the stink of death on WP 7.
No not really. If there are no apps, there are no users. Developers, Developers, Developers is the siren call of Monkey Boy. He is right. There must be developers to have applications. Even with old fashioned CE under the hood, you can run WM 6.0 or WM 6.5 apps on WP 7. So developers have to learn new tools.
There are developers, apps, the sweet smell of success and money to be made over with the iPhone/iPad.
There are developers, apps, the sweet smell of success and money to be over with the Android.
There is no guarantee with Microsoft. The devices are not out there in great numbers, the App store is empty. All the other developers are on the iPhone/Android. Since Microsoft is forcing you to learn from scratch. Would your time be better invested where you can make money today on the iPhone or Android?
Lets not forget Microsofts stellar track record in this market. WInCE apps don't run on WM 5, WM 5 apps need work to run on WM 6 and WM 6.5 and everything has to be rewritten in a new language to be used on WP 7. As a developer you can be pretty sure your iPhone 4 app will run just fine on the iPhone 5 or the iPhone 6. As a Microsoft developer there is no guarantee that your WP 7 app will run on WP 7.5 let alone WP 8.
From a developer standpoint I am just not feeling the love.
I would presume bukkake fans would be more interested in a video device, than an audio device if that was the case.
How can you help. Gnome pulled the features. You could submit patches to add them back. But Gnome is not really interested in them, are they? And as long a Canonical is a gnome shop, GDM is going to be the greeter. GDM 1 still kicks butt over GDM 2.
There is always LightDM, but you would not like that, it can be found at freedesktop.org and Dave over at Gnome has clued us in to the fact that the folks at freedesktop.org really don't have their act together.
They can have it when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
Heck, I have been porting my shortcut keys forward since the days of Windows 3.1 By the time 1998 came around I had been using the same set of hotkeys for 6 years.