7 ms·

The vast vast majority of people want to click on the Firefox icon and go to Facebook. People have lives that are busy, and the computer is a tool to get a job

by pork 15y ago

The vast vast majority of people want to click on the Firefox icon and go to Facebook. People have lives that are busy, and the computer is a tool to get a job done. How many people "explore" the engine of their cars? Not many.

spinchange 15y ago
Who are these vast majorities that want to stay completely divorced from using their computer in a meaningful way, but want to run Linux on it?
ticks 15y ago
Yep. Ubuntu's obviously aiming their main product at the mainstream these days, and developers aren't in that mainstream. That said, Unity might deter the most enthusiastic newbies, the sort that go on to inhabit support forums and help others.
- guard-of-terra 15y ago
  But do the mainstream buy it? What's their selling point aimed at them? Everybody who I know who uses or tries ubuntu is either: - A software developer of some kind. - An advanced or else adventurous user who wants perspective. - A family member of one of the above. Neither of those is "mainstream" in that sense. And making product mainly used by X while keeping Z in mind is a troublesome tactic.
nkassis 15y ago
What about something as simple as changing you screensaver? My few years working as a sysadmin in a maintenance department at a University (read low tech knowledge) tells me people who care if they couldn't change something as simple as that yet you can't do that in Ubuntu 11.10. Changing fonts is another thing that's pretty annoying in this release but not as big a miss as the screen saver to most people. I hit those two things in the first few minutes of using the new release. They are removing so many simple things like that pretty much everyone expects to be there that it's becoming ridiculous. The fact that the option to change some config exists does not in anyway prevent someone from clicking on the firefox icon and going to Facebook. (and I really hate the attitude that most assume people just want to go to facebook. The fact is most people do a whole lot more with their machine than most simplists are assuming with no data to back it up.) I'm all for sane defaults but don't remove every configuration knob.
- hasenj 15y ago
  From what I understand, they do plan to put more configuration options eventually, but they're focusing right now on getting the defaults right. P.S. I don't understand why the screen saver is important (or why it even exists, for that matter).
  - PerryCox 15y ago
    I couldn't agree more. Lots of people are panicking about Unity because it's not as configurable as Gnome use to be, but they forget that we're in a transition period. Unity is brand spanking new, and I'm sure it'll have more configuration options in the future.
    - technomancy 15y ago
      That might be a good point if it weren't already so simple to build user interfaces that are simultaneously obvious to newbies while at the same time being ridiculously extensible. You just build it in a language that exposes a repl. Mozilla doesn't even do a particularly good job at this (given how they bury the replness), and it's still fostered a plugin ecosystem that has kept it competitive despite competitors eating its lunch on performance grounds.
      - morsch 15y ago
        Having a REPL and being extensible seem like totally orthogonal concepts to me. You can have a REPL and be hardly extensible. You can lack a REPL and be extremely extensible. If anything, the REPL is going to expose interfaces that enable extensibility; it's those APIs that are important, not the existance of an REPL.
        technomancy 15y ago
        Technically they are orthogonal, but in practice if you have a repl implementation that's well done, it will be used by the developers, and the developers will ensure that the functionality they need to implement the project is accessible through it. The developers can still screw things up, but it's a factor that encourages them to do the right thing through basic dogfooding.

by pork 15y ago

spinchange 15y ago

Who are these vast majorities that want to stay completely divorced from using their computer in a meaningful way, but want to run Linux on it?

ticks 15y ago

Yep. Ubuntu's obviously aiming their main product at the mainstream these days, and developers aren't in that mainstream. That said, Unity might deter the most enthusiastic newbies, the sort that go on to inhabit support forums and help others.

guard-of-terra 15y ago
But do the mainstream buy it? What's their selling point aimed at them? Everybody who I know who uses or tries ubuntu is either: - A software developer of some kind. - An advanced or else adventurous user who wants perspective. - A family member of one of the above. Neither of those is "mainstream" in that sense. And making product mainly used by X while keeping Z in mind is a troublesome tactic.

nkassis 15y ago

What about something as simple as changing you screensaver? My few years working as a sysadmin in a maintenance department at a University (read low tech knowledge) tells me people who care if they couldn't change something as simple as that yet you can't do that in Ubuntu 11.10. Changing fonts is another thing that's pretty annoying in this release but not as big a miss as the screen saver to most people. I hit those two things in the first few minutes of using the new release. They are removing so many simple things like that pretty much everyone expects to be there that it's becoming ridiculous. The fact that the option to change some config exists does not in anyway prevent someone from clicking on the firefox icon and going to Facebook. (and I really hate the attitude that most assume people just want to go to facebook. The fact is most people do a whole lot more with their machine than most simplists are assuming with no data to back it up.) I'm all for sane defaults but don't remove every configuration knob.

hasenj 15y ago
From what I understand, they do plan to put more configuration options eventually, but they're focusing right now on getting the defaults right. P.S. I don't understand why the screen saver is important (or why it even exists, for that matter).
- PerryCox 15y ago
  I couldn't agree more. Lots of people are panicking about Unity because it's not as configurable as Gnome use to be, but they forget that we're in a transition period. Unity is brand spanking new, and I'm sure it'll have more configuration options in the future.
  - technomancy 15y ago
    That might be a good point if it weren't already so simple to build user interfaces that are simultaneously obvious to newbies while at the same time being ridiculously extensible. You just build it in a language that exposes a repl. Mozilla doesn't even do a particularly good job at this (given how they bury the replness), and it's still fostered a plugin ecosystem that has kept it competitive despite competitors eating its lunch on performance grounds.
    - morsch 15y ago
      Having a REPL and being extensible seem like totally orthogonal concepts to me. You can have a REPL and be hardly extensible. You can lack a REPL and be extremely extensible. If anything, the REPL is going to expose interfaces that enable extensibility; it's those APIs that are important, not the existance of an REPL.
      - technomancy 15y ago
        Technically they are orthogonal, but in practice if you have a repl implementation that's well done, it will be used by the developers, and the developers will ensure that the functionality they need to implement the project is accessible through it. The developers can still screw things up, but it's a factor that encourages them to do the right thing through basic dogfooding.