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A Disturbing Dialog About Ubuntu and Unity

135 points by angusgr 15y ago

kevinpet 15y ago
I think a lot of people are operating under the assumption that Ubuntu is supposed to be for power users. I've used Ubuntu for years, never paid them a dime, don't ever expect to pay them a dime. This makes me suspect that maybe I'm not the person they intend to make money off of. Far more likely they want to cut in on corporate IT, where saving $50/seat in OS licensing and $100/seat in hardware adds up to real money.
jfoster 15y ago
Design by democracy doesn't work. Ubuntu has always been about targeting the mainstream as far as I can tell. They do a good job of it, and there's plenty of other options for those who think otherwise.
annomination 15y ago
just install XFCE and don't worry about it. as long as the apt repositories are stable, let them play with their GUI and you can go back worry about something more interesting.
- rsanchez1 15y ago
  Or show Shuttleworth how wrong he is and switch to another distro, most likely Debian for those who are most comfortable with Ubuntu.
  - Sapient 15y ago
    I actually switched to Mint 11 after 11.04 and found it to be a really good alternative. Specifically because it didn't break everything and has access to all the Ubuntu repos and tools. I switched back to Ubuntu for 11.10, hoping some of the things which pushed me to Mint in the first place had been fixed, but I am again bitterly disappointed. Unfortunately, I value having a pretty interface, I find xfce ugly, and simply installing gnome 2 in 11.10 doesn't "just work". I also tried Arch, but I found I was spending too much time getting it to work how I wanted, and I eventually gave up on it for the same reason I stopped using Gentoo. The one thing I never considered was switching to Debian - which might be the best idea yet!
    - jfoster 15y ago
      If you like Mint, why not just use that?
      - Sapient 15y ago
        A few minor annoyances with the using the Ubuntu repositories. Mint, on occasion, looking for Katya repos. Actually, I do wish I had just stuck with Mint, but I dont have time to go back now, and If I am going to install another distro, then why not Debian...
- apg 15y ago
  If Linux ever becomes popular on the desktop, it won't be because of Unity, that's for sure. It's a resource hog and it breaks too many established UI conventions. Unity forced me to start using the keyboard for most things. I'll give XFCE a try. I don't want to leave Ubuntu, because I like the packages and I don't have to read a manifesto sized manual to install it or learn another package system.
  - mambodog 15y ago
    UI conventions established by what? Other Linux desktop environments? Established among whom? Old-hat Linux users? Perhaps that's not who they're targeting.
    - groovy2shoes 15y ago
      The problem is that they're targeting non-users so heavily that they're alienating the users they already have. If they never take user input to heart, they're going to wind up with no users.
    - pyre 15y ago
      There is already a contingent of non-power users using Ubuntu. If they alienate those users then who are they really targetting? Shouldn't they worry about user retention in addition to user acquisition?
  - andrewflnr 15y ago
    Linux Mint uses Ubuntu's packages, and is still on Gnome. You might want to give it a shot.
  - SkyMarshal 15y ago
    >Unity forced me to start using the keyboard for most things. That's not a good thing? I haven't used Unity yet, but might try it out just on that comment alone.
    - Jach 15y ago
      I presume he means it in a bad way, not in a good way like tiling WMs have.
- technomancy 15y ago
  Yeah, we can all agree we hate Unity, but the constant complaining about it is disproportionate to the ease with which it's replaced.
  - angusgr 15y ago
    I think this ease is somewhat offset by the extent to which Ubuntu are pushing it. When I updated to 11.04 I tried Unity for about 3 hours, got annoyed by certain things hurting my work style (the all-workspaces Alt-Tab mentioned above being one), and logged out and back in via "Classic Ubuntu". I felt no antipathy towards Ubuntu at this point, and I was impressed they were trying new things. They just weren't for me. Then 11.10 came out, and immediately my machine starts bugging me to upgrade. Apparently when 11.04 came out Canonical had said that Classic wouldn't be available in 11.10, but I missed this. The upgrade process doesn't prompt you about that fact at all - it just takes the GNOME configuration that you were using, uninstalls it, and gives you only Unity. After trying Unity again (<1 hour this time), I went to do the same old "Ubuntu Classic" switch and there was no option. That's when I got cranky. I had to Google to find out how to get back the desktop environment I'd had before I upgraded. I would have felt good about the Ubuntu upgrade if any of the following had happened: - Upgrade process had said "Please note the environment you are currently using (Ubuntu Classic) will not be available after you upgrade. You can install the gnome-panel package to re-enable it after you upgrade." - Upgrade process had seen that I was already using Ubuntu Classic and didn't remove the gnome-panel package as part of the upgrade process, letting me keep the Ubuntu Classic after my system upgraded. How would that have hurt? - (Best One) Upgrade process would have asked me "Would you like to try the new and improved Unity environment after you upgrade? If you change your mind later on, you can log back in as Ubuntu Classic" (alternatively, it could have said "install gnome-panel package and then log back in as Ubuntu Classic" if they couldn't bear to leave those packages installed.) I agree that to some extent this is me whining like an indulgent nerd about an OS I got given for free, but it's also bad UX on the part of Ubuntu. During a standard upgrade, your operating system shouldn't decide that the way you've been using it is wrong, and give you an unexpected and not immediately reversible transition to a different way of using it. That's hubris on the part of Canonical.
    - 15y ago
- mr_dev4 15y ago
  http://www.xubuntu.org/ http://www.xubuntu.org/
  - jff 15y ago
    I never really saw the point of Xubuntu--I mean, 10 minutes in Ubuntu will give you the same thing, why have an whole separate distribution when the biggest change is the default desktop environment?
    - lvillani 15y ago
      It's not a whole separate distribution. It's akin to Fedora's "spins": an ISO with a different default set of packages. Nothing prevents you from installing Ubuntu proper and then "apt-get install xubuntu-desktop" on it. I agree, though, that this distinction is not clear enough by reading Xubuntu (or Kubuntu, Edubuntu, etc) websites.
      - jff 15y ago
        Ah, that definitely makes a lot more sense. Coming from Debian, I'm used to just saying "apt-get install <some window manager>" and switching to it immediately, so the Xubuntu/Kubuntu/Edubuntu thing always tripped me up--but I guess the point isn't that you could do it the way I'm used to, but that you can more easily just grab an ISO to default the way you like it. Me, I usually just install a very basic Debian and pile crap on top as I go :)
- javadyan 15y ago
  Amen to that. Maybe when more people start switching to a desktop environment that is not completely braindead, the Ubuntu team will understand that they are doing something seriously wrong.
kiba 15y ago
I think ubuntu is taking too much, doing too much. It wants to be on the phone and the tablet, and the desktop, etc. It is also a server distribution. It is also trying radical changes to become the mac osx of the linux world. Well, it's not even a good distro at work. We're using the last two version of ubuntu, because everytime we upgrade, it breaks. I used archlinux and I liked what it does. I expect archlinux to break and I expect archlinux to be up-to-date. Even when archlinux breaks, it's no biggie because I backed it up and it's easy to reinstall archlinux. Ubuntu? What do I expect? Stability and up-to-date programs. Major upgrade does not implies major breakage. Now, they want me to expect Mac OSX like experience? They are now even more unsuitable for work than archlinux is.
- oinksoft 15y ago
  People should just be using Debian if they want a stable system with good package management with a large repository. Archlinux is very good, but its repository is tiny compared to Debian and I trust Debian package maintainers more than pretty much any other distribution. I'm happy to install the few packages I need up-to-date, like Firefox, manually.
  - Adaptive 15y ago
    From a stability perspective, I'd agree. I did want to note that Arch's AUR does put it closer to the Debian package count, but of course the AUR quality is less consistent. I have really come to like the AUR and consider it one of the strengths of Arch, despite the AUR's shortcomings. Doing recent work on Ubuntu I was really missing my AUR packages and the ease of contributing to the AUR.
  - digikata 15y ago
    I love Debian, but I wish I could find a distro that was Debian + pragmatic hardware driver packages. That was the original value proposition that Ubuntu provided.
    - yena 15y ago
      Sounds like you should try Linux Mint Debian Edition. I've been using it since I gave up on Ubuntu 11.04
naner 15y ago
As a long-time Linux desktop user (but Ubuntu outsider) I have been watching this unfold for quite a while. I think that Mark Suttleworth is smitten by Apple and desperately wants to create a mostly free-software OSX-ish Linux distro. He copied the anchored menu bar, moved the window controls to the left, copied exposé, copied some elements of the OSX panel, tried to improve typography, etc. Some of these were actually good developments (the Ubuntu branded font set is nice) but most of the time it just feels like a cobbled together interface. It also seems he is trying to copy some other elements of Apple. He is eschewing customization (ostensibly) for uniformity and simplicity. And he has made Canonical's designers the top decision makers. Programmers implement. Community gets what they're fed. Usability is their ultimate trump card (as we see in this case). This doesn't appear to be working well, though. Apple hired world class designers and payed them tons and gave them a massive amount of power. And they had Steve Jobs who would say "this sucks" when no one else would. Canonical (probably?) has pretty good designers given near-absolute power. I'm thinking there's quite a difference between "world-class" and "pretty good". Not to mention that Shuttleworth, an amazing man in his own right, is no Steve Jobs. He probably doesn't say "this sucks" enough and maybe even doesn't know what actually does suck when it comes to design and usability. Anyways... I wish Shuttleworth well but I'm not very optimistic about Canonical's future. And I think they'd do better if he brought his own personality, creativity, and intensity to the project instead of chasing Jobs' shadow. Or maybe he should find a new leader to take his place.
- Daishiman 15y ago
  It seems unfortunate to me that the Canonical designers didn't just start from the very functional, very slick Gnome 2.x releases and improved and polished them while keeping a stable base. Instead there seems to be a need to reinvent a usability paradigm that worked extremely well and gave users a lot of power while keeping a level of simplicity which, while higher than that of mobile interfaces, is in most ways appropiate for desktop interfaces.
  - bilban 15y ago
    It would be nice if Gnome 2, worked without crashing gnome-panel erratically on my desktop!
goodside 15y ago
It's not reasonable to expect a design team to be able to function under the condition that whenever a user disagrees with the placement of a UI widget, they must either publicly justify their decision as being objectively correct or make the widget's position a user-configurable option. There is an enormous class of design problems that have several appealing solutions, one of which is better than the others, but not so much better that it's worth the time to find it. "Where should the launcher be?" is very likely a member of this class: There probably actually is a best place for the launcher to be, but it's better to just have it in the wrong place than to have to argue about it on a bug tracker, and certainly better than having to make a configuration drop-down for it. The entire reason you have a design team is because design-by-complaint reliably produces shitty software. Unity exists because every other Linux GUI has fallen victim to this process. Will it succeed in not being shitty? I have no idea. Ubuntu will sink or swim on the merits of its leadership. But the only way to avoid this one major failure mode is for Shuttleworth to ignore, as politely as possible, the complaints of his users.
- old-gregg 15y ago
  > Unity exists because every other Linux GUI has > fallen victim to this process That's very debatable. According to me, Gnome 2.3 is by far the best designed UX for a desktop operating system. Like most people, I generalize based on my own limited experience, and I have seen people grow up and learn how to use a computer in Gnome who were disgusted by Windows and OSX user interfaces. Like all animals, humans can be conditioned and there's simply no such thing as "best UX for all". Lets look at Alt+Tab functionality, which now in Unity (and Gnome3) switches between "apps" instead of windows. The problem with Unity/Gnome3 is that they're doing exactly what Shuttleworth claims to avoid. Quoting Mark: > we're not that interested in matching functionality > that was in Win95, especially if we think that > functionality will get dropped in Windows 8 or 9 or 10. Unity (and Gnome3) are both busy copying obsolete UI concepts from OSX, which itself is stuck in the 80s. I would say that they'd be better off copying Win95 instead, at least Microsoft recognized (correctly) back then that a concept of an "app" makes no sense on a modern desktop, and windows is what users want to manage, not "apps". Mr. Shuttleworth admits to be heavily influenced by Android and iOS. That's weird to me, since desktops are ultimately very different beasts. The concept of an "app" came back from the grave only because the 1st generation of mobile devices were very weak, DOS-like if you will, at multi-tasking and IPC. So... Mr. Shuttleworth picked the wrong corpse to invigorate. In their mindless pursuit of copying everything from OSX they didn't even bother recognizing OSX own bugs like broken virtual desktops. See, Apple themselves failed to copy them properly from Unix UIs (windows from different desktops in OSX are mistakenly combined in the same useless giant Alt+tab list). But the thing about Apple, though, is that they can afford to have an obsolete window management circa 1985 because their windows are shiny and fly around without lag, while Unity just recently learned how to scroll text smoothly. In the end, Mr. Shuttleworth really shouldn't mention Win95 at all, which now seems to emerge as a clearly superior desktop UX of all 3, nearly 20 years after its introduction.
sciurus 15y ago
I'm curious why any volunteers still contribute their time to Ubuntu instead of contributing to more open and meritocratic distributions.
- hollerith 15y ago
  Maybe because in addition to openness, meritocracy, democracy and equality they value other things, and they understand that insisting that all human relations be open, meritocratic, democratic or equal will hobble the pursuit of those other things. Some participants in open-source software development underestimate the costs and the disadvantages of openness, democracy, etc. They seem convinced that if everyone would just uphold those values, everything will turn out well, and they seem impervious to evidence to the contrary. It might be the case that if Canonical's designers and leaders get to boss the programmers around, then not enough programmers will continue to contribute to Ubuntu. But that is an empirical question that might turn on considerations other than openness and meritocracy. Maybe many programmers will continue to volunteer to help Ubuntu even if they understand that programmers and users do not have an equal voice in the direction of the project.
Bo102010 15y ago
I'm not a big fan of Unity, but I'm sympathetic to Shuttleworth in this matter. After following open source projects for some years, it seems they're all eventually accused of some dark corruption - usually after making some UI change. "You're betraying the ideals of the [project / community / founder]," the accusers say. "It used to be about giving users [freedom / choice / slightly less RAM usage]. Now it's just about [main leader of project / 'the developers' / the corporations]'s whims! Why not just give us [a setting / the old behavior / a large-scale feature]!" Take a look at Firefox forums after every release, or Pidgin's bug tracker every time they tweak the GUI... It reminds me of an older Less Wrong article - (http://lesswrong.com/lw/uu/why_does_power_corrupt/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/uu/why_does_power_corrupt/). Now, it could be that all projects are slowly decaying into [ego / corporate / dictatorial designer]-centric tarpits, but I kind of doubt it.
- yaix 15y ago
  I disagree. Projects need these wake up calls and should listen to them much closer. Firefox is a good example. I have used it since "Phoenix 0.1" came out. Already during "Firebird" times, users have started to complain that it is getting slower and bigger. Mozilla ignored it. It needed Google's Chrome browser to ring the bells at Mozilla and show them that the user complaints were valid after all. Compare that with well managed projects like the Linux kernel. There its usually the BDFL who does the wake up calls, after having listened to user complaints and suggestions. Not saying that everything is perfect, but the kernel has been hugely successful for 25+ years and is still well focused. Ubuntu OTOH has completely lost its original focus of providing an easy desktop Linux. They started pushing server versions and now suddenly smartphones. As if the desktop would disappear in the next years.
  - nkurz 15y ago
    Upvoted, but what's your math for 25+ years of Linux kernel development?
    - yaix 15y ago
      Off by 10. I meant 15+ years.
rfugger 15y ago
I respect that Canonical is trying to make Ubuntu an OS that regular Mac and Windows users will feel comfortable switching to. They must realize that this will alienate many long-time Linux users, but that doesn't hurt Linux as a whole, because those people can just use Debian or another distro. It's a difficult choice and I'm glad someone's doing it. I may not be using Ubuntu that much longer, but I'm not going to bitch about it.
drivebyacct2 15y ago
I don't mind, nor love Unity, though I quite enjoy GNOME3 (forgiving the rash of bugs), but give this a shot: Log into Unity, Press Ctrl+T. Enjoy.
- SkyMarshal 15y ago
  For those of us who can't do that atm, what does it do?
  - bhassel 15y ago
    I am guessing he is referring to this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/814799 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/8147...
    - drivebyacct2 15y ago
      Yup, it's also (impossible?) extremely hard to close without login/logout. IIRC, a `killall nautilus` wasn't even sufficient. A workaround is to use gnome-tweak to have nautilus not manage the desktop. I highly recommend it. As much as I don't like nautlius, I feel that it drawing the desktop is flat out archaic.
ypcxz 15y ago
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sect http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sect
enobrev 15y ago
These sorts of complaints seem so absurdly dramatic. I don't understand the reasoning behind them. They somehow bring up an eerie image in my head of someone holding their spouse hostage in the basement for lightly mentioning that they wanted to take a photography class. "No, dear, you're not allowed to be anything besides what you were the day I met you. Change is not in the cards for you, unless I make those changes". Creepy. That overbearing spouse deserves to be left in the dust immediately, and maybe some of these old users do as well. Not that they would be truly left behind, considering the vast landscape of other equally expensive options available requiring just as much effort to install - or MORE, if that's your thing. We've been talking about bringing Linux to the desktop for more than a decade. And it's not even close. So a company comes along and says: Listenting to you guys isn't working, so we're going to try something else. And now they're somehow considered the antithesis to Linux. What is "Bringing Linux to the masses" supposed to mean? Making all computer users around the world cantakerous curmudgeons who can change every pixel any graphical interface can ever hope to offer? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like that world. I like Linux geeks, and consider myself one, but I also like all the people in my life who will never even care what Linux is. And maybe there is a way to the masses via the old ways. I implore you to invest your time and money to find out. I would honestly love to watch that unfold, and I'd probably install that version as well to see if it fits me. In the meantime, I'm going to be happily using Ubuntu everywhere, as I am now - on my 2 year old DIY desktop with 2 giant 27" monitors (worked upon first install, with no proprietary drivers - 3 screens: not so easy), on my television (DIY home theater running xbmc - hdmi audio and video - also worked upon first install - no proprietary), and on my laptop at work (thinkpad, also worked immediately), and of course, on a couple servers at various stages of deploy. As unpopular as the opinion may be around here, I really enjoy using Unity. It's new and obviously imperfect, but it's one of the better user experiences I've found on Linux. I felt the old gnome 2 desktop was a step back from Windows 7 when I switched my media center to it last year. It looked as though I was installing software from 15 years in the past, trying to fit into a world that had an inch of dust on top of it. I like the windows-7-like dock bar in Unity. I like that searching for apps via keyboard is king (although the sorting sucks, sorting by usage is essential). Not a huge fan of the omni-preset menu bar, but it's not really THAT big of a deal (admittedly having 2 giant screens makes that possible). I don't give a damn about screensavers, as I haven't used one since flying toasters were the in thing. Truth be told, I spend far too much making things ON Linux to care much about Linux itself. And that's the way it should be. At least that's the only way I can stand to use Linux on every single computer I own.
dasboot 15y ago
I use Ubuntu as my exclusive desktop OS. Ubuntu / Linux has far bigger problems than Unity. (Jump to point 5 for conclusion). 1. There are huge regressions. With the upgrade to 11.10 my laptop's battery life has been cut from 5-6 hours to 2-2.5 hours. This is on an Asus UL machine that on Windows gets 10 hours. This may be a kernel issue, but Canonical could add a lot of value by at least warning, or better, fixing/minimizing the problem. There are all kinds of boot parameter hacks, etc. to try to fix this, but it requires a lot of reboots and fiddling with internals. How about including a script to optimize these settings that is run after the upgrade? "Linux on the desktop" is a dangerous misnomer, because on desktop computers power is not a concern. But nowadays power consumption is almost everything. Canonical already has its sights set on mobile devices, but hasn't even addressed power consumption for notebooks properly. 2. Poor communication of core functionality changes New additions are presented and lauded in glossy detail, but removed features are not as clearly presented. Nautilus (file manager) used to allow drag and drop copying/moving of files onto the left pane "bookmarks" folders. This was simply removed without warning, crippling quick drag and drop filing. Once again, this is "upstream", because of the Gnome/Nautilus teams' decisions, but it affects users in a noticeable way. The initial update to Unity (11.04) removed all gnome applets, and made the time tracking software I used to use inaccessible. The upgrade to 11.10 made me lose my skype app/status indicator. I don't care if my dock is on the left or bottom, or my open-close buttons are on the left or the right. Most of Unity's "coolness" is Compiz anyway - zoom, desktop switching, etc., so all that was available before Unity. For launching applications, gnome-do is still much faster, light-weight, and flexible (e.g. allowing creating/opening individual tomboy notes). By communicating feature additions and subtractions better, people won't be so negatively surprised. Set proper expectations. 3. Key consumer software weaknesses No good media creation suite. I was trying to make a photo slide show with a soundtrack a while ago, and I went through two days of installing/testing, setting up ppa's, compiling sources, etc. to get the latest versions, and nothing really works well. I mostly code, write, and use the web, so it's not mission-critical for me, but for a "consumer desktop OS", the absence of an official and well-functioning suite of applications akin to Apple's music and movie makers is a weakness. Other apps like Evernote and a more up-to-date Skype would be nice as well. 4. What hardware does it run on flawlessly? When you buy a computer with Windows or OS X, you know that everything will work. With Ubuntu/Linux, you don't. It's a huge stress factor before buying a new computer. Ubuntu has "certified hardware", but it's buried on some wiki page or other back page. This information should be front and center on the home page, so that I can buy something with confidence that it just works. 5. Conclusion Ubuntu (whether Unity or Gnome) is far more usable than Windows (messy config menus, no multiple desktops, no full-screen desktop zoom, inconsistent shortcuts, etc.), and at least as good as OS X (which for example doesn't allow you to change the system's font size globally, and is less keyboard navigation friendly). I'm considering abandoning Ubuntu again, because it can't compete on power consumption. I am sympathetic to Canonical being annoyed by the bitchy entitlement complaints over superficial UI features (e.g., open/close buttons left or right). It's bike-shedding to the max. That said, I think better up-front communication of changes can help set expectations. It forces the designers to reason why they are removing/changing/adding something. This doesn't have to lead to drawn out discussions, but some design decisions seem to be "shot from the hip" without realizing that they may affect/ruin thousands of people's work flow. Lastly, there are huge issues like power consumption and predictable hardware compatibility that currently heavily weigh against Ubuntu/Linux.
derleth 15y ago
Am I the only one who loves Ubuntu and does not use Unity at all? Basically, what I want out of a distro is a convenient platform to build the system I want. That's Window Maker with a lot of xterms, an Emacs session, a Firefox session, and possibly other applications as I need them. Any distro can give me that much. The reason I pick one over the other is ease of administration. Ubuntu gives me this in the package management systems, the large repositories, hardware support, and, if all else fails, large, well-trafficked forums where questions actually get answered. (I'm leery of less-used distros because I know, I just know, that I'd stumble on some odd corner-case problem that nobody who's used that distro has seen and be up too late diagnosing and fixing it myself.) So all these posts that imply Unity is the only way to use Ubuntu sound, to me, like people implying New York City is the only place to live in America. It's big and it's in all the movies, but there's a whole continent out there just beyond.
- gnaffle 15y ago
  I'm an old Debian and Ubuntu user. I moved to Ubuntu for my desktop since I could install it and it would just work, with a sane enough GUI. With each new release the previous years, they've made design decisions that I don't like. While it's nice that they try to improve the desktop, it seems like they forget that in the real world, Linux adoption happens with power users recommending (and supporting) new users with their Linux installation. Maybe Ubuntu can change that, but we're not there yet. And if Ubuntu doesn't cater to the power users _as well_, one day they'll wake up to another Linux distribution gaining popularity. I've switched over to XFCE (Xubuntu) for now, but it seems like I might be better off going back to Debian. After all, I can join the Debian community and actually have a say if I disagree with its direction.
ianb 15y ago
There's some justification in deferring to user interface designers with respect to the vision for the interface. An authoritarian system can work, though you should be sensitive to how you present that authority. "wontfix" is socially dangerous to use. But authority only works if you use that authority to do the right thing. Unity isn't doing that. I am in part frustrated that Unity got _worse_ with the latest Ubuntu release, and I'm frustrated that it has lots of bugs, and the interface is neither traditional nor discoverable. But even worse than these problems is the problem that Unity isn't pursuing a worthy goal. It's a rethinking of how you manage applications and files on the Linux desktop, but the Linux desktop has never been particularly functional or filled out and it falls behind further with time. The major trends we see is the desktop spiraling in on a single application, the browser, and files and media moving to the cloud. Unity is messing around with something that will never win the hearts and minds of new users, while it alienates what users there already are. I've never met someone who loves Unity! There's a couple people who accept it, and a much larger group that hates it. (Personally once I figured out to install gnome-shell I can like Ubuntu again, but Unity really did almost push me over the edge to get a Mac.) It's not to say that a rethinking of the Linux UI is an entirely useless endevour, but Ubuntu and Canonical should not be pursuing a fantasy of a rich ecosystem of GUI apps. There are maybe a dozen relevant applications on Linux now, and that number will only get smaller. But the beauty of this is that if you just pursue an experience that encompasses those dozen applications, and you dive deep into those applications (which you can because they are all open source!) then something really neat could come out of that. I think people could get behind an idea like that, even if those same people simultaneously felt annoyed with particular changes that came from that. But it's hard to look past those problems when it feels like present usability is being compromised for a misguided fantasy.
midwestwebdev 15y ago
I guess I'm confused about the whole issue. Personally I hate Unity, which is why I installed Gnome 2. Isn't that the point of Linux? Being able to customize it to your liking?
- alinajaf 15y ago
  Agreed, I think Ubuntu is still a great distro for 'just working' on most machines I've installed it on. I dislike Unity too, so I install a couple of packages, grab my xmonad config file from github and get back to work.
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  I am happy with gnome 2 as well for the most part. Is it still under active development?
  - fmoralesc 15y ago
    No. There's a fork, though, called Mate (https://github.com/Perberos/Mate-Desktop-Environment https://github.com/Perberos/Mate-Desktop-Environment).
    - jiggy2011 15y ago
      From the github page: "MATE Desktop Environment, a non-intuitive and unattractive desktop for users, using traditional computing desktop metaphor." Excellent! Just what I want! I wonder how active this will be and whether it will see any improvements or just maintenance
gbog 15y ago
No one seem to see that the real problem here is not Ubuntu, Unity or Gnome X.y. The real issue at stake is putting the designers on top of the decision hierarchy. It have worked well with Apple, it was in its DNA, but it is not at all in Linux DNA (neither in Google's or Amazon's or Microsoft's). I do not mean to say design and UX and usability is not important, but still, it is a matter of priorities. If a designer decide to have transparent flapping buttons and if this make the code behind it extremely complex and if it makes impossible to customize and configure manually any parts of the system, then I would say it does not belong to Linux. Maybe it is a case with Ubuntu. Maybe Ubuntu is a Linux for designers. Then I am wrong, and will switch to another distro. For me Ubuntu was an easy to install Linux with few driver issues, and my first step after installing it is to remove the useless Visual Effects in preferences.
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  For something designed by 'designers' it is seriously ugly.
pnathan 15y ago
I appreciate the direction Canonical is taking Ubuntu. I neither condone nor condemn it; it is a valid direction to take software development. However, the direction does not seem to line up with typical open source hacker goals (it's very hard to adjust unity even in the smallest ways, and there seems to be some number of breaks from typical conventions, e.g., breaking xscreensaver), which is one of the key values of the Linux world. That, I believe, is the controversy here. I use Bodhi at home, and have been real happy with it.
sutro 15y ago
For those frustrated with Shuttleworth's attitude and with the massive step backwards in stability and usability that is Unity, try Linux Mint. I had to go through a lot of painful, time-wasting experiments to arrive at that advice.
bluedanieru 15y ago
That's why iOS has a springboard in only one place, same for Android. These are modern interfaces, based on serious design work. Our goal is to compete with those, so we're not that interested in matching functionality that was in Win95, especially if we think that functionality will get dropped in Windows 8 or 9 or 10. So they want Unity to be a GUI for tablets? How far up your ass does your head have to be, to think that a GUI designed for desktop use, and a GUI designed for tablet use, can be used interchangeably? Someone ask Mark, he'll know. Or someone who worked on Metro since they seem to have the same parts of their brain broken. If Microsoft does break into the tablet space, it will be from work on Windows Phone 7, it will not be from Metro. Apple recognized this when they used their phone GUI for tablets despite having a perfectly good desktop GUI around, and Canonical is all about copying Apple like a fucking funhouse mirror, how did they not pick up on this? If they want to target the tablet space, good for them. I think the ship has probably sailed, but more competition there isn't going to hurt. But don't fuck traditional desktop users, who currently account for 100% of your user base, in the process.
- einhverfr 15y ago
  Exactly right. I am going to state the obvious here. UI's should be designed around their input methods. If the input on a tablet and a desktop are different (mouse vs fingers) then use a different UI. Plain and simple. Gnome 2.3 was a very, very good UI aimed at desktops. 3.0 is another kinda sorta tablet UI that only kinda sorta works on desktops (I am playing around with Gnome 3.0, XFCE, and a few others). The fundamental problem is that what works well with one in one input environment breaks badly in another. This was Apple's great contribution with the iPhone and the iPad. Attempts to merge environments will get you with something that kinda sorta works everywhere and does not work anywhere well.
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    Totally Agree, there is a reason Microsoft are seperating Metro and the main Windows UI and that apple have seperate types of devices (Mac / iPhone + iPad). If you want Linux for tablets/phones just get android.
  - 15y ago
djhworld 15y ago
dialogue
lwhi 15y ago
This is a philosophical battle. Apple has the ability to make decisions without resorting to committee politics. Shuttleworth is trying to gain some of this advantage for Ubuntu. It might seem dictatorial, but I think he's got a point .. if Ubuntu is going to innovate and create differentiation from other OSs it needs to change. An element of faith is needed to allow that change to occur.
Causification 15y ago
I am an irregular Linux user and am not deeply involved in the Ubuntu community, but over the past several months I have seen the general attitude of "random geeks" change dramatically with regards to Ubuntu. A year ago the standard response to a new user inquiring about Linux was "install Ubuntu, it's easy, there's lots of help available. Go get 'em tiger." Now, Ubuntu is usually spoken of with a kind of regretful contempt. I didn't much care for it myself, but Ubuntu used to be the public face of Linux, the thing 95% of the Windows/OSX users hit if they get interested in Linux. As far as I can tell, it's fallen out of the good graces of the power user community. It appears as if Ubuntu has decided to forsake the early adopters and power users in favor of the newbies and average Joes. That may be well and good on principle but I don't see it as a strategy capable of sustaining an OS ecosystem that doesn't come preinstalled on Dick and jane's new laptop.
- slowpoke 15y ago
  > A year ago the standard response to a new user inquiring about Linux was "install Ubuntu, it's easy, there's lots of help available. Go get 'em tiger." Now, Ubuntu is usually spoken of with a kind of regretful contempt. True. I used to suggest Ubuntu myself (actually, I was one of the people who started with Ubuntu, now I'm on Arch). I've switched to either suggesting to install one of the forks of Ubuntu (mostly Kubuntu or Xubuntu), Linux Mint or even Crunchbang.
  - DanBC 15y ago
    Good grief please don't suggest crunchbang for new users!! Unless it's used as a transition for a clueful, but new to Linux, user who's going to learn a bit and then move to a different distribution. (Probably Arch or Tiny Core, if you're suggesting CrunchBang.)
    - slowpoke 15y ago
      >Unless it's used as a transition for a clueful, but new to Linux, user who's going to learn a bit and then move to a different distribution. Exactly to those I would point to #!. By the FSM, I would never suggest #! to a user that doesn't already have a degree of technical knowledge.
yason 15y ago
Mark already said it: if you don't like it, then don't use it. It's his money on the line, you go fork your own Unity. This is an instance of "you can't please everyone so don't even try." While it would definitely be nice to please everyone, even merely trying to do so will seriously derail you from your own vision and design. That direction can either be yours or nobody's. People also overestimate the effect of this kind of soloing. At worst, they will just create something nobody will use. And if the majority of users will cease to use Unity, there will be 3rd-party packages for Gnome3 or Gnome2 or whatever it is that people want. As a critical review, if Ubuntu ever get to that point it might indeed be a good idea for Ubuntu to accept defeat and return to the mainstream. However, it is no earlier than that when we will see if they truly are stupid. And if they are, then there's a fair chance of forking and there will not only be Kubuntu and Lubuntu and ${WHATEVER}buntu but also Gubuntu.
padobson 15y ago
This reminds me of a fight in a church about how high on the wall the cross should be hanging. Bitter arguments among side-stream groups (church-goers, linux-users) are a much bigger reason why these groups do not attract mainstream audiences then what it is they're fighting about. Unity, Gnome, and KDE are all headed towards a more Mac-like UI because Apple is the most lauded software design company in the world. Like church-goers, Linux users should be supporting and celebrating innovation in design that are meant to increase use in the software. If such innovation was more broadly celebrated for its own sake, then it is much more likely that one of the major players would be willing to risk new design decisions - to really experiment with the UI. Instead, the same changes are all adopted by the major players because trying something too different will get your ridiculed, and that leads to losing early adopters, and that leads to a diminishing user base. If you want to see Linux become more mainstream so that a generation of computer users can have a little more software freedom, then join the discussion by celebrating experimentation instead of condemning it.
- kitsune_ 15y ago
  The question is, has Apple "solved" UI? Some might argue that they have succeeded on mobile devices. But what about the Desktop? In my opinion, the desktop is still a ghetto. Be it Windows, Ubuntu or OS X. Open a couple of applications and documents and well, OS X crumbles from a UX point of view. Do I need to see all open Finders, applications and open docs when I should be getting stuff done? Multi-tasking leads to high complexity and the visual organization of all the information seems to be unresolved problem. Secondly, is it worth wile to bring the mobile experience to the desktop?
  - padobson 15y ago
    I don't have answers to either of your questions, and neither does anybody else. The answers are not going to come from fights about what UI should be, but from as many OS developers as possible doing as many experiments as possible on the largest number of users possible. My point was that this isn't going to happen if the community continues all of this back biting.
ilaksh 15y ago
Most people hate Unity. They are sticking with it. Canonical needs to be profitable. OK, so which distribution is everyone switching over to in place of Ubuntu?
- william42 15y ago
  Don't bother leaving Ubuntu, just install XFCE, gnome-panel[1], or make a leap into the world of the tiling WM with the package awesome[2]. [1]I think this is the name of the Gnome 2 package. Personally, I couldn't stand Gnome 2 and even preferred Unity; I didn't jump into the world of the tiling WM until compiz started crashing my GPU. [2] at http://awesome.naquadah.org/ http://awesome.naquadah.org/ ; I don't like the name, but I love the WM.
- fader 15y ago
  "Most people hate Unity." Can you show me the data that you've gathered on this? I'd love to see the user survey. (Is it maybe possible that just because you don't like something, others still could?)
  - ilaksh 15y ago
    I am one of the few people that I have run into using Unity.. I don't hate it.. its just that I haven't heard much of anything else about Unity except "god I hate Unity". Not scientific.
cmiles74 15y ago
The debate over where to place a particular widget or what bits of the user interface are customizable seems off-target to me. What struck me most was the fact that we had a polite community member doing his best to describe a problem that he was very concerned about. He felt that people in the community of Ubuntu users were feeling ignored and he suggested that an easy solution would be to provide more detail on why a particular issue in Launchpad is flagged as "wontfix". While the effectiveness of this solution is debatable, Canonical focused on how the community feels selfish and entitled. Ironically, instead of Canonical clearly explaining to this community member why they wouldn't be more descriptive on issues flagged as "wontfix", the discussion degraded into just the sort of name calling and posturing that this community member was attempting to alleviate.
- fader 15y ago
  " the discussion degraded into just the sort of name calling and posturing that this community member was attempting to alleviate" It might be enlightening to read the comments on the bug dispassionately and see where the name calling and posturing is coming from and where it is not.
cfontes 15y ago
Well, I hate Unity the UI looks like an old Nokia phone makes your Computer look like an bad designed android tablet. I am switching to Debian after 10 years of Ubuntu I was a big defender of Canonical and their SO and but now I lost it...

135 points by angusgr 15y ago

I think a lot of people are operating under the assumption that Ubuntu is supposed to be for power users. I've used Ubuntu for years, never paid them a dime, don't ever expect to pay them a dime. This makes me suspect that maybe I'm not the person they intend to make money off of. Far more likely they want to cut in on corporate IT, where saving $50/seat in OS licensing and $100/seat in hardware adds up to real money.

jfoster 15y ago

Design by democracy doesn't work. Ubuntu has always been about targeting the mainstream as far as I can tell. They do a good job of it, and there's plenty of other options for those who think otherwise.

annomination 15y ago

just install XFCE and don't worry about it. as long as the apt repositories are stable, let them play with their GUI and you can go back worry about something more interesting.

rsanchez1 15y ago
Or show Shuttleworth how wrong he is and switch to another distro, most likely Debian for those who are most comfortable with Ubuntu.
- Sapient 15y ago
  I actually switched to Mint 11 after 11.04 and found it to be a really good alternative. Specifically because it didn't break everything and has access to all the Ubuntu repos and tools. I switched back to Ubuntu for 11.10, hoping some of the things which pushed me to Mint in the first place had been fixed, but I am again bitterly disappointed. Unfortunately, I value having a pretty interface, I find xfce ugly, and simply installing gnome 2 in 11.10 doesn't "just work". I also tried Arch, but I found I was spending too much time getting it to work how I wanted, and I eventually gave up on it for the same reason I stopped using Gentoo. The one thing I never considered was switching to Debian - which might be the best idea yet!
  - jfoster 15y ago
    If you like Mint, why not just use that?
    - Sapient 15y ago
      A few minor annoyances with the using the Ubuntu repositories. Mint, on occasion, looking for Katya repos. Actually, I do wish I had just stuck with Mint, but I dont have time to go back now, and If I am going to install another distro, then why not Debian...
apg 15y ago
If Linux ever becomes popular on the desktop, it won't be because of Unity, that's for sure. It's a resource hog and it breaks too many established UI conventions. Unity forced me to start using the keyboard for most things. I'll give XFCE a try. I don't want to leave Ubuntu, because I like the packages and I don't have to read a manifesto sized manual to install it or learn another package system.
- mambodog 15y ago
  UI conventions established by what? Other Linux desktop environments? Established among whom? Old-hat Linux users? Perhaps that's not who they're targeting.
  - groovy2shoes 15y ago
    The problem is that they're targeting non-users so heavily that they're alienating the users they already have. If they never take user input to heart, they're going to wind up with no users.
  - pyre 15y ago
    There is already a contingent of non-power users using Ubuntu. If they alienate those users then who are they really targetting? Shouldn't they worry about user retention in addition to user acquisition?
- andrewflnr 15y ago
  Linux Mint uses Ubuntu's packages, and is still on Gnome. You might want to give it a shot.
- SkyMarshal 15y ago
  >Unity forced me to start using the keyboard for most things. That's not a good thing? I haven't used Unity yet, but might try it out just on that comment alone.
  - Jach 15y ago
    I presume he means it in a bad way, not in a good way like tiling WMs have.
technomancy 15y ago
Yeah, we can all agree we hate Unity, but the constant complaining about it is disproportionate to the ease with which it's replaced.
- angusgr 15y ago
  I think this ease is somewhat offset by the extent to which Ubuntu are pushing it. When I updated to 11.04 I tried Unity for about 3 hours, got annoyed by certain things hurting my work style (the all-workspaces Alt-Tab mentioned above being one), and logged out and back in via "Classic Ubuntu". I felt no antipathy towards Ubuntu at this point, and I was impressed they were trying new things. They just weren't for me. Then 11.10 came out, and immediately my machine starts bugging me to upgrade. Apparently when 11.04 came out Canonical had said that Classic wouldn't be available in 11.10, but I missed this. The upgrade process doesn't prompt you about that fact at all - it just takes the GNOME configuration that you were using, uninstalls it, and gives you only Unity. After trying Unity again (<1 hour this time), I went to do the same old "Ubuntu Classic" switch and there was no option. That's when I got cranky. I had to Google to find out how to get back the desktop environment I'd had before I upgraded. I would have felt good about the Ubuntu upgrade if any of the following had happened: - Upgrade process had said "Please note the environment you are currently using (Ubuntu Classic) will not be available after you upgrade. You can install the gnome-panel package to re-enable it after you upgrade." - Upgrade process had seen that I was already using Ubuntu Classic and didn't remove the gnome-panel package as part of the upgrade process, letting me keep the Ubuntu Classic after my system upgraded. How would that have hurt? - (Best One) Upgrade process would have asked me "Would you like to try the new and improved Unity environment after you upgrade? If you change your mind later on, you can log back in as Ubuntu Classic" (alternatively, it could have said "install gnome-panel package and then log back in as Ubuntu Classic" if they couldn't bear to leave those packages installed.) I agree that to some extent this is me whining like an indulgent nerd about an OS I got given for free, but it's also bad UX on the part of Ubuntu. During a standard upgrade, your operating system shouldn't decide that the way you've been using it is wrong, and give you an unexpected and not immediately reversible transition to a different way of using it. That's hubris on the part of Canonical.
  - 15y ago
mr_dev4 15y ago
http://www.xubuntu.org/ http://www.xubuntu.org/
- jff 15y ago
  I never really saw the point of Xubuntu--I mean, 10 minutes in Ubuntu will give you the same thing, why have an whole separate distribution when the biggest change is the default desktop environment?
  - lvillani 15y ago
    It's not a whole separate distribution. It's akin to Fedora's "spins": an ISO with a different default set of packages. Nothing prevents you from installing Ubuntu proper and then "apt-get install xubuntu-desktop" on it. I agree, though, that this distinction is not clear enough by reading Xubuntu (or Kubuntu, Edubuntu, etc) websites.
    - jff 15y ago
      Ah, that definitely makes a lot more sense. Coming from Debian, I'm used to just saying "apt-get install <some window manager>" and switching to it immediately, so the Xubuntu/Kubuntu/Edubuntu thing always tripped me up--but I guess the point isn't that you could do it the way I'm used to, but that you can more easily just grab an ISO to default the way you like it. Me, I usually just install a very basic Debian and pile crap on top as I go :)
javadyan 15y ago
Amen to that. Maybe when more people start switching to a desktop environment that is not completely braindead, the Ubuntu team will understand that they are doing something seriously wrong.

kiba 15y ago

I think ubuntu is taking too much, doing too much. It wants to be on the phone and the tablet, and the desktop, etc. It is also a server distribution. It is also trying radical changes to become the mac osx of the linux world. Well, it's not even a good distro at work. We're using the last two version of ubuntu, because everytime we upgrade, it breaks. I used archlinux and I liked what it does. I expect archlinux to break and I expect archlinux to be up-to-date. Even when archlinux breaks, it's no biggie because I backed it up and it's easy to reinstall archlinux. Ubuntu? What do I expect? Stability and up-to-date programs. Major upgrade does not implies major breakage. Now, they want me to expect Mac OSX like experience? They are now even more unsuitable for work than archlinux is.

oinksoft 15y ago
People should just be using Debian if they want a stable system with good package management with a large repository. Archlinux is very good, but its repository is tiny compared to Debian and I trust Debian package maintainers more than pretty much any other distribution. I'm happy to install the few packages I need up-to-date, like Firefox, manually.
- Adaptive 15y ago
  From a stability perspective, I'd agree. I did want to note that Arch's AUR does put it closer to the Debian package count, but of course the AUR quality is less consistent. I have really come to like the AUR and consider it one of the strengths of Arch, despite the AUR's shortcomings. Doing recent work on Ubuntu I was really missing my AUR packages and the ease of contributing to the AUR.
- digikata 15y ago
  I love Debian, but I wish I could find a distro that was Debian + pragmatic hardware driver packages. That was the original value proposition that Ubuntu provided.
  - yena 15y ago
    Sounds like you should try Linux Mint Debian Edition. I've been using it since I gave up on Ubuntu 11.04

naner 15y ago

As a long-time Linux desktop user (but Ubuntu outsider) I have been watching this unfold for quite a while. I think that Mark Suttleworth is smitten by Apple and desperately wants to create a mostly free-software OSX-ish Linux distro. He copied the anchored menu bar, moved the window controls to the left, copied exposé, copied some elements of the OSX panel, tried to improve typography, etc. Some of these were actually good developments (the Ubuntu branded font set is nice) but most of the time it just feels like a cobbled together interface. It also seems he is trying to copy some other elements of Apple. He is eschewing customization (ostensibly) for uniformity and simplicity. And he has made Canonical's designers the top decision makers. Programmers implement. Community gets what they're fed. Usability is their ultimate trump card (as we see in this case). This doesn't appear to be working well, though. Apple hired world class designers and payed them tons and gave them a massive amount of power. And they had Steve Jobs who would say "this sucks" when no one else would. Canonical (probably?) has pretty good designers given near-absolute power. I'm thinking there's quite a difference between "world-class" and "pretty good". Not to mention that Shuttleworth, an amazing man in his own right, is no Steve Jobs. He probably doesn't say "this sucks" enough and maybe even doesn't know what actually does suck when it comes to design and usability. Anyways... I wish Shuttleworth well but I'm not very optimistic about Canonical's future. And I think they'd do better if he brought his own personality, creativity, and intensity to the project instead of chasing Jobs' shadow. Or maybe he should find a new leader to take his place.

Daishiman 15y ago
It seems unfortunate to me that the Canonical designers didn't just start from the very functional, very slick Gnome 2.x releases and improved and polished them while keeping a stable base. Instead there seems to be a need to reinvent a usability paradigm that worked extremely well and gave users a lot of power while keeping a level of simplicity which, while higher than that of mobile interfaces, is in most ways appropiate for desktop interfaces.
- bilban 15y ago
  It would be nice if Gnome 2, worked without crashing gnome-panel erratically on my desktop!

goodside 15y ago

It's not reasonable to expect a design team to be able to function under the condition that whenever a user disagrees with the placement of a UI widget, they must either publicly justify their decision as being objectively correct or make the widget's position a user-configurable option. There is an enormous class of design problems that have several appealing solutions, one of which is better than the others, but not so much better that it's worth the time to find it. "Where should the launcher be?" is very likely a member of this class: There probably actually is a best place for the launcher to be, but it's better to just have it in the wrong place than to have to argue about it on a bug tracker, and certainly better than having to make a configuration drop-down for it. The entire reason you have a design team is because design-by-complaint reliably produces shitty software. Unity exists because every other Linux GUI has fallen victim to this process. Will it succeed in not being shitty? I have no idea. Ubuntu will sink or swim on the merits of its leadership. But the only way to avoid this one major failure mode is for Shuttleworth to ignore, as politely as possible, the complaints of his users.

old-gregg 15y ago
> Unity exists because every other Linux GUI has > fallen victim to this process That's very debatable. According to me, Gnome 2.3 is by far the best designed UX for a desktop operating system. Like most people, I generalize based on my own limited experience, and I have seen people grow up and learn how to use a computer in Gnome who were disgusted by Windows and OSX user interfaces. Like all animals, humans can be conditioned and there's simply no such thing as "best UX for all". Lets look at Alt+Tab functionality, which now in Unity (and Gnome3) switches between "apps" instead of windows. The problem with Unity/Gnome3 is that they're doing exactly what Shuttleworth claims to avoid. Quoting Mark: > we're not that interested in matching functionality > that was in Win95, especially if we think that > functionality will get dropped in Windows 8 or 9 or 10. Unity (and Gnome3) are both busy copying obsolete UI concepts from OSX, which itself is stuck in the 80s. I would say that they'd be better off copying Win95 instead, at least Microsoft recognized (correctly) back then that a concept of an "app" makes no sense on a modern desktop, and windows is what users want to manage, not "apps". Mr. Shuttleworth admits to be heavily influenced by Android and iOS. That's weird to me, since desktops are ultimately very different beasts. The concept of an "app" came back from the grave only because the 1st generation of mobile devices were very weak, DOS-like if you will, at multi-tasking and IPC. So... Mr. Shuttleworth picked the wrong corpse to invigorate. In their mindless pursuit of copying everything from OSX they didn't even bother recognizing OSX own bugs like broken virtual desktops. See, Apple themselves failed to copy them properly from Unix UIs (windows from different desktops in OSX are mistakenly combined in the same useless giant Alt+tab list). But the thing about Apple, though, is that they can afford to have an obsolete window management circa 1985 because their windows are shiny and fly around without lag, while Unity just recently learned how to scroll text smoothly. In the end, Mr. Shuttleworth really shouldn't mention Win95 at all, which now seems to emerge as a clearly superior desktop UX of all 3, nearly 20 years after its introduction.

sciurus 15y ago

I'm curious why any volunteers still contribute their time to Ubuntu instead of contributing to more open and meritocratic distributions.

hollerith 15y ago
Maybe because in addition to openness, meritocracy, democracy and equality they value other things, and they understand that insisting that all human relations be open, meritocratic, democratic or equal will hobble the pursuit of those other things. Some participants in open-source software development underestimate the costs and the disadvantages of openness, democracy, etc. They seem convinced that if everyone would just uphold those values, everything will turn out well, and they seem impervious to evidence to the contrary. It might be the case that if Canonical's designers and leaders get to boss the programmers around, then not enough programmers will continue to contribute to Ubuntu. But that is an empirical question that might turn on considerations other than openness and meritocracy. Maybe many programmers will continue to volunteer to help Ubuntu even if they understand that programmers and users do not have an equal voice in the direction of the project.

Bo102010 15y ago

I'm not a big fan of Unity, but I'm sympathetic to Shuttleworth in this matter. After following open source projects for some years, it seems they're all eventually accused of some dark corruption - usually after making some UI change. "You're betraying the ideals of the [project / community / founder]," the accusers say. "It used to be about giving users [freedom / choice / slightly less RAM usage]. Now it's just about [main leader of project / 'the developers' / the corporations]'s whims! Why not just give us [a setting / the old behavior / a large-scale feature]!" Take a look at Firefox forums after every release, or Pidgin's bug tracker every time they tweak the GUI... It reminds me of an older Less Wrong article - (http://lesswrong.com/lw/uu/why_does_power_corrupt/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/uu/why_does_power_corrupt/). Now, it could be that all projects are slowly decaying into [ego / corporate / dictatorial designer]-centric tarpits, but I kind of doubt it.

yaix 15y ago
I disagree. Projects need these wake up calls and should listen to them much closer. Firefox is a good example. I have used it since "Phoenix 0.1" came out. Already during "Firebird" times, users have started to complain that it is getting slower and bigger. Mozilla ignored it. It needed Google's Chrome browser to ring the bells at Mozilla and show them that the user complaints were valid after all. Compare that with well managed projects like the Linux kernel. There its usually the BDFL who does the wake up calls, after having listened to user complaints and suggestions. Not saying that everything is perfect, but the kernel has been hugely successful for 25+ years and is still well focused. Ubuntu OTOH has completely lost its original focus of providing an easy desktop Linux. They started pushing server versions and now suddenly smartphones. As if the desktop would disappear in the next years.
- nkurz 15y ago
  Upvoted, but what's your math for 25+ years of Linux kernel development?
  - yaix 15y ago
    Off by 10. I meant 15+ years.

rfugger 15y ago

I respect that Canonical is trying to make Ubuntu an OS that regular Mac and Windows users will feel comfortable switching to. They must realize that this will alienate many long-time Linux users, but that doesn't hurt Linux as a whole, because those people can just use Debian or another distro. It's a difficult choice and I'm glad someone's doing it. I may not be using Ubuntu that much longer, but I'm not going to bitch about it.

drivebyacct2 15y ago

I don't mind, nor love Unity, though I quite enjoy GNOME3 (forgiving the rash of bugs), but give this a shot: Log into Unity, Press Ctrl+T. Enjoy.

SkyMarshal 15y ago
For those of us who can't do that atm, what does it do?
- bhassel 15y ago
  I am guessing he is referring to this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/814799 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/8147...
  - drivebyacct2 15y ago
    Yup, it's also (impossible?) extremely hard to close without login/logout. IIRC, a `killall nautilus` wasn't even sufficient. A workaround is to use gnome-tweak to have nautilus not manage the desktop. I highly recommend it. As much as I don't like nautlius, I feel that it drawing the desktop is flat out archaic.

ypcxz 15y ago

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sect http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sect

enobrev 15y ago

These sorts of complaints seem so absurdly dramatic. I don't understand the reasoning behind them. They somehow bring up an eerie image in my head of someone holding their spouse hostage in the basement for lightly mentioning that they wanted to take a photography class. "No, dear, you're not allowed to be anything besides what you were the day I met you. Change is not in the cards for you, unless I make those changes". Creepy. That overbearing spouse deserves to be left in the dust immediately, and maybe some of these old users do as well. Not that they would be truly left behind, considering the vast landscape of other equally expensive options available requiring just as much effort to install - or MORE, if that's your thing. We've been talking about bringing Linux to the desktop for more than a decade. And it's not even close. So a company comes along and says: Listenting to you guys isn't working, so we're going to try something else. And now they're somehow considered the antithesis to Linux. What is "Bringing Linux to the masses" supposed to mean? Making all computer users around the world cantakerous curmudgeons who can change every pixel any graphical interface can ever hope to offer? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like that world. I like Linux geeks, and consider myself one, but I also like all the people in my life who will never even care what Linux is. And maybe there is a way to the masses via the old ways. I implore you to invest your time and money to find out. I would honestly love to watch that unfold, and I'd probably install that version as well to see if it fits me. In the meantime, I'm going to be happily using Ubuntu everywhere, as I am now - on my 2 year old DIY desktop with 2 giant 27" monitors (worked upon first install, with no proprietary drivers - 3 screens: not so easy), on my television (DIY home theater running xbmc - hdmi audio and video - also worked upon first install - no proprietary), and on my laptop at work (thinkpad, also worked immediately), and of course, on a couple servers at various stages of deploy. As unpopular as the opinion may be around here, I really enjoy using Unity. It's new and obviously imperfect, but it's one of the better user experiences I've found on Linux. I felt the old gnome 2 desktop was a step back from Windows 7 when I switched my media center to it last year. It looked as though I was installing software from 15 years in the past, trying to fit into a world that had an inch of dust on top of it. I like the windows-7-like dock bar in Unity. I like that searching for apps via keyboard is king (although the sorting sucks, sorting by usage is essential). Not a huge fan of the omni-preset menu bar, but it's not really THAT big of a deal (admittedly having 2 giant screens makes that possible). I don't give a damn about screensavers, as I haven't used one since flying toasters were the in thing. Truth be told, I spend far too much making things ON Linux to care much about Linux itself. And that's the way it should be. At least that's the only way I can stand to use Linux on every single computer I own.

dasboot 15y ago

I use Ubuntu as my exclusive desktop OS. Ubuntu / Linux has far bigger problems than Unity. (Jump to point 5 for conclusion). 1. There are huge regressions. With the upgrade to 11.10 my laptop's battery life has been cut from 5-6 hours to 2-2.5 hours. This is on an Asus UL machine that on Windows gets 10 hours. This may be a kernel issue, but Canonical could add a lot of value by at least warning, or better, fixing/minimizing the problem. There are all kinds of boot parameter hacks, etc. to try to fix this, but it requires a lot of reboots and fiddling with internals. How about including a script to optimize these settings that is run after the upgrade? "Linux on the desktop" is a dangerous misnomer, because on desktop computers power is not a concern. But nowadays power consumption is almost everything. Canonical already has its sights set on mobile devices, but hasn't even addressed power consumption for notebooks properly. 2. Poor communication of core functionality changes New additions are presented and lauded in glossy detail, but removed features are not as clearly presented. Nautilus (file manager) used to allow drag and drop copying/moving of files onto the left pane "bookmarks" folders. This was simply removed without warning, crippling quick drag and drop filing. Once again, this is "upstream", because of the Gnome/Nautilus teams' decisions, but it affects users in a noticeable way. The initial update to Unity (11.04) removed all gnome applets, and made the time tracking software I used to use inaccessible. The upgrade to 11.10 made me lose my skype app/status indicator. I don't care if my dock is on the left or bottom, or my open-close buttons are on the left or the right. Most of Unity's "coolness" is Compiz anyway - zoom, desktop switching, etc., so all that was available before Unity. For launching applications, gnome-do is still much faster, light-weight, and flexible (e.g. allowing creating/opening individual tomboy notes). By communicating feature additions and subtractions better, people won't be so negatively surprised. Set proper expectations. 3. Key consumer software weaknesses No good media creation suite. I was trying to make a photo slide show with a soundtrack a while ago, and I went through two days of installing/testing, setting up ppa's, compiling sources, etc. to get the latest versions, and nothing really works well. I mostly code, write, and use the web, so it's not mission-critical for me, but for a "consumer desktop OS", the absence of an official and well-functioning suite of applications akin to Apple's music and movie makers is a weakness. Other apps like Evernote and a more up-to-date Skype would be nice as well. 4. What hardware does it run on flawlessly? When you buy a computer with Windows or OS X, you know that everything will work. With Ubuntu/Linux, you don't. It's a huge stress factor before buying a new computer. Ubuntu has "certified hardware", but it's buried on some wiki page or other back page. This information should be front and center on the home page, so that I can buy something with confidence that it just works. 5. Conclusion Ubuntu (whether Unity or Gnome) is far more usable than Windows (messy config menus, no multiple desktops, no full-screen desktop zoom, inconsistent shortcuts, etc.), and at least as good as OS X (which for example doesn't allow you to change the system's font size globally, and is less keyboard navigation friendly). I'm considering abandoning Ubuntu again, because it can't compete on power consumption. I am sympathetic to Canonical being annoyed by the bitchy entitlement complaints over superficial UI features (e.g., open/close buttons left or right). It's bike-shedding to the max. That said, I think better up-front communication of changes can help set expectations. It forces the designers to reason why they are removing/changing/adding something. This doesn't have to lead to drawn out discussions, but some design decisions seem to be "shot from the hip" without realizing that they may affect/ruin thousands of people's work flow. Lastly, there are huge issues like power consumption and predictable hardware compatibility that currently heavily weigh against Ubuntu/Linux.

derleth 15y ago

Am I the only one who loves Ubuntu and does not use Unity at all? Basically, what I want out of a distro is a convenient platform to build the system I want. That's Window Maker with a lot of xterms, an Emacs session, a Firefox session, and possibly other applications as I need them. Any distro can give me that much. The reason I pick one over the other is ease of administration. Ubuntu gives me this in the package management systems, the large repositories, hardware support, and, if all else fails, large, well-trafficked forums where questions actually get answered. (I'm leery of less-used distros because I know, I just know, that I'd stumble on some odd corner-case problem that nobody who's used that distro has seen and be up too late diagnosing and fixing it myself.) So all these posts that imply Unity is the only way to use Ubuntu sound, to me, like people implying New York City is the only place to live in America. It's big and it's in all the movies, but there's a whole continent out there just beyond.

gnaffle 15y ago
I'm an old Debian and Ubuntu user. I moved to Ubuntu for my desktop since I could install it and it would just work, with a sane enough GUI. With each new release the previous years, they've made design decisions that I don't like. While it's nice that they try to improve the desktop, it seems like they forget that in the real world, Linux adoption happens with power users recommending (and supporting) new users with their Linux installation. Maybe Ubuntu can change that, but we're not there yet. And if Ubuntu doesn't cater to the power users _as well_, one day they'll wake up to another Linux distribution gaining popularity. I've switched over to XFCE (Xubuntu) for now, but it seems like I might be better off going back to Debian. After all, I can join the Debian community and actually have a say if I disagree with its direction.

ianb 15y ago

There's some justification in deferring to user interface designers with respect to the vision for the interface. An authoritarian system can work, though you should be sensitive to how you present that authority. "wontfix" is socially dangerous to use. But authority only works if you use that authority to do the right thing. Unity isn't doing that. I am in part frustrated that Unity got _worse_ with the latest Ubuntu release, and I'm frustrated that it has lots of bugs, and the interface is neither traditional nor discoverable. But even worse than these problems is the problem that Unity isn't pursuing a worthy goal. It's a rethinking of how you manage applications and files on the Linux desktop, but the Linux desktop has never been particularly functional or filled out and it falls behind further with time. The major trends we see is the desktop spiraling in on a single application, the browser, and files and media moving to the cloud. Unity is messing around with something that will never win the hearts and minds of new users, while it alienates what users there already are. I've never met someone who loves Unity! There's a couple people who accept it, and a much larger group that hates it. (Personally once I figured out to install gnome-shell I can like Ubuntu again, but Unity really did almost push me over the edge to get a Mac.) It's not to say that a rethinking of the Linux UI is an entirely useless endevour, but Ubuntu and Canonical should not be pursuing a fantasy of a rich ecosystem of GUI apps. There are maybe a dozen relevant applications on Linux now, and that number will only get smaller. But the beauty of this is that if you just pursue an experience that encompasses those dozen applications, and you dive deep into those applications (which you can because they are all open source!) then something really neat could come out of that. I think people could get behind an idea like that, even if those same people simultaneously felt annoyed with particular changes that came from that. But it's hard to look past those problems when it feels like present usability is being compromised for a misguided fantasy.

midwestwebdev 15y ago

I guess I'm confused about the whole issue. Personally I hate Unity, which is why I installed Gnome 2. Isn't that the point of Linux? Being able to customize it to your liking?

alinajaf 15y ago
Agreed, I think Ubuntu is still a great distro for 'just working' on most machines I've installed it on. I dislike Unity too, so I install a couple of packages, grab my xmonad config file from github and get back to work.
jiggy2011 15y ago
I am happy with gnome 2 as well for the most part. Is it still under active development?
- fmoralesc 15y ago
  No. There's a fork, though, called Mate (https://github.com/Perberos/Mate-Desktop-Environment https://github.com/Perberos/Mate-Desktop-Environment).
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    From the github page: "MATE Desktop Environment, a non-intuitive and unattractive desktop for users, using traditional computing desktop metaphor." Excellent! Just what I want! I wonder how active this will be and whether it will see any improvements or just maintenance

gbog 15y ago

No one seem to see that the real problem here is not Ubuntu, Unity or Gnome X.y. The real issue at stake is putting the designers on top of the decision hierarchy. It have worked well with Apple, it was in its DNA, but it is not at all in Linux DNA (neither in Google's or Amazon's or Microsoft's). I do not mean to say design and UX and usability is not important, but still, it is a matter of priorities. If a designer decide to have transparent flapping buttons and if this make the code behind it extremely complex and if it makes impossible to customize and configure manually any parts of the system, then I would say it does not belong to Linux. Maybe it is a case with Ubuntu. Maybe Ubuntu is a Linux for designers. Then I am wrong, and will switch to another distro. For me Ubuntu was an easy to install Linux with few driver issues, and my first step after installing it is to remove the useless Visual Effects in preferences.

jiggy2011 15y ago
For something designed by 'designers' it is seriously ugly.

pnathan 15y ago

I appreciate the direction Canonical is taking Ubuntu. I neither condone nor condemn it; it is a valid direction to take software development. However, the direction does not seem to line up with typical open source hacker goals (it's very hard to adjust unity even in the smallest ways, and there seems to be some number of breaks from typical conventions, e.g., breaking xscreensaver), which is one of the key values of the Linux world. That, I believe, is the controversy here. I use Bodhi at home, and have been real happy with it.

sutro 15y ago

For those frustrated with Shuttleworth's attitude and with the massive step backwards in stability and usability that is Unity, try Linux Mint. I had to go through a lot of painful, time-wasting experiments to arrive at that advice.

bluedanieru 15y ago

That's why iOS has a springboard in only one place, same for Android. These are modern interfaces, based on serious design work. Our goal is to compete with those, so we're not that interested in matching functionality that was in Win95, especially if we think that functionality will get dropped in Windows 8 or 9 or 10. So they want Unity to be a GUI for tablets? How far up your ass does your head have to be, to think that a GUI designed for desktop use, and a GUI designed for tablet use, can be used interchangeably? Someone ask Mark, he'll know. Or someone who worked on Metro since they seem to have the same parts of their brain broken. If Microsoft does break into the tablet space, it will be from work on Windows Phone 7, it will not be from Metro. Apple recognized this when they used their phone GUI for tablets despite having a perfectly good desktop GUI around, and Canonical is all about copying Apple like a fucking funhouse mirror, how did they not pick up on this? If they want to target the tablet space, good for them. I think the ship has probably sailed, but more competition there isn't going to hurt. But don't fuck traditional desktop users, who currently account for 100% of your user base, in the process.

einhverfr 15y ago
Exactly right. I am going to state the obvious here. UI's should be designed around their input methods. If the input on a tablet and a desktop are different (mouse vs fingers) then use a different UI. Plain and simple. Gnome 2.3 was a very, very good UI aimed at desktops. 3.0 is another kinda sorta tablet UI that only kinda sorta works on desktops (I am playing around with Gnome 3.0, XFCE, and a few others). The fundamental problem is that what works well with one in one input environment breaks badly in another. This was Apple's great contribution with the iPhone and the iPad. Attempts to merge environments will get you with something that kinda sorta works everywhere and does not work anywhere well.
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  Totally Agree, there is a reason Microsoft are seperating Metro and the main Windows UI and that apple have seperate types of devices (Mac / iPhone + iPad). If you want Linux for tablets/phones just get android.
- 15y ago

djhworld 15y ago

dialogue

lwhi 15y ago

This is a philosophical battle. Apple has the ability to make decisions without resorting to committee politics. Shuttleworth is trying to gain some of this advantage for Ubuntu. It might seem dictatorial, but I think he's got a point .. if Ubuntu is going to innovate and create differentiation from other OSs it needs to change. An element of faith is needed to allow that change to occur.

Causification 15y ago

I am an irregular Linux user and am not deeply involved in the Ubuntu community, but over the past several months I have seen the general attitude of "random geeks" change dramatically with regards to Ubuntu. A year ago the standard response to a new user inquiring about Linux was "install Ubuntu, it's easy, there's lots of help available. Go get 'em tiger." Now, Ubuntu is usually spoken of with a kind of regretful contempt. I didn't much care for it myself, but Ubuntu used to be the public face of Linux, the thing 95% of the Windows/OSX users hit if they get interested in Linux. As far as I can tell, it's fallen out of the good graces of the power user community. It appears as if Ubuntu has decided to forsake the early adopters and power users in favor of the newbies and average Joes. That may be well and good on principle but I don't see it as a strategy capable of sustaining an OS ecosystem that doesn't come preinstalled on Dick and jane's new laptop.

slowpoke 15y ago
> A year ago the standard response to a new user inquiring about Linux was "install Ubuntu, it's easy, there's lots of help available. Go get 'em tiger." Now, Ubuntu is usually spoken of with a kind of regretful contempt. True. I used to suggest Ubuntu myself (actually, I was one of the people who started with Ubuntu, now I'm on Arch). I've switched to either suggesting to install one of the forks of Ubuntu (mostly Kubuntu or Xubuntu), Linux Mint or even Crunchbang.
- DanBC 15y ago
  Good grief please don't suggest crunchbang for new users!! Unless it's used as a transition for a clueful, but new to Linux, user who's going to learn a bit and then move to a different distribution. (Probably Arch or Tiny Core, if you're suggesting CrunchBang.)
  - slowpoke 15y ago
    >Unless it's used as a transition for a clueful, but new to Linux, user who's going to learn a bit and then move to a different distribution. Exactly to those I would point to #!. By the FSM, I would never suggest #! to a user that doesn't already have a degree of technical knowledge.

yason 15y ago

Mark already said it: if you don't like it, then don't use it. It's his money on the line, you go fork your own Unity. This is an instance of "you can't please everyone so don't even try." While it would definitely be nice to please everyone, even merely trying to do so will seriously derail you from your own vision and design. That direction can either be yours or nobody's. People also overestimate the effect of this kind of soloing. At worst, they will just create something nobody will use. And if the majority of users will cease to use Unity, there will be 3rd-party packages for Gnome3 or Gnome2 or whatever it is that people want. As a critical review, if Ubuntu ever get to that point it might indeed be a good idea for Ubuntu to accept defeat and return to the mainstream. However, it is no earlier than that when we will see if they truly are stupid. And if they are, then there's a fair chance of forking and there will not only be Kubuntu and Lubuntu and ${WHATEVER}buntu but also Gubuntu.

padobson 15y ago

This reminds me of a fight in a church about how high on the wall the cross should be hanging. Bitter arguments among side-stream groups (church-goers, linux-users) are a much bigger reason why these groups do not attract mainstream audiences then what it is they're fighting about. Unity, Gnome, and KDE are all headed towards a more Mac-like UI because Apple is the most lauded software design company in the world. Like church-goers, Linux users should be supporting and celebrating innovation in design that are meant to increase use in the software. If such innovation was more broadly celebrated for its own sake, then it is much more likely that one of the major players would be willing to risk new design decisions - to really experiment with the UI. Instead, the same changes are all adopted by the major players because trying something too different will get your ridiculed, and that leads to losing early adopters, and that leads to a diminishing user base. If you want to see Linux become more mainstream so that a generation of computer users can have a little more software freedom, then join the discussion by celebrating experimentation instead of condemning it.

kitsune_ 15y ago
The question is, has Apple "solved" UI? Some might argue that they have succeeded on mobile devices. But what about the Desktop? In my opinion, the desktop is still a ghetto. Be it Windows, Ubuntu or OS X. Open a couple of applications and documents and well, OS X crumbles from a UX point of view. Do I need to see all open Finders, applications and open docs when I should be getting stuff done? Multi-tasking leads to high complexity and the visual organization of all the information seems to be unresolved problem. Secondly, is it worth wile to bring the mobile experience to the desktop?
- padobson 15y ago
  I don't have answers to either of your questions, and neither does anybody else. The answers are not going to come from fights about what UI should be, but from as many OS developers as possible doing as many experiments as possible on the largest number of users possible. My point was that this isn't going to happen if the community continues all of this back biting.

ilaksh 15y ago

Most people hate Unity. They are sticking with it. Canonical needs to be profitable. OK, so which distribution is everyone switching over to in place of Ubuntu?

william42 15y ago
Don't bother leaving Ubuntu, just install XFCE, gnome-panel[1], or make a leap into the world of the tiling WM with the package awesome[2]. [1]I think this is the name of the Gnome 2 package. Personally, I couldn't stand Gnome 2 and even preferred Unity; I didn't jump into the world of the tiling WM until compiz started crashing my GPU. [2] at http://awesome.naquadah.org/ http://awesome.naquadah.org/ ; I don't like the name, but I love the WM.
fader 15y ago
"Most people hate Unity." Can you show me the data that you've gathered on this? I'd love to see the user survey. (Is it maybe possible that just because you don't like something, others still could?)
- ilaksh 15y ago
  I am one of the few people that I have run into using Unity.. I don't hate it.. its just that I haven't heard much of anything else about Unity except "god I hate Unity". Not scientific.

cmiles74 15y ago

The debate over where to place a particular widget or what bits of the user interface are customizable seems off-target to me. What struck me most was the fact that we had a polite community member doing his best to describe a problem that he was very concerned about. He felt that people in the community of Ubuntu users were feeling ignored and he suggested that an easy solution would be to provide more detail on why a particular issue in Launchpad is flagged as "wontfix". While the effectiveness of this solution is debatable, Canonical focused on how the community feels selfish and entitled. Ironically, instead of Canonical clearly explaining to this community member why they wouldn't be more descriptive on issues flagged as "wontfix", the discussion degraded into just the sort of name calling and posturing that this community member was attempting to alleviate.

fader 15y ago
" the discussion degraded into just the sort of name calling and posturing that this community member was attempting to alleviate" It might be enlightening to read the comments on the bug dispassionately and see where the name calling and posturing is coming from and where it is not.

cfontes 15y ago

Well, I hate Unity the UI looks like an old Nokia phone makes your Computer look like an bad designed android tablet. I am switching to Debian after 10 years of Ubuntu I was a big defender of Canonical and their SO and but now I lost it...