8 ms·

Ubuntu: you’re doing it wrong

44 points by fuzzix 15y ago

koenigdavidmj 15y ago
Columns do not work on the web.
- IvarTJ 15y ago
  I had fun making a horizontal web page once. It might have worked better if the columns were more segmented so that you didn’t have to scroll down and up and then down again. That way you could get more content for less scrolling and maintain comfortable line length.
  - halostatue 15y ago
    The Verge mostly does this right, I think. They'll move text between left and right columns, and have images and blank space on the opposite side. This, on the other hand, was a pain to read—so I skimmed it.
- ineedtosleep 15y ago
  Indeed. I was about to say this. It's hard to believe one who says "You're doing it wrong" when...they're also doing it wrong.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  They may work, but you have to keep all of your content above the fold and paginate the article. Comments can be implemented as sidenotes and can point to specific parts of the article. But it's a completely different language.
  - koenigdavidmj 15y ago
    What I meant is that nearly all internet articles are optimised so that I only need to scroll down. Scrolling up only is necessary if I need to reference something that I already read. Both your case and a single-column layout fulfill that need. The linked article does not.
- etcet 15y ago
  Longer-than-page multi-column layout without even a anchor link back to the top under the first column AND almost invisible link styling - why does this designer hate his readers so much? You can make multi-columns look good if you make sure to place all the content above the fold. I made an experimental Readability hack which did this and expanded the page horiztonally with a bunch of javascript intercepting navigation - hooking into stuff like mouse scrolls across platforms is a nightmare.
spindritf 15y ago
> While Canonical is happy to accept thousands of hours of free work in bug fixes and quality assurance of their code, they are not interested in letting the community have a meaningful say in its conception. Which solves the problem of design by committee and results in a great desktop experience. I love how Unity is preserving space on my 13.3" screen and how Ubuntu team made all the choices for me and then made it all work together -- I don't have to customize a thing (I use all the default applications and don't even change the background). I remember the times when it took a day or more to install an operating system, all the necessary applications, and move your data and settings. With Ubuntu nowadays it takes less than an hour (including some hacks around the still rough edges, like reducing power usage) to have a completely up and running Linux installation. Hopefully, Mark Shuttleworth will stay on that course, because it's working great. Disclaimer: I'm not a core member of any team, I filed two bugs overs years of using Ubuntu. Everything above and below is written from my very subjective perspective and it's entirely possible that I'm just not a very sophisticated user -- give me a browser, a terminal, hide all that other stuff and I'll be happy. Though Unity did convince me to start using Gwibber, Empathy and some other apps from their integrated tray. > Gnome is a community-driven project through-and-though, yet it has recently come under fire for the way it has developed the latest incarnation of their desktop. Yes, because their community-driven approach to design led them down the path of reinventing the wheel: > Instead of picking existing components and giving them the final polish like Ubuntu did before, the GNOME project started developing things from scratch without any apparent reason to do so. And even worse: incompatible to existing solutions. It started with the rejection of the appindicator specification implemented by Ubuntu and KDE. At that point it was not clear to me whether the specification was broken or whether the responsible people at GNOME were just ignorant. > Then came systemd. And it started to be apparent that unfortunately it was the latter. http://www.rojtberg.net/457/gnome-project-suffering-the-nih-disease/ http://www.rojtberg.net/457/gnome-project-suffering-the-nih-... And if that's what developers want to do, great, but it probably will not result in a great desktop environment any time soon.
notatoad 15y ago
more accurate title: "ubuntu: i don't like what you're doing anymore." ubuntu isn't doing anything wrong. they're not doing things the old way, nor are they pretending to. it's top down control with unilateral decisions, but that's what's necessary to move forward. for a product to come out well, decisions have to be made. if you listen to everybody, you get a product that sacrifices quality in favour of not pissing anybody off, like linux mint with it's three distinct pre-installed media players.
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  I think Canonical's new direction is a breath of fresh air in the world of Linux. We already have so many Linux distros, and what has that gotten Linux? 1 % of the consumer market? Can we just have one Linux distro that is consumer-oriented, and tries to shake things up a bit?
  - hyperbovine 15y ago
    Yes, it's called "OS X". Okay it's BSD, but that is exactly what Apple came along and did ten years ago. The desktop Linux movement has a much bigger mountain to climb (insurmountable imo) than it did when we were having this exact same discussion in the late 90s.
- wmf 15y ago
  He already rebutted this in the article with the example of GNOME 3. But I agree with nextparadigms; if "Linux is about choice", why not have one distro that does things differently? The only real problem with Ubuntu IMO was the fact that they built a community of volunteers and then disregarded their input, bait-and-switch style.
  - notatoad 15y ago
    i'm not sure how contrasting ubuntu with gnome3 is really a rebuttal, when gnome3 gets almost all the same criticisms that ubuntu does. the bloggers start frothing at the mouth every time gnome3 introduces a change the same way that they do when ubuntu introduces a change. gnome3 is progressing as rapidly as they are precisely because project leaders are exercising exactly the same sort of unilateral decision making process that canonical is.
hsmyers 15y ago
As we get closer to the next big version (wherein most of the apocalyptic changes take place) I'll be reading HN for useful lists of alternatives. Anyone with useful suggestions can chip in now of course :)
- ineedtosleep 15y ago
  Linux Mint 11 and 12 are great alternatives. The Mint team has also made Cinnamon[1] which is also a great alternative to the default GNOME3 interface. If you don't want to reinstall Linux, Cinnamon is available for lots of the major distros, or you can compile it yourself. [1] http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1910 http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1910
- mooism2 15y ago
  I'll be paying attention to what disaffected Ubuntu users switch to... but I'll try the new Ubuntu out before I (possibly) switch away.
- khill 15y ago
  If you don't like the choices made by Canonical for Ubuntu, just use Debian.
- pnathan 15y ago
  I had a laptop with bodhi on it for a while, and I really enjoyed the non-Win95, non-OSX model of doing things. It took some getting used to though.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- hackoder 15y ago
  Debian is fantastic. I tend to stay on testing (wheezy atm) because it is fairly modern yet stable. Stability is the biggest problem with Ubuntu I believe- people will generally adapt to the UI changes that canonical is making, but breaking stability is a complete no-no. Even today, on Ubuntu 11.10, Unity shows wierd bugs time and time again. Apps like VirtualBox and KeePassx will show multiple times (or just disappear) in the dock. And sometimes the whole unity interface will close and restart itself. Compare this to the old gnome2, or xfce, openbox etc; You can go for months without the UI doing anything unexpected.
wicket232 15y ago
If you don't like the direction that the current default Ubuntu desktop is going, I suppose you could always try one of the variants, such as [Lubuntu](http://lubuntu.net/ http://lubuntu.net/). That's where I'll probably head, since I'm running an older Ubuntu release and I'm pretty sure I'd rather not switch to Unity upon upgrading. I can't blame Ubuntu for wanting to make their default desktop experience the way they want. It's their project.
mellis 15y ago
I'm happy to see a big player in the open-source world take a design-focused approach to software development. The author may not like Apple's design, but their top-down approach has led to products that are loved by many. It would be great to see this approach succeed in open-source, so that we end up with well-designed products that preserve the freedoms of open-source.
asadotzler 15y ago
"The 'usability studies' that get quoted whenever I have talked to people from Canonical about this have participation numbers that are laughably low. Having a focus group with two or three dozen hand-picked candidates to 'evaluate' complex user experience changes like these does not seem convincing to me. It seems ludicrous." Dismissing out of hand as "ludicrous" that user research on small groups can and very often does produce useful results is enough to discredit the rest of this guy's rant. He wants to be a part of the design process but doesn't understand even the most basic practices of user research. I am not a programmer and I do not demand representation in coding decisions and I do not criticize code choices I can't possibly understand. I wish that people who are not UX and UR practitioners would afford designers some of that same respect.
- AUmrysh 15y ago
  The difference is that users can understand when the interface is poorly designed because they have to interact with it constantly. Sure, there are parts of UX that most users never think about, but when something has been overlooked, like when you can't move the launcher sidebar to the bottom, or the settings are confusing to get to, there's a usability problem. I think the real thing about Ubuntu, however, is that it's Linux. That means if you don't like Unity, you can install GDM, KDE, Fluxbox, Awesome or any number of other window managers. You aren't stuck with the (subjectively) poor design decisions Canonical made, and you certainly have more choice than you do in OS X or Windows.
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
    It makes very little sense to pick a distro if you dislike their default interface. There are too many choices, or you can pick a distro like Arch that is WM agnostic.
    - SkyMarshal 15y ago
      It does if you value other aspects of it: Debian package management, Ubuntu PPA's, Wayland (when that arrives), popular apps like Spotify target Ubuntu and Fedora and don't 'just work' on other distro's, etc. Default interface is just one aspect of the decision, and some of the others may outweigh it even for those who hate the interface direction.
ChrisLTD 15y ago
I'm glad Canonical is trying to bridge the gap between Linux and an Apple-like design aesthetic. The Linux desktop experience has been extremely unfriendly to less than expert level users, and it'd be great if that changed. But if history is any indication, that means adopting a more top-down decision making process. Making tough choices, and streamlining design isn't something that comes out of forum discussions. Of course, not liking the direction of Ubuntu is your prerogative. However, the great thing about Open Source is that you and like-minded buddies can move to a different distribution or remix Ubuntu to your preferences. In that case, everyone gets what they want.
nkassis 15y ago
I don't mind the some of the directions they have taken with Unity (I've switched to Gnome 3 at this time, I feel more comfortable it, even with no shutdown/restart option in menu ;p) but the shear lack of ability to customize is really annoying. I understand them choosing defaults but why take away all ability to customize? Also, some changes still make no sense to me, the buttons on the left still annoy me. The dock sometimes interferes with those buttons when the windows aren't maximized. I guess I'm no longer their target audience. I feel sad about that as their really isn't many alternative I find appealing. I could use Debian directly but I still find that Ubuntu was doing a great job at cleaning up tedious issues with Linux. Their new installer that asks questions while writing files to disk is such an obvious thing it should have been done years ago. There is plenty of other areas that they've truly improved in the Linux experience. The last UI stuff is just not there yet. I'll continue to use it with Gnome 3 for now.
- jamesgeck0 15y ago
  Offtopic, but my Gnome 3 status menu has a separate shutdown/restart menu option. :-) https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/5/alternative-status-menu/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/5/alternative-status-...
- chmike 15y ago
  I have switched to mint Ubuntu 12. It solved the frustration I had with unity and not finding things. I'm not their targeted audiance, I guess.
voidr 15y ago
Canonical wants to create somethingm the OS Mark dreamed of, just like the GNOME and KDE people, what's wrong with that? “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” ― Henry Ford Sometimes you need to decide whats best for the user. Most users do not want choices, most users want something consistent that works and that is what Canonical is trying to deliver.
- tikhonj 15y ago
  I've always been confused by the "choices" argument: it seems to be a false dichotomy. Why not have good defaults but then let determined users change whatever they want? If you don't care, you just use the system as is; if you are consistently annoyed by something, you can dive in and fix it.
  - voidr 15y ago
    That is what Canonical is pushing for, you get Unity and GTK, if you don't like it, you are probably one apt-get install away from changing it. To accomodate Ubuntu to my needs I hack the hell out of it, it takes me hours to get it right, to make OS X work the way I like it's just an hour or less, but I have more power over Ubuntu than OS X. The problem however with choice is maintainability and duplication. Do we really need so many window managers? Why not have only one that actually works? While it's cool to have multiply desktop environments for almost every distro, it has it's toll, somebody has to maintain and test those. What would we have if we had combined the effort that was put into Libre Office, Abiword, KOffice, Open Office and the rest? Don't get me wrong I love having control over every bit of the OS and I love being able to choose, but I feel we could sacrifice some of it it for the greater good.
pan69 15y ago
My problem isn't so much with the innovation. My problem is with the lack of choice both Unity and GNOME 3 give to their users. What Ubuntu and GNOME 3 are doing is not giving their users an option. I run Ubuntu on a work station, which is not a tiny screen gadget. I need to do work on this thing and I'd like to get work done. Both Unity and GNOME 3 are departing from life time engrained metaphors and replacing them with supposedly better ways (whereas beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess). No start menu, or menus at all. No icons on your desktop (wtf do I have a desktop for then?), Massive icons sticking out everywhere taking over valuable screen real-estate and be in your face at all time, etc. If those new ways of doing things would be optional, at least for now, and either be able to be turned on or off rather than forced down your throat than in my opinion the resistance would have a lot less. Also, if those new ways of doing things would really be better it's something the end users can decide, not 20 people in a focus group. On top of all this, timing couldn't be worse. Both the introduction of Unity and the discontinuation of GNOME 2... I currently run Ubuntu 11.04 simply because it's the latest Ubuntu version GNOME 2. I have no intentions to upgrade and I'm looking for an alternative. OS X?
- lhnn 15y ago
  Debian (Stable and Testing) are running GNOME 2. My issues with Unity, as of Unity 5 (in Ubuntu 12.04): 1) Alt-tab should switch between windows within a workspace. This is HUGE. What is the point of workspaces if your navigation buttons/application launchers ignore the boundries? 2) Clicking on an application launcher should open a new instance of the program, not retrieve a window already open. 3) IF item 2 is to remain true, then the possible windows to re-focus should ONLY be the windows in the current workspace. See item 1. 4) Unity's taskbar should be movable to the bottom of the screen. --- Credit where it's due: Unity 5 allows resizing of the Unity bar, and you can now pin it to the desktop, so it's not constantly popping over the left side of the window when you try to close windows, access menus, etc. One must still install gnome-tweak-tools to edit the font configuration and other things, which is inexcuseable.
  - yxhuvud 15y ago
    2: Use the middle button. It will open a new instance if it makes sense. That is, you will get a new emacs, but not a new thunderbird.
njharman 15y ago
> that hides the base system as completely as possible That is the "doing it wrong" part. But, I can see/admit my "doing it wrong" is someone's grandma's "doing it right". Although, I still think (wished) grandma had to learn how a car/computer/foo worked "grossly" before she was allowed to operate it.
nfm 15y ago
"Canonical is repeating a lot of Apple’s mistakes, however, as they are using the same closed feedback loop development system that Apple is using" Care to elaborate? This process seems to be going well for Apple!
- tikhonj 15y ago
  Yes, Apple is successful. But so was Microsoft, and you wouldn't want to emulate Windows either! The point is that while Apple products are selling, the author completely reasonably doesn't like their software and does not want Ubuntu to have the same issues.
ohyes 15y ago
open source != community driven This person has some other version of open source in mind in which it means something other than 'I can download the source code with the program.' I don't take community suggestions for features on any of the projects that I have on github; A.) because no one uses any of my stuff. B.) because I don't care if they use it, I'm doing it for myself. If the makers of Ubuntu have a vision for their idea of a perfect desktop experience, they should go ahead and do it. Sometimes it does take a dictatorial visionary to get important stuff done. We already have gnome 3, yes, and it is fine, but there is plenty of room for others. Particularly successful others like Ubuntu/Canonical.
ceol 15y ago
Everyone has hit on the same issues I found with the article, but these parts bugged me. First: >Apple’s software is hard to customize and can be extremely clunky and annoying to use — that is, if you use your own brain instead of blindly buying the hype. Am I reading too much into it, or is that very insulting to Mac users? I'm not sure where I'm buying into the hype by preferring the look and feel of OS X 10.7 to Windows 7. The author seems to subscribe to the "if you like something I don't like, you must be inferior" school of thought. Second: >A very good example of this is iTunes and the way the iPhone forces you, even today, to plug in and sync everything through one horridly clumsy application. iTunes is in no way a great application, but the author has made it apparent he comments on things with which he has no experience: iOS devices haven't required users to sync through iTunes since iOS 5. You do it all on the device a la Android. With those issues and the various points other commenters raise, I don't see how this article is anything more than a rant by a person who sees simplicity and usability as an encroaching evil.

44 points by fuzzix 15y ago

koenigdavidmj 15y ago

Columns do not work on the web.

IvarTJ 15y ago
I had fun making a horizontal web page once. It might have worked better if the columns were more segmented so that you didn’t have to scroll down and up and then down again. That way you could get more content for less scrolling and maintain comfortable line length.
- halostatue 15y ago
  The Verge mostly does this right, I think. They'll move text between left and right columns, and have images and blank space on the opposite side. This, on the other hand, was a pain to read—so I skimmed it.
ineedtosleep 15y ago
Indeed. I was about to say this. It's hard to believe one who says "You're doing it wrong" when...they're also doing it wrong.
rbanffy 15y ago
They may work, but you have to keep all of your content above the fold and paginate the article. Comments can be implemented as sidenotes and can point to specific parts of the article. But it's a completely different language.
- koenigdavidmj 15y ago
  What I meant is that nearly all internet articles are optimised so that I only need to scroll down. Scrolling up only is necessary if I need to reference something that I already read. Both your case and a single-column layout fulfill that need. The linked article does not.
etcet 15y ago
Longer-than-page multi-column layout without even a anchor link back to the top under the first column AND almost invisible link styling - why does this designer hate his readers so much? You can make multi-columns look good if you make sure to place all the content above the fold. I made an experimental Readability hack which did this and expanded the page horiztonally with a bunch of javascript intercepting navigation - hooking into stuff like mouse scrolls across platforms is a nightmare.

spindritf 15y ago

> While Canonical is happy to accept thousands of hours of free work in bug fixes and quality assurance of their code, they are not interested in letting the community have a meaningful say in its conception. Which solves the problem of design by committee and results in a great desktop experience. I love how Unity is preserving space on my 13.3" screen and how Ubuntu team made all the choices for me and then made it all work together -- I don't have to customize a thing (I use all the default applications and don't even change the background). I remember the times when it took a day or more to install an operating system, all the necessary applications, and move your data and settings. With Ubuntu nowadays it takes less than an hour (including some hacks around the still rough edges, like reducing power usage) to have a completely up and running Linux installation. Hopefully, Mark Shuttleworth will stay on that course, because it's working great. Disclaimer: I'm not a core member of any team, I filed two bugs overs years of using Ubuntu. Everything above and below is written from my very subjective perspective and it's entirely possible that I'm just not a very sophisticated user -- give me a browser, a terminal, hide all that other stuff and I'll be happy. Though Unity did convince me to start using Gwibber, Empathy and some other apps from their integrated tray. > Gnome is a community-driven project through-and-though, yet it has recently come under fire for the way it has developed the latest incarnation of their desktop. Yes, because their community-driven approach to design led them down the path of reinventing the wheel: > Instead of picking existing components and giving them the final polish like Ubuntu did before, the GNOME project started developing things from scratch without any apparent reason to do so. And even worse: incompatible to existing solutions. It started with the rejection of the appindicator specification implemented by Ubuntu and KDE. At that point it was not clear to me whether the specification was broken or whether the responsible people at GNOME were just ignorant. > Then came systemd. And it started to be apparent that unfortunately it was the latter. http://www.rojtberg.net/457/gnome-project-suffering-the-nih-disease/ http://www.rojtberg.net/457/gnome-project-suffering-the-nih-... And if that's what developers want to do, great, but it probably will not result in a great desktop environment any time soon.

notatoad 15y ago

more accurate title: "ubuntu: i don't like what you're doing anymore." ubuntu isn't doing anything wrong. they're not doing things the old way, nor are they pretending to. it's top down control with unilateral decisions, but that's what's necessary to move forward. for a product to come out well, decisions have to be made. if you listen to everybody, you get a product that sacrifices quality in favour of not pissing anybody off, like linux mint with it's three distinct pre-installed media players.

nextparadigms 15y ago
I think Canonical's new direction is a breath of fresh air in the world of Linux. We already have so many Linux distros, and what has that gotten Linux? 1 % of the consumer market? Can we just have one Linux distro that is consumer-oriented, and tries to shake things up a bit?
- hyperbovine 15y ago
  Yes, it's called "OS X". Okay it's BSD, but that is exactly what Apple came along and did ten years ago. The desktop Linux movement has a much bigger mountain to climb (insurmountable imo) than it did when we were having this exact same discussion in the late 90s.
wmf 15y ago
He already rebutted this in the article with the example of GNOME 3. But I agree with nextparadigms; if "Linux is about choice", why not have one distro that does things differently? The only real problem with Ubuntu IMO was the fact that they built a community of volunteers and then disregarded their input, bait-and-switch style.
- notatoad 15y ago
  i'm not sure how contrasting ubuntu with gnome3 is really a rebuttal, when gnome3 gets almost all the same criticisms that ubuntu does. the bloggers start frothing at the mouth every time gnome3 introduces a change the same way that they do when ubuntu introduces a change. gnome3 is progressing as rapidly as they are precisely because project leaders are exercising exactly the same sort of unilateral decision making process that canonical is.

hsmyers 15y ago

As we get closer to the next big version (wherein most of the apocalyptic changes take place) I'll be reading HN for useful lists of alternatives. Anyone with useful suggestions can chip in now of course :)

ineedtosleep 15y ago
Linux Mint 11 and 12 are great alternatives. The Mint team has also made Cinnamon[1] which is also a great alternative to the default GNOME3 interface. If you don't want to reinstall Linux, Cinnamon is available for lots of the major distros, or you can compile it yourself. [1] http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1910 http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1910
mooism2 15y ago
I'll be paying attention to what disaffected Ubuntu users switch to... but I'll try the new Ubuntu out before I (possibly) switch away.
khill 15y ago
If you don't like the choices made by Canonical for Ubuntu, just use Debian.
pnathan 15y ago
I had a laptop with bodhi on it for a while, and I really enjoyed the non-Win95, non-OSX model of doing things. It took some getting used to though.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
hackoder 15y ago
Debian is fantastic. I tend to stay on testing (wheezy atm) because it is fairly modern yet stable. Stability is the biggest problem with Ubuntu I believe- people will generally adapt to the UI changes that canonical is making, but breaking stability is a complete no-no. Even today, on Ubuntu 11.10, Unity shows wierd bugs time and time again. Apps like VirtualBox and KeePassx will show multiple times (or just disappear) in the dock. And sometimes the whole unity interface will close and restart itself. Compare this to the old gnome2, or xfce, openbox etc; You can go for months without the UI doing anything unexpected.

wicket232 15y ago

If you don't like the direction that the current default Ubuntu desktop is going, I suppose you could always try one of the variants, such as [Lubuntu](http://lubuntu.net/ http://lubuntu.net/). That's where I'll probably head, since I'm running an older Ubuntu release and I'm pretty sure I'd rather not switch to Unity upon upgrading. I can't blame Ubuntu for wanting to make their default desktop experience the way they want. It's their project.

mellis 15y ago

I'm happy to see a big player in the open-source world take a design-focused approach to software development. The author may not like Apple's design, but their top-down approach has led to products that are loved by many. It would be great to see this approach succeed in open-source, so that we end up with well-designed products that preserve the freedoms of open-source.

asadotzler 15y ago

"The 'usability studies' that get quoted whenever I have talked to people from Canonical about this have participation numbers that are laughably low. Having a focus group with two or three dozen hand-picked candidates to 'evaluate' complex user experience changes like these does not seem convincing to me. It seems ludicrous." Dismissing out of hand as "ludicrous" that user research on small groups can and very often does produce useful results is enough to discredit the rest of this guy's rant. He wants to be a part of the design process but doesn't understand even the most basic practices of user research. I am not a programmer and I do not demand representation in coding decisions and I do not criticize code choices I can't possibly understand. I wish that people who are not UX and UR practitioners would afford designers some of that same respect.

AUmrysh 15y ago
The difference is that users can understand when the interface is poorly designed because they have to interact with it constantly. Sure, there are parts of UX that most users never think about, but when something has been overlooked, like when you can't move the launcher sidebar to the bottom, or the settings are confusing to get to, there's a usability problem. I think the real thing about Ubuntu, however, is that it's Linux. That means if you don't like Unity, you can install GDM, KDE, Fluxbox, Awesome or any number of other window managers. You aren't stuck with the (subjectively) poor design decisions Canonical made, and you certainly have more choice than you do in OS X or Windows.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  It makes very little sense to pick a distro if you dislike their default interface. There are too many choices, or you can pick a distro like Arch that is WM agnostic.
  - SkyMarshal 15y ago
    It does if you value other aspects of it: Debian package management, Ubuntu PPA's, Wayland (when that arrives), popular apps like Spotify target Ubuntu and Fedora and don't 'just work' on other distro's, etc. Default interface is just one aspect of the decision, and some of the others may outweigh it even for those who hate the interface direction.

ChrisLTD 15y ago

I'm glad Canonical is trying to bridge the gap between Linux and an Apple-like design aesthetic. The Linux desktop experience has been extremely unfriendly to less than expert level users, and it'd be great if that changed. But if history is any indication, that means adopting a more top-down decision making process. Making tough choices, and streamlining design isn't something that comes out of forum discussions. Of course, not liking the direction of Ubuntu is your prerogative. However, the great thing about Open Source is that you and like-minded buddies can move to a different distribution or remix Ubuntu to your preferences. In that case, everyone gets what they want.

nkassis 15y ago

I don't mind the some of the directions they have taken with Unity (I've switched to Gnome 3 at this time, I feel more comfortable it, even with no shutdown/restart option in menu ;p) but the shear lack of ability to customize is really annoying. I understand them choosing defaults but why take away all ability to customize? Also, some changes still make no sense to me, the buttons on the left still annoy me. The dock sometimes interferes with those buttons when the windows aren't maximized. I guess I'm no longer their target audience. I feel sad about that as their really isn't many alternative I find appealing. I could use Debian directly but I still find that Ubuntu was doing a great job at cleaning up tedious issues with Linux. Their new installer that asks questions while writing files to disk is such an obvious thing it should have been done years ago. There is plenty of other areas that they've truly improved in the Linux experience. The last UI stuff is just not there yet. I'll continue to use it with Gnome 3 for now.

jamesgeck0 15y ago
Offtopic, but my Gnome 3 status menu has a separate shutdown/restart menu option. :-) https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/5/alternative-status-menu/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/5/alternative-status-...
chmike 15y ago
I have switched to mint Ubuntu 12. It solved the frustration I had with unity and not finding things. I'm not their targeted audiance, I guess.

voidr 15y ago

Canonical wants to create somethingm the OS Mark dreamed of, just like the GNOME and KDE people, what's wrong with that? “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” ― Henry Ford Sometimes you need to decide whats best for the user. Most users do not want choices, most users want something consistent that works and that is what Canonical is trying to deliver.

tikhonj 15y ago
I've always been confused by the "choices" argument: it seems to be a false dichotomy. Why not have good defaults but then let determined users change whatever they want? If you don't care, you just use the system as is; if you are consistently annoyed by something, you can dive in and fix it.
- voidr 15y ago
  That is what Canonical is pushing for, you get Unity and GTK, if you don't like it, you are probably one apt-get install away from changing it. To accomodate Ubuntu to my needs I hack the hell out of it, it takes me hours to get it right, to make OS X work the way I like it's just an hour or less, but I have more power over Ubuntu than OS X. The problem however with choice is maintainability and duplication. Do we really need so many window managers? Why not have only one that actually works? While it's cool to have multiply desktop environments for almost every distro, it has it's toll, somebody has to maintain and test those. What would we have if we had combined the effort that was put into Libre Office, Abiword, KOffice, Open Office and the rest? Don't get me wrong I love having control over every bit of the OS and I love being able to choose, but I feel we could sacrifice some of it it for the greater good.

pan69 15y ago

My problem isn't so much with the innovation. My problem is with the lack of choice both Unity and GNOME 3 give to their users. What Ubuntu and GNOME 3 are doing is not giving their users an option. I run Ubuntu on a work station, which is not a tiny screen gadget. I need to do work on this thing and I'd like to get work done. Both Unity and GNOME 3 are departing from life time engrained metaphors and replacing them with supposedly better ways (whereas beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess). No start menu, or menus at all. No icons on your desktop (wtf do I have a desktop for then?), Massive icons sticking out everywhere taking over valuable screen real-estate and be in your face at all time, etc. If those new ways of doing things would be optional, at least for now, and either be able to be turned on or off rather than forced down your throat than in my opinion the resistance would have a lot less. Also, if those new ways of doing things would really be better it's something the end users can decide, not 20 people in a focus group. On top of all this, timing couldn't be worse. Both the introduction of Unity and the discontinuation of GNOME 2... I currently run Ubuntu 11.04 simply because it's the latest Ubuntu version GNOME 2. I have no intentions to upgrade and I'm looking for an alternative. OS X?

lhnn 15y ago
Debian (Stable and Testing) are running GNOME 2. My issues with Unity, as of Unity 5 (in Ubuntu 12.04): 1) Alt-tab should switch between windows within a workspace. This is HUGE. What is the point of workspaces if your navigation buttons/application launchers ignore the boundries? 2) Clicking on an application launcher should open a new instance of the program, not retrieve a window already open. 3) IF item 2 is to remain true, then the possible windows to re-focus should ONLY be the windows in the current workspace. See item 1. 4) Unity's taskbar should be movable to the bottom of the screen. --- Credit where it's due: Unity 5 allows resizing of the Unity bar, and you can now pin it to the desktop, so it's not constantly popping over the left side of the window when you try to close windows, access menus, etc. One must still install gnome-tweak-tools to edit the font configuration and other things, which is inexcuseable.
- yxhuvud 15y ago
  2: Use the middle button. It will open a new instance if it makes sense. That is, you will get a new emacs, but not a new thunderbird.

njharman 15y ago

> that hides the base system as completely as possible That is the "doing it wrong" part. But, I can see/admit my "doing it wrong" is someone's grandma's "doing it right". Although, I still think (wished) grandma had to learn how a car/computer/foo worked "grossly" before she was allowed to operate it.

nfm 15y ago

"Canonical is repeating a lot of Apple’s mistakes, however, as they are using the same closed feedback loop development system that Apple is using" Care to elaborate? This process seems to be going well for Apple!

tikhonj 15y ago
Yes, Apple is successful. But so was Microsoft, and you wouldn't want to emulate Windows either! The point is that while Apple products are selling, the author completely reasonably doesn't like their software and does not want Ubuntu to have the same issues.

ohyes 15y ago

open source != community driven This person has some other version of open source in mind in which it means something other than 'I can download the source code with the program.' I don't take community suggestions for features on any of the projects that I have on github; A.) because no one uses any of my stuff. B.) because I don't care if they use it, I'm doing it for myself. If the makers of Ubuntu have a vision for their idea of a perfect desktop experience, they should go ahead and do it. Sometimes it does take a dictatorial visionary to get important stuff done. We already have gnome 3, yes, and it is fine, but there is plenty of room for others. Particularly successful others like Ubuntu/Canonical.

ceol 15y ago

Everyone has hit on the same issues I found with the article, but these parts bugged me. First: >Apple’s software is hard to customize and can be extremely clunky and annoying to use — that is, if you use your own brain instead of blindly buying the hype. Am I reading too much into it, or is that very insulting to Mac users? I'm not sure where I'm buying into the hype by preferring the look and feel of OS X 10.7 to Windows 7. The author seems to subscribe to the "if you like something I don't like, you must be inferior" school of thought. Second: >A very good example of this is iTunes and the way the iPhone forces you, even today, to plug in and sync everything through one horridly clumsy application. iTunes is in no way a great application, but the author has made it apparent he comments on things with which he has no experience: iOS devices haven't required users to sync through iTunes since iOS 5. You do it all on the device a la Android. With those issues and the various points other commenters raise, I don't see how this article is anything more than a rant by a person who sees simplicity and usability as an encroaching evil.