5 ms·

Very slightly-off topic: So, I have this theory. The theory is that Microsoft and/or Apple somehow infiltrated the Ubuntu organization and got their men in as

by selmnoo 13y ago

Very slightly-off topic: So, I have this theory. The theory is that Microsoft and/or Apple somehow infiltrated the Ubuntu organization and got their men in as developers and made big changes to sabotage and undermine the Ubuntu project. And they've done great. Let me tell you about the Unity Launcher: http://www.bomski.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/screenshot.jpg http://www.bomski.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/screenshot.... The awesome thing about it is the microscale indicator that is supposed to tell you what window is open. Yeah, that small little triangle on right/left side of icons. It gets even better when you have many windows open (the icon menu folds) or have more than one window open of a certain application (the triangle becomes an elongated thin icon which is now twice as difficult to make out in full-view): http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-36ZlfS5qyI0/TZREYHuo56I/AAAAAAAAArw/oGdahPyxiNQ/s1600/Screenshot-11.png http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-36ZlfS5qyI0/TZREYHuo56I/AAAAAAAAAr.... Basically, the most perfect applications panel design to get my mom to stop using Ubuntu (it worked, too!) When on a high resolution screen, I can't quite make them out either (so it got me to stop using Ubuntu as well)! Also, changing windows (e.g., if you have two or three document processing files open), how do you quickly and efficiently switch to the right one? I don't know! Give Ubuntu a chance yourself to see more gems like this. Man, I really have to give kudos to whoever is behind this, to have convinced their 'dedicated UI team' that this shit is anything less than a joke. Bravo Apple/Microsoft/whoever you are, I'm impressed!

d0 13y ago
It's probably like our dedicated UI team: cheap. Our head UI designer sent SPAM for a living before working for us.
- vanderZwan 13y ago
  Also, it's open source and design related. I imagine that means that as the project grows, the bike shedding scales O(n^2).
streptomycin 13y ago
My conspiracy theory is that it was all a practical joke by Shuttleworth, bringing us so close to the ideal of a usable Linux desktop that everyone could get behind, and then randomly moving shit around and creating division within the Linux community. We went from Ubuntu clearly being the market leader and providing a consistent UI, to a clusterfuck of different distributions and DEs.
- balladeer 13y ago
  Yes. When I left Ubuntu 2 years ago, never to go back, even I thought it was merely a sadist joke. But I would say it had the desired effect.
- keithpeter 13y ago
  Shuttleworth needs to make Canonical financially self-sustaining. The strategic focus moves to mobile. Hence Ubuntu phone &c. What I can't get my head around is why Canonical and so it appears Microsoft think you need one common interface for all the devices so 3 inch screens to 30 inch screens. Apple seem to have worked that one out as have KDE with their various desktop styles.
AlexanderDhoore 13y ago
Or the fact that the current global menu HIDES when not hovered. Will kill any new adoption, for sure. Discoverability: 0.
- techwizrd 13y ago
  I actually prefer this behaviour. I need the active window/application title more than I need the menu. As for discoverability, I haven't seen much impact. Even my non-technical mother and father do not have issues with it. I'd chalk this up to personal preference.
Spittie 13y ago
I have a different theory: the Ubuntu "core" and "design" teams have their vision of what Ubuntu will be, and just don't listen for feedback from the community. It's fine to just push changes, otherwise we would be stuck in the 80s and the 90s (everyone hates changes), but it's not fine to not listen to any kind of feedback from the community, even after years. The unity sidebar is the biggest example. They refused to let users change the size of the icons for years. Even now, you're still limited by a small range they've decided on. They removed used, small features because it would make the codebase "harder to mantain". The global menu is an usability nightmare on Ubuntu (the HUD instead is a pretty cool concept). I don't really like global menus, but Canonical managed to make it even worse - It's hidden by default, and get showed only on mouse hover. I've been using Linux with various DE for years, and the last time I tried Ubuntu it took me 5 minutes to remember where is the menu (I can only wonder what would my parents do). Obviously, they didn't change this at all. I could go on and complain about Ubuntu all day (and not only about Unity - I'd like to talk about their tendency to patch everything downstream) but the message is "Canonical shot themself in the foot". I can only hope this is a "new beginning" and they'll start to listen their userbase.
- pekk 13y ago
  You talk like "the community" all has one opinion. In reality, whoever is unhappy screams and claims to speak for "the community" as a way of trying to get their way. And almost always someone is unhappy. Most of the time, an equally large subset of the community is not screaming because they are happy with that decision. You could chase one side of the community and then the other forever, without reaching a stable outcome.
  - Spittie 13y ago
    Sure, I understand. But why not make everyone happy, and give a choice? At least, for the small "little" tweaks that make everyone scream? There are plenty of examples: globalmenu on/off, globalmenu hidden/showed by default, buttons on the left/right side of the window, size of the icons in the launcher, side of the screen on which the launcher appear, show the launcher on every screen or only the main one...
polynomial 13y ago
I have also come up with the same theory, and was just explaining it to a friend last week, ending with, "I'm kidding of course, but it would certainly explain a lot."
sp332 13y ago
Click the icon twice to pick which window you want to switch to.
rquirk 13y ago
The workspace switcher is another strange one. In Gnome the workspace switcher icon showed a mini-preview of the window layouts. In Unity this is just a static icon made to look like a mini preview! This seems cargo-cultish, as though the Unity developers don't understand what they are trying to recreate.
samstave 13y ago
FYI: you can hover over he app icon and scroll your mouse wheel to cycle through the open windows of that particular app. However, I still find myself frustrated with many browser windows open... I have been trying to train myself to take advantage of multiple desktops, which I have been historically poor at doing. And since I run a win7 VM continuously, I like to have that desktop on another monitor, and then I have apps open in that VM as well... I have window/tab/app overload. Since I never shut my machine down, I only sleep it, I find that sometimes I have to just close everything and start with a fresh desktop and zero tabs to reset my brains workflow.
wpietri 13y ago
I am honestly glad that they are trying to make the Linux desktop better. But I am regularly enraged that they make me their guinea pig so that they can discover that their shit doesn't work. Please, Ubuntu people, try this stuff out in a lab and then on small groups of volunteer testers before inflicting it upon the world. And this goes double for the stuff they ship in the LTS releases. I keep my servers on LTS, and so my laptop stays on that as well. That means I've had two joyous years of wacky interactions and irritating UI bugs. I just have to log out and/or reboot every couple of days. On a Linux machine. Really, I like what they're trying to do with Unity. But if your goal is to improve the user experience, you don't ship wacky, half finished stuff to a shit-ton of users.
- smithzvk 13y ago
  Ubuntu is a Free Software project and there is a small group of volunteer testers before every release. In fact you can be one of them, right now, for the upcoming 14.04 release: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ > Really, I like what they're trying to do with Unity. But if your goal is to improve the user experience, you don't ship wacky, half finished stuff to a shit-ton of users. Amen to this.
  - wpietri 13y ago
    If they are still finding big UI bugs in production, then I suspect we're talking about different kinds of testing. I'm glad they've made a start, though.
trycatch 13y ago
> Also, changing windows (e.g., if you have two or three document processing files open), how do you quickly and efficiently switch to the right one? I don't know! There are quite a few of them: 1. Mouse scroll on the icon in the dock. 2. Click twice on the icon in the dock and select the window from spread/expose. 3. Right click and select the windows from the list. 4. Alt+Tab. Select the application, wait a second, select the window. 5. Alt+Tab. Right-click on application, select the window. 6. etc.

by selmnoo 13y ago

d0 13y ago

It's probably like our dedicated UI team: cheap. Our head UI designer sent SPAM for a living before working for us.

vanderZwan 13y ago
Also, it's open source and design related. I imagine that means that as the project grows, the bike shedding scales O(n^2).

streptomycin 13y ago

My conspiracy theory is that it was all a practical joke by Shuttleworth, bringing us so close to the ideal of a usable Linux desktop that everyone could get behind, and then randomly moving shit around and creating division within the Linux community. We went from Ubuntu clearly being the market leader and providing a consistent UI, to a clusterfuck of different distributions and DEs.

balladeer 13y ago
Yes. When I left Ubuntu 2 years ago, never to go back, even I thought it was merely a sadist joke. But I would say it had the desired effect.
keithpeter 13y ago
Shuttleworth needs to make Canonical financially self-sustaining. The strategic focus moves to mobile. Hence Ubuntu phone &c. What I can't get my head around is why Canonical and so it appears Microsoft think you need one common interface for all the devices so 3 inch screens to 30 inch screens. Apple seem to have worked that one out as have KDE with their various desktop styles.

AlexanderDhoore 13y ago

Or the fact that the current global menu HIDES when not hovered. Will kill any new adoption, for sure. Discoverability: 0.

techwizrd 13y ago
I actually prefer this behaviour. I need the active window/application title more than I need the menu. As for discoverability, I haven't seen much impact. Even my non-technical mother and father do not have issues with it. I'd chalk this up to personal preference.

Spittie 13y ago

I have a different theory: the Ubuntu "core" and "design" teams have their vision of what Ubuntu will be, and just don't listen for feedback from the community. It's fine to just push changes, otherwise we would be stuck in the 80s and the 90s (everyone hates changes), but it's not fine to not listen to any kind of feedback from the community, even after years. The unity sidebar is the biggest example. They refused to let users change the size of the icons for years. Even now, you're still limited by a small range they've decided on. They removed used, small features because it would make the codebase "harder to mantain". The global menu is an usability nightmare on Ubuntu (the HUD instead is a pretty cool concept). I don't really like global menus, but Canonical managed to make it even worse - It's hidden by default, and get showed only on mouse hover. I've been using Linux with various DE for years, and the last time I tried Ubuntu it took me 5 minutes to remember where is the menu (I can only wonder what would my parents do). Obviously, they didn't change this at all. I could go on and complain about Ubuntu all day (and not only about Unity - I'd like to talk about their tendency to patch everything downstream) but the message is "Canonical shot themself in the foot". I can only hope this is a "new beginning" and they'll start to listen their userbase.

pekk 13y ago
You talk like "the community" all has one opinion. In reality, whoever is unhappy screams and claims to speak for "the community" as a way of trying to get their way. And almost always someone is unhappy. Most of the time, an equally large subset of the community is not screaming because they are happy with that decision. You could chase one side of the community and then the other forever, without reaching a stable outcome.
- Spittie 13y ago
  Sure, I understand. But why not make everyone happy, and give a choice? At least, for the small "little" tweaks that make everyone scream? There are plenty of examples: globalmenu on/off, globalmenu hidden/showed by default, buttons on the left/right side of the window, size of the icons in the launcher, side of the screen on which the launcher appear, show the launcher on every screen or only the main one...

polynomial 13y ago

I have also come up with the same theory, and was just explaining it to a friend last week, ending with, "I'm kidding of course, but it would certainly explain a lot."

sp332 13y ago

Click the icon twice to pick which window you want to switch to.

rquirk 13y ago

The workspace switcher is another strange one. In Gnome the workspace switcher icon showed a mini-preview of the window layouts. In Unity this is just a static icon made to look like a mini preview! This seems cargo-cultish, as though the Unity developers don't understand what they are trying to recreate.

samstave 13y ago

FYI: you can hover over he app icon and scroll your mouse wheel to cycle through the open windows of that particular app. However, I still find myself frustrated with many browser windows open... I have been trying to train myself to take advantage of multiple desktops, which I have been historically poor at doing. And since I run a win7 VM continuously, I like to have that desktop on another monitor, and then I have apps open in that VM as well... I have window/tab/app overload. Since I never shut my machine down, I only sleep it, I find that sometimes I have to just close everything and start with a fresh desktop and zero tabs to reset my brains workflow.

wpietri 13y ago

I am honestly glad that they are trying to make the Linux desktop better. But I am regularly enraged that they make me their guinea pig so that they can discover that their shit doesn't work. Please, Ubuntu people, try this stuff out in a lab and then on small groups of volunteer testers before inflicting it upon the world. And this goes double for the stuff they ship in the LTS releases. I keep my servers on LTS, and so my laptop stays on that as well. That means I've had two joyous years of wacky interactions and irritating UI bugs. I just have to log out and/or reboot every couple of days. On a Linux machine. Really, I like what they're trying to do with Unity. But if your goal is to improve the user experience, you don't ship wacky, half finished stuff to a shit-ton of users.

smithzvk 13y ago
Ubuntu is a Free Software project and there is a small group of volunteer testers before every release. In fact you can be one of them, right now, for the upcoming 14.04 release: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ > Really, I like what they're trying to do with Unity. But if your goal is to improve the user experience, you don't ship wacky, half finished stuff to a shit-ton of users. Amen to this.
- wpietri 13y ago
  If they are still finding big UI bugs in production, then I suspect we're talking about different kinds of testing. I'm glad they've made a start, though.

trycatch 13y ago

> Also, changing windows (e.g., if you have two or three document processing files open), how do you quickly and efficiently switch to the right one? I don't know! There are quite a few of them: 1. Mouse scroll on the icon in the dock. 2. Click twice on the icon in the dock and select the window from spread/expose. 3. Right click and select the windows from the list. 4. Alt+Tab. Select the application, wait a second, select the window. 5. Alt+Tab. Right-click on application, select the window. 6. etc.