Ubuntu introduces new theme and branding
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
You gotta admire the guy's ambition.
However considering the cat-herding involved in creating great user experiences from the top down, and considering how much Apple pays its engineers and designers, if he pulls this off he's 100 times the leader Steve Jobs is.
Apple has a Unix that's very polished and usable, but is not that much Unix-ish if what you need is a traditional X desktop.
And OSX lacks package management.
I also really hate how every OSX app has it's own way of doing updates. Even if the OSX makes desktop apps not need dependencies, it would be really nice if I only had one 'update' button to push. As it is, 5 different things want to update practically every day.
Copying app bundles around is easy enough though and they make things Just Work w/ fat binaries, so kudos to Apple for making that easy. Their Migration Assistant is slow, but still eases much of the pain of migration.
No. If you are asking for updates and fixes, you are doing it wrong. It should be automated, because you shouldn't have to bother to remember pressing a button. I set up my mother with a Linux box and sure as hell I don't count on her pressing buttons without some prompting.
> As it is, 5 different things want to update practically every day.
If you have a defective library that's bundled in five apps and needs fixing, you will have five upgrades instead of one. And, possibly, an OS update and a reboot.
But only if you are lucky and the publishers of the five programs are paying attention. Most likely, you will end up with five different bugs scattered throughout your system with many different libraries that really should be just one.
Actually, I prefer the five. When you have a shared library, and bugs are fixed, applications that use the library might well break. Shared libraries mean that either applications are at risk of completely failing to work, or that the library developers have to flag the bugfix as a new version to avoid that. Either way, incompatible bugfixes require application updates anyway, so you might as well avoid the breakage and use static libraries.
It seems to me that the only good non-mirage reason for shared libraries was disk space usage, and that's just not a problem any more. Down with shared libraries and dependency hell, I say! ;)
Shared libraries are shared in memory too. If you have 5 separate copies of libfoo and you start up applications using them, you'll have 5 copies of libfoo in memory too. And memory is much scarcer resource than disk space.
Also, that's not including the gigantic libraries that Songbird and Miro might share (as they are both media apps) but also the smaller ones.
So, yes, while you're right that shared libraries can sometimes cause the problems you describe, a good package manager will pretty much fix them. But what I love the most about Linux though is that if something bad like that happens (like the ABI of a shared library changing)... it's a minor inconvenience, but so what?
apt-get source $package
cd $package-$version
apt-get build-dep $package
dpkg-buildpackage
cd ..
dpkg -i *.deb
Basically, as someone who switched back to Linux from Mac recently, Synaptic and the Software Center (and why there are two tools that show different-but-overlapping package sets is another WTF) are full of surprises and why-did-THAT-change?! moments.
Oh.. The 90's...
Seriously: I moved to Debian-based distros in 2002 and never experienced anything like what you describe. And mind you I ran testing with packages from sid directly for a couple years.
I have the patience and time to spend a day changing my config until things work again, but it's certainly a ways behind both Mac and Windows in this area. Additionally (while I'm venting), Ubuntu trains you out of reporting bugs because if you actually reported a bug whenever things went wrong, it would be a part-time job. I actually had fewer update problems with Gentoo ca 2003, though at the time I had things to get done and just wanted stuff to work, whereas now that that I don't depend on my home system to make money, I find fixing the problems fun. :)
Ubuntu is essentially the same in that; some weeks I come home from work to see the "Update Manager" floating in the background two or three times. :)
But that's not solving the problem - if you have a defective library inside a bundle, upgrading the copy that lives inside the other bundle will have no effect on the first one. Programs are on their own and the provider must ship a new release of the bundle for each and every update on each and every library that gets bundled. Each program has to self-update and decide if the user will be exposed to a vulnerability while it self-updates or if the user will have to wait for the upgrade to finish before he or she can read his or her e-mail.
The idea that all shared libraries are in effect shared and updated at the earliest possible time, automatically, makes a lot of sense for desktops.
This is insanity. It only looks sane if you have never seen anything better.
And, disk space usage from redundant code is a non-issue.
Added disk usage was never the issue. Consistency of behaviour is. With shared components you know your machine will decode PNGs in exactly the same way across all the applications installed.
I think the problem comes when software devs code to the actual behavior of a library's interface rather than to the stated behavior (which may not even be completely documented). I think this happens pretty frequently, and always if the library's behavior deviates in a way that breaks the program.
In the context of Mac OS, I would prefer not to rely on the library makers, etc. to do the right thing in not changing interfaces, especially in the event that an earlier version didn't quite meet its spec. I'm OK with the earlier version not meeting spec, as long as the software maker accounted for that (which he did, if his software based on it is solid).
Also, I think consistency of behavior is more important in unix-style single-purpose apps than with monolithic Mac OS style apps, due to the former's higher likelihood in being used as part of a script or larger program. I agree that package management is a good thing on Linux, and shared libraries probably are, but I'm not convinced that's true on Mac OS.
I like OS X because, yes, there's a paradigm, but there's a rich underside that you can use as much as you like.
But perhaps I'm just being anal.
I wonder if this is part of a move towards a more global image.
I'll tell ya, Ubuntu Netbook Edition is the best interface for "simple computing" out there. It's like an iPhone for your desktop computer. I almost want to do a live test where I sit people down with windows 7 and Ubuntu Netbook Edition. I bet you Ubuntu Netbook Edition will win almost every time.
MS is known for playing dirty.
One more reason to uninstall Windows (besides Windows)
Microsoft doesn't take being cut out lightly.
The other thing I just don't understand is why are netbook manufacturers still putting crappy nonstandard little known restrictive linux distros on their netbook?
I bought an Acer Aspire One, which came with linpus I think, which was ridiculous. Installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and now it's fantastic.
http://pingswept.org/2007/06/03/finally-booting-pre-installe...
I bought one when they were brand new (in fact, I'm using it right now). It was not ready for prime time - there were suspend/hibernate problems, among other issues. I could not have recommended it.
That with Dapper Drake. Karmic works a lot better, but it's so bloated that I can barely use it. I had to get rid of GNOME and run fluxbox, and I don't use Firefox anymore because it takes fully half of my RAM (not that that's Ubuntu's fault). But I think regular Ubuntu would be ready for prime time on a faster machine. The only thing really holding it back now is inertia and software compatibility.
But I expect that it will be awhile before OEMs want to try again. Canonical shouldn't have pushed it to OEMs before it was ready.
I don't know that I'm entirely convinced that Dell's program was on the level for Ubuntu, or that it's a fair representation of what would happen with a serious Ubuntu OEM.
The only problem I experience is when I set the desktop to exactly 2048 pixels while using Compiz. It will probably be solved by the next release.
Selling a box with Linux that doesn't work properly with Linux sounds like an excellent way to get a rebate on the OEM prices of Windows licenses.
It didn't work after reinstalling the OS. It does with Karmic, which shows that it's not a hardware problem.
I stand by my statement. But Dell is also not blameless, and my next computer was not a Dell (and won't be).
Consumers don't know or care about advanced functionality or technical considerations -- if your device can run the few applications that are relevant to their niche, then all systems are go; the company that performs those relatively basic technical requirements in the way that is most attractive to the end user is going to come out on top. That means sleek design and branding (probably above everything else), simplicity in choices, and high usability.
If you want your platform to succeed, you need to do the same kind of thing. Shuttleworth's investment in Canonical is good and has helped technically, but now, if he really wants to bring Linux mainstream, he needs to make a computer company that follows in Apple's footsteps. That's the way to make a dent in the market these days. Microsoft would be nothing if they were a startup now, their strategies wouldn't pay off in this environment.
I'm a developer, I spend 90% of my computing time in Vim and Terminal. I use a Macbook as my primary computer, and tend to bring it to work with me. I try to go to Linux probably twice a year, and have for a long time.
I use a mac because despite the tools I use being written originally for Linux, they work better on OS X. I've never neen unable to connect to a wireless network, I've never had problems with sleep/suspend, I've never even thought about upgrading the kernel. The things I need to do to the system, I can, and everything else works so well that I can forget it's there.
The Mac/Apple fad is all about things actually working. Windows crashes, Linux makes you think too hard about things that you're not doing. When things work, they're sexy, and that's how you can sell it to the masses, but the Zune is sexy too, and see how well pure style sells.
You say that vim and Terminal work better on OS X than they do on Linux, and then proceed to give examples that have nothing to do with either vim or Terminal. I think the biggest annoyance I have with Terminal is that I can't highlight text and middle-click paste it like I can with X.
How much work does it take to get OS X on a Windows machine? Quite a lot. Are you complaining that OS X makes you think too hard because your machine, which originally came with Windows, is finnicky about OS X?
WiFi, suspend/resume, etc. all work fine in Linux on most of the hardware out there, and you don't have to think about upgrading the kernel if you don't want to -- just tell the updater to run automatically in the background and you'll never know the difference.
My post is about an OEM that sells computers pre-loaded with Ubuntu and integrates the whole system into a desirable identity, as Apple sells computers pre-loaded with OS X and has integrated OS X and the rest of the Apple brand into a desirable identity.
People want to be seen with a MacBook because it's stylish and cool and on top of that, it's more enjoyable than Windows.
It's about the brand, the identity. It's not about the computer going to sleep. Most computers sleep and connect to WiFi without any issues at all. People are not buying Macs because they sleep and connect to WiFi.
This is why you keep things simple, find hardware that works well with it, and package it together.
Ps- Mac/Apple isn't a fad.
Not sure why neither sources or HN links to it.
My theory is that one's brain gets used to the particular fonts and may not like change very much.
This could just be my own aesthetic taste, but I think it could also be due to those companies having highly paid font designers working on those details.
Only reason I quit is that after speccing hardware that had OSS drivers (and was fairly underpowered to boot), drivers in Ubuntu still didn't work 100% (eg, connecting to external displays broke X render support) and this got worse over time (Intel drivers being replaced with much more unstable replacements).
I still develop for Ubuntu, but inside a VM.
Ugh, I had this same problem. Every time I upgraded Ubuntu, hardware rendering got another 10x performance decrease and more bugs. Eventually I couldn't even enable vsync, so I got horrible tearing while watching videos. I partially blame Ubuntu for this, since they could have held back Intel's driver updates. Ultimately though, it was Intel's fault for releasing ever-buggier drivers.
A lot of the bugs you're talking about were fixed in updates to 9.10, but I gave up and got a Mac way before that.
Switching acceleration architectures to something that's not from the '80s, allowing modern hardware to effectively accelerate the UI, allowing video to interact with OpenGL and so on needed to be done, and there was really no good way to do it painlessly.
It looks like a toy for people with poor eyesight.
Unix machines have traditionally been used with big monitors. It's not surprising at all Gnome uses lots of pixels.
And there is nothing forcing you to use Ubuntu's default layout. You have literally hundreds of options to choose from. I tend to change look and feel more or less on a monthly basis.
I use Ubuntu because I have the free time to screw around with my home computer, but I wouldn't recommend it for people who don't have the time and knowledge to do that, unless all they ever want to do is use what it comes with out of the box.
Most people don't. At the very least, most (non-geek) people don't switch desktop environments often. The people that are 'too busy' will just settle on a desktop environment and stick with it.
When running XP, as I still do on my non-Linux laptops, the total vertical space wastage at the top of Windows Explorer is 65 pixels, including title bar, toolbar, menu bar and location textbox. This is possible because on XP the toolbars and menu bars have customizable locations, unlike Vista and above - I have screenshots in my blog here:
http://blog.barrkel.com/2008/08/venting-on-vista.html
Unless you are talking about a pixel area somewhere in the region of 8000x3000 on high dpi screens, the Ubuntu proportions are nowhere near acceptable.
There's a trick to window management - I use cascading windows on the second monitor, as I detail here:
http://blog.barrkel.com/2009/11/on-difficulty-of-setting-win...
Admit it. That's a draw.
This is handled by title bars in Gnome, OS X and Windows, not window menu bars.
"separates the data (what's inside the window) from the menus that act on that data"
The menus don't just act on what's in the window. At least some menu items act on the application itself.
In a multiple document interface with a system that ties menus to windows, the menu of one window acts on multiple other windows. The other windows are either sub windows shoved inside the main window or they are windows floating independently from the window with the menu, which means you need to return focus to the main window to use the menu.
In a single document interfaces, the same menu, application controls and all, is repeated on each individual window.
Furthermore, in both of those cases, once you close the window with the menu bar, you no longer have access to any controls for the application, which is why most applications in these windowing systems can't run without at least one window open.
As opposed to "application buildup" MacOS users experience since the OS7 days, when they are on a clean desktop and five applications running for no particular reason.
The right comparison here would be, "I like Ubuntu's XFCE theme much better than their GNOME theme", or whatever the specific case is. Maybe he likes XFCE better altogether, and then it's "I like XFCE more than GNOME".
See what I am saying here?
Lubuntu, which is the "official" Ubuntu sub-distro for light fast iso for small-spec computers runs on LXDE instead of XFCE and is purportedly much better on resources and faster. I think the real reason why Xubuntu is so bad is because all the other junk from Ubuntu Gnome got packaged in with Xfce and got called Xubuntu.
While I love Linux and I use it everyday, mostly as a server, everytime I enter in the desktop interface I do not feel the "home sweet home" I do on a OS X or Windows.
Linux DM are not comfortable, specially when you have KDE apps mixed with Gnome Apps and there's that mix of different gui + usability styles.
I've said this once, and I will say it again (running the risk of serious bashing): Linux should concentrate in only one DM and improve it.
EDIT: my mistake, I meant, why switch to the left?
http://lifehacker.com/5043712/roll-your-own-lightning-at-sun...
http://lifehacker.com/5087956/customize-your-own-killer-enig...
UI looks set to change radically over the next few years, it would be cool if they looked at the multitouch route:
http://gizmodo.com/5457472/how-the-apple-tablet-interface-co...
It can't exactly hurt Ubuntu's market share to really look at exploring the possibilities (sorry couldn't resist). Apple (naturally) and even Microsoft are really upping their game on the UI front and there's the danger of Ubuntu being left even further behind.
Yeah, that's a core principal of branding - as soon as the customers are familiar with your logo, change it.
Someone tell Apple, IBM, and Coca-Cola.
And the Ubuntu change isn't drastic enough that people will stop recognizing it.
I fail to see how that by any metrics are related to the new theme and branding efforts.
The user experience is not defined by the look and feel but by so many other factors. It would be interesting if they had actually better ways to deal with certain metaphors such as file browsing.
But as it stands right now although I love what Ubuntu are doing they are a long long long way from being anything close to Apple standards.
BTW, I'm a huge Ubuntu fan. But man, purple and brown? Geesh!