Ubuntu Unity Dev Team AMA | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu Unity Dev Team AMA

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36 pointssutro11 comments

As expected, there are a number of complaints/fears about how non-configurable Unity could be. For these expert users, if they don't like Unity there's always KDE, Gnome or some other UI. I hope the Unity team, for the most part, ignores these power users and optimizes the UI for novices. That would be refreshing to see happen and might result in increased adoption of desktop Linux by the general public. Think Different!

They've done that successfully enough that I just dumped my ubuntu netbook in favor of a Mac. Ubuntu has been steadily removing all the advantages Linux has for power users without counterbalancing improvements.

Forgive me for being dense, but why not choose the 'classic desktop' option at login, or 'sudo apt-get install gnome-panel' if it stops coming by default?

Is it a clash of ideology that caused you to jump ship? Because I find it hard to believe somebody smart enough to find, download and partition their disks to install Ubuntu would balk at the effort of customising their desktop to suit their needs.

It is a forward looking decision. If the Ubuntu team is committed to making Ubuntu more confusing to use and introducing new bugs and breaking existing features and ignoring old bugs, it is better to jump over to a platform that issue heading in a better direction. It is sad that no major dev team is working on building a usable powerful system. It is a necessary consequence o the mainstreamization of computing, though. Every year power users are a smaller fraction of the user base and therefore more relatively expensive to support.

"_If_ the Ubuntu team is committed to making Ubuntu more confusing to use and introducing new bugs and breaking existing features and ignoring old bugs."

Sad thing is they aren't so your argument doesn't hold.

Nearly every problem with Ubuntu (or any other Linux distribution) can easily be solved by some sufficiently convoluted workaround. The combination of fifty separate fixes to make it behave how I expect it to isn't a solution.

In some cases, these fixes are more hassle than they're worth. I started digging through Nautilus to find where the "smart" sorting is, intending to rebuild, but then I'd have to do it on each machine I use, recompile every update, and so on. This is an acknowledged "closed, intended behavior" that I think is stupid and utterly contrary to Unix standards.

I don't balk at customizing it. You seem to be assuming I'm a newbie fleeing back to windows or something. I liked the days when configuration was in a text file (not XML) because at least then it was consistent and documented. The death of desktop linux is the gaping chasm between linux on the server and these crappy customized desktop distributions apparently trying to compete as "good enough for grandma, and cheaper than windows".

With Gnome 3 also going the same route, my main fear is that Gnome 2 is going to wither and die (ie. gradually become incompatible), and I'll be thrust back onto the "learn the quirks of another desktop environment" treadmill again.

How many people are still "novice" on the computer, and need special simplified interfaces? I guess most elderly people have used a computer by now, the age group below this have worked with at least Windows XP on their day jobs, and children born in recent years grew up with computers.

I love that they (like Gnome 3) are doing something awesome with the Linux desktop, but I had to go back to Gnome 2 after a day because focus-follows-mouse is missing and/or broken.

(Thanks to the disconnected menu bar business, they seem to be stuck in the same "focus-follows-mouse is impossible" and "multi-monitor sucks forever" hole that OS X fell into. I use both, which makes Unity doubly unusable for me.)

Hi team,

What's in Unity that makes it cool?

Cheers

The AMA is on reddit, not HN.

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