Linux Mint: The new Ubuntu?
extremetech.com
extremetech.com
Saying the solution is to go backwards is the same as telling canonical to just stop trying all together.
There's no point in stagnating and sticking with gnome. New users aren't going to switch to ubuntu because there's a start(or applications) menu. Canonical has to genuinely create a usable, unique user experience that ubuntu can call its own. It's not there yet, everyone knows. But saying people should just switch to something else and poo-pooing all over canonical isn't going to help make (desktop, mass user facing)linux the best it can be.
If you really care, get involved. Go to askubuntu.com and answer some questions. Make blog posts that illustrate how you'd improve unity. Write some code. Ubuntu is foss. Canonical neither charges for it nor sells hardware, and I'd say they're doing pretty good in spite.
All that being said; you can install gnome in ubuntu 11.10. You don't have to use unity.
For the rest of us (power users and coders) we're fortunate enough to know how to replace Unity or improve it. Canonical has a plan and they're sticking to it. They probably know that the value these changes will make in the future are worth disappointing the people complaining. You have to make choices as a developer and sometimes it's better to make a chunk of people unhappy than to bend to their will and dilute the value of your product's future. If they didn't stand strong on this they may very well end up stuck working on these little complaints instead of focusing on the bigger picture and making the system far better, far faster.
Perhaps, but one of the traditional excuses new users have given for not switching, or switching back after trying, is that Linux desktops are too different, even though they've traditionally not been all that different. Creating something unique, compared to tools users have used in the past, like Windows, isn't going to make people immediately productive. And being immediately productive is how the desktop UI/UX enters the background and becomes a facilitator rather than something that the user struggles with.
Yes, exactly. I want my interaction with the desktop to be like that with a prostitute: minimal, direct, clear, and without my having to know much at all about the other party. I don't want to have to beg and plead for the ability to alter the panel once a year on special occasions.
Or, even more simply, we can install Mint. :)
Is it really that hard to run 'sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop'? Am I missing something here?
After installing Ubuntu 11.10 I spent the best part of a day setting up my desktop and getting it to a stage with Xfce which I felt was 'only slightly more crap than my experience with 10.10'
If it were this easy, nobody would be complaining. But as far as I can tell, Gnome Classic (without HW accel) is broken by default on Ubuntu 11.10, with the default Gnome Panel being entirely messed up.
This wasn't the case in 11.04, which had a great fallback that I still use daily, and I think it's the reason the Unity complaints are getting louder: there's no longer a real alternative to it in 11.10. At least not from Canonical.
It's easy to waste a day trying all these alternatives to get something that works. I don't call that an easy-to-use distro. Particularly as it's a regression.
The old "classic" panel look has been deprecated upstream, it doesn't really exist any more so I don't know what you're expecting Ubuntu to do in this case.
I don't expect Canonical to do anything, but I'd like them to include the Xubuntu desktop packages in the long term release support cycle as an option for users.
It doesn't group windows on the panel as well as gnome 2 does.
You lose allot of the nice easy features from gnome2 for doing things like using shared files or printers from windows computers.
The panel is allot less flexible and harder to configure. There are also less panel applets available.
Mouse-button back doesn't work in several parts of the interface.
I'm sure there are workarounds for many of these issues but for an out of the box experience it is still a regression.
* Key bindings for switching keyboard layouts don't persist, I have to reconfigure them every time I reboot or X restarts
* Auto-suspend when lid is closed no longer works reliably. I sometimes find a really hot laptop in my bag after a while.
That said, XFce is much nicer than Unity.
If I had more free time I would love to contribute to something like Xfce (or E17) and turn them into a first class Desktop Environment.
The task switching interface is very much inferior to gnome2. In gnome2 I can setup some panels which span the bottom of both my monitors , giving me loads of space to switch tasks conveniently and have the panel group together similar apps to save space. I then have another panel with a set of shortcuts that I can use to launch my most common apps.
With gnome-shell you are stuck with having 1 "dock" panel on the far left of 1 monitor to switch apps, even though apps are grouped this makes it far less convenient to switch between them. Instead of 1 click to switch, it's press a button , scan the mouse to the far left then click and then usually click again for the window I want.
The big problem however is this, some of the apps I use are launched from shell scripts which will do something and then run some Java or python app. This is the way with many apps that are not installable through apt-get. IntelliJ IDEA is an example of this.
What I do in gnome2 is just create a new launcher that points to the script and add it to the panel, problem solved.
Now with gnome shell or unity , I can run my script from the terminal which will then cause the app to launch. However now when I want to dock the app for easy launch later it just won't let me.
This is probably because it doesn't understand the relationship between the shell script I ran and what it sees as the "application" and since there is nowhere else I can really put the app I am now relegated to having to launch some of my apps through the terminal each time because they cannot be docked into the main dock with the rest of my apps.
Needing to download 5GB of intermediate packages to go from karmic -> oneiric one release at a time (way to ruin apt-get, guys), a weekend fighting remotely with what turned out to be nouveau (which given its hard locking a fresh install, shouldn't even be enabled by default), and Unity tonedeafness have signalled to me that it's time to move on.
I'm giving Arch a try, and it's refreshing that I can just edit /boot/grub/menu.lst without having to figure out the abstraction built on top to do things the "right way" (and avoid being overwritten). However, if Arch doesn't work out, I'm settled on straight up Debian. At least with Debian, the indirections actually get me something.
And furthermore, why would I recommend Ubuntu to new users knowing that I'm not going to be able to help them as easily? A bit of an exaggeration right now, but an inevitable result of the path Ubuntu is on. A user friendly distribution should work with existing conventions, not discard them by creating a whole new layer on top.
Since it has such a large share of the Linux desktop market it's easy to find solutions for most of your common Ubuntu problems.
I don't really want to go back to the days when everyone used a different distribution where if you had an obscure problem and used google for a solution you would come to a page describing how to fix it in another distro with a completely different package management system and where the contents of /etc were completely different.
I remember posting questions on the forums of various distributions relating to problems I was having just seeing them go unreplied to in perpetuity.
Benevolent Dictator is what Bill Gates somewhat pretended to be for years.
He made his money selling SSL certificates in large quantities, I don't really think he is a Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.
He reminds me more of the type of entrepreneur who makes his money then decides to buy an English Football club and run it into the ground.
That's possibly unkind though, there was enough good work going into Ubuntu providing good support and sorting out allot of the common Linux Desktop issues to award him some credit, but I don't really see Ubuntu as any kind of creative juggernaut.
Maybe they are right, and the future of mass computing is in entertainment consumption and not productive work. Maybe the dream of a popular powerful OS is dead. Maybe it's time for power users to return to being a.nich
Shuttleworth started out the same way, except with Linux instead of DOS/Windows, and now he's insisting on making unpopular changes because he thinks he can see the future. Remember when Gates believed there was no future in the Internet?
Anyway, I'm rambling so I'll stop here.
There's little chance to get involved with Unity. Shuttleworth has made it clear that he's playing his benevolent dictator card.
> Canonical is genuinely trying to make linux the most user friendly it's ever been and make it ready for real mass adoption.
Maybe. Unity is probably great for touch screen interfaces. Similar layouts have been tried on small screens - netbooks for example.
I guess the people with 2 huge monitors (and all the Linux tinkering that involves) aren't the people who need Unity; and they're probably already using something else. (Something entirely keyboard driven or minimal or whatever.)
> Write some code.
Yes, "show me the code" is a powerful message. Even if there's little room for involvement in Unity there are many other window managers and desktop environments that'd welcome people getting involved; whether that's with bug-fixing or feature implementing or language translations or documentation.
Either you, Canonical, or both are on drugs.
> There's no point in stagnating and sticking with gnome.
If the options are "stagnating" with Gnome, or going over 9000 steps backwards with Unity, I'm choosing to stagnate.
> If you really care, get involved.
Why? What's the incentive for me? Canonical has continuously proven to not care about it's current users.
> Write some code. Ubuntu is foss.
FFS, this is the same old tired propaganda of FOSS-apologists, aren't you ashamed of regurgitating it?
FOSS is doomed since it doesn't match the economic realities of producing high-quality end-user software.
Doomed how? There are more and more high-quality, end-user FOSS apps. The world does not revolve around Canonical and Ubuntu. Simply change distros, problem solved.
I've said this before, but there are bigger problems than the UI of the main desktop. I think gnome2 is a surprisingly usable desktop , I remember when it was an infact that it was slow and buggy but the hard work has paid off and overall it's one of my favorite UIs on any platform due to it's speed and flexibility.
I don't think learning gnome2 would be a big put off for many people anyway, since it's similar enough to Windows XP which more people have experience with than newer UIs anyway.
Imagine if the time and resources spent developing Unity had been spent instead on more thorough hardware testing, fixing remaining issues in gnome2 or creating new applications for users that would make a Linux desktop a compelling choice.
I don't see what unity does that helps me be able to recommend Ubuntu it to less technical family & friends.
Personally all I want is a taskbar, and an application launcher. I like the combination of openbox+tint but I a lot of the application I use depend on gnome libraries anyway.
Glossy chrome elements and wobbly windows are meaningless in terms of usability, that's my opinion. Why would we want to break something that works fine? Why trashing old but reliable technology?
I would guess it's more about shipping a fancy glossy looking product than anything else.
If bling is your thing then you can do enough with compiz and desktop themes to make pretty much any desktop look however you like.
I think making the compiz settings manager more visible and easier to use would be quite a big win here, as it's often not obvious what most of the plugins do until you activate them and the whole "resolve conflicts" thing is a total mess that needs simplifying.
The result is something that people hate, not because it is different, but because it is truly sub-par.
I have found Ubuntu's strategy interesting because it seemed clear that while KDE was following general guidelines around Microsoft OSes to be more accessible, and Gnome was following general guidelines around Apple OSes for similar reasons, Canonical sort of 'turned left' and drove off the road to a new place.
I remember distinctly when I left Sun and had to give up my Suntools interface for what became Windows98 at the time. And it was hokey and painful and it crashed a lot, except that over the weeks and months it crashed less and less, all without a software update :-). And I realized it was not so subtley training me not to use features that failed. Of course if you use something long enough you become reasonably facile with it. When I switched my desktop to Linux I was always more comfortable with KDE for that reason, the whole 'start' menu on the lower left, the control panel abstraction, the way things laid out on the screen.
When I went to Google I got a Macbook as my laptop choice, it was different, and I struggled at first, but once I became reasonably good at navigating around I found that I was also less annoyed with Gnome.
I think the Unity strategy at Canonical will pay them big dividends. Mostly because the Linux desktop market has been such a small part of the whole desktop market as to barely merit a full pixel width in a pie chart of desktop OSes. I believe that part of the reason for that is that the strategy of being 'kinda like' MacOS or Windows in the GUI has failed Linux badly when it comes to non-technical users. It failed them because there was neither the cohesion of implementation, nor the quality of testing, in either KDE or Gnome which would ever cause a non-technical user to think the GUI was 'better' than the one they left behind. Unity breaks that cycle because it doesn't work like the GUI you used to use. and so I think users cut it some slack, they realize they are in a 'new' place and learn how to do the things that they want to do in the way that this gui does them. And there isn't a mental comparison to their previous gui because it wasn't like this at all.
Assuming, and its a big assumption, that Canonical can execute on the Unity strategy well, it will continue to be the dominant Linux distro. Further it will increasingly leave behind every other distro, because while others may trade off market share amongst the technical users, where programmers slosh from one to the next, Unity will be gaining non-technical users who won't go anywhere else in the Linux space. Ever.
In 11.10, you can manually install gnome, and then you get gnome 3, which is certainly not what you wanted (and not necessarily an improvement over unity).
I find that it is a stable solution and allows you to sidestep the Gnome/Unity wars.
Lot's of options out there.
XFCE does a better job. "XFCE4" has been around for 7 years and they provide small improvements but don't make any radical changes.
Unity was pushed out before it was ready. I understand the need to get people using it but it's still not a passable desktop for many people and probably won't be for another couple of Ubuntu release cycles. Hopefully once it stabilizes they won't repeat the mistakes of GNOME/KDE and decide to change everything again.
This is inevitable when you either set your sights too low (and after a while realize that your current architecture will never get you where you need to be) or develop too slowly (so by the time something is finished the market has moved on).
> Unity was pushed out before it was ready.
You would think that by 11.10, released a month ago, they would have something release-quality. I think it's just the design that people don't like. Canonical has the resources to fix bugs, but they don't necessarily have the desire to fix design defects.
It's funny that problems that have bedeviled the Linux Desktop haven't really changed over the last 10 years. Poor release QA, "almost there" hardware support, painful transitions from X to Y. Nothing ever really stabilizes.
Unity, on the other hand, is the exact replica of Gnome 3, just not as polished graphically. They both have this weird "buaaa mode" where you're typing instead of clicking on a shortcut, they both destroy virtual desktop functionality and if anything, they're basically cloning OSX bad habits: instead of switching between windows on Alt+Tab they're now switching between apps (across virtual desktops!).
So I would suggest that the opposite is happening. Instead of staying in the "new place" Ubuntu is basically trying to get on the road and follow OSX.
Frankly, I'm not even sure it's possible to "drive off teh road to a new place" when it comes to desktop UX without a significant change in hardware: we're still using basically the same computers as we did in late 80s, even the screen real estate hasn't improved much.
Sure it is.
3d file managers[1] never took off. With todays hardware they'd be a lot nicer to use.
Users have been limited to quite small (sorry about my incorrect terminology here, I'm going to go read some man pages) total virtual screen size within which their windows were located. Now graphics cards, and system memory, are huge; this leads to possible radical new interfaces.
Imagine a "Zoomable UI" - documents open in their own full size window; any document opens in its own window tiled next to it; the user can zoom in as far as they like to do detail work, or out as far as they like to organise all these documents. Programs would open toolbars in their own windows. Any toolbar would be able to work on any document (because it's Unix, so all input and output is text, right?) - but the result wouldn't necessarily make any sense.
That's not particularly radical; tiling WMs exist already.
[1] (http://nooface.net/3dui.shtml) {my favourite is FSV.}
Aza Raskin's THE stuff is pretty interesting in that regard, there are varieties of menu systems, where do menus appear, how do they appear? (I've always thought the pie menus were cool) And of course how do you switch between manipulating the space (app selection, desktop, themes) and manipulation within the app itself.
Strangely (for me at least) is that the Windows 8 previews have some interesting stuff in them (after years of not changing much) more interesting in concept than some of mainstream UIs on Linux. Again not that a tiling WM is particularly new but the blending of the icon/status bar presence/window/launcher feels pretty fresh.
I do run Kubuntu on my desktop but I continually try out different schemes with virtual machines when I can to see where things are going. My netbook runs XFCE which reminds me in a strange way of Suntools.
The screenshots of FSV on that site show me a 2D interface that's been extruded into cubes and displayed isometrically. Usable, but the 3D is superfluous. All the other 3D file managers appear utterly unusable.
What on earth is going on in this screenshot of Tactile3D: http://www.tactile3d.com/overview/screenshot_orbis_9.jpg?
Or this one of TDFSB: http://www.determinate.net/webdata/img/TDFSB2.jpg?
But with modern hardware, and with a better HID, and with a better analogy / paradigm / idea, they could come back and be useful.
I don't know what that meaningful use for the 3rd dimension would be, but I'm pretty sure there is one.
(The tactile screenshot is awful. It appears to show a bunch of stuff ordered by name. The TDFSB2 screenshot shows someone "walking" through their home/leo/jpeg directory, with all the jpegs being displayed. Remember that these are tinkering toys, and that things like mice or GUIs were initially weird and horrid. Maybe getting a bunch of smart people working on them would generate useful results?)
Window management certainly has benefited from using the GPU, e.g. with real-time thumbnails of applications and enhanced virtual desktops. But these are solutions that were enabled by the GPU, not features that were tacked on simply because GPUs were around to use.
If someone comes up with a new and revolutionary file management paradigm, or even just a useful innovation on the margin of existing file management, and it's one that 3D makes sense for, then great. Until that happens, it's a solution in search of a problem.
We already know that one of the most powerful methods for creating a lasting memory of intangible items, the "memory palace", is basically walking around a three-dimensional space.
It seems clear that there is a possibility here to create a fully-functional three-dimensional metaphor. However, it is not an evolutionary step. It would be something so foreign that it would be better to teach it to people who never managed files before. And to be honest, with apologies to Dropbox, the numbers of such folks is back on the rise because file management itself is an increasingly irrelevant task, not just on iOS but on Chromebooks and just about any non-desktop computing device.
And so although there is a very interesting potential, I have to wonder if the quest for better file management is even worth fretting over anymore. Hasn't being "ready for the desktop" largely been an exercise in skating to where the puck has been? Maybe a revolutionary file manager would have been strategic ten years ago, but now?
So I welcome Canonical's focus on touch devices. Yet I'm concerned about the sheer inertia of maintaining an identity, in being Ubuntu, on a significantly different platform. We saw how well the Windows Tablet PC succeeded at being Windows, and in so doing lost the platform. I sure hope that's not what happens here.
If you're looking for a quotation from your favorite author (assuming Google wasn't helpful), you're not going to nevigate a three-dimensional conceptual space to find it. You're going to first iterate through your list of bookshelves, and find the appropriate shelf (assuming you have lots of books and sort them into shelves e.g. by topic or alphabetically). Then you'll sort through the books on the shelf and find the book you need. Then, you'll go through the chapters of the book, etc.
The mind organizes information into categories, and groups categories within categories. Visual mnemonics are great, but they help us to find the specific item we're looking for at the appropriate level of abstraction, and they work just as well in organized, two-dimensional spaces as well as three.
I agree that there may be a lot of potential for some major breakthrough, but having to remember that your Economics paper is stored in an inventory slot in a chest in the inn in that logging town outside Stormwind isn't it.
This is THE reason why I will not touch gnome-shell/unity. Too bad, because I could get used to most other stuff (except unity's menu bar on top) and I believe it has potential. Multiple displays and virtual deskops are a minor annoyance that can be improved.
I used mint for a couple of months, the custom search engine came back every time I updated a browser, and it was very annoying to reset settings. It was a deal breaker for me.
The problem isn't so much Google. I like Google, but the custom search is not as good as vanilla Google. Currency conversion doesn't work, the calculator doesn't work, google maps doesn't return it's places on top of the results... non of Google's enhanced features are functional.
There's a quick search from the start menu which uses custom search as well, and this seems impossible to change.
Our goal is to give users a good search experience while funding ourselves by receiving a share of this income. Search engines who do not share the income generated by our users, are removed from Linux Mint and might get their ads blocked.
Wow, that is insane... With that sort of mentality, the next logical step is to gain market monopoly, pre-install a version of adblock with custom filters, and start charging the entire Internet to show ads.
And I was all set to install Mint tonight.
I don't begrudge them the right to manage their distro how they want, but I really hate a distro messing with my browser and search like that.
So no, I guess.
Damn.
One is called choice, the other is called blackmail.
While people argue over distributions, Gnome 3 is the silent winner. You may not see it now, but in ~2 years the choice of distribution will be mostly meaningless. Because finally: Linux is going to be standardized through a unified interface - both beautiful and stable. In fact, in 2 years the only reason people will still be running other operating systems, is because those have the app marketplaces. Why is that? MacOS is already getting cheaper each version, they do not intend to make money with it anymore. It doesn't make sense either, nobody wants to pay more than once for something, and by that, I mean that people expect to run Windows or MacOS on their phones, tablets and everywhere without having to think about something as pesky as a licence. Windows will make money by selling applications and appliances in their Windows Store, it's the freemium model we know from games. In fact, they will make more money than before. Most people don't even know that Office is a paid application suite, now they actually get the opportunity to pay for it. This may seem small, almost idiotic to us programmers but people can't pay for something they don't see. So here we have it again: Linux is going to be behind, but not because it lacks functionality, ease of use or beauty. It will lack apps.
The great thing about Linux – its killer feature compared to Windows or Mac – is that it's open-source, meaning each user is free to tweak it however they see fit. Ubuntu has been an interesting experiment in whether such an open-source system can also be designed to be competitive with a casual market; they're finding that the casual market's extremely difficult to penetrate, and so they're trying to innovate and make something genuinely appealing. I'm curious to see if they succeed or not, but it doesn't really matter either way, because Linux remains the turn-into-anything choice for people who need (or just want) more control over their computing environment.
As Ubuntu makes drastic changes, a new iteration of Linux becomes the go-to for people who want a conventional installation. Maybe it would have made more sense for Ubuntu to remain the conventional brand and for a newly-branded brand name to be the one fiddling with Unity, but Ubuntu's already got a name for itself and Shuttlesworth wants to take advantage of it. I think it's beautiful how Linux is capable of branching and splitting so painlessly. I don't use it myself, but that's okay – Linux doesn't need considerable market share to remain the valuable tool that it is.
You've nailed it for me with that quote. Thanks. Points up the difference between commercially packaged OS and a free (ish given Ubuntu's binary blobs) one.
Desktops succeed because they're consistent. Possibly the most important thing is to have a consistent API. X at this point is venerable. Nascent Linux desktops come complete with cruft. Lots of cruft.
Honestly I can understand why Canonical wants to start again (Wayland, Unity, etc). Even more honestly, I just don't see adoption of any Linux desktop going much above 1%.
I have a 6 core Xeon with 24GB of RAM on my desktop and Ubuntu still feels sluggish. Go down to 2 cores and 4GB of RAM and I'd have a better experience with either OSX or Win7.
Also, I have no freaking idea how your Ubuntu feels sluggish. Being in Ubuntu on my Quad/8GB is vastly faster than being in Windows.
I've discovered recently that its the video hardware and how that interacts with the precise (sic) choice of graphics driver that governs Unity speed.
cletus: you can test my hypothesis by logging in with the Unity 2d session and seeing if the UI becomes more responsive. Scaling (super-s) will be 'ragged' without 3d effects but should be faster.
drivebyacct2: what is your graphics card and what driver? I need a new desktop box soon myself...
I'm giving Unity a try and I have to admit its a little fussy and busy. My fallback is Debian with a tiling window manager (dwm) so I've been going in the 'menuless' direction for some time.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/763005
There is a series of known bugs where the window manager picks the wrong refresh rate resulting in choppy animations.
I noticed that this happens consistently with all compositing window managers (compiz, xfwm4, mutter) except kwin.
Disabling VBlank syncing may help. The bug report above has instructions to disable VBlank syncing with Compiz/Unity.
If you are using mutter (gnome-shell) you can put this line in /etc/environment, restarting your X session afterwards
export CLUTTER_VBLANK=none
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-restricted-m...
The people interested in making Unity/Gnome 3/etc aren't the people interested in making ratpoison.
I wish desktop Linux would look a lot more like Rails 3: a "sensible defaults" stack that is ready-made for picking up and using, but with the ability to easily swap out SuperFriendlyDesktop for MyBadassTilingWM, the same way I might swap out ActiveRecord for DataMapper.
Of course, every distro thinks they're that, or are trying to be that. The problem is that there's no agreement on those defaults, partly because none of them are good enough (partly because they're no agreement, and around and around we go...)
The problem we're seeing with fragmentation isn't choice per se, but rather what we're seeing proven over and over again is that everyone trying to create their own "friendly" desktops results in none of the projects getting enough traction to get over the hump.
Some tweaking tools are around anyway and more will come with time. Gnome shell extensions are pretty good and they'll mature with time.
When I use OS X, I do miss the NeXTSTEP menu bar. I do wonder how much research is going into large screen UIs these days. It seems like we need someone to concentrate on the workstation again.
With Aero Snap in Win7 and multi-mon taskbar in Win8, MS seems to finally start supporting some of these features.
OSX is busted on the 27" iMac. I know because I own one. OSX needs Win7-style window docking so bad... I spend way too much time managing windows on the 27" iMac.
I really think going back to the NeXT window bar would fix a lot of my hatred.
Debian, anyone?
I think part of what is happening here is that some number of people who got started in Ubuntu, as their first non-Windows OS, take it for granted (thus get outraged at change) but now feel the 'growing pains' of someone who wants to get more technical. Since their heads aren't where they were when they started with Ubuntu, it isn't as suitable for them any more.
Canonical has done great things to make Ubuntu Just Work. It works great out of the box under most virtualization solutions. It's also one of the only distros that has done away with most font bugs in Linux, for example. At least Linux Mint DE still has many of those - I tried it briefly after the Ubuntu 11.10 debacle.
The outrage is there because Canonical is actively breaking workflows that used to work, in other words, forcing users to spend time tweaking their system instead of being productive. That's a recipe for disaster and user outrage. Just ask the Firefox devs :-)
if people can't install a single package, i don't think debian is for them.
Then I stepped back and thought for what I'm needing or want a desktop: automounting + wifi.
For automounting I'm now starting 'thunar --daemon &' in my '.xsession', and for wifi and it's config I'm using 'wicd' and otherwise just XMonad.
And best of all, it's not going to pull the UI rug out from under you at a moment's notice.
So when a default changes away from something designed to look like Windows XP, I do not get emotionally scarred. I gather this is unusual, however, and Ubuntu's user base consists mostly of people who are terrified of package managers and can't abide anything except an XP ripoff GUI.
Maybe someone should start a new distribution which is premised on providing Ubuntu 8.04 in perpetuity.
GNOME 3 most definitely "pulls the UI rug" with massive, controversial changes from previous versions. XFCE has yet to do anything like this.
How to install gnome-classic on Ubuntu 11.10
# apt-get install gnome-session-fallback
# cd /etc/lightdm # gedit lightdm.conf change user-session=gnome-classic
hold down the alt key when right clicking the menu bar to add frequency and system monitor applets.
I went through this same stuff recently, tried xfce for a while, finally gave Gnome Shell a week and have grown to like it. I don't miss 2.2 anymore.
What, are they gonna stop making it based on Linux and move to something that can't run Gnome?
The only reason I don't use unity is that it doesn't handle multiple monitors correctly on my desktop. Otherwise, I find it satisfactory. I approve of a new design which tries to keep clutter off my screen and tries to be keyboard-driven, and I approve of compiz
Yeah, that's what I meant - you don't have to switch distros, which necessitates a reinstall.
The real problem I have with Unity is the lack of a Focus-Follows-Mouse setting. Possibly there is some hidden settings I could change, but that's a deal breaker. Even Windows7 has a registry setting for this I use.
I installed a different windows manager on 11.10 and login with the user default from the login screen, wasn't that big a deal. I load AfterStep, but it's kind of a cluster out of the box and I'm thinking of going to something else. Back in the day spending hours getting my window manager running exactly 'so' wasn't a big deal, but it's not so fun after a decade.
Because they guessed that not many users would switch to Unity if they can keep using a Gnome-2-like. But they _want_ them to switch to Unity so they have to basically force them by forcibly removing the Gnome-2 option.
If you're going to run linux on a tablet-sized device, why not just use Android? It has an existing application store(s), and more importantly an existing userbase.
Look at WebOS, if there's any competition out there to compete with Android or iOS WebOS would be the best option. From everything I've seen and heard it is quite fantastic. If not slightly buggy and a little slow. It wasn't executed well by HP or Palm but there's obvious potential.
I figure, if Palm and HP can't compete with Android and iOS, there's no way Ubuntu is going to do it.
I'll happily be proven wrong if they do, but I just can't see it.
I agree with you that it's doubtful, but if Ubuntu doesn't do it then I just don't think it can be done - Fedora and Debian aren't even going to try and most other distros don't even have the resources to start.
I know that Android is built on linux. But I don't see that as being hugely important. It's about the interface and the "mindshare" of the users and particularly the developers if you want to have a solid app selection for those users.
There's going to be a huge issue with ANY new platform. It's the chicken and the egg all over again.
Apple created a platform and got a bunch of users interested because the product was so mindblowingly refreshing amid all the crap phones available to consumers at the time. While applications weren't available from the get go, the users loved the phone despite the lack of apps.
When the app store was made available in the second iOS release allowing developers to make applications for those phones it effectively bypassed the chicken and egg problem.
Take a look at WebOS. It was unique and refreshing although not mindblowingly refreshing like the iPhone/iPad were. Thus, it's userbase was small and it's developer base even smaller. Developers wouldn't look at the platform because there weren't enough users. Users won't look at it because of the lack of applications.
Many of the original iPhone purchasers were tech savy people. They were the only people willing to spend $500-600 on a phone. People always ask those tech savy people for advice. Those tech savy people say "I love my iphone and here's why." But the same didn't happen with WebOS because the tech savy people wouldn't buy the device because it lacked apps. At least, not until the TouchPad hit $99 anyway.
What makes you think Ubuntu has a chance here? Seriously. Granted, I will give you one thing about Ubuntu and that's at least that they're trying to provide a consistent experience. Which is assbackwards from Linux in general with the Gnome, KDE, Enlightenment, Xfce, XMonad blah blah blah. Sure, those give you choice. But on a tablet or phone, choice isn't always a good thing, at least not the same level of choice you find on a desktop.
But I just don't see Ubuntu as a possible threat to anything here at all. As someone else already mentioned, if someone wants a tablet OS, just fork Android and run with it. At least you have a working base for something that's already seen success. You can mold it into something unique like Amazon and B&N did. I don't think Ubuntu can compete.
A key is how to monetize content delivery and search results. I don't see what Unity/Ubuntu adds that iOS and Android don't already have
Not present on Android and certainly not on iOS.
But you probably don't value that if your concern is how to monetize content delivery.
From my opinion, the alt+tab functionality is an improvement, the app/docs search works great and the overall look and feel is smooth and fine.
I do not pay too much attention whether my active apps are represented as rectangles in a bottom bar or as lighting dots on a left bar.
In general, when preaching about the ability to choose it is also include the ability to choose not to use gnome and use something new.
Ubuntu/Canonical/Shuttleworth owes me nothing, seriously, they have been providing me the entire Ubuntu distro platform and infrastructure for free, and in the last year alone, I have installed Ubuntu on about 500 network appliances I provided to my customer.
I, and perhaps every Ubuntu other users, owe to "Ubuntu" more than Ubuntu owe to us, so all this rant and complaining gets to my ears as a spoiled child complaining to his mama.
Bottom line, my vim is the same vim, my chrome is the same chrome and my Konsole is the same, oh, sorry, it is a bit different and better now, because I set "Ubuntu Mono 11pt." as the default font.
As for the alt+tab functionality.. well, if you are used to OSX and its third rate window management (can't move or resize windows without aiming at a tiny bar or handle?) and broken virtual desktop implementation, then maybe this kind of impoverished behavior is a welcome change. Since I have OSX experience, global menu's aren't a big problem for me, except when they are hidden by default and show up on different screens depending on window location. An interesting compromise for multi-monitor users, but mystery-meat menu decision is mind boggling.
For people who have now had ~16 years of window-centric keyboard navigation, having no good muscle-memory way to switch among 3 windows in 2 different applications is a nightmare. Having alt-tab slide your entire desktop over is just an insult on top of that injury. We use exact same set of tools (vim, chrome, and a terminal), but you must only ever use one window each; I can't imagine how you could tolerate the new app-switcher's behavior otherwise.
Your point about the only change being the font is also interesting, since in Ubuntu 11.10 you cannot change your fonts (or any colors on your theme, or gtk2 themes which a majority of apps will still use) without installing some third party tool with a terrible UI that looks worse than anything has since gnome-2 was released. The terminal is the only program that provides a UI for changing it.
In general, I agree with the posts in this thread that say you can massage the XFCE desktop into a worse version of what gnome-2 was about 3 years ago. After trying very hard to get along in Unity and 11.10 (gvim freezes for 30 seconds on start-up if you have installed foreign language packs, a bug fedora fixed about 9 months ago but persists in ubuntu), I've given up am using XFCE w/ Compiz (which doesn't work that great but is usable) until I find a weekend where I can ditch it for something else.
The part that's sad is that I did not find Gnome3 to be much better than Unity; it still has the same "enhanced" (broken) window/app collection which I find completely unsuitable for doing real work without encountering incredible friction. So for me (and probably others), Gnome3 has joined KDE4 as some unusable tangent, essentially killing off systems I was very happy and productive with. Gnome2 is a temporary fix; it's a dead end. XFCE still feels very spartan; in the past 3 years Gnome2 has got better and better and XFCE has barely moved. Hopefully, someone (maybe Mint, or maybe the ElementaryOS guys) will raid the remnants of Gnome2 come up with a system that has a living development path.
Ubuntu more than any other has tried a bit of everything. I've long settled on the Xfce version called Xubuntu. So after trying Unity for a couple of hours after installing the recent Ubuntu I could just install "xubuntu-desktop" and be done with it, back to my trusted experience.
Interestingly, many users seem to settle on the default experience and then feel cheated when it changes to something they don't like. Users coming from Windows found home in some version of Ubuntu. Then felt cheated when it changed some more.
Experienced users have all of this baggage, all the learning they have undergone... But the Linux distros namely Ubuntu want to try to make something for people who have barely used a computer, pushed by partners like Dell and so on.
Windows too has changed a lot throughout versions. The lucky ones kept on using Windows XP.
(EDIT): I forgot to mention, I also don't think changing UI will affect Canonical because of past history with it. Facebook has a mass of complaints every time ot changes, but it's still growing every day. The two examples don't entirely match up, but I think the same will apply to Canonical.
To me this feels a bit like what Opera has churned through - first you pay; then you pay to get rid of ads (or not); then it's got great CSS (which is rigidly compliant but makes some sites look weird); then it's free; then it's got versions for mobile technology; then it's got social stuff built in; etc etc.
Opera is a great browser. Unfortunately, not many people know that it's a great browser, because they use IE or Safari or Ff or Chrome.
Facebook does get a lot of criticism from users when it changes UI. I think the difference is that you only read that if you're already using Facebook. All the furore about $LATEST_CHANGE_IN_OS is written on blogs, and that gets read by people trying to decide whether they're going to go for some Linux distribution.
Many Linux distributions aren't very good at "elevator pitches", and most users are too lazy to plough through a bunch of wiki pages to find out just why Mandriva is different from Mageia.
Operas has very good mobile market share, i.e. where it matters now. They executed well on that space.
Whatever advantages they have on desktop (questionable IMHO) don't seem to be compelling or strong enough to win users over. And just like everyone else, they now have to fight the Google Chrome advertising juggernaut.
What? Have you tried handing a laptop running Unity to someone used to Windows 7 and asking them to complete a few tasks?
I wish Ubuntu well. Wouldn't a customised GUI stack including Wayland and Unity be great? BUT like Windows it isn't!
Its easy to understand why ... those markets are growing quickly. And Microsoft is going in the same direction with their Metro look-and-feel.
Gentle iteration (改善) is fine, and complete overhaul is fine, but the combination of killing off the old version and introduction of workflow-breaking new versions; with a supposedly community driven project ignoring many users has been very frustrating for some users.
Unity Unity 2d
You can install other desktop packages from the repositories of course.
I agree however that 11.10 has been a nightmare as many useful (but not hardcore) features have been removed from the UI of many packages for reasons such as "casual users are unlikely to need this". This is the problem that is likely to get me looking else where for distr.
I originally started using Ubuntu for the driver support (after a while you want to work rather than compiling everything and editing files in /etc, which means you either roll your own de facto distro or you switch to something which has an 'out of the box' workability).
I don't have any issue with a distro refining the user experience, trying to appeal to a more general market. However, the initial Unity was such a half-assed, buggy release that my confidence in the maker of Ubuntu was destroyed.
Pissing off base/sophisticated users in attempt to attract doesn't look like a good omen for future success.
But left taskbar and being unable to integrate Docky with Compiz effects beauty it's a continuous pain
If one distro makes a change you really dislike, there are plenty of others out there to try.
Changing OS is a pretty big deal but it's nowhere near as big a ballache as it used to be, and virtualisation and live CDs are brilliant ways to try before you buy, as it were.
In 11.04 the Gnome fall back just about worked. In 11.10 it does not. As for Unity I can't tell whether it's working as intended or is buggy.
Every progressive update from 10.04 has gotten increasingly slow to boot and respond.
As we speak I'm preparing to install Mint, with a fall back to Ubuntu 10.10.
help fund your project and sell my soul too...
It's based on pageviews as I recall, but that's a decent metric for getting a feel for a distro's "buzz". The data suggest that Mint started to surpass Ubuntu nearly 6 months ago-- not 2 like this article's author implied.
* The dock won't auto hide until hovered over like in OS X.
* I have to search for the app I want to use most of the time. There should just be a whole menu or list
* The dock should be able to be moved different areas of the screen.
I tried to get used to it but couldn't. I switched to ElementaryOS (loved it). Then I switched to Crunchbang which runs OpenBox and I've never looked back.
Ubuntu is amazing for newbies except for those 3 flaws. Its the only distro I've seen that could make a Windows or Mac user feel right at home.
Not sure if this is how your supposed to do it, but I just search for the program once from the dash home, then once it's open I right click on the icon and click keep in launcher.
The dock should be able to be moved different areas of the screen.
did you get the Compiz Config settings manager (sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager)? It has a bunch of settings for the dock (it's not fantastic but it helps).
"Tonight we're gonna GUI like it's 1999!"
I guess if they had any aesthetic sense, they'd probably be switching to OS X...