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vacipr

"Avoid the pain of Windows 8."

Well done Canonical..well done.

Here's a nice alternative for those having problems with the site. http://releases.ubuntu.com/quantal/

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"Avoid the pain of Windows 8."

I've been running Windows 8 since the RTM went to MSDN. I adjusted to the cheese-moving pain of Windows 8 within a week.

Four months into Ubuntu with Unity I eventually adjusted to the cheese-moving pain of Unity by switching to Mint.

Ubuntu has no leg to stand on when it comes to new versions of an OS making unwanted changes to UX.

[Before anyone chimes in here, I know you can set up Ubuntu to work with other desktops than Unity, but IMO there's not really a compelling reason to stick with it when the out-of-the-box experience is inferior to another distro.]

Forgive me, but I don't know what you mean by "cheese-moving pain". Two questions: first, is this a well-known term that I've just not run across? And second, what do you mean by it? (And if the answer to 1 is "no" then, WTH?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Moved_My_Cheese

Interesting. Have you read the book? Wondering if I could use something out of this for clients who fear the change (be it UI, UX, process)

I've never read the book the phrase comes from actually, so I can't speak to it directly. I'm only aware of the phrase "moving the cheese" because it has become a bit of a meme over the past few years in development/IT (this may be a regional thing).

You can read the book in less than an hour, it's not big.

Well, even you'd have to admit that this comment flogs the goat. There is so much goat flogging going around on HN, it's no surprise. Obviously we're lacking a gilded trough.

Same here. Windows 8 is a clear improvement over Windows 7 once you acclimate to the new interface (which you only need to spend a tiny fraction of your time using anyway).

I've noticed that a lot of the criticism comes from people who tried Windows 8 in a VM, where it's difficult to hit the corners, and people who dabbled with dual booting it or using it on secondary machines, without truly committing to learning the new interface.

Not me. I installed Windows 8 as a partition. It was a nightmare. There are four corners of the screen that seem to do different things when you point there. After about two weeks of casual use, I gave up and went back to Windows 7. My head seriously hurt trying to remember (guess) which corner did what, in order to go "back and forth" between the different UI paradigms (which by the way is UNNECESSARY to have more than one paradigm on my UI). I have no interest in the new "tablet" paradigm that's being forced onto desktops. It doesn't make sense. I dumped Ubuntu for a similar reason (Unity was/is awful) - I put up with it in Ubuntu for about 8 months. I now run Windows 7 and Linux Mint. Now you may argue that I wasn't committed to learning the new UI after only two weeks, but you know what? It either works, or it doesn't. I could learn to walk with a warn-out hip and a limp, but it doesn't make it ideal or optimal.

Corners? Yeah, I don't like those either, and I hated Windows 8 at first.

But there turned out to be a simple solution: the Windows+letter shortcut keys. Start with the Windows key (literally), or use Windows+I for quick settings (power, wireless, etc.), Windows+X for power tools, or any of the other Windows+letter shortcuts.

I posted several of them here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4663376

After getting used to those keys I started to like Windows 8 after all. I'd always used the Windows key to open the Start menu on Windows 7 and earlier, there were just some new Windows+letter combinations in Windows 8. Handy stuff.

I'm not saying you should switch back to Windows 8 again, but if/when you do, just go through the whole alphabet trying every Windows+letter combination to see what they do. You won't need those four corners any more.

Hot corners have been in OS X and Ubuntu/Gnome for many years...

I hear you on Ubuntu, I've switched from recommending it as a Windows alternative to Mint. Linux Mint is lovely; too bad I still have a Windows dependance due to a few legacy desktop apps.

I really wish I could use Evernote on Linux.

I haven't really used it too much (i usually use evernote on my tablet), but Nevernote is supposed to work http://nevernote.sourceforge.net/

In my opinion Everpad is better Evernote client.

You can via the Chrome/Chromium addons:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/evernote-web/lbfeh...

For whatever reason there's no counterpart for Firefox, just Evernote's Web Clipper addon and Readability.com clones.

There's also Springpad which has its note-taking addons for both browsers.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/springpad/?sr...

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/springpad/fkmopoam...

I have explored all these options but a dedicated Linux client would be awesome.

Indeed, but lets not hold our breaths. The dedicated Linux client is pretty much Firefox or Chrome/ium these days.

Mint's packaging and documentation is significantly worse than Ubuntu's. There is no reason to use Mint and not Debian or Ubuntu, except that you are interested in Cinnamon (which I have never once found to work)

Right now on Debian, every desktop sucks out-of-the-box - I've been bouncing around them trying to find something that will satisfy my preference for a traditional desktop. As Debian doesn't do much in the way of UI customisation, so this pretty much means every core desktop sucks at the moment without a downstream maintainer nailing it down properly. XFCE is a little coarse though it would be usable... if only it didn't stop my laptop from properly resuming from sleep (other environs don't do this).

I've used Mint's LMDE distribution and liked the desktop in it, but the community around it doesn't seem too big, which makes me a little nervous.

If what you want is a "traditional desktop" UI and you're running Debian, ISTM you'd have plenty of options. You can install a complete environment (GNOME 2, XFCE) or one of the many tiling wm's (awesome, dwm, xmonad, &c).

As far as I am aware, gnome 2 was losing maintainer focus. Certainly right now, it's hard to clearly find gnome 2/debian sid results on google - something that is important when things go wrong. XFCE is somewhat coarse but usable... if only it wasn't the only desktop that prevented my laptop from resuming from sleep. The tiling WMs I haven't installed, but when looking at their webpages don't seem to be traditional desktops - floating windows, ability to put thing on the desktop itself. The latter item is important to my workflow, and I can't understand the religious zeal with which people think that the desktop must be clear these days...

Right. Correction to my comment above: I meant to separate the tiling wm's out of "trad desktop" distinctions: I don't think the tiling wm is what most users think of when considering desktop UIs. Still, I from what I've seen wm's like awesome or xmonad do a good job of maximising screen real estate and make everything keyboard-centric, which saves a lot of time for developers.

XMonad is really great, provided you're willing to spend some time learning Haskell to configure it, which isn't a trivial task. It's in my book a very rewarding experience.

For my part Unity is the first time I have an UI that doesn't make me swear and wish I was back to using my old Amiga....

I installed Ubuntu 12.04 with the intention of ripping out Unity for a tiling window manager, but gave it a day or so, and that was enough to realize that with minimal adjustment to keybindings etc., it was pretty much exactly what I wanted with the exception of the loss of spatial file browsing which still annoys me,but then again I rarely use use the gui for finding files so it's something I can live with.

Stabbing others in the back is no way to behave, especially when they're pumping what the user types in the launcher straight at amazon and closing bugs when people complain that their launcher commands are showing inappropriate images.

>especially when they're pumping what the user types in the launcher straight at amazon and closing bugs when people complain that their launcher commands are showing inappropriate images

That objection doesn't make any sense because those complaints are unrelated to the complaints people have about Windows 8. If you want to say that directly attacking your competition is un-classy, fine (although a better criticism might be that directly attacking your competition is known to be ineffective marketing). But to say that specific random shortcomings of Ubuntu have any bearing on the matter is silly.

I'm making a couple of points in that comment:

1. Attacking your competition is definitely not classy.

2. The suddly introduced shortcomings of Ubuntu are being ignored and regularly hidden away under the wave of marketing from (1).

The "shortcoming" is fixed by uninstalling a single package.

So you are saying Windows 8 is bad means backstabbing Microsoft? Everyone seems to be doing that lately. As far as I know they're not sending the requests directly to Amazon and there are currently 2 ways to disable that. Have you tried disabling metro ? Good luck with that. Also Dash no longer displays adult content from Amazon.

You know how the IE team sent (do they still?) cakes to Mozilla for Firefox major version releases? This is the opposite of that.

They stopped sending cakes once the Firefox team started releasing versions faster to get more cakes from Microsoft.

It may be the middle of the night, but I laughed far too hard at your comment.

Ubuntu BUG #1 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1

Interesting, they changed it form "Windows" to "Proprietary".

Or do I misremember that?

You do not, it once read “Windows has…”

After 8 years of saying "Windows", it was changed as part of the 12.10 cycle.

Lots of people are quick to jump on this "Avoid the pain of Windows 8" comment but people need to relax. Their is something major being overlooked here. Ubuntu is giving away their OS for FREE. $0

Windows 8 will be cheaper than previous Windows upgrades but lets not forget about the pillars of free software and why to support it.

'Free' and 'polite' are not mutually exclusive. The first pillar of free software is not '$0 free', it's 'respect'.

I don't recall ever seeing respect as a pillar of free software. I always thought the first pillar was freedom. Canocial can be as rude as they want, but as long as they do not make it difficult for me to do what I want with their software, their software is free.

Free Software is about acknowledging and enabling your rights and value, both individually and within the community. Freedom of availability / modification / etc are the tools to achieve that. However, just because you give me something for free, doesn't mean you value me and want to empower me. And you can't value someone if you don't respect them first.

Perhaps this is all just arguing semantics, but the idea that motives matter is important to me.

I don't understand how can Linux folks feel any respect for Microsoft after what they tried to do to Linux community a couple of years ago...

"They started it" - Is no reason to be disrespectful or rude. Instead they should show by example how a to act.

'Stabbing in the back' generally implies betraying someone who trusted you. I don't think that's really applicable here: Canonical are directly competing with Microsoft.

For what it's worth, that slogan seems to have been changed now: the home page now just says "Your wish is our command." Though I'm sure critics will still see plenty of irony there.

Avoid the trainwreck that is Metro by hopping onboard the trainwreck that is Unity!

Sorry, that slogan is a bit much given how bad the recent Ubuntu releases have been.

Starting drama with the competition is a good move, it makes your company/product relevant, causes people to talk about your company/product, and shows that your product/company has personality. The term "Avoid the pain of Windows 8." is not overly offensive and does not lack class.

Trying to use multiple monitors on an Nvidia card and nothing but pain. They work just fine under Windows.

Hmm, seems to be working fine for me, have two going right now.

Same here.

Unity had a few bugs which seems to be fixed in this release but nothing annoying enough for me to switch.

Ironically, I also ran two screens on an ATI card which I bought to support their open source efforts. The nVidia was much better!

Care to send me a description of your setup? If I use the nvidia binary driver with twinview then the rendering is glacially slow. It's fast with nouveau but then I have display artifacts everywhere, regions of the screen get filled with solid blue.

If you only have two, it's bearable, though.

Use KDE (Kubuntu), it has better multimonitor support.

http://brainacle.com/multiseating-with-kde-and-xbmc-like-a-b...

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