Are Power Users Too Cool For Ubuntu Unity? 798
darthcamaro writes "There are a lot of us that really don't like Unity. Ubuntu Founder Mark Shuttleworth defended Unity today, arguing that even 'cool' power users should like usability and ease of use. Then again he admitted that some of us are just too cool even for Unity. 'There is going to be a crowd that is just too cool to use something that looks really slick and there is nothing we can do for them,' Shuttleworth said. 'Fortunately in Ubuntu there are tons of options and lots of choice and ways to skin the cat.'"
E17 already. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's fine if you don't mind a slightly looser integration of GNOME.
Plenty of eyecandy to spare.
Long time Ubuntu User here (Score:5, Insightful)
But I fucking hate both GNOME 3 and Unity with a passion.
Canonical and the GNOME tools fucked up a good thing that was GNOME 2.
Now get off my lawn.
'cool' power users should like usability and ease (Score:5, Insightful)
>> 'cool' power users should like usability and ease of use
I do. Thats why I avoid Unity.
Unity gets in the way. It takes way to many actions to find and launch something compared to gnome 2.
-1 To Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
No it's just the wrong solution to the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Or just maybe... (Score:3, Insightful)
How old are you??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did I blink and end up back in primary school? Does anyone who refuses to use Ubuntu have cooties too?
And how ridiculous is it to say geeks are "too cool" to use a product. What are you smoking!?!? Geeks love new things that function well and allow them to do cool things. They do not shun these things based on idiotic social protocol.
So take your poorly written crippled little interface and put it back in a dark cupboard, or if you're out of room shove it somewhere the sun don't shine!
I am sick and tired of free software developers thinking that because their product is free (in both senses) they can dictate what I do or do not like, or what features I do or do not want. If you take a feature away, either give me a way to re-enable it or suffer my ire. Firefox devs, Google, Ubuntu...that means you. Apple, Microsoft, you're not exempt because I pay for your product.
I like usabiity (Score:5, Insightful)
I like usability, but usability doesn't just mean that a dumb user can figure it out, it also means that it gets the job done with the least amount of effort and Unity just doesn't cut it right now. One thing for example really nice in Gnome2 was that i could have multiple panels, spread across different monitors and filled with the apps needed for that monitor. With Unity I can't even move the dock thing, let alone place it on a monitor of my choice. Also starting an app: Yeah, for big applications, having the icon click be turned into a 'switch to already running app' is great, however for terminals is awkward as hell and makes no conceptual sense. That's simply not how you use a terminal and the dock doesn't provide any proper way to change that behavior. Menu on-top, same issue, great when you have a small screen, awful and confusing on a big screen one, especially when an app spawns multiple windows.
There are also very basic issues with Unity, such as: Does it even work? Well, right now with my ATI drivers, no it doesn't. It produces counterless ugly graphic glitches and problems that make it unusable.
I mean in essence I don't even get why Unity exists. Desktop environments are not that complicated, you have buttons to click on stuff and they make windows open, hardly anything has changed with that in 20 years. The thing that makes the environment more usable lies in making it consistent and bug free. Throwing what we have and starting a new doesn't make it better, it just makes it different for being different sake.
Wanna make application installation easier? Don't twiggle with the start menu, fix dpkg and allow me to easily install software from third party sources across distributions and allow me to install multiple versions of the same app.
What if we are right, Mark? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mr. Shuttleworth should stop for a moment and think: "What if they are right? What if Unity is a poor design? What if putting a smartphone-ish interface on a desktop computer is a damn stupid idea?"
Once and for all (Score:5, Insightful)
The Ubuntu people better read this thread because I'm only going to say it once more..
It's a goddamn OPERATING SYSTEM!
People use it to start and control applications. It's not supposed to be shiny, wobbly and sparkly. I still set Windows7 to Classic Mode because I don't want it to use up resources for bullshit and the menus are set up sane in this mode. The only thing I somewhat liked about Unity is that you have more screen real-estate, but last time I used it, it was messing up even something as simply as Alt-Tab.
Mark Shuttleworth may classify me as 'too cool' and beyond hope of ever being pleased. But the fact is, I'm a pretty laid back user. The only thing I'm not is a 14 year old girl who wants everything to be pretty or a Mac user who values looks over functionality.
And what the hell is it with things needing to be changed for change sake? I recall most of my friends rebuilding their webpage from the ground up every 6 months, just so that it would be new. It seems Ubuntu is suffering from the same problem. Gnome2 was just fine, and if there was something wrong with it, they should've just fixed it instead of throwing it out the window. I still have to see any real advantage of Unity over Gnome2. All I encounter is a ton of things that don't work. And even if you make the argument that they are only small things, Unity is killing the user experience by a thousand cuts.
Re:Or just maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
As a power user, the last thing I need is for my desktop to try to be 'cool'.
It should help me perform the basic tasks of starting and managing running applications. It should be light weight and customizable.
So by trying to be 'cool' Unity alienates the power user community. And then by taking away the possibilities to customize it makes them install something else.
Re:Long time Ubuntu User here (Score:2, Insightful)
There's a reason why Just Works(tm) just works. Operation, not appearance, is the better indicator of personality.
Right... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Or just maybe... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's why Slashdot still looks just like it did 10 years ago.
Not true at all. I there have been a number of instances of significant degradation of /.'s look and feel over the last decade.
Re:Why Unity/Gnome3/Windows8... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty simple. Marketing does a survey, finds out that 99% of button-presses on a TV remote are channel up/do, volume up/down, and guide.
Correct response: Enlarge those three buttons, move them into the easiest to reach area of the remote.
Braindead response: Make those three buttons the entire front of the remote. Hide all other buttons behind a panel you have to remove with a screwdriver to access.
Re:Long time Ubuntu User here (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:'cool' power users should like usability and ea (Score:4, Insightful)
I like seeing exactly what windows I have open and ungrouped. I like using my horizontal space to display these things. I like not having my file menu potentially hundreds of pixels away when I could normally access it a very short distance away. I liked dedicating launcher menus on a separate bar from my task bar. I like visible scroll bars and I most definitely like having dedicated buttons visible at all times just one click away from me minimizing and maximizing my windows. In my opinion, Beryl/Compiz/Fusion alone offered enough eye-candy mixed with the right options to enhance my productivity while making the experience pretty.
There are very good reasons why I preferred the old Gnome 2.x desktop UI over OSX, KDE, Windows, or anything like that.
Here's a tip Shuttleworth: Don't be a Jobs. Don't think that just because we don't agree with you 100% that we're enemies or a bunch of whiners who are whining for no good reason. You have many users who know what they want, who know what they like, and who know the reasons why. Don't insult us by acting like The King of Hipster Club.
Re:E17 already. (Score:4, Insightful)
See that's the thing: Shuttleworth wants to make it out like power users don't like shiny things.
The fact is polish is just fine assume functionality is there too.
Re:Or just maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're going to use Compiz for your eye-candy at least install the Compiz manager by default
If you're going to take 3 icons to display 'office' programs at least spare one for a menu.
I'm writing this from 11.10. Installed Saturday. My biggest complaint is that processes are allowed to take 100% of the CPU and freeze the user.
Compiz works great once you get 3D working. Unfortunately, when I try to enable 3D, my system locks. It's not my X-session that locks up, but the entire system locks up. My video card is an HD Radeon 6000 series. Not a bad card, but it's over a year old and fairly popular. I've tried drivers from AMD as well as both drivers supplied with Ubuntu. Nothing works for 3D.
Now here's the kicker:
I guess in order to make the system more simple to use they removed the safe graphics mode boot option. Yep! It's gone. My only option is to boot to a root shell, which doesn't mount any drives. Since they quit using the way we used to mount drives, I don't know what drive is what any more. I know that all my drives have long ass character strings, but I don't even know how to get a list of drives any more as "sudo mount" doesn't do shit. I had to look it up on my "other" machine which is a headless workstation running XFCE4. Found how to boot in single mode to remove /ect/X11/xorg.conf and reboot. Unfortunately this alone does not fix the problem. I also have to literally remove the fglrx driver from the system AND remove the xorg.conf file or the system won't boot. Now, remember, kids. this could have all been done in the safe graphics mode of Ubuntu 10.10. I could have also used the graphics mode to research a solution to my problem. Not so in the new, easier to use Ubuntu. I literally used cat to pull up the xorg.log file, looked over my shoulder at one monitor, typing the data in the log on another machine's search box. You know, because this way is easier.
I have seen Unity, in 2d mode of course, and I don't get it. When I wanted to open a text document I clicked on the applications menu, clicked accessories, and found gedit. Or I could press ALT-F2 and type "gedit". Or I could click on the button in the tool bar where I had dragged the icon earlier. There were any number of ways I could easily put this application wherever I wanted it.
Now, I have to move the mouse to the let of the screen. Nothing happens. I move it to the top left... nothing. Minimize my current application and move the mouse to the top left of the screen, still nothing. I have to minimize my application, click twice on an empty area of the desktop and then move the mouse to the top left.. The "menu" appears. There is no grouping or organization. It's just a bunch of icons. While it's possible to add and remove applications to this bar, I have not yet figured out how to reorder them. I have the email app I never use, a firefox icon (I use chrome), three open office icons, I'll never use any of those, and a desktop, window looking icon, which for some reason, I only have 1 desktop, so this does nothing. Still, no gedit. So, I click on the first icon and it pulls out a menu. I see porn view, image viewer, Pan and other stuff I was using to look at porn the last time I had X working. Yeah! That's exactly what I want my wife to find when she needs to look up something real quick and doesn't feel like booting her machine. OK, so there are most recently used apps, and a few suggestions from the "App Store", although they call it"Software Center" and I call it advertising, which is something I've never seen in my OS before. Finally, I give up and type gedit in the box and it appears. By now, I forgot why I wanted it in the first place...
Oh yeah! I wanted to copy the xorg.log file and use it to search the web for answers as to why X doesn't work in 3d. At this point, I give up on 3d, install XFCE4, get it working and configured, then I reboot in to Windows and play Starcraft2 and won't reboot Linux for at least a couple of months, if ever again.
Thanks Mark! Good job! You've taken a someone who used Linux 90% of the time and turned me into someone who uses Windows 95% of the time.
Re:How old are you??? (Score:4, Insightful)
And how ridiculous is it to say geeks are "too cool" to use a product. What are you smoking!?!? Geeks love new things that function well and allow them to do cool things. They do not shun these things based on idiotic social protocol.
Geeks claim to be all about change and innovation but in all honesty in many ways they're as set in their ways as anyone else.
According to Geeks the window manager was perfected by Microsoft in Windows 95 and everything else has been an abomination.
They don't care what the statistics or the user testing show... they know they're right. After all it's been that way since 1994.
Someone below mentioned they disable Aero in order to avoid the window manager using system resources... even though it probably uses 1MB of RAM of their 8,000 MB system. There are legions of geeky cargo cults who still live in 1998 and practice superstitious rituals to make their computers go faster.
I'm just as guilty as the next guy. The reason we geeks never evolve is because we aren't willing to buy-in to the notion that there's a better way. We test the waters but still hold onto bad workflows. If you try to do it the old-way with the new system you won't get anywhere. It's like whipping your computer to make it go faster. You have to adapt to the new ways. If you try to do things the old way then it often is clunky and slow.
We believe that since we've used the system for 20+ years we know the best way to do something we've done forever. But sometimes the old way kind of works but in all honesty they've changed the entire philosophy of how to do something.
I can't count how many times I've tried to work the same way I've worked in old software in a competitor's package. It was horrible! Why? Because I was *doing it wrong*. Once I learned how the new software worked and stopped trying to cram my square plug approach through a round hole I realized that the new system was actually a lot faster when you worked with its philosophy.
Re:Or just maybe... (Score:4, Insightful)
Unity is too cool for power users?
Or maybe it's not just power users, it's anyone who wants to travel the information superhighway, and Unity feels too much like being stuck in a handicapped parking space.
Re:Slackware (Score:5, Insightful)
I was told Gentoo was the distro of choice for someone who wanted to learn Linux "from the ground up". I haven't touched Slack since my failed experimentation with it in '02 - it didn't recognize any of my hardware, X wouldn't use any sane resolutions without massive text file configuration and hours of research, and I gave up on it after a few days of hardcore effort attempting to make it work well enough to even surf the net.
Ubuntu was a godsend in '07 - pretty much everything worked "out of the box" (other than some minor audio issues that I never did resolve, and were probably due to the retarded AC97 hardware, rather than any failing of the OS). '08 was even better. In '09, I felt like there was some regression, but chalked it up to "growing pains". '10 was alright, once I got my buttons moved back to the upper-right corner... but I was beginning to feel some buyer's remorse. I recently tried out 11.04, because I felt like I should; the misgivings were not minor. Unity is damn near unusable, for anyone who comes from a Microsoft background. This is not a good thing, since Windows still makes up close to 90% of the desktop market. I haven't bothered moving to 11.10 because I feel like Canonical has lost touch with their user base. When I get around to being excited about an OS again, it will probably be because I have moved to something with a more stable interface, that actually works, with only minor tweaking necessary (instead of the hellish battle with my own computer that any Ubuntu install/upgrade has become).
I can understand wanting to change things up a bit, to make sure the users don't feel like the OS has become stagnant. What I don't understand is why Ubuntu seems to have become an experiment to see just how much change the users will tolerate with each version before chucking it in the bin.
I can also understand wanting to make OS X users feel more comfortable with the OS - but it should be an option, not the default. Apple hasn't got enough market share for Canonical to get away with making everyone feel like they're trying to use a broken iPhone instead of a PC... and to be honest, neither does Canonical.
Re:How old are you??? (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't count how many times I've tried to work the same way I've worked in old software in a competitor's package. It was horrible! Why? Because I was *doing it wrong*. Once I learned how the new software worked and stopped trying to cram my square plug approach through a round hole I realized that the new system was actually a lot faster when you worked with its philosophy.
Sometimes the problem is the new philosophy is abhorrent. If you have to work with it, by definition you have no choice. But given a choice, why pick the new less efficient system if the old one was better and more efficient? This kind of reinvention of the wheel is exactly why progress is so slow and often 2 step forwards, 1 step back.
You do realise that, combined with the section of the GP you quoted, you have just built the perfect case why anyone who already knows how to use Windows should never use Linux ever. Summed up: learning to use a new, different system makes you slower and inefficient until you master it so is therefore bad regardless of any long term gains.
You have to adapt to the new ways. If you try to do things the old way then it often is clunky and slow.
We believe that since we've used the system for 20+ years we know the best way to do something we've done forever.
You only adapt to new ways if it is better overall. If the new way is moronic, adapting to it is also moronic.
The problem that the GP is arguing is that this whole thing is just a big clusterfuck of "my new system is better!" "No it isn't!" "Yes it is!" "No it isn't!" "Why not?" "Because I say so!" (that last one is demonstrated by your response, you haven't explained anything, you just insulted it for existing and left it at that).
Given the amount of hate, I am confident that there is a problem but morons using name calling instead of stating facts aren't going to change anything. (Use of "morons" is intentional irony, you were probably mad that I referred to you like that which demonstrates the non-constructive nature of this crap)
It's like whipping your computer to make it go faster.
Wiping a computer almost always does make it "go faster", for a long list of reasons, but you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater to do it. This hasn't changed all that much from when I was born except that there is added data and software and thus more complexity for a complete re-install. (Perhaps the one thing that has changed is that the DRM has become idiotic in an attempt to force duplicate purchases, but you can avoid software like that).
The GP was explicitly referring to cargo cultism, the idea that you just do something because "it worked last time" or "I read/was told something that said it would help". The example given was disabling the "Desktop Window Management" service in Windows 7 (i.e. "Aero") because "disabling services makes things go faster and use less memory, right?" (cargo cult) which is wrong since without Aero, all graphics are rendered on the CPU (+CPU% usage) and all window graphics are stored in system RAM (+RAM% Usage) instead of using the [much faster] graphics card GPU and VRAM.
Re:Or just maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
Shuttleworth is deluded, or trolling., OSX's dock is "slick" and shiny etc, and I like to install clones of it on Gnome. Even Window 7's dock is pretty good too, with its window grouping, previews, and built in progress bars gradually filling up the icon..
I don't use Unity because it's an arrogant piece of crap that tries to change how I do things, rather than letting me decide. I don't want my menu on the left hand side of my screen. I don't want default, non-configurable shortcut keys that override some of the same key combinations I've used for years. I don't want icons that I can't add or remove from the panel.
I do like the way Unity streamlines the menus when you go fullscreen. But that's not enough for me to want to keep it. After (if..) they fix the other issues, I may try it again.
Shuttleworth, I loved Ubuntu until you forced this fucking mess as the default interface. I am now using Mint Debian Edition. Honestly, if I wanted an OS that tries to force me to do things, I'd just go back to OSX. I don't use Linux because I can't afford better, I use it because it can adapt to how I want to use my computer.