Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go?

inkscapee writes "Used to be Ubuntu was the big Linux hero, the shining knight that would drive Linux onto every desktop and kick bad old Windows to the curb. But now Ubuntu is the Bad Linux. What's going on, is it typical fanboy fickleness, or is Canonical more into serving their own interests than creating a great Linux distro?"

Re:what?

[Anthony Mouse]

Since when is Ubuntu the 'bad linux'?

Since they put the window buttons on the left hand side, if I remember correctly.

Who's this guy ?

[burdicda]

Every single word is negative
Just like he's being paid
A Microsoft Ad to begin the article
All other articles at bottom of page also negative towards Linux

I say this guy's a troll in the first degree

ciao

burdicda

BLOGMYGOD

[SpeedStreet]

Yet another incendiary post on a site that generates revenue by number of browser clicks. I'll skip TFA, thanks. Ubuntu seems to be doing just fine. They are generating attention with their new UI, the Ubuntu Server release is one of the best out there, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of reasons for people to 'hate' on it since it benefits upstream as well as down. Who's letting this trash get to the default RSS?

Re:Did I miss something?

[rubycodez]

that's just silly, Ubuntu has more desktops to choose from than the furniture section of the Office Depot near my house. I can think of ten other desktops just an apt-get or software center click away if you don't like the default and there are more.

Re:what?

[ArcherB]

Is this a setting, now? Because when I tried it, you had to hack up a bunch of images as well as change some files somewhere. Wasn't really fun.

No you don't. Click here [howtogeek.com] for instructions with pretty pictures.

Or, just followed the instructions I so thoughtfully copied and pasted

Press Alt+F2 to bring up the Run Application dialog box, enter “gconf-editor” in the text field, and click on Run.

The Configuration Editor should pop up.

The key that we want to edit is in apps/metacity/general.

Click on the + button next to the “apps” folder, then beside “metacity” in the list of folders expanded for apps, and then click on the “general” folder.

The button layout can be changed by changing the “button_layout” key. Double-click button_layout to edit it.

Change the text in the Value text field to:

        menu:maximize,minimize,close

Click OK and the change will occur immediately, changing the location of the window buttons in the Configuration Editor.

Note that this ordering of the window buttons is slightly different than the typical order; in previous versions of Ubuntu and in Windows, the minimize button is to the left of the maximize button.

You can change the button_layout string to reflect that ordering, but using the default Ubuntu 10.04 theme, it looks a bit strange.

If you plan to change the theme, or even just the graphics used for the window buttons, then this ordering may be more natural to you.

Re:what?

[Computershack]

That was definitely the case in our house. Long story short Ubuntu went from being used on our communal home built desktop to being replaced by a new Windows 7 PC within two weeks of the installation of a version with the buttons on the other side,

Say what? Why didn't you just simply either change the theme or go into the gnome desktop manager and switch them back? Its hardly like being able to switch them back to the right hand side is some trade secret - shit, people knew how to do that in the BETAs.

Re:what?

[Vaphell]

no, gconf-editor is as standard as it gets in gnome

Re:What's going on?

[vadim_t]

1) avoid acronyms and abbreviations. Everyone is guilty of this, but Linux is worst - do you think /dev/sda means ANYTHING to a Linux noob? Well I can tell you for a fact that it doesn't, because I've been helping one. She didn't even know that was referring to her primary disk drive until I told her (and she's a tech geek in every way except Linux - and yes married [to my best friend, but he's less of a geek than she is]).

There are several things here:

1. It's a device file. Changing names for those can lead to problems with little benefit
2. It is hard to give them intuitive names. You'd prefer /dev/scsi/hard-disk/primary/master perhaps? But now it's long and still confusing. What's a primary master? Or maybe /dev/scsi/INTEL_SSDSA2M080G2GC would be better? (that's what my disk calls itself). This stuff isn't for end users, and tends to come out ugly any way you slice it. Something of this sort was tried before with devfs a few years back. It was a huge pain to switch over to, had little benefit, and didn't stick.
3. As an end user, you're not supposed to mess with this stuff in /dev anyway. The GUI is supposed to make it accessible easily.

2) Program names need to tell the user what they do. Do you know what "Ruby" is? I'd guess a color or a gem, not a scripting language. Windows isn't very good at that, either (Microsoft Silverlight? wtf is that?!)- Apple is much better (for instance, iTunes makes a pretty nice mnemonic for what it does, but they've had their failures too - QuickTime?! The only time I want time to go quick is when I'm working and not under a tight deadline).

This is already mostly solved. In my Ubuntu install stuff appears as:

in the "Internet" section:

BitTorrent Client
KTorrent

Seems pretty clear.

Ruby is something you shouldn't even see really, it might be needed for some program to work, but those are implementation details.