Ubuntu Will Revert Window Controls To the Right-Hand Side in Next Release (neowin.net) 171
Following a survey carried out last month, Ubuntu will begin shipping with the minimise, maximise, and close buttons on the right-hand side of windows. From a report: In the survey 46.2% of people said they prefer their window controls on the left-hand side and 53.8% said they prefer them on the right. The decision comes after seven years of window controls being on the left, at the time it had plenty of detractors but Ubuntu founder, Mark Shuttleworth, maintained that the controls needed shifting to the left because they'd be in the way of the then newly introduced window indicators.
design by committee is always a bad move sailor (Score:1)
51% of our users want shit on the left
49% want shit on the right
therefore left is best because a bunch of randos who filled out a survey monkey are best equipped to design our UI for us
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There were always options to be able to move them to the other side. I'm sure the same will still hold true.
If more people want the controls on the right, then the controls should be on the right - at least by default.
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There were always options to be able to move them to the other side.
Oh, good. Because that's not generally the case with desktop environments. Usually
you have to decompile and recompile some binary-ized markup/scripting language installed
in system directories, or use some configuration tweaking tool outside the normal one
that ends up obsolete by the time you upgrade to the next version of the desktop, or
fiddle with trying to figure out which of tens of possible locations for rc-ish files actually work
between three competing "lets put all the options in one place" projects
Re:design by committee is always a bad move sailor (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, no. With Gnome 3 and apps using client-side decorations and the HeaderBar where the window controls are mashed together with toolbar buttons, it's no longer possible to change window close, maximize, etc to the left side without serious hacking of GTK and possibly the apps themselves. Gtk dictates where the window buttons are going to be and what they look like (according to the GTK theme in use). So no more window manager themes in the long run.
You used to be able to disable client-side decorations which would let the window manager draw its controls still (in whatever order you configured it to), which looks a bit funny because apps will have a sort of double titlebar. However recent versions of GTK have no means for disabling CSD.
Trying to engage GTK devs over concerns about CSD won't get anyone anywhere as the devs are tired of hearing the complaints and consider the arguments tired and ignorant.
In my mind, this (client-side decorations) is a huge step backwards for usability, to say nothing of the power and flexibility that has made the Linux desktop so interesting and powerful. But hey, progress.
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AC is right. I am wrong about changing button placement, at least as of Fedora 26. So while I still don't like CSD, GTK+ apparently does allow changing of the order of the buttons, and putting them on the left. In Gnome this is done through dconf ord.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences.button-layout. This setting will change both the window manager used for non-CSD apps, and GTK+ CSD apps that use the HeaderBar. I have no idea what dconf setting you would need to set for just GTK apps under other desktops.
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Which version? And are you using apps with CSD such gedit?
Re:design by committee is always a bad move sailor (Score:5, Funny)
...but the survey had the tick boxes on the left so I couldn't figure out how to submit my vote correctly.
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I say the question is Wrong.
Do you want the buttons where Microsoft Windows has them
Do you want the buttons where Apple OSX has them
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If they're adopting Gnome then they should default them to wherever Fedora sticks them.
Unnecessarily fragmenting the cross-distro experience for the sake of quirky designers? Yeah, nah.
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Re:design by committee is always a bad move sailor (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously they should compromise and put them in the middle.
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Or randomly switch them from left to right, so that both sides get an equal chance.
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therefore left is best because a bunch of randos who filled out a survey monkey are best equipped to design our UI for us
This implies that close to 50% of people will be happy with EITHER option, So why not create a Right-Click menu that allows you to CHOOSE between Left and Right-hand side?
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Giving people options is so last century.
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Giving people options is so last century.
OK, Then... Let's compromise then and put the window controls in the center.
Also, they should be drawn in the shape of a kitten.
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But the Russians manipulated the vote!
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51% of our users want shit on the left
49% want shit on the right
Sure, if you go by the popular vote. The Electoral College on the other hand ... Wait. What are we voting on again?
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It's ironic that they should justify doing this with a poll, since when they moved them in the first place Shuttleworth specifically said that he didn't care what the users thought:
"No. This is not a democracy. Good feedback, good data, are welcome. But we are not voting on design decisions."
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubu... [launchpad.net]
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Also, they took away the ability to even change them in Unity as of 16.04. An Ubuntu dev had this to say when someone filed a bug about it:
"The window controls in Unity are on the left. It is not a setting, it's where the designers chose to place them. This will not change."
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubu... [launchpad.net]
Seriously? (Score:1)
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Why not just make it user-configurable?
It's Linux. It probably is already.
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Old XKCD [xkcd.com]https://xkcd.com/1172/ [xkcd.com]
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is configurable.
It still needs a default.
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Isn't this what themes (of which there are 85 jillion) are for?
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One of which still needs to be the default.
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But why should users care what the default is when they can so easily change it?
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Because setting defaults that the least number of users will want or need to change is just common sense.
I have better things to do than to spend hours changing all the defaults. The more defaults that are right for the most users the better.
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But the vote was 53:47. With the statistical ambiguities inherent in voluntary online voting, that's too narrow of a margin.
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Sure... but the default has to be set to something. 53/47 may not be terribly convincing, but in the absence of better data, it doesn't make sense to go against the vote.
OSX is on the left.
Windows is on the right. A lot more people use windows than OSX.
Also by default gnome, kde, lxde, xfce, and fluxbox are on the right.
I just don't see an argument for putting them on the left by default. Most people are going to expect them on the right, so I'd be leaning to putting them on the right by default just from a
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My min/max/close buttons are on the left, too. I don't remember what the Xfce defaults are, since I changed it to my preferences as soon as I installed.
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https://duckduckgo.com/?q=xfce... [duckduckgo.com]
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Did I write "left"? Shame on me. They're on the right, where God intended them to be!
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That's probably how the vote was so close too a bunch of dyslexics all clicked left when they meant right. :p
the only scientifically correct way of deciding (Score:2)
Re:the only scientifically correct way of deciding (Score:4, Funny)
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Bah, I just configure my screen to flip the image vertically et voilÃ!
Now the controls are to the right place.
Is this important? (Score:4, Funny)
I mean really, the right thing would have been to have left things alone.
Here is my question? (Score:1)
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There is, mr. programmer.
Re:Here is my question? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Having to support the system, it gets crazy to ask the person to look for the X some where. Yes, in 2017 some people just don't know how to close a window.
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Some people just can't remember / respond to icons. Tell them to find it in the taskbar, right-click and choose close.
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Things for yourself is always at the bottom
so much for consistent user interfaces (Score:1)
If the controls have been on the left for 7 years, then why on Earth would you change the default to the right for mostly no good reason?
Really, nonsense like this is why Linux desktop adoption has been...slow.
And then, on fvwm, I can set them however I want (Score:3)
But apparently these newfangled "user interfaces" cannot do that anymore?
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But apparently these newfangled "user interfaces" cannot do that anymore?
You can still do it in metacity afaik. But Unity was purposely made less configurable to make support easier. It was a dumb idea and now it's going away.
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That explains it...
All or nothing (Score:2)
Why does it have to be all or nothing? I prefer close on the left and max/min on the right.
Make Them Dockable (Score:2)
We used to have arguments like this all the time at a place [flow3d.com] I worked. We built scientific software, with the UI written in C++ using Qt. The support, and the hardcore numerical solver, department heads used to have heated debates about button placement. Both had good points, and both's suggestions depended on their perspectives, and the perspective of the user base each represented (with support being more along the engineering, and the solver being more along scientific applications.)
The solution I propose
Shuttleworth's decision (Score:2)
They should be on different sides. (Score:1)
Close on one and other buttons on the other side so one don't close accidently.
See amigaos and others doing it right.
Why not both? (Score:4, Insightful)
In windows, I've always taken advantage of the 'feature' from Windows 16-bit days, where if you double-click on a program icon (on the left), it closes the window, so whenever I want to close a window, I just find the closest upper corner, and double/single click it.
You could do the same kind of thing simpler, just by having an X-mark box on the right, program icon at the left, and whenever you bring your mouse near the program icon, have it shift over and reveal a minimize/maximize/close button - and the same on the right, just slide out a minimize/maximize option. Of course, add the option to disable animations, and you're good to go - no visual clutter, but can use it wherever the window is.
Just an idea.
Ryan Fenton
A Stunning announcement (Score:2)
When they forced them to the left, I tweaked them to the right.
Whatever happened to the ability to be able to choose the appearance of your desktop?
I may move them to the left now, just because, you can't tell me what to do. /s
Ubuntu has lost it's "special" feature. (Score:2)
similar controversy ... (Score:3)
Wow. This ranks right up there with the furious debate over which side of the toast should be buttered. Conservatives, of course, insist that it be the side they've always buttered, while liberals, deliberately non-conformist, insist it be the other. Will there ever be peace at the breakfast table?
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No buttons (Score:2)
Some of us don't want any buttons on our windows, and would prefer to have minimal to no decorations.
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I'm not looking for the mechanism, I'm saying there is a false dilemma that Canonical presented between buttons of left versus on the right.
I think we can all agree it would be insane to have the buttons in the center
Standardized UI Actions: Forwards vs Backwards (Score:3)
I can't speak specifically to Ubuntu's UI, but in general, the close/exit action belongs on the left side. The majority of us read and write from left-to-right, and so an action on the left is to move backwards while an action on the right is to go further. Web browsers reinforce this notion with the idea of back and forward buttons (though their placement may not be ideal).
It's an easy, logical standard and allows the users to quickly grasp the likely effect of their action in a pop-up dialog, for example. The affirmative choice goes on the right edge and the close / cancellation / negative response goes on the left edge. This also automatically means there is a good space between the two very opposite operations, vastly reducing the chance of a mis-click. In similar fashion, I always put the save/update action on the right and the delete action on the left.
Why is this not a common standard by now?
Re:Standardized UI Actions: Forwards vs Backwards (Score:4, Insightful)
Because you're stupid and wrong. Sorry, but that's the level you bring the debate down to when you say my way is the right way and why isn't everybody doing it like me. For example let's take your page navigation, the natural sequence of events is that I open a book, turn the pages, close the book. The "close" action is clearly after I've turned the pages and is the last action "beyond the end" so it should be on the right-most side. As for the second example, you're turning a natural sequence of a "yes or no" question to become a "no or yes" question. That is not a natural ordering in English and indeed most western languages.
Truth is, these things happen mostly by convention. It's not really important if they're left or right, it's that they're consistently left or right. And it's more important to be locally consistent, like everybody drives on the left or the right than to be universally consistent like all Fords drive on the right. Which is why when I use a Windows machine I expect every application to follow the Windows convention. If I use a Mac I expect them to follow the Mac convention. On Linux use whatever Gnome/KDE/Cinnamon etc. is configured to use. Those who refuse to follow convention because they know better should be taken out back and shot.
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Personally, I like the title bar to have an icon on the left, with the title immediately next to it (left aligned), because it resembles the way the file appears when viewed in a list of files. Therefore, I prefer the close button on the right.
Of course, the icon and title on the window should be that of the file that is displayed, not the program used to display it. The icon and title of the program should be at the very top left of the screen, on its menu bar. It's an easy, logical standard that allows
As a lefty I am APPALLED (Score:2)
Time and time again Rightists stomp all over us lefties rights! er... uh... I yield back the rest of my time.
Too late (Score:2)
I switched to Mint long ago. Not only does it have the window controls in the right place, but it has a much more sensible selection of default applications, and I can get it with MATE, a desktop manager that's not trying to be an avant-garde tablet interface.
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Why The Fsck Can't you change them by default (Score:2)
Windows control panel let you do this is Windows 1.0!!!!
It's absolute madness that you can't change the window color by default. How come Windows figured out how to add a control panel almost 30 years ago, but Gnome still can't include a built-in control panel that lets you change window color. It's an absolute embarrassment tha
Ubuntu will implement Unity in GNOME (Score:4, Interesting)
I had thought that Ubuntu was planning to just adopt the GNOME Shell, but that's not their plan. Reading TFS I found out: their plan is to use extensions to change the GNOME Shell experience so that the desktop works more similarly to Unity.
Famously, the GNOME Shell got rid [gnome.org] of minimize and maximize buttons completely, opting to keep only the close button.[1] To maximize you snap a window to the top of the screen. There is no minimize, but you can make any number of virtual workspaces and the equivalent of minimize is to send a window to a workspace that is not currently displayed. It's not necessarily a bad way to go, but it's really different from any other desktop environment ever.
The new Ubuntu is going to have a dock, and minimize will make the window disappear the way it does now in Unity, and you will use the dock to re-open the window just as now in Unity.
What about menus... will they be per-window or Mac OS X style? One screenshot (see it here [didrocks.fr]) shows them at the top of the window. Just like Unity.
So the Ubuntu team is going to avoid the needless duplication of effort of making a complete desktop environment, but they will be customizing their GNOME Shell to work pretty much like Ubuntu works today.
I guess I should have expected it but this was surprising news for me. Personally I am still using MATE on my own computers, but I'd rather use a Unity clone than native GNOME Shell.
[1] Note that back in the GNOME 2.x days at Sun Microsystems, Sun paid for usability studies. For GNOME 3.x, a developer made the giant change of removing the minimize button by... thinking about it and talking to two other people on the GNOME 3.x development team. Who needs usability studies? Not the GNOME devs, apparently.
Actual quote: "In the end, I think with GNOME 3 we need to emphasize design coherency and slickness - what is different and better, and that actually is more important than being 100% sure we perfectly meet everybody's workflow." Personally I think the emphasis on "coherency and slickness" vs. "workflow" was a mistake, which is why I'm still using MATE. I just want to get my work done with minimal distractions.
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Wow. I'm using a browser plugin that blocks JavaScript by default, and so the caption didn't appear for me. When I enable scripts the caption appears, exactly as you described it, and of course it appears in the page source.
So, I thank you for the correction. I don't know what Ubuntu 17.10 will look like in the end.
Also, re-reading that web page he does say that "global menu" is one of the things that won't be present; I didn't recognize the term "global menu" but that is what Ubuntu calls the menu at th
Window button controls vs. "windicators" (Score:5, Informative)
The buttons were moved from the right side of the window to the left side because Ubuntu was planning an amazing new feature called "windicators" ("window indicators") which were going to go on the right side of the window bar. These would show, for example, a progress bar for a background task in an app, online/offline indicator for server connection status, etc. My favorite idea: they were supposed to also provide convenient per-app volume control or mute. (PulseAudio does allow per-app volume controls but there isn't any window chrome for it; you have to go to the audio control panel, find the list of running audio apps, and control from there.)
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/333 [markshuttleworth.com]
Windicators... never happened.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/58466/what-is-the-current-status-of-windicators [askubuntu.com]
This announcement, that the window buttons are going back to the right side, indicates to me that Ubuntu has officially given up on ever implementing "windicators".
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ok, i get it, but most of these things could be accomplished by a status bar, i suppose?
The Real Story Here (Score:2)
How did this survey find 10,000 people who prefer window controls on the left?
Or did they just find 10K users who are sick of Ubuntu radically changing their gui every other release?
Make it optional for users! (Score:2)
Let the users decide which sides they want on their own!
Missed opportunity for direct democracy! (Score:2)
Fix 'OK' and 'Cancel' buttons (Score:2)
I keep clicking cancel on window boxes when I use Ubuntu due to being familiar with Windows.
This is a big turn off for alot of users hwo keep closing Windows dialog boxes
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Re:News for Nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you have chanced upon a better story, and you would like us to run it here, please submit it or tip us here or on Twitter? We largely rely on the submissions readers make.
The Firehose is a farce. Submissions there are supposed to be voted up or down by us, the readers. In reality, the "editors" at Slashdot pick and choose what to push to the front page, often injecting their own "submissions" (and commissions, I'm sure). I imagine the amount of voting the Firehose gets from actual Slashdot readers is infinitesimal at this point, but that's due to years of abuse. We don't use it because we know it doesn't behave as intended.
When political, SJW, non-news bullshit is inject
Re:News for Nerds (Score:4, Insightful)
I imagine the amount of voting the Firehose gets from actual Slashdot readers is infinitesimal at this point
And I'm sure you are using the firehose actively and trying to improve the situation rather than just bitching about no one participating on the side lines and then complaining when the default action is that a few people decide on what appears because the site isn't taking an interest in its own future.
You should read the firehose sometime and see what true garbage we get as submissions on Slashdot and then be happy we're in as good a position as we are.
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When I upvote a submission in firehose, I get to choose form "fresh", "funny", "insightful", "interesting" and "maybe". Please tell me, what does "maybe" mean? And why is "fresh" there? And is green better then yellow? Is yellow better then blue?
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I stopped caring about the firehose a few years ago when it was choked with spam submissions, mostly from user IDs in the 39xxxxx and 4xxxxxx range. This was made worse by the complete lack of a karma system for rejected submissions. (Even with thousands of throwaway accounts, many of them would submit spam dozens of times.) Now I don't even remember the firehose URL to see if it's still as bad at it used to be.
While I admit that it is good for people who aren't established /. users to be able to submit st
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How do you expect us to run the stories you would like to see on the front page when you don't alert us about it?
Ummm... mind reading? If you had hired a mind reader on your staff, you could post all of the stories that people want but never asked for.
Is living in reality required or can we all just stay in fantasy world? (CAPTCHA referee, lol)
Re:News for Nerds (Score:4, Insightful)
This.
Is why I'm rarely here anymore.
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The AC is playing tough! The AC wants more politics! Politics everywhere! But just *his* politics - people who disagree or just don't want to avoid the US right wing political bias ticks him off so much that he can't discuss straight!
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Part of the reason is dragging in stories about Trump, Russia, Climate Change and so on. When this site wasn't political, we could check out our political opinions at the door, and come in here and discuss things like Windows vs Linux vs Unix, Intel vs ARM, Apple vs Google and so on. Or sometimes delve into interesting although fringe stories about things like Haiju, Amiga, Minix, WebOS, Emacs, systemd or even HURD. But when political stories are given homes here on /. for clickbait, it's hard to expe
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It's a pity that some right-wingers always want to make politics out of climate change. It really isn't - it's natural science, which is definitively news for nerds. Nerds are a wider group than just IT admins.
It would be a pity of we cannot discuss that - on a scientific basis - just because it pisses off people who put politics above science.
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Sure - how to act on the information given by climate science is definitively a political issue. And my beef is not with people who explicitly come out and say that "we should do nothing, let whoever come after me deal with it, whatever it may be". That's OK, it is honest, but most people - no matter their political orientation - would find that a bit immoral. But it is honest, which I find more important - especially when we are supposed to check our baggage at the door.
What I have a problem with is when p
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In other news:
I brushed my teeth this morning.
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Interestingly those numbers add up to 100% what about the percentage of people that didn't care.
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Re:News for Nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
Even more: they have the code for doing both; why not let the user decide?
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Precisely! While some older OSs like NEXTSTEP automatically had it at the right, later OSs made it more flexible. On most of the DEs that I've seen - KDE, LXDE, Lumina, I've seen them give users the option of where they want it. Why not just let a user select it during installation, or the first time one logs into an account, fix it then & there, and use that until the next time it needs to change? And change it by simply dragging & dropping, rather than editing .login or something like that
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Even more: they have the code for doing both; why not let the user decide?
I'm against this. I think the default experience for what is targeted at a user friendly distro should not only have a limited configuration options but should in it's basic form be presented to the user the same way without the option to change and confuse.
Sure by all means change the entire window manager, but if something looks even a bit like Ubuntu then it should act like Ubuntu.
The same would not apply to something designed specifically for power users.
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Same comment, only "Shit, if I wanted Windows, I'd just go fucking buy one..."
Clearly the superior choice is the middle.
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This is the only relevant post. Let's not dance around it - shit was only ever on the left to be different from Windows.
totally agree (Score:2)
Most of the OSs I had used had the max/min buttons on the right: early Unix with graphics (e.g. HP-UX), Windows, most Linux other than Ubuntu, many things based on Ubuntu (e.g. Kubuntu)....
All because Shuttlecock, and his minions wanted it on the left is a poor reason to have move them to the left. Now, all of a sudden, because of a single poll that is split almost 50/50 (what is the margin of error?) they suddenly want to move it to the right? What gives? The survey would suggest putting it in the midd
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>stand up for what is right
Ha ha ha oh wow.