Ubuntu’s move to Unity is the best thing that ever happened to Linux

http://kumailht.com/2011/11/ubuntus-move-to-unity-is-the-best-thing-that-ever-happened-to-linux/

by kht786 • 15 years ago

70 110 15 years ago

bigfoot• 15 years ago

"As for Unity; its incomplete, buggy and complicated." -- four lines later: "The non geek will love Unity. Its simple to use [...]". The author fails to be consistent even in a single paragraph. Even the post's title contradicts its content.

sp332• 15 years ago

Note the present tense in the first quote and the future tense in the second. Unity will be a very user-friendly system once they fix more of the bugs.

jiggy201119• 15 years ago

The problem is, by the time they have fixed the bugs and made it nice they will spot something else shiny and start again.

So you'll get 2 or 3 nice stable releases before being baptized by fire again.

andyking• 15 years ago

It's been "the year of desktop Linux" every year since about 2006 for me. Who cares what everyone else is using? Just find a system you're happy with and stick with it.

dextorious5• 15 years ago

"""Who cares what everyone else is using?"""

A lot of people. It's called "network effects": if more people use my OS of choice, I get more stuff for it, from support to applications to resources to see it develop faster.

The real question is "who cares what YOU are using?".

Why there always has to be one guy in every discussion of desktop Linux, going "I use it on my desktop just fine"?

We don't care, and it's not what's under discussion. Some people also use QNX or Plan 9 in their desktops just fine. That's not the f*n point.

burgerbrain6• 15 years ago

I care about what I am using, and he cares about what he is using. We don't care what they are using. Any of your arguments as to why we should would apply equally well to cars, but you never see people have that conversation.

jiggy201119• 15 years ago

Urgh, where to start?

Unity isn't going to drag any joe-average users to suddenly want Linux on their PC. It's neither consistent with what their used to nor does it create any kind of superior paradigm to what already exists.

Sure you can browse the web , play music and do the odd spreadsheet etc with it , big whoop we've been doing this for years , it would have been exciting in the late 90s not now.

The barrier for Ubuntu is not really it's UI. It's problems like having a really horrible flash player, poor selection of applications for many tasks (not to mention games). Not to mention other nasties like pulseaudio,networkmanager,dependency problems etc.

Ubuntu is so desperately trying to be a cut price apple, now they want to move to tablets.. Ok so they will have the same problem they have had on the desktop for the last 20 years, lack of consumer applications.

sixtofour• 15 years ago

"Unity isn't going to drag any joe-average users to suddenly want Linux on their PC."

'What comes with the PC at the store' is what joe-average is always going to use. Always. What a Linux desktop looks like and aspires to be and how well/whether it works means nothing in this context. Nothing.

Numbers-wise, people using Linux on the desktop are: geeks (an insignificant percentage of PC users) and friends/parents of geeks (an insignificant percentage the former).

We're like flies buzzing around a very small pile of elephant dung (but it's really good dung); meanwhile the elephant has lumbered off, out of site.

jiggy201119• 15 years ago

Not totally sure, yes there is always going to be a big advantage to whatever comes with the PC. I think if there was a clear sales pitch that could be used to sell Linux desktop as an alternative to Windows there would be enough people willing it try switching to give it critical mass which would then cause OEMs to ship it with some of their computers.

Linux tends to be well used in dedicated electronics (routers, GPS , phones etc etc). We really need to think about what "Linux on the desktop" actually means. What it really seems to mean is a system where the majority of the components are released under a GNU (or similar) license , so that includes the Desktop environment etc.

Let's say for example that apple decided to rip the darwin kernel out of OS X and replace it with Linux 2.6.x but kept everything else as it was would we suddenly cry "woo it's the year of the Linux desktop" , what real quantifiable difference would it make?

It seems that in order for Linux to succeed as a mass market desktop OS it needs some company to plug big gaps (as has happened with android) at what point would the "Linux people" decide they no longer wanted to be associated with it?

jenhsun• 15 years ago

I already switch one of my production PC to Hackintosh due to Unity. I believe OP's just a propaganda anyway.

nextparadigms• 15 years ago

Maybe Unity isn't the best possible UI they could've made, but the strategy is definitely a good one. They need an UI that's as easy as possible to use if Linux will ever be destined for regular consumers.

On the other hand, they might've done this too late. Android will probably be the popular solution on all devices and machines that could have been running it.

jjm• 15 years ago

I held off until couple days ago on installing 11 with Unity and was very frustrated... I didn't want to believe it, but it was way too dumbed down for me. I was almost insulted...

If I want pretty GFX and UI I'll just use my mac.

Yes, you can disable Unity... But the issue for me is a lot of man power will be spent on it. Manpower that could be put to use on other things.

fader6• 15 years ago

I see the "dumbed down" complaint a lot, but I don't understand it. What is missing from Unity that you could do before? Or is it that if something is pretty or simple it is automatically worth less somehow than something ugly or complicated?

For me Unity is far more powerful out of the box than GNOME 2 was. Being able to position and tile windows with the keyboard and having 10 applications easily and automatically bound to a keystroke are huge timesavers for me.

daliusd2• 15 years ago

I consider myself power user. I am developer, I have experience with Windows, Mac OS X, BSD OSes and Linuxes. I have actually tried various desktop environments and WMs (including several tiling managers, I have used awesome WM for half a year). Overall I really love experimenting with software to the very deep level.

I have tried Unity and I really like it. It is simple and it does what I need. It respects my screen estate without taking functionality and clarity. I really don't understand what other power users are missing.

P.S. I don't like that Unity has some bugs but those are minor problems.

ch0wn• 15 years ago

Count me in. When developing, I usually have no more than three applications opened: GVim, a terminal window and a browser. All of them are easily accessible through Super + 1..3. In addition to that, I can move them around the screen using Ctrl+Alt+Numblock. These features work extremely reliable and fit very well in my workflow.

jiggy201119• 15 years ago

Well for one example: I use 2 large monitors to work with and run allot of applications at the same time.

With gnome 2 I can put a seperate taskbar on each monitor and switch quickly between tasks with the keyboard or mouse. I also have another panel with buttons to launch my most common apps. Small amount of mouse movement and 1 click.

With unity I have to drag the mouse right to the far left or my furthest left monitor , possibly scroll through the icons , select the app I want, click it and then I have to select the window I want. Lots of mouse movement and 2-3 clicks.

Another problem I get is when launching a GUI app from a shell script , I load the app but then cannot dock it because it doesn't understand the relationship between the shell script and the app. This means I need seperate icons on my desktop to launch some apps.

daliusd2• 15 years ago

OK. I see how it can be problem with two monitors but aren't shortcuts like (Start+1) helping in this case? While I still see problem with eyes movement. Lastly I'm against idea using multiple monitors so I don't feel competent enough to comment.

Problem with GUI apps from shell script is bug in my opinion but I was not affected by it yet.

rbanffy6• 15 years ago

I use two monitors and I solved this problem by using multiple desktops. Every desktop has one of my "tasks". When I want to see what other window is doing, I move to that given desktop. This way, each desktop has one "context" - Emacs and a development server, a browser and another window to the same development server (screen is your friend), one with various "social" things - IM, Skype, IRC, Twitter - and others with assorted activities (managing servers on Amazon, remote upgrading my mom's computer (Unity is very grandma-friendly) and so on. If I'm ever lost, Super-S brings me everything up in a simple and easy way.

My two problems with Unity: It's too easy to get to get to the launcher when I want to hit the browser's back button and all my Super-related Emacs shortcuts had to be relocated. Now I need a Hyper key.

jcastro• 15 years ago

I have 2 24 inchers and what I do to get my "set up" in the morning is I have all the applications I need arranged in my launcher:

From top to bottom I have file manager and browser, then all my apps that I need to have open on my launcher, so I just hold down my winkey then hit 3,4,5,6 and my mail, irc, trello, calendar all launch, then I'm done.

danking002• 15 years ago

Thirded,

Geeks are coding away at some application feature, managing servers, updating designs, watching some TV show, browsing the web, discussing project goals over skype with team members and other mundane things – all this on a slow day.

I disagree. I have three windows open. Google Chrome (with, unfortunately for my productivity, Hacker News open), Emacs, and a Gnome Terminal (I X forward my Emacs session from my home machine to my work machine).

Even if I did have skype open rather than an IRC session (in ERC/irssi), I don't see how Unity is better or worse than the normal Gnome set-up. Alt-Tab still works. Same goes for other applications that are distracting me from my editor.

What part of alt-tabing and application launching does Unity do so terribly compared to the old Gnome interface + Gnome-Do (I hated the menus, I tab-complete in the terminal, why can't I tab-complete in my application launcher?).

Anderkent• 15 years ago

Alt-tab works, but alt-shift-tab does not - or at least did not work for me when I upgraded. Not wanting to waste time looking for a workaround, I just reverted to my backup and forgot about Unity.

jedbrown• 15 years ago

I typically have Chromium, a urxvt running tmux with 5-15 "windows" (a couple of which go to remote machines), two workspaces of Emacs, and half a dozen open pdfs of journal articles that I may be looking back at. When debugging parallel jobs, I may have a few more tmux instances. I find that Xmonad offers the most efficient window management in this scenario. I currently run it with Gnome3 in legacy mode because all I want from Gnome is the toolbar and session management.

jeffnappi• 15 years ago

I concur, I'm using a few applications - Yakuake Terminal, Chrome, Thunderbird, Eclipse+viPlugin, Empathy and Skype.

Unity took me a while to get used to, but I've found it to be fantastic and look forward to seeing the production release with Ubuntu 12.04.

kitsune_• 15 years ago

I agree, I don't understand the hatred for Unity. I've used Linux since Slackware 3.0 or so...

My girl friend, who is an Apple user, was pretty impressed by the user interface after I installed 11.10 on my Thinkpad.

jeffdavis2• 15 years ago

"I really don't understand what other power users are missing."

With Unity, if I am on a workspace with no terminal, and I click on the terminal to open it, I am warped back to a workspace that already has a terminal open, and I have to open a new window from there, and move it back (with several more clicks) to the workspace I really want to be on. Much different than just clicking on the terminal icon, which worked before.

I'd like unity to work out, and if they could get past the awkwardness of task-switching and workspaces, then I'll go back to it. Maybe it would be best to just treat a new workspace as though there are no applications open at all, and if you want an application on another workspace you have to switch to that workspace first.

Also, it would be nice if I had a way to go directly to, say, the third instance of the terminal that I have open, rather than trying to choose it from a picture.

parbo• 15 years ago

Middle-click the terminal button in the dock.

fader6• 15 years ago

Middle-click on the terminal icon, or right-click and select "New terminal" to create a new one.

lucian1900• 15 years ago

I agree. Especially on my 13" laptop, Unity gives me by far the most screen space of any other desktop environment out there (including OS X), especially vertical.

It has a few bugs, but they're not that big a deal.

godDLL• 15 years ago

On my work laptop I will typically have around three workspaces (everything about a given task/goal in one space), with around three Safari windows open in each, each with 1-6 tabs and a couple of Inspector sheets; some Finder windows thrown in here and there, a couple of Terminal windows per space (some with split screens or multiple splits open in vim), some Vico windows here and there. iChat, Skype, iTunes, Mail and Things follow me around when I move spaces -- they stay hidden most of the time. I will mostly move around with swipes between spaces, Cmd-Tab between three of the most recent apps, and Cmd-` between a given app's windows (or ^W^W from split to split in Vico). When a window is more than a couple of strokes away I'll tile all of the apps windows, or right-click it in the Dock to choose a window from a menu. When an app is more than a couple of keystrokes away I'll summon Spotlight and just move to it by name (or hold Cmd-Tab and trackpad over it).

Thanks to the SSD I don't ever have to wait, or stop to think what to do next.

I wouldn't call this ideal, but I will call the above _the_minimal_ viable windowing environment control scheme, for what I'm after.

How is it that you're so at peace with that glitchy simpleton? (Or am I over-doing it?)

(edit) formatting

gbog• 15 years ago

> The non geek will [...] love the gloss that Unity brings to Ubuntu.

I don't know. It seems common sense that "non geeks" (hear, common people) like glossy things. After all, the Miss Universe thing has some success and is pure gloss. But I think it can also be an observation bias, or the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing.

For instance, we check what people like to watch on TV, but what the people are fed with on the TV is already the result of some presupposition over what they like.

Some counter example exist, showing that people do not always like preformatted content, or glossy interface. Two different cases come to mind:

In France, there was a movie called Etre et Avoir, about a teacher in a remote countryside village. No professional actors, no story, just some shots in a school. Who would have bet on it? Is it not obvious that spectators want action, glamour, movie stars? Well in this case it was not true: the movie has been widely successful.

Another case, closer to HN interest: Is not Wikipedia the most successful (rich) content website ever? Who could say without laughing that Wikipedia has a glossy interface?

So I think one need to avoid clichés and presuppositions about "non geeks". They may or may not like Unity. If they do, it could be because it looks "glossy", yes, maybe, but it could also be because it just works, or because it is cheap, or because it is fast, or for some other reason.

kmfrk• 15 years ago

I also think that he is mistaking "gloss" with "UX that won't make you want to pull your hair out".

Creating a good experience has more to do with creating some good interface metaphors that look good and work well than to just emulate known platforms like Windows and Mac.

jiggy201119• 15 years ago

Entirely agree, I think pherhaps when people describe apple products for example as "glossy" or "shiny" a large part of that is because they like the overall experience of the hardware + software but don't know enough Computer / UI jargon to describe exactly why they like it so they pick up on something concrete that they like such as colours and materials.

It's like if you ask somebody why they find a woman attractive they are more likely to talk about her breasts , smile or legs rather than mentioning things like distance between the eyes, nose shape or cheekbone structure.

ssp• 15 years ago

So I think one need to avoid clichés and presuppositions about "non geeks".

Indeed. And the concept of dividing the world into geeks and non-geeks is flawed to begin with, because non-geek covers so many different kinds of people, like kids, chemistry professors, Belgians, housewives, the mentally retarded, taxi drivers, muslims, the poor, the rich, and on and on. The "average user" doesn't exist (and isn't called Joe).

rbanffy6• 15 years ago

I am a developer and I don't know what he's talking about. Sure Unity is a bit unpolished around the edges, but I barely use it. Most of the time of a developer is spent in shells and editors (and, occasionally, a browser). All I see of it is when I have to launch something and, quite frankly, hitting the windows key and typing is much faster than menueing around.

Of course 2012 won't be the year of the Linux desktop and he nails it when he says we really don't want it. Give me power and stability. Give me power-user-friendliness, not grandma-friendliness.

guard-of-terra4• 15 years ago

There is no indication whatsoever that Ubuntu will be able to reach "average joe", and building a product for audience you can't reach is pretty pointless. The only audience really using Ubuntu is one consisting of coders and geeks.

There's a famous russian chinese saying: When a rhino stares at the moon - he is wasting his spleen flowers.

jiggy201119• 15 years ago

I agree, if they had taken advantage of the fact that their competitors are spending lots of resources on simpler OSs for tablets etc and concentrated on providing the best Power User experience out there and spent the time they spent on Unity building really useful software I think there would be more of a business model for them.

guard-of-terra4• 15 years ago

I can't contemplate how on earth they might reach tablets either.

(Not ones hand-made for 125$, obviously, that one ran Windows anyway).

rsheridan63• 15 years ago

They did (sort of) reach a mass audience through Dell's Ubuntu laptop program in 2007. It didn't quite work out then because Ubuntu wasn't ready (I owned one, it was not ready for prime time). It still isn't, but it's closer. If it was ready, then avoiding the Windows tax would be a good enough reason for retailers to push Ubuntu.

guard-of-terra4• 15 years ago

Sadly, PC makers offset the Windows tax by installing crapware in it. It makes harder for Canonical to gain advantage.

flomo2• 15 years ago

The issue with pushing Linux onto unwitting users is many don't understand it's incompatible with their Win32 software and end up returning the computer. Therefore Dell had to put up a big "here be dragons" page in front of the Ubuntu systems.

If this were to actually work, they would need some sort of huge mass marketing campaign which convinced people they actually want or need Linux on their computer, which is very unlikely. Defining your audience as people who want to save the 5% cost of a Windows license cost from their already cheapass PC is never going to amount to much.

pg7• 15 years ago

I am a geek and I like Unity. It's like emacs of the world of UI's. The first modern GUI you don't need to use a mouse to work with it. I find it very productive.

jiggy201119• 15 years ago

What do you use to work with it? I didn't try it for very long but I didn't find it especially conductive to keyboard use.

Or are you referring to touchscreen usage? How many people are actually using multitouch with Ubuntu?

fader6• 15 years ago

http://askubuntu.com/questions/28086/what-are-unitys-keyboar...

You can launch or switch to any of the first 10 applications on the launcher, resize/maximize/minimize a window, tile multiple windows, switch workspaces, or bring up the dash with a single keybinding for each. The only one of those I remember being able to do in GNOME 2 was switch workspaces.

arocks• 15 years ago

There are two reasons why an average person learns computers and uses a particular OS:

* Even if it is not very intuitive, it is universally used (Windows) * Even if it is not universally used, it is intuitive (Mac OS)

Linux is currently, IMHO, in the middle. This brings up a lot of issues from an average Joe's perspective: some hardware configurations do not work perfectly (especially laptops), time spent in learning an interface cannot be applied in other environments (like office) and some tools are not intuitively named especially for a beginner (what is GIMP? Evolution?)

Just to be clear, I use Linux everyday and as an advanced user I love the freedom it offers. For the latter reason, I don't prefer Unity. Now, when a beginner uses Unity, they will approach someone like me. But since I dislike the unorthodox UI, I might be able to help her. But I am sure a fellow Unity enthusiast would be more than willing to help.

So my feelings are mixed and not as upbeat as the OP thinks.

karterk• 15 years ago

> Even if it is not universally used, it is intuitive (Mac OS)

I often hear people saying that the Mac is intuitive. Is there actually proper proof for this?

jiggy201119• 15 years ago

I'm not sure about intuitive (when I use OS X I still have to lookup on google how to do things) but it is more discoverable in my limited experience. There are just less buttons and menus than there are in Windows, Linux desktop sort of has this advantage too although often many of the things that would have been done with the extra buttons are done with the Terminal.

Also OS X is generally allot more consistent in it's interface than Linux is.

SoftwareMaven• 15 years ago

I really like OS X, but I don't think it is. What I do think it is, though, is more consistent. Apple and almost all app providers do a pretty good job following the HIG[1].

1. http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/ipad/#documentation/U...

rufugee• 15 years ago

Regarding an OS being intuitive...my wife is typically the ultimate test. She's not a power user...she just wants to surf the web, process photos, and email. She also has very low tolerance for UX deficiencies.

I've had Windows 7, Ubuntu with Gnome 2, and OSX Snow Leopard and Lion in front of her. She was ok with Windows 7...it was tolerable, but we hit our first virus soon in and I ordered it off the machine. She liked Gnome 2 better, but it took a bit of getting used. Unity was pretty straight-forward for her...she likes it very much and prefers it above all others. OS X, however, was an entirely frustrating experience. I gave her my Macbook Pro because I was using my Lenovo Ubuntu notebook far more often and felt my hard-earned Apple investment was going to waste. She gave it a fair shot but HATED it. OS X's insistence on keeping applications open in the background even after the last window is closed slowly ate up memory. If two users are logged into the system and simply running a web browser and nothing more, the system crawls...no clue why. But the absolute worst part of her experience was the completely obstinate, bizarre OS X window switching and minimizing behavior. I realize many of you are accustomed to it by now, but she still rants about the fact that command-tab won't switch between all windows, and how minimizing a window requires right-clicking the icon to find it. Anyway, I'm sure there are ways to work around this behavior, but it should give one pause when someone calls Mac OS intuitive...I'd argue it's far from it.

jiggy201119• 15 years ago

I'm not so sure about "eating memory" with programs still running. I'm no OS expert but I'm pretty sure that assuming that app isn't doing anything then it's pages will be swapped out to disk (in essence , quitting the application from a memory perspective) if there are more pressing requirements for the memory.

What is the technical difference between a program that is running or not running? As far as I can tell it depends on whether it has an entry in the scheduler , performance then should only vary based on how many O(n) (or worse) routines there are in the scheduler where n is the number of processes including ones that are sleeping?

I think that measuring swap usage is a more important metric than RAM usage.

andreadallera• 15 years ago

I've tried Unity and I didn't like it. But that was to be expected, since I've been using xmonad for more than a year now.

Power users like myself will always find a way to get their favourite system up and running. I agree with Canonical and their policy of "fuck you, we're doing that no matter what you tell us", since their current user base is almost 100% power users and you can't really grow out of that niche if you don't take bold decisions. We will probably leave ubuntu because of it (I'm already on Arch Linux on most of my machines) but if they manage to attract a good slice of the market it will be a great thing for Linux as a whole.

They probably shouldn't try to sell themselves as a "cheap mac", but that's another story.

cs702• 15 years ago

Despite the occasional glitches, I've come to like Unity a lot.

Unity is invisible when I'm working. It shows up only when I invoke it with the <super> key. It uses screen real estate very efficiently. It lets me open my most often used apps with only two keystrokes (I've mapped <super><0> to <super><9> to my most used apps). It makes everything else quickly reachable with a few keystrokes via <super><a> and <super><f>. It lets me quickly divide screen real estate among windows with <Ctrl><Alt> and the numeric keypad. The next version (12.04) looks set to add many features specific to multi-display setups.

It's great for people who want their desktop environment to get out of their way and prefer to use keyboard instead of mouse.

yummies• 15 years ago

So to sum this article up: 'unity is awesome and will finally let non geeks use linux, but any current linux users should move on to other distros.'

despite how illogical that sounds, that may very well be cannonical's game plan.

jiggy201119• 15 years ago

This is a pretty horrible plan, all the power users who helped report & fix bugs + answer questions on forums/wikis for ubuntu will move onto something else so canonical will be on their own for providing testing and support which will either slow down their release cycles allot (no bad thing). Or they will keep pushing buggy untested software straight into the hands of peoples grandmas.

Newky• 15 years ago

I really want to know how these "non-geeks" are going to get a chance to like Unity. I'm all for bringing Linux closer to people, and looking at the work that Android has done, it clarifies that with a correct marketing and technical drive, Linux' openness is something which can attract a large range of users.

Worth noting that Android for all intents and purposes is fighting a closed, one-device (or at least one brand of device) Apple iOS. Commanding a place on desktops (not sure the relevance of this is still the same) will be arguably a different fight than on the mobile space.

Windows runs on all hardware, its a familiar albeit crappy at times interface. What tells me most that Linux as a viable desktop for non-geeks is a fairytale never going to happen is the fact that right now, apart from a select group of pc vendors, the only way for anyone non-technical to get access to a ubuntu install is to install it themselves.

It doesn't matter if its such a simple install, users are frightened to install a simple application at times.

On this note, I always find it mystifying who all these non-geeks we are trying to appeal to are, I'm all for a slicker, easier to use desktop but why not target it at the market which have stood by and held up Linux for all these years.

supar2• 15 years ago

I have experienced quite the opposite. A lot of colleagues that were once found of Ubuntu switched in flocks to other distros starting with Ubuntu Maverick.

With Ubuntu 11, friends personally asked me how to switch back to the previous system, or to dump linux completely because the system got too slow with updates. And, sadly, that's true: the experience of the Ubuntu desktop, performance-wise, has degraded to the point of being significantly slower than windows xp or 7.

I have witnessed netbooks (decent netbooks running either android or ubuntu with unity) considered as "crap" by several non-tecnical people talking in the building, simply because they don't work "as expected" and thus being almost unuseable by them.

The way I see it, most people expect a standard windows-like interface. I've long stopped being a "go-to guy for computers" so I don't enter these discussions anymore, but that's very sad for me to realize that Ubuntu had everything two years ago for both technical users and new users, while now people simply flock away.

Even at work, I'm seriously considering to dump Ubuntu LTS on servers due to the increasing (unfixed) issues we have on large systems, mostly due to Ubuntu changes compared to debian and/or ubuntu projects such as upstart. Bugs on launchpad (let alone the crappyness that is launchpad itself) don't get fixed, but are simply "waited for" from upstream (either debian or source author).

I'm disappointed, really. Having the choice of the interface would have been so damn easy.

technomancy3• 15 years ago

What makes you think you don't have a choice? I'm running Ubuntu with xmonad, and before that was on xfce; it's super easy to switch. I will probably switch to Debian soon, but that has more to do with Ubuntu pushing nonfree software than Unity.

supar2• 15 years ago

In theory yes, however alternative desktops are not supported. The choice of desktop is the primary difference between Ubuntu and (say) Debian which doesn't worship any. Not that "support" exists anyway, but there's no point in using Ubuntu if you use a different desktop.

I also agree about your non-free software argument. Plus all the useless, additional services ubuntu is trying to push (Apple-style).

Atropos• 15 years ago

I'm probably a non-geek by HN standards, I primarily use my computer for internet, writing documents, media consumption etc... I have been using Ubuntu for 5 years or so and for my purposes it is "like windows, but better": (Practically) no viruses, no strange bugs, easy to reinstall/upgrade/backup. Personally I didn't like Unity and the changes at all and I didn't want to bother to learn / get used to it. Which of course is no problem, since Xubuntu works fine for me too.

Where I don't agree with the author is the image of the "average joe". The characterization is possibly correct if you are talking about non-computer literate users ages 40+ or so. But in the age group <25 there are alot of non-geeks that go from InternetExplorer->Firefox/Chrome, MicrosoftOffice->OpenOffice without considering "gloss" at all.

asto• 15 years ago

Alienating current users (geeks) for prospective users (non-geeks) is always a bad move regardless of what the product is.

jiggy201119• 15 years ago

Very true, Apple does a fair job (mostly) in avoiding this and even Microsoft aren't terrible at it. There's just as many hardcore developers who love their macbooks as there are english lit students.

The idea that you have to somehow have an apartheid for users is silly.

If I trade an economical Toyota for a Ferrari the mission statement of the car may be very different but the basic interface (wheel + 3 pedals) is the same. Apart from knowing that the gas is going to be way more responsive on the ferrari you don't really need to re-learn driving just to switch.

technomancy3• 15 years ago

This almost seems plausible until you realize that Gnome 3 has all the polish of Unity but none of the immediately obvious bugs. If they had simply contributed to Gnome 3 instead of breaking off into their own thing, the result would be far ahead of what they have now.

rbanffy6• 15 years ago

I am not alone thinking Gnome 3 is not as comfortable to work with as Unity. Unity was born because Canonical wasn't happy with the directions Gnome was taking with 3, and, after using 3 for some time, I have to agree - lots of polish, true, but it's not as clean and direct as Unity.

Unity has its bugs. In the end, they'll be dealt with. It's a 1.0 release, after all.

drivebyacct2• 15 years ago

Jesus. A decent, level headed article, ended with the same fear mongering of every other article where the author doesn't like Unity. For some reason, if Ubuntu has Unity has the default launcher, you must choose a different distribution in order to use a different DE. Because a distro's DE is more important than it's package management, community, available random software, etc.

billpatrianakos• 15 years ago

I think this am excellent point. Every time I've seen this brought up it turns into an argument over which features of Unity suck worst.

So normal people have Ubuntu and Unity and the rest of us have a million other options. Hell, I even used Ununtu for development for a while. It was nice for a month but then the novelty wore off and Unity got in my way. But I hope more people realize that Ubuntu is not for you, it's for everyone (if everyone means you aren't a big power user). What's wrong with that?

jiggy201119• 15 years ago

The only constructive thing I take from this discussion is that on Linux everyone has a completely different way of working.

Accommodating this requires either multiple WMs or ones which are very flexible. The problem with Unity is that it dilutes the work available for other window managers reducing the number of quality choices but it does not replace this with enough flexibility in itself.

wildmXranat• 15 years ago

Ugh, that is hype and nothing more. I've been using ubuntu since version 4 or so, and Unity has made me switch the windowing manager. Simple as that. It impedes my workflow and it doesn't even come close to what a simple, developer centric manager should be in my point of view. I installed the WM that comes with Lubuntu and unless Unity changes for the better, it will not be on my workstation.

I can also say, that many developers I work with feel the same way. It wasn't as if we didn't try to get used to it.

gnaritas• 15 years ago

Unity isn't for developers.

mst• 15 years ago

And there's precisely the point: "it will not be on my workstation".

Unity is aiming for the desktop market, not the workstation market.

My desktop is Windows, because it allows me to consume media, browse the web, shove stuff onto my iPod with iTunes, and at no point do I actually have to think.

My workstation is debian with fvwm2.

Ubuntu is "linux for human beings", not "linux for development workstations". This is not necessarily a problem.

hamoid2• 15 years ago

I think the only thing wrong with Unity is that it came without instructions.

My dad, a non computer expert, updated to a recent Ubuntu and wondered where did all the menus go to. He called me saying that he needed help.

Even I'm a power user, it also took me time to adapt. The first days I was trying to do things the old way. For example trying to find the applications by clicking instead of typing. After I realized, I think I'm now faster than before. I was already used to Quicksilver and Launchy, so pressing the start key, typing a few letters and pressing enter feels fast and easy.

I was also annoyed by windows maximizing when I dragged them to the top. No one told me what was that about. Today I realized that I can easily drag windows to the left or right borders for having two windows side by side, which I find very useful.

So I think what's missing is a welcome video tutorial that explains the changes and tells us how to be productive with Unity.

I wonder about one thing though: aren't geeks doing most things with the keyboard? I don't think you notice Unity much if you stay away from the mouse.

molecule• 15 years ago

"I can no longer remember Ubuntu’s release names and numbers. I had to look it up for this article, apparently its at 11.10."

YY.MM of release date.

cavilling_elite• 15 years ago

One of the things I think is keeping any desktop from being "the one" is the lack of true developer interoperability. You can program in gtk or qt (or many many others) but for a single distro your "best" programs span a number of different ways to do the same thing (and many flame wars).

This is the greatest thing about Linux, and its curse. In Windows you have the Windows API, in OSx you have Cocoa. Sure you can add more to the mix but most of it is the main API.

I enjoyed the direction gnome2 was going, slowly filling in the niches needed to create a complete system. Then it seems they scratched that and went with gnome3. I like a lot of things about gnome3, but I wish gnome2 would not be defunct.

The same goes for kde, slowly building a complete system of tools for most users.

Both gnome and kde are the reason people would choose gtk or qt for their development.

What Unity needs (and I am not sure if it is in the works) is a true Unity API. Build apps for Unity with Unity specifics. Of course this goes against the Linux way, but if one really wants "the year of Linux on the desktop" we have to stop being a moving target.

Ubuntu’s move to Unity is the best thing that ever happened to Linux

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