Desktops are outgrowing me, and I'm worried

http://www.granig.io/2012/11/outgrowing-desktops/

by agranig • 14 years ago

27 26 14 years ago

Cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

mhurron• 14 years ago

Is it just me or does it seem like the author doesn't know you can change to any number of desktop environments that will give them all they want while still being Ubuntu.

/Openbox/Slackware. This whole Linux thing is about choice.

agranig2• 14 years ago

It's not about Ubuntu in particular. Ubuntu just used to combine the concepts and tools in user-friendly way without the need to "tinker".

Where do you turn to for a modern Desktop if everything is going the same (=OSX) direction? The whole point is that staying with Gnome 2.x will put you into an entrenched situation, whereas everyone else is moving on, but in a way which just doesn't fit your way of working, and without perspective that it'll ever fit?

dman• 14 years ago

The people who value the out of the box experience would likely be drawn to ubuntu because of its USP - its out of the box experience. If youre in the "I will set up my desktop to be exactly the way I want" then why not start with debian / fedora?

grovulent2• 14 years ago

One of my fears as I hit 35 is just a general fear that suddenly I'll blink and I won't be able to use the essential interfaces that you need to get stuff done as effectively as most of the people around you.

As the OP describes - we all remember our grandparents struggling to use computers with any degree of effectiveness at all. Is that just because they grew up in a time where tech just wasn't evolving that fast? And so weren't used to having to constantly update their stack? Or is it just that their brains no longer could cope.

Even if it is the former - might the rate of change in 20 years time itself dwarf the rate of change that we grew up with such that we'll end up like our grandparents anyway.

This fear sometimes leads me to do stupid things. I bought a nexus 7 tablet - before I knew what the hell I really needed it for. I still don't know where it fits in my life - except for more pleasant web browsing in bed. I've enabled just about every google location, search history this n that - just to see what on earth all this shit does for me. And as far as I can see - I still don't use it as anything other than a web browser.

Is this THAT object that defines my bewildered obsolescence? Are people using these things in ways I can't even imagine that gives them an edge over others in their everyday lives?

I assume I'm not going to be able to tell until some ten year old looks over my shoulder and tells me I'm doing it wrong.

sosuke• 14 years ago

I think you're on the right track, this new stuff is very different than what I'm used too, and part of it is not just the interfaces, but how people are living differently. I don't get certain new social things, because I don't have the social structure that makes them work. So I don't think it is just age, but in how this connectivity has just been a part of life since the K-12 years. If I were still in that kind of social structure I think it would click faster, but the workplace doesn't count yet.

grovulent2• 14 years ago

Exactly... I would love to just experiment with google latitude. The idea would just to have an open social experience - such that if I'm at a cafe somewhere - and I have latitude enabled then people can just feel free to join me.

But I don't bother enabling it - because none of my friends want to (even though quite a few now have android phones). They'll say it's too creepy. And maybe it is.

But you can easily imagine a culture where it's not. Currently - people probably think it's creepy because they are very protective of their social networks - and don't like the idea of them blending. Largely this is because they don't want to be judged by the standards of one group when in the company of another. So they split their social realities.

A culture that found services like latitude not creepy is one where standards are more liberal or more homogenised - such that mixing social groups is less likely to cause negative consequences.

Ironically - if people mixed their worlds a little more then society would almost certainly become more homogenised and liberal. So it's a bit of a chicken egg problem that probably won't be solved until there is substantive generational change.

kenjackson• 14 years ago

I've turned 40 and I already see where my demise will be. It won't be in what I consider tech (gadgets, languages, frameworks, HW, etc...), but rather how to use social networks. I already am like my grandparents when it comes to Twitter (does this message go to everyone or not?). And with Facebook I'm always unclear about who can see what (private, friends, Facebook users, everyone?). And I have virtually no understanding why instagram and pinterest are "must have" apps.

I've seen where I'll be like my granddad and it will be in social networks.

munin2• 14 years ago

> And with Facebook I'm always unclear about who can see what (private, friends, Facebook users, everyone?)

it seems cruel to say this is your fault - Facebook's UI for determining this is terrible and basically only .05% of Facebooks users have an idea of where their messages go (probably).

Udo• 14 years ago

Don't feel bad, it's not your fault. The only thing betraying your true age is the fact that you even think about privacy settings. Most Facebook users have no idea how to limit (or judge) message visibility, nor do they desire to. Facebook also sabotages such attempts on purpose.

For instance, I used to think I got my publication settings down pretty good (by dividing FB friends into groups), but it turns out Facebook ignores and resets your preferences every once in a while for good measure. So even if you belong to the small minority of users who go through the trouble of trying to compartmentalize their message publication, Facebook will override you and enable interesting things like your coworkers commenting on party pictures they shouldn't even be able to see.

munin2• 14 years ago

> As the OP describes - we all remember our grandparents struggling to use computers with any degree of effectiveness at all

I've seen this argument a lot, and I hate it. my grandmother can use computers more effectively than many university undergrads (even computer science students). why? she's been using computers, in one form or another, for forty-five years.

I don't think age has much to do with this. age brings some lessening of cognitive capability but it doesn't make you automatically bad at things. were you good at things before you got older? good news, you will probably still be good at things.

> Are people using these things in ways I can't even imagine that gives them an edge over others in their everyday lives?

Probably! but they are probably also ways people in their age group can't even imagine either.

NathanKP• 14 years ago

Personally I like the Mac OS X interface, and my only complaint about it is that I would like to see more applications making better use of large screens, especially if this "full screen app" is going to become the next style wave to sweep interfaces.

For example making Chrome full screen stretches one tab across the entire width of my iMac screen, which is a stupid waste of space on most websites, and looks horrible on some websites which try to fluidly expand to the entire width of this huge screen. A better user of the horizontal space in Chrome would be to show multiple tabs side by side or even history, with the most recent page in a pane the far right, and the page that you came from in a pane to the left of that, the page before that in another pane to the left, etc.

molecule• 14 years ago

- http://linuxmint.com/

- http://mate-desktop.org/

agranig2• 14 years ago

A reachable version of the post is here: http://www.sipwise.com/news/doutgrowing-desktops/

bztzt• 14 years ago

I think part of it is the new style of desktop/shell itself just hasn't yet had enough time to mature.

zalzane• 14 years ago

I think a huge part of it is that unity is burning trash and the people behind it either don't have any idea what they're doing, or are suffering from the sunk cost fallacy.

Unfortunately after the amazon adware fiasco, I'm starting to lean on the former.

unoti• 14 years ago

My progression was similar, and my thoughts similar, except for this one divergence: Right around the same time that Unity the window manager came out, I needed to start working with Unity 3d the game development platform, which is only available for Windows not Linux. So I installed Windows 7, and now I don't have any more quarrels with Unity and Ubuntu 12. Problem solved! I still use a Mac and a Linux box via combinations of ssh and Synergy. I don't like Unity (the window manager) either, but I'm honestly mystified why so many people fall on their swords over this instead of just getting back to work, or using a different distro.

I installed Lubuntu on an old machine to use on my TV, and it's just like old times on the Window manager, except it uses up to date packages. Why all the trail of tears? The author is willing to install Cynagenmod 10 on his phone, but he's not willing to just install a different flavor of Linux on his desktop? That's just silly. I conclude the author doesn't know about Lubuntu or many other seriously good alternatives to make the pain go away.

jasonkostempski• 14 years ago

It sounds to me like you really just want someone else to pick a window manager, some tool bars, text editor, keyboard shortcuts, programming language, package manager, IM notification icon, etc, and then never change those choices. That isn't going to happen. Here's the good part, you're already on Linux, you have a bunch of good choices for all those things and the only other thing you need to know is that your weird hangup on a desktop being 'future proof' makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. What is your concern? That you won't be able to sit down in front of someone else's Mac OS 10.n Big Cat alpha and figure out how to open a window without seeking help? If you've been using anything but that for any amount of time you'll probably be a little lost, even if you've been using the current stable Mac OS. Apple, MS and now Ubuntu have all made drastic changes in the DE between releases and that's their choice, it is what it is, someone else picking shit for you, take it or leave it. I suggest going minimalist for a while and figuring out exactly what YOU want. Arch Linux is a good starting point if you're interested. When you find out what you actually need and don't have to work around other peoples choices, you will love your desktop again and it will be a deeper love, a love only known by a parent for it's chi... uhh... Just quit letting people with their own agendas pick what you work with for such a large chunk of your life.

mtgx• 14 years ago

I really believe Ubuntu needs a flat, modern UI going forward, because Unity is very heavy on resources even for x86 chips, and is completely in conflict with Canonical's aggressive support of ARM chips. Ubuntu would run so much better on ARM chips if it didn't have Unity, and considering Canonical wants to put Ubuntu even on tablets and phones eventually, I'd say this makes it a big deal, and should be their #1 priority right now.

They also need to do it before 14.04 LTS and before the rumored SDK for Ubuntu is ready, if they actually plan to create design resources for "Ubuntu apps". They need to decide right now what Ubuntu needs to look like in the future, and how efficient it should be, unless they want to rebuild everything 1-2 years later.

The new UI also needs to be inspired by Windows 7 not Mac OS X. The developers working at Canonical might be Mac OS X fans, and using Macs but that should be completely irrelevant. They need to follow their target market, and that is Windows users not Mac users. Ubuntu will never get much market share by being installed on Macs and replacing Mac OS. But it could get some potential significant market share from the fallout of Windows 8 and the Windows ecosystem. The market share of Windows is like 20x greater than that of Mac OS. They have a lot more opportunity for growth there.

Someone like me who is coming from Windows would much rather use something like Linux Mint or Zorin OS than Ubuntu. I tried Ubuntu and it took me a while to moderately get used to it, although I still found it frustrating by the time I gave up on it and tried Mint, which I found very "intuitive" to use, coming from Windows. That's what Ubuntu needs to go back to. One of the reasons I gave up on Ubuntu was also about feeling it's not faster than Windows 7, which again, is a major problem with Unity right now.

vy8vWJlco• 14 years ago

Some evolutionary paths are also dead ends. Only time will tell with Unity.

I find it slows me down, but it's just yet another attempt at "simple," by hiding the desktop. Turns out consumers like simple and the desktop is too free-form for most people (What are icons? Heck, what's a "double click"? I just want the Internet -- this does the Internet, right?), just like the terminal was too free-form for people before that, just like that's limiting compared to soldering transistors. The desktop is still there (you can remove Unity), as is the terminal (you can remove all desktops). The desktop PC/grampa box isn't going anywhere, even after the laptop, and the laptop is still useful after the tablet/smartphone. The only thing you have to worry about is not being able to choose what works best for you. Otherwise, just hang onto your towel, and remember: "don't panic."

billyjobob• 14 years ago

The funny thing about all the Gnome 3 complaints is that I felt exactly the same way about Gnome 2. I had the perfect Gnome 1 desktop configured and then Gnome 2 came along and removed every configuration option. That was about the same time Miguel began integrating Mono into everything and I realised that whether he was aware of it or not everything he did was to assist Microsoft in damaging Linux. There was a new Unix out in the form of OS X so I jumped ship to that and haven't looked back. (Until now, since I'm finding the Apple ecosystem too restrictive and looking at something more Free.)

contextfree• 14 years ago

Yeah, good thing you escaped from Linux before Microsoft succeeded in destroying it using Mono, killing everyone on board. (???)

PeterWhittaker• 14 years ago

Ageing users are not the problem, UI racing to the bottom is.

As noted in another reply, computers are becoming entertainment appliances for most/many people - so the UI is trending to their skill and interest level. Remember the flashing 12:00 on your VCR? That's the level of UI we're heading for.

This race to the bottom leaves the rest of us, thems of us that actually use and understand these things, behind.

For unrelated reasons, I installed Cinnamon on Ubuntu 12.10 yesterday and I don't hate my computer anymore. I don't "love Ubuntu" again, because Ubuntu is now just the substrate on which Cinnamon runs. If reinstalling the OS weren't such a pain, I would, but for now I can live with Unityless freedom.

wwkeyboard• 14 years ago

Just because something is touted as 'better' doesn't mean it is, remember Microsoft Bob? If these UIs really are more useful you will see people being more productive with them, and you can mimic their usage. Otherwise don't burn brain cycles trying to 'get' the latest interface.

taylodl• 14 years ago

I've been using computers since the days of the VIC 20 and Apple II. A lot has changed since then, generally for the better. I'm significantly older than you and I'm here to tell you one thing: you'd better get with it. I don't see any point in crying about a desktop metaphor that's dying. Let's face it - there's a lot of people now whose primary computer is a smartphone or tablet. The name of the game today is to create a user interface manager that works well with those devices AND the desktop. We're not there yet, but that's the direction we're headed, and more importantly, it's the direction we should be headed.

One final thing, I'm using an iPad to read and respond to this post. On this iPad I have an outstanding code editor and development environments for Lisp, Scheme, Python, J, F# and JavaScript. This is the way of the future.

Desktops are outgrowing me, and I'm worried

Related Stories