** Alan Pope <[email protected]> [2011-12-02 11:03]: > On 01/12/11 23:52, [email protected] wrote: > >Is Ubuntu going in the wrong direction? > > I personally don't believe so, no. I personally think it's going in > exactly the _right_ direction, but some people seem obsessed by > yesterday, today and tomorrow and not next year or next decade.
I agree, I think in the longer term this will probably be good. I certainly prefer Unity to Gnome Shell (with the proviso that this is based on reading about both, but only having used Unity so far!). My main gripe is that it has been rushed out as the primary desktop when it is so painfully unfinished. Things I want to do just aren't easy yet and force me to the command line and Google (this feels very last millenium Linux!), and some of the changes I'm not keen on I could easily adjust if there were configuration options for them. A few examples: The launcher pops out from the left when I want to bookmark a web page. I do this by dragging it onto the bookmarks sidebar in Firefox because I like to categories them and this is the easiest way to do it quickly. Unfortunately it gets covered by the launcher and I have to reduce the size of the Firefox window to drag it across and then maximise again. If I could configure it to only pop out if I push the mouse to the side edge that would solve the problem. I've got too many icons on my launcher and would like to categorise them into sub groups that pop out sideways when clicked (much like the OS/2 Warp button bar from the 1990s!), this isn't and option and I don't think it is likely to be sadly. I may be able to do something if I can get my head around writing lenses, but I haven't found any useful documentation yet. Choosing an application from the launcher is not easy when they are bunched up at the bottom. I'd like to have the menus show all the time as I find myself with what I describe as the "Unity twitch". I move the mouse up to the top to get at a menu, but as I can't see where it is I don't hit my target straight away and have to move the mouse sideways to get the right one once I can actually see it. I want to add parameters to the launcher icon, or add my own application to the launcher (I really must find the configuration file to do this), but this doesn't seem possible in an easy manner yet. If the application isn't available through the dash then you can't drag it on (I have a scrip to start JTides that I'd like to add), and if it is but you want to start with specific parameters you can't (I want to start XTides with Portsmouth as the default location using command line options). There are others, but I won't go on. The main thing that I don't see getting fixed to my liking is the move of the menus to the top of the screen. I've read the Mac justifications about why this is good and half seen the point, but in use it really isn't nice. For a start it kills mouse over focus which I used extensively to have a small window open with reference data in and type into the background window that was maximised. I've got past this one, all be it I'm still annoyed when I'm resizing windows to achieve similar results, but the hassle of working on a small window at the bottom right and having to move the mouse all the way up to the top left and back to use a menu item is just plain silly. The concept may have worked when Mac had small screens, but with the size of modern screens it isn't so much fun - and you could possibly argue that it isn't good for RSI (or are bigger movements better than smaller ones?). I'm confident it will get there (mostly), but if I wasn't happy with Ubuntu on the server (no GUI!) and preferring to stick with it on the desktop I'd likely be looking around at alternatives. It seems a shame to lose people because they've upgraded and found themselves using what is basically a development release. Perhaps the LTS and other 6 monthly releases should be named separately. Then it would be clearer that in between releases can be somewhat experimental in many ways and more people would stick to the LTS versions. As it is I'm more inclined to try to learn about lenses, etc. and see if I can 'fix' things without actually moving distro. ** end quote [Alan Pope] -- Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. | http://www.aptanet.com/ | 023 9238 0001 ====================================================================== Registered in England | Company No: 4905028 | Registered Office: Crawford House, Hambledon Road, Denmead, Waterlooville, Hants, PO7 6NU -- [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
