Does anyone have examples of good quality criticism of GUIs? Examples of reviews that changed the way you think about the GUI would be very welcome.
We are going to get a rash of articles like this one, which make some valid points, but do not really compare Unity in its 12.04 guise with any kind of model of interaction or external standard.
It would be nice to try to produce something better. Canonical design have done a lot of testing and have documented some of their work. I think they deserve a critical essay rather than the kool-aid type response, or the instant dismissal that seems quite common.
If you have a Windows machine or image handy, take a look at the Ditto clipboard manager. The way the clipboard should be done -- or closer to it. (BTW, it's free/donation-ware, last I checked. And it has the rather occasional hiccup, but the idea is solid and the hiccups don't lose data, e.g. sometimes the window repositions or it misses a keystroke momentarily while it is loading a large dataset.)
Yes, this is just one small part of the picture. But that's a primary way in which things get done: Someone focuses on one part and "fixes" it really well. Other people eventually add up these fixes and integrate them.
There are also "grand visions" and "productive discovery", but that level of ability seems to be somewhat less common and not always observed/adopted, no matter how deserving.
From my experience, being able to use the clipboard as an indexed data store, or "memory", is very convenient. Control-C, and I know the item will be a 1 - 3 second search away, for the next few weeks.
Challenge: can anyone out there do the bits about the change in the libraries, the indicators, the way Unity ties in with Gnome 3 (remember Gnome Shell and Unity are both Gnome 3 shells)?
I'll risk the slings and arrows and have a go at the surface/UI bit. That'll be next weekend. I'm no Siracussa but everyone has to start somewhere.
PS: 12.04.1 is when you install on a production machine, that's around June
> The short version: Ubuntu 12.04 is the best release they’ve ever had and
> absolutely blows the upcoming releases of Windows and MacOS X out of the
> water in just about every way that matters.
The second half of that statement may be a touch hyperbolic.
I agree with batista, if OS has no quality software .. then why on earth would I use that OS? Also, til Ubuntu can't support .PSD files with GIMP natively, I will never .. ever use it. And no, I do not want to use Wine emulator or whatever the hell you gotta do to get stuff working under Ubuntu.
> I do not want to use Wine emulator or whatever the hell you gotta do to get stuff working under Ubuntu
Why don't you want to use it? Using Wine is as simple as double-clicking a Windows EXE and letting it install or run. It's no more difficult than using software on Windows (usually)
And sorry to nitpick, but WINE stands for "WINE Is Not an Emulator", because it isn't :)
I'm a long-time Ubuntu user, and I use Wine only when I absolutely have to, because it most definitely does not "just work". Case in point, GP was talking about Photoshop. This is from Wine's page for CS3:
First off: don't expect this to work well. Wine does not yet support Photoshop CS3. Only read these instructions if you feel like fiddling around, not if you expect to get a working Photoshop.
The other versions look in better shape, but still.
I am eternally grateful to the Humble Bundle folks for insisting on Linux support.
“Changing from your browser -> Firefox = most websites will still work, no additional effort on anyone.”
Now.
When Firefox v1.0 was released in 2004, 8 years ago, that was not so, and early adopters who were thinking about recommending Firefox had to consider two important issues:
First, compatibility.
Second, the fact that the idea that you would install a third-party program to browse the web seemed strange, even pointless, to people.
Yet, Firefox was so good already by that time, and it held so much promise, that those who already knew about it did recommend it. As a result, within one year it had 15% market share—an impressive achievement—, and webmasters had to start doing something about browsers that were not Internet Explorer. Today the compatibility problems are largely confined within intranets, and the idea that you would need one particular browser to browse the web seems strange.
Let’s compare that with where desktop Linux is today. What is the promise it helds? Which are its redeeming virtues that would make me and you recommend it to other people?
I have Linux installed on my auxiliary desktop system since 2004 — either Ubuntu or Debian Sid. The main issue that prevented me from switching when I was more enthusiastic was this:
I like to have two sound cards on my desktop systems: The on-board one, which I don’t care about, and a good one with a good DAC. The music I listen to is fed to the good card, which then feeds the amplifier. All other sound generated by the system goes to the on-board card. In 2004, and also in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, there was only one—I repeat, one—audio player that allowed you to select a non-default sound card for its output and at the same time met some basic requirements like proper gapless playback and good UTF-8 support. That was Quod Libet. The option was not exposed in Quod Libet’s GUI; you had to search for it, and then pass it to the program as a command-line argument. But at least there was one program that supported this simple thing. However there was another issue: Because of a bug in ALSA or the kernel (don’t remember which any more) the sound devices of the system were enumerated at random upon booting, with the result that 50% of the times the audo player had the wrong card selected upon starting! :-) So, after some time I got tired of struggling with the system in order to listen to music and abandoned the idea that I would use Linux as my main desktop system. I don’t know how much better things are today, but I would not be surprised if such problems remain.
I still use Linux today but only on my auxiliary desktop system (Debian Sid). I also use Debian on my laptop for a simple reason: I use the laptop for about 5 to 10 hours a week for a narrower set of tasks, and the high maintenance requirements of Windows seem to me too much for that. Debian, even Debian Sid with its occasional hiccups, is MUCH easier to maintain.
Now, one could say that the one issue I say prevented me from switching to desktop Linux is an edge case. It may be. But I am afraid it is only one of the many edge cases that are frought with problems on desktop Linux. Desktop Linux in my eyes is a heap of edge case problems. Not everyone is affected by every problem, by everyone is bound to hit upon a serious one at some time or other. The two exceptions I know are folks who use their machines mainly for developing for the vibrant Linux web ecosystem, and folks who need their desktop/laptop systems for a narrow set of basic tasks.
This is precisely the reason why Linux hasn't stuck on me, even though I've tried multiple times to use it. Every time, on different systems, there was something off. Sometimes the sound card that wasn't properly supported, other times the video card (ATI at the time) had big issues with secondary monitors, other times it was my low-end, weird brand WiFi card. It's never "Just Worked" and, even though the exact same happened with Windows at one point or another, the fix is generally simple with Windows (locate the manufacturer, download the driver for your Windows, works with any decent age hardware), wheras it's harder with Linux (google it, find half a dozen possible solutions, download one driver which installs 30 dependencies and breaks your system, try another driver which completely prevents the OS from booting, give up and reinstall Windows).
And then, there's the Software & Games issues... but that's a story for another day.
>Changing from Windows to Ubuntu requires you to find equivalents for all of the software you need.
Yes, but that goes both ways. If Ubuntu lacks equivalents for all of the software you need, you cannot say that it's "better than the other OSs", i.e. software availability is a very important metric of "better" in an OS, even more important than the network stack being 5% faster, or the filesystem supporting more esoteric features etc.
So, it would be like saying "Ubuntu is better than OS X/Win if we exclude things that also matter a lot".
> plain better, than other operating systems, more people would use it.
Desktop Linux is not for everyone. It all depends on what you use your computer for - if you write software for Mac or Windows or if you rely on perfect Office compatibility, it's most definitely not for you. If you run heavy software that has no Linux counterpart, it's obviously not for you. If you develop software that'll run on Linux, it's a really good choice. If you browse the web for everything, it's a great choice.
Firefox is an interesting example, because on little things it behaves differently in windows to linux. For example - double click the address bar in Windows - highlights a token. Do it in linux, highlights the whole link.
Yeah Fx is annoying with its inconsistent defaults between platforms. The one you mention is because browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll is set to true on Windows but False on Linux. Why I have no idea!
I can't know for sure that it is intended because of this, but it is a good default for linux because of the way copy & paste works. Not to select the whole link enables you to copy something by selecting it, change the url, go to that page and insert the prior copied text with the middle mouse button. The windows-setting is wrong in that context, disabling that workflow, even though it's inconsistent between platforms. Sometimes that's a good thing.
When FF was in beta versions it was already a better browser than IE, but nearly no one knew of it, therefore FF had a small number of users. As awareness of FF grew, so did its popularity.
It is silly to judge the quality of a product or service by the number of people that use it.
sure and the fact microsoft ties you into a lifelong comittment with licenses(break one and you still owe money) has nothing to do with it. dude, ive been hearing bunk like this for years and in the meantime linux is growing like weeds. you need to be glad no real way of measuring linux growth numbers exists. it would be very painful im sure. ms is dying and must find another venue soon. in the mean time, let me know when you are ready to be free, ill direct you to ubuntu's website.
When I read this article, I was open to hearing how this could be the case, but then I read:
"Working with Ubuntu 12.04 is quite simple and elegant… until you want to sit down and see what applications are available on your system."
Which sounds like it really doesn't blow anything out of the water. Then I also read:
"click the “Ubuntu” button in the top left, then click the little white icon on the bottom center that is, I assume, representative of “a comb, a pencil and a building with pacman on it”. Then you expand the “Installed” section by clicking on the left/center of the screen. Then you click on “Filter Results” in the top right."
WAT? That's the complete opposite of a well-thought-out experience for the user.
So why is it that this GUI environment is superior again?
He's not the best writer. The point he meant to get across is that that's a nitpick, not a huge problem, but he spends several paragraphs explaining the problem and only a few sentences explaining that it's just a minor nitpick and overall the experience is good. Totally out of proportion, leading readers to weight the bad more than he intended.
Key phrases:
> In short: It’s fast. Stable. And generally a pleasure to use.
> In fact, this is my only big gripe with the Unity interface. And it’s not a big one. I’m nit-picking here.
Criticism takes more space and attention than good things. When you like something, you just do. Maybe there are a couple of things that you really really like and you can write about them.
On the other hand things that don't work as you expect have some story to it - why don't you like them, what else did you expect, who does it properly, how is it affecting your workflow, how much you dislike that problem. I expect things like that to affect most reviews...
The current obsession with tablets is maddening. Tablets are great for many things, but I still spend much of my life sitting at a workstation: a computer with a keyboard, a mouse, and (lucky me) a big-ass monitor. So, for me, it's just sad that everyone is now rushing to optimize their OSes for tablets, often at the expense of usabilty in a workstation-like configuration.
I think that there is middle ground to be had, with some sensible defaults, and sensible configuration options.
Make it good for the mouse, good for touch and good for keyboard! And let me mix it up a bit. And good for small and large screens alike.
The last time I tried Ubuntu, probably 11.10 - I could not use it without a mouse, just because of some wretched dialogues that I couldn't get keyboard focus on!
Indeed. I think the thought going through most of these peoples' heads is "Workstations are going away. Everyone's switching to tablets. I'd better make my OS work on tablets, or else it will go away eventually too."
I've also tried beta 12.04, seems ok, but article is a really bit hyperbolic. IMO this ubuntu has similar progress from previous version as other versions in the past.
Big surprise for me: I've upgraded 4 years old laptop with new SSD disk and 12.04beta and its really lightning fast compared to windows 7 (altough I have to switch to Unity 2D because of too hot gpu). It really feels like new machine.
Yes, this is not instantenous, but ok fast, few hundreds of ms for me. Also using Unity 2D instead of std Unity bothers me a bit.
Anyway I am really suprised by overall performance, apps start very fast and laptop has 4 sec suspend/3 sec wake up. (altough it often takes additional timea for wifi to reconnect again).
Thanks, I'll take that as something like a fifth to a quarter of a second! I'm seeing nearer half a second, which is above my annoyance threshold.
The Dash home lens is actually providing a lot of context by listing the recently used apps/modified files/and even the played music. I sometimes wonder how many people use that context!
The times for the app loading and suspend/resume is down to your hardware which is obviously fast with the ssd.
I find network-manager takes more time than anything else getting a foot hold onto my wireless network. Other than that Debian Wheezy, with Gnome Classic is pretty good for me on an ancient SATA 1.0 spinner.
That's why I have Intel GPUs on my machines. And if I need games, I'll buy a PS/3. As long as they are selling hardware or not getting the bad reputation they deserve, ATI and Nvidia won't fix the problem (of not having proper support for open-source drivers). As it is now, I'd never buy an ATI or Nvidia board for 3D.
If one doesn't want the other using their technologies, make the source public under a non-open license and sue the other if they use it. BTW, offer an easy and automated way to build, test and install the kernel modules.
Sorry, dont have ATI, I have Nvidia NVS 160M, using proprietary drivers. I think I'll try to figure out power management again in few weeks, but I'll decided to stay with 2D for now.
Agree and disagree. It's not pointless, it's principled, and Stallman has this way of being right in the long term, so we ignore him at our peril.
However, for Linux to be a 100% replacement for Windows or OS X, we have to use to non-free software for some things. You could always choose not to do those things, as Stallman does, and sometimes I'm tempted given how little real utility movies and whatnot have in my life, but for Linux and all the free software it brings to make headway with the general public, non-free software is a necessary evil.
It's a tradeoff, both sides have pros and cons, gotta know them, and make an informed choice.
Multi-monitor support in 12.04/gnome3 is unbelievably good. There are tons of horror stories, that I've lived and that I've read, regarding multi-monitor breaking jut when it's most needed (presentation at conferences, etc). This has happened to me in the past.
Now, my system keeps track of my preferences per-configuration, so plugging in the monitor that I mirror display on automatically does mirroring, and plugging in the monitor I use as a secondary monitor automatically does that. Also, just plug and go for multi-monitor.
It's fantastically better than ever before. Anyone else noticed this?
Is that Ubuntu specific? I'm running Debian Wheezy with an Intel GM45, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that hot plugging of my monitor worked. I'd read in the past, that that was Intel specific. Either way it's very welcome. I'd imagined I'd be stuck with Windows because of poor multi-monitor support - on my laptop.
Multiple monitors need a good window manager. I sacked off my second monitor out of frustration in the past, I wanted shortcuts to move apps to the other screen, the ability to turn off one screen when not needed - I inevitably had to turn it back on, when I'd loose a window or dialogue somewhere. Full screen apps chose the wrong monitor, some windows sat between monitors etc. It was just a bind, and a distraction in the end. Virtual desktops were a better fit for me because of the inadequacies.
"takes several clicks on parts of the screen that are nowhere near each other and are not immediately obvious the first time you see them".
... and that this process requires the user to:
"click the “Ubuntu” button in the top left, then click the little white icon on the bottom center that is, I assume, representative of “a comb, a pencil and a building with pacman on it”. Then you expand the “Installed” section by clicking on the left/center of the screen. Then you click on “Filter Results” in the top right."
Doesn't like like a great thing to use at all to me.
As a non-Unity user I honestly don't think I've noticed any difference whatsoever since upgrading to 12.04. Which is mostly a good thing - it was fine before and it's fine now.
If you're running it on a laptop I believe there's been a lot of work in the latest kernel in ubuntu 12.04 to help with the power management and battery life.
Unity and gnome-shell might be OK on a netbook. Or a notebook. Or maybe on a single monitor desktop.
For a triplehead setup this concept is just not bearable.
I think this really bad design-decision goes back to the days when there was this "Linux the great netbook / eee-PC OS hype".
The good thing is: Nobody is forced to use this . There is Mate (http://mate-desktop.org/), or KDE, or XFCE, or ...
The only thing that I find a bit pity, is that so many resources are spent on Gnome3 and Unity :-/
20+ people on my team are using Unity on dual-head setups and it works very well. There was some pain in the transition from Gnome 2 to Unity, but, in general, people are happy and productive.
Most have split their desktops into 9 spaces and run all apps full-screen, usually with a terminal on the notebook screen and something else (Eclipse, Emacs) on the larger LCD.
How is the multiple spaces experience? This is my biggest fear. If this isn't very streamlined my productivity is going to go down.
It is my biggest gripe with OSX that the "Spaces" functionality requires multiple clicks with lengthy animations in between to navigate the spaces. I could setup keyboard shortcuts but, damn it, a one click panel or dock widget is what I am used to and what I like. This has been included in unix type IDEs since the early 1990s (except Apple who managed to break it) the lack of it is a deal breaker for me.
Multiple desktops work as expected under Unity - you move between them and both heads follow. It's a very easy way to organize your stuff when you are a spatial thinker. This makes it natural to keep working contexts on separate spaces (editor + terminal, editor + browser, browser + terminal, email + IRC + IM) and easily switch between.
On the Mac, I like the Lion way to deal with it, despite it being unidimensional. The only thing is that you'll need to get rid of the mouse and buy a trackpad (assuming you are on a desktop or with the notebook docked).
I find it confusing when both heads move independently between their own spaces.
My yearly "lets see if Ubuntu is good enough now" a few days ago: installed the beta, froze when I connected the external monitor. Then the same happened with 11. And with Xubuntu. And I went back to Windows 7.
Let me offset that with a different view: I have bought 4[1] different laptops over the past month, running Ubuntu 12.04 on them. One of my key tests was plugging in my external HDMI monitor, in which it worked for all of them.
In all seriousness, if this is happening to you send me a private message and we can look over your specs and dig into what could be causing it.
[1] HP Envy 15 3033, Acer S3, Asus TimelineX, Macbook Pro
How is Ubuntu on Macbook Pro? I'll be in the market for a new laptop soon, and MBP is a consideration, but I'd like to dual boot Ubuntu (using Basecamp?). Seems there was some issue with BIOS and bootstrapping, is that solved now?
i'm dual booting 12.04 and lion on my late 2011 macbook air. very simple. install refit in OSX. you may have to reboot several times or do a complete shutdown before the refit bootloader will show up. then it will be a very familiar install from there. you can use the mac disk utility to partition your drive beforehand. i haven't tried bootcamp, so i can't comment about that.
I just upgraded 11.10 to 12.04 final beta yesterday, and so far I can confirm what he says about performance and stability - 11.10 was ok, but 12.04 is noticeably better.
Two problems 12.04 solved:
1. On 11.10 I was getting frequent kernel panics when watching flash in a browser (Youtube in Chrome, Chromium, Firefox), and when watching video in Movie Player. That's all gone.
2. In 11.10, Ubuntu Software Center was sluggish as hell, so much so that I never used it. It's much faster now, just a smidge away from being downright snappy, and hence useable finally.
I like how the upgrade (via sudo do-release-upgrade -d) resulted in what seems to be a really clean installation, and that I didn't have to do a fresh install to get that (still scarred from my Windows days).
I hear battery life is improved as well but haven't tested that yet. Hope that's true.
This is on an hp dm1-4050us, Intel i3-2367, HD3000, 8GB RAM, 5400rpm hdd.
When i tried out the 12.04 beta on my HP Microserver, installation went smoothly. However when booting up the installed system, all i'd get is a blank screen. Turns out for some odd reason it doesn't set the textmode display correctly, so you need to add a cryptic line to the boot options to see anything. Upon doing this, i found it was throwing a fit at a degraded raid array on a disk i happened to have plugged in at the time, and so wouldn't continue booting until i entered the emergency console and typed exit.
In this case i was using the machine as network storage, with the RAID1 array being part of a backup. The main system was on a separate disk, so the RAID was in no way required for booting up. In fact, i never explicitly set it up during installation.
Not only could i not see what was going on, i couldn't even access the machine from the network. All for no good reason.
Anyone who recommends Wine as a solution for running all your Windows applications loses a lot of credibility with me. In my experience, Wine just doesn't work all that well---certainly not well enough for doing real work. Obviously some applications work better than others, but every time I've tried Wine, at least one of the applications I use a lot has had serious problems. In my opinion, VirtualBox is a much, much better way to run Windows application on Linux.
I've tried the beta of 12.04 the past few weeks. Unity is still a pile of ----. Gnome Shell (3) isn't much better and fall back mode (Gnome Classic) is riddled with bugs that basically makes it unusable as a desktop to work on. The Linux desktop has finally officially failed.
Might be worth mentioning the Alt-F11 function in XFCE for those who don't know it already.
Alt-F11 removes the title bar from the current window, and ensures that the window uses the whole screen area. The menu is still on top of the window unlike the usual 'full screen' settings. Very handy on a 1024 by 600 screen. I have Firefox in one workspace, LibreOffice Impress in a second, e-mail client in a third and I switch between them using Ctrl-Alt arrows.
I'm running Gnome Classic as I don't fancy Gnome Shell at the moment. And it's nearly there for me. My quit applet hangs my machine, my cpu applet has redraw issues. And nautilus and gedit are giving me some agro, but that's going off topic. It's taken me a week to theme the thing (Gnome 2 at least had a helper app - where I could make my own changes - though it was still problematic - I run a dark theme.) My keyboard switching applet sometimes doesn't respond to clicking. And I'm lost when it comes to audio configuration.
I think that's where the pain lies, when you run into a wall it hurts.
I guess these are teething issues. I'd like to know what GTK3 does bring to the table?
I get video flicker in games under Gnome Shell, and I've had flickering issues with video under Unity (11.10) on an Intel GM45 and Nvidia 6200 respectively. I crashed Unity in about an hour and made my desktop inaccessible the last time I used it. Unity 2D wasn't that bad, but some elements of the UI didn't gel well together at all - dialog boxes that are out of place etc.
The sad thing for me, is that I remember seeing Compiz for the first time. And there were elements and plugins that I really liked about it, and it felt like the desktop was moving forward. I was hoping that Gnome Shell would take the best bits of Compiz - but really get to the point where it would manage my desktop for me . But I can't say it brings me anything.
The negativity is just a case of sour grapes. We'd prefer to see the free desktops outdoing their commercial cousins. OSX10.4 Tiger is a pretty good benchmark to beat. And that's a 2007 OS.
It would be nice to see a Desktop OS competing with Android, W8 and the iPhone though.
Ubuntu 10.04 is still there, and still great. I'm still using it on my home and work machines--Gnome 2-based, PPAs and backports to update any apps that are a bit tired, and the whole thing's really stable. I'm not sure what I'll do when support runs out for it, though. I'm kind of holding out that they'll announce another two years of desktop support!
If you are using ppas and backports, the security update situation gets complex anyway. People have been trying to pin down the situation for Gnome Shell packages on 12.04, looks like not 5 years because they are 'Universe' packages.
The 10.04 server packages, therefore the base, have 5 years of support, so I guess you could simply risk carrying on with 10.04 after the EOL for the desktop?
> but t until you don't have to think about changing your window manager it can't win.
What is the value of "win" in the above sentence? Because for me it's much more useful than either Windows or OSX for development. It won me for package management and for being very similar to the actual deployment environment. Even changing the desktop environment is easy - an "apt-get install" does the trick.
I don't care about achieving desktop dominance - the desktop is going the way of the dodo for most people and for everything that's doesn't sit on a desk or has an Apple logo, Linux is the dominant OS. I'm at home now and there are 9 machines running Linux (phones, e-readers, tablet, router, modem, notebooks) and 5 that don't (Macs, iPod and iPhone).
Right. I don't think it's a stupid aim to have. All you need to do is make an OS, that is stupidly easy to use... I still see people flounder over windows. I put Salix with a bare amount of apps on an older family member's computer - and I think it's pretty elementary - but they still run into a few issues. I think it's more user friendly though than Windows XP - so that's a plus point.
We are going to get a rash of articles like this one, which make some valid points, but do not really compare Unity in its 12.04 guise with any kind of model of interaction or external standard.
It would be nice to try to produce something better. Canonical design have done a lot of testing and have documented some of their work. I think they deserve a critical essay rather than the kool-aid type response, or the instant dismissal that seems quite common.