[ale] ranting about new Ubuntu UI

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Mon, 2011-06-20 at 23:01 -0400, Pat Regan wrote:
> Unity doesn't seem fully baked at this point and Canonical warned
> everyone about that ahead of time. 

The thing is that they *know* that a normal release confers some level
of implied workability.  This would be the type of thing that they
should make *two* releases for: a "technology preview" (hey, sounded
like something that'd tickle The Almighty His gherkin) and a normal,
stable release that just works out of the box.

But even more to the point, even when it's fully baked, it's going to be
just like all of Canonical's other software:

"We submitted it for consideration in GNOME, they pushed us away"

"Could it be because it's crap?"

"Nah, man, it's the coolest thing since sliced bread!"

Whatever.

They have yet to make anything that is truly universally useful, IMHO.
for example, they replaced the notifications system that shipped with
GNOME with their own thing, and it's unbearable: it puts notifications
on the top-right (you don't get to configure it) of a screen (you don't
get to pick which one).  Yeah, that's *real* useful.  You know, when I
had the ability to choose where my notifications went, I put them on the
bottom-right of the screen my eyes spent the most time on.  Why?
Because that's where I'd actually *see* the damned things.

GNOME has its share of "we'll try to just do the right thing and screw
the whole configuration deal", but they at least provide knobs for the
important stuff, even if they are buried in some XML file somewhere.
Canonical won't even go that far, they've shown that time and time
again.  People literally have to fork their shit to make it useful.

	--- Mike