[ale] ranting about new Ubuntu UI

[David Tomaschik]

On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 4:35 AM, Michael B. Trausch <mike at trausch.us> wrote:
> 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.

Canonical treats all non-LTS releases of Ubuntu as "technology
previews" -- sorry, "cutting edge".  One can only hope they have the
Unity kinks worked out (or replaced) by PP/12.04 LTS.  (Placid Penguin
-- who knows?)

> 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


And this is why my laptop runs Debian right now.  I hate Unity, and I
hate yum.  I might end up back at Slackware or Gentoo before it's all
over.  (Though I have concerns about Gentoo from an ecological
standpoint.)



-- 
David Tomaschik, RHCE, LPIC-1
System Administrator/Open Source Advocate
OpenPGP: 0x5DEA789B
http://systemoverlord.com
david at systemoverlord.com