[ale] screwing up the UI

[Pete Hardie]

I heartily agree - I've been annoyed ever since Gnome made the "focus
follows mouse"
inaccessible without a hack.


On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 09:08, Ron Frazier
<atllinuxenthinfo at c3energy.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I guess I must be getting old, at 45, because I see what I think is a
> disturbing trend amongst Linux development, and that is screwing around
> with, and screwing up, the user interface.  I was previously running
> Ubuntu 9.??.  I'm assuming that runs Gnome 2 by default.  When I
> eventually upgraded to 10.04, which I'm running now, the first thing I
> see is that the minimize, maximize, and exit buttons have moved to the
> left of the window.  What the heck.  I immediately proceed to put them
> back on the right WHERE THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO BE.  Yes, I know, personal
> preference.  Why are they supposed to be there, because that's where
> virtually every computer user on the planet EXPECTS them to be.  After
> all, we don't spontaneously move the steering wheel in our cars for next
> model year to the right side in America or the left side in Europe,
> opposite of what we're used to.  We don't all of a sudden scramble all
> the letters on future keyboards, just because we can.  The result would
> be chaos.  Now, I saw on the tuxradar site that the Gnome 3 shell will
> not even have minimize and maximize buttons on windows.  Give me a
> break.  If true, you can bet I probably won't be using it.  Why bother
> with something that works.  I looked at this article, briefly, about the
> Unity interface.  It's a bit dated, so things may have changed somewhat.
>
> http://www.webupd8.org/2010/05/taking-ubuntu-unity-interface-for-test.html
>
> Now, from my brief review of it, I'm not impressed.  I may try it later
> in a VM.  Ubuntu 9 and 10 got me into Linux, and Gnome 2 (I presume)
> provided the UI.  This was enough like what I'm used to, ie Windows,
> that I didn't have a huge learning curve just to use the PC.  Now the
> trend seems to be, lets change everything we can, just because we can,
> whether it's better or not, and let's spring it on unsuspecting users
> for good measure so everyone will have to retrain themselves to use
> their computer.
>
> My UI is doing exactly what I need, thank you very much.  Fortunately,
> since everyone has different tastes, it's pretty customizable, which
> apparently Unity is not.  For my purposes, I have a Gnome panel at the
> right and one at the top.  The one at the right shows system status,
> network status, firewall status, and gives me access to the sound,
> power, screen lock, firefox, the Ubuntu menu, and of course, the show
> the desktop button.  Oh, and the right panel also shows the date AND
> time, with instant access to the calendar.  The top panel is my taskbar,
> and shows a separate button for EACH window that's open, even if it's
> multiple windows for the same app.  It also shows the CPU temperature,
> and the frequency scaling widget for the CPU.  This is exactly the same
> way I have it set up in Windows, to the extent possible, and it does
> exactly what I need.
>
> I'm sure everyone else has a different custom setup.  The point is, I
> could and did set it up the way I like it, and I don't like some
> designer coming along and saying, in the next version, we're going to
> screw with and change most of what you're used to or have customized,
> and oh by the way, these (pick a number) of features you like are going
> to vanish entirely.
>
> Based on these observations and what I'm hearing in podcasts and such, I
> may just have to keep 10.04 until they stop patching it in 2013 (I
> think), then very cautiously try whatever the current crop of stuff is
> in VM's to see what the least painful change will be.  By the way, I'm
> still running Windows XP on one machine, and from a UI standpoint, it
> runs just fine, sometimes better than Vista.  This phenomenon is one
> reason why I'm reluctant to install Linux on my son's PC, etc.
>
> OK, exit soapbox.  I feel better now.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron
>
>
> --
>
> (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
> call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
> mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new messages very quickly.)
>
> Ron Frazier
>
> 770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
> linuxdude AT c3energy.com
>
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-- 
Pete Hardie
--------
Better Living Through Bitmaps