Therein lies the rub. Either the OS is designed for newcomers or Linux or veteran users.
Right now Natty seems totally hostile to the former while a pain in the backside from at least some veteran users. I'm no MS/CS sys-admin but I'm not a Linux or Ubuntu newbie either. I love the ease of installation and slick operation of Jaunty-Lucid-Maverick as well as the Linux power. Natty has the power of the underlying Linux system with none of the convenience of its recent predecessors. I'm still trying to work through Natty's shortcomings (in Gnome; I've totally forsaken its hopelessly botched KDE implementation) but as yet I fail to see anything in Natty that isn't done as well or better by Jaunty-Lucid-Maverick. An extra mouse stroke to invoke an app is not an improvement in my book and I don't think Windows users will see that as one. Maybe Shuttleworth's Ubuntu is like any other empire that grew too powerful too quickly. Ubuntu lost sight of achieving worthy desirable goals and chose instead to do whatever it wanted regardless of what was desirable, simple because it had the power to do so. On 05/02/2011 09:58 AM, Mike Connors wrote: > . An in-depth study of the reactions and problems >> of new desktop users, comparing Unity, Gnome, KDE, and a few others, >> would be very revealing. >> >> I won't speculate as to the outcome. I only wish to point out that >> without some scientific evidence, everything that people say pro and >> con Unity is wild ass speculation. Whether you or I personally like it >> or not is irrelevant. Ubuntu's goal is to make Linux usable on the >> desktop for newcomers to Linux. Those users are the ones whose opinion >> matters. > To the best of my knowledge, Ubuntu really seems to be driving the > "average jane desktop user" development. If we > all want to see the Linux community grow than this work needs to > happen. Historically, desktop usability has > not received a lot of care and attention as most developers wanted to > work on the kernel, drivers, etc. > Which needed to be done. What's the point of worrying about how the > dashboard in your car looks / feels if the engine keeps stalling > and the tires fall off. > > -Mike > _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
