Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 02/07/12 17:42, Andy Smith wrote: If you look at Gnome 3, it's all different to Gnome 2 also. I would say that this is a dramatic change forced upon almost all Linux desktop users. Change isn't the problem Andy, on the contrary I welcome it, it's the pace of change and the accompanying lack of choice in this particular instance. Sean -- music, film, comics, books, rants and drivel: www.funkygibbins.me.uk -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 03/07/12 09:58, Andy Smith wrote: Things were a little difficult at first with Unity. It really isn't suited to having many different windows of the same application open. This is one of the things I don't understand at all - surely, that is one of *the* biggest strengths of a windowing GUI? Like you, this is a fundamental requirement of my working day, so anything that is inherently designed not to work that way is going to be a problem for me SNIP If Unity can't be made to work for you, I honestly think that there are so many other more productive things to do about it than just complain that it happened too fast and there is no choice. Well, as I and several others have stated, we have done something more productive - we're using something else. *But*, we have been assured that those steering Ubuntu do listen to the concerns and problems of Ubuntu users so I, for one, was *trying* to point out why I have a problem with Unity (and GNOME 3) - I was trying to provide a critique, rather than just b*tching about it. Having said that, as a developer on a moderately important piece of software for the Unix/Linux world, and being responsible for the releases of that software, my experience doesn't encourage me to believe there's much listening going on in the Ubuntu camp. When I contacted some members of the Ubuntu release committee last year (at the behest of the Ubuntu package maintainer), I didn't even receive an acknowledgement back - which I felt was pretty poor. Chris -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 3 July 2012 14:54, Chris Liddell c...@spamcop.net wrote: Having said that, as a developer on a moderately important piece of software for the Unix/Linux world, and being responsible for the releases of that software, my experience doesn't encourage me to believe there's much listening going on in the Ubuntu camp. When I contacted some members of the Ubuntu release committee last year (at the behest of the Ubuntu package maintainer), I didn't even receive an acknowledgement back - which I felt was pretty poor. But I am very glad that here we have alan pope who is not just listening but also trying to answer as well as taking feedback for the future development of ubuntu . @alan pope : Yes its a very long thread but personally I feel this thread has one of the most important views / points on free desktop and its feedback from the power user side . Hope the next release would rock :D KDE4 took its time , hope so will unity . Regards, pavithran -- pavithran sakamuri http://look-pavi.blogspot.com -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On Tue, 03 Jul 2012 10:24:23 +0100 Chris Liddell c...@spamcop.net wrote: Having said that, as a developer on a moderately important piece of software for the Unix/Linux world, and being responsible for the releases of that software, my experience doesn't encourage me to believe there's much listening going on in the Ubuntu camp. When I contacted some members of the Ubuntu release committee last year (at the behest of the Ubuntu package maintainer), I didn't even receive an acknowledgement back - which I felt was pretty poor. In contrast I had problems with a new version of a software application I am using all day, everyday - namely GeneWeb. The original developer hadn't done any work on it for several years and in the end said that he was unable for various reasons to upgrade it. At the beginning of this year the development was taken over by someone else and a new version was released which looked very different to the original. I hated the new look (more importantly a few of the regular users of my database didn't like it either) so I complained bitterly, so much so that I nearly got banned from posting ;-( However the new developer obviously _was_ listening and a few weeks back I was able to do a tweak to the config file which re-enabled the 'classic' look. This is possible because GeneWeb has always had the ability to use templates to modify the look of the interface and the developer had created a new template which restored the original look, although he had originally said we had to accept the change in appearance. So I, and anyone else that prefers the old way can have it but underneath that skin any new goodies the developers introduce will be available. This may be analogous to what has happened with the Debian version of Gnome3. Of course the change from Gnome2 to Gnome3 was a lot more complicated than just a change in appearance. -- John Lewis Debian the GeneWeb genealogical data server -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 03/07/12 09:58, Andy Smith wrote: If Unity can't be made to work for you, I honestly think that there are so many other more productive things to do about it than just complain that it happened too fast and there is no choice. Or simply switch across to Xubuntu, which is precisely what I did. And if you re-read my posts you'll see I wasn’t so much complaining as voicing an opinion in a discussion on the topic. Sean -- music, film, comics, books, rants and drivel: www.funkygibbins.me.uk -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 03/07/12 11:40, pavithran wrote: On 3 July 2012 14:54, Chris Liddell c...@spamcop.net wrote: Having said that, as a developer on a moderately important piece of software for the Unix/Linux world, and being responsible for the releases of that software, my experience doesn't encourage me to believe there's much listening going on in the Ubuntu camp. When I contacted some members of the Ubuntu release committee last year (at the behest of the Ubuntu package maintainer), I didn't even receive an acknowledgement back - which I felt was pretty poor. But I am very glad that here we have alan pope who is not just listening but also trying to answer as well as taking feedback for the future development of ubuntu . @alan pope : Yes its a very long thread but personally I feel this thread has one of the most important views / points on free desktop and its feedback from the power user side . Hope the next release would rock :D KDE4 took its time , hope so will unity . Regards, pavithran Agreed. Temporary truce, while Gnome fallback gets a tryout; .. If user control returns, you have your continued user loyalty - for now Lesz -- The power of this life, if men will open their hearts to it, will heal them, will create them anew, physically and spiritually. Here is the gospel of earth, ringing with hope, like May mornings with bird-song, fresh and healthy as fields of young grain. But those who would be healed must absorb it not only into their bodies in daily food and warmth but into their minds, because its spiritual power is more intense. It is not reasonable to suppose that an essence so divine and mysterious as life can be confined to material things; therefore, if our bodies need to be in touch with it so do our minds. The joy of a spring day revives a man's spirit, reacting healthily on the bone and the blood, just as the wholesome juices of plants cleanse the body, reacting on the mind. Let us join in the abundant sacrament--for our bodies the crushed gold of harvest and ripe vine-clusters, for our souls the purple fruit of evening with its innumerable seed of stars . Vis Medicatrix Naturae, by Mary Webb, in Spring of Joy: Nature Essays, Constable, London, 1917 -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 02/07/12 01:20, pavithran wrote: Why should it be close to mac for new users who lets presume are coming from windows world ? Or is the new target audience the disgruntled mac users or people who want to use mac but can't afford it ? I wouldn't presume that users are coming from either Mac or Windows. For many users of Ubuntu this is their first computer. Especially in markets like China and India where we have hundreds of Ubuntu branded Dell stores. Cheers, -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On Monday 02 July 2012 01:49:29 Leszek Kobiernicki 1 wrote: We're still all adults here, I think ? I wouldn't count on it! Seriously, I hope that there are some who have no yet reached adulthood. Catch 'em young and all the rest of it. And we perhaps should set a good example? There was that enthusiastic and knowledgeable young man who came to the PLUG stand at the Havant Green Fair, would love to come to meetings (when they are no longer in a pub!!) and hopefully has subscribed to PLUG, and I would be surprised if he has entered his teens. I am sure that he is not unique. Lisi -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
Oh, the irony, given my (not entirely serious) comment about returning to a CLI world: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/07/01/218255/has-the-command-line-outstayed-its-welcome Here's one very good reason for for the command line to remain - even (or especially!) for total beginners with the system. Has any here ever tried to described, step-by-step how to achieve an even moderately complicated set of actions in a GUI, either in plain text, or over the phone? Compared to telling the person to open a terminal window, and type the following, describing how to manage something in a GUI can be a royal pain! NOTE: this is not an argument against GUI tools, but an argument for ensuring *both* GUI and CLI methods should be available for as many operations as is reasonable. Chris -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 02/07/12 13:19, john lewis wrote: On Mon, 02 Jul 2012 12:18:10 +0100 Leszek Kobiernicki 1 l.kobierni...@ntlworld.com wrote: I contend that the underlying strategic vision is flawed. It is we, all the end users, who ought to be acquiring/gaining ever greater empowerment, in transparency of our use of the software. It is this which is the central bone of contention .. which the corps. don't seem to be able to address I agree with this comment and so to do quite a few of the fairly wide spectrum of _Linux_Users_ on this list and if nothing else this discussion has enabled them to express their unease about current trends. We may not be the target audience of the current crop of developers but I hope our opinions will not be overlooked. Indeed Jon. I have kept quiet on this topic having some time ago voted with my feet as it were, when I swapped back to Xubuntu, which I had tried before and found just a little too unpolished. My personal feeling is that this was an ideological change that was thrust upon Ubuntu users, with a future vision of the desktop effectively being decided by a few and then forced upon the many. I'd be interested to see what the uptake would have been were people presented with a choice on installation. I am guessing that a good number of people would have stuck with the more familiar desktop at least until most of the wrinkles were well and truly ironed out of Unity. However, as others have pointed out, we are spoiled with many good alternatives, and the shift back to Xubuntu has been great for me. Doubtless I will keep an eye on Ubuntu and Unity and who knows, maybe one day I'll return to the fold. Sean -- music, film, comics, books, rants and drivel: www.funkygibbins.me.uk -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
Hi Leszek, Please can you trim your quotes a little? There was no need to quote the full previous message (78 lines). It just means that everyone has to scroll through it to reach your text which is then hard to tell which bits (if any) you are actually replying to. On Mon, Jul 02, 2012 at 12:54:08AM +0100, Leszek Kobiernicki 1 wrote: Trouble is, we slightly longer users in time, are some of the key recommenders of a distro to new entrants I've been using Linux as my main desktop since 1995 and I have no hesitation recommending Unity to new users. I also now use Unity myself. If a desktop cripples established ease-of-use, forcing a completely different operational design on us, we're not going to want to recommend the same elevated learning curve to others If I felt it crippled ease of use, I wouldn't be using it myself. It is Different. Different is not automatically wrong. It is possible to disagree. It is okay for you (or anyone else) to not like it. I've no special preferences ( Debian/Ubuntu/derivatives ), but simply will hafta travel the road of max. power-user configurability so that the real work ( whatever that may be for self, or others ), can still go on getting done, with a minimum of heartache I feel I am still able to do real work (I work in IT) with the minimum of heartache. Otherwise I am capable of using something else. My ways of working *have* had to change. They would have had to change whatever the case, because my only real choices were Unity or Gnome 3. Restoring user selection of choice of desktop at bootup, would be a prime contribution .. ( if it's there, I don't see it ) As an experienced Linux user you can install a bewildering range of desktop environments. It does not automatically follow that Ubuntu needs to devote resources to supporting every single choice available to you. You don't have to take that personally. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 02/07/12 17:37, Andy Smith wrote: Hi Leszek, Please can you trim your quotes a little? There was no need to quote the full previous message (78 lines). It just means that everyone has to scroll through it to reach your text which is then hard to tell which bits (if any) you are actually replying to. Sure mate Sorry Lesz -- The power of this life, if men will open their hearts to it, will heal them, will create them anew, physically and spiritually. Here is the gospel of earth, ringing with hope, like May mornings with bird-song, fresh and healthy as fields of young grain. But those who would be healed must absorb it not only into their bodies in daily food and warmth but into their minds, because its spiritual power is more intense. It is not reasonable to suppose that an essence so divine and mysterious as life can be confined to material things; therefore, if our bodies need to be in touch with it so do our minds. The joy of a spring day revives a man's spirit, reacting healthily on the bone and the blood, just as the wholesome juices of plants cleanse the body, reacting on the mind. Let us join in the abundant sacrament--for our bodies the crushed gold of harvest and ripe vine-clusters, for our souls the purple fruit of evening with its innumerable seed of stars . Vis Medicatrix Naturae, by Mary Webb, in Spring of Joy: Nature Essays, Constable, London, 1917 -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On Sun, 01 Jul 2012 02:53:45 +0100 Leszek Kobiernicki 1 l.kobierni...@ntlworld.com wrote: On 30/06/12 12:29, john lewis wrote: On Sat, 30 Jun 2012 11:37:06 +0100 Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com wrote: On 30/06/12 11:09, Leszek Kobiernicki 1 wrote: On 10.04.x, you can access every single app cumulatively installed, ever so easily In 12.04 it's very search-oriented. Press the Ubuntu button then click the second lens along (Applications Lens) or just tap the Windows (super) key + A and then start typing what you're after. Way more efficient than squirrelling through menus IMO. You could try other derivatives like Linux Mint with Cinnamon or Mate, but I would question the sustainability of those desktops. When you install KDE, LXDE, XFCE desktops, they take on a kind of Unity cut-down format .. I hear Debian is quite nice :) Debian is more than Nice ;-) Install it and never have to re-install your OS again and (for now at least and hopefully always) you can use Gnome Classic, chosen at login Wheezy has just been frozen but it will be a few months before it is released as the next stable version. Install Debian Unstable instead if you need more recent packages than are in current Debian Stable. It isn't all that problematic to use but does need regular doses of aptitude update, aptitude safe-upgrade I do it daily. Thanx John If I can't warm to Unity, I might well hafta go Debian Is there a HOW TO for installing it on a Mac ? there are several howtos on debian wiki http://wiki.debian.org/MacBook/ http://wiki.debian.org/MacMiniIntel/ for starters It was mighty fiddly getting Ubuntu to dual-boot with OS-X on the Mac I think it depends on which version of OS/X and what hardware you have. I tried installing it on my early mac mini and it wouldn't play and googling suggested there was a known problem. I then tried booting off a USB hard drive but the version of OS/X installed didn't recognise the drive, again a known problem. off_topic I have just upgraded to Snow Leopard and I believe this version will boot off USB drives but at the moment the only USB drives I have are in use for other things (one being the backup drive for the stuff that was on the mac mini before upgrading). As it happens (almost) nothing was destroyed during the upgrade in fact the only thing I have noticed is that safari has lost the stored bookmarks so will have to find a way of getting them back. The upgrade was quite straightforward, apart from needing to reboot a few times and the length of time it took, 45 mins for the first stage then another half hour installing stuff newer than what was on the CD. /off_topic Apropos the real Alan Pope, if memory serves me correctly he along with about 75% (or more) of LUG members were all Debian users several years back. Then for some unknown reason they defected to the new kid on the block. I never made that move and have never in fact even tried running ubuntu. I wasn't happy with the Debian developers when Gnome3 became the default on Debian Sid and considered moving to Mint but then found that Gnome3 had an option to run Gnome Classic. I think I'd be unhappy with any interface that didn't use traditional menus. One of the things I really dislike about OS/X is that the 'thingy' at top of screen changes depending on the application running. I like my apps to have their own menus. And I have never been an advocate of having every app have the same look and feel and could never understand why people were critical of The Gimp for not conforming. As for having to 'search' for things that I'd expect to find in a menu that would drive me bonkers, except that I only ever run half a dozen apps each in its own workspace and only reboot when absolutely necessary so rarely need Gnomes pull down menu. (Oh yes!, I hate icons on the screen so don't have them to click on) off_topic again One thing I do like about Snow Leopard is that it allows Spaces so I can work in a similar fashion to what I am used to. My wife uses XP and I find it very frustrating if I ever have to do something with her system that she has to have all open apps on the one workspace and that even with a large/wide screen it is impossible to have even three apps (mail, browser and FTM) open at anything like full size. /off_topic -- John Lewis Debian the GeneWeb genealogical data server -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 30/06/12 18:10, hants...@googlemail.com wrote: On Saturday 30 June 2012 11:37:06 Alan Pope wrote: I hear Debian is quite nice :) I never expected to hear you say that! ;-) I ran Red Hat on my systems for a while up until ~7.3. It was Hugo who suggested I try Debian when I got sick of dependency hell on Red Hat. Then in 2004 Hugo mentioned Ubuntu to me and I started using that. I've not gone back since. Given Ubuntu is built upon Debian it's no real surprise that I still like Debian :D Cheers, -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On Sun, 01 Jul 2012 02:53:45 +0100 Leszek Kobiernicki 1 l.kobierni...@ntlworld.com wrote: If I can't warm to Unity, I might well hafta go Debian if you do decide to install Debian this will be relevant; General questions Q. How do I install unstable (sid) ? See also http://www.debian.org/CD/faq . There are no unstable full CD or DVD images. Due to the fact that the packages in unstable change so quickly, it is more appropriate for people to download and install unstable using a normal Debian FTP mirror. If you are aware of the risks of running unstable, but still want to install it, you have two choices: Use the business card size CD image of testing. Boot from it in expert mode or with priority=medium. You will then be able to select the distribution (stable/testing/unstable) during mirror selection. Install testing using a netinst image, then upgrade to unstable by changing the entries in your /etc/apt/sources.list (change each occurrence of testing to unstable). To avoid unnecessary downloads and package upgrades, it is advisable to install a minimal testing system first and only to install most of the software (e.g. desktop environment) after the switch to unstable. Then apt-get update and apt-get -u dist-upgrade - then you have a sid release. Incidentally installing only a minimal system is what I'd recommend to anyone other than a complete noobie as the default installation tends to install far too much. Install only to the point where you are asked to select what packages to install but don't select anything. Once the system has re-booted you can test things like networking without having the complication of a graphical interface getting in the way. Nano is the default editor so it is easy to change /etc/apt/sources.list from testing to unstable and add the non-free repositories, so you have this line: deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free I also have: deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ unstable main non-free deb http://deb.opera.com/opera sid non-free but there is some controversy over debian-multimedia.org as it isn't an official debian repository and it is to be renamed (some people question the need for it at all since some of what is in 'multimedia' is now in Debian non-free). you may need to install the firmware-linux-nonfree package if you weren't given the option during basic install. I haven't used the latest installer so am not sure what it does by default but hardware detection should ascertain if you have a need for it. -- John Lewis Debian the GeneWeb genealogical data server -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 02:22, Full Circle Podcast wrote: Oops, almost forgot, Popey: You could try other derivatives like Linux Mint with Cinnamon or Mate, but I would question the sustainability of those desktops. Nice plug of the corporate line, It's not the corporate line, it's my personal opinion. As I understand it one is a fork of a current desktop (GNOME Shell) the other is a fork of an old abandoned desktop (GNOME 2). Neither have particularly large development communities. They're both aimed at the refuseniks who don't like GNOME Shell or Unity. I don't believe the 'future' of computing is based in a dead/unsupported desktop (GNOME 2) or a _fork_ of said dead/unsupported desktop. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. That's just mine, personally. The complaints about Unity and GNOME Shell are mostly coming from the 'neckbeards'. People who are perfectly entitled to their opinion and choice of desktop, but are actually a pretty small part of the computer-buying market. There's millions upon millions of people out there who have never seen GNOME 2 or XFCE and don't have the same pre-conceptions that us nerds do. The vast echo-chamber of the internet (including mailing lists and twitter feeds) is not at all representative of the 'normals'. No, Unity isn't perfect. If it's broken in places, let us know and we will try to fix it. My team at Canonical are responsible for putting out Unity/Compiz etc releases so I'm keen to know which bits are broken, so we can, you know, fix them. I mean, who wants to get stuck on a proprietary desktop supported by only one commercial Linux vendoroh. Like GNOME Shell? When you install KDE, LXDE, XFCE desktops, they take on a kind of Unity cut-down format .. Hmm. don't suppose those project teams would take that as a compliment. Or an accurate comparison. Ho hum. I didn't say that! Leszek did. Get your reply-formatting fixed please. I use it on all my machines, I guess that makes me a dummy. We couldn't possibly comment. But then again, if you're Canonical's Product Strategy Manager, you are kind of obliged to eat your own dog food. I used it on all my machines long before I started working for Canonical. Yes, it's expected that we dogfood our own products, that's not exactly surprising, but it's easy to do when you're already running it. I'm just an Engineering Manager, the head of Product Strategy is Mark Shuttleworth. Cheers, -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
I very much feel there is a trend in interface design to favour the new/occasional user, even when it will inconvenience the experienced power user. I think exactly the opposite, TBH. All this searching for the application presupposes that the user knows what the app is called. It doesn't help much to search for one thing if you're actually after something else. My favourite music player is called amarok, although I've heard others like totem. My PDF viewer is called evince... The point of menu-based desktops is that they are discoverable; you know where to start, and you can follow your hunt for an app by way of a sequence of classifications. Removing this means that the user needs prior knowledge before he can get to his goal. I see both Gnome3 and Unity as a serious own-goal. With Windows8 making exactly the same cock-up, we could really have pushed Linux desktops over the next few years. But absolutely none of the newbies I've tried on Gnome3 can cope with it, whereas only one has balked at Gnome2, so for this to happen, we now need a mainstream distro that doesn't ship Gnome3 or Unity. That means neither Fedora[1] or Ubuntu :-( Vic. [1] Having said that, I'm writing this post on a machine running Gnome2 on Fedora 16. But it's a non-trivial route to get to that point, and not something you can just download from the Fedora website :-( -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 02:48, Leszek Kobiernicki 1 wrote: I understand Canonical's committed to Unity, but I still don't hafta like its seizure of control over the old menu-driven experience Sure, there's bits of Unity that I don't like either :) What's worth noting is that it's not finished. We have a design team who have come up with plans for Unity, but only a small amount of the work gets done in each 6 month cycle. We're hiring all the time and frequently hire community contributors onto staff. In fact in some ways people think the community around Ubuntu is shrinking, that's partly because we hire all the decent community contributors! :D Didn't mean to imply you're a dummy: what I meant, was, that the experience of Unity, gives me the impression, that I'm being turned into one ! Yeah, I got that, my reply was a bit tongue in cheek :) Thing is I hear this dumbing down thing a lot, and then I look around at the Ubuntu Developer Summit at the incredibly clever people who use Unity every day. One of our guys - Jorge Castro - made a video showing how he multi-tasks on Unity. http://blip.tv/jorge-castro/how-i-multitask-in-unity-5015448 It's a little old now, based on an older release of Unity, but worth a watch to see how a power user uses Unity. Oh - by the way, Ubuntu 12.04's installed on a Mac, so - no Windows key. Yeah it does, it's just called something else. It's the one next to the spacebar, The apple or cloverleaf key. Cheers, -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 03:11, Leszek Kobiernicki 1 wrote: Some private jokery-pokery here No idea, I think Robin had been on the sherry. :) But, more pragmatically, how to get Gnome fall-back session ? sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback Logout, log back in again but choose the fallback session. Cheers, -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 10:07, Vic wrote: I very much feel there is a trend in interface design to favour the new/occasional user, even when it will inconvenience the experienced power user. I think exactly the opposite, TBH. SNIP Yeh, I see what you mean... Perhaps I should have said: I very much feel there is a trend in interface design to try to, or be seen to, favour the new/occasional user, even when it will inconvenience the experienced power user. My main point, though, was about have ways of working imposed on me, rather than me having control over them. Chris -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 09:56, Chris Liddell wrote: This is Unix, for heaven's sake, how can a terminal window *not* be available right there, front and centre? https://www.google.com/search?q=ubuntu+unity+terminal Basically ctrl+alt+T (same as it has been on Ubuntu for some while). Or press the Ubuntu button and start typing terminal. I find Terminal pops up when I get as far as typing the t. I very much feel there is a trend in interface design to favour the new/occasional user, even when it will inconvenience the experienced power user. In truth I have no problem with interfaces being made easier to drive for the less experienced user, but why does it have to get in the way of me (as an experienced user) going about things they way I want to? They don't, you just didn't know how to do the thing you wanted to. Throwing the whole desktop out because you couldn't find a terminal isn't necessarily the desktops fault. I wonder if we'll see an upsurge in power users using plain old window managers, instead of the full desktop experience GUIs We already have. Hence the creation of GNOME Fallback mode, Cinnamon and Mate. Cheers, -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
My main point, though, was about have ways of working imposed on me, rather than me having control over them. And I am right with you on that. Luckily for me, the code I use is FOSS, so I do have the right to port the old Gnome2 desktop to my current OS. But I am very much in the minority in terms of having the capability[1] to do that; most users[2] are stuck with the choice of an obsolete OS or a desktop they don't like. This is not a good situation if we want people to switch to Linux. Vic. [1] ...even if I don't actually get it together to finish the job. My machine is so usable, I've not bothered to get the few remaining bits sorted out :-) [2] I've tried quite a few of my users[3] with this comparison. I've put two laptops in front of them, and told them that the machines are running *slightly* different OSes, but that they should pick the one they prefer. So far, the result is unanimous - everyone has preferred hophead, which is actually the less powerful machine, but which runs Gnome2 on F16. No-one liked perridge, which is a straight F16 machine. I've now put Gnome2 on perridge, because I can't find anyone that wants to play with Gnome3, so it was going to waste. [3] The bulk of the people I look after are not very computer-literate. They type when they *have to*. Asking them to type the name of something they know is hard enough, but typing the bizarre names we get in the G/L world? Not going to happen. They still insist that they use Excel and Photoshop, even when the tools clearly claim to be LibreOffice and Gimp. -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 10:18, Alan Pope wrote: On 01/07/12 09:56, Chris Liddell wrote: This is Unix, for heaven's sake, how can a terminal window *not* be available right there, front and centre? https://www.google.com/search?q=ubuntu+unity+terminal Basically ctrl+alt+T (same as it has been on Ubuntu for some while). Or press the Ubuntu button and start typing terminal. I find Terminal pops up when I get as far as typing the t. Like I said, I got there - didn't like it I very much feel there is a trend in interface design to favour the new/occasional user, even when it will inconvenience the experienced power user. In truth I have no problem with interfaces being made easier to drive for the less experienced user, but why does it have to get in the way of me (as an experienced user) going about things they way I want to? They don't, you just didn't know how to do the thing you wanted to. Throwing the whole desktop out because you couldn't find a terminal isn't necessarily the desktops fault. So, clearly I'm wrong. I've always wanted to work the way Unity works, I just didn't realise it.. Are you channelling the ghost of Steve Jobs? There's our way, and there's the wrong way is not an attitude I ever expected to find so openly espoused in the Unix world, and especially not in the Linux world. I wonder if we'll see an upsurge in power users using plain old window managers, instead of the full desktop experience GUIs We already have. Hence the creation of GNOME Fallback mode, Cinnamon and Mate. Those are all full desktop packages - I meant really, just a window manager... Chris -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 10:26, Chris Liddell wrote: So, clearly I'm wrong. I've always wanted to work the way Unity works, I just didn't realise it.. I fail to see how being different is 'getting in the way'. There's a learning curve with many things, but people seem to have a very low tolerance for change on the desktop. Perhaps the proliferation of desktops perpetuates that. 10 Choose a desktop 20 Install desktop 30 Spend 5 minutes using it, make a snap decision that it's not good 40 Goto 10 There's a lot of that about. Are you channelling the ghost of Steve Jobs? There's our way, and there's the wrong way is not an attitude I ever expected to find so openly espoused in the Unix world, and especially not in the Linux world. Just because GNOME 2 did it one way for years, doesn't make it the right way. It just makes it the established way. The established way can still be wrong. Cheers, -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
Just because GNOME 2 did it one way for years, doesn't make it the right way. Just because Gnome3 and Unity do it a different way, doesn't make it the right way. It would be really nice to have this discussion occasionally without being told we're just wrong for wanting the old metaphor that has evolved over many years, rather than the new and largely unproven one that's trendy... Vic. -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 10:33, Alan Pope wrote: On 01/07/12 10:26, Chris Liddell wrote: Are you channelling the ghost of Steve Jobs? There's our way, and there's the wrong way is not an attitude I ever expected to find so openly espoused in the Unix world, and especially not in the Linux world. Just because GNOME 2 did it one way for years, doesn't make it the right way. It just makes it the established way. The established way can still be wrong. What GNOME 2 did right, *eventually*, was allow a hell of a lot of the functionality to be configured by the user, should the user wish to do so. What I think GNOME 3, and each generation of the Ubuntu desktop (not just Unity, but going back several generations) have gotten wrong is progressively removing the ability for the user to change the look, feel and function of the user interface. The early releases of GNOME 2 had most of that configurability removed (compared to GNOME 1), and such was the outcry, it was gradually fed back in over subsequent releases. The argument I've seen cited for both GNOME 3 and Unity severely limiting the extent of the user's ability to change the look, feel and function of the environments is to pursue the idea of consistency across installs - every Unity driven box should be as usable for a random user as any other Unity driven box, same with GNOME 3. Sounds very laudable - except, if that's all we really wanted, why would we have moved away from Windows? Chris -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 1 July 2012 09:56, Chris Liddell c...@spamcop.net wrote: A bit late to this discussion, but never mind. I gave up on Unity *very* quickly. it took me a good (bad!) fifteen minutes to find how to get a terminal window up, and I concluded it was not for me, at all - I switched to Xfce for now. I may go back to Debian next time I have to setup a machine. This is Unix, for heaven's sake, how can a terminal window *not* be available right there, front and centre? For me, the terminal is: Press Windows Key, then press t, then press ENTER Far easier than moving the mouse around a bit and clicking. I can also drag and drop it off the Dash menus if I wish to click mouses on it. I agree, Unity has taken me a bit of getting used to, but most people are happy with the search approach. I don't think I can go back to the clunky Gnome or xfce desktops now. Once you get used to it, it does provide quicker (fewer clicks, key presses) access to what you want to do. In fact, the Start button is maybe disappearing for window 8, so Ubuntu are not the only people who think application menus are on the way out. Kind Regards James -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 10:38, Vic wrote: Just because Gnome3 and Unity do it a different way, doesn't make it the right way. A convincing argument for GNOME 2 you have there. It would be really nice to have this discussion occasionally without being told we're just wrong for wanting the old metaphor that has evolved over many years, rather than the new and largely unproven one that's trendy... Reducing it down to 'them and us' doesn't help, it's not as simple as that. Although someone probably has to be wrong, and sure, it could be us. We do regular user testing with people (pretty much) off the street and that helps to feed back to our design and development processes. Sometimes they discover things with Unity that surprises us, and makes us change the way the desktop works. One example of that was the launcher dodging windows when they were brought near. We welcome new designs for features and behaviours suggestions for new or changed behaviour on our Unity design mailing list, and irc channels. If someone flat out doesn't like it and wants to use another desktop there's not much we can do, but if someone things we're wrong and they know the 'right' way and can articulate it in a meaningful and respectful (i.e. not just telling us it sucks) then we'll listen. We do listen, we may be wrong, time will tell. Cheers, -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 10:48, James Courtier-Dutton wrote: On 1 July 2012 09:56, Chris Liddell c...@spamcop.net wrote: A bit late to this discussion, but never mind. I gave up on Unity *very* quickly. it took me a good (bad!) fifteen minutes to find how to get a terminal window up, and I concluded it was not for me, at all - I switched to Xfce for now. I may go back to Debian next time I have to setup a machine. This is Unix, for heaven's sake, how can a terminal window *not* be available right there, front and centre? For me, the terminal is: Press Windows Key, then press t, then press ENTER Far easier than moving the mouse around a bit and clicking. And I'm not saying that's wrong. You prefer it, great! You should certainly not have my preferred working methods imposed on you, that would be totally unfair. Oh, hang on Just to be clear, James, I'm not having a go at you - to paraphrase: I may not like your way of working, but I'll support to the death your right to work that way! In general, I'm not really having a go at Unity, it just seems unfortunate that both GNOME (my previously preferred desktop) and Ubuntu (my previously preferred distribution) contemporaneously decided that I really didn't want all that ability to configure stuff, and I should just work as their designers saw fit. That just doesn't feel very Linux to me. Chris -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
Andy, Alan and I take the mick out of each other all the time (often on podcasts and in IRC), and we've had this very conversation a couple of times. We have very thick skins. Merely pointing out a couple of pertinant facts. -- Rgds RC Robin Catling Full Circle Podcast On 1 July 2012 02:30, Andy Smith a...@strugglers.net wrote: Hello, On Sun, Jul 01, 2012 at 02:22:58AM +0100, Full Circle Podcast wrote: I use it on all my machines, I guess that makes me a dummy. We couldn't possibly comment. But then again, if you're Canonical's Product Strategy Manager, you are kind of obliged to eat your own dog food. This was not a very constructive post. Please can you try to be less needlessly offensive when posting here. Thanks, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) iEYEAREDAAYFAk/vqD8ACgkQIJm2TL8VSQvxQgCeN/Xe/Dw+zKnfBDDykS+s2+H4 q8cAoJ706dgFnkJxXzBjz8eVMCS9QfCP =1npe -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk -- -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
...and I haven't touched the sherry since 27 July 2000. -- Rgds RC Robin Catling Full Circle Podcast I this this the right room for an argument? I've told you once... (Monty Python) -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
A convincing argument for GNOME 2 you have there. It was your argument in support of Unity. I was trying to point out how fatuous it is. Reducing it down to 'them and us' doesn't help Of course it doesn't. It does, however, reflect the approach many of us experience when we say that Unity and Gnome3 are flawed. Apparently, that makes us neck beards, which I would say is fairly demonstrative of a them and us situation. it's not as simple as that. Although someone probably has to be wrong, and sure, it could be us. The saddening part of this is that we could both have what we want. The whole search metaphor could be bound to an accelerator key, giving your side of the fence your favourite paradigm, whilst simultaneously allowing our side to have the desktop we think is superior. Menus and panels are trivially removed in Gnome2. Unfortunately, we haven't got that. We've got a new idiom pushed onto us. And we don't like it. We do regular user testing with people (pretty much) off the street and that helps to feed back to our design and development processes. Well, your test subjects seem to be producing results entirely at odds with mine. Are you giving them a side-by-side Gnome2/Unity comparison, or are you giving them two versions of Unity and asking for their preference? The latter would give skewed responses... We welcome new designs for features and behaviours suggestions for new or changed behaviour on our Unity design mailing list, and irc channels. Here's my suggestion: reinstate the Gnome2-like desktop. Do you honestly think that will get treated seriously if I were to suggest it on IRC? Because I've experienced quite enough invective for one week, thankyouverymuch. We do listen [citation needed] Vic. -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 11:50, Vic wrote: A convincing argument for GNOME 2 you have there. It was your argument in support of Unity. I was trying to point out how fatuous it is. It wasn't meant in support of Unity, just that the fact that something is de-facto standard doesn't make it right. That applies to many things.. Word documents, qwerty keyboards, desktops. It was a counter to the foot-stamping I want this and I don't want that new thing because it isn't this old thing that I see a lot. We do regular user testing with people (pretty much) off the street and that helps to feed back to our design and development processes. Well, your test subjects seem to be producing results entirely at odds with mine. Are you giving them a side-by-side Gnome2/Unity comparison, or are you giving them two versions of Unity and asking for their preference? The latter would give skewed responses... I'm not privy to the exact circumstances under which the most recent tests are performed. However in the past I believe they have been given one machine running Unity and a list of tasks to perform. Here's a summary of what was done last year. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2011-April/032988.html Here's my suggestion: reinstate the Gnome2-like desktop. Do you honestly think that will get treated seriously if I were to suggest it on IRC? That specific point is tricky given upstream GNOME project have abandoned GNONME 2. However we do ship gnome-fallback mode which does behave like GNOME 2. It's in the repo, just not default on the CD. If you asked for a GNOME2-like desktop you'd probably get the answer:- sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback We do listen [citation needed] https://lists.launchpad.net/unity-design/msg07682.html Many of the changes made stem from that research and testing. Not all of them. But even the crazier bits can be tested in isolation to gain confidence or shape insights. https://lists.launchpad.net/unity-design/msg07665.html In fact, the dodge-windows approach tested very poorly. We thought it would work well, tried it, tested it, and have had to evolve from there based on evidence. So, based on that, we made the following design choices: ... Not to offer a dodge option, because users who don't want it always there are perfectly capable of using it in plain hiding mode, and users who don't know what 'dodge' means don't have to spend time trying to parse it. We also look _daily_ at high profile (many affected users, hi-impact issues) bug reports and assign developers to work on them. There's a lot of them though. http://tinyurl.com/76npbtp We also have a system which sends crash reports to us and automatically generates bug reports. We cherry pick bugs from that list which are high impact. Okay these aren't design issues but it's another illustration of us listening to what problems users are having. https://errors.ubuntu.com/ We also get verbal feedback from people. I was recently in a bar and was approcahed by two friendly Ubuntu Unity users who asked me why a particular feature was broken and when I looked into it found it was a higher profile issue than I'd previously thought. I assigned a developer to that last week and expect that issue to get fixed and released real soon now. So yeah, we do listen. Unless all someone has to say is it sucks in which case Linux Mint / Debian / Fedora etc are - that way. Cheers, -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On Sun, 1 Jul 2012 11:50:50 +0100 (BST) Vic l...@beer.org.uk wrote: Here's my suggestion: reinstate the Gnome2-like desktop. Do you honestly think that will get treated seriously if I were to suggest it on IRC? Because I've experienced quite enough invective for one week, thankyouverymuch. Debian has done this. At the login screen (using gdm3) there is an option to choose Classic which gives all the goodness of Gnome3 with the simplicity of Gnome2 menus. I think what is happening with interface designers is that they are assuming we are all going to be using tablets or screens with touch interfaces and recent improved GUIs are designed with this in mind. I am of the old school that thinks touching the screen with greasy fingers is not a good idea!! -- John Lewis Debian the GeneWeb genealogical data server -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 12:31, john lewis wrote: I think what is happening with interface designers is that they are assuming we are all going to be using tablets or screens with touch interfaces and recent improved GUIs are designed with this in mind. I hear this a lot. Mostly from people who have never actually tried Unity/GNOME Shell on a touch screen. You should try it, it sucks. :) If you look on youtube there's loads of videos of people trying out Unity on tablets. It's far from an ideal experience, and I wouldn't say it was designed for it. I think the big iPhone-style icons in the launcher make people thing that, but Xandros on the Eee PC some years back had a 'harry big buttons' experience too.. Cheers, -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
It wasn't meant in support of Unity It was your response to Chris' comment that 'There's our way, and there's the wrong way is not an attitude I ever expected to find so openly espoused in the Unix world, and especially not in the Linux world.' That would seem to be your argument in response to his position. My apologies if I have inadvertently assumed some inadvertent causality in your post. Are you giving them a side-by-side Gnome2/Unity comparison, or are you giving them two versions of Unity and asking for their preference? The latter would give skewed responses... I'm not privy to the exact circumstances under which the most recent tests are performed. However in the past I believe they have been given one machine running Unity and a list of tasks to perform. Here's a summary of what was done last year. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2011-April/032988.html The test machine was a Lenovo ThinkPad T410i running Ubuntu Natty with unity 3.8.2-0ubuntu1 and compiz 1:0.9.4git20110322-0ubuntu5. So it's not a side-by-side test to see which model users prefer, it's a simplistic can they use this model? test. Like I said, that will give you skewed results; that later improvements help users to use the unfamiliar model does not make that model the one those users would choose if they actually had a free choice. That specific point is tricky given upstream GNOME project have abandoned GNONME 2. I thought Ubuntu was all about making Linux useful for Joe Average? If, as is my belief, Gnome2 is the more usable interface, that would seem to imply that it should be forked and continued. Again, my profuse apologies if I have inappropriately inferred some sense of trying to assist users in the meaning of enhance the initial experience of new Ubuntu users from the Mission Statement at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BeginnersTeam/MissionStatement. I likewise apologise if I have inadvertently indferred some sort of insult in the term neck beard bandied around earlier in this thread. https://lists.launchpad.net/unity-design/msg07682.html Talk about window dodging. Not really about G2/Unity. https://lists.launchpad.net/unity-design/msg07665.html Same thread. Still nothing about why users might prefer not to use Unity. http://tinyurl.com/76npbtp A bug tracker. Unique... https://errors.ubuntu.com/ And a graph from it. How many bugs are cleared out because they have become stale, rather than being fixed? I notice that a bug I filed is no longer showing against the package, despite another page telling me its status is confirmed. And I gave the fix in the bug report (back in 2008). We also get verbal feedback from people. Do you call them all neck beards? So yeah, we do listen. Selective listening really doesn't cut the mustard, I'm afraid. Unless all someone has to say is it sucks in which case Linux Mint / Debian / Fedora etc are - that way. It's easy to hear exactly that when someone is telling you something you don't want to hear, even if the actual words used are decidedly different. Vic. -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
I mean, who wants to get stuck on a proprietary desktop supported by only one commercial Linux vendoroh. Like GNOME Shell? I guess you're trying to imply that as unity==cannonical so gnome==redhat but I think you are missing an important point, Gnome is developed by the Gnome Project, Red Hat contributes, as do lots of other people (I notice Cannonical host gnome.org ...), but they are separate and if fedora decided to switch to KDE for F19 gnome would continue to exist, be developed, and be widely used. By the way, Red Hat doesn't ship product with Gnome 3, Fedora does, but RHEL6.3 still runs gnome 2 (which makes me sad, I like gnome3), so if you really want the gnome2 experience maybe CentOS is the choice for you ;) Yes, I work for Red Hat :) chris -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On Sun, 01 Jul 2012 12:41:39 +0100 Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com wrote: On 01/07/12 12:31, john lewis wrote: I think what is happening with interface designers is that they are assuming we are all going to be using tablets or screens with touch interfaces and recent improved GUIs are designed with this in mind. I hear this a lot. Mostly from people who have never actually tried Unity/GNOME Shell on a touch screen. You should try it, it sucks. :) If you look on youtube there's loads of videos of people trying out Unity on tablets. It's far from an ideal experience, and I wouldn't say it was designed for it. I think the big iPhone-style icons in the launcher make people thing that, but Xandros on the Eee PC some years back had a 'harry big buttons' experience too.. OK! So maybe they aren't designed with touch screens in mind. I don't have one and am unlikely to ever have one so I'll never know. So we are left with an interface that is designed for a different audience than quite a few of us who have been following this thread. My original problem with Gnome3 was that it didn't have static work places. My mode of working is that once logged in I only open half-dozen apps* and have each app maximised in its own separate work place and use Ctrl-left or right arrow key (or the mouse) to move between them. This was hairy with Gnome3's floating work places. I have no idea what unity does with work places but I know that windows XP and early versions of OS/X don't have the concept of multiple places at all. (OK I am aware there is an app that gives (sort of) this functionality to XP). So maybe I'm in a minority of one in the way I work, but I'm not alone in not liking the current trend in GUIs. And as for it being easy to get used to a new way of working why should we have to? A common reason given as to why businesses are reluctant to upgrade between versions of windows is the cost of retraining staff to use a new interface. *I rarely need anything other than a mail-agent, a browser and a pdf reader, plus a couple of x-terms which with zim and osmo easily fit in one workspace. -- John Lewis Debian the GeneWeb genealogical data server -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On Sun, 01 Jul 2012 12:41:39 +0100 Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com wrote: If you look on youtube there's loads of videos of people trying out Unity on tablets. I forgot to mention that I barely even know what youtube is ;-) -- John Lewis Debian the GeneWeb genealogical data server -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 12:50, Vic wrote: The test machine was a Lenovo ThinkPad T410i running Ubuntu Natty with unity 3.8.2-0ubuntu1 and compiz 1:0.9.4git20110322-0ubuntu5. So it's not a side-by-side test to see which model users prefer, it's a simplistic can they use this model? That's not the goal of our testing. Anyone is free to setup a test such as the one you describe and publish their results. I look forward to seeing the results. test. Like I said, that will give you skewed results; that later improvements help users to use the unfamiliar model does not make that model the one those users would choose if they actually had a free choice. And GNOME 2 has been a raging hit with our target market over the last 7 years? No. People haven't chosen GNOME 2, that's the point. A small number of highly technical users have chosen it. That specific point is tricky given upstream GNOME project have abandoned GNONME 2. I thought Ubuntu was all about making Linux useful for Joe Average? s/Joe Average/anyone/ , but yes. If, as is my belief, Gnome2 is the more usable interface, that would seem to imply that it should be forked and continued. It has. I'm sure they would appreciate your valuable contributions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATE_%28desktop_environment%29 Again, my profuse apologies if I have inappropriately inferred some sense of trying to assist users in the meaning of enhance the initial experience of new Ubuntu users from the Mission Statement at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BeginnersTeam/MissionStatement. I likewise apologise if I have inadvertently indferred some sort of insult in the term neck beard bandied around earlier in this thread. I merely used it as mildly humorous shorthand for technically competent, well versed, Linux-experienced experts, as opposed to the 'normals'. Apologies if it offends you. I won't use it again. https://lists.launchpad.net/unity-design/msg07682.html Talk about window dodging. Not really about G2/Unity. You asked for a citation when I said we listen. I gave you examples of how we listen. They may not be the specific questions to which you want answers, but they do address the point that we listen. Just because we listen also doesn't mean we have to agree or action your opinion/points. http://tinyurl.com/76npbtp A bug tracker. Unique... *sigh* https://errors.ubuntu.com/ And a graph from it. How many bugs are cleared out because they have become stale, rather than being fixed? I notice that a bug I filed is no longer showing against the package, despite another page telling me its status is confirmed. And I gave the fix in the bug report (back in 2008). Bug number? We also get verbal feedback from people. Do you call them all neck beards? No, usually Hey you! douchebag! Use Unity, don't complain, everyone loves it, you're a minority, gnome is dead etc. etc. So yeah, we do listen. Selective listening really doesn't cut the mustard, I'm afraid. Contrary to what you might think we _have_ heard this argument about GNOME 2 before. It doesn't make you right, and frankly Unity is our choice for the future of our desktop. If you don't like it, don't use it, if you want to change it, contribute. Lobbing tomatoes from the sidelines helps _nobody_. Unless all someone has to say is it sucks in which case Linux Mint / Debian / Fedora etc are - that way. It's easy to hear exactly that when someone is telling you something you don't want to hear, even if the actual words used are decidedly different. You seem to think that your opinion is the only one we should should take notice of. News flash for you. You're just one dude on the internet with an opinion and an email client, there's a lot of them about, and unsurprisingly they don't agree with eachother. Cheers, -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 09:56, Chris Liddell wrote: A bit late to this discussion, but never mind. I gave up on Unity *very* quickly. it took me a good (bad!) fifteen minutes to find how to get a terminal window up, and I concluded it was not for me, at all - I switched to Xfce for now. I may go back to Debian next time I have to setup a machine. This is Unix, for heaven's sake, how can a terminal window *not* be available right there, front and centre? I very much feel there is a trend in interface design to favour the new/occasional user, even when it will inconvenience the experienced power user. In truth I have no problem with interfaces being made easier to drive for the less experienced user, but why does it have to get in the way of me (as an experienced user) going about things they way I want to? Unity and Gnome3 (I haven't tried KDE in years) both seem to want to impose a way of working on me, and that's a big reason I wanted to get away from Windows - I want to tell the computer how to work, not have the computer tell me how to work! I wonder if we'll see an upsurge in power users using plain old window managers, instead of the full desktop experience GUIs Chris On 30/06/12 11:09, Leszek Kobiernicki 1 wrote: Hi all I've been struggling with Unity/Ubuntu 12.04 on a Mac Desktop seems a good deal less usable than in the pre-Unity days On 10.04.x, you can access every single app cumulatively installed, everof other so easily Is there a SysAdmin's walkthrough, of how to return a Unity desktop to full administator's ready functionality ? Please advize, if you can. ( If not, I'll downgrade, keep on updating that .. ) When you install KDE, LXDE, XFCE desktops, they take on a kind of Unity cut-down format .. Instead of giving you a bootup choice of desktop, the system auto-defaults to the latest installed desktop All this is a backwards step - offering less user-friendliness more system-initiated control ( Ubuntu for dummies ? ) thanx, Lesz -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk -- If you'd been at Popey's demo of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS at the Surrey meet in Addlestone, Chris, you might have been converted to Unity - as were a lot us. E.g. I get an instant Terminal window on this PC by pressing win + 6 - that's just two keys, together. Using the search key (top of the icons), three letters finds a program thanks to predictive text. I'm no 'power user' but it all seems pretty good to me. And compared to my previous MS experience of about 17 frustrating years, this is computer heaven. (Thank you Desmond.) Tony Wood (from PC) -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 14:51, Samuel Penn wrote: On Sunday 01 July 2012 10:45:56 Chris Liddell wrote: SNIP What GNOME 2 did right, *eventually*, was allow a hell of a lot of the functionality to be configured by the user, should the user wish to do so. But it was Gnome 2 which removed all that configurability in the first place. Gnome 1, when it was designed with Englightenment in mind, was incredibly configurable. Far more so than Gnome has ever been since then. Yeh, that's kind of my point: having gone down the route of removing all that configurability in GNOME 2, and then effectively being brow beaten by disgruntled users into putting an awful lot of it back in again in subsequent maintenance releases, I'm surprised (and a little depressed) by the fact they've done it again with GNOME 3. KDE has kept the configuration options (KDE 4 was originally a broken mess, but it has improved a lot since when it was first released), which was why I moved to KDE pretty much entirely since KDE 3. I haven't tried KDE in several years - I may give it a another go soon. I regularly create and throw away virtual machines for various testing, builds and so on, so I have the chance to try things out quite a bit. Chris -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 14:51, Tony Wood wrote: On 01/07/12 09:56, Chris Liddell wrote: SNIP -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk -- If you'd been at Popey's demo of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS at the Surrey meet in Addlestone, Chris, you might have been converted to Unity - as were a lot us. E.g. I get an instant Terminal window on this PC by pressing win + 6 - that's just two keys, together. Using the search key (top of the icons), three letters finds a program thanks to predictive text. I'm no 'power user' but it all seems pretty good to me. And compared to my previous MS experience of about 17 frustrating years, this is computer heaven. (Thank you Desmond.) Well, again, I come back to: if it works for you, great! And I am in no way claiming you are wrong, because of that. I respect the fact that you find Unity's way of working suits you - but don't I deserve the same respect with regard to finding Unity doesn't suit me? I admit, I am prone to snap decisions about these things: it's not a question of I can use this or I can't use this, but more this feels right or this feels wrong - which is much more ethereal, harder to define. But if something feels right from early on, I will put the effort into learning to use it to fully satisfy my needs. If it feels wrong, I probably won't put that effort in unless I really have to. Maybe I'll ditch the desktop experience, and GUI and go find me a nice vt100 terminal to work at... Chris -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 17:13, Chris Liddell wrote: On 01/07/12 14:51, Tony Wood wrote: On 01/07/12 09:56, Chris Liddell wrote: SNIP -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk -- If you'd been at Popey's demo of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS at the Surrey meet in Addlestone, Chris, you might have been converted to Unity - as were a lot us. E.g. I get an instant Terminal window on this PC by pressing win + 6 - that's just two keys, together. Using the search key (top of the icons), three letters finds a program thanks to predictive text. I'm no 'power user' but it all seems pretty good to me. And compared to my previous MS experience of about 17 frustrating years, this is computer heaven. (Thank you Desmond.) Well, again, I come back to: if it works for you, great! And I am in no way claiming you are wrong, because of that. I respect the fact that you find Unity's way of working suits you - but don't I deserve the same respect with regard to finding Unity doesn't suit me? I admit, I am prone to snap decisions about these things: it's not a question of I can use this or I can't use this, but more this feels right or this feels wrong - which is much more ethereal, harder to define. But if something feels right from early on, I will put the effort into learning to use it to fully satisfy my needs. If it feels wrong, I probably won't put that effort in unless I really have to. Maybe I'll ditch the desktop experience, and GUI and go find me a nice vt100 terminal to work at... Chris -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk -- Fair enough, Chris. Bit like a car/motorbike: takes only a few minutes of driving/riding to know whether it suits you or not. To each his own. Tony Wood (from PC) -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 09:56, Chris Liddell wrote: A bit late to this discussion, but never mind. I gave up on Unity *very* quickly. it took me a good (bad!) fifteen minutes to find how to get a terminal window up, and I concluded it was not for me, at all - I switched to Xfce for now. I may go back to Debian next time I have to setup a machine. This is Unix, for heaven's sake, how can a terminal window *not* be available right there, front and centre? I very much feel there is a trend in interface design to favour the new/occasional user, even when it will inconvenience the experienced power user. In truth I have no problem with interfaces being made easier to drive for the less experienced user, but why does it have to get in the way of me (as an experienced user) going about things they way I want to? Unity and Gnome3 (I haven't tried KDE in years) both seem to want to impose a way of working on me, and that's a big reason I wanted to get away from Windows - I want to tell the computer how to work, not have the computer tell me how to work! I wonder if we'll see an upsurge in power users using plain old window managers, instead of the full desktop experience GUIs Chris Hi Chris I think I'm inclined to agree with all of this As an 8 year user of Ubuntu, I too want to do things my way Will certainly consider window manager usage, rather than Unity-for-dummies Thanx, Lesz -- The power of this life, if men will open their hearts to it, will heal them, will create them anew, physically and spiritually. Here is the gospel of earth, ringing with hope, like May mornings with bird-song, fresh and healthy as fields of young grain. But those who would be healed must absorb it not only into their bodies in daily food and warmth but into their minds, because its spiritual power is more intense. It is not reasonable to suppose that an essence so divine and mysterious as life can be confined to material things; therefore, if our bodies need to be in touch with it so do our minds. The joy of a spring day revives a man's spirit, reacting healthily on the bone and the blood, just as the wholesome juices of plants cleanse the body, reacting on the mind. Let us join in the abundant sacrament--for our bodies the crushed gold of harvest and ripe vine-clusters, for our souls the purple fruit of evening with its innumerable seed of stars . Vis Medicatrix Naturae, by Mary Webb, in Spring of Joy: Nature Essays, Constable, London, 1917 -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 09:58, Alan Pope wrote: On 01/07/12 02:22, Full Circle Podcast wrote: Oops, almost forgot, Popey: You could try other derivatives like Linux Mint with Cinnamon or Mate, but I would question the sustainability of those desktops. Nice plug of the corporate line, It's not the corporate line, it's my personal opinion. As I understand it one is a fork of a current desktop (GNOME Shell) the other is a fork of an old abandoned desktop (GNOME 2). Neither have particularly large development communities. They're both aimed at the refuseniks who don't like GNOME Shell or Unity. I don't believe the 'future' of computing is based in a dead/unsupported desktop (GNOME 2) or a _fork_ of said dead/unsupported desktop. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. That's just mine, personally. The complaints about Unity and GNOME Shell are mostly coming from the 'neckbeards'. People who are perfectly entitled to their opinion and choice of desktop, but are actually a pretty small part of the computer-buying market. There's millions upon millions of people out there who have never seen GNOME 2 or XFCE and don't have the same pre-conceptions that us nerds do. The vast echo-chamber of the internet (including mailing lists and twitter feeds) is not at all representative of the 'normals'. No, Unity isn't perfect. If it's broken in places, let us know and we will try to fix it. My team at Canonical are responsible for putting out Unity/Compiz etc releases so I'm keen to know which bits are broken, so we can, you know, fix them. I mean, who wants to get stuck on a proprietary desktop supported by only one commercial Linux vendoroh. Like GNOME Shell? When you install KDE, LXDE, XFCE desktops, they take on a kind of Unity cut-down format .. Hmm. don't suppose those project teams would take that as a compliment. Or an accurate comparison. Ho hum. I didn't say that! Leszek did. Get your reply-formatting fixed please. I use it on all my machines, I guess that makes me a dummy. We couldn't possibly comment. But then again, if you're Canonical's Product Strategy Manager, you are kind of obliged to eat your own dog food. I used it on all my machines long before I started working for Canonical. Yes, it's expected that we dogfood our own products, that's not exactly surprising, but it's easy to do when you're already running it. I'm just an Engineering Manager, the head of Product Strategy is Mark Shuttleworth. Cheers, Hi Alan Trouble is, we slightly longer users in time, are some of the key recommenders of a distro to new entrants If a desktop cripples established ease-of-use, forcing a completely different operational design on us, we're not going to want to recommend the same elevated learning curve to others I've no special preferences ( Debian/Ubuntu/derivatives ), but simply will hafta travel the road of max. power-user configurability so that the real work ( whatever that may be for self, or others ), can still go on getting done, with a minimum of heartache If the developers can restore power-user configurability to Unity - while still allowing new users to grasp the holding hand of a Mac-like icon-taskbar, then that would comfortably satisfy all comers .. Even grousers/gripers, like my current bemused self Restoring user selection of choice of desktop at bootup, would be a prime contribution .. ( if it's there, I don't see it ) All the best, Lesz -- The power of this life, if men will open their hearts to it, will heal them, will create them anew, physically and spiritually. Here is the gospel of earth, ringing with hope, like May mornings with bird-song, fresh and healthy as fields of young grain. But those who would be healed must absorb it not only into their bodies in daily food and warmth but into their minds, because its spiritual power is more intense. It is not reasonable to suppose that an essence so divine and mysterious as life can be confined to material things; therefore, if our bodies need to be in touch with it so do our minds. The joy of a spring day revives a man's spirit, reacting healthily on the bone and the blood, just as the wholesome juices of plants cleanse the body, reacting on the mind. Let us join in the abundant sacrament--for our bodies the crushed gold of harvest and ripe vine-clusters, for our souls the purple fruit of evening with its innumerable seed of stars . Vis Medicatrix Naturae, by Mary Webb, in Spring of Joy: Nature Essays, Constable, London, 1917 -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 2 July 2012 05:24, Leszek Kobiernicki 1 l.kobierni...@ntlworld.com wrote: Trouble is, we slightly longer users in time, are some of the key recommenders of a distro to new entrants +1 to that :) If a desktop cripples established ease-of-use, forcing a completely different operational design on us, we're not going to want to recommend the same elevated learning curve to others I wouldn't for sure ! If the developers can restore power-user configurability to Unity - while still allowing new users to grasp the holding hand of a Mac-like icon-taskbar, then that would comfortably satisfy all comers .. Even grousers/gripers, like my current bemused self Why should it be close to mac for new users who lets presume are coming from windows world ? Or is the new target audience the disgruntled mac users or people who want to use mac but can't afford it ? Regards, Pavithran -- pavithran sakamuri http://look-pavi.blogspot.com -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 10:14, Alan Pope wrote: On 01/07/12 03:11, Leszek Kobiernicki 1 wrote: Some private jokery-pokery here No idea, I think Robin had been on the sherry. :) But, more pragmatically, how to get Gnome fall-back session ? sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback Logout, log back in again but choose the fallback session. Cheers, Most helpful Will certainly install Thanx a bunch Lesz -- The power of this life, if men will open their hearts to it, will heal them, will create them anew, physically and spiritually. Here is the gospel of earth, ringing with hope, like May mornings with bird-song, fresh and healthy as fields of young grain. But those who would be healed must absorb it not only into their bodies in daily food and warmth but into their minds, because its spiritual power is more intense. It is not reasonable to suppose that an essence so divine and mysterious as life can be confined to material things; therefore, if our bodies need to be in touch with it so do our minds. The joy of a spring day revives a man's spirit, reacting healthily on the bone and the blood, just as the wholesome juices of plants cleanse the body, reacting on the mind. Let us join in the abundant sacrament--for our bodies the crushed gold of harvest and ripe vine-clusters, for our souls the purple fruit of evening with its innumerable seed of stars . Vis Medicatrix Naturae, by Mary Webb, in Spring of Joy: Nature Essays, Constable, London, 1917 -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 10:33, Alan Pope wrote: On 01/07/12 10:26, Chris Liddell wrote: So, clearly I'm wrong. I've always wanted to work the way Unity works, I just didn't realise it.. I fail to see how being different is 'getting in the way'. There's a learning curve with many things, but people seem to have a very low tolerance for change on the desktop. Perhaps the proliferation of desktops perpetuates that. 10 Choose a desktop 20 Install desktop 30 Spend 5 minutes using it, make a snap decision that it's not good 40 Goto 10 There's a lot of that about. Are you channelling the ghost of Steve Jobs? There's our way, and there's the wrong way is not an attitude I ever expected to find so openly espoused in the Unix world, and especially not in the Linux world. Just because GNOME 2 did it one way for years, doesn't make it the right way. It just makes it the established way. The established way can still be wrong. Cheers, Now, really ! Transparency is a prime user need Users don't have the same priorities as software developers/designers/or the overall architects I don't believe it is fair additionally to compel new users into a browser-driven search mode, when they're learning replacements for their WinApps It is, however, fair to expect experienced users to want to play with a new way of doing the old things - but not, I feel, to compel them into it The balance is wrong, for the moment. How one works through ( not with ) Unity, needs to be shifted. Default choices we had with 10.04.x have been removed. I for one, want them back. While retaining the ability to shift between old mode new mode. Just for completeness' sake .. Re-/Education of an established user-base is something more readily achieved with a catchment of old faithfuls - who may not have the spare energy to devote, in order to invest the time, internalizing new forms of keystroke magic, in order to get their work out The work, the work, is what matters: not the software ! That is supposed to be making the work we do, easier - not harder. ( I discern the baleful influence of Cloud technology, behind the present situation with Unity. Linus Torvalds himself, and many others, are agreed, that Cloud, Software-As-A-Service, all the other related developments forcing unaccountable company controlled Cloud-server-hosting of our precious data, is an unmitigated disaster-in-the-making - let alone an unresolvable security nightmare ) Lesz -- The power of this life, if men will open their hearts to it, will heal them, will create them anew, physically and spiritually. Here is the gospel of earth, ringing with hope, like May mornings with bird-song, fresh and healthy as fields of young grain. But those who would be healed must absorb it not only into their bodies in daily food and warmth but into their minds, because its spiritual power is more intense. It is not reasonable to suppose that an essence so divine and mysterious as life can be confined to material things; therefore, if our bodies need to be in touch with it so do our minds. The joy of a spring day revives a man's spirit, reacting healthily on the bone and the blood, just as the wholesome juices of plants cleanse the body, reacting on the mind. Let us join in the abundant sacrament--for our bodies the crushed gold of harvest and ripe vine-clusters, for our souls the purple fruit of evening with its innumerable seed of stars . Vis Medicatrix Naturae, by Mary Webb, in Spring of Joy: Nature Essays, Constable, London, 1917 -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 10:38, Vic wrote: Just because GNOME 2 did it one way for years, doesn't make it the right way. Just because Gnome3 and Unity do it a different way, doesn't make it the right way. It would be really nice to have this discussion occasionally without being told we're just wrong for wanting the old metaphor that has evolved over many years, rather than the new and largely unproven one that's trendy... Vic. Yeah To take a schoolmasterly tone with subscribers, is likely to get people's backs up Reasoned argumentation, please. We're still all adults here, I think ? Lesz -- The power of this life, if men will open their hearts to it, will heal them, will create them anew, physically and spiritually. Here is the gospel of earth, ringing with hope, like May mornings with bird-song, fresh and healthy as fields of young grain. But those who would be healed must absorb it not only into their bodies in daily food and warmth but into their minds, because its spiritual power is more intense. It is not reasonable to suppose that an essence so divine and mysterious as life can be confined to material things; therefore, if our bodies need to be in touch with it so do our minds. The joy of a spring day revives a man's spirit, reacting healthily on the bone and the blood, just as the wholesome juices of plants cleanse the body, reacting on the mind. Let us join in the abundant sacrament--for our bodies the crushed gold of harvest and ripe vine-clusters, for our souls the purple fruit of evening with its innumerable seed of stars . Vis Medicatrix Naturae, by Mary Webb, in Spring of Joy: Nature Essays, Constable, London, 1917 -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 10:48, James Courtier-Dutton wrote: On 1 July 2012 09:56, Chris Liddell c...@spamcop.net wrote: A bit late to this discussion, but never mind. I gave up on Unity *very* quickly. it took me a good (bad!) fifteen minutes to find how to get a terminal window up, and I concluded it was not for me, at all - I switched to Xfce for now. I may go back to Debian next time I have to setup a machine. This is Unix, for heaven's sake, how can a terminal window *not* be available right there, front and centre? For me, the terminal is: Press Windows Key, then press t, then press ENTER Far easier than moving the mouse around a bit and clicking. I can also drag and drop it off the Dash menus if I wish to click mouses on it. I agree, Unity has taken me a bit of getting used to, but most people are happy with the search approach. I don't think I can go back to the clunky Gnome or xfce desktops now. Once you get used to it, it does provide quicker (fewer clicks, key presses) access to what you want to do. In fact, the Start button is maybe disappearing for window 8, so Ubuntu are not the only people who think application menus are on the way out. Kind Regards James Nope Doesn't matter what the software engineers think ( or want us to think ) What matters, is combining familiarity with ease-of-use, making usage transparent Windows is no guide to *nix usage: the work we hafta get out, is the proper guide - the software's job is enable that to happen I simply can't recommend a desktop to new users, imposing such additional amounts of invested energy, before the workflows come rolling on out Devs, please think again ! Restore user primacy. Lesz -- The power of this life, if men will open their hearts to it, will heal them, will create them anew, physically and spiritually. Here is the gospel of earth, ringing with hope, like May mornings with bird-song, fresh and healthy as fields of young grain. But those who would be healed must absorb it not only into their bodies in daily food and warmth but into their minds, because its spiritual power is more intense. It is not reasonable to suppose that an essence so divine and mysterious as life can be confined to material things; therefore, if our bodies need to be in touch with it so do our minds. The joy of a spring day revives a man's spirit, reacting healthily on the bone and the blood, just as the wholesome juices of plants cleanse the body, reacting on the mind. Let us join in the abundant sacrament--for our bodies the crushed gold of harvest and ripe vine-clusters, for our souls the purple fruit of evening with its innumerable seed of stars . Vis Medicatrix Naturae, by Mary Webb, in Spring of Joy: Nature Essays, Constable, London, 1917 -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 10:52, Alan Pope wrote: On 01/07/12 10:38, Vic wrote: Just because Gnome3 and Unity do it a different way, doesn't make it the right way. A convincing argument for GNOME 2 you have there. It would be really nice to have this discussion occasionally without being told we're just wrong for wanting the old metaphor that has evolved over many years, rather than the new and largely unproven one that's trendy... Reducing it down to 'them and us' doesn't help, it's not as simple as that. Although someone probably has to be wrong, and sure, it could be us. We do regular user testing with people (pretty much) off the street and that helps to feed back to our design and development processes. Sometimes they discover things with Unity that surprises us, and makes us change the way the desktop works. One example of that was the launcher dodging windows when they were brought near. We welcome new designs for features and behaviours suggestions for new or changed behaviour on our Unity design mailing list, and irc channels. If someone flat out doesn't like it and wants to use another desktop there's not much we can do, but if someone things we're wrong and they know the 'right' way and can articulate it in a meaningful and respectful (i.e. not just telling us it sucks) then we'll listen. We do listen, we may be wrong, time will tell. Cheers, Yeah, that's reasonable Project-in-process , then .. Hope my 2d worth already posted, can help Lesz -- The power of this life, if men will open their hearts to it, will heal them, will create them anew, physically and spiritually. Here is the gospel of earth, ringing with hope, like May mornings with bird-song, fresh and healthy as fields of young grain. But those who would be healed must absorb it not only into their bodies in daily food and warmth but into their minds, because its spiritual power is more intense. It is not reasonable to suppose that an essence so divine and mysterious as life can be confined to material things; therefore, if our bodies need to be in touch with it so do our minds. The joy of a spring day revives a man's spirit, reacting healthily on the bone and the blood, just as the wholesome juices of plants cleanse the body, reacting on the mind. Let us join in the abundant sacrament--for our bodies the crushed gold of harvest and ripe vine-clusters, for our souls the purple fruit of evening with its innumerable seed of stars . Vis Medicatrix Naturae, by Mary Webb, in Spring of Joy: Nature Essays, Constable, London, 1917 -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 30/06/12 11:09, Leszek Kobiernicki 1 wrote: On 10.04.x, you can access every single app cumulatively installed, ever so easily In 12.04 it's very search-oriented. Press the Ubuntu button then click the second lens along (Applications Lens) or just tap the Windows (super) key + A and then start typing what you're after. Way more efficient than squirrelling through menus IMO. So to find xchat I do this:- Super + A, X, enter For audacity I do:- Super + A, au, enter etc. Is there a SysAdmin's walkthrough, of how to return a Unity desktop to full administator's ready functionality ? You could install gnome-session-fallback which is a bit like old GNOME 2, but not quite identical. Please advize, if you can. ( If not, I'll downgrade, keep on updating that .. ) .. and then have the issue again in a while when those older releases stop being updated and you have to choose a supported desktop again. You could try other derivatives like Linux Mint with Cinnamon or Mate, but I would question the sustainability of those desktops. When you install KDE, LXDE, XFCE desktops, they take on a kind of Unity cut-down format .. I hear Debian is quite nice :) All this is a backwards step - offering less user-friendliness more system-initiated control ( Ubuntu for dummies ? ) I use it on all my machines, I guess that makes me a dummy. Cheers, -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 30 June 2012 11:09, Leszek Kobiernicki 1 l.kobierni...@ntlworld.com wrote: Hi all I've been struggling with Unity/Ubuntu 12.04 on a Mac Desktop seems a good deal less usable than in the pre-Unity days On 10.04.x, you can access every single app cumulatively installed, ever so easily What precisely are you trying to do? If you are trying to find a app you have installed, just press the windows key and the the first few letters of the app name. If uses search instead of multi-level menus. -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On Saturday 30 June 2012 11:37:06 Alan Pope wrote: I hear Debian is quite nice :) I never expected to hear you say that! ;-) Lisi -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 30 June 2012 12:29, john lewis zen57...@zen.co.uk wrote: On Sat, 30 Jun 2012 11:37:06 +0100 Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com wrote: On 30/06/12 11:09, Leszek Kobiernicki 1 wrote: On 10.04.x, you can access every single app cumulatively installed, ever so easily In 12.04 it's very search-oriented. Press the Ubuntu button then click the second lens along (Applications Lens) or just tap the Windows (super) key + A and then start typing what you're after. Way more efficient than squirrelling through menus IMO. You could try other derivatives like Linux Mint with Cinnamon or Mate, but I would question the sustainability of those desktops. When you install KDE, LXDE, XFCE desktops, they take on a kind of Unity cut-down format .. I hear Debian is quite nice :) Debian is more than Nice ;-) Install it and never have to re-install your OS again and (for now at least and hopefully always) you can use Gnome Classic, chosen at login Wheezy has just been frozen but it will be a few months before it is released as the next stable version. Install Debian Unstable instead if you need more recent packages than are in current Debian Stable. It isn't all that problematic to use but does need regular doses of aptitude update, aptitude safe-upgrade I do it daily. One aspect I like of debian, now that I have it installed because Ubuntu refused to install on this old 486 box. (a nice fanless box now running my home automation software) aptitude update takes about 20MB on Ubuntu, but only takes about 250KB on Debian. A difference of 8000%. Reason being, Debian uses something called a diffindex, and ubuntu does not. -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 30 June 2012 16:07, Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com wrote: You could try other derivatives like Linux Mint with Cinnamon or Mate, but I would question the sustainability of those desktops. Almost the same issue here when I was roaming around desktops and landed on Ubuntu 12.04 with unity . Yes its hardly usable, the whole copy cat behaviour of unity (from mac) is driving people crazy . First it was things on left , next the entire menu goes out of the window . Though I dont mind designing for the mobile/handhelds I feel this is just not for me . If you still want to use the default unity , you can try out a nice guide on unity by Vancouver ubuntu http://frenchfortunecookie.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/unity-5-10-0-final-pdf.pdf The above guide though was helpful didn't convince me to use unity on ubuntu :) I have been using Cinnamon desktop from the linux mint team and I am not going back to unity . I agree that the support on cinnamon is a question but as long as the linux mint thrives there would be cinnamon :) Review on Cinnamon : Just loved it :) I tried out Gnome3 on debian and I liked it . Coming back to ubuntu the simplest way to get a usable desktop was to install Cinnamon . I just added the PPA at https://launchpad.net/~gwendal-lebihan-dev/+archive/cinnamon-stable and sudo apt-get install cinnamon was how I got back the control of my desktop . It took few minutes to discover cinnamon . There was this Cinnamon Settings with which you can get themes and other extensions which can be downloaded from http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/ Happy to see a downstream project like linuxmint helping out upstream :) Well there are also plans to bring it more up aka into the debian archives ! Regards, Pavithran -- pavithran sakamuri http://look-pavi.blogspot.com -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
Who are you and what have you done with the real Alan Pope? Question about Unity and HUD that no-one's yet answered: why are you making me type and search for stuff that I used to, errm... have in nice menus and panels? Still not beginner friendly (I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!) Use instead Gnome Fallback Session. Easy. RC Robin Catling Full Circle Podcast On 30 June 2012 11:37, Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com wrote: On 30/06/12 11:09, Leszek Kobiernicki 1 wrote: On 10.04.x, you can access every single app cumulatively installed, ever so easily In 12.04 it's very search-oriented. Press the Ubuntu button then click the second lens along (Applications Lens) or just tap the Windows (super) key + A and then start typing what you're after. Way more efficient than squirrelling through menus IMO. So to find xchat I do this:- Super + A, X, enter For audacity I do:- Super + A, au, enter etc. Is there a SysAdmin's walkthrough, of how to return a Unity desktop to full administator's ready functionality ? You could install gnome-session-fallback which is a bit like old GNOME 2, but not quite identical. Please advize, if you can. ( If not, I'll downgrade, keep on updating that .. ) .. and then have the issue again in a while when those older releases stop being updated and you have to choose a supported desktop again. You could try other derivatives like Linux Mint with Cinnamon or Mate, but I would question the sustainability of those desktops. When you install KDE, LXDE, XFCE desktops, they take on a kind of Unity cut-down format .. I hear Debian is quite nice :) All this is a backwards step - offering less user-friendliness more system-initiated control ( Ubuntu for dummies ? ) I use it on all my machines, I guess that makes me a dummy. Cheers, -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/**mailman/listinfo/hampshirehttps://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --**--**-- -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
Oops, almost forgot, Popey: You could try other derivatives like Linux Mint with Cinnamon or Mate, but I would question the sustainability of those desktops. Nice plug of the corporate line, I mean, who wants to get stuck on a proprietary desktop supported by only one commercial Linux vendor oh. When you install KDE, LXDE, XFCE desktops, they take on a kind of Unity cut-down format .. Hmm. don't suppose those project teams would take that as a compliment. Or an accurate comparison. Ho hum. I use it on all my machines, I guess that makes me a dummy. We couldn't possibly comment. But then again, if you're Canonical's Product Strategy Manager, you are kind of obliged to eat your own dog food. -- All in fun, RC Robin Catling Full Circle Podcast -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
Hello, On Sun, Jul 01, 2012 at 02:22:58AM +0100, Full Circle Podcast wrote: I use it on all my machines, I guess that makes me a dummy. We couldn't possibly comment. But then again, if you're Canonical's Product Strategy Manager, you are kind of obliged to eat your own dog food. This was not a very constructive post. Please can you try to be less needlessly offensive when posting here. Thanks, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting signature.asc Description: Digital signature -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 30/06/12 11:37, Alan Pope wrote: On 30/06/12 11:09, Leszek Kobiernicki 1 wrote: On 10.04.x, you can access every single app cumulatively installed, ever so easily In 12.04 it's very search-oriented. Press the Ubuntu button then click the second lens along (Applications Lens) or just tap the Windows (super) key + A and then start typing what you're after. Way more efficient than squirrelling through menus IMO. So to find xchat I do this:- Super + A, X, enter For audacity I do:- Super + A, au, enter etc. Is there a SysAdmin's walkthrough, of how to return a Unity desktop to full administator's ready functionality ? You could install gnome-session-fallback which is a bit like old GNOME 2, but not quite identical. Please advize, if you can. ( If not, I'll downgrade, keep on updating that .. ) .. and then have the issue again in a while when those older releases stop being updated and you have to choose a supported desktop again. You could try other derivatives like Linux Mint with Cinnamon or Mate, but I would question the sustainability of those desktops. When you install KDE, LXDE, XFCE desktops, they take on a kind of Unity cut-down format .. I hear Debian is quite nice :) All this is a backwards step - offering less user-friendliness more system-initiated control ( Ubuntu for dummies ? ) I use it on all my machines, I guess that makes me a dummy. Cheers, Hi Alan Thanx for the good advice I understand Canonical's committed to Unity, but I still don't hafta like its seizure of control over the old menu-driven experience Nonetheless, I'll try keystroking, as you suggest .. Didn't mean to imply you're a dummy: what I meant, was, that the experience of Unity, gives me the impression, that I'm being turned into one ! Search-orientation derives from the browsing experience, which is a step along the way to Cloud. When that becomes mandatory, I'll give up computing altogether, as by then I guess I'll have written out all my books ! Oh - by the way, Ubuntu 12.04's installed on a Mac, so - no Windows key. Happy days, Lesz -- The power of this life, if men will open their hearts to it, will heal them, will create them anew, physically and spiritually. Here is the gospel of earth, ringing with hope, like May mornings with bird-song, fresh and healthy as fields of young grain. But those who would be healed must absorb it not only into their bodies in daily food and warmth but into their minds, because its spiritual power is more intense. It is not reasonable to suppose that an essence so divine and mysterious as life can be confined to material things; therefore, if our bodies need to be in touch with it so do our minds. The joy of a spring day revives a man's spirit, reacting healthily on the bone and the blood, just as the wholesome juices of plants cleanse the body, reacting on the mind. Let us join in the abundant sacrament--for our bodies the crushed gold of harvest and ripe vine-clusters, for our souls the purple fruit of evening with its innumerable seed of stars . Vis Medicatrix Naturae, by Mary Webb, in Spring of Joy: Nature Essays, Constable, London, 1917 -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 30/06/12 12:29, john lewis wrote: On Sat, 30 Jun 2012 11:37:06 +0100 Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com wrote: On 30/06/12 11:09, Leszek Kobiernicki 1 wrote: On 10.04.x, you can access every single app cumulatively installed, ever so easily In 12.04 it's very search-oriented. Press the Ubuntu button then click the second lens along (Applications Lens) or just tap the Windows (super) key + A and then start typing what you're after. Way more efficient than squirrelling through menus IMO. You could try other derivatives like Linux Mint with Cinnamon or Mate, but I would question the sustainability of those desktops. When you install KDE, LXDE, XFCE desktops, they take on a kind of Unity cut-down format .. I hear Debian is quite nice :) Debian is more than Nice ;-) Install it and never have to re-install your OS again and (for now at least and hopefully always) you can use Gnome Classic, chosen at login Wheezy has just been frozen but it will be a few months before it is released as the next stable version. Install Debian Unstable instead if you need more recent packages than are in current Debian Stable. It isn't all that problematic to use but does need regular doses of aptitude update, aptitude safe-upgrade I do it daily. Thanx John If I can't warm to Unity, I might well hafta go Debian Is there a HOW TO for installing it on a Mac ? It was mighty fiddly getting Ubuntu to dual-boot with OS-X on the Mac Thanx again, Lesz -- The power of this life, if men will open their hearts to it, will heal them, will create them anew, physically and spiritually. Here is the gospel of earth, ringing with hope, like May mornings with bird-song, fresh and healthy as fields of young grain. But those who would be healed must absorb it not only into their bodies in daily food and warmth but into their minds, because its spiritual power is more intense. It is not reasonable to suppose that an essence so divine and mysterious as life can be confined to material things; therefore, if our bodies need to be in touch with it so do our minds. The joy of a spring day revives a man's spirit, reacting healthily on the bone and the blood, just as the wholesome juices of plants cleanse the body, reacting on the mind. Let us join in the abundant sacrament--for our bodies the crushed gold of harvest and ripe vine-clusters, for our souls the purple fruit of evening with its innumerable seed of stars . Vis Medicatrix Naturae, by Mary Webb, in Spring of Joy: Nature Essays, Constable, London, 1917 -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 30/06/12 20:44, pavithran wrote: On 30 June 2012 16:07, Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com wrote: You could try other derivatives like Linux Mint with Cinnamon or Mate, but I would question the sustainability of those desktops. Almost the same issue here when I was roaming around desktops and landed on Ubuntu 12.04 with unity . Yes its hardly usable, the whole copy cat behaviour of unity (from mac) is driving people crazy . First it was things on left , next the entire menu goes out of the window . Though I dont mind designing for the mobile/handhelds I feel this is just not for me . If you still want to use the default unity , you can try out a nice guide on unity by Vancouver ubuntu http://frenchfortunecookie.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/unity-5-10-0-final-pdf.pdf The above guide though was helpful didn't convince me to use unity on ubuntu :) I have been using Cinnamon desktop from the linux mint team and I am not going back to unity . I agree that the support on cinnamon is a question but as long as the linux mint thrives there would be cinnamon :) Review on Cinnamon : Just loved it :) I tried out Gnome3 on debian and I liked it . Coming back to ubuntu the simplest way to get a usable desktop was to install Cinnamon . I just added the PPA at https://launchpad.net/~gwendal-lebihan-dev/+archive/cinnamon-stable and sudo apt-get install cinnamon was how I got back the control of my desktop . It took few minutes to discover cinnamon . There was this Cinnamon Settings with which you can get themes and other extensions which can be downloaded from http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/ Happy to see a downstream project like linuxmint helping out upstream :) Well there are also plans to bring it more up aka into the debian archives ! Regards, Pavithran Hi Pavi Good ideas here Thanx in bunches ! Will certainly have a peek sometime All the best, Lesz -- The power of this life, if men will open their hearts to it, will heal them, will create them anew, physically and spiritually. Here is the gospel of earth, ringing with hope, like May mornings with bird-song, fresh and healthy as fields of young grain. But those who would be healed must absorb it not only into their bodies in daily food and warmth but into their minds, because its spiritual power is more intense. It is not reasonable to suppose that an essence so divine and mysterious as life can be confined to material things; therefore, if our bodies need to be in touch with it so do our minds. The joy of a spring day revives a man's spirit, reacting healthily on the bone and the blood, just as the wholesome juices of plants cleanse the body, reacting on the mind. Let us join in the abundant sacrament--for our bodies the crushed gold of harvest and ripe vine-clusters, for our souls the purple fruit of evening with its innumerable seed of stars . Vis Medicatrix Naturae, by Mary Webb, in Spring of Joy: Nature Essays, Constable, London, 1917 -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 02:17, Full Circle Podcast wrote: Who are you and what have you done with the real Alan Pope? Question about Unity and HUD that no-one's yet answered: why are you making me type and search for stuff that I used to, errm... have in nice menus and panels? Still not beginner friendly (I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!) Use instead Gnome Fallback Session. Easy. RC Robin Catling Full Circle Podcast On 30 June 2012 11:37, Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com mailto:alan.p...@canonical.com wrote: On 30/06/12 11:09, Leszek Kobiernicki 1 wrote: On 10.04.x, you can access every single app cumulatively installed, ever so easily In 12.04 it's very search-oriented. Press the Ubuntu button then click the second lens along (Applications Lens) or just tap the Windows (super) key + A and then start typing what you're after. Way more efficient than squirrelling through menus IMO. So to find xchat I do this:- Super + A, X, enter For audacity I do:- Super + A, au, enter etc. Is there a SysAdmin's walkthrough, of how to return a Unity desktop to full administator's ready functionality ? You could install gnome-session-fallback which is a bit like old GNOME 2, but not quite identical. Please advize, if you can. ( If not, I'll downgrade, keep on updating that .. ) .. and then have the issue again in a while when those older releases stop being updated and you have to choose a supported desktop again. You could try other derivatives like Linux Mint with Cinnamon or Mate, but I would question the sustainability of those desktops. When you install KDE, LXDE, XFCE desktops, they take on a kind of Unity cut-down format .. I hear Debian is quite nice :) All this is a backwards step - offering less user-friendliness more system-initiated control ( Ubuntu for dummies ? ) I use it on all my machines, I guess that makes me a dummy. Cheers, -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 tel:%2B44%20%280%29%207973%20620%20164 alan.p...@canonical.com mailto:alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk mailto:Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk -- -- Some private jokery-pokery here But, more pragmatically, how to get Gnome fall-back session ? I will hunt for it in the repository - if ever it can be found .. Thanx, Lesz -- The power of this life, if men will open their hearts to it, will heal them, will create them anew, physically and spiritually. Here is the gospel of earth, ringing with hope, like May mornings with bird-song, fresh and healthy as fields of young grain. But those who would be healed must absorb it not only into their bodies in daily food and warmth but into their minds, because its spiritual power is more intense. It is not reasonable to suppose that an essence so divine and mysterious as life can be confined to material things; therefore, if our bodies need to be in touch with it so do our minds. The joy of a spring day revives a man's spirit, reacting healthily on the bone and the blood, just as the wholesome juices of plants cleanse the body, reacting on the mind. Let us join in the abundant sacrament--for our bodies the crushed gold of harvest and ripe vine-clusters, for our souls the purple fruit of evening with its innumerable seed of stars . Vis Medicatrix Naturae, by Mary Webb, in Spring of Joy: Nature Essays, Constable, London, 1917 -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 v. old Gnome/KDE on 10.04.x
On 01/07/12 02:30, Andy Smith wrote: Hello, On Sun, Jul 01, 2012 at 02:22:58AM +0100, Full Circle Podcast wrote: I use it on all my machines, I guess that makes me a dummy. We couldn't possibly comment. But then again, if you're Canonical's Product Strategy Manager, you are kind of obliged to eat your own dog food. This was not a very constructive post. Please can you try to be less needlessly offensive when posting here. Thanks, Andy -- Hi Andy This is clearly a joke, and not intended to offend I'm the puzzled mastiff, straining at the leash, with Unity And the light-hearted tone helps confidence surmount the desktop hurdle Lesz --- The power of this life, if men will open their hearts to it, will heal them, will create them anew, physically and spiritually. Here is the gospel of earth, ringing with hope, like May mornings with bird-song, fresh and healthy as fields of young grain. But those who would be healed must absorb it not only into their bodies in daily food and warmth but into their minds, because its spiritual power is more intense. It is not reasonable to suppose that an essence so divine and mysterious as life can be confined to material things; therefore, if our bodies need to be in touch with it so do our minds. The joy of a spring day revives a man's spirit, reacting healthily on the bone and the blood, just as the wholesome juices of plants cleanse the body, reacting on the mind. Let us join in the abundant sacrament--for our bodies the crushed gold of harvest and ripe vine-clusters, for our souls the purple fruit of evening with its innumerable seed of stars . Vis Medicatrix Naturae, by Mary Webb, in Spring of Joy: Nature Essays, Constable, London, 1917 -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
