I fully agree with you. I love Ubuntu but this new trend of reinventing
things that are good but not prefect and then coming up with something
that has a lot less functionality (in the beginning at least) is not a
very good thing.
However in defense of the Ubuntu developers it needs to be said, that
this whole situation with Gnome has been caused by the gnome developers
in the first place.
To add one example to yours, the new print dialog that is available by
default on oneiric has a lot less functionality then the tool from
maverick. Unless one knows that the old print configuration tool is
still available as "system-config-printer" (if i remember correctly)
there is not even a way to configure the default page size.
Cheers
Lanoxx
On 07/04/2012 13:52, Dane Mutters wrote:
I'm not keen on getting involved in a debate, but since this issue
affects my ability to be productive on Ubuntu, as well, I find it
appropriate to inform the developers of it.
I'm aware that there have been numerous complaint threads on this
mailing list and others about some people finding Unity (and Gnome 3)
basically unusable for their purposes. I'm in the same boat, and
while I realize that "+1" on this issue is basically pointless, the
continued postings on the subject raise an important issue that's only
being obliquely touched upon, for the most part:
Ubuntu has decreased in usability for many people due to the all-out
"war on the old GUI." At this point is where someone says, "use Gnome
classic!" This, however, proved rather problematic for me, and
continues to be so for many others; also, it's both condescending and
counterproductive to insist that users with genuine problems with the
direction of development simply "deal with the new GUI" or switch back
to a somewhat broken Gnome 2 that lacks significant pieces that made
Gnome usable before these changes started. I'll mention a couple of
examples, just to cursorily illustrate that I'm not simply "blowing
smoke," but ultimately it's something you have to use and have
problems with to fully understand.
1) No system menu; everything is shoved into Applications > Other.
Having 30+ items here is utterly impractical, and I found that not
everything even made it into a menu after System was removed. I often
had to search the web for the program's actual name so that I could
then open a terminal and type the command to let me do some basic
administrative or customization task. This is greatly compounded when
much of the menu is full of things that were designed for Unity or
Gnome 3, and therefore do nothing useful for Gnome classic--or just as
often break things.
2) Even if you can find everything in Gnome classic that you used to
use in Gnome 2, half the stuff on a recent Ubuntu installation is
stuff that breaks Gnome 2, or is only usable with Unity (and therefore
Compiz), or Gnome 3. Furthermore, if you reset as much as you can to
"default" for Gnome classic (delete config files in ~, etc.), you'll
end up with programs that require working Unity/Gnome 3 components,
but since you're no longer configured for those desktop environments,
they'll be unpredictable and crash frequently. This is especially bad
because Compiz breaks Unity (and its components) when not properly
configured. I experienced crashing window manager, freezing, and even
segfaults about every hour while using a stock install of Unity with
just a few minor Compiz customizations. These crashes also carried
over into Gnome classic, once I stopped using Unity. (Yes, I disabled
Unity support and enabled Gnome support in Compiz.)
Ultimately, I've been forced to switch to KDE on Linux Mint--neither
of which I'm particularly fond of. The thing is, though, they work
*for me* 10 times better than Ubuntu has since it dropped Gnome 2, so
it's the best of several undesirable options. I'd love to go back to
stock Ubuntu, but as long as the GUI is busy being re-invented (not
just in Ubuntu, notably), I'm finding myself stuck dealing with
Windows a lot more, and Linux--which I generally like much better--a
lot less. I used to boot into Windows only to play games, but now I
find that staying in Linux means spending lots of time arguing with
unnecessary GUI problems. (I'm personally quite fed-up with it all,
but I'm trying to be civil and rational so as to be productive, rather
than a problem, in and of myself.)
...But all the above is only marginally relevant; the real problem, as
I see it, is the development trend being espoused. I understand that
it's great to invent new, exciting software, and I don't begrudge
anybody of it. In fact, the mere fact that you bother to write for a
free OS is admirable, and I commend you for it (for whatever that's
worth). Unfortunately, it's been a consistent-but-growing trend in
Linux development, generally, and Ubuntu, specifically, to make a
piece of software *pretty* good, then whimsically decide that instead
of making it *really* good, it's more fun/better/whatever to invent a
completely new thing, based on better principles, technology, and so
forth. Unfortunately, these good ideas rarely get fully realized
before yet another set of good ideas emerges and causes working
systems to be abandoned in favor of alpha-stage projects. This is a
problem endemic to Linux as a whole, but it's been especially
disappointing to see it infest the otherwise amazing Ubuntu. For an
example, I note that Red Hat 7.2 had a rather good built-in,
cross-environment menu editor. Then, the underlying software changed,
and it was about 5 years until Gnome had a menu editor again (which
Ubuntu's developers helped to create, as I understand it). Similarly,
KDE3 had a good menu editor, but now that KDE4 is out, it's all but
impossible to simply organize items by alphabetical order. So, while
the underlying technology got better, the useful, basic features that
we all expect to "just work" (as they do in Windows and Mac OS X,
which are the main competition to Ubuntu and Linux) have *repeatedly*
gone by the wayside because it's somehow more appealing to re-write
things than to polish them. I encourage those who still don't believe
me to look for other examples, themselves, rather than fixating upon
the ones I've given; productive conversation would suffer from
arguments over inane details like these.
Since the release of Warty Warthog in the early 2000s, the Ubuntu
developers turned the quirky-and-barely-functional Gnome desktop into
a darned good system for getting things done. With a couple years
more polish, it could have been truly competitive with GUIs by Apple
and Microsoft. But as soon as it had really come into its own--and
before it became "really good"--folks decided to completely redesign a
working system, producing the magnets-for-complaints we call Gnome 3
and Unity. (When you get rid of something that works, in favor of
anything at all that's different, you WILL have complaints--some for
good reason.) I don't at all doubt that those systems will one day be
at least a little better than Gnome 2 ever was, but since in the
meantime we have nothing but half-baked new systems and gutted old
systems (i.e. Gnome classic and its oddly-more-faithful fork, MATE),
the state of the Linux GUI has brought adoption back to a matter of
just how much time a competent computer user wants to waste on
learning something new, rather than sticking with a system that
already works for him. For a lot of people, the question isn't even
reasonable. Until this trend of "fixing" things that aren't broken
(from the end user's perspective) by inventing "shiny-yet-incomplete"
things, Linux will truly never garner a solid place in the desktop market.
So, here's the "thrust" of my dissertation: Please, developers, stick
with something that works until it's become something truly great;
then when public demand requires it (or your foresee that requirement)
make something new and better--but under no circumstances take away
what we already use and love!! It feels like a betrayal of the user
base (those who don't like the new system, at least--and you know
there are plenty, if you read these mailing lists), and it puts users
in the very awkward and problematic position of deciding to limp along
with a broken system or just revert to a commercial offering. I
personally have a somewhat fanatical love for Linux, but for me,
anyway, no amount of fanaticism can compete with a gross lack of
usability (for my purposes, of course). I beg you, the developers of
this otherwise great OS and superior Linux distribution, to consider
the awkward place you've put your (existing/potential) user base in,
and allow us to install and use the FULLY-FUNCTIONAL version of what's
previously worked for those of us who don't want the new system just yet.
I know that I've been wordy and dissertated at length, so if you've
read all the above, you have my sincere gratitude.
Thanks.
--Dane Mutters
--
Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list
Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
