I am definitely not the only one who has had his blood boil from the recent swarm of articles "previewing" Ubuntu I with alpha 1. A specific problem right now is that this is causing a great deal of noise about the theme, which is Not Final and intended specifically to generate bug reports regarding dark themes. Because of these articles, there is a strong misconception rising that this is the shape of Ubuntu's new theme. This can be very damaging.
More problems tend to arise down the line once development steps beyond
the merge with Debian. Fortunately, we aren't there yet.
This Needs to be fixed, because this release is going to get a lot of
attention. Possible fixes:
* Very loud printing on the login screen, wallpaper or usplash
saying something along the lines of "this is a development
pre-release intended for testing. Do not use this operating
system for production work, and bear in mind that all content is
subject to change. Please file bug reports at launchpad.net."
* Information popup for the theme packages when they receive
updates, stating intent: As a means to test dark themes, and not
final; that users please watch out for theming issues and report
them because this release is the chance to fix them! Later, "we
are rotating between a variety of possible themes to gauge
interest. Please provide constructive feedback at
ubuntuforums.org". As for having a jarringly ugly theme to start
off with, I really hope that generates some contributions.
In short, I think the alpha builds could do well making more known that
they are pre-release work, provided because the development process is
100% open. (There seems to be some left-over misunderstanding amongst
"the crowd" that released work, regardless of status, should look nearly
final. Not the case with open source).
The info popups could actually be quite cool in this case, because they
may carry all sorts of handy testing information. As is, Ubuntu Ibex may
almost be mistaken as a release candidate. It would seem that
journalists and / or crowds are leaping at that to generate noise.
Bye,
-Dylan
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