Ubuntu Touch Has Many Plans For Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

[Pajn]

I wouldn't consider Unity on any machine, regardless how good you deem it to be.
At first, I don't think that starting an application from a quick-launch bar on an "old" desktop is any slower than using Dash for that. But what do I know, I don't use such "old-style" desktops. But I could say to you: "Well, get the hell over yourself and try something new, you'll be disappointed to know that single clicking on the desktop is not as fast as as using keyboard shortcuts for your favorite programs and whatnot." Using the mouse for anything that can be done without using the mouse is just a waste of time, you will always be faster using the keyboard.

With Unity you can do both, if I want to launch Firefox with my mouse I click on the Firefox icon in the launcher and if I want to launch it with my keyboard I press super+2.
If I want to see the number for each application I just hold super.

[Vim_User]

Sometimes, I like to lounge on my couch and hold the mouse against my thigh, like when I read online comics or something. And it'd take me much longer to sit up straight and pull up the keyboard than it would to just click on things with the mouse.

OK, I should have said "in a normal working environment". Of course there are edge cases, but you could also use a wireless keyboard, so no sitting up straight and pulling the keyboard. Anyways, I think you got the point.

With Unity you can do both, if I want to launch Firefox with my mouse I click on the Firefox icon in the launcher and if I want to launch it with my keyboard I press super+2.
If I want to see the number for each application I just hold super.

You can do both with any WM/DE I know of. That shows even more that NothingMuchHereToSay argument is simply mood.

[Siekacz]

I see that there is strong addiction to MS-like clutter on desktop, even now, when Microsoft, the inventor of such mess, resigns and finally decides to go some different way - Metro, not the best *revolution* but at least they have courage to do something like this. Canoncial is much more conservative, when it comes to changing UI. And I see those changes being highly rational.
KDE, Cinnamon and others - with all due respect, I noticed something horrible about these DE's, and that differs them from Unity. They are introducing more and more widget and settings clutter, just to make some nerdy, old-school guys happy. I hate when DE crashes all my work with "personalization" which takes time and causes compatibility issues. Unity basically "disappears" when you are working and that's something unique about it. Yes - I want to get rid of widgets, plugins and ridiculous settings. I want to work and play, not "pesonalize". I was a KDE fan once, and now I notice how much time did I spend on "personalization" back then. Now I don't care at all about this - OS disappears, does not take much part of my time. KDE, Cinnamon do something exactly opposite. I wait for Unity 8 and Mir - I want to see extreme version of such simplicity and full integration. Currently Unity is a collage of several loose components and that simply sucks.

[Aleve Sicofante]

So who's going to carry the banner of desktop Linux now that Canonical have lost their minds?

You mean inside the minuscule group of geeks we represent here? Who the hell cares? I can tell you, though, that regarding the gerenal public, Ubuntu will be synonimous for Linux for years to come.

The Linux desktop has been quite stagnant for years now as Windows and OS X keep pushing forward.

This is simply false. Mere opinion not supported by facts. Windows is on a road to nowhere with their dual approach. OS X is simply being canibalized by iOS, slowly but steadily. I wouldn't call either "pushing forward".

[Vim_User]

I see that there is strong addiction to MS-like clutter on desktop, even now, when Microsoft, the inventor of such mess, resigns and finally decides to go some different way - Metro, not the best *revolution* but at least they have courage to do something like this. Canoncial is much more conservative, when it comes to changing UI. And I see those changes being highly rational.
KDE, Cinnamon and others - with all due respect, I noticed something horrible about these DE's, and that differs them from Unity. They are introducing more and more widget and settings clutter, just to make some nerdy, old-school guys happy. I hate when DE crashes all my work with "personalization" which takes time and causes compatibility issues. Unity basically "disappears" when you are working and that's something unique about it. Yes - I want to get rid of widgets, plugins and ridiculous settings. I want to work and play, not "pesonalize". I was a KDE fan once, and now I notice how much time did I spend on "personalization" back then. Now I don't care at all about this - OS disappears, does not take much part of my time. KDE, Cinnamon do something exactly opposite. I wait for Unity 8 and Mir - I want to see extreme version of such simplicity and full integration. Currently Unity is a collage of several loose components and that simply sucks.

You sound like you never tried anything but the "big" DEs, but there are much more options. That I don't use Unity does not mean that I have to use something that resembles the older desktop metaphor. In fact, I don't use desktop icons (or other of those things I think you mean with "MS-like clutter" for years (they simply don't make sense)
Maybe try some of the not so common options, you will find that in reality Unity is not unique. Any of the simple WMs will get out of your way, even more so than Unity. And many of them just make more sense on the desktop, just because they are aimed at the desktop and not meant as a one-size-fits-all mobile/desktop hybrid.

[Onuca_V]

Unity and touch

I've spent some time reading comments in this forums without participating. It's incredible the willingness people may have to call someone a troll or a fanboy.

I want to comment about Unity from a personal point of view. The main problem I see in Unity is I haven't experienced its awesomeness or its crapiness. I think it may be great or may be crap o some middle point, but Ubuntu really should take a look into their base users experience because I think it's very hardware-specific, my video card was droped for support and I have to use open source drivers as a lot of users have. When I install Ubuntu with Unity it just works slow, I don't think it's by design slow, I say it may be requiring a lot of GPU power in a regular hardware and this is not the strongest point with Linux drivers. I own a pretty decent piece of hardware but can't run a fluid Unity. Even if Linux drivers are slower than Windows drivers for whatever reason, why Ubuntu should push its users to use this desktop if they can't support their users' drivers?

I know it's not responsability of Ubuntu to have great Linux graphics drivers, but what... do they even care? Ubuntu was "linux for human beings" but it has become "linux for gadget lovers", they are not thinking in human beings (as in general) when they produce ther distro. Take a look to Ubuntu Edge, they tried to sell a great phone in the range of 700 - 900 USD (way more expensive than my laptop). It was a marvelous design and it had spectacular specs, I wanted to have it but more importantly I wanted it to have success. But Ubuntu Edge represents what Ubuntu aims to be, Canonical has great, admirable expectations but what if they succeed? What is important for Ubuntu if its convergence project becomes a success?

[johnc]

I know that my initial comments were a bit acerbic (by design), but I still think they hold. I get that Canonical wants to go into mobile because that's the new thing these days. I completely get that and I have no ill will towards that per se. But let's be honest with ourselves. We're all adults here. By necessity that is going to involve less resources put into the desktop, which we know has lacked attention for years now. Yeah I get that the idea is that the codebase is going to be shared between mobile and desktop and that's supposed to bring all kinds of flowers and unicorns -- but come on. That's not the real world.

So it goes back to my question... What company with the resources is going to focus on building an OS with the best user experience possible, introducing new features and innovation and giving us a non-silly UI? (Frankly the proposed Ubuntu 14.04 UI looks like a cartoon from a bygone era.)

When Canonical bows out, aren't we really going to end up back in the days where distros just slapped together the latest versions of a bunch of disparate software pieces and called it an OS?

[NothingMuchHereToSay]

Change is not inherently a good or bad thing. There's little point in change for the sake of change. Because a change can be a change for the worse as well as a change for the better.

You're mistaken about quite a few things here. Firstly, the "traditional" desktop metaphor wasn't invented by Windows. It was done by many other GUIs before Windows was even a twinkle in old Bill's eye.

Secondly, there's nothing much innovative or new about the Unity interface. It's just a dock with a weird custom app launcher. You can get a dock for pretty much any DE, I have one in Cinnamon right now, it works great. And docks weren't invented by Canonical. As for the dash, it's not a really good innovation. It's fine if you don't know what you're looking for and want to search for an application to do something. But if you already know the program you want, and it's not in your dock or on your desktop, it becomes a pain in the ass to switch to the keyboard just to launch an app. It's even more a pain to search for it between all the other applications (and Amazon ads), because there's no categorization. So you basically have to keep every application you use regularly in the dock, but then the dock grows huge, and it becomes a pain even there.

Oh, there's categorization now. The thing with the Dash is that it IS new and different, because if they followed what Linux Mint has been doing for years.. well Mint wouldn't have to exist at all, Ubuntu would still be "innovating" the stupid start menu.

I'm not even saying Unity is particularly bad or anything. It's just average, there's just nothing particularly innovative or original about it. The biggest lack of Unity is the lack of customizability, last time I tried it (12.04) you needed 3rd party apps to do even basic customizations that should be doable by default. Still, Unity is probably fine for the average user, to someone who just needs to run a web browser and edit some documents now and then, maybe play some games, watch videos etc. But anything heavier and that and it becomes inconvenient and a pain in the ass.

So what you're saying is that nobody has patience for a brand new desktop and there are some original things about Unity, such as its disappearing menubar when you fullscreen a window. What could possibly be heavier than playing video games? Development? Well in the case of resource hogging, I will give you that, since Compiz is something that really should just die as it has no real purpose.

When it comes to launchers, I'm quite partial to the Cinnamon launcher. It has its problems, like a long-standing bug that makes it appear slowly sometimes (they're working on fixing that though). But the basic concept is brilliant. Two columns, categories on the left and launchers on the right. Select a category, or if you don't know, there's also "all", then select the application on the right. Simple, minimalistic, not overly complex, no fancy bells and whistles - just simple functionality. It works. And if you want to search with the keyboard, Unity-dash-style, that works too. And in the side there are icons for favorites.

I quite like the KDE launcher too, it takes some getting used to, and it's a bit more complex than the Cinnamon one, but it's very functional once you get to the rhythm of it.

The Windows start menu, by contrast, is just plain horrible. The latest I have experience of is the XP one, but it was basically identical to the one in 95, and I doubt they've changed it very much in Vista/7. And let's not even get into the hot mess of what the fuck that is windows 8... But speaking of the 95-XP start menu... you have the 1st level folders, like accessories, applications etc. Then you click that, you get a new list of folders, because of course every application has to install its own folder, and then you have to go to that folder to find the actual launcher. So that's 3 levels of nested context menus just to launch an application. You think the "traditional" DE's on Linux don't innovate? Hell, the discarding of this moronic shit was already a huge improvement!

The problem with those menus on Linux Mint and KDE is that while they're good for the desktop, they won't ever become useful on tablets/touchscreens. There's a massive change going on in the world, where enthusiasts' desktops are the only desktops to remain within the mainstream media/consumers, businesses, schools, etc are going to choose more lightweight and power saving hardware. Thus, switch over to something like say, Windows 8 or iOS or Android. Desktops will become obsolete and will only be used for ultra high power stuff, which is either already used by Apple or Microsoft (not including servers). Windows Vista/7's were improvements, but it's not going out very well at the moment.

That's the point though: you don't always have to reinvent the wheel to be innovative. Sometimes, the best innovations are small things that improve everyday usability. Sure, it may not be as "media sexy", it may not get you as much hype on tech sites, but for the everyday user, the small things are often much more important.

Sadly that's not how the world works, but according to Linux users, that's how things are or at least should be, right down to their freakin' desktops. The desktop is dying, Microsoft knows this, and guess what? People are tolerating Windows 8 and people WILL STILL be going to MS, so until you get something out that spouts out "innovation" to the mainstream, you're not going to get far within the Linux desktop/mobile hybrid. Ubuntu is that key and still is, even though Windows 8 exists, you HAVE to tell it to the mainstream as it is, "It's a new interface, easier to use, etc."

[johnc]

Well in the case of resource hogging, I will give you that, since Compiz is something that really should just die as it has no real purpose.

A window manager is something that "has no real purpose"? Yeah, you seem like somebody who has great vision for a good desktop user experience.

The irony is that compiz was actually lightweight until Canonical wrecked it by making Unity a plugin, which is a pretty awful design decision. No half-decent software shop would ever come up with an idea that bad. I'm sure we're in good hands with their convergence story though.

[johnc]

Man, what are you talking about? The proposed new icons look beautiful, and they are based on studies about iconography conducted with researchers from the University of Reading. Most of the comments I've read complaining about it claim it's too trendy, following the flat icon fad. Are you serious?

I've never heard of the University of Reading. Am I supposed to be impressed with their opinion?