I knew this group when they were at UIUC. Their work is really great and approachable. the concept of basic version control was foreign to them, so there seemed to be a lot of room for improvement on the non-scientific side. It is great that they have started to fix those issues. Seriously consider this job is you are interesting in the mix between hardware and software.
just install XFCE and don't worry about it. as long as the apt repositories are stable, let them play with their GUI and you can go back worry about something more interesting.
I think this ease is somewhat offset by the extent to which Ubuntu are pushing it.
When I updated to 11.04 I tried Unity for about 3 hours, got annoyed by certain things hurting my work style (the all-workspaces Alt-Tab mentioned above being one), and logged out and back in via "Classic Ubuntu".
I felt no antipathy towards Ubuntu at this point, and I was impressed they were trying new things. They just weren't for me.
Then 11.10 came out, and immediately my machine starts bugging me to upgrade. Apparently when 11.04 came out Canonical had said that Classic wouldn't be available in 11.10, but I missed this.
The upgrade process doesn't prompt you about that fact at all - it just takes the GNOME configuration that you were using, uninstalls it, and gives you only Unity.
After trying Unity again (<1 hour this time), I went to do the same old "Ubuntu Classic" switch and there was no option. That's when I got cranky. I had to Google to find out how to get back the desktop environment I'd had before I upgraded.
I would have felt good about the Ubuntu upgrade if any of the following had happened:
- Upgrade process had said "Please note the environment you are currently using (Ubuntu Classic) will not be available after you upgrade. You can install the gnome-panel package to re-enable it after you upgrade."
- Upgrade process had seen that I was already using Ubuntu Classic and didn't remove the gnome-panel package as part of the upgrade process, letting me keep the Ubuntu Classic after my system upgraded. How would that have hurt?
- (Best One) Upgrade process would have asked me "Would you like to try the new and improved Unity environment after you upgrade? If you change your mind later on, you can log back in as Ubuntu Classic" (alternatively, it could have said "install gnome-panel package and then log back in as Ubuntu Classic" if they couldn't bear to leave those packages installed.)
I agree that to some extent this is me whining like an indulgent nerd about an OS I got given for free, but it's also bad UX on the part of Ubuntu.
During a standard upgrade, your operating system shouldn't decide that the way you've been using it is wrong, and give you an unexpected and not immediately reversible transition to a different way of using it. That's hubris on the part of Canonical.
I gave a presentation to a user group at a senior center last night on Ubuntu, during which one person made a similar argument. (The only real difference was that he used the word "arrogant" rather than "hubris".)
I don't know your background so I can't speak to it, but this person I spoke with had contributed no code, artwork, translations, etc. to the project. He received a product entirely gratis, which he got value from. But then the product moved forward and changed. He still had what he had been given freely, of course. But he demanded that the people doing this work for free either never make changes to their work, or if they do to continue to maintain the old system as well. This work should also be given to him without charge or without him having to put forth any effort.
And for those of us actually spending our lives building the thing for him to do otherwise was arrogant.
I'm literally speechless when confronted with these sorts of arguments.
Well I did also say that I was whining like an indulgent nerd about an OS I got given for free. Which pretty much sums up the characterisation you've given here, as well. ;)
I do see your point, I really do. My concern, and the part that I specifically labelled hubris - which in hindsight is a regrettable term - was neither the desire to make changes nor the desire to not maintain old configurations. Those things are understandable. When I tried Unity in 11.04 I was impressed that Canonical were working to advance the state of the art.
The part that irks me is when I try to imagine the assumptions behind the choices for the upgrade behaviour in 11.10. Users are proactively prompted to make that upgrade, and I perceive a disconnect between their expectations of a simple upgrade and the resulting user experience.
In the post above I mentioned some ways in which this could have been made much smoother (simply warning users that their entire desktop environment was about to change, for instance.)
Canonical doesn't have to answer a single thing to me for the operating system they worked hard to give me for free, but I still wonder why they chose that path.
Agreed. Regardless of whether it's fair to be whining or not, Canonical loses if they alienate their core user group. Just look at how gradually Apple is refining the OSX desktop. If OSX had gone from the classic desktop to IOS/Springboard from one version to another, I'm pretty sure they would have had some serious backlash from their users.
If Linux ever becomes popular on the desktop, it won't be because of Unity, that's for sure. It's a resource hog and it breaks too many established UI conventions. Unity forced me to start using the keyboard for most things.
I'll give XFCE a try. I don't want to leave Ubuntu, because I like the packages and I don't have to read a manifesto sized manual to install it or learn another package system.
There is already a contingent of non-power users using Ubuntu. If they alienate those users then who are they really targetting? Shouldn't they worry about user retention in addition to user acquisition?
The problem is that they're targeting non-users so heavily that they're alienating the users they already have. If they never take user input to heart, they're going to wind up with no users.
I never really saw the point of Xubuntu--I mean, 10 minutes in Ubuntu will give you the same thing, why have an whole separate distribution when the biggest change is the default desktop environment?
It's not a whole separate distribution. It's akin to Fedora's "spins": an ISO with a different default set of packages. Nothing prevents you from installing Ubuntu proper and then "apt-get install xubuntu-desktop" on it.
I agree, though, that this distinction is not clear enough by reading Xubuntu (or Kubuntu, Edubuntu, etc) websites.
Ah, that definitely makes a lot more sense. Coming from Debian, I'm used to just saying "apt-get install <some window manager>" and switching to it immediately, so the Xubuntu/Kubuntu/Edubuntu thing always tripped me up--but I guess the point isn't that you could do it the way I'm used to, but that you can more easily just grab an ISO to default the way you like it.
Me, I usually just install a very basic Debian and pile crap on top as I go :)
Amen to that. Maybe when more people start switching to a desktop environment that is not completely braindead, the Ubuntu team will understand that they are doing something seriously wrong.
I actually switched to Mint 11 after 11.04 and found it to be a really good alternative. Specifically because it didn't break everything and has access to all the Ubuntu repos and tools.
I switched back to Ubuntu for 11.10, hoping some of the things which pushed me to Mint in the first place had been fixed, but I am again bitterly disappointed. Unfortunately, I value having a pretty interface, I find xfce ugly, and simply installing gnome 2 in 11.10 doesn't "just work".
I also tried Arch, but I found I was spending too much time getting it to work how I wanted, and I eventually gave up on it for the same reason I stopped using Gentoo.
The one thing I never considered was switching to Debian - which might be the best idea yet!
A few minor annoyances with the using the Ubuntu repositories. Mint, on occasion, looking for Katya repos.
Actually, I do wish I had just stuck with Mint, but I dont have time to go back now, and If I am going to install another distro, then why not Debian...
It's amazing how big IF has become over the years. I don't recall a single discussion in grad school (in the late 90's) where we ever sat down and discussed the IF of journals we wanted to publish in.
Unfortunately I am not sure all the current altmetrics efforts quite address the problem either.
