Unity Mega Discussion Thread

[bryanl]

re: "The problem is with that ... is that menus are a lot easier to find, navigate, and understand for first-time users"

This gets to the key issue I think. -- how do you know what is "easier" for any particular group of users? How is that measured and what are the properties of that measurement?

The trend is away from a tree structured menu towards a search and context paradigm from what I can see in many UI's. Why would that be if it were more difficult? What are the presumptions in each case about the users and what they know and how they function?

As an example, compare the number of entries in the menu system in Gnome 2 distributions to the number of executables in /bin and /usr/bin -- the mismatch means there are very very many utilities and applications that are not in the menu system. How do you access them (and that gets into Gnome terminal shortcuts and methods to help with this).

It is a multi-variate issue with a big overlap in human cognition. Fascinating stuff where theories can only go so far and there is much learning to be achieved.

[trikster_x]

re: "The problem is with that ... is that menus are a lot easier to find, navigate, and understand for first-time users"

This gets to the key issue I think. -- how do you know what is "easier" for any particular group of users? How is that measured and what are the properties of that measurement?

A Unity type interface is "easier" for the touch-interface user group. A hover to expand type interface is easier for the mouse-interface user group. That's not an assumption, its an observation based on the difference in complexity for the user groups. Number of actions necessary should be the single defining measurement of difficulty for a user group.

The trend is away from a tree structured menu towards a search and context paradigm from what I can see in many UI's. Why would that be if it were more difficult? What are the presumptions in each case about the users and what they know and how they function?

It's not because search and context is simpler. It's because of the proliferation of those god-forsaken tablets. Canonical is preparing to move into the tablet and mobile device market. Therefore they are creating a user experience that is simply more beneficial to a user that lacks a mouse. Keyboard shortcuts have been implemented, not because they want power users to be able to do things as fast and effortlessly as on Gnome, because the non-touch interface users will need a way to access things without having to be hindered by the fact they are using a mouse.

As an example, compare the number of entries in the menu system in Gnome 2 distributions to the number of executables in /bin and /usr/bin -- the mismatch means there are very very many utilities and applications that are not in the menu system. How do you access them (and that gets into Gnome terminal shortcuts and methods to help with this).

These were almost always programs that were hidden for the benefit of the novice user. They are programs that are capable of changing config files or otherwise wreaking havoc on a system if used without more than a passing knowledge of the system. It was easy enough to include them in your menus by right clicking the category and adding whichever installed programs were missing from the menu. Also keep in mind there are a great number of terminal programs that have no GUI and therefore are pointless to include in the dropdown menu system.

[grahammechanical]

Can I throw my thoughts into the mix? I running 12:04 alpha and an update the other night changed Libroffice 3.4 to 3.5 beta. It was un-asked for. The trouble is Libreoffice now looks like Windows 98 complete with blue highlighting. I never thought that I would miss the Ubuntu orange highlighting that seemed so different when I installed Ubuntu about five years ago. But I do miss it in Libreoffice.

We get used to things and as we get used to one thing, so we can get used to other things, even changes.

Regards.

[flar]

I feel duty-bound to point out that a) some people like Unity

b) gnome 2 was dead anyways

c) Feel free to use any other desktop environment.

d) Looking back, I see every other DE being criticised at a new release. Even GNOME2, from whatever GNOME1 was. So...give it time, and then there will be uproar at Unity being ditched.

Gnome 2 was not dead, that's utterly ridiculous. It was the best and most widely used desktop on linux. It's dead now, only because gnome developers dropped it to work on Gnome 3.

c) is true, unfortunately none of the others are as good as Gnome 2 was (at least for now)

d) I and many others will never use Unity or Gnome 3, they're poorly designed for the way many people use their computer.

[MG&TL]

Gnome 2 was not dead, that's utterly ridiculous. It was the best and most widely used desktop on linux. It's dead now, only because gnome developers dropped it to work on Gnome 3.

c) is true, unfortunately none of the others are as good as Gnome 2 was (at least for now)

d) I and many others will never use Unity or Gnome 3, they're poorly designed for the way many people use their computer.

b) my point being it was no longer supported and would not move on, leaving Linux looking like it came out of the XP era.

c) I imagine gnome 2 needed some tweaking; take a look at LXDE and XFCE and provide feedback to make them better.

d) Your opinion. Fair enough, but I'm sure many people said the same when new desktop environments come out. (I'm not sure, I came in around 11.04), I just google KDE 4 and oh, look, rants. Then google KDE 4.7, and oh, look, rave reviews. Just my opinion, equally.

[StewartM]

re: "The problem is with that ... is that menus are a lot easier to find, navigate, and understand for first-time users"

This gets to the key issue I think. -- how do you know what is "easier" for any particular group of users? How is that measured and what are the properties of that measurement?

I differ with you, I think there are objective measures of how easy something is to learn and use, that it's not simply random user preference. There's the measure of "is the thing indicated by a visible marker or sign?" and the measure of "how many actions does it require to get something done"? Using both measures, Unity and GNOME 3 alike are less user-friendly than GNOME 2.3, KDE, GNOME Classic, or even LXDE.

A keyboard shortcut you have to know a priori. Menus you can dig through and find what you're looking for. What do you think is easier, if you don't already know and have no reference? Hunting through menus, or trying out every possible keyboard shortcut?

It's the old rejoinder to Windows advocates talking about how Windows is more "intuitive" than the competition. But what's intuitive about CTRL + ALT + DeL? Nothing at all.

When I started using Linux, back in 2007, it was with GNOME 2.18, which was far less polished and less user-friendly than 2.3. But as an utter newbie I could figure out "hey, when I click on this in the menu, that happens" or "hey, I can switch between workspaces when I click on those little doo-dads down there on the bottom panel". I made mistakes, to be sure, but no unrecoverable ones.

But with GNOME 3? Even though now I'm far more experienced now, it's a struggle because to do simple tasks you must already *know* the shortcut and in effect have to know the answer. In fact, they have published a cheat sheet for it.

http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet

I don't think using a truly "intuitive" UI requires refering to a cheet sheet taped to your box for basic commands. Yes, there are things we all have to just learn with any new experience, but basic stuff should be staring back at you from the screen. That's the rule we apply everywhere else in life--if it's visible and obvious, then it's easy, if it's hidden, it's not.

But as Trikster_x rightly said, Unity and GNOME 3 aren't really designed for desktops/laptops or even netbooks. They are designed for tablets and smartphones, based on the mistaken belief that "the desktop is dead" and that everyone will move to using mobile devices. They are also designed with the mistaken belief that the UIs for these devices are superior to traditional DEs when in fact it's inherently clunkier. Mark Shuttleworth has inferred this kind of thinking in his blog:

-----

"A constantly changing world

The way we access the Internet, connect to our friends, listen to music, watch films and go about our daily lives is rapidly evolving. We now use a diverse set of devices with an array of operating systems, which have a range of connectivity. Few people are exclusively loyal to a single technology provider.

Consider this quote from Paul Maritz of VMWare:

“Three years ago over 95 percent of the devices connected to the Internet were personal computers. Three years from now that number will probably be less than 20 percent. More than 80 percent of the devices connected to the Internet will not be Windows-based personal computers.” Paul Maritz, 29 August 2011 VM World Keynote.

Make no mistake – just as the world is changing for manufacturers so is it changing for Linux distributions. Today, 70% of people in Egypt access the Internet solely via the phone. Even in the US that figure is a startling 25%."

-----

These factoids may be true taken on face value. But they are misleading.

For starters, country-by-country preference about how one connects to the internet is determined by a number of factors--the relative price of the device and the relative price of connectivity. I don't know about Egypt, but in China mobile devices are expensive, but mobile connectivity is cheap. So if you can scape up the money to buy a smartphone, that's a cost-effective way to go. In many places of the world, you access the internet at a cybercafe or other wifi spot, so having a mobile device is almost essential.

In the US, by contrast, home connectivity is far cheaper than mobile connectivity and desktops are cheaper and more powerful than smartphones or tablets. Even netbooks are cheaper than tablets or smartphones! Based on those facts alone, and I don't see the paradigm shift that Shuttleworth and others predict. This is especially true if the price of home connectivity in the developing world drops and people can access the internet at home instead of at the cybercafe.

Secondly, looking at the number of internet-connected devices sold is a misleading indicator of preference. It is more a measure of the useful lifespan of the device. A desktop computer provides more bang for the buck on inital purchase, and it can be upgraded and repaired by the user (or cheaply by a service). It can be useful for up to a decade. Mobile devices are the opposite--more likely to be broken, more fragile, harder and costly or even impossible to repair, limited or no upgradeability. A hypothetical user who sought to keep one smartphone, one tablet, one laptop, and one desktop might need over the course of 10 years need buy only 1 desktop, but might need to buy 2 laptops, 3 tablets, and 4 smartphones. But that buying habit should not be interpreted to mean that he/she prefers smartphones 4 times more than he prefers desktops. Nor should it be interpreted to mean that that he/she thinks the UI of the smartphone or tablet is superior to that of the desktop.

Nor is this "hypothetical", because I know young people in college who have these items. And no one I know thinks that they don't need desktops. In fact, one who has a smartphone, a netbook, and a laptop called me from grad school Tuesday about buying a new desktop. He says the desktop he needs to do a whole host of things from writing papers to webpage maintenance that none of the other devices can easily manage. We talked about this, and if he had to drop anything, it would be his laptop. The netbook he uses to take notes in class and the smartphone is mostly just used as a phone. Nor do he and his peers see the smartphone/tablet UI as superior to the traditional desktop UI. They realize that it's more limited in fact, due to limitations imposed by lack of screen space.

So in my perspective, the whole raison d'etre of the Unity and GNOME 3 interface is based on a mistaken interpretation of the data.

StewartM

[StewartM]

I just google KDE 4 and oh, look, rants. Then google KDE 4.7, and oh, look, rave reviews. Just my opinion, equally.

That's assuming that KDE 4.7 hasn't corrected some of the faults and put back some of the functionality that people complained about in KDE 4. Which in fact it has.

There's an old adage of business: "the customer is always right". It's not a good model to dismiss your users'/customer complaints with a wave of the hand and an "Aw, they'll get used to it". If your long-time users or customers are complaining, it's worth looking into.

And it's true, people might one day miss Unity and GNOME 3. But that will because that future versions of these will have been improved. Some of the things I find wrong with GNOME 3 is simply stuff that the developers plan to add back but weren't able to add back in time for its incorporation in 11.10. I expect some of these things back in 12.04.

StewartM

[MG&TL]

That's assuming that KDE 4.7 hasn't corrected some of the faults and put back some of the functionality that people complained about in KDE 4. Which in fact it has.

There's an old adage of business: "the customer is always right". It's not a good model to dismiss your users'/customer complaints with a wave of the hand and an "Aw, they'll get used to it". If your long-time users or customers are complaining, it's worth looking into.

And it's true, people might one day miss Unity and GNOME 3. But that will because that future versions of these will have been improved. Some of the things I find wrong with GNOME 3 is simply stuff that the developers plan to add back but weren't able to add back in time for its incorporation in 11.10. I expect some of these things back in 12.04.

StewartM

Where I live 'rave reviews' means good ones.

But I agree with the other stuff.

[Garthhh]

That's assuming that KDE 4.7 hasn't corrected some of the faults and put back some of the functionality that people complained about in KDE 4. Which in fact it has.

There's an old adage of business: "the customer is always right". It's not a good model to dismiss your users'/customer complaints with a wave of the hand and an "Aw, they'll get used to it". If your long-time users or customers are complaining, it's worth looking into.

And it's true, people might one day miss Unity and GNOME 3. But that will because that future versions of these will have been improved. Some of the things I find wrong with GNOME 3 is simply stuff that the developers plan to add back but weren't able to add back in time for its incorporation in 11.10. I expect some of these things back in 12.04.

StewartM

one of the main Gnome customers RedHat will be using gnome 2 until 2017

expect that Gnome3 will be fully developed by then

one can't help but wonder if the little ******* contest between canonical & gnome hasn't exacerbated the dysfunction on both DE's

[nethero]

Gnome 2 was not dead, that's utterly ridiculous. It was the best and most widely used desktop on linux. It's dead now, only because gnome developers dropped it to work on Gnome 3.

c) is true, unfortunately none of the others are as good as Gnome 2 was (at least for now)

d) I and many others will never use Unity or Gnome 3, they're poorly designed for the way many people use their computer.

Well put. Gnome 3 and Unity were killing my productivity. They are fine examples of someone trying to fix something that wasn't broken to begin with. Have you heard of MATE? It's a fork of Gnome 2. I've been using it but it's still a little buggy. Apparently Linux Mint is including it. Actually, Linux Mint is going to great lengths to offer users a Gnome 3 that behaves more like Gnome 2 or to offer Gnome 3 alternatives. I wonder if this is why Linux Mint is topping Ubuntu on DistroWatch.org. Nah, must be a coincidence....