Unity and 11.04 (I know -- yawn -- another opinion)

[Russell McOrmond]

  Just to add another voice to the choir.

  Tried the Unity interface for a bit yesterday, with that being the
first opportunity where I had the time to go through an upgrade (and
any potential pitfalls -- none that happened!  Yay!  :-).

  Without any way to configure and disable certain features in Unity,
after two hours I set the machine to default to the classic (Gnome)
interface and don't expect I'll be checking it out again until people
say it is configurable.

  I really don't like what happens with the File/etc menus.  I want
that attached to each window, not tossed at the top for the window
that just happens to be active at the moment.  I tend to have many
windows open. While the Unity behaviour might make sense for a new
user who only has one thing open at a time (Maybe an Android device is
better than a desktop?), it doesn't seem to be a useful interface for
an advanced user.

  The launcher I could live with, and if I used it I might come to
like it -- that seems comparatively intuitive.  But what Unity does
with the File/etc menus is a bit of a show-stopper for me that I don't
think I'm interested in getting used to.

  It is not surprising, but the general feel reminded me of the things
I don't like about MacOS, and why I wouldn't want to be stuck with
that interface either.  It isn't only the fact that I consider Apple
to be my greatest political opponent in all the policy work that I do
that keeps me away from using a Mac.  I also have disliked their user
interface choices (and lack of configuration options) -- and have felt
that way since the 80's when I was first exposed to what they now call
a Mac classic.

  I hope that Ubuntu plans to actively maintain the "classic"
interface.  I would hate to see "Unity" become the thing that divides
the community, and pushed people like me to move to another
distribution.

-- 
Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
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