Is this mailing list defunct?

[Sebastian Rösgen]

Hi,


first of all: thanks to Craig. I share your opinion. One should at least 
listen to these "pet" bugs and try to appear as if one cared about these 
bugs. They way how it people deal with these bugs is -- to me -- a 
display of a behaviour which is beyond arrogance. It is as if the 
Ubuntu/Canonical developers thought, they were dealing with kids and not 
with mature people. Perhaps thinking about the complaints some people 
utter about the behaviour of the system is what should be done here. 
Certainly not all complaints are valid but especially if 119 people vote 
for "affects me" there must be something about these errors.

secondly about Ubuntu Tweak: I like the idea and I love the work which 
has been done to the tool during the recent time. I think it is a good 
step in the right direction because it really offers a overview about 
those aspects of the desktop which can be configured. Especially the 
plug-in system is a good idea, for it is now possible to remove certain 
configuration options which are not needed by most people, and it leaves 
the option (for more advanced users) to add those configuration options 
if needed. (And the new UI is, generally speaking, a real big step forward.)

But besides the praise I have one big problem with Ubuntu Tweak. I do 
not like the idea of a configuration system which must be installed to 
the system in addition to the Gnome Control Center. Wouldn't it be 
better to integrate a couple of the Ubuntu Tweak options in the Gnome 
Control Center?


I additionally have to say that Craig is about the fixation on Ubuntu 
Tweak. There are some pressing issues on other places and I really hoped 
that this list might raise some voices of doubt about the direction 
Ubuntu is currently heading down (being driven down that wrong path by 
some questionable decisions by the Ayatana members).

Let me refer (again) to those two pet bugs of mine and let me explain 
why they are important to me. I really do not want to bore anyone, but I 
want you to understand me. And I want to do this especially for Jorge, 
to simply show him that his horse of arrogance is not providing him a 
saddle as steady as he might think. The nice word "pet bug" belittles a 
huge problem posed before the Ubuntu community and questions  the 
decision making processes which I criticize so much.

Bug 733349 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ayatana-design/+bug/733349) deals 
with the behaviour of the Launcher when an icon of an already running 
application is clicked. The questions was if it weren't better to 
minimize the windows of the running application instead of doing nothing 
or activating spread mode or whatever.

There were many discussions about the right behaviour. In my opinion the 
most problematic aspect of the current behaviour is the factor of the 
"expectation" of the users. If you would decide to go into spread mode 
on a middle mouse click that would be ok. But the left mouse click is 
usually the default action. If you have only one window of an 
application opened and the window is already focused, then the click 
will bring you NO reaction at all. Also, some quicklists are not yet 
completed and a right click will thus, not necessarily, offer you any 
option to open more than one instance of an application. Most prominent 
among these applications is nautilus. I cannot understand why nobody 
thought about the possibility to easily and quickly open a second 
window. Why do I have to use the (hidden) global menu?
Now, this all would not be so problematic if I had the option to change 
the behaviour. There was none. Believe be I never had ANY problem with 
default behaviour of ANY software as long as the Desktop/Operating 
System offered me the possibility to modify the behaviour of my desktop. 
Ubuntu/Canonical instead decided to ignore any individuality in the 
users and denied them nearly any possibility to modify the desktop.

Funny about this is the reason that "it is more easily to support and 
administrate a system which always looking  the same". So when somebody 
calls me I can say "click on the launcher on the left and do the 
following steps...". Well, that is a nice thought. BUT: until recently I 
worked at a University. I have switched my employer now, but I remember 
a nice example, concerning user support which disproves the reason for 
the unconfigurability of Unity given here so far. We installed Ubuntu on 
a couple of library PCs in different libraries on the campus. We had 
made good experiences with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (in the department of 
ethnology and anthropology and in the department of English 
linguistics). But those people who should install the OS chose Ubuntu 
11.04 instead of 10.04 and then placed these PCs in the libraries. We 
had not many complaints about the 10.04 PCs. But the complaints about 
11.04 were many. Especially the behaviour of the system was sometimes so 
unexpected and unfamiliar that people did not want to use the Ubuntu 
PCs. The argument that "Ubuntu behaved more like Mac OS X instead of 
Windows" did not help because one of the aspects frustrating the users 
was that the launcher looked like a dock and very often behaved like a 
dock but it factually was not like the Mac OS X dock. It lacked many of 
its features. It was funny that it helped to install Docky on the PCs. 
This solved at least one of the complaints (there were others).

Now you can certainly argue that I proved how easily I can configure 
Ubuntu (by installing Docky) to solve one problem. But first of all the 
argument that the fixed launcher behaviour made it easier to maintain 
the desktop is not true. Instead there is now an additional application 
installed which can produce additional errors.

Next there is the nice aspect of comments 175 and 176 of the launchpad 
page of bug 733349. Can you all see how frustrated Marco Biscaro is? He 
wrote a patch which made it possible to configure the launcher as 
wanted. But it was rejected. Not he does not want to port the patch for 
unity 4.x until he knows that the patch is accepted. Totally 
understandable! Why should he invest time, for which he is not paid and 
he does not even get a thank you? Where was the problem to say "thank 
you that you invested your time". Where was the problem to say "now, 
that somebody invested time to write that patch, we will think about 
offering an option in the control center or ccsm which makes it possible 
to switch between the default Launcher behaviour and a different one."

Btw.
Some month ago I asked on this list if somebody of the Canonical/Ubuntu 
developers could say if it is possible that Ubuntu Tweak (after some 
modifications) can be integrated into Ubuntu by default (to offer some 
more options to configure the system). There was never any answer to 
this. Was this some pet bug, too? Oh you all so much for the community, 
I am really baffled! If you do not want any of us involved or to share 
ideas or to say our opinion then please do not try to start any 
community project anymore. Be it a Power User Community or a different 
one. And no these bugs are not my "pet bugs" they are seemingly the pet 
bugs of 119 people. We all share one small little pet bug. So do not 
mind if I am frustrated and angry, as there are 119 people who all have 
to share one single pet bug. It is getting crowded on that launchpad 
page of bug 733349. It is getting crowded on the page of bug 668415, as 
well. A "pet" bug sounds to me like a personal, small bug. Heck! I am 
really frustrated Perhaps I should file a different bug which only gets 
two or three "affects me" votes. These very often get fixed more quickly 
as it seems. And at least then I would have a real small, nice pet bug 
for my self (or nearly my self ...). I hope there are not too many 
people voting "affect me" on that bug, because then it would be again 
one of those strange pet bugs which become so crowded.




Am 03.10.2011 14:43, schrieb Craig Maloney:
> On 01/-10/-28163 02:59 PM, Jorge O. Castro wrote:
>
>> As far as I can tell this mailing list is to coordinate these things:
>> [...]
>> * provide communication channels and support resources.
>> [...]
>> But so far it seems to me that this is mailing list is just a list of
>> people either talking about their setup or complaining about pet bugs,
>> so I don't really know how to fix that.
>
> I think the first way to fix it is to listen to the "pet bugs" and 
> setups, thereby creating a communication channel and support resource. ;)
>
> I joined the list with the idea that the power users would have an 
> opportunity to discuss their setup, and see if we could somehow 
> influence the design of Unity and Ubuntu to somehow cater to the wants 
> and desires of "power users". And it started out that way, but once 
> Ubuntu Tweak was mentioned, the list focused on that as a swiss-army 
> catch-all for fixing everything power-users found wanting in Ubuntu / 
> Unity.
>
> If Ubuntu Tweak is the only fruit of the mailing list (outside of 
> providing a forum for folks to discuss how they use their computers), 
> then at least we have that. However, that falls short of my 
> expectations for this list. It also calls into question the efforts to 
> court power users into discussing their issues instead of merely 
> paying lip-service to wanting power-user input.
>
> I wanted to see if I might have a voice in design decisions from a 
> power-user's perspective. If we can have that forum, I think this list 
> still has merit. If the only solution is an add-on tool that 
> eventually will cause problems when Unity needs to break 
> compatibility, then we need to rethink whether anything useful will be 
> accomplished by this list, or whether discussion should be taken to 
> Ubuntu Tweak instead.
>

-- 
Non quia difficilia sunt, non audemus, sed quia non audemus, difficilia
sunt!
<Seneca>