Fully compatible with Microsoft Office?

[Alan Pope]

On 29 April 2011 20:34, rikona <rikona at sonic.net> wrote:
> Does this mean that they are unaware of the negative feedback re
> Unity,

No. They get feedback from many angles. I gave three of them some
feedback over beer at the release party last night. There's nothing
quite like talking to developers in a relaxed atmosphere to get them
talking about the stuff they love and hate too :)

> and are, in essence, not listening to their users, or do they
> monitor REAL user feedback in another way that gets the FULL range of
> responses.

I don't know what you mean by "REAL user feedback". A user is a user
whether they frequent this list or not. I am a user, a developer is a
user, we're all users.

The Ubuntu project has pretty focussed places for providing feedback.
This list actually isn't one of them.

Here's some lists where you will find developers.

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/Ubuntu-devel-discuss
https://launchpad.net/ayatana

https://lists.ubuntu.com/ - comprehensive list of mailing lists

They also get feedback in various IRC channels like:-

#ubuntu-desktop, #ubuntu-devel, #ubuntu-motu, #ubuntu-kernel and so on.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IRC/ChannelList - comprehensive list of irc channels

Then there's AskUbuntu which is monitored by a number of developers.

http://askubuntu.com/

The developers have a limited amount of time on their hands. They get
feedback from every direction be that mailing lists, irc, twitter,
facebook, UDS sessions. They're not short of feedback, I can assure
you of that.

> Not liking Unity is not a 'bug' or 'technical problem' and
> would not likely show up on those kinds of places, that perhaps they
> do monitor. It would be a shame if Ubuntu were to be surprised when a
> significant number of capable folks leave for another distro...
>

Indeed. I don't like Thunderbird but I have never filed a bug or
moaned about it on a mailing list. Personal taste is exactly that,
personal. Canonical have done quite a lot of usability testing on
Unity, some of which has even been published, but that doesn't mean
they don't listen to feedback.

http://design.canonical.com/2011/04/unity-benchmark-usability-april-2011/

> I left Mandriva when they screwed up - it would be nice to stay put
> for a while. :-)

Indeed. I have used Ubuntu since 4.10 and have considered my options
along the way. I have decided to stay put because I believe that this
will all work out in the long term. Short term it's bumpy here and
there, and we will inevitably lose people who don't agree with the
philosophy, design or package selection, but I don't believe we need
to be obsessive about keeping every single user. I never got a call
from Bill Gates asking why I switched away from Windows, I doubt I'll
get a call from Mark Shuttleworth if/when I switch away from Ubuntu :)

Cheers,
Al.