Unity breaks basic UI principles

[Thierry de Coulon]

On Saturday 30 April 2011 07:54:55 am Gilles Gravier wrote:
> I remember something about open source being all about choice. That
> sounds slightly incompatible with "that's not an option". :)

This (sometimes) is a problem with open source:

Closed source programs can't be modified by you (bad), but (most) closed 
source programmes make money with what they code, so they (may) listen to 
unhappy customers. I'd take the Windows Vista -> Windows seven move as an 
example.

Open source let's you modify the code (good), but you may not be able to do 
that (I can't, mostly) and developpers (sometimes) don't listen to users 
because these are supposed to be able to modify the code and anyway they 
don't pay for the stuff (this is a little exagerated, but it sumarises the 
basic arguments I found on some - mainly KDE 4 related - lists).

_If_ the Unity developpers listen to unhappy users _and_ clever programmers 
jump in to hack a little where it needs, maybe Unity ends up as an 
interresting alternative.

SuSE used to have a choice screen were you could decide if you wanted KDE or 
Gnome. Why doesn't Ubuntu have such a choice (it could be under an advanced 
option and it could require to download some stuff if you install from CD): 
Unity, Gnome 2, Gnome 3, KDE 4 - even Trinity KDE as unsupported, why not?

I understand Ubuntu targets "basic" users and those are not supposed to make 
choices, but on the other hand it may be too complicated for them to change 
their UI, so they will probably change the distribution (I know so may who 
don't make a difference between Linux and Gnome (or KDE).

Sorry, I'm a teacher, and I think this way of "the user is dumb, so let's make 
the product as dumb as him" won't give good results in the end. Let's educate 
the user - softly, but nevertheless.

Just my 2 cents as usual,

Thierry