Unity ROCKS not!!!

[Liam Proven]

On 8 May 2011 20:36, Ric Moore <wayward4now at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 2011-05-08 at 19:43 +0100, Liam Proven wrote:
>> On 8 May 2011 00:21, compdoc <compdoc at hotrodpc.com> wrote:
>> >>It's pathetic and it's childish.
>> >>
>> >>Just deal with it, learn the new, and move on.
>> >
>> >
>> > Expressing an opinion, in life and in a mailing list, is never pathetic or
>> > childish. Our talking about it is how we deal with it. This is how people do
>> > this sort of thing.
>>
>> I'm not saying that expressing the opinion is childish.
>>
>> I'm saying that the opinion itself is childish.
>>
>> > If enough of us find Unity is a step backwards, then maybe something is
>> > wrong with the direction Ubuntu is headed.
>>
>> Who says it's anything to do with existing users?
>>
>> ISTM that it's an attempt to simplify the GUI, make it more
>> phone/tablet-like, to win /new/ users. If the current ones don't like
>> it, well, tough.
>>
>> There are a billion-odd Windows users out there to convert. 99.9% or
>> so of the world's computer users run Windows. THEY are the target, not
>> present Ubuntisti.
>>
>>
>> > If enough of us find Unity useful
>> > or even better than gnome, then Ubuntu is going the right way.
>>
>> Honestly? If every existing user deserted, so long as more new ones
>> came on board then left, I don't think they'd mind at all.
>>
>> > We are after all, the users and supporters and maintainers of Ubuntu.
>> > Shouldn't we be allowed to voice our opinions?
>>
>> Well, yes, sure. But this is not a democracy. Never was. It's a
>> dictatorship, under a self-appointed dictator-for-life. Happily,
>> though, he is a benevolent one.
>>
>> > Without us, Ubuntu would become another abandoned fork.
>>
>> Not if a hundred million new users descended on it, no.
>
> But that does abandon the old "Meritocracy" concept, where the search of
> the "Right Thing" is the Holy Grail, as those of higher merit occupy the
> higher rungs of Power and Authority.

Well, the thing is, the pure meritocracy model gave us Debian. Clever,
powerful, flexible, horrible to install and configure and a pain for
anyone except a deep geek.

Then Bruce Perens (peace be upon him) tried to get people to pull
together and make UserLinux. But it didn't attain critical mass.

Then the blessèd saintly Mark Shuttleworth, praised be his name, came
along with a big fat chequebook and said "just bloody well do it,
here, I'm paying," and lo, we got the blessings from space itself of
Ubuntu. Yay Mark!

Mark bypassed the whole meritocracy thing with a few years of $10M/yr.
Amazing how that encourages FOSS coders to pull together, that. ;¬)

> But, telling some one of a different perspective to fark off, if they
> don't like things, is to completely devalue the person, if not just the
> relationship. OTOH, that goes for both sides of the relationship coin.
> So, if someone occupies the higher rungs of the Meritocracy, maybe we
> could consider that they just might know something that we don't. You
> know, "give the Devil his due". Hopefully, some sense of moderation and
> accommodation can be found in the middle ground. As it is, I can just
> hold back to 10.4 and enjoy life as it is. There is, thankfully, always
> that. :) Ric

Fair point, actually.

I installed Natty last night. The upgrade didn't bother to install a
new bootloader so it trashed my box.

But I fixed that, and now, I have it and I really like it. It's cool,
pretty and it works rather well. It's not perfect - it's not a patch
on a Mac yet - but hey, it's nifty. It's natty, in fact.

But then, I was fairly happy with GNOME 2. And LXDE is OK. Xfce I am
not a huge fan of, but it's OK. Xandros were the only people ever to
make KDE usable and Red Hat were the only people ever to make it look
nice, but hell, I could live with KDE if I had to. I might have to go
and find some old monochrome monitors to tame the fugly enough so it
didn't hurt my eyes, but I could.

Desktops are not all that big a deal, really. People get too exercised
about it. It's just a bally program launcher, for heaven's sake!

Maybe Unity is a bold new step in the right direction. Maybe it isn't.
Maybe in 2y we'll all have GNOME 3 but with an Ubuntu launcher panel
down the side!

But GNOME 2 is dead. Get over it, people, move on, enjoy your really
pretty natty free OS and apps, because they're really pretty damned
good!


-- 
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