Linux Mint

[David Shochat]

On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 11:56 AM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Also, I think many people have already
>> wondered why it can't be relocated to the bottom (default loc for the
>> Mac) or RHS.
>
> Speaking from experience of the Dock on Mac OS X, which is very similar:
>
> * The RHS is where scrollbars are found. In maximised windows, if you
> whack the mouse pointer over to the right to scroll, you get the Dock
> covering the scrollbar which is /very/ annoying.
>
Yes, I agree, I have had that problem on (other people's) Macs where
thy had it on the RHS.

> * The bottom works fine and is the Apple default, but with 16:9
> aspect-ratio widescreens becoming the default computer screen size,
> vertical pixels are increasingly "expensive" while horizontal ones are
> "cheap".
But not everybody is using a small screen. Desktop systems these days
have really large screens and people with those don't have that issue.
That's why it should be at the user's discretion.

> I've been using Mac OS X for a decade, with something much like the
> Launcher. The left edge /is/ the best place and now we also know why
> the window controls were moved - the story about "windicators" was a
> red herring. Ubuntu have done the right thing.
>
The right thing for you, but not for me. Even with my 13 inch MacBook,
I have the Dock at the bottom since that means more room for icons.
I'm not thrilled with having to "reach down" on the Unity Launcher to
get to some of the icons, although it does work well. Clearly, it's a
matter of user preference. You should be able to put it on the left
and I should be able to put it on the bottom.

I'm pretty happy with Unity, however. I guess the thing I like least
is that there's no way to select applications from hierarchical menus.
For me that makes much more sense and is so much easier to find what
you're looking for compared to the Dash, where you're essentially
forced to use Search. Search only makes sense when you know the NAME
of the application. With hierarchical menus, you only need to know
what KIND of app you're looking for. I know I'm trying to swim against
the current, and that the "modern" thing is to abandon hierarchical
storage and just search for everything. Or to have a smartphone-like
sea of icons (ugh). Ok, so I'm old fashioned. But now I have the apps
I need in the Launcher so it's not that big a deal.
-- David