[ubuntu-us-ut] Airing of grievances (was Meerkat Ditching 'aptitude')

Leif Andersen tbolpi3 at gmail.com
Sun Sep 12 20:09:37 BST 2010


Here are the things that bug me about ubuntu:

1.  Purple, sorry, but when I was first getting into linux, I chose it over
fedora because I liked its look much better, the brown and orange in 6.06
really felt good on my eyes.  I liked how it got polished more and more
through time as well, with 9.04 and 8.04 being really good releases (theme
wise), and 9.10 also was great, but also seemed really polished...but than
that all changed in 10.04.  Sure, it was slightly more polished than 9.10,
but only a bit more, and the whole color scheme changed.

2.  The need to copy OS X.  I do admit, there is a bunch of cool stuff in OS
X.  But I left it because there were too many flaws in the design.  As such,
right now, I think the amount they've copied is okay, as it does make things
more usable (and pleasant to look at), but if they copy much more, than I'm
going to leave ubuntu.  (Although I do like how they've integrated the top
bar and the window bar in full screen mode only (I think it's only in the
netbook remix though), it really saves screen space.

3.  The default applications are horrible.  Now, it's not as bad as it used
to be.  For me anyway, when I was first getting into ubuntu, the default
applications were buggy, crashed a lot, looked bad, and were missing a bunch
of the needed functionality.  I would start up rythembox, and it would crash
within a half-hour of use.  Totem did a horrible job playing movies, and
would lock up all the time, only a few things like evince, open office, and
firefox worked properly.  Now however, it is better, which is to say the
applications don't crash (as much), but they are still limited in
functionality.

I know I can configure everything I'm complaining about here, but hey, what
is a linux distro besides a bunch of pre-built configurations?  (Meaning
that with some work, I could turn a fedora install into an ubuntu one, why
would I do that?  Well I wouldn't, as it would be a massive waste of time).

With that being said, I am currently very happy with ubuntu, and don't plan
on switching for some time.  (Which is to say, until something much better
(and is fairly stable) comes out, or if everything starts becoming a 'mac
clone', etc.)

~Leif Andersen

----------
Searching a DAG: http://xkcd.com/761/


On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 12:34, Benjamin Cardon <bj.cardon at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ubuntu does do a lot of stuff that makes Gnome more usable, but I feel like
> going "more OSX" is a bad direction to go when everyone around you is
> avoiding most of its interface abominations like the plague :p
>
> I personally feel that if the KDE project would tighten up a bit and get
> more solid releases going, they would easily become "the" Linux Window
> Manager (obviously I'm talking in mainstreams here, there will always be
> more window managers). I feel like the KDE team are the only ones adding
> useful features and mimicking the functionality of other OSes only where it
> makes sense. I don't get that sense from the Gnome team at all, let alone
> the Ubuntu developers.
>
> That said, I definitely do appreciate the strides made by Ubuntu in terms
> of making Linux more mainstream. Thanks to Ubuntu, my wife can actually use
> Linux without feeling like she doesn't know what to do. Thanks to Ubuntu,
> you can actually talk to most tech people about Linux and they will have at
> least heard about a mainstream distribution for once.
>
> On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 11:54 AM, Charles Curley <
> charlescurley at charlescurley.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 12 Sep 2010 11:40:37 -0600
>> Aaron Toponce <aaron.toponce at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > While I'm not using Ubuntu any longer, I'll address the points you've
>> > brought up.
>> >
>> > On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 11:01:48AM -0600, Christer Edwards wrote:
>> > > 1) window buttons belong on the right!
>> >
>> > Mark Shuttleworth has been making Ubuntu a Mac OS X competitor since
>> > day one, and he has been very vocal about it. In his mind's eye, if
>> > GNU/Linux is to compete with the Big Dogs on the desktop, it needs to
>> > act like one. Because GNOME was primarily inspired by Mac OS Classic
>> > (9 and earlier), it makes sense to design it further to behave like
>> > it. If this bothers you, KDE was designed to be a Windows killer, so
>> > that might be more your route to take.
>>
>> I don't want a "Mac look-alike". I don't want a "Windows look-alike". I
>> want a desktop that has all the power, flexibility and ease of use of X.
>> If that includes some Mac-ish or Windows-ish features, fine. But I want
>> those features to be there because they are good features, not because
>> because Mr. Shuttleworth has enslaved himself to the Ghods of Cupertino
>> or the Ghods of Redmond.
>>
>> Maybe I'll join Aaron and move to Debian. I'm planning on replacing an
>> 8.04 (Hungry Hippo) release with Debian stable on two machines that
>> provide network services around here anyway; maybe I should do the same
>> for other systems.
>>
>>
>> >
>> > BUt, the buttons moving to the left, the indicators, the "Me Menu",
>> > the task bar, the themes, everything under GNOME from Canonical is
>> > designed to compete directly with OS X, not Windows. While it's not my
>> > preferrence, they've done more for the look and feel of a desktop than
>> > any other vendor.
>>
>> Or made it worse (less flexible, more user hostile) and more servile.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Charles Curley                  /"\    ASCII Ribbon Campaign
>> Looking for fine software       \ /    Respect for open standards
>> and/or writing?                  X     No HTML/RTF in email
>> http://www.charlescurley.com    / \    No M$ Word docs in email
>>
>> Key fingerprint = CE5C 6645 A45A 64E4 94C0  809C FFF6 4C48 4ECD DFDB
>>
>> --
>>
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>>
>
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