I, and I believe many others, have long used and admired Ubuntu for its unrelenting pragmatism. It's long been the distro of getting stuff done. It's had an agressive release cycle, and its had a great focus on usability.
However, this is going to be the release that's going to force everyone showing Ubuntu off to friends/coworkers to say "oh yeah, the buttons are on the left, yeah that's stupid, I agree but I can fix that" clickity command line clack.
What's most disappointing is the utter failure of the UI team to communicate why they've done this, which is insulting. Yes, they've said "we've had meetings and thought about it!", but no reasons other than 'we like it', have been disclosed to my knowledge. Ubuntu's made decisions like this before, but never one so fundamental.
All in all, I've been left with a bitter taste in my mouth from both the stupidness of the decision, and the stupidness of not handling the PR crisis that this is (and this is a PR crisis).
I understand it's Shuttleworth's baby, and he can do what he wants, but if decisions like this keep up I'll be looking for greener pastures.
* something like Scrivener for linux and a bit more decent Office format support.
Along with decent H.264 support, the above are some of the things that I am willing to pay for - yet what Shuttleworth does with Ubuntu is left side buttons.
i don't know what release you're using, but my 10.10 beta has rdesktop installed by default and it still works as well as it ever did for connecting to windows servers.
I thought the reason for them being on the left is that they're reserving the top-right of the screen for notifications, the "social" menu and other things that may overlap with the window buttons.
I hadn't heard that, got a link? I guess that points to that PR failure I was speaking of though, I have been following this and I haven't heard that once.
I will say though, having heard that, it doesn't sound like a very good reason for the switch.
In 9.04 every time there was a notification you had to wait for it to disappear before you could click on the buttons. In 9.10 they moved the notifications down a bit as a hack around that.
Now in 10.04 the notifications are where they were but they've introduced a social menu & moved the lock screen / switch user / shutdown menu to the top-right.
If they hadn't moved the buttons it would be very easy to accidentally close a window when you meant to use those new menus.
That does make sense (though I still think its strange that Shuttleworth hasn't mentioned this), as a 9.04 user I've found the notifications problematic for that reason.
Wouldn't the obvious answer be to move the notifications down to the bottom right, like windows does it? I mean you'd probably have to move the system tray down there as well, but really, it makes more sense.
You don't have to wait to interact with anything underneath the notifications. When you move the mouse over the bubble, it blurs or goes invisible, and you can click avay at things underneath it without worry.
I am saddened by this. Ubuntu announces Maverick, and the highest-rated comment about Maverick on HN by a wide margin is a rehash of arguments about Lucid.
I couldn't agree more. I haven't tried the new button scheme, but even if I like it, the way that it's been implemented in such a heavy handed dictatorial way leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I'm not too concerned about it though. If it keeps up, somebody is going to pull an Ubuntu on Ubuntu and steal the popular mindshare. Mint?
But isn't the entire point of Ubuntu supposed to be that things "just work"? Most people don't go searching through settings to fix annoyances--they just get annoyed.
In my mind I was imagining a person who shows off Ubuntu would know how to do such a thing, but these days that's probably not (necessarily) true, even if it were, it still doesn't matter if the person they're showing it off to wouldn't be able to easily do it too.
However, this is going to be the release that's going to force everyone showing Ubuntu off to friends/coworkers to say "oh yeah, the buttons are on the left, yeah that's stupid, I agree but I can fix that" clickity command line clack.
What's most disappointing is the utter failure of the UI team to communicate why they've done this, which is insulting. Yes, they've said "we've had meetings and thought about it!", but no reasons other than 'we like it', have been disclosed to my knowledge. Ubuntu's made decisions like this before, but never one so fundamental.
All in all, I've been left with a bitter taste in my mouth from both the stupidness of the decision, and the stupidness of not handling the PR crisis that this is (and this is a PR crisis).
I understand it's Shuttleworth's baby, and he can do what he wants, but if decisions like this keep up I'll be looking for greener pastures.