Thoughts on Ubuntu and (dis-)Unity(?)
Ok, so now pretty much anyone who is interested in this sort of thing has heard that Ubuntu will be changing from Gnome to the Unity desktop for their standard distribution in the 11.04 release. There are so many sides to this, and so many different ways to look at it, that I start getting dizzy every time I really try to get into it. Here are a few thoughts, pro and con:
- I hope that Canonical isn't falling into the "let's change this just because we can" trap.
- I hope that they see this one all the way through. Recent examples of other changes made in Ubuntu are not encouraging in this regard. The most obvious is the very controversial decision to move the Window controls from the right side of the title bar to the left. At the time that they did that, it seemed that a major part of their motivation was that they had "other plans" for the title bar area that would be opened up by moving the controls. Since then there has been no sign of those "other plans".
- I hope they make the Unity desktop work properly on a lot more systems, with a lot more different graphic controllers, than the Unity in Ubuntu 10.10 does. I can tell you from direct personal experience that it refuses to install on some systems, and it installs on others but doesn't work properly. This is going to be particularly important for older systems, because if Canonical is going to start making a desktop that requires the latest hardware to work properly, that will be a very bad thing.
- Is Canonical perhaps doing this because they are angry about the delay in Gnome 3.0, or because they are concerned about it being ready in time for their 11.04 release?
- Canonical has put themselves in the position of being the "best known" public face of desktop Linux. It would be unfortunate if their penchant for experimentation were to cause so much confusion in the novice user community as to actually drive away new Linux users rather than bring them in. It would be even more unfortunate if they were to provide Linux critics with ammunition - I have already heard someone here say "If you don't like the Ubuntu desktop today, just wait a few months and it will be completely different - but then again, if you do like it today, it's going to be different every six months or so anyway, so don't get too comfortable".
- What will the release of 11.04 be like in terms of upgrading existing Ubuntu installations. This is something Ubuntu already takes a fair amount of criticism over, and it seems like the next "upgrade" could really be a doozie. I can say that several of the people who have been using the Ubuntu Netbook Edition at my recommendation have reported tremendous problems in trying to upgrade to UNE 10.10 and the Unity desktop. I don't know of anyone who has actually successfully "upgraded" (in place) from UNE 10.04 or earlier to UNE 10.10. The very limited number of cases that I know about personally have required a backup, clean installation, restore procedure. Good luck getting large numbers of inexperienced users to do that!
- I am, in theory, very much in favor of new desktops, or variations in desktops, anything like that. I have been interested and supportive of it since the days when I was working with wm and xwm, and especially when twm came along...
- I hope Canonical/Ubuntu are successful with this desktop. Like it or not, they are pretty much the "standard-bearers" for desktop Linux in the general market, and having them get a black eye over this would not be a good thing.
Any comments and information on personal experience with Unity are very welcome.
jw 1/11/2010