

Default File Manager with Unity8 in future desktops - zeis
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-desktop/2014-January/004414.html
I&#x27;m pleased to see that they&#x27;re working on a better file manager.
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wirrbel
I have been using Linux for a long time, Gnome since v. 1.4. While I am
enthusiastic about the platform as a whole, I feel let down by the Desktop
teams as a whole.

While a few aspects of the UI are greatly improved (anti aliasing,
localization, FX, etc.). In terms of functionality, applications have not
gained much.

Nautilus especially has a history of removing features for the sake of
"Design" that people depend on. remember the time when nautilus always opened
new windows when navigating the file system tree? Or the gnome project
announcing to remove the middle-click paste? Ubuntu moving the menu out of the
windows into a mac-style menu bar on top of the screen, a behaviour you could
not revert as a non-admin and menus were invisible (in favor of the window
title) when not hovering over that top-of-screen area?

In general I do value thoughtfully designed user interfaces and I see that
care has to be taken to avoid clutter and keep them clean and sanitized. But
with the linux desktops, it just feels like the designers have lost their
focus and just harp on _abstract_ principles.

As a linux enthusiast it saddens me that Gnome has not even come somewhere
near to a functional GUI that could compete to MacOS or Windows 7 in terms of
ease of use and functionality.

To me, the CLI ecosphere will always make me want to choose linux. Yet with
the linux desktop I have more than ever the feeling that I have an inferior
piece of software in front of me.

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jfoster
Canonical have an interesting challenge. The people who are most aware of
their product are not their target market, and seem to actively dislike the
direction their product is headed in. Worse, those people seem to be under the
impression that they are the users that Canonical are targeting.

In my opinion, this phenomena might sufficiently explain why "desktop Linux"
never went mainstream. No previous "desktop Linux" company was so willing to
ignore the desires of existing Linux users in order to make a product that
would be good for their target market. Canonical do seem to be bold enough to
have a good chance at pulling it off despite their critics, though.

~~~
taeric
Meh. I think you are seeing more in the vocal minority than anything else. For
myself, ubuntu has been fine and remains the distribution of choice.

I will confess I have considered toying with arch. I do build quite a few
things from source, already. Still, I have found very little to fault ubuntu
for. (And, really, I just want a high res laptop. Which I will quickly put
ubuntu on.)

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Aardwolf
I bet it's gonna be a file manager useable by power users with built in
terminal, full copypastable path shown by default, ability to navigate inside
of zip files as if they're directories, tree view, directory bookmarks, etc...

Ah wait, no, that are the features of file managers of 10 years ago, after
that they only got dumbed down to target regular joe. Yay progress.

~~~
jfoster
Ubuntu have made it really clear that they want to be a competitor to Windows
and be very different from typical Linux operating systems. If you're using
Ubuntu and expected it to be like Debian, you made the wrong choice of
operating system. In my opinion, Ubuntu and Debian are both great, but they
are targeting massively different types of users.

~~~
Aardwolf
A competitor to Windows?

I'd say even Windows 98 has a better UI than what Ubuntu has become: at least
Windows 98 has a taskbar that can show multiple instances of the same program.

(And fortunately, so does KDE still, for now, for long I hope)

~~~
jfoster
Whether they're succeeding or failing isn't really the point. The point is
that if you're in the IT industry, the Ubuntu UI isn't even trying to cater
for you. It is Canonical's expectation that you will prefer some other
operating system rather than Ubuntu.

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sixbrx
Is Ubuntu replacing everything above the Kernel one piece at a time?

~~~
taeric
Would that necessarily be a bad thing?

~~~
hdevalence
Yes. See my earlier comment here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7083763](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7083763)

~~~
akerl_
Are we really going to fault Canonical for developing new open source
projects, or for those projects not being adopted outside of Ubuntu? I don't
have a need for another file manager any more than I needed another init
system, but if this was being done by anybody besides Canonical, the comments
would say ~"So stoked to see a new option disrupting the file manager space".

They're betting they can provide a better UX with their own tool. If they
fail, or can't maintain it, or whatever, then that's on them, and people will
shift onto other distros.

I'm looking forward to seeing what they do better, in the hopes that other
projects can benefit as well.

~~~
hdevalence
If Canonical wants to develop a new file manager, power to them! I, too, am
looking forward to seeing what they do better.

My comment was specifically in regards to the idea of 'what's wrong with
Canonical reinventing everything', e.g., discarding Wayland for Mir. Sorry if
that was unclear.

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morsch
I don't like the NIH syndrome, but I like using what's probably the most
popular distro and especially the software variety in the community PPAs.

So what's the best way to get a more vanilla Linux desktop experience without
losing the convenience of the Ubuntu PPA ecosystem? Use a Ubuntu remix? Can
you use PPAs with Debian? Or do you not even need them with the cutting-edge
Debian variant (whatever it's called again)?

edit: NIH, not NIMBY, thanks kudu for the correction.

~~~
kudu
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY)

I don't understand how it applies in this context?

~~~
callahad
I think the OP meant NIH (Not Invented Here), rather than NIMBY.

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bbanyc
Unity is already moving from Gtk to Qt, so the move away from user-visible
GNOME elements is natural. The question is what they're going to do with the
GNOME "plumbing". To fork and maintain a mixed Gtk/Qt legacy codebase, or to
reimplement everything from scratch...neither seems attractive.

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kudu
I liked the days when Ubuntu was a nice, simple distro that I could recommend
to beginners. Nowadays, every desktop distro is becoming more and more of an
"island". The main "alternative" to Ubuntu, Linux Mint, is also replacing
pretty much every piece of the OS with its own (NIH).

I would actually like for there to be a nice, simple distro that anybody could
use, with only general, vanilla Linux software.

~~~
dombili
Try elementary OS.

~~~
mcintyre1994
Elementary is amazing but isn't it one of the most NIH-inflicted distros?
Custom DE, app manager, dock, I think every app it ships with is theirs, etc.
I guess it's a bit more vanilla than the Ubuntu it builds on, but it's all
very NIH.

~~~
dombili
Yes, but I recommended elementary OS because the person I was replying to
wanted "a simple, nice OS anybody could use". I've used a lot of Linux distros
over the years (I have a "Linux computer" and I often install different
distros just for fun) and when someone asks me the same question my answer is
usually "either install Xubuntu or elementary OS". I could be considered a
power user, but even I'm using elementary OS right now because it's so hassle
free and it just works. Xubuntu is the same, but it's a bit boring compare to
elementary OS.

