
Ubuntu: you’re doing it wrong - fuzzix
http://dehype.org/2012/ubuntu-design/
======
asadotzler
"The 'usability studies' that get quoted whenever I have talked to people from
Canonical about this have participation numbers that are laughably low. Having
a focus group with two or three dozen hand-picked candidates to 'evaluate'
complex user experience changes like these does not seem convincing to me. It
seems ludicrous."

Dismissing out of hand as "ludicrous" that user research on small groups can
and very often does produce useful results is enough to discredit the rest of
this guy's rant. He wants to be a part of the design process but doesn't
understand even the most basic practices of user research.

I am not a programmer and I do not demand representation in coding decisions
and I do not criticize code choices I can't possibly understand. I wish that
people who are not UX and UR practitioners would afford designers some of that
same respect.

~~~
AUmrysh
The difference is that users can understand when the interface is poorly
designed because they have to interact with it constantly. Sure, there are
parts of UX that most users never think about, but when something has been
overlooked, like when you can't move the launcher sidebar to the bottom, or
the settings are confusing to get to, there's a usability problem.

I think the real thing about Ubuntu, however, is that it's Linux. That means
if you don't like Unity, you can install GDM, KDE, Fluxbox, Awesome or any
number of other window managers. You aren't stuck with the (subjectively) poor
design decisions Canonical made, and you certainly have more choice than you
do in OS X or Windows.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
It makes very little sense to pick a distro if you dislike their default
interface. There are too many choices, or you can pick a distro like Arch that
is WM agnostic.

~~~
SkyMarshal
It does if you value other aspects of it: Debian package management, Ubuntu
PPA's, Wayland (when that arrives), popular apps like Spotify target Ubuntu
and Fedora and don't 'just work' on other distro's, etc.

Default interface is just one aspect of the decision, and some of the others
may outweigh it even for those who hate the interface direction.

------
notatoad
more accurate title: "ubuntu: i don't like what you're doing anymore."

ubuntu isn't doing anything wrong. they're not doing things the old way, nor
are they pretending to. it's top down control with unilateral decisions, but
that's what's necessary to move forward. for a product to come out well,
decisions have to be made. if you listen to everybody, you get a product that
sacrifices quality in favour of not pissing anybody off, like linux mint with
it's three distinct pre-installed media players.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
But the person making the decisions not a designer. When you load Unity for
the first time you have to be taken aback, or at least I was, but how
glaringly ugly it is.

~~~
kstenerud
"But the person making the decisions not a designer."

Who is making the design decisions (what's their name)?

How do you know this person is not a designer?

How do you know that there's only one person making the decisions?

~~~
wmf
With the title Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life, I think it's clear
who's making the decisions.

~~~
kstenerud
Is it, though? Canonical states quite clearly that they employ a TEAM of
designers to handle the UX aspects of Ubuntu. Unless you're suggesting that
they're micro-managed, for which you'd need to supply some proof.

------
koenigdavidmj
Columns do not work on the web.

~~~
IvarTJ
I had fun making a horizontal web page once.

It might have worked better if the columns were more segmented so that you
didn’t have to scroll down and up and then down again. That way you could get
more content for less scrolling and maintain comfortable line length.

~~~
halostatue
The Verge mostly does this right, I think. They'll move text between left and
right columns, and have images and blank space on the opposite side.

This, on the other hand, was a pain to read—so I skimmed it.

------
spindritf
> While Canonical is happy to accept thousands of hours of free work in bug
> fixes and quality assurance of their code, they are not interested in
> letting the community have a meaningful say in its conception.

Which solves the problem of design by committee and results in a great desktop
experience. I love how Unity is preserving space on my 13.3" screen and how
Ubuntu team made all the choices for me and then made it all work together --
I don't have to customize a thing (I use all the default applications and
don't even change the background).

I remember the times when it took a day or more to install an operating
system, all the necessary applications, and move your data and settings. With
Ubuntu nowadays it takes less than an hour (including some hacks around the
still rough edges, like reducing power usage) to have a completely up and
running Linux installation. Hopefully, Mark Shuttleworth will stay on that
course, because it's working great.

Disclaimer: I'm not a core member of any team, I filed two bugs overs years of
using Ubuntu. Everything above and below is written from my very subjective
perspective and it's entirely possible that I'm just not a very sophisticated
user -- give me a browser, a terminal, hide all that other stuff and I'll be
happy. Though Unity did convince me to start using Gwibber, Empathy and some
other apps from their integrated tray.

> Gnome is a community-driven project through-and-though, yet it has recently
> come under fire for the way it has developed the latest incarnation of their
> desktop.

Yes, because their community-driven approach to design led them down the path
of reinventing the wheel:

> Instead of picking existing components and giving them the final polish like
> Ubuntu did before, the GNOME project started developing things from scratch
> without any apparent reason to do so. And even worse: incompatible to
> existing solutions. It started with the rejection of the appindicator
> specification implemented by Ubuntu and KDE. At that point it was not clear
> to me whether the specification was broken or whether the responsible people
> at GNOME were just ignorant.

> Then came systemd. And it started to be apparent that unfortunately it was
> the latter.

[http://www.rojtberg.net/457/gnome-project-suffering-the-
nih-...](http://www.rojtberg.net/457/gnome-project-suffering-the-nih-disease/)

And if that's what developers want to do, great, but it probably will not
result in a great desktop environment any time soon.

------
ChrisLTD
I'm glad Canonical is trying to bridge the gap between Linux and an Apple-like
design aesthetic. The Linux desktop experience has been extremely unfriendly
to less than expert level users, and it'd be great if that changed. But if
history is any indication, that means adopting a more top-down decision making
process. Making tough choices, and streamlining design isn't something that
comes out of forum discussions.

Of course, not liking the direction of Ubuntu is your prerogative. However,
the great thing about Open Source is that you and like-minded buddies can move
to a different distribution or remix Ubuntu to your preferences. In that case,
everyone gets what they want.

------
nkassis
I don't mind the some of the directions they have taken with Unity (I've
switched to Gnome 3 at this time, I feel more comfortable it, even with no
shutdown/restart option in menu ;p) but the shear lack of ability to customize
is really annoying. I understand them choosing defaults but why take away all
ability to customize?

Also, some changes still make no sense to me, the buttons on the left still
annoy me. The dock sometimes interferes with those buttons when the windows
aren't maximized.

I guess I'm no longer their target audience. I feel sad about that as their
really isn't many alternative I find appealing. I could use Debian directly
but I still find that Ubuntu was doing a great job at cleaning up tedious
issues with Linux. Their new installer that asks questions while writing files
to disk is such an obvious thing it should have been done years ago. There is
plenty of other areas that they've truly improved in the Linux experience. The
last UI stuff is just not there yet.

I'll continue to use it with Gnome 3 for now.

~~~
jamesgeck0
Offtopic, but my Gnome 3 status menu has a separate shutdown/restart menu
option. :-) [https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/5/alternative-
status-...](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/5/alternative-status-menu/)

------
wicket232
If you don't like the direction that the current default Ubuntu desktop is
going, I suppose you could always try one of the variants, such as
[Lubuntu](<http://lubuntu.net/>). That's where I'll probably head, since I'm
running an older Ubuntu release and I'm pretty sure I'd rather not switch to
Unity upon upgrading.

I can't blame Ubuntu for wanting to make their default desktop experience the
way they want. It's their project.

------
pan69
My problem isn't so much with the innovation. My problem is with the lack of
choice both Unity and GNOME 3 give to their users.

What Ubuntu and GNOME 3 are doing is not giving their users an option. I run
Ubuntu on a work station, which is not a tiny screen gadget. I need to do work
on this thing and I'd like to get work done.

Both Unity and GNOME 3 are departing from life time engrained metaphors and
replacing them with supposedly better ways (whereas beauty is in the eye of
the beholder I guess). No start menu, or menus at all. No icons on your
desktop (wtf do I have a desktop for then?), Massive icons sticking out
everywhere taking over valuable screen real-estate and be in your face at all
time, etc.

If those new ways of doing things would be optional, at least for now, and
either be able to be turned on or off rather than forced down your throat than
in my opinion the resistance would have a lot less. Also, if those new ways of
doing things would really be better it's something the end users can decide,
not 20 people in a focus group.

On top of all this, timing couldn't be worse. Both the introduction of Unity
and the discontinuation of GNOME 2...

I currently run Ubuntu 11.04 simply because it's the latest Ubuntu version
GNOME 2. I have no intentions to upgrade and I'm looking for an alternative.
OS X?

~~~
tikhonj
OS X is no alternative--you'll have just as little choice or less there.

You should consider KDE--it's a really nice option these days, and easy to
configure however you like. Fedora is a great distro if you want to run KDE
with minimal setup.

~~~
rmk2
I also think KDE has come a long way. You can configure it all you want and if
you ignore the plasma-stuff widgets, then it doesn't get in the way and is
very space-efficient (just a panel really?).

I keep hearing good things about Fedora's support for KDE but have not tried
it personally.

I run KDE on openSUSE and am very happy with it, as well as the community
there.

------
ceol
Everyone has hit on the same issues I found with the article, but these parts
bugged me.

First:

 _> Apple’s software is hard to customize and can be extremely clunky and
annoying to use — that is, if you use your own brain instead of blindly buying
the hype._

Am I reading too much into it, or is that very insulting to Mac users? I'm not
sure where I'm buying into the hype by preferring the look and feel of OS X
10.7 to Windows 7. The author seems to subscribe to the "if you like something
I don't like, you must be inferior" school of thought.

Second:

 _> A very good example of this is iTunes and the way the iPhone forces you,
even today, to plug in and sync everything through one horridly clumsy
application._

iTunes is in no way a great application, but the author has made it apparent
he comments on things with which he has no experience: iOS devices haven't
required users to sync through iTunes since iOS 5. You do it all on the device
a la Android.

With those issues and the various points other commenters raise, I don't see
how this article is anything more than a rant by a person who sees simplicity
and usability as an encroaching evil.

------
hsmyers
As we get closer to the next big version (wherein most of the apocalyptic
changes take place) I'll be reading HN for useful lists of alternatives.
Anyone with useful suggestions can chip in now of course :)

~~~
hackoder
Debian is fantastic. I tend to stay on testing (wheezy atm) because it is
fairly modern yet stable.

Stability is the biggest problem with Ubuntu I believe- people will generally
adapt to the UI changes that canonical is making, but breaking stability is a
complete no-no. Even today, on Ubuntu 11.10, Unity shows wierd bugs time and
time again. Apps like VirtualBox and KeePassx will show multiple times (or
just disappear) in the dock. And sometimes the whole unity interface will
close and restart itself.

Compare this to the old gnome2, or xfce, openbox etc; You can go for months
without the UI doing anything unexpected.

~~~
kristianp
I'm looking around for alternatives too after using 11.10. I have been happy
using Ubuntu for about 3 years.

Is there anything Ubuntu adds that I would miss in changing to Debian? Not
including the Unity interface of course.

~~~
oakgrove
The main difference is Debian isn't quite as user friendly out of the box.
Sudo isn't set up for you for example so you'll be in for a surprise the first
time you try to use it. Also, Debian isn't quite as pretty. The fonts aren't
as good and the desktop looks quite a bit dated. The upside is Debian at least
for me is much faster. I don't know what Canonical did to Ubuntu 11.10 but it
drug for me. Also, Debian doesn't crash at all at least for me whereas Ubuntu
did suffer some random instability.

That having been said, I like the idea of Ubuntu. I like the fact that they
are trying to move the Linux desktop forward and I will happily return if they
can get Unity straightened out. As it stands though, I'm a content Debian user
for the forseeable future.

------
mellis
I'm happy to see a big player in the open-source world take a design-focused
approach to software development. The author may not like Apple's design, but
their top-down approach has led to products that are loved by many. It would
be great to see this approach succeed in open-source, so that we end up with
well-designed products that preserve the freedoms of open-source.

------
voidr
Canonical wants to create somethingm the OS Mark dreamed of, just like the
GNOME and KDE people, what's wrong with that?

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
― Henry Ford

Sometimes you need to decide whats best for the user. Most users do not want
choices, most users want something consistent that works and that is what
Canonical is trying to deliver.

~~~
tikhonj
I've always been confused by the "choices" argument: it seems to be a false
dichotomy. Why not have good defaults but then let determined users change
whatever they want? If you don't care, you just use the system as is; if you
are consistently annoyed by something, you can dive in and fix it.

~~~
voidr
That is what Canonical is pushing for, you get Unity and GTK, if you don't
like it, you are probably one apt-get install away from changing it. To
accomodate Ubuntu to my needs I hack the hell out of it, it takes me hours to
get it right, to make OS X work the way I like it's just an hour or less, but
I have more power over Ubuntu than OS X.

The problem however with choice is maintainability and duplication. Do we
really need so many window managers? Why not have only one that actually
works? While it's cool to have multiply desktop environments for almost every
distro, it has it's toll, somebody has to maintain and test those. What would
we have if we had combined the effort that was put into Libre Office, Abiword,
KOffice, Open Office and the rest?

Don't get me wrong I love having control over every bit of the OS and I love
being able to choose, but I feel we could sacrifice some of it it for the
greater good.

------
njharman
> that hides the base system as completely as possible

That is the "doing it wrong" part. But, I can see/admit my "doing it wrong" is
someone's grandma's "doing it right". Although, I still think (wished) grandma
had to learn how a car/computer/foo worked "grossly" before she was allowed to
operate it.

------
ohyes
open source != community driven

This person has some other version of open source in mind in which it means
something other than 'I can download the source code with the program.'

I don't take community suggestions for features on any of the projects that I
have on github;

A.) because no one uses any of my stuff.

B.) because I don't care if they use it, I'm doing it for myself.

If the makers of Ubuntu have a vision for their idea of a perfect desktop
experience, they should go ahead and do it. Sometimes it does take a
dictatorial visionary to get important stuff done. We already have gnome 3,
yes, and it is fine, but there is plenty of room for others. Particularly
successful others like Ubuntu/Canonical.

------
nfm
"Canonical is repeating a lot of Apple’s mistakes, however, as they are using
the same closed feedback loop development system that Apple is using"

Care to elaborate? This process seems to be going well for Apple!

~~~
tikhonj
Yes, Apple is successful. But so was Microsoft, and you wouldn't want to
emulate Windows either!

The point is that while Apple products are selling, the author completely
reasonably doesn't like their software and does not want Ubuntu to have the
same issues.

