Does anyone have examples of <i>good quality</i> criticism of GUIs? Examples of reviews that changed the way you think about the GUI would be very welcome.<p>We are going to get a rash of articles like this one, which make some valid points, but do not really compare Unity in its 12.04 guise with any kind of model of interaction or external standard.<p>It would be nice to try to produce something better. Canonical design have done a lot of testing and have documented some of their work. I think they deserve a <i>critical essay</i> rather than the kool-aid type response, or the instant dismissal that seems quite common.
<p><pre><code> > The short version: Ubuntu 12.04 is the best release they’ve ever had and
> absolutely blows the upcoming releases of Windows and MacOS X out of the
> water in just about every way that matters.
</code></pre>
The second half of that statement may be a touch hyperbolic.
The current obsession with tablets is maddening. Tablets are great for many things, but I still spend much of my life sitting at a workstation: a computer with a keyboard, a mouse, and (lucky me) a big-ass monitor. So, for me, it's just sad that everyone is now rushing to optimize their OSes for tablets, often at the expense of usabilty in a workstation-like configuration.
I've also tried beta 12.04, seems ok, but article is a really bit hyperbolic. IMO this ubuntu has similar progress from previous version as other versions in the past.<p>Big surprise for me: I've upgraded 4 years old laptop with new SSD disk and 12.04beta and its really lightning fast compared to windows 7 (altough I have to switch to Unity 2D because of too hot gpu). It really feels like new machine.
<a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8403291/1204-poster-4.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8403291/1204-poster-4.pdf</a><p>I did this poster aimed at end users going from Ubuntu 10.04 to 12.04, just in case it helps anyone who is supporting end users.<p>The best way to explore Unity is to click around of course.
Multi-monitor support in 12.04/gnome3 is unbelievably good. There are tons of horror stories, that I've lived and that I've read, regarding multi-monitor breaking jut when it's most needed (presentation at conferences, etc). This has happened to me in the past.<p>Now, my system keeps track of my preferences per-configuration, so plugging in the monitor that I mirror display on automatically does mirroring, and plugging in the monitor I use as a secondary monitor automatically does that. Also, just plug and go for multi-monitor.<p>It's fantastically better than ever before. Anyone else noticed this?
The author says that doing something simple:<p>"takes several clicks on parts of the screen that are nowhere near each other and are not immediately obvious the first time you see them".<p>... and that this process requires the user to:<p>"click the “Ubuntu” button in the top left, then click the little white icon on the bottom center that is, I assume, representative of “a comb, a pencil and a building with pacman on it”. Then you expand the “Installed” section by clicking on the left/center of the screen. Then you click on “Filter Results” in the top right."<p>Doesn't like like a great thing to use at all to me.
As a non-Unity user I honestly don't think I've noticed any difference whatsoever since upgrading to 12.04. Which is mostly a good thing - it was fine before and it's fine now.
Unity and gnome-shell might be OK on a netbook. Or a notebook. Or maybe on a single monitor desktop.<p>For a triplehead setup this concept is just not bearable.
I think this really bad design-decision goes back to the days when there was this "Linux the great netbook / eee-PC OS hype".<p>The good thing is: Nobody is forced to use this <i></i><i></i>. There is Mate (<a href="http://mate-desktop.org/" rel="nofollow">http://mate-desktop.org/</a>), or KDE, or XFCE, or ...<p>The only thing that I find a bit pity, is that so many resources are spent on Gnome3 and Unity :-/
My yearly "lets see if Ubuntu is good enough now" a few days ago: installed the beta, froze when I connected the external monitor. Then the same happened with 11. And with Xubuntu. And I went back to Windows 7.
I just upgraded 11.10 to 12.04 final beta yesterday, and so far I can confirm what he says about performance and stability - 11.10 was ok, but 12.04 is noticeably better.<p>Two problems 12.04 solved:<p>1. On 11.10 I was getting frequent kernel panics when watching flash in a browser (Youtube in Chrome, Chromium, Firefox), and when watching video in Movie Player. That's all gone.<p>2. In 11.10, Ubuntu Software Center was sluggish as hell, so much so that I never used it. It's much faster now, just a smidge away from being downright snappy, and hence useable finally.<p>I like how the upgrade (via sudo do-release-upgrade -d) resulted in what seems to be a really clean installation, and that I didn't have to do a fresh install to get that (still scarred from my Windows days).<p>I hear battery life is improved as well but haven't tested that yet. Hope that's true.<p>This is on an hp dm1-4050us, Intel i3-2367, HD3000, 8GB RAM, 5400rpm hdd.
When i tried out the 12.04 beta on my HP Microserver, installation went smoothly. However when booting up the installed system, all i'd get is a blank screen. Turns out for some odd reason it doesn't set the textmode display correctly, so you need to add a cryptic line to the boot options to see anything. Upon doing this, i found it was throwing a fit at a degraded raid array on a disk i happened to have plugged in at the time, and so wouldn't continue booting until i entered the emergency console and typed exit.<p>Certainly not the distro i'm looking for.
Anyone who recommends Wine as a solution for running all your Windows applications loses a lot of credibility with me. In my experience, Wine just doesn't work all that well---certainly not well enough for doing real work. Obviously some applications work better than others, but every time I've tried Wine, at least one of the applications I use a lot has had serious problems. In my opinion, VirtualBox is a much, much better way to run Windows application on Linux.
I've tried the beta of 12.04 the past few weeks. Unity is still a pile of ----. Gnome Shell (3) isn't much better and fall back mode (Gnome Classic) is riddled with bugs that basically makes it unusable as a desktop to work on. The Linux desktop has finally officially failed.