I felt I needed to explain the last post a little better, so here goes....
I recently decided to try and break away from using Windows operating systems completely, in favor of one of the many free flavours of Linux-Kernal based OSs. I've had a tentative history with Linux. A couple of years ago, I would balk at the idea of using it. At one stage I even came up with this little creation. Things are different now though. Oh yes. For one, I'm no longer upto date with the current Windows version. In fact, I'm two versions out of date, having never touched Vista. So here I am with my aging copy of Windows XP SP3, facing down the time with it becomes a "Legacy System".
I've never bought an operating system. Sure, I've paid for them to be bundled along with a new PC but I've never upgraded outside that. Nor do I like the idea of pirating an OS. Being honest, this is less about morals and more about the fact that I like to trust where my OS came from. So I wanted a change... so I went for the most popular Linux version: Ubuntu.
Thankfully, I switched just in time before the 11.04 distro. I was amazed at how much I liked 10.10. It just did stuff out of the box that XP never did. Nearly any USB device I plugged into it worked straight away. Even my Nokia worked when I plugged it in and I had access to the 3G network within minutes. UI though, that's what made the difference for me. Ok, so things were a little topsy-turvy compared to Windows, but it was all very intuitive and easy to follow. I found myself just booting into Ubuntu, daily. If it wasn't for the one or two programs that refuse to work in WINE I would probably make a switch from Windows completely. Then came 11.04. Mother of dear fucking Christ Almighty. What the fuck is this abomination! And here is the nub of this post: If I had switched to Linux just after the 11.04 "update", I would have uninstalled it with much prejudice and never touched any version of Linux again. WHAT. THE. FUCK. WERE. THEY. THINKING. Unity?? Unity on the fucking bounty, more like!
Standard Gnome3 is apparently just as bad. What kind of fucking spastic thought that making a user type to get an application was a good idea!? If I wanted to type to get an application running, I'd just use the console. Fucking dumbass spastics.
9 comments:
Try LinuxMint. It's based on Ubuntu and so far they have avoided both Unity and Gnome 3. Even I can cope with it.
dude . . . calm the fuck down . . .step away from the computer
you CAN turn Unity off, you know
Linux DOS and Windows Mileniumm r for fags lol say it to mah face you batty boy
Rob
Grandad: thanks for the suggestion. I'll keep it in mind when I see what 11.10 brings. If the promise of killing off "classic" Gnome is kept, I'll have to switch, or see about bolting on a new front end myself. I'd probably switch distro completely than doing that though.
hu bris: My point is, if Unity was the first thing to greet me after years away from Linux, I'd have run away screaming hysterically. Unity is the default login for 11.04 and will take over completely in the next release. Being stuck with Unity on Ubuntu is no big deal as, like I said to Grandad, there are many other options. It's just very handy using Ubuntu because there's such a large user-base to draw from when problems arise.
BMD: You never fail to amaze me. It's almost sexual at times.
Amen amen, can I get an amen brother?
I've been using Linux since 2006 when I first tried Slackware. It was a nightmare back then. For most of 90s and early 00s I was a RedHat/Fedora person and then I found Ubuntu around v7 and stuck with it since then.
10.10 was their best yet. I have it on a two laptops, 2 desktops and it even powers our business servers on Amazon EC2. It just works, as you said. Ok, The purple colour scheme was dire and the move of the window controls was idiotic but that's it. The only thing it's missing is a decent bitmap drawing package (yeah yeah I use GIMP, but I don't always have 30 mins free for it to start-up).
And then 11.04 arrived with the Unity abomination. It is supposed to encourage non-power-users to adopt Ubuntu. I challenge any non-power-user to find the goddammed Apps. The UX geniuses in Canonical decided that the icon the rest of the planet uses for Zoom should be how you find things like the editor, or screensaver. Or or or, oops I just burst a brain vessel.
Oh look, there's Compiz using up 800MB of RAM. AGAIN. To display this piece of crap. Arrghhhh.
As for everyone saying you can still use Gnome, I discovered yesterday that you won't be able to do so when the next version comes out.
It's interesting that you rarely hear about the Linux version of DLL-hell that we all had with Windows 9x. I couldn't run a bunch of apps on 11.04 because they are linked to libraries which only work with 10.10. Every Linux upgrade is fraught with this danger. Whereas I can still run apps written for MSDOS and Windows 95 on my Windows 7 box.
The sort of abusive behaviour towards existing users by Canonical is becoming far too common. "Screw you users, we know best" is rampant. And if you complain, you are told that you just don't like change or you are anti-n00b.
Hopefully some decent hackers will fork Ubuntu, keep full binary compatibility and revert to a UI that people can actually figure out.
p.s. Try VMWare Convertor + VMware Player to snapshot your XP machine and run it inside Ubuntu.
That Compiz will be the death of you :)
The promise of killing off "classic" Gnome is what really irked me. This is Microsoft/Apple mantra: "We are the creators, you will bend to our will".
I actually like the colour scheme of 10.10 but purple was a poor choice for boot up screen as it makes your LCD monitor look like it's ancient and has a terrible viewing angle. At least, that's my experience of polarized screens anyway. Then again, this is coming from someone who still uses the Windows95 "classic" theme for XP :)
I've been tinkering around with GIMP a lot recently. To be fair, it has a lot going for it but it badly needs an update. It's still as clunky as ever.
I must look into your VMware suggestion. I was initially put off of virtualisation because of stories about cannibalising system resources, whether they were running or not. I really don't mind dual booting when I have something substantial to do in an OS, but I'm very episodic in my behavior, and I like to dip in and out of things quickly... ooh matron!
I just installed Linux Mint 11 pre-release on a development laptop. It's basically Ubuntu 11.04 with the Unity garbage removed and a nice calming grey and green colour-scheme. Also a minuscule task bar at the bottom taking up only a tiny part of my small screen. If I don't run into any issues installing apps, it may be a keeper. Still hate those new Gnome scroll-bars tho.
From what I've read GIMP has huge issues with core dev team being tiny and the apps still stuck on 8bpp colour. Still the business when I want to do something awkward on a bitmap. For everything else vectory I use Inkscape.
Yeah the constant use of resources by a VM can be a pain. We have the XP instance set to 1GB of RAM (out of the 4GB). Deesn't really slow down the machine but if the VM been idle for a while, it can take 20-30 secs before it is fully responsive when you click into it.
Omg, I am *so* glad there are other people out there who have the same feelings/thoughts about this new unity/gnome stuff. I haven't even run it myself, but took a peek at it on my partner's computer.
I have 10.04 on my Buntu PC and am not sure what I'm going to do when I am forced to upgrade. My partner has been running the K desktop and likes it, but we all share files between linux and windows machines. KDE doesn't seem to handle that as well as gnome.
I've heard that LXDE is a good way to go, just install that as a WM, so I may take that route or switch to Mint.
By the way, I lol'd for real when I saw the Mark Shuttleworth image. :)
Mint is a very good option for people who just want a nice OS without any fear of the developers pulling a fast one on them with weird UI decisions. I'm not sure how long they will resist the Gnome 3 UI though. Perhaps long enough for Gnome to come to their senses :)
KDE is probably very powerful for those that know what they're doing, but to me it looks like a complete warzone! Scary.
Mark is a very serious guy :-\ Gives nice keynotes though.
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