Ubuntu 17.10 Final Beta Is Ready For Testing
phoronix.com
phoronix.com
For example now my volume control uses 5 steps at once instead of one. So every version I have to search the net for some command line command to fix things.
I wont leave Linux anytime soon but I can imagine people get sick of this.
Ubuntu is great, but maybe the priority should be flawless instead of yet another window manager/desktop environment.
Every few years or so some new "kid" comes onboard and decides they can rewrite some piece of code over a caffeine fueled weekend.
This then effectively solves some surface problems but resets the clock on a whole lot of other issues...
And the fact young people are more likely to be People of Color due to demographic shifts isn't a factor at all, I'm sure.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
Also this one:
"Assume good faith." (<-- Edit: whoops, haven't added that one yet! It's coming.)
Blatant nastiness is easier to do something about because it's so obvious. But when people degrade discussion by replying to the worst about each other, the frog boils more subtly.
Also Linux on the desktop went a long way since I started using it 20 years ago, but it's always a catch-up play with new hardware specs.
Well switching to Systemd, Gnome Shell and Wayland instead of their own solutions goes a long way towards freeing up their resources to make that experience flawless.
Broken bluetooth headphone pairing due to some idiotic "patches" Ubuntu "maintain" as part of their "mobile" efforts.
Untold wasted hours on custom desktop environments, X11 replacements, "mobile"- all abandoned or half-assed.
Broken upgrade from 16.04 to 16.10 that left my network inoperable.
Half-assed systemd integration - why do I have two competing networking services on my computer ????
Ubuntu is a ghetto. A "we-are-all-super-friendly-united-in-harmony-giant-human-family-everything-is-amazing" ghetto of too much advertising, too much PR, too much "community" this-and-that and not nearly enough engineering.
This is what happens when you have a billionaire benefactor, too much free time, and no fear of failure - lack of direction, lack of vision, lack of anything of quality, really.
The decision to move to Unity was bad, users choose Linux desktop because they want something simple, something more under their control. The whole unity desktop experience together with that everything is searchable promise is just not the right selling point for that audience.
Now many many years in xfce4, that is the exact desktop environment I want. no over engineering rubbish, no forced features, no fancy UI pretending to be cool/smart, just the essential stuff that actually work. If I am going to spend most of time in terminals + chrome, why forcing me to have a fat desktop environment? gnome seems to be fine, used it for many many years before the Unity joke/xfce4, but it is still too fat and it is too late.
However if you want three monitors lined up side by side, this seems to be ridiculously hard to configure at least in Ubuntu. The monitor drag-drop interface in Ubuntu is the worst I have ever seen. We recently had three new hires and had to go through the traumatic experience of setting this up for each of them.
xranrdr -d :0 --output VGA-2 --right-of VGA-1
xranrdr -d :0 --output VGA-3 --right-of VGA-2
That would line up your three monitors in a row. I've been using it to automate testing of a multi-window Electron app and it works very well. You can do grids, columns, a cross - whatever...
They have decided that they will only do whole number scaling, and Unity (up to 7, Unity 8, now a community project, was to be based on Qt) is based on GTK/Gnome.
Frankly the Linux DE have been crapifying every size the DEs (Gnome in particular) figured they knew better how to do the underlying stuff than X11.
::sigh::
I've never once had a problem like that in Windows and I literally switch my display back-and-forth in Windows 7 at least 3 times a day as I move around.
I haven't kept up with the goings-on in this release, but I was quite excited to see so many clamoring for resolutions to pains involving multi-monitor setups in a previous discussion[1]. I would be interested to see what of those pains have been fixed.
[1]: GNOME3 has command pallete (ctrl+p) known from Sublime Text - https://github.com/p-e-w/plotinus
Personally, I don't use unity, but I find these features attractive.
In the grand scheme of things, it is really just a taskbar in a vertical orientation, but I dunno, I just liked it after a while.
I understand the motivation of getting rid of it (the dislike of it from a lot of the user base, the development needs being able to be applied elsewhere, etc.) so I'm not going crazy over it or anything. Will miss it though.
I was more alluding to the gnome method which last I used it has a similar menu with the tiered folder structure. Maybe they have added search as well, but my memory of GNOME is too fuzzy so I had to go with the fresher (for me) Windows equivalent (granted, with Windows 10 the applications folder essentially hangs out to the left of the Windows 8 start screen-esque area so calling it Applications folder would be a misnomer on my part).
Since 1995 I have tried every major window manager, nowadays I just use the default installations in any OS I use.
Gnome3 is a collection of UI blunders and they (over)spend their funding on political bullshit I don't support.
Otherwise, roaming the KDE settings can be a fun excercise.
Unfortunately, real fractional scaling did not make it to this release (you can test it though). I can't wait for 18.04 which will probably have fractional scaling and will be an LTS release.
I think you nailed it there, Ubuntu is a least common denominator of the Linux distros. Canonical found their niche, good for them.
- https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/921/multi-monitors-ad...
USE flags and equivalents are a thing that only comes with systems that compile most of the software instead of relying in binaries.
this is closest you'll get though, as Debian is not a source distribution and these features are not aimed at users
Apple is nearly a trillion dollar company. People want cloud backup, consistent and beautiful UI, and usable, "just works" tools. They're doing something correctly.
Sincerely,
Someone who owns a Windows PC, an Ubuntu laptop, a Fedora server, an Android personal phone, and an iPhone work phone.
Beyond that what sold OSX better was a unix cli in a off the shelf hardware package with a support contract.
And frankly what people want can be so easily manipulated by marketing that is a real worry.