Comments for Peter Hicks' Blog http://blog.poggs.com Sat, 31 Dec 2011 15:42:52 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.5 Comment on Ubuntu 11.10 for Productive People by sinbad@linuxthebest http://blog.poggs.com/2011/10/ubuntu-11-10-for-productive-people/comment-page-1/#comment-881 sinbad@linuxthebest Sat, 31 Dec 2011 15:42:52 +0000 http://blog.poggs.com/?p=255#comment-881 Thanks for this nice post... I am already become a lover of your blog... Nice post and keep going and share some more with us..Thanks.. Thanks for this nice post… I am already become a lover of your blog… Nice post and keep going and share some more with us..Thanks..

]]> Comment on Dumbed Down Ubuntu by wes http://blog.poggs.com/2011/10/dumbed-down-ubuntu/comment-page-1/#comment-879 wes Thu, 29 Dec 2011 07:55:36 +0000 http://blog.poggs.com/?p=253#comment-879 I couldn't agree with Peter about Unity. Although I will admit that 11.10 brought a better Unity then 11.04. I gave it a good 2 months and even messed around with compiz config, ubuntu tweak and unity 2d. I just found myself wanting the old gnome back. I am going to try out Mint, XFCE and Debian though, I have been a Ubuntu die hard for a while. I did like Lubuntu for my older comps. I couldn’t agree with Peter about Unity. Although I will admit that 11.10 brought a better Unity then 11.04. I gave it a good 2 months and even messed around with compiz config, ubuntu tweak and unity 2d. I just found myself wanting the old gnome back.

I am going to try out Mint, XFCE and Debian though, I have been a Ubuntu die hard for a while. I did like Lubuntu for my older comps.

]]> Comment on Ubuntu 11.10 for Productive People by John J http://blog.poggs.com/2011/10/ubuntu-11-10-for-productive-people/comment-page-1/#comment-878 John J Mon, 26 Dec 2011 02:42:12 +0000 http://blog.poggs.com/?p=255#comment-878 Unity was certainly a wrong turn for Canonical. At least it is easy to install gnome-shell, which is clearly less capable than G2's mature desktop, but potentially has more of a future than Unity. To the people who are shouting that we must "change" no matter what -- I say why? The G2 desktop had been around a long time, and had adapted to the needs of its users quite well. It had basically evolved to the point where it worked as users expected a desktop environment to work. The menu system was well organized, and the applications were easy to find in the menu structure. Beside the menus, a nice row of easily configurable launchers would launch my apps. I like my custom icons, and it was very easy to change the icon for a launcher. There were lots of applets available to be placed on the panels, and each applet had a nice configuration dialog, and the applets could be moved around in the panel so they appeared exactly the way I wanted them to appear. Another panel at the bottom provided space for my application list and virtual desktops, which I use very often. Windows always runs in desktop 3, whether or not there is anything in desktop 2. I have tried to work with Unity, and each time I have given up in frustration after a very short time. Basically I do not "want" my desktop to look like that, and there is pretty much nothing I can do about it, so the result is unproductive frustration. My OCD makes me refuse to click on an icon until I am able to tweak at least one aspect of the user interface. I just want to get the "dash" to go away and get my real interface back. Finding things now makes me have to type, use the mouse, and basically divert 100% of my attention from whatever productive thing I was doing to to having to scan the entire screen for the huge icon that is the thing I want to launch. And the application menu at the top of the screen - really? I don't know whether to laugh or cry. It almost makes me want to go back to Windows. I just do not understand how anybody gets anything done with Unity, at all. With gnome-shell at least there are some plug-ins to return some of the functionality that has been lost, and thankfully developers are putting in time trying to return some of that functionality. A couple requests high on my list - let me move my icons around in the Activities bar. Let me easily create a launcher and move it between the desktop and the dash or whatever it is called. Let's have a better weather widget - (one like the G2 weather widget that has a detailed daily report, a 5-day forecast and radar maps). Wish I could write these things! I think gnome-shell would be great for a smaller platform like a tablet. But for my desktop I want something that I can tweak to make it look and operate the way I want it to. G2 had evolved to that point. I am going to try XFCE for a while, but I will check back, because I am confident that the devs will extend gnome-shell to the point where it will be usable. I just hope they do it soon. Unity was certainly a wrong turn for Canonical. At least it is easy to install gnome-shell, which is clearly less capable than G2′s mature desktop, but potentially has more of a future than Unity.

To the people who are shouting that we must “change” no matter what — I say why? The G2 desktop had been around a long time, and had adapted to the needs of its users quite well. It had basically evolved to the point where it worked as users expected a desktop environment to work. The menu system was well organized, and the applications were easy to find in the menu structure. Beside the menus, a nice row of easily configurable launchers would launch my apps. I like my custom icons, and it was very easy to change the icon for a launcher. There were lots of applets available to be placed on the panels, and each applet had a nice configuration dialog, and the applets could be moved around in the panel so they appeared exactly the way I wanted them to appear. Another panel at the bottom provided space for my application list and virtual desktops, which I use very often. Windows always runs in desktop 3, whether or not there is anything in desktop 2.

I have tried to work with Unity, and each time I have given up in frustration after a very short time. Basically I do not “want” my desktop to look like that, and there is pretty much nothing I can do about it, so the result is unproductive frustration. My OCD makes me refuse to click on an icon until I am able to tweak at least one aspect of the user interface. I just want to get the “dash” to go away and get my real interface back. Finding things now makes me have to type, use the mouse, and basically divert 100% of my attention from whatever productive thing I was doing to to having to scan the entire screen for the huge icon that is the thing I want to launch. And the application menu at the top of the screen – really? I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. It almost makes me want to go back to Windows. I just do not understand how anybody gets anything done with Unity, at all.

With gnome-shell at least there are some plug-ins to return some of the functionality that has been lost, and thankfully developers are putting in time trying to return some of that functionality. A couple requests high on my list – let me move my icons around in the Activities bar. Let me easily create a launcher and move it between the desktop and the dash or whatever it is called. Let’s have a better weather widget – (one like the G2 weather widget that has a detailed daily report, a 5-day forecast and radar maps). Wish I could write these things!

I think gnome-shell would be great for a smaller platform like a tablet. But for my desktop I want something that I can tweak to make it look and operate the way I want it to. G2 had evolved to that point. I am going to try XFCE for a while, but I will check back, because I am confident that the devs will extend gnome-shell to the point where it will be usable. I just hope they do it soon.

]]> Comment on Ubuntu 11.10 for Productive People by Lucek http://blog.poggs.com/2011/10/ubuntu-11-10-for-productive-people/comment-page-1/#comment-875 Lucek Thu, 22 Dec 2011 02:46:20 +0000 http://blog.poggs.com/?p=255#comment-875 What can I say. I love menus. They work. When you need them they're there when you don't you close them. There's a reason why they're still around from the times of the first GUI. Docks and (shiver) Microsoft's ribbon are just the opposite. When you need them what you need isn't always there and when you don't you can't get rid of them. Liam, we can all see you're preference. But remember that's all it is a preference. A fare minority of people disagree strongly with you on how well such schemes work. Frankly if they think that it doesn't on their box then we should be free to change it. Thank you open source software for allowing us to do so. What can I say. I love menus. They work. When you need them they’re there when you don’t you close them. There’s a reason why they’re still around from the times of the first GUI. Docks and (shiver) Microsoft’s ribbon are just the opposite. When you need them what you need isn’t always there and when you don’t you can’t get rid of them.

Liam, we can all see you’re preference. But remember that’s all it is a preference. A fare minority of people disagree strongly with you on how well such schemes work. Frankly if they think that it doesn’t on their box then we should be free to change it. Thank you open source software for allowing us to do so.

]]> Comment on Ubuntu 11.10 for Productive People by Santiago Roland http://blog.poggs.com/2011/10/ubuntu-11-10-for-productive-people/comment-page-1/#comment-868 Santiago Roland Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:23:47 +0000 http://blog.poggs.com/?p=255#comment-868 I cannot believe what Ubuntu did to itself with unity. I've been an Ubuntu user since 6.06 migrated from Windows XP (the last window version i ever touched) and used Ubuntu for scientific work and personal stuff. In those years even my wife started to use Ubuntu (her since 9.04) and i don't know what to do now. I installed XFCE desktop to have something fairly similar to GNOME 2, but i found 11.10 to be the biggest disaster of Canonical ever. Bluetooth is broken, Public folder sharing is broken, nautilus was broken until 2 weeks ago. Skype crashes (i think maybe due to some buggy qt lib) Google Earth displays wrong fonts. And if you also think about the ridiculous conception of a desktop driven by mutter or unity or whatever-buggy-heavy-crappy desktop developed by some guy with a fetish with a tablet PC, this disaster is even bigger. The PC is not a toy, not a smartphone and not a tablet PC. The tablet PC is designed to be used to quick things and a few apps, not more than 20 min. That amount of time is exactly the time that lasted my unity session before i noticed that it was completely rubbish. It's nice, it's pretty, it has nice icons, but for use only 20 mins, not for working. This is the thing, unity turned Ubuntu's desktop for other thing but working or multitasking. I'm very sad about that because there is no other reliable choice gnome2-like or parallel desktop that mature and serious people would use. There is this kind of joke called gnome-session-fallback give me a break. I'm in a very tense situation with Ubuntu and it's usability, stability and i'm thinking about migrate after 6 years to other distro that won't be playing with useres like this. And i'm not saying another desktop, because i tried all, and the stuff that should work (because it works in previous versions) do not work in other desktops. XFCE is not able to eject a USB pendrive without giving confusing feedback or no feedback at all of the usb being unmounted, bluetooth do not work, thunar do not handle network places... this things should be fixed and well supported before introducing unity, because other users have no place to go. And I have Ubuntu pens, t-shirts, went to Ubuntu presentations and give talks in local events about Ubuntu and how good is it. I cannot support Ubuntu this way anymore because i do not see a usable desktop oriented PC operating system. I see a tablet operating system, but i do not have a tablet, i have a PC. I cannot believe what Ubuntu did to itself with unity. I’ve been an Ubuntu user since 6.06 migrated from Windows XP (the last window version i ever touched) and used Ubuntu for scientific work and personal stuff. In those years even my wife started to use Ubuntu (her since 9.04) and i don’t know what to do now. I installed XFCE desktop to have something fairly similar to GNOME 2, but i found 11.10 to be the biggest disaster of Canonical ever. Bluetooth is broken, Public folder sharing is broken, nautilus was broken until 2 weeks ago. Skype crashes (i think maybe due to some buggy qt lib) Google Earth displays wrong fonts. And if you also think about the ridiculous conception of a desktop driven by mutter or unity or whatever-buggy-heavy-crappy desktop developed by some guy with a fetish with a tablet PC, this disaster is even bigger. The PC is not a toy, not a smartphone and not a tablet PC. The tablet PC is designed to be used to quick things and a few apps, not more than 20 min. That amount of time is exactly the time that lasted my unity session before i noticed that it was completely rubbish. It’s nice, it’s pretty, it has nice icons, but for use only 20 mins, not for working. This is the thing, unity turned Ubuntu’s desktop for other thing but working or multitasking. I’m very sad about that because there is no other reliable choice gnome2-like or parallel desktop that mature and serious people would use. There is this kind of joke called gnome-session-fallback give me a break. I’m in a very tense situation with Ubuntu and it’s usability, stability and i’m thinking about migrate after 6 years to other distro that won’t be playing with useres like this. And i’m not saying another desktop, because i tried all, and the stuff that should work (because it works in previous versions) do not work in other desktops. XFCE is not able to eject a USB pendrive without giving confusing feedback or no feedback at all of the usb being unmounted, bluetooth do not work, thunar do not handle network places… this things should be fixed and well supported before introducing unity, because other users have no place to go. And I have Ubuntu pens, t-shirts, went to Ubuntu presentations and give talks in local events about Ubuntu and how good is it. I cannot support Ubuntu this way anymore because i do not see a usable desktop oriented PC operating system. I see a tablet operating system, but i do not have a tablet, i have a PC.

]]> Comment on The Chancellor’s Autumn Statement by passengeraction http://blog.poggs.com/2011/11/the-chancellors-autumn-statement/comment-page-1/#comment-858 passengeraction Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:58:29 +0000 http://blog.poggs.com/?p=262#comment-858 My note of alarm is the devil hidden in the detail. Health data is by and large *not* public data. Having personal access to my medical file on line, regardless of whether I think that's a good idea (for the record I don't), is not an Open Data issue in anyway. Are we seeing the early stepping stones being laid to later claim that huge investment into another NHS farce was in fact what they meant by supporting on Open Data Initiative? As you say I think on the whole very positive, but the inclusion of personal access to medical history looks really incongruous amongst the other examples. My note of alarm is the devil hidden in the detail. Health data is by and large *not* public data. Having personal access to my medical file on line, regardless of whether I think that’s a good idea (for the record I don’t), is not an Open Data issue in anyway.

Are we seeing the early stepping stones being laid to later claim that huge investment into another NHS farce was in fact what they meant by supporting on Open Data Initiative?

As you say I think on the whole very positive, but the inclusion of personal access to medical history looks really incongruous amongst the other examples.

]]> Comment on Ubuntu 11.10 for Productive People by C PHILLIPS http://blog.poggs.com/2011/10/ubuntu-11-10-for-productive-people/comment-page-1/#comment-837 C PHILLIPS Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:10:56 +0000 http://blog.poggs.com/?p=255#comment-837 I actually tried the Xubuntu desk again but there was a major conflict with running the latest version of Virtualbox and I could not get it running in Xubuntu, so I ended up reloading Ubuntu 10.10. Couldn't give up running XP in VBX because I have a film scanner I use for negative scanning and I don't want a full intall of the Windows I dislike. If I could, I would use Xubuntu, it was much faster. I have always resented these kind of changes because I prefer a minimal, fast desktop. I do respect others desire for all the gadgets though. It's just not for me. But then, I get on there to work, not play. I actually tried the Xubuntu desk again but there was a major conflict with running the latest version of Virtualbox and I could not get it running in Xubuntu, so I ended up reloading Ubuntu 10.10. Couldn’t give up running XP in VBX because I have a film scanner I use for negative scanning and I don’t want a full intall of the Windows I dislike. If I could, I would use Xubuntu, it was much faster. I have always resented these kind of changes because I prefer a minimal, fast desktop. I do respect others desire for all the gadgets though. It’s just not for me. But then, I get on there to work, not play.

]]> Comment on Ubuntu 11.10 for Productive People by GPL or death http://blog.poggs.com/2011/10/ubuntu-11-10-for-productive-people/comment-page-1/#comment-831 GPL or death Sun, 06 Nov 2011 18:59:32 +0000 http://blog.poggs.com/?p=255#comment-831 Thank you for the helpful post. I am able to reply only after installing lynx at the command line (Unity vs Compiz destroyed the GUI), searching, and following your suggestions. $0.02: Ubuntu seems to be following a classic distribution pattern for failure... SUCKLESS Developers migrate away from suckage. They arrive somewhere, usually the distribution that isn't overtly hostile to their presence, and that is stable enough for useful things. The growth begins! IMPRESS More developers around means more fixage. Stability allows for improved user experience, which brings in more users, which attracts more developers. The golden age for a distribution. SQUEEZE Ubuntu seems to be interested in monetizing their userbase. Fine, go ahead. But remember, the moment it sucks for developers, we seek alternatives! Force feeding narrow user experiences, turning development tools into crippleware distribution upsells (so far Ubuntu hasn't made this classic bad decision, as others have in the past), churning versions for revenue reasons, etc... an easy trap to fall into. SUCK Once the suckage begins, there might be panic, which leads to yet more bad decisions. Duct tape is applied, migration plans begin... Perhaps Ubuntu peaked a few distributions back and is now in nose dive mode? Anyway, thank you for the 11.10 duct tape. Thank you for the helpful post. I am able to reply only after installing lynx at the command line (Unity vs Compiz destroyed the GUI), searching, and following your suggestions.

$0.02: Ubuntu seems to be following a classic distribution pattern for failure…

SUCKLESS
Developers migrate away from suckage. They arrive somewhere, usually the distribution that isn’t overtly hostile to their presence, and that is stable enough for useful things. The growth begins!

IMPRESS
More developers around means more fixage. Stability allows for improved user experience, which brings in more users, which attracts more developers. The golden age for a distribution.

SQUEEZE
Ubuntu seems to be interested in monetizing their userbase. Fine, go ahead. But remember, the moment it sucks for developers, we seek alternatives! Force feeding narrow user experiences, turning development tools into crippleware distribution upsells (so far Ubuntu hasn’t made this classic bad decision, as others have in the past), churning versions for revenue reasons, etc… an easy trap to fall into.

SUCK
Once the suckage begins, there might be panic, which leads to yet more bad decisions. Duct tape is applied, migration plans begin…

Perhaps Ubuntu peaked a few distributions back and is now in nose dive mode? Anyway, thank you for the 11.10 duct tape.

]]> Comment on Ubuntu 11.10 for Productive People by Tom http://blog.poggs.com/2011/10/ubuntu-11-10-for-productive-people/comment-page-1/#comment-787 Tom Fri, 28 Oct 2011 13:53:23 +0000 http://blog.poggs.com/?p=255#comment-787 This rant says it all. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/why-ubuntu-1110-fills-me-with-rage/19103 The dock on the left side of Unity drives me crazy. I want to move it to the bottom like Mac OS X. This rant says it all.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/why-ubuntu-1110-fills-me-with-rage/19103

The dock on the left side of Unity drives me crazy. I want to move it to the bottom like Mac OS X.

]]> Comment on Ubuntu 11.10 for Productive People by Gijs Jansen http://blog.poggs.com/2011/10/ubuntu-11-10-for-productive-people/comment-page-1/#comment-770 Gijs Jansen Sun, 23 Oct 2011 18:02:36 +0000 http://blog.poggs.com/?p=255#comment-770 Soory, i mean Peter Soory, i mean Peter

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