Common sense has prevailed (see bold text)! “The final decision on window controls for 10.04 LTS is as follows: the window controls will remain on the left, however the order will change to be (from left) close, minimize, maximise. The decision is based on the view that putting the close button in the corner will be most familiar to many users, even if the particular choice of corner is not.”
So the decision regarding the buttons is final. I hope their other decision to name the next version Maverick Meerkat is not final. I would suggest a more appropriate name: Mimicking Mac
Marsupial Motor-insurance.
I have always put my window buttons like that (even before Mac os x came around). Why? Well, because it is more consistent if everything controlling the app (menu, toolbar etc) is at the same place.
I have changed this a little bit the last year keeping strict windowmanaging tasks on the upper right (over/below others, on every desktop and the window icon, since I only use that for virtual desktop stuff).
I think this move is a good move.
I prefer Linux Hater’s suggestion: Masturbating Monkey.
Sorry, that’s already taken. OpenBSD got it from Linus himself.
Maybe Moron Mole, then?
Maybe Moron Mole, then? [/q]
Or, even better:
Ubuntu 10.10 Mickey Mouse
Edited 2010-04-02 20:45 UTC
Or they can go with:
Ubuntu 10.10 Malicious Mosquito.
Or just:
Ubuntu 10.10 Mischievous Macaque
To be honest I never saw the big fuss about it being justified. It’s only default settings, for most users those left buttons would last just about as long as the godforsaken brown theme lasted in previous incarnations
Oh well, I fully agree with you and for those who insist on having the buttons on the right side, take a look at this:
[u] http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Defiance%2BReliance?cont… [/u]
Or simply go to Gnome-look and click on Metacity.
I don’t know about you or anyone else, but the point of this–if there actually is one–really, really escapes me. Ubuntu, Ubuntu, Ubuntu, removing Gimp from the default, Yahoo/Bing as the default search engine?! Ditzy moves like this are part of why I’ve decided to move back to [Debian] Squeeze or sid (or Sidux). They are less trouble, and strangely enough have been less likely to break. Gaaah.
I agree! Its not a big deal, no need to make so much noise on swapping buttons. The root problem for most of the people is they thought that Ubuntu is their OS! They have say in everything… and when they have realized the real fact its becoming hard for everyone to accept.
I even saw on other forums people saying I’m never gonna use Ubuntu! ha ha
I have one suggest to everyone… U want to use Ubuntu download theme that has buttons on right side. If you want to drive everything in distro… go for debian… for most of the people…. they can download debian testing image and get all the latest packages if not cutting edge.
Yeah, cool. What I just would love to see is a place where you can actually have checkbox or something to choose position of these buttons. It’s annoying for me, over 10 years linux user to use gconftool with some magick command to do that.
No. It could make Ubuntu a little less user unfriendly, and Sheldon Cooper might not like that…
Linux must be difficult/not so easy to use to keep it’s user base. If non-geek people can use the system, then geeks will not want to use it. I know wouldn’t…=)
Yes, makes me think about switching to something more obscure…
Eventually I hope we will all switch to Haiku.
You could try KDE, it lets you specify all sorts of things like window button arrangement.
So does Gnome. The issue isn’t whether it is customizable, the issue is sane defaults. I think they made a terrible choice moving the buttons to the left but in the opposite order of the familiar commercial interface that does that. It would have been just as silly to keep them on the right of the titlebar but reverse the order. By keeping them on the left but in a common order, they have (in my opinion) made the best choice possible.
There are times when being different from the mainstream is good, but when it comes to deeply ingrained things like muscle memory, it’s best not to make it so unfamiliar people are immediately turned off. The last thing Desktop Linux needs is to turn away new users.
Most users do not change default settings, either because they don’t care or because they don’t know how to. Do me a favor and walk into any real office. Count how many people have that prairie + blue sky picture set as their Windows XP background.
There is a reason this is a big fuss. It may seem to be a really dumb thing for most OSAlert readers, but that is because we are not most users. Most users do not adapt well to change.
In the office settings I’m used to dealing with, most users couldn’t change their defaults if they wanted to because the IT staff have it locked down. The less things the end user can mess with the less headaches they have to deal with on support calls.
For home users, the people who either can’t be bothered or don’t care enough to change something as basic as a theme most likely won’t be using Linux anyway because it’s an effort to change from that default OS of Windows that their computer was shipped with
This is exactly how it is in my workplace (local government). Our clueless IT department won’t update our systems to Vista or 7, nor will they install XP’s SP3 or any updates from the past three years. Yet, they won’t allow us to change something as simple as the time and date, therefore our machines are stuck with incorrect DST settings and an incorrect time, which among other things causes incorrect timestamps on time-sensitive work. One hour’s difference can literally mean someone’s job depending on what we’re doing. They refuse to even acknowledge there’s a problem now, and in the past have blamed the third-party software vendors. Damn the man.
That’s not true. They just think they can’t adapt to change on PCs.
They do, however, most of the time have no problem at all getting a totally new cell phone once a year or so, because carriers throw subsidized cell phones after them.
If they’d just realize that adapting to a new cell phone is often even a bigger change than DE upgrades, more people wouldn’t be as stubborn.
So… Are you going to write a news and you expect us to comment on any visual (configurable) change ubuntu people does?
Yes.
it’s clearly working. oh look, even i commented on it, and personally I couldn’t care one way or the other about Ubuntu’s buton placement for windows.
But then again, I am not a Ubuntu user. don’t get me wrong its a nice OS and good for windows users switching over to linux, but its just not my favorite.
Why? Is commenting becoming difficult?
It is when you are on an iPhone. I had a rough time clicking on the reply button.
That’s funny, out of all the mobile browsers I’ve used Mobile Safari is the only one that doesn’t have issues on this site. FYI, I’m using 3.1.3 on an iPod touch and I have javascript and plugins enabled.
A big part of OS news is UI design. When one of the largest linux distros decides to do something different with such a basic ui element, well that’s interesting.
If they change something stupid and not as basic like text in some setup wizard or something that’s less noticeable and hasn’t been thought to death by every other windowing system, then that’s not so newsworthy.
Ah I got used to the buttons now, ain’t a big deal.
I am looking forward to what will be place to the right in 10.10.
There will be nothing on the right side. That’s the whole idea. Cram everything on the left side to free the right side. this a left wing thing
And why not keep the buttons on the right side and then put stuff on the left side?
It amazes me how long is takes them to make changes like this. Six months, put titlebar buttons on the left, the next six months put something on the right.
It’s a very slow development but perhaps Mark’s goal of surpassing OS X might get there in 5-6 years at that rate.
This is fine for nerds: “Our intent is to encourage innovation”
But normal people might just quit after they try and fail to interact with those window buttons.
Or are they really just trying to convert Mac users now?
Nah, Apple^aEURTMs doing that.
So people can get used to the ribbon interface in the newer windows versions, but not to the placement of window controls… that seems a bit weird to me.
I don’t know what you mean because I thought the ribbon was in Office apps. And in that case you can imagine some reasons why that would work. They replaced features people weren’t using, so there wasn’t much change. The new features were notably better than the old features, so the change was worth it.
Do you think moving the X button around could fit either situation?
Now, They have to implement a zoom button and take away that non-sense “maximize” thing. C’mon Mark, you can do it! Take your time…
Maybe in ten years we have a decent Linux desktop. pff
i’ve been dying for zoom instead of maximize myself
That would require Canonical to hire actual programmers instead of marketing people and a bunch of SC students who can only backport Fedora features.
If Canonical had hired some professional programmers, maybe they would have a real, good, professional Operating System, not just Yet Another Linux ^a"c Distro.
Edited 2010-04-03 16:35 UTC
Zoom?? You mean like in Mac OS X? I hope that was sarcastic, ’cause if not, it’s a really, really bad idea.
Coming from a Windows user who still closes windows by double-clicking on the upper-left corner, Ubuntu’s new arrangement makes more sense. Yes, it copies Mac OSX, but that’s still better than the reverse OS/2 Warp layout they expected users to put up with.
The window controls moved?
It’s a shame that the window widgets have gotten so much attention from the media. Ubuntu 10.04 has social networking on the Gnome panel, an implementation of the Freedesktop.org specification for more integrated notification area icons/menus, it has switched to Nouveau as the default Nvidia driver, it’s got a totally different theme and branding, the Software Centre is a hundred miles away from what it was before, AND they’ve moved the window widgets, AND the whole distro has stayed stable and usable during the full development cycle.
They had to be conservative for this release because Canonical is supporting it for three years on the desktop and five years on the server.
Give the Ubuntu developers some credit for once.
For taking the Red Hat-developed Nouveau driver without contributing to it?
I give credit once Canonical contributes to driver development, esp. Nouveau which currently needs help very desperately.
But also Gallium3D (Nouveau’s foundation) needs help. It’s the perfect, even though currently not-quite-ready-yet, opportunity to unify all driver development again (currently Intel and AMD develop everything in their Xorg drivers by themselves which results in wasted work and varying driver quality).
I couldn’t care personally less about where some buttons are located or what the color scheme is. But what bugs me is that Ubuntu and mr. Mark constantly declare a leader position in the open source “usability”. I don’t know anything about usability, but it sure feels like changing buttons and color schemes is not what it is all about.
It kind of reminds me of BeOS…
Mmmm…BeOS in the morning, on my birthday
Who copied who and who cares?
Mac copied others before it, so….
(Yes, it’s my birthday
)
Edited 2010-04-03 07:22 UTC
Happy Birthday!
… just open a terminal window and enter:
gconftool-2 –set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout –type string menu:minimize,maximize,close
Regards,
Toonie.
That’s approachable…
You know, this really bothers me. In KDE/Windows, there are a million GUI options and people (rightly, in my opinion) complain that the UI is confusing and inconsistent. In MacOS, almost nothing is configurable using GUIs. Despite this, you can often edit a .plist or .xml file to do what you’re looking to do. No one complains about this in MacOS. On the contrary, people celebrate MacOS’s consistent and simple UI.
Personally, I prefer editing a file to gconftool but both are details. The point for the celebrated Mac UI is to have sane defaults and a simple UI. Gnome is attempting the same approach with gconftool and people complain that this is too onerous. I miss editing simple text files but gconftool is a logical extension of this. I miss some of the particular GUI options that I would use but, on balance, Gnome is greatly simplifying the Linux UI, making it consistent, and, through gconftool, is still providing tinkerers with the option to do so.
So, what do you want? A million trivial options in the UI, or something like gconftool? Pick one.
Edited 2010-04-04 00:41 UTC
Are you trolling or why do you put KDE (I guess you mean either the whole SC or Plasma Desktop and not the organization) and Windows into one phrase?
Plasma Desktop and Windows have next to nothing in common.
KDE1 got a lot of GUI inspiration from CDE and Windows, but also diverged from both over time with SC4 being a total break (see the Plasma Folder View concept or KDE’s Plasma Netbook interface).
Now to your point about configuration:
There aren’t too many config options in software. They just need to be well organized.
Up to KDE3 the software was mostly designed by programmers. As KDE grew, usability people also came in and the programmers realized that things need to change. SC4 was a good opportunity for this change and this change was undertaken. While there are a few exceptions (KMail comes to mind), pretty much every app’s config window has been redesigned or application were even completely replaced.
Now SC ships out of the box with Dolphin, Gwenview, and Okular which are all by many considered the best FOSS tools in their genre.
They are all highly configurable and slick at the same time.
That’s simply not true. I haven’t used 10.6 yet, but at least on 10.5 only the Finder was a PITA in this regard (and often criticized — check ArsTechnica’s OSX reviews).
But take iTunes for example: At the first glance it has a pretty simple interface. When you dig deeper, you’ll see its amazing power: Mass tagging, CD cover editor, disk recording,…
You mean like when a few years ago a new iLife release contained a simplified iMovie with less features and the users protested so loud that Apple saw itself forced to offer the old iMovie as free download?
Mac GUIs are usually consistent and easy to use. Yes.
Are they overly simplified so that nobody can configure them? No!
It’s a mistake by many GNOME people to believe that Mac apps are not configurable via GUI.
Adium became the second most popular instant messengers on Mac OS X (IIRC more popular than iChat, but less popular than Skype) because of its high configurability and large feature set.
Colloquy (IRC app) invented themed chat windows. Adium followed.
Only later Miranda, Kopete, etc. followed.
What you prefer isn’t the OSX approach to configuration. It’s the Windows approach with its RegEdit.
I want well organized apps with smart defaults, but easy customizability. That’s why I use KDE SC.
Edited 2010-04-04 09:33 UTC
My apologies if my post was taken in any way as a troll. My example of KDE was based on my usage of 3.5 and earlier. I haven’t had much time with any of the KDE 4 releases. They certainly seem to bear little resemblance to KDE 3,x, let alone Windows.
As for Apple UIs, I didn’t mean to suggest that the interface was dumbed down or that there were no options. Just that many options are not exposed through a GUI but remain configurable through text files.
There are cases in OSX where options can only be set using the PLIST Editor or the “defaults” command, but in my experience those aren’t a major aspect of OSX software.
I could be wrong, but my impression is that this either affects really nerdy features (eg. Safari’s debug menu) or features that have been added relatively late in a release cycle and the project-internal string freeze was in effect and no new strings in the GUI are allowed.
The most important difference between Mac software and GNOME isn’t the number of features exposed in the GUI.
It’s the whole approach to user interaction and this is really why GNOME is in no way “Mac-like”:
Within one major version, Apple software is constant. Maybe a few features are added, but features are not removed and the behavior does not change (unless it’s an unwanted regression).
In GNOME OTOH suddenly all menu icons are gone. Nautilus’ default behavior changed completely from spacial to browser mode, because 6 months in the future browser mode supposedly works better in conjunction with GNOME Shell, but for years we’ve been told how great spacial mode is in conjunction with the 2.x GNOME Panel.
Similar in Ubuntu:
Window buttons are moved to the other side in preparation of a feature that might arrive in 6 months. Maybe they’ll use the space on the right side for something, but currently they do not.
Apple would never to something like that in areas that affect user interaction. And honestly I also can’t remember seeing KDE do this. KDE 4.0 was a break in some usability metaphors from 3.5.x, but that was a major version number jump. It’s not like the KDE project deleted KDesktop from the 3.5.9 release or replaced Konqueror with Dolphin 0.something “in preparation” for Plasma/Dolphin in 4.x … (Kubuntu OTOH did the latter)
If Canonical moved the window buttons with the new “right side feature” already developed (esp. if developed upstream in GNOME to be released as part of 3.0), I’m sure there would be much less backlash.
Or you could just use gconf-editor. It’s not as good as a dedicated panel in the Customize window, but it’s miles ahead of command-line arcana.
There are more important things than the GUI-related issues in Ubuntu. Such as making improvements on the Ubuntu Software Center, more managed repositories, and becoming more user-friendly.
Agreed. There is also a strong need for better documentation. An example: 10.04 is apparently using plymouthd for boot graphics. plymouthd has no manpage.
Also, there are completely avoidable UI deficiencies. For example, there is no way to rename a PC using a GUI. You have to edit both /etc/hostname and /etc/hosts. Easy for people reading this site, not so for Ubuntu’s target demographic. This is because of the post-8.04 move from network-admin (part of gnome-system-tools) to NetworkManager. The functionality now exists in a separate network-admin package but Ubuntu devs won’t ship it because it duplicates functionality in NetworkManager. NetworkManager doesn’t change hostname. The result: No GUI for something that has been in Windows since Win95, MacOS since computers had names, and Linux until Ubuntu 8.04. This despite Canonical’s “Paper Cuts” initiative.
It’s this attention to detail that looks to be missing in 10.04 that worries me. I use and recommend Ubuntu extensively both at work and home. I have filed bug reports to no avail. If this were a strictly community-driven affair, I may feel more personally responsible. However, it’s not. I feel I’ve done my due-diligence by reporting these problems. Every time I’ve reported bugs, they’ve either been sent upstream or ignored.
time to change to a another linuxdist (not open suse)
Edited 2010-04-03 13:26 UTC
is there really anything else out there that matches ubuntu in terms of being easy to upgrade (when it works), not installing proprietary crap by default but offering an easy way to deal with it if you must, no root, a massive and friendly community, etc?
don’t know and i’ve never used the community for anything
You mean like…Debian? Although technically, Debian has a real root account, so I guess it doesn’t fit your bill.
Any rolling release distro (eg. Arch).
And what if it doesn’t work?
Basically every distro.
No idea. Never understood the usefulness of no root anyway.
Every somewhat mainstream distro.
just use http://ubuntu-tweak.com/ !
that’s a power, doin’ what ya want from da distro.
wtf?! are u gettin mad for such a tiny thinga ? …
wtf?! are u gettin mad for such a tiny thinga ? …
The change of the buttons is not the problem. It is the handling of the change and the positions taken by Canonical management.
The change in itself is minor, as today it can be easily changed. However, Canonical has stated they want to put “something” up on the right side. That means that the easy change we have with Lucid Lynx might not be so easy with Maverick Meerkat. The space is occupied by an as of yet unknown new UI element.
The problem I have with this change are the underlying attitudes coming from the company repackaging Debian. Canonical just basically said, shut up, we’re going to experiment on the right side and your investment in muscle memory and the resulting smooth workflow is less important than our desire to play around with the UI.
I don’t know about others, but I am only willing to change if I’m presented with a tangible benefit to do so. Some handwaving about wanting to experiment with “innovative options” doesn’t cut it. You’re futzing with my desktop and I’m not going to adapt one version ahead of time without a clear explanation of why we should accept that change. So far it has become clear that Canonical has no idea whatsoever what they want to do with that corner. Mark S. even suggested that some crappy gestures feature could be an option. I hate gestures. If I wanted to wave about in the air to convey meaning I would have become a fscking Mime.
Any company who thinks my time and investment in established UI conventions is less valuable than their need to be different for the sake of being different is sadly mistaken. Debian has turned out to be very configurable after all. It has also opened my eyes to the reality that Canonical doesn’t add a lot to Ubuntu but marketing. The only thing Debian doesn’t have is a smidge more spit and polish. The rest is a breath of fresh air and it comes sans a lot of the useless hype.
While I don’t use Ubuntu, I can’t help but keep up with every single detail about its development because it always ends up on the front page. The outrage about moving the title bar buttons is nothing more than a storm in a teacup. It’s almost embarrassingly easy to modify the button positions and order via Metacity, or simply use Emerald. Perhaps Ubuntu’s user base has become so saturated with former Windows weenies that, like on Windows, they simply accept what they’re given by Canonical. Nothing in Linux or open source is final and changes can be made at will. If a user can’t be bothered, then s/he can choose another distribution from the 600+ available.
When I saw the “common sense prevailed” thing I was thinking the news would be “buttons to remain in the location they were in before which every non-MacOS user expects” – but I guess I have a different view of what makes sense.
If this change were to occur it would be better to seek real improvements and not just this another-coat-of-paint nonsense. Titlebar button placement is a user preference which should have a sensible default. While this announcement of a change in button order is an improvement over the previous order in terms of how sensible the default is, a complete revert would have been more sensible. No usability improvements are likely to occur with this; indeed, no one has produced a single argument attempting to prove that changing the button position makes any improvement whatsoever.
I don’t care, really. I don’t use Ubuntu. I don’t use Metacity (piece of junk!) and I am an obsessive tweaker who always sets my environment just so anyway. This does not effect me. I am, however, still annoyed by the whole business.
I can’t speak for the Canonical designers, but making it like the MacOS makes sense to me. Five years ago I wouldn’t have said that; I was dual-booting Win2k and Slackware with Blackbox, and I hadn’t touched a Mac since OS 8.2. Then, I decided to learn OS X and I bought a Mac mini when they were released. At first I hated the UI; it seemed obtuse and foreign. I got rid of the Mac after six or so months of frustration. I went back to Windows and Linux, this time Ubuntu and Debian alongside Slackware, and suddenly I realized what I missed most about the Mac: Nearly no tweaking or fixing needed!
A year later, I had an opportunity to get another Mac and again I made it my main OS. This time I had some prior familiarity, and my eyes opened up to the power under the hood of the OS. Then I realized that I was much more comfortable with Apple’s everything-in-the-upper-left-corner approach. It just made sense to me; no matter what I needed to do to an open window, I had one single place to go looking for it.
Fast forward to this year; I tried the beta release of Ubuntu 10.04 and was not impressed. They had done something right, but in the wrong way. They tried to combine the Windows/Linux default button order with the MacOS button location. It was jarring and wholly unfamiliar.
Now it’s fixed, and Ubuntu is much the better for it.
I used Mac OS X for years. I grew accustomed to the buttons on the left side, but I actually never saw any benefit over the right side and I still don’t see it.
It’s just different. And if you have a dual boot system with Windows, buttons on the left is just plain confusing.
What was wrong with the everything in one place in the upper right corner approach?
Although, incidentally, fitts law suggests that dangerous things should be hard to do. Classic MacOS got this right: max/min was in the upper right by the scrollbar, close was in the upper left.
Nothing’s wrong with it, it’s just my own opinion that having all your controls in the same general area makes sense. Muscle memory is one of those things you don’t think about, but I have noticed I’m just a bit more productive on a Mac than on Windows or Linux. Whether this is truly due to the interface I can’t say for sure, but it sure feels awkward on non-Mac systems when I have to constantly go back and forth from one corner of the screen to another (menu to titlebar buttons) just for window management.
I agree, and on Windows and Linux a close button clicked in haste can be disastrous. On a Mac, closing the active window rarely exits the program, and if closing the window would lose data there is always a modal dialog warning of this with the option to save or cancel the close.
Change it back, and turbocharge it aswell.
Tired of lame performance in Quake Live?
-> http://www.paradoxuncreated.com/articles/Millennium/Millennium.html
Btw, the .deb for the kernel isn’t there yet, but the source is there, just remember to update-initramfs.
what comes after zealot zebra?