The Register has posted a very unfavorable review of the new Ubuntu, focusing primarily on the new Unity Interface: “That’s not to say there isn’t much to love in Ubuntu 11.04 with the new Unity Interface being the primary news, but even for a beta this release is way too rough. Unity – regardless of what you think of it – isn’t ready for prime time and it seems unlikely Canonical will iron out all its problems before the planned final release in April.”
…anyone who pays even remote attention to what The Register has to say on any topic.
I’m curious why they’re so disreputable here?
I don’t object too much to their opinions or style.
One reason I’ve abandoned them is because I noticed them censoring more and more legitimate user discussions. Funny thing is that they never (or rarely) censored profanities, instead they were censoring posts containing criticisms of the register and its writers/articles.
While they’re free to censor what they like, I decided that I don’t want to participate in a board whose operators don’t value freedom of speech.
I’ll field that…
I was a Reg reader for years until “Mad” Mike Magee walked/got fired etc. Then I read the Inq. TBH I don’t pay much attention to either of them since Charlie left the Inq and my general attention span for internet “news” is waning thin…
Anyway, my problem with the Register is along the lines that I really don’t think they give a damn about what they write these days (as long as it’s just the right side of the “truth” that they don’t get sued – and the days of investigative journalism and leaks at the Reg disappeared with Mike) and more about the way they write.
It just seems to be one giant experiment in trolling to drag in as many click throughs as possible… and the comments… g’z – most of those buggers need to take some serious happy medicine. Some examples would be any story involving Apple (which must include the word “messianic” at least 500 times), “Plucky” most be applied to any/all UK companies (because they’re still lost in some bizarro WWII “underdog” world which hasn’t existed since the 80’s) etc etc etc…
Dunno, maybe it’s just me but there overbearingly negative, sensationalist view on everything, whilst occasionally fun, really grinds after a while and I just want to read what’s happening out there without feeling like I’ve been smacked round the face with a rolled up copy of The Sun.
You see, now I sound like one of the comments on the Reg!
You are aware that WWII was in the 40s, right?
You dramatically underestimate the “Engerlanders” (I’m English BTW!)
You must not know many Britons.
Be in any Pub or Bar in the UK when there is England vs Germany Football match on … WWII gets mentioned a lot.
At least The Sun has page 3….
*raises hand*
I actually like The Register because they have the balls to slam companies and products when they deserve it. Not to mention, their writing style is amusing… I have a sense of humor, and I don’t believe in kissing everyone’s and every company’s ass (no, I’m not a Christian… no “love everyone and respect everything” bullshit here).
It’s refreshing since all the other sites and news reporters in general try to be politically correct, reviewing products and talking about companies in the most positive way, completely ignoring all faults as if they don’t exist. This often leads to buying a product and realizing you just wasted money on a piece of shit, which is not cool.
Edited 2011-04-04 10:06 UTC
…as it proves the fact their reporters have been banned from entering the Garden of the forbidden fruit 😛 (which has them gain several reputation points from me)
I do. The Reg is a great source for high end computing news (Timothy Prickett Morgan, etc) while also being hilarious. What’s not to like? As for accuracy and respectability, well, I remember reading more BS and hype in the “respectable” 1990s printed computing press than I’ve ever read on The Reg.
Haven’t read The Inq in a while though. Thinking about The Inq back when I used to read it regularly (early 2000s) reminds me of Aces Hardware…now that was a great site, but those were simpler times
This doesn’t seem to count as news.
Ubuntu has been criticized for not doing much development, but just adding finishing touches. Well, Unity is not a finishing touch. Its a significant change to what was before, more so than the location of the close button for window or a color scheme. I applaud them for taking on the challenge. Taking that responsibility of development means that there will be more bugs and a longer qa cycle. They should not be criticized for releasing a beta with such issues in it. That was brave, and should be applauded. If and when the were to release a final version that contained major flaws ( really don’t think the article touched on many that I would find offensive, IMHO), then they should be castigated. Taking on such risk may mean that they may have to ship parts of the code on a “ship when its ready” schedule rather than a “its been 6 months” schedule.
Ubuntu final releases always have felt like beta’s to me so I find it scary when the real beta is so bad. Taking on a challenge is great but when 11.04 comes around it has to be finished. If Ubuntu tries to do a KDE 4.0 people will just skip this release.
Yeah, they can’t do an ubuntu version of KDE 4.0. KDE thought they could do what they did because they understand that their releases aren’t real releases. Distributions take their releases and test/tweak them a bit before it gets to most users. And as history sorta points out, KDE really didn’t get away with that.
But, if Ubuntu is going to do Unity correctly, I think they may have to decouple its releases from Ubuntu’s. This would allow them to get feedback and get testing on it even before a beta version of ubuntu.
I totally agree with you…
As Joel Spolsky used to say: “Good software, like wine… takes time”… KDE 4 suffered the same problem when it was released; but an early release is also needed to show the new functionality, to receive a lot of feedback and improvement requests and to let the developers having something to code for while the new technology is being built.
Every “1.0” has a lot of bugs and weaknesses; but everything can be fixed and improved.
Agreed, and to add to that,
it should be noted that I think most people eventually came around to respect KDE for taking the hard path; actually, perhaps for inventing it. KDE 4 wasn’t ready for prime time, and I recall devs justifying it by essentially saying that it would accelerate bug squashing, which was–let us be honest–unfair to most end users. Yet they won public opinion in the end, not because theirs was The Right Way, but rather because it got cast as a noble thing to do (and, of course, because it was backed by genuine and extensive backend improvements). AFAICS, Ubuntu is following the same playbook.
So, the real question is not “can Ubuntu pull this off” nor “why is Ubuntu doing this”, but rather “if the Unity roll out doesn’t go down like KDE 4, why?”
Disclaimer for people who don’t get it: KDE 4 is great and I think that releasing it early was “noble”
Somehow, I agree that this release of Ubuntu would be the worst ever, not only the beta, it is THIS RELEASE. Because Gnome 3 has been the worst release so far. Although Unity is not good for normal laptops or desktops, gnome-shell sucks more! They could use the classic interface for gnome 3, but we know that is not going to happen.
I love GNOME 2, but have you ever used GNOME 2.0? It was horrific! Give GNOME 3 a break, I’m sure it will be amazing a few point releases from now.
Classic interface for GNOME 3 is not even close to GNOME 2. I’m sorry to say I was very disappointed with it.
At least in Gnome 2, I have a global window list which is EASY to access. With the classic interface of Gnome 3, we still have this list. This is the whole point of my obligation to gnome 3.
I have to say that gnome 3 is discouraging the use of multiple windows on the same screen. Because there is no fast and intuitive way to navigate among them. You have to either use Alt-Tab or go to Activity first to get the global picture of all opened windows, then choose the one you want. I don’t use Alt-Tab, especially when I am relaxing because my right hand usually hold a snack bar or a cup of tea. And I hate to go to Activity first because that needs one extra step. Besides, I like everything is under my control, so the global picture of the system has ALWAYS to be in front of my eyes.
…and you only have one finger on your left hand?
I’ve tried the beta and I think it’s going to be the most polished Ubuntu release ever. Except for Unity, of course. Unity has some really nice features (try maximizing Firefox for example! Its window titlebar will merge with the top menubar!) but is overall pretty unusable at this point.
No problem though, just install some other desktop environment or select “Ubuntu Classic” as your default session and off you go.
Well, at least you could get it to install. Mine failed at some package, and the entire installation just gave up. Damnit.
I got that too at first. It’s a flashplayer update that crashes the installer for some reason. Leave the “install updates at install time” and “install third party software” checkboxes unticked and it will install. After booting, the updates work fine.
Yeah thanks, I found it in the relevant bug report. Installed fine now!
I kinda like Unity. Certainly needs work, but I like where it’s heading. One thing though – why the fcuk is everything so huge? I have a 24″ display – no need for My First UI Elements(tm), please.
My bet: Touchscreen friendliness.
It’ll take some more decades before computer UIs are finally able to adapt themselves seamlessly to various input and output resolutions. At least, if everything is huge on a modern display, it means that they are thinking in centimeters/inches instead of pixels, which is already one step forward.
I have a 30″ 2560×1600 display and I was almost freaked out by the humongous size of things at first. At this point, Unity is NOT made for such large displays, I tell you. Luckily, switching to “Gnome Classic” made things good again.
I wanted to try Unity, but it didn’t work. I didn’t have or want to spend time on it to get it to work.
The normal GNOME didn’t work well either, it looked like some things didn’t start (yet).
As a long time KDE user, who finds KDE4 a bit…heavy, I didn’t know what I was going to use, as I always found Gnome kinda sucks (no vertical taskbar, really?) and Unity, I think is really going to suck, there is only one answer, XFCE. It doesn’t have the customizability I miss from KDE, but it does work well, it’s a bit lighter than Gnome or KDE, and can be, if you want, made to look almost like a classic Gnome desktop.
I’ve been using it for about a year, and 4.6 was really good, and 4.8 is really nice, so if you are not happy with the thought of Unity, and not a big fan of Gnome-Shell, XFCE is the way to go.
Edited 2011-04-04 10:47 UTC
What about Enlightenment? I’ve tried it a bit, but I admit it’s pretty rough around the edges. Works really well on my old PC though.
You can add a vertical panel and put the taskbar on it in gnome. In fact, I can’t remember any version where it hasn’t been possible.
When you create a vertical panel with a taskbar, the taskbar does not rotate, or in anyway honor the vertical position of the panel, at least in Gnome 2.2x It is also a fixed size, so it does not use all available space.
This is a bug describing the issue, dating from 2002:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=86382
Edited 2011-04-04 17:21 UTC
I’m experience the beta as we speak and I can say it is very buggy and pretty game. Unity is good, but there are small bugs that are so annoying (like for instance I can’t seek an MP3 file in totem player). I am thinking about going back to 10.10 as that was rock solid.
What don’t they understand about the word “Beta”
Another flame rant from Theregister. Why arent I suprised …although I generally like Theregister. I guess trying to be the Howard Stern’s of technology reporting has it perks and has entertaining reads. Lots of Adsense revenue.
Forget the news, just report the controversy.
Let me quote from their “flame rant”.
Compared to what the summary here makes it sound like, it’s a rather measured article – and as for it being beta, they really don’t have that much time left before it’s supposed to be released.
Edited 2011-04-04 15:52 UTC
I’ve never experienced good beta quality from Ubuntu. If you use Firefox’s beta as a reference, Ubuntus is extremely poor.
Unity is not an improvement for the desktop. And in combination with the extreme instability of Compiz and the linux graphics driver situation, choosing a bleeding edge kernel may not be the wisest of choices.
As the article mentions, you are able to choose the ubuntu classic desktop before logging in and you can even pick a ‘no effects’ version of it, which seemed stable.
I still find KDE 3.x more usable than 4.x – the revolutionary stuff on 4 series did not have any effect in real life for me. Gnome Shell and Unity will certainly not get there, because people will just drop it after a week or two of frustrations, when these desktops are fully released and shipped.
In the meantime, I think it’s time for XFCE eat everybody’s lunch if it gets more polished (and a name change comes along the way, hear that Olivier & crew?).
Edited 2011-04-05 02:29 UTC
I do like KDE4 but, I agree, it still needs work. It’s not as buggy as it was a three years ago, but there just seems to be something not quite right with it. I couldn’t imagine going back to KDE3, though. Even though I don’t use KDE.
Gnome might just be a little too late. I’ve never been a Gnome user, and I do like the “look” of Gnome 3, I really think that, and Unity, are a little late. It reminds me of 10 years ago when everybody wanted to be OSX.
As for this version of Ubuntu, I installed it on a friend’s box and didn’t have much trouble. Maybe a couple bugs, but nothing serious. I wouldn’t use Ubuntu for anything serious. I haven’t used Ubuntu since 2004. Well, I did use a few derivitives, but the upgrades from one release to the next REALLY needs work still. I always think of Mark Shuttleworth as the George Steinbrenner of the OS world for some reason.
XFCE, I do like it, but it does need some polishing, as far as looks go, anyway. It “looks” like it’s in the stone age. It works as well as any DE on any OS, though. I’ve been waiting for e17 to be consistently usable for five years!
I was impressed with LXDE. It’s simple and usable, even if more work (that I’m not willing to contribute) needs to be put into it. It seems that team let themselves get sidetracked with their component side projects instead of bringing the whole thing together. I’d still recommend LXDE over KDE or Gnome.
I don’t know why I even care, though. I don’t use Ubuntu or any derivitive. I also don’t use any of the above mentioned DE. I would use Enlightenment (I know it’s not a DE) if it was consistent in it’s perpetual alpha state. I’m not so sure I’d even recommend Ubuntu to a linux beginner. It seems a little too experimental to be “user friendly”. Whatever that means. I’m not an Ubuntu hater. Their forums are full of useful linux information (along with useless garbage). I just disagree that Ubuntu is a starting point in linux, even if it is easy to install.
Xfce uses the same Gtk themes as Gnome, so it “looks” as good or bad as you want it.
You wanna see something from the stone age, fire up Window Maker and run nothing but GNUstep apps.
I’m just too lazy to create any themes of my own, and everybody who’s not, they don’t mind the old “Start” menu world. I’m not complaining. Maybe a little, but if I really was I’d do something about it instead of complaining.
I actually do use Window Maker! I’ve recently made the switch to Openbox, but I still use Window Maker. I don’t know why I like it so much. One of the best pages I’ve seen on the web is the ‘Features’ page on the Window Maker website. Especially the “eye candy” part. I am a fan of minimal, but I also like eye candy. It’s hard to find the balance sometimes.