Ubuntu Wants to Replace Menus with a HUD

Current menu-driven systems, says Ubuntu, require users to read too much, even though they already know what they want to do. They are hard to use from the keyboard (unless you already know an application’s shortcuts) and “force developers to make often arbitrary choices about the menu tree.”

The HUD concept allows users to simply say what they want to do and then do it. Thanks to fuzzy matching and its ability to learn and then prioritize commands you regularly use, this approach should give advanced users an advantage over the menu system.

Who doesn’t like talking to their computer? I bet this would go over real well in the cube farms.

#linux

openSUSE 12.1: All Green!

This release represents more than eight months of work by our international community and brings you the best Free Software has to offer. Awesome improvements include the latest GNOME 3.2 desktop as well as the newest from KDE, XFCE and LXDE; your ownCloud made easy with mirall; Snapper-shots of your file system; and much, much more.

Since I’ve given up on Xubuntu 11.10 after the failed upgrade, I’ve decided to give openSUSE another whirl. Back in the early 2000s I used it as my main OS, built many a website, and never had a complaint - until Novell took over. Read more on this below..

In any account, I’ve moved all mission critical services to the Mac Mini and now have a powered-down box to play with. The install DVD torrent is downloading as I type and I’m eager to tinker with ownCloud.

I’ll post more if this whole affair turns into anything magical.

#linux

Unity is the end of Ubuntu

To be perfectly clear, I am not complaining that Unity is different from traditional GNOME. I can deal with things being in a different place. I can deal with improvements that are hard to adjust to. What I can’t deal with is extra actions that make me think too much about the software; I can’t have these kinds of distractions. I’ve lost productivity because the Ubuntu UI was redesigned for the utterly stupid, leaving experienced experts like me to rot.

Similar to the author, I started the update for Xubuntu 11.10 yesterday afternoon when I got home from work, thinking nothing about it since all previous upgrades have gone without a hitch. Typically only Samba gives a peep of resistance. Again, similar to the author, installation borked near completion.

Fortunately an act of some Linux god pushed the machine to reboot and I was able to get everything back to stable state using apt-get upgrade -f afterward.

Unfortunately the default desktop is living in a weird mid-90s-Windows state where the background is a light blue. No matter what I set the background image and/or color to, it won’t stick. The various application windows seem torn between showing themselves in that fresh install Win95 theme and Xubuntu’s default.

Worse still, Thunar opens up my home directory on login and there’s this stupid on-screen keyboard pops up. I can find ZERO setting that will turn either off.

Any System Settings app changes seem to be completely ignored by whatever under-the-hood thing that went afoul. I’m about ready to just power down the machine completely and move the rsync dumps to the MacMini.

I know that I can fix these if I Google and tinker but the thing is, I’m older now and I actually want to use my computers. Gone are the days when I reformatted my HP with Win95 every six months because I had nothing else to do.

Elsewhere (and a couple weeks old):

Has Gnome 3 decided that people shouldn’t want screen savers?

#linux