Monday, October 24, 2011

Un-Terrible-ize Ubuntu 11.10

Oh my god. After years of being a great, easy-to-use Linux distribution, Ubuntu finally has failed me and may need to be dumped. I just upgraded to 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) and they have made it more difficult than before to return to a not-terrible window manager. I think the idea behind Ubuntu's new "Unity" interface are cute, but is just god-awful for people who want to use their computer for things and don't like desperately trying to hunt them down. What was wrong with an "applications" menu that had an "Office" tab under it with office-related applications? Now, you open the side panel overlay bar thing and it takes up the whole screen but presents you with almost exactly zero useful information. It has something like 3 applications along the top and then says "fuck you, go figure it out" if you want anything more. Alt-F2 doesn't work to open a launcher to launch an application. Alt + middle-click doesn't resize windows any more. Just getting out of my damn way and letting me use the computer like I have for years doesn't even close to work.

GNOME 2 was just fine. Why did you have to take something which worked, in a non-terrible fashion, and remove all of the useful, discoverable, productive parts of it? I've spent a couple hours at this point trying to get back to the level of non-uselessness I had with Ubuntu 11.04, which was not useless. I even tried installing GNOME 3 in the hope that it would have a "stop doing stupid bullshit" mode, but it only kind of does. I've gotten close, but the "system" menu is AWOL, and I can't figure out how to get it back. It doesn't seem to want to let you customize the theme at all or even have something as simple as focus-follows-mouse. Yes, I've opened gconf-editor and set /apps/metacity/general/focus_mode to mouse, which seems to be the closest thing to focus-follows-mouse available, but it doesn't do it.

I'll post what information I've found to get it to the minimally-crappy state it's in now, but I'm still searching for how to de-terrible-ize it further. Alternatively, I might just dump Ubuntu altogether until it gets some sense beaten into it. I hear Linux Mint is supposed to have remained safe from the "enshittening" of Linux user interfaces of late. Also, I could try Xubuntu, though I've never really been a fan of XFCE. It's a heck of a lot better than Unity or GNOME 3.

No, nevermind. Not using XFCE.

Okay, after a few more hours of wasted time, I'm going to bite the bullet and back up all of my documents, wipe 11.10 off of my computer, and go back to 11.04, aka "the last sane version of Ubuntu". It really sucks because I used to recommend Ubuntu to my relatively non-technical friends, but with the crap they're pulling now, there's no way I'd let their first Linux experience be with this trash. Sad day.

12 comments:

  1. I got to agree full heartedly here, I have been a fan of gnome since the beginning and now they have trashed it beyond repair, I wish more people would stand up against it..

    ReplyDelete
  2. I could do a whole separate post on the current state and direction of GNOME 3 and Unity, but I'll (try to) keep this short.

    Basically, I hate this new trend of coming up with new "metaphors" for the "desktop experience." Unity has "panes" and "perspectives" which "represent" some kind of physical-like interaction with applications. A computer is not a "set of pages" on "different panes of glass" that you interact with metaphorically. There are applications. Sometimes I want to open them. I do this by clicking on the "Applications" menu, then the relevant subcategory, then the application. Why would Ubuntu run away from that?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Man, they are both (Gnome3 and Unity) so terrible.

    It feels like a bunch of UI designers got together, and mocked all this stuff up on a whiteboard, but never actually tried sitting down and using the interface. They had a bunch of "woah, dude, it would be really cool if" ideas, but never actually tried to see if they were usable by real human beings.

    Thankfully there are many alternatives to gnome and unity...

    I've switched to XFCE 4.8 at home... honestly, it's almost identical to gnome 2, though maybe with a little less graphical polish. It's definitely better than gnome 3's "fallback" mode at least.

    ReplyDelete
  4. @Brendan Taking another look at XFCE, it seems a lot nicer than I was giving it credit for. I'd definitely have to do some customizations (dock = nope), but as long as I can have focus-follows-mouse (without raising the focused window! Defeats the whole purpose!), wobbly windows (yeah, I know), and a system stats monitoring widget like the "System indicator such and such" from GNOME 2, I'll be happy.

    One turn-off of XFCE is that it has its own basic desktop applications. I like Nautilus just fine, so I don't really need Thunar. I guess I could always just launch Nautilus instead...

    This is definitely a case study of "why you should keep designers on a leash."

    ReplyDelete
  5. Been a ubuntu fan since 7.04 I have a Desktop running multi screen which completely broke on 11.10 so ive had to move to debian squeeze (loads more stable and still have great features)

    My laptop - vostro 1500 has a fresh install of 11.10 and frequently crashes.

    Very poor effort from Ubuntu, but what do you expect for a 6 monthly release cycle! My productivity goes down the pan. I've rolled back the Linux kernal and sticking with stable OS - Debian :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. I loved my Ubuntu for a few years now, but 11.10 marks an abrupt end to this affair... With no task bar, no application menu, copy progress bar not showing except after restarts is completely unproductive.
    Time to look for something fresh!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Everything in Ubuntu 11.10 is broken. My ethernet driver broke after an update, pulse audio crashes, my nvidia driver crashes, Unity freezes up... and then on top of that comes all the new sucky interface bloat.

    The only thing I'd like to emphasize is LightDM, which is truly fast and nice.

    ReplyDelete
  8. What we want from a linux OS with a graphical interface?:
    1)Maximum freedom of flexible personalization
    2)Maximum possibility of interface configuration, lightness, speed
    3)Maximum stability and security

    This new Ubuntu, from the 11.04 to this 11.10 version rapresent a strong involution. No dubt!! I'm very sorry but I will immediately change it with Mint.

    ReplyDelete
  9. PCLinuxOS. Srsly.

    I resisted, because I told myself "Ubuntu uses Debian packages...sort of...so if I just find somekindabuntu to stick with, I'll have easy access to newer stuff". Honestly, any halfway decent distro has lots of stuff, it's 2012, I was fooling myself.

    For those of you who feel like Linux on the Desktop was doing so good, and now it is so fucking awful...it isn't. It is just the somebuntus. Load up Arch or PCLinuxOS 2012, and remember why you used to think Linux was good.

    ReplyDelete
  10. PCLinuxOS. Srsly.

    I resisted, because I told myself "Ubuntu uses Debian packages...sort of...so if I just find somekindabuntu to stick with, I'll have easy access to newer stuff". Honestly, any halfway decent distro has lots of stuff, it's 2012, I was fooling myself.

    For those of you who feel like Linux on the Desktop was doing so good, and now it is so fucking awful...it isn't. It is just the somebuntus. Load up Arch or PCLinuxOS 2012, and remember why you used to think Linux was good.

    ReplyDelete