On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 17:20, Tom <email address hidden> wrote:
> As i understand it the Unity interface has something crucial or at least more easily implemented than
> other UIs.  Touchscreen.

Could be - have seen impressing videos with Ubuntu on the Phone. However,

> Unity can catch-up with what power-users want later.  It also offers more opportunities for
> revolutionising the UI in ways other UIs could never hope for.

I hope that I don't have to wait too long for the things I require...


On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 18:28, houstonbofh <email address hidden> wrote:
> On 02/23/2012 10:20 AM, Tom wrote:
>>Unity can catch-up with what power-users want later.
> This is the big mistake. Power users are your base, and a lot of them
> HATE Unity and Gnome 3.

I do not hate Unity - I find a lot of plus but also a lot of minus.
From my point of view Canonical was too early setting Unity as
default.


> Many of us have halted on 10.04, or have moved
> to XFCE, or KDE (now unsupported...) and these people are no longer able
> to help with questions.  I know that in my case I stoped contributing in
> the newbie forums when my only answer to every post was "Roll back to
> Gnome 2."

Indeed. In my local Ubuntu community most switched to Mint because
they try to still offer a Gnome2 look and feel (which IMHO is of
course only possible with some quirks), some switched to a completely
different distribution or on the way doing so.

I personally do not want to leave Ubuntu because from what I have seen
yet, Ubuntu so far did the best job in my opinion. Of course there are
big challenges today.


On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 19:19, Tom <email address hidden> wrote:
> True.  I don't think this path would have been chosen if there had been any choice about it.  I think we had 2 choices
> 1. stick with Gnome which had no touchscreen support and no intention of building that in any-time in the next few years plus watch Gnome
> 1.a) Watch Gnome head towards where Unity is now
> 1.b) copy Mint's idea of developing a "plugin" for gnome3 to make it look more like gnome2, with an ever increasing amount of work to keep the plugin working
>
> 2. Find something else that did have touchscreen support (or could
> develop it fairly easily) and was willing to be developed in a direction
> that might gain a larger user-share

It's not only about the touch-screen stuff - even just looking at the
desktop, I find Gnome 3 failing in a similar way that when KDE did
their last major release update.


> Mint chose option 1b
> which gives us all at least 1 possible place to go in the short-term but
> it's an untenable position so hopefully Ubuntu's position will prove
> best in the longer-term

Yes, I also think, that Ubuntu has chosen the better path for the longer term!


> Don't forget that support for the 10.04 LTS lasts until at least 2013,
> April so if the 12.04 LTS is not what we would hope then we still have a
> year more after that.

Probably I should consider sticking a little longer to 10.04 - but I
did not have a look at 12.04 so far, so that is the first step for me!
Be it only to contribute with testing!

Best regards, Martin.
-- 
Martin Wildam

http://sites.google.com/site/mwildam/