Too Cool For Unity

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Written by +James Weir

u·ni·ty/ˈyo͞onətē/

Noun:
  1. The state of being united or joined as a whole, esp. in a political context.
  2. Harmony or agreement between people or groups.

Unity was also that thing that most people really hated once the Ubuntu crew decided to move away from Gnome and head down a slippery slope into Unity.

The moment when i installed Ubuntu 11.04 onto my laptop, the first thing that came to mind was "Seriously, wtf? How do i do anything with this?!"

The fact is, Unity is not user friendly, it is in-fact, extremely confusing.

Just attempting to navigate left me annoyed, dazed and utterly frustrated leading to the very first thing that i did and in this order:

  1. Log out of Ubuntu
  2. Switch default theme to 'Gnome Classic'
  3. Log into Ubuntu

These 3 simple steps are what stopped me from going utterly insane with the new user interface.

What they had done, was taken everything you knew about how an OS user interface should work, flip it on its side, remove the easy to get to options for your computer settings and then decided that they would prefer you to play a game of memory just to remember how you go there in the first place.

What do you want from a start menu? How do you think a start menu should handle itself? Should a start menu be simple and structured?

If you just happened to answer similarly as:

  • I want it to work
  • I just want to navigate it easily
  • I think normal menu's are easy for me

Then you would hate Unity.

It would seem that Unity was created for those people who run touch-screen Tablets or PC's who need large icons sitting everywhere so that they know where to click. It actually reminds me a lot of an Apple Mac... Put a whole lot of icons down the bottom and let the user figure out the rest, or alternatively give them a strange way to get to their applications.

But what about shortcuts on a desktop? How is this different?

Well, it just is. Because you can structure those icons or even remove them if you want. With Unity, you get a limited choice.

 

However on the flip side of the fence, it would seem that the head dude of the <Ubuntu Crew>, aka Mark Shuttleworth, seems to think that Unity is still a major step forward for the Ubuntu community emhpisising that there are more desktop's using Ubuntu as their main OS than before boasting a 20 million user figure.

Linux Power Users Aren't Too Cool for Unity

He goes on to say that:

Ubuntu is going to continue to focus on usability and ease-of-use that will help power users.

Following with:

There is going to be a crowd that is just too cool [for Unity]

 

I just happen to be in that majority group... you know... that "too cool for school" group.

The only difference being, this group, actually knows what everyone else wants.