Malta Linux User Group

Natty Narwhal arrived with lots of fanfare about its new "Unity" interface. I already had some misgivings about it before it was released. What it was promising seemed to be several steps backwards, and that's exactly what it was.

One of the greatest things ever about Linux was the fact that the users could customise it to function and work exactly as they wanted it to. The popularity of this characteristic of Linux is attested to by the multitude of websites where users can show off their particular desktop. We could change the window manager or its theme, the widget styles, choose between single-click or double-click activation and lots more. With the Unity interface, all that is gone. The new mentality seems to be "You can have any colour as long as it's black". Heck it doesn't even have a right-click any more.

In frustration I decided to try out Gnome Shell instead. It's slightly worse, at least as implemented on Ubuntu.

What's the idea behind these new interfaces? Some say that they're intended to look good on any device including mobile touchscreens. Well guess what... I'm not running it on a mobile touchscreen. I have a nice big high-resolution screen, and I bought it so that I'd have plenty of room on the screen for a panel containing a window list and frequently-used icons and stuff. If I had insufficient room I could have made my panels auto-hide, but I didn't. Now I'm stuck with the desktop arrangement that some bright-as-mud individual decided was the optimal setup for everyone, and it's going to auto-hide whether I want it or not. So, apparently, will my scrollbars and other things that I want to remain visible at all times.

Another common argument is that these interfaces are simple enough for everyone to use. Aiming at the lowest common denominator is a very bad move. I happen to be one of those users who knows which end of the mouse is which, and to present me with an interface for idiots does not make me like my desktop better. It's like selling bikes with trainer wheels welded into place.

When KDE4 was first launched I felt that they had dumbed-down the interface considerably. Unity and Gnome Shell have brought the user interface down to the level of the average arthropod. By all means provide different user interfaces, but to make this the default for everybody sucks.

I think the choice of Ubuntu to go for Unity could well trigger an exodus towards other distributions. In an effort to push Ubuntu into new areas, Canonical seems to be forgetting its existing users.

To me, an improvement is something that adds benefits without removing the ones already in place. As such, the switch to Unity is one of the biggest steps backwards that Ubuntu has ever made.