Today I read a critique on the German Pro-linux.de by Michael Kofler titled "Unity - Der Anfang vom Ende für Ubuntu?" (Unity - The beginning of the end of Ubuntu?)[1]
The article spawned a huge discussion about the pros and cons of choosing default settings and removing the options to change these settings. Instead of giving even more arguments for or against these changes I wanted to just share the way I configure my desktop. Hopefully this will give some insight for the developers how the flexibility of having more options can be used by users. I have posted the comment on the original article and on my blog [2]. Here is what I wrote: The freedom to configure your Desktop Many arguments have been given about the pros and cons about Gnome 3 and Unity and the value of fewer versus more options to configure the desktop. The general critique is that both try to enforce default settings while removing the ability to configure things different. Instead of giving even more arguments I want to give an example about how I configure my Desktop and why I value the flexibility to configure and adjust the Gnome Panel and the Desktop (both in Theme and Layout). First of all here is a picture of my current Gnome Desktop: http://tinypic.com/r/xuk51/7 Now a short explanation about the things that I have changed and my motivation: 1. I have a relatively small notebook with a 12.1″ screen and 1024×768 pixels. That means screen real estate is relatively important. 2. I prefer to have the panel at the bottom rather then at the top. Additionally I dont like to have two panels (top and bottom) like its in the default Ubuntu configuration. Therefore I have combined all the applets that I need in one panel and placed it at the bottom. 3. I am using the window-picker-applet instead of the normal window-list-applet. I find it very useful to only see the icons and not the name of the window and it saves a lot of my screen real estate. 4. I removed the application menu because it used to much space and I can easily call it with Alt+F2. 5. I am not using virtual windows, thus I have removed the applet. 6. I have changed the background color to a light orange and the window title to a light blue. 7. I have put the buttons for minimize, etc. back to the right. I think if I had the automatic window tiling function of Gnome 3 (move it to the top right/left to make it half the screen size) then I could as well do without the buttons. The freedom to configure the desktop according to my own needs is very important and valuable to me. In comparison, on Windows you even cannot change the background color of the task bar, not to mention removing the start button or changing the general composition of the task bar. I would never occur to me to suggest (or even enforce) that my settings become the default settings for Gnome, as I am well aware these settings would not necessarily suite many other people. Never the less it is important to have the flexibility to configure the panel as one wishes. Developers can make design choices which are suitable for most users but they should never remove the option to diverge from the default values, thus taking users the ability to configure things different from the standard. Especially this ability should be integrated into the GUI directly, and not in various tools that have to be installed separately or via configuration options that are only accessible from dconf/gconf tools and in config files. If anybody was to tell me that I can only put the panel at the top of the screen then personally this would be reason enough for me to change to a different Window Manager. The only things that I do not like about my current desktop configuration are because of a lack in configurability or bad design. First in the indicator-session-applet (which is designed by Ubuntu by the way) it is not possible to hide the user name. I find this very annoying because my user name takes up a lot of space and the buttons (logout and IM status) would be enough for me. The second thing is that I have to rearrange all the applets if I connect my laptop to my external 22″ screen. I find it a bit ironic that this has only been fixed in gnome 3 now that the gnome-panel is actually doomed to become obsolete anyway. Anyway here is the article that explains that applets can now only be aligned right/left or centered and not by absolute positioning: Long Live the Gnome Panel (Align your applets correctly). I wish they had introduced this a bit earlier in Gnome 2 (maybe it can be backported?). [1] http://www.pro-linux.de/artikel/2/1504/unity-der-anfang-vom-ende-fuer-ubuntu.html [2] http://blog.invisco.de/?p=86 -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
