what about when Unity pushes new graphics requirements that suddenly break and don’t work on most people’s hardware? I was used to Linux/X/Gnome2 being able to pretty run on anything. All of a sudden Unity with poor coding targeting only the most recent OpenGL spec shows up and because they are busy shimmying it in before it’s ready the whole release quality goes down. Between 11.10 and 12.04 I had about 3 laptops and a desktop that suddenly couldn’t run Ubuntu. Like some of them, the laptop mice stopped working (this is on upgrade. it did work under Ubuntu, then I upgraded and it didn’t). The interface was buggy, slow, unresponsive, and best of all, crashed every few hours. The result. 2 Computers downgraded to 10.04, one to fedora, and one just went back to Windows. That’s why I stopped recommending Ubuntu for a spell. (clearly still pretty bitter about that “betrayal”, I was just getting some people won over). And yes, I blame the team and Unity. Unity wasn’t ready, and the whole release suffered for it.
FWIW it does look like they have learned and are being more cautions with Mir.
Also, now that Unity is more stable, and has had a bunch of missing features slowly added in, I do find it pretty fast and usable, and going back to a Menu based system actually annoying. But even now, Dash has a 2 second open delay for me on many systems and doesn’t promote apps in search by default which makes it a heroic pain over Windows 8 tile mode search. Sadly
Yep. Run LTS releases. I explicitly keep my parents on the LTS, precisely because interim releases aren’t particularly guaranteed to be stable and are only supported for nine months. This is why LTSes don’t offer an upgrade until the next LTS is released. If the introduction of a new DE or a new audio system is likely to cause you a problem then the Ubuntu team will (mostly) not do that in an LTS release. Also, again, I did not say that you should use Ubuntu; if you don’t like it, or are unhappy with its stability, don’t use it, and that’s the right thing to do. What I would like to see is that when someone decides to move to Ubuntu from some proprietary OS, the response should not be that they shouldn’t use Ubuntu and should instead use Fedora or Xubuntu or something else. Encourage them into the free software world, not into a particular corner of it.
I’m just wondering if there has been efforts to give an option, during an install, that offers some basic tutorials (here’s some features and this is how to use them)? Some people, like myself, can be a bit thick. Sure, there might be tutorials on Youtube or elsewhere, but some might not think to search. And then, at the end of the tutorial, where to find resources could be listed. This could be very useful for one who cannot get networking going (and therefore cannot get online to find help), and there is a tutorial about networking there to help out.
If I am not misrepresenting @jonobacon and if apps are more important than shells that means Unity and Gnome 3 have wasted past three years for nothing. Plasma 5 does prove that in some sense. It is the same traditional desktop experience but more elegant and sophisticated and with modern components to build modern apps.
“KDE’s experience hasn’t changed”. KDE used to be ugly with its protruding Oxygen buttons all over but now with Plasma 5 it is beautiful and as far as I can the only competitor it has in 2014 is Google’s Material design.
But I agree with you in saying that it’s all about apps. Plasma 5 speaks a modern design with flexible library but I am going to use same Amarok on it. Banshee or Rhythmbox hasn’t changed for either Unity or Gnome. They remain same useless piece of archaic software and a shame on Linux music space.
So you are right in saying that my desktop experience has remained same overall these years.
“Should programming be part of a school curriculum…” I think you get better at what you do more. You can’t improve one aspect of your brain by working on another. Chess players are chess players they don’t magically turn out to be great scientists or strategist. I would focus more on making available computers universally as soon as possible and making kids know that they can change things they don’t like. But formalizing programming could make it another subject like History for which no one cares anymore.
There are some students that enjoy History. I wouldn’t think the idea would be to make a programming class mandatory as other classes are, such as History is (which is probably why it is resented). It just seems that there could be a benefit of using more resources for programming courses, both in the tech world and just in helping the students themselves in other ways.
[quote=“donniezazen, post:65, topic:8272”]
But formalizing programming could make it another subject like History for which no one cares anymore.[/quote]
I disagree History is a fascinating subject, or can be if taught properly. If you teach it as a list of facts to remember such as: Kings & Queens of England, Scotland, Wales and the United Kingdom 757-Present then of course most people will switch off but my daughter recently learnt about medieval siege machines such as the Trebuchet and Mangonel through a computer game where they attacked a castle.
By learning through play she got a feeling for how these machines worked and the strengths and weaknesses of each.
Programming can only be leant by doing. Start with Scratch (or similar) a graphical environment for teaching and testing the key concepts without the need to do significant typing. Then move on to a more typical programming language such as Python.
Children get a sense of achievement if encouraged to have a go. They can be creating something in minutes, some will spend the rest of their lives to master the subject. Most won’t and will only ever tinker at the edges but as a result they:
a. Learn how to structure their thinking.
and
b. Gain some understanding of what a computer actually does and how it works.
I don’t think the efforts in GNOME and Unity have been wasted, but I think that time could have been better spent elsewhere.
Of course, desktops need improving and maintaining…and recent Unity, GNOME, and KDE all work much better than earlier versions, I just think there is a disproportionate amount of effort spent on the desktop compared to apps.
I think that is being a little unfair to Banshee and Rhythmbox. Sure, they feel a bit old now, but they are still pretty decent media players.
There is no reason to think that we will be able to provide the best of the best to the unlikely places you will find great programmers and artists and scientists. I think kids should be given as many toys and gadgets as possible so that they can play with them break them and learn when you least expect them to. I just find the idea of teaching kids programming from 9:10-10:30am on MWF for 8 months and then testing them at the end of the year just to assign them a grade.
You said it yourself that most applications won’t get around using all the great technology that is being built by Gnome, Unity or KDE.
Small point on the tech in movies/tv thing. The Big Bang Theory has people making sure that they get tech stuff right. But they still get stuff wrong. IE Sheldon in one episode states that he doesn’t like Windows Vista, because it’s designed to be user friendly. But then in another episode, he says his favorite Linux operating system is Ubuntu. Shurely, his favorite should be LFS?
A serious point to make this time.On the subject of logical thinking. I support tech in a Legal Firm. On a daily basis, I talk to lawyers about how they use their tech. And the thing that I always find notable, is how some of the smartest lawyers, have such a not logical and fundamentally incompatible mindset to the stuff they’re using. For instance, I had a senior lawyer that I know to be very well respected in his field of law, but couldn’t grasp why the email inbox he hadn’t made any effort to maintain for a scary quantity of years and had grown to 4gb in size, wouldn’t transfer over a network on an instant basis. In fact my failed attempts to explain, lasted for as long as it took to transfer it all down but he still didn’t get it.
The point I’m making is that yes I agree that this is a positive and beneficial thing to have more people learning from programming. But I think it’s going to take a long time. And that becoming skilled and knowledgeable in an intellectual or logical field, doesn’t necessarily mean they will always deploy those skills across all their activities.
Right. This is a question of the mental model – how people think this stuff works in their heads. It’s our job as software creators and designers to put an appropriate mental model in users’ heads. They does not always mean that their mental model has to be correct, but if it’s not then any confusion caused by mismatch between the mental model we encourage and the actual model…is our fault and our problem to fix.
Then why bother with any education? I took machine shop and it has benefitted me well. My wife took sewing and could make designer dresses (from patterns) that any clothing store would be happy to sell. Was that all for just a grade?
Sheldon strikes me as a Debian guy. He has that whole Debian Developer kind of vibe. I can imagine him getting in in-depth debates with people about usage of correct Debian policy.
