Ubuntu’s move to Unity is the best thing that ever happened to Linux
Ten years! For ten years I have read articles such as “2000 is the year of Desktop Linux”. It never was. We have been chasing a dream we never really wanted or atleast thats what it seemed like.
I can no longer remember Ubuntu’s release names and numbers. I had to look it up for this article, apparently its at 11.10. I gave it a spin and hated it. It was slow, unproductive & buggy. I spotted around ten bugs in the two hours I played with it. This wasnt a stable release to say the least.
Not all was bad though, some areas of the user interface were incredibly improved and refined. The settings, file browser, login screen, software center, buttons, workspaces, icons and a few others things were improved impressively. As for Unity; its incomplete, buggy and complicated. Gnome took its own sweet time to mature, so did the things I mentioned above such as the file browser. Unity on the other hand has not had a chance to prove itself. Given a few years to iron out its kinks and simplify the interface, I think Unity will be the best thing that will ever happen to Linux. The non geek will love Unity. Its simple to use, it feels fresh and although naive they will love the gloss that Unity brings to Ubuntu.
I for one cannot sacrifice productivity for glitz. Geeks are coding away at some application feature, managing servers, updating designs, watching some TV show, browsing the web, discussing project goals over skype with team members and other mundane things – all this on a slow day. Unity gets in the way when getting things done.
The average Joe cares about checking his facebook, managing his spreadsheets, listening to music, twittering and making a skype call – all of which Ubuntu with Unity does extremely well. This helps Linux gain traction with real everyday people – the dream that we all talked about for 10+ years.
What about us geeks? We have Fedora, OpenSuse, Debian, Mint, RedHat, Arch, Gentoo, Mandriva, do i really need to go on?
