I have been using Ubuntu for more than 3 years and had been actively using it for the last 1 year, since I am working more and more on Hadoop. Ubuntu was supposed to be the flavor of Linux which is easy to install and runs out-of-the-box with minimum additional softwares/configurations required. Some of the features which have been there in 11.04 have been missing in 11.10. Here are some of the gripes I have, these may not be significant for a Linux geek, but may be significant for someone who wants to get started with Ubuntu for the first time.
- Screen saver has been removed in 11.10, there is a blue-print (smile) for a new screen saver. When something is not ready for 11.10, then why remove the existing working software. To get the screen saver running in 11.10, a couple of softwares had to be installed/removed and an application had to added to the start-up.
- User passwords can be changed from UI, but to make a user member of a group the terminal has to be used. Reason to use the CLI.
- After installing 11.10, the machine was a bit slower than 11.04. So, I used 'Startup Applications' to see the applications bought during boot. It did have only one in the list, which didn't make much sense. Later came to know that the startup applications were picked from /etc/xdg/autostart application and these are not shown in the 'Startup Applications'. Another reason to use the CLI.
- There is no easy way to add/change the order of icons to the Unity Launcher. A couple of files have to be tweaked to get the 'quick list' in the launcher.
- With GNome 2x, launching a new application instance was just a matter of clicking the icons in the panel. With Unity, it takes two clicks to launch a new application instance. This reminds me of something which took something like 6-7 clicks in Windows XP to change something really simple.
- There are some nice features like integration with Open Stack. But, it's not worth a dime to someone who wants to do some basic stuff like chatting, browsing etc.
I am not against CLI, in fact I write shell scripts to automate tasks on a regular basis. But, I find it disturbing that some of the basic features have been removed from Ubuntu 11.10 and it takes more clicks to perform some action in Unity than in GNome 2.
Hope 12.04 is better !!!
- Screen saver has been removed in 11.10, there is a blue-print (smile) for a new screen saver. When something is not ready for 11.10, then why remove the existing working software. To get the screen saver running in 11.10, a couple of softwares had to be installed/removed and an application had to added to the start-up.
- User passwords can be changed from UI, but to make a user member of a group the terminal has to be used. Reason to use the CLI.
- After installing 11.10, the machine was a bit slower than 11.04. So, I used 'Startup Applications' to see the applications bought during boot. It did have only one in the list, which didn't make much sense. Later came to know that the startup applications were picked from /etc/xdg/autostart application and these are not shown in the 'Startup Applications'. Another reason to use the CLI.
- There is no easy way to add/change the order of icons to the Unity Launcher. A couple of files have to be tweaked to get the 'quick list' in the launcher.
- With GNome 2x, launching a new application instance was just a matter of clicking the icons in the panel. With Unity, it takes two clicks to launch a new application instance. This reminds me of something which took something like 6-7 clicks in Windows XP to change something really simple.
- There are some nice features like integration with Open Stack. But, it's not worth a dime to someone who wants to do some basic stuff like chatting, browsing etc.
I am not against CLI, in fact I write shell scripts to automate tasks on a regular basis. But, I find it disturbing that some of the basic features have been removed from Ubuntu 11.10 and it takes more clicks to perform some action in Unity than in GNome 2.
Hope 12.04 is better !!!
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