[Klug-general] Is anyone using Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) yet?

[James Blake]

I am not trolling here, but the 'more like a mac feel' is actually a 'more like a UNIX feel'.  The concept of the dock in MacOS has been around since the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) made its appearance in AIX, HP-UX and Solaris.  MacOS has now integrated what they call 'Spaces', which is effectively workspace switching, again familiar to anyone who has used CDE.  

The whole field of Human-Computer Interaction is very well established and researched and there aren't many desktop metaphors that have proven successful and the ones that have can be counted on one hand.  The end result is that the best of all of the different approaches are coming together on all platforms - call them widgets or plasmoids; docks or trays; Start menus or file menus - it is all coming together.

The one thing that users find really jarring is massive changes in the metaphor - think Windows 3.51 -> Windows 95.  This is one of the reasons that a move from an early version of KDE to 4.5 will have a familiar feel to it.  These wholesale forced changes to totally new metaphors, like Gnome -> Unity can get pretty ugly :D

James



On 19 Jan 2011, at 09:20, David Halliday wrote:

> I gave last nights CD a try.
> 
> The joys of taking something that is the latest cut from SVN, didn't even boot. Things froze after the buttons to "Install" or "Run from CD" appeared on screen (I wasn't able to move the mouse or use the keyboard to click one of them). So for now, the release is still very much for those who like a challenge.
> 
> I am getting a little uncomfortable with the more "Mac like" feel of Ubuntu, I tried the new Gnome Shell, I'm not that sure I like it. KDE feels too much like Windows... I think Next time I might go for something using XFCE, or If I have the time to customise I might run back to the minimalist arms of fluxbox.
> 
> A few years ago I used Debian (many still do) it's like Gentoo but compiling was optional... And I'm not going to start a distro war.
> 
> On 18 January 2011 22:33, James Morris <jwm.art.net at gmail.com> wrote:
> No I've not tried it nor am I planning on it. IMHO might as well
> become a Mac user if I am going to use Ubuntu.
> 
> I've been using Gentoo for the past year. I enjoyed having some
> bleeding edge software over that year, and also not having to install
> seperate dev packages everytime I wanted to compile some fly ointment.
> 
> Now I'm using Arch. It's a bit like Gentoo but with a lot less compiling :-)
> 
> (the non-professional) James.
> 
> 
> 
> On 18 January 2011 13:20, David Halliday <david.halliday at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The daily release CDs are available
> > here: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/
> > And as always there is chatter online about it.
> > Is anyone in KLUG using this yet?
> > Is this only testing of have you taken the full plunge?
> > I remember with 10.10 (I think) some people were getting into beta testing,
> > and enjoying it! How stable was it?
> > If I get time in the next couple of weeks I'm planning on giving it a test
> > on a live CD or VM.
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Kent at mailman.lug.org.uk
> > https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/kent
> >
> 
> 
> 
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