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This is a series of e-mails from an obviously angry user who did not manage to find his way around the Unity desktop and has switched back to the Gnome version

Gentlemen;

Re the latest update(?) to Ubuntu is 11.04, with a side panel mandatory. Finding things now requires much more time including clicking here and there and everywhere, its a huge waste of time and effort, its also frustrating. Its unbelievable that you would offer this as an improvement, let alone not even warn users of your new time wasting and frustrating reality. I was not able to find any way to revert to the previous user interface with stuff only on the top or bottom. If there is a way to revert and not have to reinstall, please do let me know ASAP ! Dan Ostroff

On Wed, 2011-05-04 at 17:52 +0300, Dan Ostroff wrote: > Re the latest update(?) to Ubuntu is 11.04, with a side panel mandatory.

As you have already been told - there's no problem switching to the classic gnome desktop. I know that going from gnome to Unity seems frustrating at first, but a little time spent finding your way around is well worthwhile! It's obviously designed with the less advanced user in mind, but it's well capable of serving the most technical of users without the desktop getting in the way. You just have to spend an hour exploring! Believe me, I'm no novice, and I love the Unity desktop. Kind regards, Barry.

I can reply as follows: my time is limited and to me valuable. All time spent needlessly is a waste, time once gone, is gone forever, it can never be replaced, even the few hours ( not just one ) that I wasted clicking here and there in the supposed improvement to Ubuntu, all needlessly. Previously in Gnome there was much less clicking and much less time spent finding things. Thus to me, in no way is the supposed improvement real. If for example your time spent at your work were to increase, and needlessly, and you were to receive no extra compensation for it, just how much patience would you have "trying it out", "being patient", "its well worth while", etc.? Is beauty just in the eye of the beholder?

If the desktop as you say, gets in the way, why not eliminate it, go in the new modern way, have many rows of pictures without wording instead? This would be but an extension of this "improvement". To me to put an icon on a desktop, with mini-description, taking me instantly where I want to go, its far less of a bother than clicking and clicking and clicking and wasting time searching and searching . . . . . . After this abomination, I was considering not giving up on ( fractured ) Windows, now I'll just wait and see, and / or switch to another distro . . . . . .

If the aim is at the not so sophisticated user, how is he / she best served by all the clicking and searching and clicking and searching?

What research is there that indicates that wasting time in this way is beneficial, even to the novice? What statistics indicate that Ubuntu users need and / or want this type of interface? Or is all this just in the imagination of a few decision makers?

Hopefully this way that is common these days, weird, bizarre like USA cars in which the occupants can only be seen from their noses upward, and other such nonsense like "improvements" that do little more than waste time and frustrate users, will all be soon into the garbage pail of history. Yet more modern foolishness: putting ones personal and sensitive personal info on "the cloud", beyond ones personal control, do be ready to sell short at the first sign of a class action law suit for loss / theft of confidential info . . . . . .

Although the owner of Conical does not go out of his way to be available, I intend to write to him about this "time wasting and frustrating improvement(?)". The more who do so, the better IMHO. Dan Ostroff

Dan Ostroff wrote:

• >That's OK. I'd like you to be a bit more specific about what you were trying to do

The concept of having a few icons / images on a side bar, without descriptions is in itself foolish. This is what requires much needless clicking. Continue this concept forward, just imagine what work on a computer would be like if in addition to the GUI having only images no text, that inside applications, the options were the same, only photos, say of kids = settings, or oranges = go to the net, but no text = the concept is foolish in the extreme. If this is not easy to grasp, build for yourself not just one column, but say a dozen or so, with just images, then try working with that for a while. Also try to find things as I'll describe below, that are not represented by a specific images which are not easy to locate:

I recall trying to find some of the functions that relate to system settings, and various tools, then I installed Opera Browser, then went hunting for that start icon, etc etc etc. This new and improved GUI is a path best abandoned, before many leave Ubuntu. A customer once lost is often a customer not regained. For example, Real Player, they were one of the first in the field, could have had the market cornered, but they were greedy, tried copying MS philosophy, use a hard sell, but give problematic content which was lacking in various areas, and over sold in most, etc. It didn't take long, they lost out to others, big time. Recently a friend asked me to test their latest "GOLD" product.

Its still the same, even their uninstall left over 1,300 items in registry. I told this man that their history is terrible, he liked their advertising, as usual it promised a lot, so he tried the product, expensive as it was. After all these years its still got various bugs, one is that randomly the speakers emit a loud buzz that won't stop until a re-boot. But this does not directly relate to Ubuntu, only indirectly, I expect that you understand.

Barry Wrote: >For instance, if you had wanted to open an application, did you try right-clicking on the >'Applications' icon on the sidebar?

The fact of the matter is that I put in more than an hour, several just trying to find things via memorizing what each photo / icon was supposed to represent. Often a screen opened with more sub-choices to search further on - all this is quite needless. If I had decided to design a user interface to be max. user un-friendly, how about one that has no text in the icons, and only a few icons representing many sub screens with search requirements and more pictures to memorize what they represented. How could one design a GUI more difficult to deal with than that?

A system of lack of clarity - no text on icons, always having to memorize the meaning of images - needlessly, having to go to sub menus needlessly and searching for an icon, its needless and a huge waste of time. In Windows which I'm trying to abandon, I've got over 200 active programs that I work with. Were I to try to memorize varying icons for each of them, and starting with one screen with less than a dozen icons leading to many sub-menus, with more icons ( sans text ) inside the many sub-menus, then in same in each program, all without text, I'd spend my days clicking without end trying to memorize thousands of icon images, instead of being productive. I'm sure you understand this. This way is a concept whose time should never have come, and hopefully will so be abandoned, for the benefit of all.

Barry Wrote: >The same is true of all the things you wanted to do in a fairly in a fairly 'gnome-like' way.

In short, I've got better things to do with my time than to attempt to fathom and if lucky memorize what countless images represent, its a concept that is far from the way the human mind works, Ubuntu is supposed to be human / user friendly. I can find no way in which this new GUI even comes close to that objective. Certainly it is not so compared to what you had previously. Gnome and KDE are not perfect, but this new GUI is to me the worst of all possible choices that I can imagine.

I'm working with state of the art hardware, yet find that Kubuntu runs slowly, and hesitatingly. This after several downloads and several installs. I know that this is another matter entirely. Dan Ostroff