Four Years with Linux--Ubuntu Matures

Well, I turned on my Windows XP Box a couple of months ago, back in March, and spent a few hours doing the upgrades--I hadn't run Windows at home since before Christmas, and almost every piece of software from the OS to the applications needed an individual upgrade, with the McAfee virus scanner insisting on running in background and slowing the process down.  Immediately following the upgrades, the system was perceptibly slower, with no other changes except the upgrades. Reminds me of why I switched to Ubuntu in the first place.

The last Alpha release for Ubuntu 11.04 came out in the middle of last month, and I loaded it on my production machine, AMD FX-60 with 4gb of ram.  I'd heard it was buggy, but I found it as stable as any release so far even considering the big changes, including a shift in Office from OpenOffice.org to Libre Office, and an upgrade in kernel. The Ubuntu team skipped the Beta release ostensibly because of a holiday.

In class, we had all loaded the alpha1 release several months ago with very few crashes, and no crashes I did not believe were caused by student experimentation with the OS or student install choices.

The very first comment I heard from students was, "How do I get rid of the MAC doc?"  Perhaps not MAC exactly, but darned close to it.  In fact, the system is stuck with it--a huge kindergarten goofy dock stuck to the side of the monitor.  Unity.  On the other hand, there is a choice--switch to Ubuntu classic.  However, on switching to classic mode, we immediately discovered the scroll bar was missing.  OK, not missing, but changed to a cellphone style scrubber.  On the Human Clearlooks theme I have managed to keep since it first came out, the little orange vertical dash is nearly invisible.  What used to be a fairly intuitive mouse over to scroll up or down, has become a hunt and search for that stupid scrubber which is apparently sometimes inside the line and sometimes out. I hate that thing.

Too bad the designers have made the choice for me apparently irrevocably.  The scroll bar I've lived and worked with since Windows 3 days is choking out it's last breath as far as the Ubuntu/Unity team are concerned.  I really don't mind the reduction in size of the scroll bar, but in my higher resolution screen, it is invisible.  How about at least giving us a means to change the color or the size of the scrubber, guys?

I perceive this as part of the maturization process of Linux. 

Back in the DOS days, Peter Norton and Bill Gates worked to add more functionality and control to the OS.  Somewhere along about DOS 5 or so, the software writers decided corporately that users were too (dumb, larcenous, smart, undeserving, etc.) to have that much control, and user controls became more and more restricted until the users finally got fed up and caused the early demise of Vista.

Now I perceive this same mode of thinking seeping into the Linux world--"why would 'they' need to be able to do 'that'?"  So, now we have that distinctly MACish  dock on the side hopping around and poking it's little icons in and out like Whack-a-Mole.  Or, we can choose classic mode and deal with the scroll bar overlay.  Even the classic mode is destined to go away in 11.10, Ocelot.

Another change that caused me to throw my arms into the air was the arbitrary deletion of Open Office.Org for Libre.  I had selected OOO prior to the move to Linux from Windows, and sincerely don't appreciate the deletion of my program.  I understand the reasoning, having researched the decision, but Libre is a little rough around the edges for my level of word processing usage. Same with the swap from GQView to Geeqie last distribution upgrade.  What about personal choices?

People on the forums are in arms about the arbitrary changes in functionality.  I like Ubuntu.  Hope it's not time to apply the Red Green men's prayer to my choice of operating systems: "I'm a man and I can change if I have to---I guess (sigh)." We'll see.