[ale] Presentation challenge
Ron Frazier (ALE)
atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com
Sat Feb 2 15:40:00 EST 2013
Hi all,
As promised, here is my VERY minimal comparative analysis of doing a couple of different things to configure the computer via the GUI on Windows 7, Gnome 2 (Ubuntu 11.04), and Unity (Ubuntu 12.04). I'm only going to focus on a few items, but the concepts are representative.
By, the way, Ubuntu 11.04 calls its control panel the control center. Ubuntu 12.04 calls it the all settings screen.
Lets talk about power settings. This is something I tweak whenever I set up a computer.
Unity - Ubuntu 12.04 - GUI Power Settings - options available
- when to suspend the computer on battery
- when to suspend the computer on ac
- what to do when the battery is critically low
- when to show the menu bar (for power)
- Ubuntu 12.04 didn't even detect my attached UPS for some reason, so I cannot monitor it's status.
Gnome 2 - Ubuntu 11.04 - GUI Power Settings - options available (Items not available above are marked with ***.)
- when to put the pc to sleep - on battery
- when to put the pc to sleep - on ac
- when to put the display to sleep ***
- when to spin down the hdd *** (I don't want them to spin down at all.)
- what to do when the battery is critically low
- when to display the power icon
- what to do when the power button is pressed ***
- what to do when the suspend button is pressed ***
- what to do when the laptop lid is closed (don't know if this is on unity since I tested on a desktop)
As you can see, Gnome 2 gives me substantially more control over the system. Now, here's what I can do with Windows 7. This varies somewhat by PC maker.
Windows 7 - GUI Power Settings - options available
-
(**&$#$##%%(*&^% AARGH !!! - I just spent an hour typing this and then hit the wrong button and discarded it! What follows is a condensed summary of what I was trying to say.)
Before, I had listed all the things that the Windows power settings screen allows me to set. Suffice it to say that it allows me to set 20 - 30 different things, including low, critical, and reserve levels for the battery, lid close actions, power button actions, and sleep button actions.
Being able to set specific battery levels is critical to allow a proper shutdown on battery power. With my laptop, with a healthy battery, I can safely let it get to 5% battery before hibernating. On the desktop, with the UPS, I have to start hibernation at 50% - 70% of battery for a safe shutdown, because the battery only lasts 12 minutes.
I haven't found a way to exercise this level of control in Linux.
Verdict?
Windows wins by a landslide in controllability of power functions.
Consider the screensaver.
Unity - user has almost no control except on/off, timer, and password.
Gnome 2 - user has many choices of screensavers, as well as on/off, timer, and password.
Windows 7 - user has many choices of screensavers, as well as on/off, timer, and password. I can also set the screensaver screen to specific text, to tell, for example, who's logged in.
Verdict?
Windows 7 beats Gnome 2 slightly and beats the socks off of Unity in terms of screensaver controllability.
Consider screen appearance, font control, special effects control, and sub pixel font smoothing control.
Unity - user has almost no control.
Gnome 2 - user has a fair amount of control, including sub pixel font smoothing.
Windows 7 - user has control over almost all aspects of these items, including sub pixel font smoothing.
Verdict?
Windows 7 beats Gnome 2 to a fair extent, and beats the socks off of Unity in terms of screen appearance.
I feel that the design of Windows 7 and Gnome 2 (for the most part) are examples of good GUI design and examples of giving the user more control over his experience. These should be emulated.
I feel that Unity and windows 8 are examples of bad GUI design and examples of giving the user much less control over his experience and that they should not be emulated.
PS - I didn't mean to hijack the presentation thread. Respondents to this can change the subject line if you like. I didn't know whether to change it or not.
Sincerely,
Ron
"Ron Frazier (ALE)" <atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:
>See inline.
>
>On 2/2/2013 2:49 AM, JD wrote:
>> Ron,
>>
>> Installing a GUI on Linux isn't a big deal. It is like installing any
>
>> other program. Heck, install both Mate and Cinnamon and try them out.
>
>> It is just a PPA for each, then you choose which you like to run at
>login.
>> Of course, I'd test out each GUI in a different user account to limit
>
>> setting collisions in the ~/.config/ and other dirs under $HOME.
>>
>> PPAs really are nice, provided the person managing it is competent,
>> trustworthy and maintains it against the main distro repositories.
>>
>> Not a big deal at all. Just a few minutes to install on a fast
>> connection. If you don't like a GUI, remove it from the system.
>>
>
>That sounds neat. I think I'm going to put Ubuntu 12.04 in a virtual
>machine and, perhaps, set up a login for Mate testing and one for
>Cinnamon testing, since you mentioned that there may be conflicts. I
>think I tried to install xfce once and some of my Gnome settings got
>mangled. I don't remember exactly what happened, but I haven't tried
>it
>since.
>
>> "Control panel" what's that? Settings are usually maintained in text
>> files under ~/.config/ No need for a GUI to manage them, though
>> sometimes the XML is easier to handle with some GUI tool. This isn't
>> MS-Windows, the tools are hardly mandatory.
>>
>
>I'm going to express a different opinion here. That doesn't mean yours
>
>is wrong. Just different. And, everyone has a different style of
>using
>and configuring their PC.
>
>I will say that I can sling text files around as good as anyone,
>assuming I know what to put in the text file. Been there. Done that,
>30 years ago with DOS and older versions of Windows. Almost everything
>
>was text file based. I hated it, and was immensely grateful when
>Windows moved away from that trend from XP and forward.
>
>There are still some config files hanging around in Windows, and there
>is, of course, the registry; both of which I can and will edit if
>necessary.
>
>I far and away prefer to do things from the GUI if possible. If
>there's
>something I have to do, which cannot be done from the GUI, I will do it
>
>by editing text files or the registry if I have to. If it's something
>I
>can optionally do, I may not do it at all if there is no GUI interface,
>
>particularly if it's something I only have to do once or infrequently.
>
>One of the most fundamental reasons that I have this preference is that
>
>a config file is NON INTUITIVE. I have to read a man page or help file
>
>to find out what all the options for all the commands that go into the
>config file are. As I said, I can do and have done this.
>
>A properly designed GUI is INTUITIVE. It is immediately obvious what
>your options are for whatever it is you're setting up. You have entry
>blanks, radio buttons, check boxes, etc., with labels beside them which
>
>indicate immediately what they do. In the best GUI's, you can get help
>
>on the meaning of any entry blank by hovering over it or clicking a
>help
>button. So, using such a properly designed GUI, I can go in to
>configure the settings for the power, or the screen appearance, or
>whatever, for the very first time, and get the job done quickly by
>concentrating on what I want the settings to be, rather than figuring
>out what the settings are and then figuring out how to communicate them
>
>to the system.
>
>I consider the options screens of Firefox to be a well designed GUI.
>Complex, to be sure, but still well designed. Many of you know that
>you
>can type about:config in the Firefox address bar and get to their
>settings subsystem. It's their equivalent of the registry, but I don't
>
>know what they call it. I can, and have, tweaked things there too, but
>
>would much rather do things from the GUI.
>
>I do understand that some things can be better done, or only done, with
>
>a command line, a chain of commands, or a script. I get that. I also
>get that designing GUI's for some purposes is complex and perhaps not
>worth the effort. However, I do like the concept that many Linux
>utility and some Windows utility providers are doing, of providing all
>of command line, script, and GUI interfaces to their programs.
>
>I should not have to read a man page to be able to configure my
>screensaver, my power settings, my ups settings, or even to run a
>badblocks test on my hdd. After comparing the GUI, specifically, of
>Windows 7, Gnome 2 (Ubuntu 11.04), and Unity (Ubuntu 12.04), I have
>concluded that Windows 7 gives me far and away more access and more
>control of the under the hood guts of my system than either of the two
>Ubuntu options, through the GUI. (Windows 8 is a total step backwards
>from this.) This is the way it should be. Now, I will reiterate that
>I
>don't think you should be restricted to the GUI. Most things should be
>
>scriptable, or accessible via command line. But, I will say that there
>
>should ALWAYS be an option to use a GUI for most major system
>configuration functions.
>
>The badblocks command is a prime example. I posted about some of my
>experience with it in recent threads on HDD maintenance. It is a very
>useful, and powerful command. But, the syntax for it can be somewhat
>cryptic. The first time I tried to use it, it took me about half an
>hour of studying the man page. To this day, I don't use it frequently
>enough to remember the syntax. So, every time I want to use it, I have
>
>to dig out the little piece of paper I wrote the command on, or look up
>
>the man page again. Not only that, the starting and ending block
>numbers are in reverse order, ending first, which seems totally
>illogical to me.
>
>It would be far easier for me to open something like gbadblocks (making
>
>this up), click non destructive read write scan, check off the drives
>or
>partitions I want to scan, and enter the starting and ending block
>numbers in a blank, and hit GO. I still have to know something about
>the structure of the disk I want to scan, and the meaning of the
>options
>on the screen. Built in help could help with that. But I don't have
>to
>spend lots of time finding, and remembering, how to activate the
>command
>I want. They could even put a blurb on the GUI screen that says more
>obscure options can be accessed via the command line.
>
>This is the type of thing that makes the OS far more accessible to
>average and semipro users. Users that are really not computer literate
>
>at all will still need help from the geeks.
>
>After lunch (for me), I'll do a followup post, and provide a mini
>comparative analysis of how much control I have over certain system
>functions via the GUI of Windows 7, Ubuntu 11.04, and Ubuntu 12.04.
>
>Again, this is not meant to draw a dividing line between or incite
>conflict between command-line-fans, text-file-fans, and GUI-fans. It's
>
>meant to elaborate on the advantages of having both.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Ron
>
>
>> Am I overstating how easy this is? Anyone?
>>
>>
>>
>> "Ron Frazier (ALE)" <atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Jay L, and Jim L,
>>
>> Thanks for this info on Cinnamon. So, it sounds like it's pretty
>easy to put Cinnamon on Ubuntu. First, I have to upgrade my machines
>to Ubuntu 12.04, which I haven't gotten around to yet. I'm still
>recovering one of my main machines and installing and tweaking things
>from an upgrade that I did of Windows Vista to Windows 7. All my data
>is still there, but I had to do a clean OS install because of the
>particular version of Vista and 7 that I was switching between. So, I
>had to reinstall and reconfigure all the major apps. So it's a bit of
>a mess. I may have to do the same thing with all my Ubuntu installs.
>I don't like that idea, but I've heard more than a few horror stories
>about OS version upgrades, versus installs. So, in a relatively short
>period of time, I have a whole boat load of OS upgrade / install /
>maintenance to do on multiple
>> computers ... and there are never enough free hours in the day
>... particularly with other real life things interfering. But, al!
>> l the Linux stuff is on my list.
>>
>> Is it just as easy to install Mate as it is Cinnamon? I may want
>to go in that direction.
>>
>> Gnome 2 provides a few key features that I really need in my new
>desktop environment.
>>
>> 1) Full hierarchical menu of all major applications on the system
>> 2) Movable "panels" that I can park on any edge of the screen, to
>hold running apps (taskbar), status info (system tray), quick access
>icons, the menu itself, the trash can, the speaker icon, the network
>icon, etc.
>> 3) I particularly want to have a small CPU usage monitor graph on
>one of those panels, which I can do now. In some cases, I also put a
>CPU frequency monitor and a temperature monitor there.
>>
>> So, my next question is, can Mate and / or Cinnamon do these
>things?
>>
>> My other concern about the new DE's is
>> that
>> Ubuntu has removed many options from the control panel and gives
>the user much less control over things such as power settings, special
>visual effects settings, etc.
>>
>> So, my next question is, do Mate and / or Cinnamon restore this
>control capability to the user?
>>
>> And, finally, can I potentially have both Mate and Cinnamon on
>the system and switch between them?
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>
>>
>> Jay Lozier<jslozier at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Ron Following the links from Linux Mint you get this as the
>> 'buntu Cinnamon repository
>>
>https://launchpad.net/~gwendal-lebihan-dev/+archive/cinnamon-stable
>>
><https://launchpad.net/%7Egwendal-lebihan-dev/+archive/cinnamon-stable>
>>
><https://launchpad.net/%7Egwendal-lebihan-dev/+archive/cinnamon-stable>
>>
><https://launchpad.net/%7Egwendal-lebihan-dev/+archive/cinnamon-stable%3E>;
>> The instructions to install are Add Repo: sudo
>> add-apt-repository ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-stable
>> sudo apt-get update Install: sudo apt-get install cinnamon
>> Logout and Change the session to Cinnamon. On 02/01/2013
>01:08
>> PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
>>
>> I wouldn't mind a presentation on Mint, or on installing
>> Mate or
>>
>> Cinnamon on Ubuntu. Since my Ubuntu 11.04 expired, I have to
>> figure out whether to fire them and go to Mint or try to put
>> Mate or Cinnamon on Ubuntu 12.04.
>>
>> Sincerely, Ron Jim Lynch <ale_nospam at fayettedigital.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> On 02/01/2013 08:20 AM, Jim Kinney wrote:
>>
>> Is mint a desktop or a distro? I would put it in
>> the desktop group.
>>
>> I guess I've never seen a discussion of the
>difference
>> but since
>>
>> Mint
>>
>> doesn't offer a specific server edition, I'll agree
>> with you. Most
>>
>> of
>>
>> Mint specific repos are GUI related. Jim.
>>
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>> -- Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth
>> keyboard and K-9
>>
>> Mail.
>>
>> Please excuse my potential brevity. (To whom it may
>> concern. My email address has changed. Replying to
>>
>> former
>>
>> messages prior to 03/31/12 with my personal address will
>> go to the
>>
>> wrong
>>
>> address. Please send all personal correspondence to the
>new
>>
>> address.)
>>
>> (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you
>> might want
>>
>> to
>>
>> call on the phone. I get about 300 emails per day from
>> alternate
>>
>> energy
>>
>> mailing lists and such. I don't always see new email
>> messages very
>>
>> quickly.)< br />
>>
>> Ron Frazier 770-205-9422 (O) Leave a message. linuxdude
>AT
>> techstarship.com <http://techstarship.com>
>>
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>> --
>>
>> Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and
>K-9 Mail.
>> Please excuse my potential brevity.
>>
>> (To whom it may concern. My email address has changed. Replying
>to former
>> messages prior to 03/31/12 with my personal address will go to
>the wrong
>> address. Please send all personal correspondence to the new
>address.)
>>
>> (PS - If y
>> ou
>> email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
>> call on the phone. I get about 300 emails per day from alternate
>energy
>> mailing lists and such. I don't always see new email messages
>very quickly.)
>>
>> Ron Frazier
>> 770-205-9422 (O) Leave a message.
>> linuxdude ATtechstarship.com <http://techstarship.com>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
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--
Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and K-9 Mail.
Please excuse my potential brevity.
(To whom it may concern. My email address has changed. Replying to former
messages prior to 03/31/12 with my personal address will go to the wrong
address. Please send all personal correspondence to the new address.)
(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
call on the phone. I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
mailing lists and such. I don't always see new email messages very quickly.)
Ron Frazier
770-205-9422 (O) Leave a message.
linuxdude AT techstarship.com
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