@nsigma - what I was bitching about was the ‘settings’ UI. There’s hardly anything to configure there. I can’t make any real changes to the UI (fonts, DPI, gui tweeks, etc.) and worse (IMHO) look at the User config. No advanced button to manage groups, home, encrypted home, quotas. Pretty much no admin functionality. IHMO: totally noobs and folks with moderate experience should be able to be up-and-running in a minimal amount of time without needed to resort to web-searches or punting and simply editing the plain-text files.
I never knew that there existed a “java” OS… interesting… I will like to see how well it performs.
Bearing in mind the target audience, I fail to see how you equate advanced user management with the need for noobs and those with moderate experience to be up-and-running quickly. Reducing the settings UI to the basic functions most people are likely to need is a good thing in my opinion, and it’s not just Ubuntu making this sort of move. Advanced user management is hardly needed by the average user, and there’s a one-click install GUI or the CLI tools for those likely to - which is primarily enterprise usage, no? The one thing perhaps missing is support for an encrypted home folder for new users (though you can easily set one on install for the primary user).
Similarly, I don’t understand the desire for so much UI tweaking. The three things I wanted to do - change launcher icon size, set the launcher to auto-hide and change the desktop background (love the way the UI colours change to match the background!) are all immediately accessible. That’s more changes than the vast majority of your average Windows user makes! And MyUnity is again a one-click install for those who want more control, which apart from around here I’d guess is a small minority.
I don’t understand your desire to change icon size, auto-hide things, or change backgrounds. You need to get out of your old way of thinking and stop endlessly tweaking things and get used to the way things are.
Annoying, isn’t it?
LOL, no! You slightly missed my point, though I should have been more explicit I meant OOTB. I think the UI shows Canonical have done proper research on what the majority might want to change, and left everything else out by default (it’s still there for power users) Design for the majority! You really think a dialog with hundreds of options is better UI design?
Canonical’s “research” is a farrago of confirmation biases to reinforce what the gnome designers wanted in the first place. I have alternatives, I’ve chosen them, so I’m really no longer interested in challenging the epistemic closure of the gnome developers. Let them do their own thing, let them sink or swim.
All OSes are pretty good these days. It’s not like the bad old days of Windows ME 
(Remember that one?)
Ubuntu floats my boat - that 10 second boot time is so nice. But there’s lots of nice stuff in Vista too.
It’s like coke: you drink it how it comes out of the bottle. Most people don’t complain. But give people a choice and they get picky and opinionated. Like coffee, black, sugar, dark roast, cappucchino. Out of the hundred ways of making coffee, everyone manages to have only one or two ways they actually like. So if there were less operating systems, people would be happier with the OS they have. And if the OS offered fewer look and feel tweaks, people would spend less wasted hours tweaking the number of pixels between the X button and window bezel.
Ah sure I remem-
http://attachments.techguy.org/attachments/39699d1095281322/untitled.jpg
Hold on a second…
Actually, Windows 8 boots up pretty fast too. But that’s a nice analogy.
Yeah it’s a pretty well-known effect called a Choice Paradox. I’d prefer to have it.
It’s better to confused in choosing rather there’s only one single option.
Well, if there’s only one option, then people won’t know about anything better, right?
I’m not anti-choice or advocating for some Apple-esque lock down, just don’t think you need to confuse the majority with choices only required by the minority, as long as they’re available somehow. Recently had to hack the GTK theme files (to work around a Java bug I hasten to add) and glad that it’s actually possible.
Interesting article here on Wordpress - http://wordpress.org/about/philosophy/ - chosen because it’s not about an OS but illustrates the point well. Also chosen because I dislike Wordpress a lot, but I know a lot of people like it, often for the reasons on this page. And all of us around here should remember we’re part of the 1%! 
Apart from obviously unity != gnome (at least the parts I was talking about), I’d generally agree with you in that most product research has a tendency to reinforce existing biases. I don’t think it negates the process entirely, though, and I think the UI research Canonical has done as part of Ayatana has been a step forward (if minor) in UI development on Linux.
Note: page 13 of this thread and the only nod to OS’s is that reliability is pretty much driver dependent. Everything else is user space programs.
;D
You’ll have to wait until at least page 42 for that. But we have discussed the evilness of Monsanto, and that has an O and an S in it. This will soon turn into a discussion on life, the universe and everything. Thanks for all the fish.
I really needed that laugh, thanks! ;D
That would be a great OS crash message: “Don’t panic”.
On Linux SPARC, a kernel oops includes this:
[ 0.982046] \|/ ____ \|/
[ 0.982054] "@'/ .. \`@"
[ 0.982058] /_| \__/ |_\
[ 0.982063] \__U_/
We should replace the BSOD with a suffusion of yellow.
We really must e-mail Bill Gates about our ideas.