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well, the user interface isn't supposed to be the hard part! but
your question about Lindows also brings the UI issue in play --
Lindows itself is dead, I believe (I think it may have weathered a
trademark challenge, but sheer market indifference seems to have
killed it, though if I'm not mistaken it sort of lived on for a
while in Canada believe it or not) but its spirit survives in the
seemingly perpetual dream of "a desktop Linux for the masses."
Ubuntu means to be this, and has come fairly close to succeeding,
in part by addressing the very real need for access to cost-free
computing in third-world countries and small and large businesses
and government agencies around the world; but also by striving to
perfect the design of its Unity desktop into something supremely
useful and customizeable -- yet at the same time quite generic in
the best sense of the word.
to elaborate: "finding things" has been the sticking point of nearly every computing desktop -- the consensus would seem to be that nesting folders and subfolder a la XP is about right -- and this is the way both Gnome and KDE, the old rival Linux desktops, used to work -- just like Mac/Windows/OS2, you could put the dozen things you use all the time on your desktop or some slidey swoopy drawer-y thing, but if you needed to get under the hood to adjust settings or tweak the interface itself or find a program you used but seldom, you'd need to root around. Ubuntu's fun and controversial Unity is embodied these days by something called the Dash, a search-y text slot which opens up when you press your keyboard's Windows key (euphemistically referred to as the "Super" key in Linuxland). this activates a sort of personal uber-Google, producing results from installed applications, filename matches, or, should you choose, Google, Twitter, and by now dozens of other possible selections (Wikipedia, Spotify etc) called "Lenses." similarly, when you are working in an application, if you need to perform a function but can't remember the keystroke or the location of the submenu choice that invokes it, you can simply tap an Alt key to open another text-input slot, type in what you want to do -- eg, "crop" in an image-manipulation program -- and after a few letters, be offered a selection of possible commands which you can access by mousing or arrowing up and down. the Unity desktop has taken painfully long to develop, but the newest version of Ubuntu, 14.04 "Trusty Tahr," looks like it will bring a very mature and slick version of it -- but if you're curious, I'll let you know in a day or two, since because my hard disk is dying, I've decided to upgrade to this version, which is a so-called LTS version, for Long Term Support, meaning that it will be officially supported for five years. (for me a cardinal rule of computing is, if possible, always upgrade your software when you have to upgrade your hardware -- where Linux is involved, nearly a painless process, since if you plan things correctly, all that's necessary is to 1) copy select partitions and directories onto an external hard drive, 2) install the new OS version, 3) run 2-3 commands which will re-install the newest versions of all your open-source Ubuntu apps, and 4) copy back the stuff you'd put on your external HD. number 5) feeling a sense of smug gratification that you will never, ever, have to fork over hundreds of dollars in order to be able to use the latest version of some program whose functionality is practically identical to the previous one, and reflecting how some large software companies have become indistinguishable from perpetually needy relations, by turns extortionate and wheedling, is optional.) sunshine enough. the faint shade of a dark side is this: while it's actually possible to use Ubuntu without really knowing what you are doing, the way M$ and Apple purport to allow you, if you want to do something special -- like get the most out of XyWrite -- you will have to get your hands dirty enough to root around a command line. however 1) it's not really all that difficult, 2) once you've gotten things set up, as long as you take note of what you did and back everything up, you seldom if ever need to do those things again, and 3) learning and mastering these tools is actually quite satisfying and fun if you're the least inclined to tinker. -rafe On 03/31/2014 06:26 PM, J R FOX wrote:
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