Ubuntu aesthetics drive me to Linux Mint
Ubuntu makes my eyes bleed. I'm sorry, but it does.
It's mainly their default background color, which they call Aubergine. It's the most horrible color I've ever seen. It's hard for me to believe that somewhere in the world there's a human being who thinks that this is a great color, and he or she is surrounded by others who think it's nice enough not to shoot that person. And to match the backgrounds, the title bars are a kind of ugly brown. Yuck!
Then there's the new, wonderful Unity GUI, which replaces the old tired, sad, KDE/Gnome/WTF interface. Really? Is this an improvement? Not to me. And, oh, yeah, it's buggy. Something called compiz seems to crash after a few hours use on every install I've made. And I've made a lot. But not too many more.
I don't get the idea of the Unity interface. Maybe it's because I'm a Windows guy and this interface is supposedly more Mac-Like. Maybe. I'm not enough of a Mac guy to even know. What I know is that the application menus now appear at the top of the screen far away from the focus of my attention, which is --surprise--usually the window I am currently using. At best I have to move my eyes, which are not that heavy, but mildly annoying to move, especially when focused. At semi-worst, I have to move my hand to move the cursor, also not that heavy, but a little more annoying.
And then, sometimes, my next task will take place in a different window then the one I am in. My eye flicks to the new window, where normally I would find the menu before my fingers or hand could switch. But it's not there. The top of the screen still contains the menu for the application I am now using, not the one that I want to use. So I have to switch applications, then look up to the menu, then go there.
You may be saying: "What a pussy!" And maybe you're right. I could learn some new habits. For example I could stop using my mouse for menus (sometimes my fingers know how to do this, and sometimes not). I could press the ALT key which drops down the menus. And that's a great idea, which I'm going to use with a non-buggy interface like not Unity/Compiz/whatever. But I want to learn at my pace, not be forced to because the interface sucks.
So I discovered Linux Mint, which his supposed to be based on Ubuntu. It's lots prettier.
I read reviews. It's supposedly a bit faster, but boots slower. I tried it and I liked it. So I nuked the Ubuntu 12.10 distro that I had installed and installed Mint 14.
I'm a lot happier with the aesthetics and the usability, both. But I ran into problems. I'll tell you all about them in a series of posts in process on my problems with Linux Mint.
See my posts on problems with Linux Mint TODO and my post on configuring my system TODO and my post on my ideal computing environment, also TODO.
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| Bleeding Eyeballs |
Then there's the new, wonderful Unity GUI, which replaces the old tired, sad, KDE/Gnome/WTF interface. Really? Is this an improvement? Not to me. And, oh, yeah, it's buggy. Something called compiz seems to crash after a few hours use on every install I've made. And I've made a lot. But not too many more.
I don't get the idea of the Unity interface. Maybe it's because I'm a Windows guy and this interface is supposedly more Mac-Like. Maybe. I'm not enough of a Mac guy to even know. What I know is that the application menus now appear at the top of the screen far away from the focus of my attention, which is --surprise--usually the window I am currently using. At best I have to move my eyes, which are not that heavy, but mildly annoying to move, especially when focused. At semi-worst, I have to move my hand to move the cursor, also not that heavy, but a little more annoying.
And then, sometimes, my next task will take place in a different window then the one I am in. My eye flicks to the new window, where normally I would find the menu before my fingers or hand could switch. But it's not there. The top of the screen still contains the menu for the application I am now using, not the one that I want to use. So I have to switch applications, then look up to the menu, then go there.
You may be saying: "What a pussy!" And maybe you're right. I could learn some new habits. For example I could stop using my mouse for menus (sometimes my fingers know how to do this, and sometimes not). I could press the ALT key which drops down the menus. And that's a great idea, which I'm going to use with a non-buggy interface like not Unity/Compiz/whatever. But I want to learn at my pace, not be forced to because the interface sucks.
So I discovered Linux Mint, which his supposed to be based on Ubuntu. It's lots prettier.
I read reviews. It's supposedly a bit faster, but boots slower. I tried it and I liked it. So I nuked the Ubuntu 12.10 distro that I had installed and installed Mint 14.
I'm a lot happier with the aesthetics and the usability, both. But I ran into problems. I'll tell you all about them in a series of posts in process on my problems with Linux Mint.
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| Linux Mint Menu (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Nice |
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