Comment 270 for bug 668415

@SRoesgen

With 269 comments (mine is 270!), *every* aspect of this bug has been mentioned already, at least once. :)

I suggest we all give it a rest. It is very clear that this bug report is not helping one bit. Mark has not budged since comment 2, and in the plans for 12.04 we see that the Unity team is prepared to go to great and bizarre lengths to make sure that the Launcher will not be movable.

All we're doing by "nagging" is fitting in Mark's view of the community, that we are part of a "minority" of users who refuse to accept that their pet bug won't be fixed. This, I insist, is an error in understanding the reason for "nagging:" the community is in fact worried about Unity's usability and potential, and is every bit concerned about future Ubuntu users as he is. We tell our stories here, as anecdotal evidence, and provide our opinions, as longtime computer users.

Come to think of it, he has not *once* come out and thanked us for posting on this bug. He sees this whole bug as a nuisance and distraction from his real work, rather than a valuable source of input from people who use Ubuntu everyday. (He has stated explicitly that he doesn't care about our opinion: he is targeting people who never used computers before, or who have barely used them.)

Locking a huge, important UI element like the Launcher to a specific part of any and all displays will hurt that future. The sheer diversity of computer displays out there -- so many different sizes, resolutions, aspect ratios, viewing angles, multiple display setups, touch vs. non-touch, eInk vs. LCD, including new display technologies that we don't know about yet -- demands that Unity maintain flexibility. And then there's a diversity of users: left-handed, right-handed, speakers of right-to-left languages (like me).

You want to run Unity in a car computer? Well, in your country do you driving on the left or right side of the road? There are just so many aspects to this that it seems like shooting yourself in the foot by not planning for such futures.

The vision of "an operating system for human beings" can only work if it takes into account the diversity of humans and the diversity of their experience. Otherwise, it will be an operating system for a lucky group of human beings who happen to fit a specific mold.

I have no doubt that in a year or two, Unity will have no choice but to make the Launcher movable, introducing considerable breakage and change to a bug-free product. And then all our comments on this bug will remain as archaeological evidence that perhaps the community should have been listened to. :)