Movement of Unity launcher

Thanks for your bug report and help to make ubuntu better.

This is indeed possible, you just have to drag out the launcher item (to the right), and put it somewhere else. We discovered that there are some usability issues there, which will be fixed in Natty to make it more discoverable.

I think the report actually meant that the launcher should be movable to
other edges of the screen. I'm afraid that won't work with our broader
design goals, so we won't implement that. We want the launcher always
close to the Ubuntu button.

 status wontfix

Mark

Mmm... i was hoping for dock on bottom :( but i respect that...

Btw: maybe you could add into launcher some unity icon(like Docky have first dock icon) and that Unity icon could take some of the ubuntu button functions. This way would not matter where launcher is (left/right/bottom) :)

Among other things, it would be important to be able to move the launcher on portrait-oriented screens, as when a monitor is rotated (which is otherwise well supported).

Mmm... I lked unity since the beggining but never liked the left fixed dock, I was hoping a panel-position customization, using another dock at the same time with unity is just not good. Fortunately I can disable unity and use another option and in fact that is what I'm going to do.

Intellihide and on bottom are important options for a desktop dock. I want to be able to set it.

Why coudn't this just be an option? Mark Shuttleworth, you don't have to agree with it, but it could still be an option of the launcher. I understand that you wants it near the Ubuntu buttom, but the launcher at the buttom isn't that far away, and the fact that you wants it at the left side shouldn't mean that you don't give people the possibility to move it to the buttom.

I also liked unity since the beginning, but I, and many other people, wants to be able to move it to the buttom. the launcher at the right is indeed too far away of the Ubuntu buttom, but having it on the buttom isn't that far. Please give them the possibility to move it to the buttom.

uhm... locking unity launcher movement will propably have unwanted consequencies in some users.
they will simply not use the unity shell, they will logon to classic desktop and use docky instead...

I'll be one of those that will change to gnome...if Unity wants to be the default desktop it has to include features for personalize it. That's one of the advantages and promises we have in Linux in general. The ability to customize our distro. And of course a user may need to change the launcher, maybe due to the nature of its work or the use he gives to its OS.

------Mensaje original------
De: 6205
Remitente: <email address hidden>
Para: Jonás Carmelo Díaz Gómez
Responder a: Bug 668415
Asunto: [Bug 668415] Re: Movement of Unity launcher
Enviado: 5 de dic, 2010 3:35 PM

uhm... locking unity launcher movement will propably have unwanted consequencies in some users.
they will simply not use the unity shell, they will logon to classic desktop and use docky instead...

--
You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to Unity.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668415

Title:
  Movement of Unity launcher

Status in NULL Project:
  Invalid
Status in Unity:
  Won't Fix

Bug description:
  Please consider this a possible feature request or wishlist.

Now when Unity will be default desktop for 11.04 could you please consider to add option to configure Unity launcher placement. Add simple option to lock/unlock through right-click menu and drag launcher to desired location like left/right and bottom.

Este mensaje ha sido enviado gracias al servicio BlackBerry de Movilnet

Saying that the reason not to make the Unity Launcher moveable is simply a design decision appears in my opinion invalid.

Why? Simply because it is not an OEM solution anymore if you want to spread Unity to the desktop of every day users. You want to appeal to normal people? Then do so. If you take away the choice to modify the desktop the way one is used to do, will actually drive back many normal users.
Normal users are used to have the launcher at the bottom of the screen. And though this might sound stupid it still is a a point to be made: appeal to normal users by presenting them something that is not too alien to them. Certainly you want a design that is unique and special. But that is not the right way. Making it possible to move the launcher should definitively be a small thing to implement and denying this option to other users appears more erratic and unreasonable that logical.

It should not be any problem to put the launcher at the left edge of the screen. Why not? But also, one should consider making it possible to adjust the placement of the launcher (be it the right or the bottom of the screen). We are not all equal and some are more individualistic than other users. Make it possible for them to modify such a simple thing as the launcher.

And by the way: what about those users that come from Arabia or Isreal? Or where ever else in the world the read from right to the left side? These people are usually fixated on the upper right corner of the screen and not the upper left one. At least for them it should be possible to put icons AND launcher on the right side of the screen.

Well Hi everyone, I've been reeding what Mark said in one comments here.. And he said that they "want to have Ubuntu button near the launcher"..

Well, first of all, which is the difference between de Dash (ubuntu's button on gnome's panel) and the apps menu button on launcher? I think that there is no differences.. Dash seems to work like an app filter that can be improved (or better improve) in apps menu launcher button..

In that way we can have one button (like Mac OS) on gnome panel (or not) where we can access to the system information and things like "About me" and so on...

And then Ubuntu's button can be placed on launcher, unifying dash button and apps menu button.. and, naturally, launcher can be moved to the right or, even, the down of screen and win an importan pixels on screen and a gorgeous desktop..

I know, it's look to close to the Launchpad button on the upcoming Mac OS; but I believe that is more useful and gorgeous desktop..

I think everyone should calm down a bit.

Design is a constant evolution.

while a feature like this may not be a high priority for the upcoming version, it doesn't mean it cant be considered in the future.

Anyway am confident they'll make some good decisions, and if not enough then back to the drawing board.

On 05/12/10 20:47, SRoesgen wrote:
> And by the way: what about those users that come from Arabia or Isreal?
> Or where ever else in the world the read from right to the left side?
> These people are usually fixated on the upper right corner of the screen
> and not the upper left one. At least for them it should be possible to
> put icons AND launcher on the right side of the screen.

We will explore an RTL option, with mirroring of the entire experience,
for this case. That's documented in a separate bug.

Mark

Please try using this with a widescreen display in portrait orientation, which I love. It looks terrible. For the same reason this launcher was created - a waste of space along a long edge. Just move the ubuntu button with the launcher.

@Mark Shuttleworth

Mark wake up!

Don't forget Ubuntu's philosophy about being open and community-based.
It's fair that you want a standard Ubuntu-look, but you need to listen to the community.
If the users want to move the launcher why just let them? Why don't you you bind the Ubuntu-logo to the top panel?
Even in the often criticized Mac OS X it's possible to decide if the dock should be either at the bottom or at the right or left side of the screen.

Anyway, I guess that Unity is going to be open source, so people either can make a hack or a fork that supports movement of the launcher.

Is this a bad sign that tells that Ubuntu is going to be a locked-in OS that only supports the kind of customization that it's company allows?

Louis, it's open source! If you want to change it please do. Or use
Docky. Or AWN. Or any number of alternatives. But please recognise that
we've got the right to build Unity the way we think it's going to be
best for folks, and that explicitly precludes trying to fit everything
that everyone wants into it.

Mark

It's simple, Mr. Shuttleworth. Just have the launcher on the left by default. If the user wants to move it somewhere else then they can open up the Appearance settings and change it.

@UncleNinja
I suppose that is what nearly everybody wants and to me your few sentences are the most cogent and reasonable proposal I have heard up to now.
At least there appears to be no logical argument against your suggestion.

I am now rather thrilled to hear any counterargument.

@all
btw.: It certainly has nothing to do with design decision to prevent somebody from moving the launcher from its default position (left edge of the screen) to another position. What will happen next? Are there any additional proposals concerning design questions? Will the next step be to decide that people do not need the minimize/maximize function of a browser window or their office application just because by design it was decided that browsing the web and writing a text with a maximized windows is per se the best way to use a software?
And yes, there is always the possibility to fork something because it is open source and one simply can add additional features to the fork. But I personally hear this answer much to often in the open source world. I myself am a linguist and not a software programmer. I do not have the time to fork something everytime I do not like how it is designed.
I love Ubuntu it is the best Linux distribution I know and with every new release I am excited to have a look at the new features. But I suppose one should at least sometimes listen to some voices of the community if it comes to such simple design questions like the one being discussed here.

On 16/12/10 10:11, SRoesgen wrote:
> But I suppose one should at least sometimes listen to some voices of the community if it comes to such simple design questions like the one being discussed here.

Just because I disagree with this point doesn't mean we don't listen.
There is ample evidence of responsiveness to questions and ideas raised
in bugs and on the Ayatana design list. When you make a comment like
this, you come across as petulant because YOUR preferred idea is not
being pursued - take the trouble to participate for a while, and you'll
have a more balanced view.

@Mark
Point taken. If I came across too impolite, I hereby apologize.

Though, I think that I voiced not only my idea, but those of many, I accept your premise of trying to participate (as limited as my means may be) and will follow the discussions of the design/development of the next releases.
Let's see what happens. And believe me I am a fan of you and your work. Thus posting this comment was to point out that there are other people, beside the original poster. (When the news that Unity is coming to the desktop were released there were internet fora in which they discussed the inability of the launcher being movable.)
Still, I accept your final decision and lets see how Natty works out. I am looking forward to it.

On 16/12/10 13:00, SRoesgen wrote:
> @Mark
> Point taken. If I came across too impolite, I hereby apologize.

Thank you, accepted!

> Thus posting this comment was to point out that there are other people, beside the original poster. (When the news that Unity is coming to the desktop were released there were internet fora in which they discussed the inability of the launcher being movable.)

A good way to reflect interest in the bug, without spamming everyone
subscribed, is to use the "affects me too" link on the bug page.

Mark

Dear Mr Mark.
Why? WHY? Why? You said that there are design goals which prohibit this little improvement. Can we, humble users, know the reason of this denial? Maybe we just don't know about something great to come. Many of human crimes come from misunderstandings. Many of those could have been prevented. Please - enlighten us at least: WHY won't we be able to customize Unity? One simple question. Is it that hard? Also, I would like to point out, that scientists proved that low ceilings have bad impact on human creativity. Here this applies as well. The effect is especially oppressive on small wide screen displays.
Yes. I speak about "new bug". But it is something similar and I don't want to ignite another bug procedure. What I want is healthy discussion of "Unity customization" topic. I do understand that there are many goals and designs. But have you ever considered subconsciousness impact in user interfaces? For example: I removed from my FullHD display the upper panel. Just that. When my computer illiterate sister glanced on the screen, she asked, whether I changed my distro. It was a matter of a split second. Also, I made an experiment on myself. I used "top only" set for about a month. Now I switched the panel to bottom. It was great relief for me. Similar to someone's having put a weight off my spine. Please consider this. Again, what I ultimately want is healthy conversation, which will lead to understanding of both sides and agreement.
Don't be inexorable, Mr Mark.
By the way, I never had occasion to thank you for the Ubuntu fonts. I fell in love with them the day the new logo emerged. Now I use them everywhere. Because of that, I have faith in your vision. Just don't be adamant. When you make new font, you don't force people to use it. When you make new shell, you should leave the possibility to customize it. As can be seen in the net, almost every Ubuntu user leaves the default set-up. But there is a huge group of customizers who love to tinker with their interfaces. Let them to have fun with Unity too.
Thank you for your attention.
Hirager.

Mark;

I can envision a number of settings in which it would be desirable to ensure the placement of the launcher etc: Hopefully hardware vendors will choose Ubuntu/Unity over Android etc for various devices, and want control over where the launch bar etc is for screen fitting etc, screen management, etc.

However, I'm very concerned that you are citing design considerations as a reason for fixing the location in general - especially with a view to Natty/Desktop - but equally with a view to vendor attraction for netbooks, because it /assumes/ physical device layout. You just lost any vendor planning a Kindle format device.

In the desktop arena, I would implore you attempt to reconcile any such design decisions with the root of Ubuntu's success, which is the quality of desktop experience it delivers out of the box. "It's open source, fix it yourself" is what I expect to hear from Gentoo, not Ubuntu. "Switch to a different desktop experience" is something I expect to hear from a Ubuntu derivative or a lesser Linux entirely.

I don't have a problem with accepting that the launcher be limited to left, right or bottom edge of the screen. Just take the Ubuntu icon with the launcher bar. Bar on the right, Ubuntu on the right. Bar at the bottom, Ubuntu at the bottom with a choice of right-or-left edge. Will it be a bigger button when they do that? Yes, but "OMG the start button is huge" just isn't something I hear people say.

Imposing netbook aesthetics on desktop experience will deflate much of the trust, enthusiasm even, that Ubuntu has stirred amongst folks with whom you had begun to [re-]build faith that Linux could really be a viable desktop alternative to Windows.

Let me close with some practical use cases:

1. RTL countries,
2. Portrait displays (where the vertical launch bar has the opposite of it's intended effect),
3. Left-handed mousers,
4. Accessibility conflicts with left-of-window controls in applications (esp web-browsing where navigation is frequently on the left-side, whereas the scroll bar serves as a buffer for them between pages with right-hand navigation and a right-handed launch bar).
5. Accessibility issues where the user's primary use of the computer is centered around the right hand side of the screen,
6. Multi-screen displays where the left-most display is the minor display, and having the launch bar on the left side of the primary screen is a bloody nuisance.

If I wanted design decisions that trump ease of use, I'd go back to Windows XP, thanks :)

On 30/12/10 01:53, kfsone wrote:
> In the desktop arena, I would implore you attempt to reconcile any such
> design decisions with the root of Ubuntu's success, which is the quality
> of desktop experience it delivers out of the box. "It's open source, fix
> it yourself" is what I expect to hear from Gentoo, not Ubuntu. "Switch
> to a different desktop experience" is something I expect to hear from a
> Ubuntu derivative or a lesser Linux entirely.

A willingness to limit the set of supported options is a large part of
the quality of the out-of-box desktop experience. For example, the old
Gnome Panel was designed with the goal of making many, many things
possible. you could put them on any edge of the screen, you could write
any sort of app, that supported any sort of interface pattern. And the
result was very, very hard to use well. All of that customization made
it impossible to provide an "overall feeling" to the old Gnome Panel.

And this is similar.

Now, I know full well that the argument for being "on rails" can be
taken too far. It boils down to a judgement call, which has to be made
in the knowledge that wherever one draws the line (or *I* draw the line,
if you want to be personal about it) there will be some folks who never
use the flexibility offered, for whom it's confusing, and others for
whom it's not enough and who resent the line having been drawn there.

In all cases, it's not unreasonable to ask folks who want something
badly to implement at least a hacked up version of that capability. I
don't think it's needed, and I think it could in fact be detrimental
both to the user experience and the code itself, so I'm simply not going
to ask Canonical folks to spend any time on it. But I can't stop, and
have no interest in stopping, someone from working up a patch which
implements the capability, which can then be tested and discussed.
Bleating or sulking don't inspire me to spend time and money helping out ;-)

So, "work up a patch" is a reasonable statement. "Use a different
interface" is also a reasonable statement. That's not "we don't care
about you" it's "we are busy implementing a particular vision". We may
be wrong, the best way to learn is to have others show that a better way
is possible. If so, we'll adapt quickly, we're not too proud to embrace
great work done elsewhere.

> Let me close with some practical use cases:
>
> 1. RTL countries,

Yes. But this involves mirroring everything: launcher, panel,
indicators, window controls. It's not an argument for being able to
place the launcher anywhere, it's an argument for a proper RTL
perspective on the shell. That is being tracked in a separate bug, iirc.

> 2. Portrait displays (where the vertical launch bar has the opposite of it's intended effect),

At this stage, our view is that intellihide makes the launcher position
acceptable on portrait interfaces.

> 3. Left-handed mousers,

There's no strong argument that a left-handed mouser benefits from the
launcher being anywhere different. One needs to be able to get to any
point of the screen with a mouse for it to be useful :-) And touch
interfaces, arguably, are better for lefties with the launcher in its
current position.
...

So it boils down to "Make it yourselves"?

Marek: "A developer scratching an itch" is the starting point of most Free/open source software, and still the most effective way to make things happen. There a finite number of people and a finite amount of time; at the moment people are busy working on pulling other parts of the stack together. Once the essential stuff is done, the "nice to have"s can be looked at, if you want to focus on a particular area and expand the number of people that are able to work on Unity then please join us, and please propose and make a patch.

It's a complex problem to solve so I would not expect the patch to be as simple as just changing the X coordinate! There is interaction with the dash button (top-left) to consider, there is the interaction of application indicators and window indicators when toggling between, autohide direction, right-to-left languages and layout, ...

I finally took the glance at available bug statuses. Now I am competent to suggest, that this sort of bugs should be "confirmed" and "assigned to community". This way is clear (wontfix suggests it is not even allowed) and most communicating to the community. Pardon my harsh words before, but I was under impression that customization will not be even allowed in Unity. It turns out to be out of reach for the Canonical. It makes big difference. I strongly advise to use (or create) "assigned to community" Launchpad status. If it was clearly stated at the very beginning of Unity development, that its up to community to solve this issue, we would probably have working solution by now.

> > 2. Portrait displays (where the vertical launch bar has the opposite of it's intended effect),
> At this stage, our view is that intellihide makes the launcher position
> acceptable on portrait interfaces.

I might be late to the party, but how exactly is intellihide supposed to work for portrait touchscreens? And if a maximized app hides the dock, how is the Dash supposed to integrate?

+1 for the "assigned to community" idea.

I totally agree with Mr. Mark.

A fixed interface makes life easier for developers to integrate better the program with the interface...
And they(devs) know that they make it one way and it will look the same for all users.

I don't think that being able to move the dock to a different edge of the screen is just another nice to have feature. Every dock I've ever heard of has this feature, and moreover, the most common setup is to have it on the bottom edge. Therefore, the ability to have the dock on the bottom is basic functionality. If we were talking about regular panels this might be different, but the design of the dock and the items in it make it far more suitable for switching between horizontal and vertical layouts. If you will accept patches that add this basic functionality then this shouldn't be marked Won't Fix.

Linux UIs have always been too customizable; but the dock defines the shape of the display. So it's location is going to have a bearing on Ubuntu's suitability to a number of device formats -- and more importantly, dynamic display formats.

Questions:

- Are there cases where a display will call for a fixed application launcher bar (dock)?
Yes: Hardware vendors selecting an OS are occasionally going to want the ability to coordinate dock and physical decoration and/or controls.

- What advantages do fix UI meta-decoration (menu bar, app bar) offer?
* Fixed screen space,
* Deterministic display dimensions,
* Simplification of support,
* Clear UI guidelines on user-attention areas of the display,
* Clear UI guidelines on user-blindspot areas of the display

- Are there cases where a fixed application launcher bar will be detrimental to user experience?
Yes: Rotatable displays (such as cell phones, tablets); Multi-display devices; Non-standard sized displays (a fixed bottom/top bar on a tripple-head screen is going to waste a lot of screen real-estate); Dynamic sized displays (e.g. where an on-screen keyboard is replaced by a slide out), etc.

I dont care about which side the launcher is, but a nice shiny looking launcher connected to a plain ugly top panel with a flimsy looking ubuntu menu logo is a big disaster.

Either make the panel on left and top seem to flow in a smooth manner or detach the left launcher or panel a bit down away from the logo.

This way you stick to your design goals and make the desktop look more in 'unity'.Not many people might have pointed this out cos they trust you blindly maybe.You i mean the UI team.

I afree with Rajeev Nair. And I think the whole look & feel of Unity right now is a disaster. You paid people to do it? You lost your money. Sorry, thats what I think. I hope it will be better one day.

The best solution to this problem is to write the patch and package it and offer it in a ppa. Mark is trying to provide a consistent vision for his implementation of unity that doesn't stop me writing a patch and testing the alternative implementation. Any maybe we could call the alternate implementation community :) I might start on the patch tomorrow if someone doesn't beat me to it.

Sounds good!

Mr. Shuttleworth, have you considered providing the option of moving the BFB (button) to the right side with the Launcher? That is, if the Launcher is moved, the BFB is placed in the top right corner above it? This would keep the Launcher next to the BFB.

Ubuntu is a great OS. I appreciate all your hard work and the awesome work of the developers in its creation. Thank you!

As for those people who are searching for the bug about mirroring of the interface for RTL locales, its bug #654988 .

Hi Jason

Thanks for the comments

Yes, we've considered consolidating the BFB and indicators all on the
right. In the end, we settled on the current arrangement because it
keeps those two functions distinct. I imagine other designs would be
more accommodating of the option, for example, in Gnome Shell they have
indicator-type capabilities more widely spread on the top bar.

Mark

A proof of concept I believe has already been created, http://habreffect.ru/files/5fc/a970a188f/%D0%A1%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BA-4.png I don't have additional information on it.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/04/five-neat-changes-in-todays-unity-update/#comment-176288444

For other people who hate when people post links without any description:

"there is a patched launcher package (Unity-df) that gives you options to change launcher's color and transparency AND it lets you place launcher at any place you want it.

http://habreffect.ru/files/5fc/a970a188f/%D0%A1%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BA-4.png

Package:
i386: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/566323/temp/unity-df_0.2.47-0ubuntu5_i386.deb
amd64: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/566323/temp/unity-df_0.2.47-0ubuntu5_amd64.deb"
- _artem_

Source of the unity package that allows moving the launcher (in Russian): http://tehnoblog.net/2011/04/kak-pomenyat-raspolozhenie-paneli-unity-v-ubuntu-11-04/

Looks like the movable launcher was an April Fools' joke.

Mr. Shuttleworth and team,

Unity is awesome!

It is fast, responsive, I love the design and the global menus and merged title bars. Gnome-shell is nice but wastes enormous space by always showing title bars and menu bars. You guys are getting everything right with Unity. When the dust settles, I'm confident Unity will be a big success. I commend you on holding to your design goals during the development process.

I am so thankful that the Unity launcher can be set to autohide and only activated when the cursor goes to the left upper corner. Great design! Before trying Unity I was worried the cursor touching anywhere on the left margin would unhide the launcher.

Thank you for creating Unity. It incorporates all the principles I've been looking for in a desktop. And of course, thanks for Ubuntu!

What purpose does the "Fade on bfb and Slide" setting serve?

There's a lot going on in Unity's top-left corner. New windows spawn there. Window controls are laid immediately to the right of the bfb. There's the Application Menus. My cursor is constantly over and around the bfb in these situations while I have no intention of activating the Launcher. Yet the Launcher keeps partially sliding out/fading over what I'm trying to work on (especially when working with newly spawned windows or when trying to close a maximized window). I'm curious as to why there is no setting to turn off the Slide/Fade feature all together and what exactly this function is intended to serve?

None of my users are technical enough to have a login on this site, but they are ALL going to tell me that Narwhaal with Unity is unacceptable because of this. I'm not in a position to DICTATE MINOR GUI NUANCES, that should be as configurable as left- or right-handedness options. Neither is Ubuntu. I know users can fallback, but there are a lot of good innovations I'd like my users to see in Unity, and the fallback will be phased out in 11.10. This is a mass emigration (away from Ubuntu) bomb waiting to happen.

Bryan, why do you say "fallback will be phased out in 11.10"?

Because Ubuntu 11.10 will not ship with 'classic' GNOME desktop, so saying use the fallback is moot.

Wow.

"...we have the Classic desktop fallback in Natty, but will not in Oneiric." - Mark Shuttleworth, 2011-03-31 - https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/739812/

Imagine this:
I have a laptop and a larger second monitor which I mainly work on when at my desk.
The laptop screen is still useful for IM windows etc, but it is not my primary screen.
Now, for any given desk the secondary laptop has a preferred position on either side of the main screen.
Unfortunately, Unity only works when the laptop is on the right side, because if it is on the left side the launcher bar cuts the desktop in half and is really hard to hit because the mouse just moves onto the secondary screen.

So, Mark, you are saying that your design goal is to have no simple way to put the secondary screen on the left.
Does the canonical office have this desk layout policy?
Sure, I can install my own launcher alternatives, but then why do I bother with Ubuntu, might as well go back to Debian...
Did you know that even OS X allows you to move the Dock?

I guess there is always Fedora and Kubuntu. However, I quite liked Ubuntu pre-unity, so here is my feedback, so that hopefully I can keep liking it.

"A willingness to limit the set of supported options is a large part of
the quality of the out-of-box desktop experience." -Mark Shuttleworth, quoted from above.

I am sorry, but I beg to differ.
A willingness to limit the set of supported options is why I switched from KDE to Gnome a year ago, as KDE Plasma removed configurability from it's wallpaper plugin that earlier allowed me to use multiple compiz wallpapers together with KDE, and removing this configurability made the UI lose it's appeal over gnome that it had earlier.

I am actually a little worried that the current design mentality for ubuntu seems to be "give the user one interface and don't let them change it as not to be confused". I can live with the fact that an additional plugin needs to be installed to configure unity, but any ui designer knows that configurability options can be grouped into various "levels of complexity", as not to bewilder the end user. As Mark brings it up, so will I... the old Gnome panel is a great example of how something is easy to use, configurable and is highly complex and customisable... I know of many non-linux-experts who have no problem using the gnome panel, and who, in fact, have no problem with the fact that it may not be "consistent" if one does strange things to it. As for the "consistency" argument, most linux users will agree that the diversity of linux allows each person to personalise their desktop, and this general lack of the potential for personalisation in unity may well create a lack of diversity and creativity that was present earlier. Many a windows-user places their panel on a different part of the screen simply to be different from the rest. I would go so far as to say that a lack of personalisation makes the desktop boring, not easier to use.

The "go write a patch yourself" view expressed above is somewhat sensible if it were to get included in the trunk or in some repo, but as a programmer myself I know that it is not too difficult to code in more configuration options, so I doubt that lack of resources is too much of a problem, considering the "100 papercuts" initiative, and this, I would say, may qualify for something like this.

Lastly, I would like to ask those who design unity to consider adding more configuration options, as the adoption of ubuntu of those who know computers well, and would therefore be willing to configure unity more, is crucial for the more widespread adoption of ubuntu as those are the people who install ubuntu on their friends' computers. Thinking back to KDE 4, I see that history does seem to repeat itself - KDE 4.0 had barely any configuration options in the panel, whilst the current KDE has many... probably as a result to user feedback.

* I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.

This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do.

Please, just tell people to use KDE.
         - Torvalds, Linus (2005-12-12). Message to <email address hidden> mailing list. Retrieved on 2006-08-28.

----

Interesting that you say KDE has limited options as well now...

And Torvalds switchted back to Gnome when KDE4 was released. Not because of
a lack of funtionality, but:

"*Another open-source project that underwent a big change was KDE with
Version 4.0. They released a lot of fundamental architectural changes with
4.0, and it received some negative reviews. As a KDE user, how has this
impacted you?* I used to be a KDE user. I thought KDE 4.0 was such a
disaster, I switched to GNOME. I hate the fact that my right button doesn't
do what I want it to do. But the whole "break everything" model is painful
for users, and they can choose to use something else.

I realize the reason for the 4.0 release, but I think they did it badly.
They did so may changes, it was a half-baked release. It may turn out to be
the right decision in the end, and I will retry KDE, but I suspect I'm not
the only person they lost.

I got the update through Fedora, and there was a mismatch from KDE 3 to KDE
4.0. The desktop was not as functional, and it was just a bad experience for
me. I'll revisit it when I reinstall the next machine, which tends to be
every six to eight months.

The GNOME people are talking about doing major surgery, so it could also go
the other way."
Source:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9126619/Q_A_Linux_founder_Linus_Torvalds_talks_about_open_source_identity?taxonomyId=18&pageNumber=5&taxonomyName=Software

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 6:13 AM, IKT <email address hidden> wrote:

> * I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.
>
> This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of
> Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will
> use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long
> since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do.
>
> Please, just tell people to use KDE.
> - Torvalds, Linus (2005-12-12). Message to <email address hidden> list. Retrieved on 2006-08-28.
>
> ----
>
> Interesting that you say KDE has limited options as well now...
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668415
>
> Title:
> Movement of Unity launcher
>
> Status in NULL Project:
> Invalid
> Status in Unity:
> Won't Fix
>
> Bug description:
> Please consider this a possible feature request or wishlist.
>
> Now when Unity will be default desktop for 11.04 could you please
> consider to add option to configure Unity launcher placement. Add
> simple option to lock/unlock through right-click menu and drag
> launcher to desired location like left/right and bottom.
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/null/+bug/668415/+subscribe
>

Just to point it out:

On 2010-12-16, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> When you make a comment like
this, you come across as petulant because YOUR preferred idea is not
being pursued - take the trouble to participate for a while, and you'll
have a more balanced view.

I am not quite sure, but according to the 43 votes one might point out that this all is not just only MY "preferred idea". According to 43 votes it might be not time to reconsider the "movement of the launcher" idea in its entirety. It might be time for some official statement to tell us (users) if there is now at least the discussion to make a moveable launcher a standard feature for Oneiric.

To quote now Bryan Seigneur's post (2011-04-14):
>None of my users are technical enough to have a login on this site, but they are ALL going to tell me that Narwhaal with Unity is unacceptable because of this.

That is the point. Exactly that is the point. If you get 43 votes for a feature change, or rather for a wish/suggestion to change something, the number of votes might not sound to be very high. But it is actually a high number: most users who would wish the launcher to be positioned at the bottom or the right will not have a Launchpad account. And they will not create an account. They are not technically versed enough or interested enough. 43 votes represents a high number of people if it comes to the putting forward proposals or suggestions or wishes for a technical change (or at least a reevaluation of policy) .

I always said it is good that Ubuntu/Canonical has a Benevolent Dictator like Apple has its Steve Jobs; a project needs a visionary to make progress. And I still think that it is better to have one person to make a final decision; many people that make decisions might appear democratic but a production process is nothing that should be decided in democratic ways and means; there is the need for one man to make the final decisions. BUT this one man should at least listen to other people and if there is a high representation of voters that unanimously vote for one feature, then one should reconsider the own opinion and should show the character strength to admit that there is a strong opposition against a decision that one has made.

Unity became better every single day. I really started to love it -- despite the fact that I still cannot install it on my Dell Precision 4500 without the nomodeset option. But on my other two systems it works perfectly. And I love the feature set and the way it has developed. But those changes during the last week, that convinced me the most, thatUnity is -- according to my opinion -- heading towards the right direction, those changes were the simple ones that gave some control back to the user: the gnome-controlcenter is easily reachable for everyone, the sitze of the launcher can be configureable, there is again a possibility to launcher several instances of one application (if it makes sense for the given application), there is a method to configure the way how to hide/reveal the launcher etc...
These features, though small, are the important ones. This is not too much freedom for the user to make the unity experience wholly inconsistent ...

It is totally obvious that - if you don't want to make it an option - the position of the launcher should - at least - depend on the orientation on the screen. It is totally unacceptable to have a locker launcher on the left side of a protrait screen. No argument could ever justify that...

Even when all the arguments have already been presented here, I would like to say that I like the way Ubuntu 11.04 looks, but it is completely absurd that even Windows and OSX let you move the taskbar/dock however you want, and its main "open-source" counterpart does not. From the point of view of a normal user like me, the whole Unity concept is an improvement, but the restrictions are more reasonable for netbooks or mobile devices, not for desktops.
Please let us know when there is a community-based alternative for this rather simple customization request.

First of all let me say that I really like a lot of the features of Natty, especially the global menu, the dashboard, the Windows+S and Windows+W functions.

But I really hate the way that the launcher is stuck on the left hand of the screen. My aesthetic instincts are crying out for symmetry! I want the damn thing at the bottom. And I want it to be re-sizable so it doesn't have to take up the whole side of the screen.

I know I can add AWN or Docky or something like that, but what's the use of essentially having two docks doing the same thing just to make up for an inflexible desktop environment?

I know that I'm only one person, but I just want to add my voice to the others who are saying the same thing.

Hi, I'm a Mac user and I would prefer to get it on the bottom. While I am a programmer, I do not feel like putting countless hours in learning how to compile a Linux distribution just to get a bar on the proper side of my screen.
It's even blocking the hack someone suggested!

Mark, it's kind of clear that this is YOUR preference. You're forcing us to use YOUR preference. Lots of people would like to put it somewhere else and it would be so easy to just put the option there. Apple has it, and the option isn't even hidden in OS-X.
Is it really so important for you that everyone uses the product however you want it to? You haven't given any proper argument against it.

So please, let's just get this over with and include this very basic option.

If you have two monitors, and have the right one as the primary, it is extremely difficult to mouseover the correct area to get the launcher to appear fully, as it's on the edge between two screens.

If it's impossible to move the launcher to the right of screen, it's impossible to use dual monitors with the right one as primary.

Setting the left monitor as primary is not always an option, surely moving the launcher should be?

I'm writing to support Liamo comment #60.

I have that exact setup: two monitors, where my right monitor is primary. Because of the way my desk is arranged, the left monitor is not in front of me, and having the Launcher there would be a pain -- literally, to my neck.

The "best" option I have now is the Launcher on the left of my right screen. It's a rather sad option.

I've tried to make the launcher to never hide, which would be better, but that creates another bug, which I've reported separately: https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/772889

It seems that this rather common use case has been overlooked! The design concept is perfect on my single-screen laptop, but for my desktop environment Unity is frustrating. While it's possible for me to use other shells or desktops, as Mark suggests, it would require me to use an entirely different workflow for my desktop and my laptop, not to mention the 5 other Ubuntu computers I use. Not a lot of "unity" in that experience. ;)

A comment to Mark: your very terse "won't fix" response here is not one of your finest moments of engaging the community. Some people may be clamoring for customization for its own sake, which doesn't make sense to me and may try your patience, but some of us are pointing out a serious usability problem. Mark, perhaps the design "vision" for this particular issue could use some rethinking?

To add insult to my injury: my native language is written right-to-left. But, I'm not even going to try it with Unity, and stick to English. (Even if Unity worked nicely, other parts of the desktop would surely break from my experience!) So, is part of Unity's "vision" to enforce a left-to-right world?

I'll just add that I happen to love Unity's vision generally. It's a refreshing pleasure to use on my (English) laptop, and I would love to have the same on my desktop. I just don't see this happening without the Launcher being movable to the right, but would happy to hear a different solution (other than to rebuild my office!).

I am glad to see that we see here an increase in voices that call for a change of the Launcher.

Just to comment on one statement that I read here:

Some here are not postulating the idea that one should be able to change the position of the Launcher for its own sake. This is different.
Some time ago mobile-phones did not allow any customization at all. But the more these little devices became part of everyday life the more the became configurable. A new Android smartphone now makes it possible to configure several aspects that were not configurable before. Certainly these options are not as vast as on a desktop but they are perceivable and usable.

Now, we have a desktop operating system (Linux/Ubuntu) which has emphasized simplicity since its creation. And, basically, this was a well rounded idea. A normal user does not need many customizable aspects in his operating system. But a normal user calls this system, on which he is working, not "Desktop" without a cause. The user interface of the computer's operating system has replaced the normal desktop on a working desk that one has used for decades.
I want to be able to control my own workflow and when I want to put the launcher on the bottom of the computer screen this is like being able to place some pencils (or a pencil-box) on the right or the left of my old desk. Or to place the desk lamp on the right or the left of the desk. You cannot control everything in the user's behaviour. Give them, the users, at least some freedom.

If somebody says that the decision to make the Launcher movable is solely based on his wish to make it more "compatible" with his behaviours as a native speaker of a right to left language this is not in any way different from my wish to keep my own workflow. I can only speak for me: this is my reason, I have a workflow which I have acquired in 22 years of using a computer and I am alway open for change. But I dislike the idea that essential parts of my behaviour will/should be changed by a design decision which deviated from every computer (desktop) interface that we have seen for the last 15 years.

Btw: I now use Unity since the beta 1 and while I do like the Launcher (and Unity) in general, I honestly detest the fixed position of the launcher. I use docky as an addition to my desktop, though it should not be necessary to do so. I can place docky wherever I want. I have more features in docky. And: with docky I can launch several instances of one application if I like to do so (especially I can launch several instances of Nautilus which certainly is a very odd behaviour: who the heck wants to use more than one nautilus winow at once??? Yeah, I must be a real moron!).

To become serious again: I cannot undestand what is so strange about the idea to make the launcher movable? To have a launcher at the bottom is MY design decision. And possibly that of many other people. To have the launcher at the right is the design decision of many other people. And to have the launcher at the left side is also the design decision of many other people. Heavens! This is my desktop. My desktop is quasi my virtual home. How can anybody be so rude to command me how to design my ...

I have major ergonomic issues with the launcher being pinned to the far left side of my multiple monitor setup. I primarily work on the right screen and travelling all the way over to the left to click an icon is not very usable. Making it appear on the left of my other monitor would help, but is not ideal as it interrupts the movement of windows from screen to screen.

In addition, with wide-aspect becoming the standard monitor configuration, there is MUCH more space for icons running horizontally rather than vertically.

Please consider changing this!

I think we need to accept it. I see disadvantages, but also the benefits. However as long as they really don't want to change this due to design goals we are doomed. Some fanatic developer(s) can try to implement this feature request within a custom package or something similar....

And otherwise I think we have to get used to it.

Melroy,

If they refuse to fix this, then it should be seen as a different kind of bug:

If Unity detects that it's in a multi-monitor setup and that the primary monitor is not the leftmost, then it should display a warning to the user that this is not a fully supported setup, perhaps helpfully offering to automatically switch the primary monitor to the leftmost for the user. (Though this may be difficult to do with proprietary drivers that have their own monitor setup tools.)

The current situation is very clearly broken, because everything seems to be OK (no warnings) and yet this setup is not properly supported. This has nothing to do with design goals: this is objectively a bug.

Does no one else use multi-monitor setups with one monitor on top of the other?

I just gave unity a 'real try' on my primary work desktop, where I have two matched landscape-oriented monitors, one directly above the other, and not only is it pretty much impossible to click the ubuntu button (since it's hovering right on the border between my monitors), I also have TWO top menu bars duplicating the time and notification area buttons.

This is extremely confusing and a usability nightmare compared to simply letting me put the ubuntu button / launcher on the bottom or top.

Worse yet, any new window in this setup is created with the window decorator completely hidden beneath the menu bar on the bottom screen and resized to just 20-50 pixels tall.

Mark, I respect your design goals but they are simply not in line with the desktop PC experience. I think unity is fine for touch pads but for a significant portion of your userbase (everyone where I work has AT LEAST 2 monitors.. many have 3 or 4), these goals are NOT being well-realized.

I truly believe you're either going to have to allow these configuration choices or you'll have to create a separate ubuntu-desktop-pc package again.

I think it'd be helpful for this practical-usefulness of this bug to highlight cases where moving the launcher is critical, and either get suggested workarounds or hard answers from Mark (or other people representing the decisions) on 'expected behavior':

1. Synergy setups with a computer to the left of the primary display
 - this is the most arguable case for needing to move the launcher, imo. You cannot click on anything along the left edge of the screen OR make the panel appear since your 'left edge' spills off to the next monitor.
2. Dual-monitor setups with one screen to the left of the other
 - if the right monitor is your primary, the button and apps are all hard to click on quickly
3. Dual-monitor setups with one screen above the other
 - problems would match those described here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/668415/comments/66
4. Triple-monitor setups with one portrait screen and two landscape (or more monitors)
 - problems would match those described here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/668415/comments/66
5. Triple-monitor setups with three portrait-mode displays next to each other
 - problems similar to #1
6. Single-monitor setups in portrait mode
 - I don't think auto-hide is acceptable here.. the problem is the lost screen space

Mark or someone authoritative, I look forward to hearing your responses to each of these problematic conditions.

Dear Mark Shuttleworth, I humbly respect all you have done for the Ubuntu community. You have been the core of an extremely solid Linux based platform that to say is amazing is simply an understatement. But I have a problem. I run dual monitors. My main monitor is on the right. My monitors are also wide screen. What this means is my Unity bar defaults itself to the far left. If you had any idea of what my setup is like, you would understand the royal pain in the rear this is to use Unity in that situation. I use my 2nd monitor for displaying several things, such as email, a video surveillance feed, and often times a 2nd document that I'm working from on my 1st monitor. That being said, the amount of "mouse traffic" my 2nd monitor sees is very minimal since that monitor is basically a not-heavily-used display tool, however I HAVE to use it a lot because of Unity's stubbornness with defaulting to the far left and only the far left.

I would like to highlight what the user Tamale had to say above:

*******
Mark, I respect your design goals but they are simply not in line with the desktop PC experience. I think unity is fine for touch pads but for a significant portion of your userbase (everyone where I work has AT LEAST 2 monitors.. many have 3 or 4), these goals are NOT being well-realized.

I truly believe you're either going to have to allow these configuration choices or you'll have to create a separate ubuntu-desktop-pc package again.
*******

I cannot stress this enough. Mark. You truly need to open your eyes in this situation. There are lots of faithful users, like myself, running alternative desktop environments and/or Linux based distributions. Unity is a gorgeous, gorgeous desktop environment. But in its current state, it is only usable to a very sincere small amount of users.

Things. Must. Be. Changed. I hate to sound like this, but Tamale is dead-on. If Unity cannot be customized even to the simplest degree of moving the Unity bar to another monitor to suit that user's desktop, Unity will not fly nearly as high as the Ubuntu teams insists it will. I hate to see such a rock solid project not hit maximum potential because of "long term design goals" not fitting.

You and your team have done so much for this project, and I truly love Unity. But as far as I'm concerned, it's only usable on my laptop. Please listen to your users. Put the "long term design goal" argument to the side for now. We've listened, and we heard your case on why things won't change. But here's the catch... The users drive the product, and right now, the users are talking. But no listening is being done, as far as I can tell.

We all appreciate your time, and we all anticipate an uplifting answer.

Nothing is more annoying than an itch you cannot scratch.

I thought this itch was scatchable, just no one has taken the initiative to start to scratch it, what is preventing the fix?

This bug has been closed as "Won't Fix" and is unassigned. Nobody is working on it. Not only that, Mark Shuttleworth has said that it's not a bug, and that it's part of Unity's vision, and so it seems unlikely that any patches that do enable this behavior will be accepted.

A possible option is for the community to fork Unity and create a different version that is more customizable, but it's not something I would personally do, because it would mean constantly chasing and merging fixes from the official version.

My conclusion is that Unity is and will continue being a frustrating choice for multi-monitor desktop setups and for users of right-to-left languages. I do enjoy it on my English laptop, but it's frustrating to have to keep switching paradigms when I move to working on my desktop. I really hope to be able to run Unity everywhere.

"A possible option is for the community to fork Unity and create a different version that is more customizable, but it's not something I would personally do, because it would mean constantly chasing and merging fixes from the official version."

So the itch is scratchable, we just need to find someone who is dedicated enough.

Tal Liron: The lack of proper Right-to-Left full mirroring is a bug, it's bug #654988 ("Unity doesn't mirror its interface for RTL locales.") should really have been designed in from the start but didn't get done I think because of time constraints … there are RtL users in the design team.

IKT: Indeed; the lack of full RtL is a bug, whereas having a movable Launcher is a Wishlist request—there's nothing to prevent anyone from doing the design, R&D, the implementation or making it work in order to scratch an itch. *However*, designing and supporting a movable Launcher is beyond what the Canonical Unity Design Team, Desktop Experience team or testers can do within the next Ubuntu 11.10 cycle. The limited and valuable time that is available needs to be spent on firming up those elements that are part of the *default* experience first.

Ok, hoping that some are still reading answers to this bug I will drop a few lines here:

Two days ago I started a discussion on the Power User mailinglist (<email address hidden>). I hope that together we can come up with some solutions to the problem that Ubuntu Unity lacks anything like configurability. I want Unity to be more configurable and I want Canonical to listen to the users if they come up with such an issue.

Concerning, for instance, bug 733349, we got a user who wrote a patch which should -- in my opinion -- be integrated into Ubuntu by default. If it is against their design decision then ok: but one can still keep the default settings of the system to work according to their design decisions and on the other hand one can try to offer options to configure the system easily. This both can be done.

On the Power User List I am trying to convince the people that we need a trimmed down version of Ubuntu Tweak (or something like that) which will be integrated into the default installation as a part of the Gnome Control Panel. Thus one can integrate those options to configure Unity, which are currently found in CCSM, into the default installation (and one can thus include them in the Gnome Control Panel). In anyway I cannot understand why these options are only available via CCSM. The tool easily breaks Unity and additionally it makes no sense to offer options, which decide if the launcher "dodges windows" or "stays visible" all the time are only accessible by installing additional software.

So please join the discussion there. It seems that the larges part of the members of that list are on the side of those who want to make Unity more configurable. But the more voices the better. I want a real discussion and I hope we can thus convince the Unity developers to listen more to the users.

"I think the report actually meant that the launcher should be movable to
other edges of the screen. I'm afraid that won't work with our broader
design goals, so we won't implement that. We want the launcher always
close to the Ubuntu button.

 status wontfix

Mark"

This 100% makes sense as you would have to move the mouse to the left screen to enable the launcher then move the mouse to the right to click things on the menu.

Thus we need functionality to move the ubuntu button AND the launcher to the right side of the screen. The specific use case where this is required is if you have a screen to the left of your main screen. You are unable to move the mouse to the left screen to bring out the launcher, as the mouse goes onto the left screen.

The other alternative is to prevent any screen other than the default screen from being on the left side of the desktop.

+1, there should be an option to move the launcher.

I'm all for simplicity. But this is a pretty simple thing the user should be allowed to configure.

Also, sometimes when hitting the back button in Firefox, the launcher appears and you find yourself clicking on it instead. So I'm not sure it even makes sense to have it on the left by default.

>We want the launcher always
>close to the Ubuntu button.

Who is "we"? Apparently not Ubuntu's users, since there is apparently a huge numer of users asking for this feature - as the various comments and bugs marked duplicate shows.

Wasn't Ubuntu all about the users?

This really reminds me of Pidgin's stupid "We won't make the input text-field resizable, since it does not fit into our broader design goals" or Gnome's "We won't give you a GUI option to switch of the blinking cursor in a terminal, since non-blinking cursors confuse the user and does not fit into our broader design goals"

@Robin van Ee
Changing back to Invalid in NULL Project, since a non-Invalid status in NULL Project is not (ever) meaningful; see https://launchpad.net/null. (Please note that this has no bearing on the issues being discussed.)

Natty.......Is this a singular vision or a shared vision? The reason I ask is it appears more as a secret vision.

At least, there should be a way to select Ubuntu Classic as the default in the installation process, so people could be free to reject Unity.

Fernando, does Kubuntu offer KDE 3.5 as an option during the installation process? Do any major KDE distro's offer KDE 3.5 support anymore?

Most software venders will move on to newer software they have made unless there is a drastic reason why not to, this is the nature of the software business.

In the open source business you are free to continue to use the older software as long as you like, and if you don't like that it isn't supported anymore you are free to move to another distro which does support the software you want or even to go further and pay someone to support and update that older software.

I have had many issues with Unity, however many of those issues have been fixed in the next version simply because people like you and me put in requests with our issues.

My best advice in relation to your feature request is to please do submit bug reports and get involved in the community, that way we can continue to improve Unity and make it so you don't want to reject it.

thanks

@IKT
Let me ask this questions in a very special way: "Hello? Is someone there?"

Did you actually read the discussion on this launchpad page? This, here, is a filed bug which includes a request (or wish).

Being part of a open source community means to contribute? Well, then everybody IS contributing here. The moment they state their opinion they are contributing. The opinion should be important
When 112 users complain about a behaviour in the system it is very important that they state their opinion because normally developers should react to these complaints. Thus, everybody who states his opinion is important solely for the fact that (usually) his opinion, or his vote, should be an indicator for how critical a bug or requested feature is.
The problem is that this is not done here. There is no reaction to this (possibly because the most developers do not receive any notifications about this bug anymore).

There are two bugs/feature requests with a huge group of "affects me" voters. Both are completely ignored. Do not dare to tell anybody on this page to tell them that they should submit a bug report. If the content of the report is not to the liking of the Canonical design team or whichever Canonical team it will not be debated. That is the bitter truth in here. Do not dare to tell me something about a community.

I use now Unity simply as a normal user. I will not defend it anymore. I will not explain its behaviour to anyone anymore. And especially: I will not file bug reports. They do not want to hear different opinions coming from the community? Well, then seemingly they do not need the help of the community. They can pay some people now, to search for bugs.

Well, I filed a ton of bug reports for Unity not one of them was fixed (but many got confirmation from others). I believe Unity team is overworked - maybe there is to few of them. If this is the problem, maybe the solution would be to stop for a while and consider the future, ask for help or sth.

I have an idea how to solve this mess: KDE Plasma. I am starting my education on "Applied Informatics" this year. I need a pastime other than computer games. My thought: Why not to try to port Unity to KDE environment? The plasma interface has a very nice feature - lock-down of interface, so it cannot be customized, until unlocked. This single feature divides the interface into two very different modes: complete and zero customizability. When locked by default, the UX team can assume the "noob users" (no disrespect meant - just a quick phrase) won't destroy the plasma desktop by accident, yet the "power users" will have tools not available for traditional GNOME/Compiz desktop. But for this to happen, I would need to have support in form of all the "art and design". I don't want to make the stuff from scratch - I want to do a port, which means I would need to have all the stuff like proper gradients for panels, how thick the panels should be, etc. It would take a lot of time, I would need to learn a lot of stuff, but the effect is worthy. The KDE desktop is the single thing I miss in the "vanilla" Ubuntu.

s-roesgen, the comment I was responding to was a request to have gnome 2 added to the installation options, nothing to do with what you are suggesting.

This bug has been made "don't fix" and is ignored by the Unity team. However, it has been an important discussion forum for the (often frustrated) community of users!

And so, I'd like to point everyone to a relevant change in Unity coming for Oneiric: the "BFB" in the top left corner is moving into the launcher. More on this here:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/08/revamped-dash-lands-unity-2d/

This has lots of advantages in my view (no more clicking it by mistake when you are trying to click on the "File" menu of an app). But, the most important one for this "won't fix" bug is that it now makes more sense to be able to move the launcher other parts of the screen without breaking the association with the BFB. The whole shell structure could exist anywhere while staying 'unified'.

I don't know if there are plans to allow for this, but it's a move in the right direction for us.

I also want to point out that apparently Unity's "vision" is not so much a unified idea sprouting from Mark Shuttleworth's brain, but instead a product of ongoing usability research by hired 3rd party teams. This is good because it allows for evolution, but bad because it seems arbitrary. Our "won't fix" bug might end up getting fixed because some research intern point out the obvious issues that have been filling these 84 comments, not because a leader steps up and says "these guys are right."

The new design, as it appears on OMG!Ubuntu, makes it even harder to place the launcher elsewhere. In the current situation, you can make the launcher appear via the top left corner of a screen. In the new situation, the trigger point must have been removed. Otherwise you would get the launcher when you try to close an application, which is probably undesirable behavior.

Mark, and/or everyone at the UI team.

Imagine that I am a new home pc user, told by my friends that Ubuntu is great.

Most likely I am a current Windows user, and am used to the button being on the bottom.

I might be able to get behind the useability or feel of the Gnome 2 environment, if simply because I can put the button on the bottom.

Now I am using Unity. Nothing moves to where I want it. I can't make any changes to how I want it.

Also because I am not a programmer, I can't make a patch or change it by changing the code.

I am now alienated, and frustrated. The next person who asks about Ubuntu is going to here that I went back to Windows because of how awful the experience was.

The desktop experience MUST be flexible, or you will see a dramatic loss of users to Ubuntu...

I am only one voice, but I myself am writing this from Xubuntu, simply because of Unity.

My personal feelings aside (I absolutely hate Unity)...

It has always been the job of the designer to fit the wants and needs of the user, NOT the other way around.

If it where the other way around we would all be running terminal emulators, and there wouldn't be a gui... (most likely)

I am able to make changes to my linux world because I am an avid linux user, to the point that I could do everything I need to do in the cli. But the majority can not, and I feel a responsibility to speak up for the masses.

Anyone reading the posts on the net knows there are now a multitude (a vast one IMO) of users who are so frustrated with this "god aweful" user interface (not my description) that they are looking elsewhere.

If it is your intent to make Unity the desktop environment for everyone, and not just for netbooks and other unique devices, then Unity has sorely missed the mark, and should be seriously reworked.

I own a 10" netbook. I actually much prefer xfce or gnome 2, and even gnome 3 to Unity. Currently I am using XFCE4 on it, without problem.

In closing, I just want to say that we all need to look at other's points of view, and saying "you fix it" is never the answer.

And that's basically what you did Mark, you basically said, "you fix it, I won't..." (summed up ofcoarse)
-Dennis Andrew Gutowski Jr.
Owner/Operator Denny's Computers
http://www.dennypc.com

OK, practical problem: Lots of applications have a slender panel down the left hand side, e.g. Nautilus (the panel containing drives and shortcuts) and Epiphany (the panel containing folders). Dragging files or mail respectively towards that panel causes the unity launcher bar to pop out, obscuring the panel and severely degrading the useability of said apps in fullscreen mode. If the launcher bar must be on the left, for the sake of compatibility with said apps it must not pop out when dragging files, at least not as readily as it does now.

Personally I don't see why keeping the launcher bar and the ubuntu button close together means that the bar cannot be moved. Just move the button with the bar. However I'd understand it if you wanted to concentrate on getting core functionality working first. Unity is quite flaky at the moment, to put it mildly. Not a good time to be working on options. But sometime the option would be nice.

There are differences of opinion over this. To call the bug invalid is unconstitutional.

@leaf-2:

See my comment above re: the movement of the BFB from the Panel into the Launcher. It seems to me that the main reason the Launcher had to be stuck on the left was that the BFB was on the beginning of the Panel (which is also why flipping *everything* to the right seemed to be the only choice for right-to-left languages). That means that the Launcher was always locked in a 90-degree angle to the Panel, with the BFB as axis. A very severe limitation!

Now that the BFB is *in* the panel (on Oneiric), this limitation seems to have disappeared.

This whole discussion seems to be about folks expecting every one of their 'needs' or 'wishes' being fulfilled. No system, open source or otherwise, is going to meet the wishes of everyone.

Someone has to make a decision and it appears that Mark Shuttleworth(?) has made that decision. Get over it and either make a patch or get used to it, that's my opinion/feeling.

The designers of Ubuntu aren't stupid, they understand the laws of supply and demand, I am sure. If enough people don't like the position of the unity tool-bar and it becomes a problem with users leaving Ubuntu then they will change it back...just like when coke brought out "new coke" and everyone stopped buying it, forcing coke to bring back the "old coke". Market rules will dictate in the long run.

Also, for crying out loud folks, Ubuntu is free, you don't get all you want in paid software either, and you don't have to pay for this, so what's the whining for?

Personally, I don't like the Unity desktop, so I use the classic one....problem solved for me....I love Ubuntu...thanks to all the developers and community for making it.

@Mark....thanks for leading the ship, you're doing a great job.

Right now it looks like there are no designers. Just programmers making user interfaces blindly.

@magnes:

For what seems to be the first time ever in open source, Unity is actually being designed in conjunction with "usability studies," which involve a close look at the habits of a sampling of users interacting with the desktop. Statistics are gathered on things like where their mouse pointer moves and where they click, where they pause and where they spend time. This is a more scientific approach to usability than the community is used to. It doesn't mean there's no overall vision, but it does mean that the weight of a lot of design decisions ends up being external to any one person's opinion. Of course, you also look at statistics and not just the average: if you seem that half of the test sample exhibits one habit and the other exhibits the opposite habit, you need to take that into account in your design.

I don't think this is "blind," I think it's actually perceptive. The limitations of this approach are that you need to present the test sample users with an actually running desktop to play with. So, it takes a few iteration until things are perfected.

I definitely applaud the Unity team for this innovation, and hope other open source projects learn from it.

@paul:

Market rules and leadership notwithstanding, Launchpad is an integral part of the process of improving Ubuntu. Some of the complaints here are indeed over-the-top (people "threatening" to move to XFCE, oh noes!) but there are a few reasonable arguments, too. Everyone here wants Ubuntu to succeed.

The irony is that you are whining about our whining. If you don't agree with this effort, just get over it. :)

@Tal...yeah mate, you called me on that one! :)

When I marked this bug Invalid in NULL Project, I explained why that was correct. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/668415/comments/78.

It is meaningless for a bug in NULL Project to have non-Invalid status. Please click on "NULL Project" and read what it means before making changes to bugs assigned to it. If this bug is to be reopened, it should also be assigned to a project that corresponds to some real application or software development effort. This bug's Invalid status in NULL Project is *not* incorrect, because the statuses that represent this bug's real state are the statuses in unity and in Ubuntu, *not* the statuses in NULL Project.

This bug's current Won't Fix statuses in unity and in Ubuntu reflect that there is a difference of opinion; they are correct as well. (However, it is not *universally* the case that bugs where there is a difference of opinion should not be marked Invalid. Different projects use Won't Fix a bit differently from one another. In some projects, if there is a difference of opinion that the developers agree is reasonable, but they have nonetheless decided not just to make the requested change but also that the issue raised is *not* a bug, they may correctly mark the bug Invalid. See https://help.launchpad.net/Bugs/Statuses.)

Since the Ubuntu button is now contained in the physical launcher, are there any plans to revisit this bug? Moving the launcher to other portions of the screen without disconnecting the launcher and the Ubuntu button is now possible. I feel that locking the launcher to the left side of the screen is a bit restrictive and I think that users should be allowed to move the launcher. While I think that Unity has some rough spots that could use quite a bit of polish, I see great potential for it.

Mark, don't you think that it's quite ridicolous that Mac OS and Windows are less restrictive than Ubuntu Unity?

I agree with Alexander Wilms that I have more freedom on Mac OS and Windows user interface that I have on Unity.
The way that Unity developers are treating their users, is the same way that Apple and Microsoft do to their.
All my friends that uses Ubuntu, claims about Unity.

@ Dennyboot
If you hate Unity and have switched to Xubuntu, how is moving the Launcher going to do anything for you? Pick the distro/desktop enviro you like best. I'm assuming Xubuntu isn't perfect or you wouldn't be posting here. Nothing's perfect. So just accept the decision for now. =)

To everyone else: Mr. Shuttleworth has acknowledged that he has heard this request and said it's a Won't Fix. Maybe he'll change his mind in the future, maybe not. But if he does it will probably be based on Research that shows a reason to change it.

I originally wished for the Launcher to be moveable. But after using it on the left for a while I've found the intelligent hide behavior has made it a non-issue. I actually prefer it on the left now as long as it can dodge windows.

Make a choice, use Unity how it is or switch distros. But my advice is give the current status quo a chance with an open mind. Don't judge, just use. Maybe you'll change your mind, maybe you won't. I changed my mind.

I have trust that Shuttleworth is making good decisions based on research. So yield and try to give an honest chance and give it some time to mature.

Based on use, I have come to the realization that I like Unity better than any other desktop UI (Windows, Mac, or Linux). I'm sure others will develop the same affinity. But you got to let some preconceptions go and accept things for how they are. Your voice has been registered and acknowledged. So I suggest putting your energy in exploring the new desktop enviros that Linux is offering with an open mind and finding what you like and trying to use things in the new way. Although maybe an adjustment at first you might find you like it pretty well. This was my realization.

Sorry, but right now Windows 7 UI is much better than Unity (look at the launcher behavior in Windows 7 - it's perfect) and it looks like the "Research" is not worth much based by the reactions of users. Maybe Mr. Shuttleworth should change his designers or researchers because right now I (and probably many others - even on distrowatch Ubuntu is very close to losing it's first position) find Unity the worst enviroment (Android HC being the first to me, Windows 7 second, OSX third). It's also cacaphony of colours - like it was done by a kid without style - look how it's done in other enviroments. That is my opinion. I still use Ubuntu and Unity for now hoping for the best - and because I dislike the old style desktop (like Windows XP or Xubuntu) even more. But I think you are close to making even the most patient fans who WANT to like Unity very close to abandoning ship. How will it fix the bug #1?

I, personally, don't a single human being on the Earth that thinks that Unity is the best think they had found until now.
If there is any research about user interfaces, please, share with us the results, papers and every other artifact of this research.
Please Unity developers, don't be as ignorant as developers of Microsoft and Apple, please, hear us, it is for the sake of the Ubuntu Linux project that we are asking such a thing.
I know that from time to time new user's interface must be developed, but sometimes their concepts don't match user's expectations. As I can see, Unity is not the right direction in it's current form.

Well, Fernando, then let me be the first then. I heavily prefer Unity
over the Mac OS X and Windows 7 UIs, despite both having a movable
"launcher". I agree that the Unity Launcher sticking to the right isn't
always perfect (like with RTL languages or with a dual screen setup with
the left screen being the primary), but that's really secondary. For
most users, the current launcher covers it. It's fantastic!

If everything would happen based on what users would expect, there would
not be much innovation...

On 09/08/2011 03:05 PM, Fernando wrote:
> I, personally, don't a single human being on the Earth that thinks that Unity is the best think they had found until now.
> If there is any research about user interfaces, please, share with us the results, papers and every other artifact of this research.
> Please Unity developers, don't be as ignorant as developers of Microsoft and Apple, please, hear us, it is for the sake of the Ubuntu Linux project that we are asking such a thing.
> I know that from time to time new user's interface must be developed, but sometimes their concepts don't match user's expectations. As I can see, Unity is not the right direction in it's current form.
>

Maarten, I don't know you personally, that is what I was talking about.
And another thing that wish to remember is that here, we are not ordinary
users. Many people here are Computer Science students, application
developers and all other sort of technical expertise. So don't think that
there are only dumb people complaining. Even Linus Torvalds is unhappy with
the current situation of Linux desktop.
We are not here to TROLL Unity, but trying to make it better. The fact that
the launcher is fixed in the left side of the screen is only a single
complaint in middle of many that I hear.

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 10:16 AM, Maarten Kossen <<email address hidden>
> wrote:

> Well, Fernando, then let me be the first then. I heavily prefer Unity
> over the Mac OS X and Windows 7 UIs, despite both having a movable
> "launcher". I agree that the Unity Launcher sticking to the right isn't
> always perfect (like with RTL languages or with a dual screen setup with
> the left screen being the primary), but that's really secondary. For
> most users, the current launcher covers it. It's fantastic!
>
> If everything would happen based on what users would expect, there would
> not be much innovation...
>
> On 09/08/2011 03:05 PM, Fernando wrote:
> > I, personally, don't a single human being on the Earth that thinks that
> Unity is the best think they had found until now.
> > If there is any research about user interfaces, please, share with us the
> results, papers and every other artifact of this research.
> > Please Unity developers, don't be as ignorant as developers of Microsoft
> and Apple, please, hear us, it is for the sake of the Ubuntu Linux project
> that we are asking such a thing.
> > I know that from time to time new user's interface must be developed, but
> sometimes their concepts don't match user's expectations. As I can see,
> Unity is not the right direction in it's current form.
> >
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
> duplicate bug report (821156).
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668415
>
> Title:
> Movement of Unity launcher
>
> Status in NULL Project:
> Invalid
> Status in Unity:
> Won't Fix
> Status in Ubuntu:
> Won't Fix
>
> Bug description:
> Please consider this a possible feature request or wishlist.
>
> Now when Unity will be default desktop for 11.04 could you please
> consider to add option to configure Unity launcher placement. Add
> simple option to lock/unlock through right-click menu and drag
> launcher to desired location like left/right and bottom.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/null/+bug/668415/+subscriptions
>

--
Fernando

First of all, let me correct my previous post: with 'sticking to the
right' I naturally meant 'sticking to the left'.

Fernando: you are right, most Ubuntu users are power users. However,
what I think Canonical is trying to do is make Ubuntu more appealing to
non-technical users. I really think for this purpose Unity is way better
than the old Gnome2 desktop or the new Gnome shell. It's more appealing
to the eye, if offers a more streamlined experience and it's easy to get
started with.

On 09/08/2011 04:39 PM, Fernando wrote:
> Maarten, I don't know you personally, that is what I was talking about.
> And another thing that wish to remember is that here, we are not ordinary
> users. Many people here are Computer Science students, application
> developers and all other sort of technical expertise. So don't think that
> there are only dumb people complaining. Even Linus Torvalds is unhappy with
> the current situation of Linux desktop.
> We are not here to TROLL Unity, but trying to make it better. The fact that
> the launcher is fixed in the left side of the screen is only a single
> complaint in middle of many that I hear.
>
> On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 10:16 AM, Maarten Kossen<<email address hidden>
>> wrote:
>> Well, Fernando, then let me be the first then. I heavily prefer Unity
>> over the Mac OS X and Windows 7 UIs, despite both having a movable
>> "launcher". I agree that the Unity Launcher sticking to the right isn't
>> always perfect (like with RTL languages or with a dual screen setup with
>> the left screen being the primary), but that's really secondary. For
>> most users, the current launcher covers it. It's fantastic!
>>
>> If everything would happen based on what users would expect, there would
>> not be much innovation...
>>
>> On 09/08/2011 03:05 PM, Fernando wrote:
>>> I, personally, don't a single human being on the Earth that thinks that
>> Unity is the best think they had found until now.
>>> If there is any research about user interfaces, please, share with us the
>> results, papers and every other artifact of this research.
>>> Please Unity developers, don't be as ignorant as developers of Microsoft
>> and Apple, please, hear us, it is for the sake of the Ubuntu Linux project
>> that we are asking such a thing.
>>> I know that from time to time new user's interface must be developed, but
>> sometimes their concepts don't match user's expectations. As I can see,
>> Unity is not the right direction in it's current form.
>> --
>> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
>> duplicate bug report (821156).
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668415
>>
>> Title:
>> Movement of Unity launcher
>>
>> Status in NULL Project:
>> Invalid
>> Status in Unity:
>> Won't Fix
>> Status in Ubuntu:
>> Won't Fix
>>
>> Bug description:
>> Please consider this a possible feature request or wishlist.
>>
>> Now when Unity will be default desktop for 11.04 could you please
>> consider to add option to configure Unity launcher placement. Add
>> simple option to lock/unlock through right-click menu and drag
>> launcher to desired location like left/right and bottom.
>>
>> To manage notifications abou...

What people are trying to tell - here and on Mark Shuttleworth blog, I recommend reading the comments there - is that Ubuntu is very bad for non-technical users. I can confirm it after trying to teach three non-technical people using it. They were lost, while they done things without problem (and without me having to explain simple tasks for them) with old Ubuntu.
"It's more appealing to the eye" - is it, really? The cacaphony of colours on the launcher hurts my eyes, the dash has insanely huge icons, in my opinion it's very far from appealing. And like I said the main problem is that is very hard to get started with.

*In the first paragraph I meant that Unity not Ubuntu is very bad for non-technical users.

Make the words of Magnes mines. Non-technical users (and even technical)
have lots of trouble with Unity. I can say it by my own personal experience.
As I can see, here this Unity adventure is a personal desire of someone and
people should avoid putting their nose on it. It seems that no one will hear
us and things will continue to get worst. I'm really tired about this
situation. Every research of satisfaction around Unity that I have read
points many design failures.
I actually don't think that people in their majority are so dumb to need a
complete revamp of their user interface to be able to use it properly. Until
now, everybody has learned how to use Windows, MacOS, Gnome2, KDE3 and none
of these users interfaces are so strange to users as Gnome3 and Unity.
Ubuntu have lots of other problems that need to be adressed with top
priority (like device driver support, open source applications that don't
match it's proprietary counterparts, etc.). Don't think that an appealing
user interface is the main reason to address bug #1. In all my years of
experience with Linux, no single human being has complained with me that
they had problems to use Gnome2. That is not the case here with Unity:
everybody that I personally know, complains about it.
A Desktop manager in it's conception is only an application to help people
open windows and manage them, it is not the Enterprise Spaceship to be
commanded.

On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 3:34 AM, Magnes <email address hidden> wrote:

> *In the first paragraph I meant that Unity not Ubuntu is very bad for
> non-technical users.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
> duplicate bug report (821156).
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668415
>
> Title:
> Movement of Unity launcher
>
> Status in NULL Project:
> Invalid
> Status in Unity:
> Won't Fix
> Status in Ubuntu:
> Won't Fix
>
> Bug description:
> Please consider this a possible feature request or wishlist.
>
> Now when Unity will be default desktop for 11.04 could you please
> consider to add option to configure Unity launcher placement. Add
> simple option to lock/unlock through right-click menu and drag
> launcher to desired location like left/right and bottom.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/null/+bug/668415/+subscriptions
>

--
Fernando

As was stated earlier there is a particular problem in the multi monitor arrangement with the secondary monitor to the left. Mark identified that this is a case that actually needs consideration, and with the removal of the classic theme as a login option in the next version this should be given some serious consideration..

I still think that there is no reason to deny users the freedom to customize
their desktop.
For now, I suggest to allow users to put the launcher at any border of the
screen and to be able to enable/disable the auto-hide function.
I haven't tested Unity with multiple monitors, but I think that the global
menu will also be an issue.

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 11:35 AM, Nick Vincent <email address hidden>wrote:

> As was stated earlier there is a particular problem in the multi monitor
> arrangement with the secondary monitor to the left. Mark identified
> that this is a case that actually needs consideration, and with the
> removal of the classic theme as a login option in the next version this
> should be given some serious consideration..
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
> duplicate bug report (821156).
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668415
>
> Title:
> Movement of Unity launcher
>
> Status in NULL Project:
> Invalid
> Status in Unity:
> Won't Fix
> Status in Ubuntu:
> Won't Fix
>
> Bug description:
> Please consider this a possible feature request or wishlist.
>
> Now when Unity will be default desktop for 11.04 could you please
> consider to add option to configure Unity launcher placement. Add
> simple option to lock/unlock through right-click menu and drag
> launcher to desired location like left/right and bottom.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/null/+bug/668415/+subscriptions
>

--
Fernando

@nick-xrva

A GNOME2-like desktop *is* available in Oneiric, if you install the package "gnome-panel". This comes from the GNOME project, as they're also trying to give users an easier transition. However, from what I've seen so far, this "GNOME Classic" is very limited. The panels only mimic the GNOME2 look, and do not support panel applets.

So, if you install that and "gnome-shell" in Oneiric, you have the following login options:

* Unity
* Unity 2D
* GNOME Shell
* GNOME "Classic"

I think 4 options for is not bad! And this list is just for GNOME; you also have KDE, XFCE and LXDE desktops, which are also fully supported and easy to install in Ubuntu. All the people threatening to switch to other operating systems because of a few limitations in Unity really need to chill.

I should note that both "gnome-shell" and "gnome-panel" are very small installations! Since Ubuntu already is based on GNOME 3, the vast majority of the desktop is already there. The desktop shell is really a very small component compared to other parts of the desktop. Still, it's obviously very important and emotional. ;)

@Tal Liron
I currently imagine myself going to buy a new car and ask if they have got the model in black colour instead of white colour and if they have got different seats and perhaps even a more sophisticated navigation system.

I wonder what exactly I would say if they told me that they only have got white colour, one type of seats and one type of navigation system. I wonder how exactly I would react if they told me that they won't sell me any car without navigation system and that I can only buy this model. It would be really nice, even hilarious, if they even told me that I can go to a car mechanic to remove the navigation system but that they definitively will not sell me the car without the system.

If you now find this situation awkward, I really hope it makes you ponder the whole situation a little bit more thoroughly.

Most people here want more customization. When people go to buy a car nobody expects them to be car mechanics themselves or to visit a car mechanic after they bought a car just that they are able to make some personal customizations to their car. Everybody expects that the product offers some flexibility so that it can be fitted to the needs of the customer.

Now, can anybody tell me what exactly is different in the wold of computer technology? Why is the answer always to go and install some add-ons if the demand was for some simple flexibility and customization? The "go and fix it yourself" mentality does not belong in the 21st century, it did not even belong in the second half of the 20th century. The time that all cars have to be black and have the same set of features is over. So it is with computers. Even my old Grandpa would second this opinion, he prefers his Microsoft Windows bar to autohide and that though the default setting of Windows Vista is that the bad is always visible....

Addition: I am sorry, it should read
"... that the bar is always visible..."

Without adding more fuel to the flames, I will just say I would also appreciate if a placement option for the launcher and ubuntu button were available, even if the top-left remains the default.

I would like to say a few things:
1) There is a difference between "limiting" the options and "not having" them. We don't want to do as some other people, who say that the users don't know what they want, we have to tell them.

2) I suggest the following iteration:
 2.1.) take any OOTB experience - not a random one, though :-) (within realistic limits, of course - GUI design guidelines, dev resources, etc.)
 2.2.) implement it
 2.2.) synthesize(save) the experience in a configuration file (all the Unity configuration can be saved in a /some files, right?)
 2.3.) a poll is made where the users post their configuration file. A merge is made, the most common configurations are identified by name and proposed as a mainstream OOTF experience (I propose "Sparta" as the most widely used one - there can be such a thing as a GUI Democracy, right?)

 This can be repeated a number of times, until the "real" mainstream is attained.

3) My opinion on DE in general:
  3.1.) Component interaction as straightforward as possible - drag&drop, right click, etc.;

  3.2.) Component customization - there are so many common-sense things so difficult/impossible to get. Examples:
  - windows titlebar text font/size/color;
  - icon sizes/text/appearance in general - systray, taskbar, quicklaunch icons are so hard to customize, sometimes impossible;

 3.3.) Component integration - the most overlooked and missed one. Examples: wheel scroll on a power manager icon SHOULD do something (change the brightness, or the current power scheme, etc.); wheel scroll on a mixer icon SHOULD do something (change volume, change default output device, etc.). Anything that is on the screen SHOULD interact in some way with the user. Not the other way around.

 3.4.) DE INTEGRATED apps - system monitor, time/date/weather applet, taskbars, systrays should be part of the DE and not "just another app".
Stand-alone system monitors, time/date applets where you cannot change anything, taskbars with no possibility to change the colour of the text, or display only the text/only the icon should not be thought of as part of the DE itself. They're just "some apps".

There are so many things in current DEs that I think are not treated synergistically that I cannot stop asking myself every time I turn on my computer: why, oh why?

PS When can we see a systray where the size of EACH icon can be set independently?
PPS As long as we stick to current paradigm, a DE is incomplete without some gesture functionalities. Please see easystroke.

Please note that all these comments are my personal views and thought that I try to live with, it might be 100% irrelevant to current topic; I just felt I needed to say it and it seemed that here there was a good place.

This is very irritating.

In the time that this discussion already goes on, the position-freedom-feature could already have been implemented. twice.

even if it just would be a very sable hack, just doable for highly experienced 1337 users.

that's not the ubuntu style of listening-to-their-users i love(d) so much.

It's a shame.

Nico

for portrait mode on a widescreen (eg, 1080x1920) locking the panel to the left-hand side is a problem. IDEs, office suites and most apps steal pixels for scroll bars, notifications, docks, etc - at least 100 pixels, maybe 200, leaving you with 900ish pixels. the 50 that the side-panel requires means you're giving up 5% of your width, maybe 5 characters

the difference between 85 and 90 characters of width is huge

obviously, this isn't just ubuntu's problem. it's modern aspect ratios, it's apps that waste space on the display, it's our insistence on making everything a rectangle even if it means 90% of the space is wasted, it's developers and authors making their documents wide (i'm a guilty party here), it's facebook using a fixed width display. but getting religious about the panel location is particularly egregious - it effects every app, every web page, every document

fwiw, i'm actually 1200x1920, which is about the best that you can do these days (and it's getting harder and harder to find) and i had to sacrifice viewing angle to get it. i have gnome panel on the bottom of the screen, and have configured most of my apps to not use horizontal space for anything but the document. and i still run out of horizontal pixels regularly, eg 120 char width code, facebook, many web sites, some pdfs. if i was 1080 with unity's panel, i don't think i could do it - i'd have to switch to landscape mode and i'd be getting 45 or 50 lines of code on the screen instead of 90

Well, I installed Ubuntu 11.4 and my first reaction was "Ok, let me move this launcher down so that i can reach it easily" . Hell it can't move? this is ubuntu or what? why in the hell someone has to decide what is better and more convenient for me? I can bet 90% of users will want the Launcher down. not everyone will have the time to create a profile here to disagree with Mark to whom i am very thankful for the great job but shock he deliberately prevent people from choosing what they really want.

People shall be able to chose and how I dispose items on my screen shouldn't be a design decision but my preference.

@Mark Shuttleworth
My brain just don't support having the utility function on the left of my screen. It is 4 am here, I can't sleep, I'm having headache looking at my desktop, I'm obsessed about moving the launcher on the button or on the top.

Our brain isn't wired the same way, this is like forcing a right-handed guy to write with his left-hand and being confident that he will get used to it ... or make water the only legal drink since pops and beers can harm our health.
WHO TOOK THESE DECISION IN AN UBUNTU(=people's allegiances and relations with each others..) WORLD?

There is no way this is gonna work for me. Even windows (the whore) give you the option of placing object where you want

I agree with all you that this decision to force people accept unity
launcher at the left of the screen is an arbitrary decision and have no
argument that makes me believe it was a good choice.
They say that there were a research for finding the best position to the
launcher, but no one has shown me this research.
Let's start asking Unity developers, what is the difference between the
unity launcher at the left and right corners of the screen for example?
They consume the same amount of space.

On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 7:11 AM, nsamedjeu <email address hidden>wrote:

> @Mark Shuttleworth
> My brain just don't support having the utility function on the left of my
> screen. It is 4 am here, I can't sleep, I'm having headache looking at my
> desktop, I'm obsessed about moving the launcher on the button or on the
> top.
>
> Our brain isn't wired the same way, this is like forcing a right-handed
> guy to write with his left-hand and being confident that he will get used to
> it ... or make water the only legal drink since pops and beers can harm our
> health.
> WHO TOOK THESE DECISION IN AN UBUNTU(=people's allegiances and relations
> with each others..) WORLD?
>
> There is no way this is gonna work for me. Even windows (the whore)
> give you the option of placing object where you want
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
> duplicate bug report (821156).
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668415
>
> Title:
> Movement of Unity launcher
>
> Status in NULL Project:
> Invalid
> Status in Unity:
> Won't Fix
> Status in Ubuntu:
> Won't Fix
>
> Bug description:
> Please consider this a possible feature request or wishlist.
>
> Now when Unity will be default desktop for 11.04 could you please
> consider to add option to configure Unity launcher placement. Add
> simple option to lock/unlock through right-click menu and drag
> launcher to desired location like left/right and bottom.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/null/+bug/668415/+subscriptions
>

--
Fernando

Currently I am using a vertical auto-hide panel (as a quicklauncher) on the left side and a vertical panel (that includes the systray, taskmanager, and a few applets - kima, weather, clock, etc.) on the right side. I am actually using KDE3. Why ? Not because it looks better (it's a matter of taste) or because I "hate" gnome. It's simply because it lets me configure it according to most of my needs (ergonomical & aesthetical) in a very simple way.
For instance, try to change the orientation of the gnome panel from horizontal to vertical - big trouble. Why wouldn't I want to use the panel in vertical mode (especially nowadays when there are resolutions down to 700 and smth pixels on the vertical)? Why the gnome panel was not designed to support the vertical orientation? Total mistery to me.
 As long as the requirements I mentioned above in the post are not met, I stick to my opinion - it's not a DE, it's just a collection of apps.

Sigh! Oneiric made things worse for me -- the Launcher and Dash are now pushed always to the far left, no matter which monitor is primary. I guess this "fixes" some issues, but it makes it quite unusable in my multi-monitor setup.

Because I don't want to abandon Unity entirely (there's a lot to love about it), I'd like to suggest these workarounds for the Launcher/Dash, which are good enough for me, kinda.

Use DockbarX instead of the Launcher (and set the Launcher to autohide). DockbarX supports Unity quicklists! And of course is very configurable. The folk at WebUpd8 keep an up-to-date PPA for it:

https://launchpad.net/~nilarimogard/+archive/webupd8

Note that you want to launch "dockx" for the standalone dock (DockbarX can also work inside the AWN dock). Also, BigRZA made a nice Unity theme for it:

http://bigrza.deviantart.com/art/unite-11-04-theme-197980167

There are a few alternatives for the Dash, and all are available in the Ubuntu repositories: GNOME Do, Kupfer, Synapse, Launchy. My favorite is Synapse: it's minimal and looks good. Unfortunately, none of these support the Unity Lens feature.

I am posting this here because I know Mark is reading..

I have always been interested in linux ever since I downloaded root and boot floppies for kernel version 0.97 in the 90's. I have tried linux on and off over the years and always found it to be unstable, lacking support - at least until i found Ubuntu. I have been a Ubuntu supporter since version 7 because it was the first distro I loaded that no matter what kind of desktop I threw at it, it ALWAYS seemed to load no problem and it offered a great set of featured applications right out of the box (ever try that with Windows installs?). Versions up through 8 or 9 I could even load on older PC's..I had 8.04 running on a P-II 450MHZ machine and a 233Mhz bondi blue iMac Rev A - avoided having to throw that hardware in the trash. I also appreciated the corporate philosophy of wanting to make software freely available to all people.

Lately however, I have come to realize that with every new release support for older hardware is going away, increased graphic requirements and processing power are now a prerequisite..that's a sad thing to me because a lot of the software you are running like "openoffice" really doesn't need compositing and more advanced features. I've tried Xbuntu but I think a lot of users prefer a more polished interface..and gnome was just right..not too much..not too little...if you happened to have a GPU with good OpenGL support then you could have the eye candy, but otherwise it defaulted back to a usable generic system and that was great.

I have more than one netbook and I thought that the netbook remix launcher was really cool for that platform, big ol' clunky "fisher price" icons, great for people not used to a desktop too - and there, on such a small screen playing with the window controls makes sense. However I'm afraid that I just don't care for Unity on the desktop.

You are trying to simplify the desktop interface? How is Unity "simpler" than having three simple drop down menus at the top of the screen that say "Applications", "Places" and "Settings" ? How is hiding the standard close, minimize, maximize buttons until you mouse over them "simpler" ? How is replacing the application menu with a composited, compartmentalized display with a ton of expand/collapse/close window controls "simpler" ?

You are combining like the worst features of the windows vista start menu with the worst features of the OS X dock, and somehow the team believes that is an improvement? I used to recommend Ubuntu to ALL of my windows friends because it was RELIABLE (compared to windows) and the gnome desktop really WAS simpler than windows, very little learning curve. Now I can't really imagine anyone who is used to MS Windows being able to pick up how to navigate in Ubuntu without some serious tutoring help. You've just created the need to prompt first time users to go through an online training course.

Actually that's not a bad idea, if you want people to feel comfortable then be the first distro that offers to walk people through the application interface (ala - remote control style) when they log on for the first time.

I like unity on my netbook, but I am ...

What they did on Ubuntu with Unity is what here in Brazil peoples say that
someone had "defecate and sit on top".

On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 10:10 AM, elian <email address hidden> wrote:

> I am posting this here because I know Mark is reading..
>
> I have always been interested in linux ever since I downloaded root and
> boot floppies for kernel version 0.97 in the 90's. I have tried linux
> on and off over the years and always found it to be unstable, lacking
> support - at least until i found Ubuntu. I have been a Ubuntu supporter
> since version 7 because it was the first distro I loaded that no matter
> what kind of desktop I threw at it, it ALWAYS seemed to load no problem
> and it offered a great set of featured applications right out of the box
> (ever try that with Windows installs?). Versions up through 8 or 9 I
> could even load on older PC's..I had 8.04 running on a P-II 450MHZ
> machine and a 233Mhz bondi blue iMac Rev A - avoided having to throw
> that hardware in the trash. I also appreciated the corporate philosophy
> of wanting to make software freely available to all people.
>
> Lately however, I have come to realize that with every new release
> support for older hardware is going away, increased graphic requirements
> and processing power are now a prerequisite..that's a sad thing to me
> because a lot of the software you are running like "openoffice" really
> doesn't need compositing and more advanced features. I've tried Xbuntu
> but I think a lot of users prefer a more polished interface..and gnome
> was just right..not too much..not too little...if you happened to have a
> GPU with good OpenGL support then you could have the eye candy, but
> otherwise it defaulted back to a usable generic system and that was
> great.
>
> I have more than one netbook and I thought that the netbook remix
> launcher was really cool for that platform, big ol' clunky "fisher
> price" icons, great for people not used to a desktop too - and there,
> on such a small screen playing with the window controls makes sense.
> However I'm afraid that I just don't care for Unity on the desktop.
>
> You are trying to simplify the desktop interface? How is Unity
> "simpler" than having three simple drop down menus at the top of the
> screen that say "Applications", "Places" and "Settings" ? How is
> hiding the standard close, minimize, maximize buttons until you mouse
> over them "simpler" ? How is replacing the application menu with a
> composited, compartmentalized display with a ton of
> expand/collapse/close window controls "simpler" ?
>
> You are combining like the worst features of the windows vista start
> menu with the worst features of the OS X dock, and somehow the team
> believes that is an improvement? I used to recommend Ubuntu to ALL of
> my windows friends because it was RELIABLE (compared to windows) and the
> gnome desktop really WAS simpler than windows, very little learning
> curve. Now I can't really imagine anyone who is used to MS Windows
> being able to pick up how to navigate in Ubuntu without some serious
> tutoring help. You've just created the need to prompt first time users
> to go through an online trai...

This argument of keeping the launcher near the Ubuntu button is nonsense. The Ubuntu button already appears to be part of the launcher, so if I want to move the launcher to the bottom of the screen, I would *expect* the Ubuntu button to move down there with it, thus making a win-win. Having the launcher on the left side is annoying if you're using Autohide or Dodge settings because when you move your mouse to the left side of the screen, you often cause the launcher to pop up when you didn't want it to. It seems to me that the bottom is more ideal than the left. It gets in the way much less often and is the expected place to find it if you're moving from Windows.

is there a 'pro & contra' list?
i can't find my argument:
i've got a monitor on the left of the Ubuntu-VirtualMachine.
i can't move the mouse to the left, because i loose focus.

There is no pro & contra list, and Unity developers seems to be ignorant
about this problem.
They thought about a single use case and designed Unity to solve that single
use case.
People with other use cases and needs, must seek other desktop manager, like
KDE, Gnome2, XFCE or LXDE.

On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 7:31 AM, maletin <email address hidden> wrote:

> is there a 'pro & contra' list?
> i can't find my argument:
> i've got a monitor on the left of the Ubuntu-VirtualMachine.
> i can't move the mouse to the left, because i loose focus.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
> duplicate bug report (821156).
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668415
>
> Title:
> Movement of Unity launcher
>
> Status in NULL Project:
> Invalid
> Status in Unity:
> Won't Fix
> Status in Ubuntu:
> Won't Fix
>
> Bug description:
> Please consider this a possible feature request or wishlist.
>
> Now when Unity will be default desktop for 11.04 could you please
> consider to add option to configure Unity launcher placement. Add
> simple option to lock/unlock through right-click menu and drag
> launcher to desired location like left/right and bottom.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/null/+bug/668415/+subscriptions
>

--
Fernando

As a programmer I think it was a project error - if they didn't make the launcher with ability to move in the beginning now they will have a lot of work to do to fix it. As a programmer I prefer adding as many configurable options as I can in the very beginning of making a new project - I can hide most of them from the user if I think he/she won't need them. But they - maybe because of overwork or time limits - decided to not make it configurable practically making themselves much more work know (If they decide to fix it).

Hi all you complainers! ;)

I've created a detailed guide on how to achieve a decent workaround for this problem, by using DockbarX, Synapse and Unity's 2D Panel in Compiz:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=11368937

Now that It's been a year since i started using unity...
I got completely used to the launcher on the left.
I can use it fine, and i recognize the advantage of more usable screen space.
In contrast, I couldn't get used to Gnome 3 at all.

But I still don't like it and wish it was horizontal and on the bottom.

Everybody wants it to be customizable. Only Canonical developers are unable
to see it. That is very sad.

On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 1:50 PM, reduz <email address hidden> wrote:

> Now that It's been a year since i started using unity...
> I got completely used to the launcher on the left.
> I can use it fine, and i recognize the advantage of more usable screen
> space.
> In contrast, I couldn't get used to Gnome 3 at all.
>
> But I still don't like it and wish it was horizontal and on the bottom.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
> duplicate bug report (821156).
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668415
>
> Title:
> Movement of Unity launcher
>
> Status in NULL Project:
> Invalid
> Status in Unity:
> Won't Fix
> Status in Ubuntu:
> Won't Fix
>
> Bug description:
> Please consider this a possible feature request or wishlist.
>
> Now when Unity will be default desktop for 11.04 could you please
> consider to add option to configure Unity launcher placement. Add
> simple option to lock/unlock through right-click menu and drag
> launcher to desired location like left/right and bottom.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/null/+bug/668415/+subscriptions
>

--
Fernando

@Fernando:

I'd rather they get rid of the bugs first, but honestly.. Canonical devs needs to learn that 20 years of habit takes effort to change, specially when it makes you comfortable and productive, and even Apple keeps a sane level of customization on such aspects on OSX.

Zero configuration only really works well for new products..

What drives me crazy in this situation is that now, I'm forced to hear from
people that Ubuntu is a dirty shit since the introduction of Unity. It is
resource hungry, makes many PC that I won very slow and that is a very sad
situation.
Everything that I had done to promote Ubuntu in the last 2 years, I'm now
seeing go to the trash can.

On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 5:52 PM, reduz <email address hidden> wrote:

> @Fernando:
>
> I'd rather they get rid of the bugs first, but honestly.. Canonical devs
> needs to learn that 20 years of habit takes effort to change, specially
> when it makes you comfortable and productive, and even Apple keeps a
> sane level of customization on such aspects on OSX.
>
> Zero configuration only really works well for new products..
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
> duplicate bug report (821156).
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668415
>
> Title:
> Movement of Unity launcher
>
> Status in NULL Project:
> Invalid
> Status in Unity:
> Won't Fix
> Status in Ubuntu:
> Won't Fix
>
> Bug description:
> Please consider this a possible feature request or wishlist.
>
> Now when Unity will be default desktop for 11.04 could you please
> consider to add option to configure Unity launcher placement. Add
> simple option to lock/unlock through right-click menu and drag
> launcher to desired location like left/right and bottom.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/null/+bug/668415/+subscriptions
>

--
Fernando

It seems to me if Mark, or Canonical, is unwilling to make changes that users request, the he and the company will find him(it)self with happy OEM's and no users

My left-side monitor is an HDTV. I normally keep it (a) set to a different input and (b) turned off.

So, with 11.10, in order to launch an application I have to:

Turn on the HDTV
Select the computer as input source on the HDTV
Open the launcher and launch the application
Change the input back on the HDTV
Turn off the HDTV

For the love of all that is sane in user interface design, PLEASE RE-OPEN THIS BUG.

There is a fine line between "providing user-friendly defaults" and "taking away user control". This decision crosses over that line. Way, way over.

I have been using Ubutnu since Dapper. It would take a lot to force me to change distributions. But this will do it.

Sad, ain't it ? I have more and more the feeling that I'm heading straight to the wall with Ubuntu (and with Linux, in general, since Ubuntu is the best Linux distro, right?). Well, at least as a desktop environment.
Power consumption and management, version updates, driver integration, etc. these are important issues, too. As for the DE GUI, as long as we're stuck with this kind of issues and not taking a wholistic approach, I am very much afraid that Ubuntu's days are numbered.
 Please, Mark, don't do this to us, Ubuntu fans and users. Please, don't do this to yourself. Just steal some GUI designers from Microsoft, and make something new, something great. Or at least something that works.
I see the internet full of rants about this issue and about some other Ubuntu issues.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/why-ubuntu-1110-fills-me-with-rage/19103?tag=content;siu-container

Right now the launcher is tied to the left-bottom most monitor.

This was a design decision which had no real good answer. This is
something that we are looking at now with design for better
multi-monitor support.

Right now, if you have a monitor set to the left of your primary
display and you want the launcher on your primary, the only real
solution is to move the other monitor to the right. Sorry about that,
but we are working on it.

Hello everyone. I've opened a separate bug on this, in hopes of addressing the underlying issue:

Community engagement is broken: https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/882274

I want to point out there exists a non-official patch that makes the desired result of place the unity launcher on bottom of the screen.

http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/how-to-move-unity-launcher-to-bottom-of.html

There are minor bugs. One of them is the dash has to be always maximized.

It seems that Mark is putting Ubuntu community aside with this Unity.
The majority of users was comfortable with the older interface.
I don't know why they are so ignorant with us.

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 8:14 AM, Mark Shuttleworth <
<email address hidden>> wrote:

> ** Changed in: ayatana-design
> Status: New => Won't Fix
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
> duplicate bug report (821156).
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668415
>
> Title:
> Movement of Unity launcher
>
> Status in Ayatana Design:
> Won't Fix
> Status in NULL Project:
> Invalid
> Status in Unity:
> Won't Fix
> Status in Ubuntu:
> Won't Fix
>
> Bug description:
> Please consider this a possible feature request or wishlist.
>
> Now when Unity will be default desktop for 11.04 could you please
> consider to add option to configure Unity launcher placement. Add
> simple option to lock/unlock through right-click menu and drag
> launcher to desired location like left/right and bottom.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ayatana-design/+bug/668415/+subscriptions
>

--
Fernando

On 28/10/11 12:01, Fernando wrote:
> It seems that Mark is putting Ubuntu community aside with this Unity.

There are many community members who have contributed to Unity. There
are many who have said they love it, and some who have said it does not
work as well for them. There are lots of developers and lots of
designers working to improve it. Instead of complaining, please find a
constructive way to engage, or leave.

> The majority of users was comfortable with the older interface.

Change is coming regardless, best we be ahead of that curve, don't you
think?

> I don't know why they are so ignorant with us.

Disagreeing with you is not being ignorant of your needs or thoughts.

Mark

Have you counted how many requests to change Unity launcher position we have
here?
Have you read the following articles?
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTczOQ
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/73026.html

I can't find all the articles that I have read this year about how people
are feeling bad with this desktop changes, in time to answer you quickly.
But these are few of them, that I have found here.

Unity and Gnome 3 are in the same path, so I think that this issue should
apply to the second article.

I wish only to remember Mark, that I'm acting on the behalf of the Ubuntu
users that I represent here in my neighborhood, college and friends. They
are all unhappy with Unity. It is resource hungry, inflexible and brings me
many problem maintaining that.
When you say, " Instead of complaining, please find a constructive way to
engage, or leave." you are not considering that criticizing is a way to show
what is wrong. With this thought you leave us, with few options other than
"leave".
When you write "Status: New => Won't Fix" this makes me think that even that
I write a patch that fixes these issues and send them to you, it won't be
merged, because it's not your interest to change the look and feel that you
previously imagined.
It is a very sad situation.
Please read carefully the posts above, so you can get a better idea of what
is going on.

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 9:24 AM, Mark Shuttleworth <
<email address hidden>> wrote:

> On 28/10/11 12:01, Fernando wrote:
> > It seems that Mark is putting Ubuntu community aside with this Unity.
>
> There are many community members who have contributed to Unity. There
> are many who have said they love it, and some who have said it does not
> work as well for them. There are lots of developers and lots of
> designers working to improve it. Instead of complaining, please find a
> constructive way to engage, or leave.
>
> > The majority of users was comfortable with the older interface.
>
> Change is coming regardless, best we be ahead of that curve, don't you
> think?
>
> > I don't know why they are so ignorant with us.
>
> Disagreeing with you is not being ignorant of your needs or thoughts.
>
> Mark
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
> duplicate bug report (821156).
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668415
>
> Title:
> Movement of Unity launcher
>
> Status in Ayatana Design:
> Won't Fix
> Status in NULL Project:
> Invalid
> Status in Unity:
> Won't Fix
> Status in Ubuntu:
> Won't Fix
>
> Bug description:
> Please consider this a possible feature request or wishlist.
>
> Now when Unity will be default desktop for 11.04 could you please
> consider to add option to configure Unity launcher placement. Add
> simple option to lock/unlock through right-click menu and drag
> launcher to desired location like left/right and bottom.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ayatana-design/+bug/668415/+subscriptions
>

--
Fernando

@Mark

> Instead of complaining, please find a constructive way to engage, or leave.

This kind of attitude is not going to help you fix bug #1. A *lot* of users *are* leaving right now because of your recent discutable choices (forking GNOME mainly).

There were quite a few very constructive comments on this bug report, and they were all ignored, which, in turn, generated more non-construcitve comments (mine included).

Please open your eyes: you're making a big mistake with this whole close-minded attitude, not just with locking the movement of the unity launcher.

I hope my comment is not too harsh as i'm just trying to help Ubuntu go back on the right track, with all the respect I have for all you did to help the linux community in general.

Adding a comment here IS a way of getting engaged. I had to perform a clean Ubuntu install the other day and the last screen of the slideshow says something on the lines of "With thousands of customization options Ubuntu can be tailored to suit everybody's needs". Here people are asking for an added OPTION, remember, nobody is trying to force people to go back to bottom-screen bars if they don't want it. Some people have vertical screens, some have a second monitor on their left side, some other just prefer the old regular look. This is the kind ofthings Ubuntu should be about - providing a usable enviroment for everyone. We shouldn't even be explaining this! Please, please, please reconsider your stance on this.

Em 28-10-2011 10:09, Fernando escreveu:
> When you write "Status: New => Won't Fix" this makes me think that even that
> I write a patch that fixes these issues and send them to you, it won't be
> merged, because it's not your interest to change the look and feel that you
> previously imagined.
This is exactly what happened in bug #733349 (I've added a new option,
the bug was marked as "won't fix" and the merge proposal was rejected).

Very sad this.
I would recommend Mark to get a laptop with Ubuntu installed, and start
walking through the street of some capital of the world (like London, New
York, São Paulo, Tokio ...) and ask people to do basic things in this and
get their opinions about their experience. I'm pretty sure that people will
not be comfortable with Unity, specially people that usually uses Windows.
Recently I've read that Ubuntu laptops will be offered in China (
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/28/dell_canonical_ubuntu_china_pcs/).
Given the current situation, I'm pretty sure that it won't go further, like
the past initiatives around this. The reason for that is that people gets
scared about the user interface.
I have lots of experience about this. I had installed Linux for many people
and they, at some point accepted gnome 2 interface. When Ubuntu updated to
11.04 and Unity came as the default desktop environment, many called me that
they were confused, they could find their applications menus, that bar that
riding and showing is very annoying and every other sort of complaints that
many of us already heard in our daily lives.
What I'm saying above is not my personal opinion, because I personally can
use only Open Box with a terminal and a browser and it is enough to me. But
people normal people (Lawyers, Teachers, Secretaries, Doctors, Nurses,
Salesman ...) can't interact with the computer in the same way as I
(Computer science student).
If Mark want us all to go to hell and leave him in peace, then we should
consider our options.
It is pretty sad this, because at some point, we all had contributed a
little to bring Ubuntu to it's current stage.
Now, we receive that: top down decisions that don't matches the needs of
many of us.
I really can't understand the advantages of Unity. I had really tried that,
but I couldn't.

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Marco Biscaro
<email address hidden>wrote:

> Em 28-10-2011 10:09, Fernando escreveu:
> > When you write "Status: New => Won't Fix" this makes me think that even
> that
> > I write a patch that fixes these issues and send them to you, it won't be
> > merged, because it's not your interest to change the look and feel that
> you
> > previously imagined.
> This is exactly what happened in bug #733349 (I've added a new option,
> the bug was marked as "won't fix" and the merge proposal was rejected).
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
> duplicate bug report (821156).
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668415
>
> Title:
> Movement of Unity launcher
>
> Status in Ayatana Design:
> Won't Fix
> Status in NULL Project:
> Invalid
> Status in Unity:
> Won't Fix
> Status in Ubuntu:
> Won't Fix
>
> Bug description:
> Please consider this a possible feature request or wishlist.
>
> Now when Unity will be default desktop for 11.04 could you please
> consider to add option to configure Unity launcher placement. Add
> simple option to lock/unlock through right-click menu and drag
> launcher to desired location like left/right and bottom.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ayatana-design/+bug/668415/+subscriptions
>

--...

I have marked this bug as "also affects me", because of the cited annoyances in Unity.
Therefore, I have been receiving notifications of the comments here.
And man, it's been truly painful to watch the "get the hell out leave my vision alone" atitude from Mark, hence people here are not asking for "change", but rather for "options".
That's really really really sad. =(

I think that this article from ZDnet summarizes our feelings:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/why-ubuntu-1110-fills-me-with-rage/19103

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 1:30 PM, DIego Ponciano
<email address hidden>wrote:

> I have marked this bug as "also affects me", because of the cited
> annoyances in Unity.
> Therefore, I have been receiving notifications of the comments here.
> And man, it's been truly painful to watch the "get the hell out leave my
> vision alone" atitude from Mark, hence people here are not asking for
> "change", but rather for "options".
> That's really really really sad. =(
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
> duplicate bug report (821156).
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668415
>
> Title:
> Movement of Unity launcher
>
> Status in Ayatana Design:
> Won't Fix
> Status in NULL Project:
> Invalid
> Status in Unity:
> Won't Fix
> Status in Ubuntu:
> Won't Fix
>
> Bug description:
> Please consider this a possible feature request or wishlist.
>
> Now when Unity will be default desktop for 11.04 could you please
> consider to add option to configure Unity launcher placement. Add
> simple option to lock/unlock through right-click menu and drag
> launcher to desired location like left/right and bottom.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ayatana-design/+bug/668415/+subscriptions
>

--
Fernando

> Instead of complaining, please find a constructive way to engage, or leave.

... I'm sorry, but how many more constructive opinions are needed to you understand what power users, the ones that made Ubuntu popular (recommending to friends, etc) really want?

People are already porting Launcher's behavior to go to the bottom ( http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/how-to-move-unity-launcher-to-bottom-of.html ), why this can't just be official?

This kind of reaction reminds me when SONY removed Linux support from all PS3s. The same thing is happening: nobody will listen users and we will be left trying to hack and port things to what we want (just what happened to the PS3).

:(

On the particular issue of not having the option to move the Unity launcher to some other part of the screen, I believe there is some sort of cognitive dissonance from everybody.

For users complaining about not being able to move the launcher, I believe that if you like Unity (like myself) this is not such a big issue, the whole Unity experience cannot depend on just one single feature, the position of the launcher. And if you don't like the Unity experience as a whole you will move away despite the launcher being movable, to any of the excellent options that we have within Ubuntu or somewhere else to the free software world.

On the Unity design team, I also see stubbornness. Every other application dock mechanism that I know (avant, docky, the one in MAC OS, the ones in Windows) can be placed anywhere in the screen that the user wants, and it does not seem such a difficult to implement feature that will increase development so much as to discard it, as all the other docks seem to show.

What we are complaining is more than Unity launcher problem.
Maybe the topic could have reached out its bounds, but I think that all the
complaints here are valid and marks the feelings that Unity introduction put
in the hearts of it's users.
There are many issues that must be addressed in order to Unity be
acceptable.
I wish so much that everybody read this article:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/why-ubuntu-1110-fills-me-with-rage/19103
I've just found it to be my own words. You can also consider that it I that
wrote that.

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 2:20 PM, Walter Garcia-Fontes <<email address hidden>
> wrote:

> On the particular issue of not having the option to move the Unity
> launcher to some other part of the screen, I believe there is some sort
> of cognitive dissonance from everybody.
>
> For users complaining about not being able to move the launcher, I
> believe that if you like Unity (like myself) this is not such a big
> issue, the whole Unity experience cannot depend on just one single
> feature, the position of the launcher. And if you don't like the Unity
> experience as a whole you will move away despite the launcher being
> movable, to any of the excellent options that we have within Ubuntu or
> somewhere else to the free software world.
>
> On the Unity design team, I also see stubbornness. Every other
> application dock mechanism that I know (avant, docky, the one in MAC OS,
> the ones in Windows) can be placed anywhere in the screen that the user
> wants, and it does not seem such a difficult to implement feature that
> will increase development so much as to discard it, as all the other
> docks seem to show.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
> duplicate bug report (821156).
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668415
>
> Title:
> Movement of Unity launcher
>
> Status in Ayatana Design:
> Won't Fix
> Status in NULL Project:
> Invalid
> Status in Unity:
> Won't Fix
> Status in Ubuntu:
> Won't Fix
>
> Bug description:
> Please consider this a possible feature request or wishlist.
>
> Now when Unity will be default desktop for 11.04 could you please
> consider to add option to configure Unity launcher placement. Add
> simple option to lock/unlock through right-click menu and drag
> launcher to desired location like left/right and bottom.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ayatana-design/+bug/668415/+subscriptions
>

--
Fernando

After reading the first lines of the article I nearly skipped it and thought it was only written from a much too narrow, geeky perspective. But I am glad I continued reading because all the things the author writes are really, really true. He definitively hits the mark. So thanks for mentioning the article. I can recommend it to everybody else, too.

Nevertheless, concerning the way how the whole discussed has developed so far, I suppose we will again hear that the opinions of other people are wrong and that the decisions made in the ayatana team are right and that nothing will change at all.

On 28/10/11 16:10, Fernando wrote:
> I would recommend Mark to get a laptop with Ubuntu installed, and start
> walking through the street of some capital of the world (like London, New
> York, São Paulo, Tokio ...) and ask people to do basic things in this and
> get their opinions about their experience. I'm pretty sure that people will
> not be comfortable with Unity, specially people that usually uses Windows.

This is exactly what we do, every month. We have 10 people who don't
know Ubuntu sit down and try to achieve some key tasks. The sessions are
usually videotaped, and we observe and ask a lot of questions. So I can
definitively tell you that people are more successful on those tasks
with 11.10 than they were with 11.04, and that was better than 10.10.

I don't get everything I want with Ubuntu. Neither will you, or anybody
else. That's the nature of it. To make this into a celebrity issue is
simply wasteful. It really isn't worth it.

This is not a contest of wills. This is not about forcing one persons
idea over another. This is about measuring what works for people off the
street, just as you describe, and deciding to focus on those things done
that way. For every option we add, we add a burden for every single
user. The bar is high, and this issue simply does not get over the bar.

There is a substantial constructive community that is actively building
ubuntu and unity every day. You can choose whether you want to be part
of that, or to shoot from the sidelines. What you choose says a lot more
about you than it does about me or anybody else in the project.

Mark

On 28/10/11 17:18, Vitor Lamas Gatti wrote:
> ... I'm sorry, but how many more constructive opinions are needed to
> you understand what power users, the ones that made Ubuntu popular
> (recommending to friends, etc) really want?

As it happens, we have a concrete program of review of what power users
try to do, and how we can make all of those things smoother. It turns
out that power users are much more concerned about keyboard shortcuts
than the position of the launcher. My favourite comment was from one
person who said 'I'm a power user, I do everything with the mouse', and
then turned out to know nothing at all about Linux.

So.

Rather than claim that *your* preference is reflective of all power
users, figure out:

 * how you would define power user
 * how you would find an unbiased sample of them
 * how you would test whether they have natural preferences or natural
aversions
 * how best to present those findings

That's hard work, but it would turn your personal preference into a
matter of substantive evidence, and thus make a far more compelling case.

This is a slow, painful process, but it's how we make decisions -
evidence based design. Showing up here and voting for your preference is
not the right way to make these decisions, period. Think about that, and
if you want to make a difference, start doing it properly.

> People are already porting Launcher's behavior to go to the bottom (
> http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/how-to-move-unity-launcher-to-bottom-
> of.html ), why this can't just be official?

Because every option comes at a cost, and the cost of this one is too high.

> This kind of reaction reminds me when SONY removed Linux support from
> all PS3s. The same thing is happening: nobody will listen users and we
> will be left trying to hack and port things to what we want (just what
> happened to the PS3). :(

Be my guest. I admire and respect the fact that you can make free
software do exactly what you want - that's precisely what I set out to
support in founding Ubuntu. What I did not set out to found was a
project which pandered to the needs of a few, at the cost to the many.
Especially when the few can perfectly well help themselves, and the many
cannot.

Mark

On 28/10/11 17:20, Walter Garcia-Fontes wrote:
> On the Unity design team, I also see stubbornness. Every other
> application dock mechanism that I know (avant, docky, the one in MAC OS,
> the ones in Windows) can be placed anywhere in the screen that the user
> wants,

Is that true of the iPad springboard and the Android favourites? I don't
believe it is. Change is coming to the desktop whether we like it or
not. Better for us, and for free software, to be ahead of the curve on
those changes, than behind. This is an opportunity, not a threat.

Mark

> This is not a contest of wills. This is not about forcing one persons
> idea over another.
This is what it looks like. Every operating system except ubuntu lets
you change the position of the launcher, dock or task bar. This is a
very basic option. There is no good reason to take this decision away
from users. Originally you said that it was to keep the launcher near
the ubuntu button. Now the button is on the launcher, and you still
refuse to budge an inch.
> This is about measuring what works for people off the
> street, just as you describe, and deciding to focus on those things done
> that way. For every option we add, we add a burden for every single
> user.
No. Most options aren't even accessible without installing CCSM. The
sort of user who finds options 'burdensome' need not install CCSM -
probably doesn't even know about it! How will adding one more very
standard and reasonable option to the CCSM unity plugin burden anyone?

> What I did not set out to found was a
> project which pandered to the needs of a few, at the cost to the many.
> Especially when the few can perfectly well help themselves, and the many
> cannot.

If you think everyone commenting on this bug is a 'power user' or programmer etc., you are very much mistaken. I can't 'help myself' by writing a patch or anything like this. I can just about switch to another distro, as long as the installer doesn't ask me too many difficult questions. I am a normal user who got a launchpad account specifically to register my feelings about this matter. Looking back, I can see this was pointless. Still, I hear that Mint has a nice easy installer.

This is a very disastrous situation, because everyone is complaining that
Unity have serious usability issues.
I wish so much that Mark read the Jason Perlow wrote about Unity (
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/why-ubuntu-1110-fills-me-with-rage/19103).
It summarizes everything we are complaining about.
It is not that we are trying to destroy Ubuntu. It is the other side of the
thing: we are here, investing our time to try make Ubuntu better and makes
it shine once more, as the best Linux distro ever released.
But if irritating little things are present on the desktop experience,
people will hate Ubuntu.
Think of this as if you are going to date Catherine Zeta-Jones and she is
bed smelling. Despite she is a pretty beautiful woman, many people would
prefer another girl that at least don't kill his nose.

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 11:38 PM, Sam Frances <email address hidden>wrote:

> > What I did not set out to found was a
> > project which pandered to the needs of a few, at the cost to the many.
> > Especially when the few can perfectly well help themselves, and the many
> > cannot.
>
> If you think everyone commenting on this bug is a 'power user' or
> programmer etc., you are very much mistaken. I can't 'help myself' by
> writing a patch or anything like this. I can just about switch to
> another distro, as long as the installer doesn't ask me too many
> difficult questions. I am a normal user who got a launchpad account
> specifically to register my feelings about this matter. Looking back, I
> can see this was pointless. Still, I hear that Mint has a nice easy
> installer.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
> duplicate bug report (821156).
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668415
>
> Title:
> Movement of Unity launcher
>
> Status in Ayatana Design:
> Won't Fix
> Status in NULL Project:
> Invalid
> Status in Unity:
> Won't Fix
> Status in Ubuntu:
> Won't Fix
>
> Bug description:
> Please consider this a possible feature request or wishlist.
>
> Now when Unity will be default desktop for 11.04 could you please
> consider to add option to configure Unity launcher placement. Add
> simple option to lock/unlock through right-click menu and drag
> launcher to desired location like left/right and bottom.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ayatana-design/+bug/668415/+subscriptions
>

--
Fernando

@Fernando

I nominate your statement as Quote of the Year in free software:

"Think of this as if you are going to date Catherine Zeta-Jones and she is bed smelling. Despite she is a pretty beautiful woman, many people would prefer another girl that at least don't kill his nose."

Thank you for making my day bright. :)

On 28/10/11 17:20, Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl) wrote:
>Is that true of the iPad springboard and the Android favourites? I don't
>believe it is. Change is coming to the desktop whether we like it or
>not. Better for us, and for free software, to be ahead of the curve on
>hose changes, than behind. This is an opportunity, not a threat.

I don't know about the iPad, but for Android for sure people are
doing a lot of alternative configurations of the desktop. In any case,
do you really believe change will be stopped because the desktop is
made more configurable?

I insist, I believe the position of the launcher is a very minor point, both
from the point of view of users, none of the new Unity users that I met
have asked me to change the position, but this is just my experience,
and from the Unity design team, the default position can be on the left,
but the Unity design will not be broken if there is a tweak to move it.
The autohide feature makes the launcher invisible and the Unity experience
and design is not broken without it, as the transparency makes the top
bar also almost invisible, but there is much more in Unity than the launcher
and the top bar.

If you all do not mind, I want to answer to the request of Mr Shuttleworth to define the term "power user" and will then elaborate on my perspective on the term Power User.

Wikipedia:
A power user is a user of a personal computer who has the ability to use advanced features of programs which are beyond the abilities of "normal" users, but is not necessarily capable of programming and system administration. In enterprise software systems such as Oracle or SAP, this title may go to an individual who is not a programmer, but who is a specialist in a transaction or a business process. The "Super User" in enterprise programs (SAP, Oracle) often refers to an individual who is an expert in a module or process within the enterprise system.

http://www.webopedia.com:
A sophisticated user of personal computers. A power user is typically someone who has considerable experience with computers and utilizes the most advanced features of applications.

http://www.techterms.com (excerpt)
"Power users [...] require top-of-the-line machines that are optimized for their work purposes. Power users include video-editing professionals, high-end graphic designers, audio producers, and those who use their computers for scientific research. Professional gamers (yes, there is such a thing) also fall under this category. [...]"

So now that we have some definitions I suppose we can go on, can't we?

All in all, these definitions state that one does not necessarily need to have programming skills or be a system administrator. But one knows how to use special software and how to use the more advanced features of the operating system and of an application. This then would mean that a Power User is anybody who does not use his PC only for "checking e-mails", "writing text documents" and "searching/browsing the internet". A power user is somebody who uses advanced and/or special applications, who knows where to find certain options in the operating system, who knows how to modify the actions triggered by a left or right mouseclick, who knew (in Widnows or Gnome 2) how to modify the taskbar so that it does autohide etc.... A power user is somebody who has a certain workflow and knows what he want and expects from an operating system. Somebody with experience, somebody who has modified his workflow over many years so that he knows now exactly what he wants. (Or what she wants)

What Unity does: it breaks with old paradigms of the operating systems known. This is certainly not always bad. But even Windows 8 will have a legacy mode to get back to the old desktop one knows.

That is the special issue here. Being a Power User is simply being able to customize the system, so that the OS can be fitted to your expectations, to your daily workflow. Currently Ubuntu is NOT for Power Users. Because Ubuntu/Unity makes the user fit to Unity's workflow, not vice versa.

Your favourite, Mr Shuttleworth, was the user who preferred the mouse? Maybe this user was indeed no Power User, especially if he did not know anything about the options of the operating system.
Still, being a Power User is not being somebody who uses the Keyboard and preferring the keyboard over the mouse. I cons...

I think that for now, since Mr Shuttleworth is trying to make our lives
miserable, we should consider doing a "sudo apt-get install xfce4" and make
that our default desktop. This follows what our dear Linus Torvalds is doing
on his own desktop: he gave up to use KDE and Gnome3 because their bad taste
of what a desktop should be. Since Unity and Gnome3 follows the same
orientation (to think that users are dumb enough to use a regular desktop
manager) we could consider them the same.

On Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 10:46 AM, SRoesgen <email address hidden>wrote:

> If you all do not mind, I want to answer to the request of Mr
> Shuttleworth to define the term "power user" and will then elaborate on
> my perspective on the term Power User.
>
> Wikipedia:
> A power user is a user of a personal computer who has the ability to use
> advanced features of programs which are beyond the abilities of "normal"
> users, but is not necessarily capable of programming and system
> administration. In enterprise software systems such as Oracle or SAP, this
> title may go to an individual who is not a programmer, but who is a
> specialist in a transaction or a business process. The "Super User" in
> enterprise programs (SAP, Oracle) often refers to an individual who is an
> expert in a module or process within the enterprise system.
>
> http://www.webopedia.com:
> A sophisticated user of personal computers. A power user is typically
> someone who has considerable experience with computers and utilizes the most
> advanced features of applications.
>
> http://www.techterms.com (excerpt)
> "Power users [...] require top-of-the-line machines that are optimized for
> their work purposes. Power users include video-editing professionals,
> high-end graphic designers, audio producers, and those who use their
> computers for scientific research. Professional gamers (yes, there is such a
> thing) also fall under this category. [...]"
>
>
> So now that we have some definitions I suppose we can go on, can't we?
>
> All in all, these definitions state that one does not necessarily need
> to have programming skills or be a system administrator. But one knows
> how to use special software and how to use the more advanced features of
> the operating system and of an application. This then would mean that a
> Power User is anybody who does not use his PC only for "checking
> e-mails", "writing text documents" and "searching/browsing the
> internet". A power user is somebody who uses advanced and/or special
> applications, who knows where to find certain options in the operating
> system, who knows how to modify the actions triggered by a left or right
> mouseclick, who knew (in Widnows or Gnome 2) how to modify the taskbar
> so that it does autohide etc.... A power user is somebody who has a
> certain workflow and knows what he want and expects from an operating
> system. Somebody with experience, somebody who has modified his workflow
> over many years so that he knows now exactly what he wants. (Or what she
> wants)
>
> What Unity does: it breaks with old paradigms of the operating systems
> known. This is certainly not always bad. But even Windows 8 will have a
> legacy mode t...

@Fernando and others interested in migrating to Xfce4
Generally speaking, "sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop" is a preferable way to get the Xfce4 desktop environment on an Ubuntu system.

I just want to point out, that decision to go for XFCE without checking out current (4.7) KDE is not a most sensible one. Linus gave up KDE 4 because the development 4.0 version was picked up as a stable one by so many distributions. 4.0 was never supposed to be released "into the wild". This situation pictures two problems:
1. Give every complex software time to mature and let it grow all planned features before giving it a deciding tryout.
2. Even if the software was lost for you, give it another chance once in a while.
Seriously - KDE SC is an amazing piece of software now. I wish Ubuntu adopted KDE as its main desktop environment. I know its much work, but I wish it nevertheless.

Just install the 'gnome-shell' package for a 'Gnome' option at login. It has a far superior user experience compared to Unity in my opinion and it has the added benefit of being community driven as opposed to ego driven. I don't know where Canonical is getting their usability testers, but there is no way anyone can claim positive productivity results by limiting choice and flexibility. Every organization makes mistakes and when compared to how much good Canonical has done with Linux this is inconsequential. I only hope that it realizes the mistake before too much effort is wasted and the "changes" coming that Mark is talking about are past. Tablets are all fun and well, but I thought Ubuntu was about changing the computing experience. Instead it appears Canonical is chasing the latest fad in gadgetry.

Jim, GNOME is ego driven, too, I am afraid to say. They limit choice and flexibility as well. Power user really should go for KDE right now, as no other environment gives them as much power.

I think that after this all, I'm going back to the good and old terminal.

2011/10/31 Marek Paśnikowski <email address hidden>

> Jim, GNOME is ego driven, too, I am afraid to say. They limit choice and
> flexibility as well. Power user really should go for KDE right now, as
> no other environment gives them as much power.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
> duplicate bug report (821156).
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668415
>
> Title:
> Movement of Unity launcher
>
> Status in Ayatana Design:
> Won't Fix
> Status in NULL Project:
> Invalid
> Status in Unity:
> Won't Fix
> Status in Ubuntu:
> Won't Fix
>
> Bug description:
> Please consider this a possible feature request or wishlist.
>
> Now when Unity will be default desktop for 11.04 could you please
> consider to add option to configure Unity launcher placement. Add
> simple option to lock/unlock through right-click menu and drag
> launcher to desired location like left/right and bottom.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ayatana-design/+bug/668415/+subscriptions
>

--
Fernando

Since Unity I use terminal to launch application because it's faster than clicking the Ubuntu logo and waiting for it to display the confusing panel where I have to write down the name of the app anyway.

Ubuntu has been a force for Good in my life: installation is a breeze,
usage is a joy and how to's are a plenty. Unity, in my opinion, is a step
in the right direction for the Linux desktop. Yes it frustrates me that I
cannot move the Unity bar in my two-screen setup. But the Unity team has
chosen different priorities, based on user research and what they think
will have the best cost/benefit ratio for all current and potential users.
So be it, they build, they invest, they decide. A feature request is just
that, a request. Preferably a polite request and definitely not a
demand! If your life has become a dark pit filled suffering and frustration
because of the unity bar issue then why not invest some time and effort in
fixing it yourself? I choose to accept this minor annoyance because at the
bottom line Ubuntu works great for me and Unity shows a lot of promise,
stick with this people, it's not finished nor perfect but it's going the
right way!

@Mark Thank you, the people at Canonical and of course the upstream folks
for putting together such a great desktop system that I use with pleasure
everyday!

Mathijs

On 1 November 2011 08:48, Magnes <email address hidden> wrote:

> Since Unity I use terminal to launch application because it's faster
> than clicking the Ubuntu logo and waiting for it to display the
> confusing panel where I have to write down the name of the app anyway.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/668415
>
> Title:
> Movement of Unity launcher
>
> Status in Ayatana Design:
> Won't Fix
> Status in NULL Project:
> Invalid
> Status in Unity:
> Won't Fix
> Status in Ubuntu:
> Won't Fix
>
> Bug description:
> Please consider this a possible feature request or wishlist.
>
> Now when Unity will be default desktop for 11.04 could you please
> consider to add option to configure Unity launcher placement. Add
> simple option to lock/unlock through right-click menu and drag
> launcher to desired location like left/right and bottom.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ayatana-design/+bug/668415/+subscriptions
>

OK, so I tried MINT for a while, and it was okay but still not perfect, and then I tried Kubuntu, KDE sure has changed a lot in the last 10 years...neat but I don't want to have to relearn the WHOLE interface. In the end I reloaded the mainline distro of "orrnery ocelot" - even with Unity it seems to have the most polished interface. I WILL tell you though that without the nVidia binary drivers my system would've been dead in the water..I installed the 173 post-install version and things seem to be better. nouveau team has worked very hard but that driver just wasn't very responsive at all for 3D.

I am SLOWLY starting to use Unity, THREE clicks is still waay too much to start an installed app. You should have a link to all of the installed apps on the favorites tab to make it more apparent. Even when you find the apps in the next tab over it still only shows five big icons and a little tiny blurb that says "(Read More)".

Since I (unfortunately) have to use windows every day at work I am still looking for the panel with the list of running tasks at the bottom of the screen. It took a while to figure out that the system settings have ALL been moved to the far right drop down menu - it was really irritating searching for the settings panels through the menu before I figured that out.

Is there any way to pin the menu open? I tried searching for "Pidgin" and nothing appeared for a long time - then I had a desire to go look something up in firefox..the panel slid away and of course when I opened it back up my search was cancelled. Like the person who started this thread I have noticed that when you right click on the bar you get no choices for options..

Any way to get nautilus to show up in an actual window, with a real frame? What if people want to drag and drop files between two windows? As an A+ certified IT support specialist for more than 15 years I will tell you that there were some people who I trained - drag and drop is the only way they figured out copying files.

I really, really wish that you guys would consider forking GNOME2 and continuing to develop a low power version of the interface for old hardware - a stated goal of this distro is making software available to all people right? it's a shame that all of those used P-III PC's nobody wants anymore can't still be used for a few more years in schools and non-profits. I say P-III because I'm pretty sure the majority of P4 systems I've seen are power hungry RAMBUS based designs...okay for their time but maybe better to retire those..I dunno.

Any UI testing groups I can be a part of - is there a link for that? It isn't hard to see that you're pushing the distro toward an app store but hey, I guess it costs money to keep development in business so I can't say I blame you.

My only other complaint right now is that shutdown is still slow - need to either speed it up or offer better feedback than things just sort of hanging there.

Try tapping the Super key, then typing the name of the app, rather than
going via the terminal.

On 01/11/11 08:44, imdm wrote:
> @Mark Thank you, the people at Canonical and of course the upstream folks
> for putting together such a great desktop system that I use with pleasure
> everyday!

Thank you Mathijs, the sentiment is very much appreciated.

Ok, so you say you won't fix this.

Then, help me with this, please. 8 out 10 ten times i click on the back button on chrome, dash shows. When the window is maximized (i always use chrome maximized, and i guess a lot of users just do the same) the back button is too close to the left side. Honestly, i'm losing my fucking nerves with this situation. So i need A)A fix. or B)Stop using unity. Any ideas?

Re: David Gómez (dabisu)

Here my workaround:
run "ccsm" in terminal > unity plugin > reveal mode set "Top left" and hide launcher to "dodge active window"

so unity launcher will never open at least you move mouse pixel perfetly to left upper corner beneath top bar. Constanly opened launcher very annoying.

Em 01-11-2011 06:44, imdm escreveu:
> If your life has become a dark pit filled suffering and frustration
> because of the unity bar issue then why not invest some time and effort in
> fixing it yourself?
Because it wouldn't be accepted. Won't fix means "we don't want to carry
this on code", and not "we have other priorities to work on, but you can
do it yourself".

Originally, we used a corner invocation of the launcher. Testing showed
that users expected to find the launcher where they saw it go - on the
edge. That lead to us using edge invocation (this was a change late in
11.04). We knew at the time that false-positive invocations would be
greater on the left edge, but wanted to see if we could minimise that by
using some careful heuristics, for example, the extent to which it
looked like you really *meant* to invoke the launcher, how hard you hit
the edge and whether you continued to push the mouse past the edge.

We are still working on those, and patches to improve the heuristics of
launcher revealing on left edge would be welcome.

We are also working on ways to cue the user to the fact that they are
approaching the launcher invocation. X makes a proximity effect
difficult, but we could hint at the launchers presence for folk who just
inadvertently touch the edge before showing it, with a push giving you
quick access to the launcher, for example. Patches and mockups in this
regard would also be welcome.

We could consider a number of changes to the Launcher's behaviour to
address the needs of those who flat out don't want a left edge invoke:

 * we could have an option to reveal the launcher after a top left
corner hit (so the movement returns to being the original
slam-into-top-left-corner, then move to your app icon)
 * we could allow the launcher to move to the bottom of the screen.
However, this would require a patch which took into account all the
related issues, like animations and transitions, and the direction of
various arrows. We would not accept a patch which reduced the quality of
the existing experience for those who like it.

Mark

Em 01-11-2011 09:18, Mark Shuttleworth escreveu:
> We could consider a number of changes to the Launcher's behaviour to
> address the needs of those who flat out don't want a left edge invoke:
>
> * we could have an option to reveal the launcher after a top left
> corner hit (so the movement returns to being the original
> slam-into-top-left-corner, then move to your app icon)
> * we could allow the launcher to move to the bottom of the screen.
> However, this would require a patch which took into account all the
> related issues, like animations and transitions, and the direction of
> various arrows. We would not accept a patch which reduced the quality of
> the existing experience for those who like it.
These are good news!

Constantine & Mark: Yes, i've tried the top-left corner invocation. It avoids the problem i mentioned before, but... it's slow and i prefer the current left edge invocation. I also prefer to have all the left edge invoke the launcher, and top-left is not intuitive for new users. If it has to be top-left corner invocation, 11.04 original top-left corner movement is better i think.

For left edge invocation, problems like the "back button" one needs to be addressed. I like left edge invocation over top-left, but false positives make it fairly unusable. This particular problem is really annoying for me, but surely other users have hit different false positives. I haven't look Unity code myself and wouldn't know where to start, but if this could be avoided with better heuristics, that would be great.

There is also much simpler solution (which I use) - never hide the launcher (at least on big screens). No confusion then. (optional ability to hide it temporarily by clicking top left corner would be very helpful in this situation).

@elian
"Any way to get nautilus to show up in an actual window, with a real frame? What if people want to drag and drop files between two windows?"

Nautilus starts maximized by default. Just click the maximize button to make it no longer maximized. Dragging and dropping between Nautilus windows (or between a Nautilus window and the desktop) works the same way as it always has. See http://askubuntu.com/questions/39014/how-do-i-stop-unity-from-starting-windows-maximised for details. See http://www.ubuntugeek.com/list-of-ubuntu-unity-keyboard-shortcuts.html for information about how to quickly use the keyboard to manipulate where and how big application windows are.

"it's a shame that all of those used P-III PC's nobody wants anymore can't still be used for a few more years in schools and non-profits."
http://www.liberiangeek.net/2011/08/return-to-ubuntu-classic-desktop-in-ubuntu-11-10/
Or, better: http://xubuntu.org/
Or, even better: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu

I agree with Mark that at least this cycle there are more important things that need attention.

for example.

- global menus not ergonomical on large screens.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/682788

- Reducing upgrading risks.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/null/+bug/876146

- polish and quality.

- accessibility

- making launcher easier to use and smarter when folding (lots of icons) and less prone to false-positives

and other things being discussed currently at the UDS.

Not saying a movable launcher may not be important, but is something that may be better of for another cycle once the vision of unity matures... Remember that the "Windows taskbar" was also not movable till later on.

Moving the launcher to the bottom would be a great feature for monitors that are not widescreen.

My monitor, for example, is a 17" 4:3. I lose precious horizontal space because of that big vertical sidebar.

I'm sure lots of people still use 4:3 monitors. The world is not all about laptops and tablets... not yet.

manny: I agree that a movable launcher it's not a priority provided that the false positives are fixed. In the long term, although i like the left-edge launcher, a bottom launcher should be make an option.

Unfortunately, the bandwagon is a little overloaded. For many of us here, this is not a power-user issue but a simple matter of spatial arrangement.

The left-side bar is in the wrong place on the wrong screen for me to use at home or at work. On my single-display laptop, I have no problem with where it is.

Unfortunately, I'm *not* a power-user so I'm not going to go looking for something under the hood - such as a different spin or something - to solve such a trivial problem. Windows 7 + Putty + VMware/Virtual Box + Debian headless => problem solved.

It pains me to say this but, thank you Microsoft =/

I think some of you don't understand what was meant by "won't fix" -- it's
not that this issue is a low priority, it's that the team has no intention
of fixing at all. It has nothing to do with them being too busy for it
right now. If they were too busy, they would have left the bug open until
it would be fixed.

The Unity Launcher is *not* going to be movable, so we all have to get used
to it. Mark has made it 100% that this is his final decision and that he
has moved on.

I can only hope that an alternate solution will be available for people
with multiple monitors and people who use right-to-left languages. However,
I do not know of any plans to accommodate us, and it's indeed hard for me
to even imagine a solution for us within Unity's current vision.

Bye bye, Ubuntu. So long , and thanks for all the fish.

To all the people saying "goodbye": you are a bunch of drama queens. You
say you are going to leave ubuntu because of Unity but take an effort in
reporting it here, which means you obviously don't want to say "goodbye"
or like to make a show of it. Besides that, if you don't like Unity and
switch to Windows or Mac OS X because of it, there's more bothering you
than just Unity. There are plenty of alternatives available that can be
easily installed on Ubuntu, without having the need to switch to a
completely different OS.

I've been following this bug for a while and even though I would
personally prefer a movable launcher, I really understand the reasoning
for not giving that option [out of the box]. I've liked Unity from the
beginning and I use it with pleasure every day.

So, to the Ubuntu Team, the Ayatana Design Team and Mark Shuttleworth:
thank you!

Maarten

On 11/02/2011 08:12 AM, realn wrote:
> Bye bye, Ubuntu. So long , and thanks for all the fish.
>

Now, I am the one, who does not understand the fuss.

I actually thought we went one step further down the right direction. At least in the direction that most of the people here wanted this discussion heading.

 > * we could have an option to reveal the launcher after a top left
> corner hit (so the movement returns to being the original
> slam-into-top-left-corner, then move to your app icon)
> * we could allow the launcher to move to the bottom of the screen.
> However, this would require a patch which took into account all the
> related issues, like animations and transitions, and the direction of
> various arrows. We would not accept a patch which reduced the quality of
> the existing experience for those who like it.
>
> Mark

To me this reads like "Canonical won't pay anybody to program a moveable launcher, but will accept a well written patch which allows the launcher to be placed at the bottom of the screen". So if all design requirements are met the new option for the launcher will be accepted. At least this is how I understood it.

I do not know why anybody would now want to leave the Ubuntu train. Nobody could expect Canonical to invest money into a development when they see other, more pressing, features to be implemented.

I was complaining here, because I thought that "won't fix" means that the also will not accept any patches. But with this new answer I am pretty pleased. I am no programmer, so I am afraid I cannot implement the code for a moveable launcher myself. But still this gives me hope that there is the possibility of a moveable launcher. That is all I wanted. To hear "it could be feasible and we will accept a patch, if it is well written".

@Maarten Kossen:
Don't you think yourself that you sound somewhat exaggerated and hypocritical? Look at the comments of this article:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/11/ubuntu-desktop-designers-clarify-on-configurability/
there are tow main elements that permeat all comments
a) more configurability is great (there are not very many comments stating that they want the number of options stay the way it is)
b) many people state in the comments that Canonical/Ubuntu should learn to do PR work. And I have to agree with this. If this all was already on the agenda for a long time then why did not anybody say so month ago? Much of the fuss about many of the aspects in Unity would have been avoided. I, personally, am annoyed by the unmovable launcher, but I could have lived with it if I had thought that this would be one of the few things that would not be configurable. But instead it all appeared as if there would never be much space for configuration at all. So seemingly I was wrong and there will be a couple of options to configure the system. But many discussions and much of my frustration could have been avoided by some simple statements to the public (or to the community).
You say yourself you would prefer the launcher to be movable. So you cannot be entirely content with the system. I look at my own work and see that there are many things that I can improve. I do not applause myself because I did not make much errors today or yesterday; I simply look for those things I c...

Now, to be a little bit more productive, I stumbled upon this several times now during the last three days:
http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/how-to-move-unity-launcher-to-bottom-of.html

So, there is currently a rough patch to make the launcher moveable (or rather to move the launcher to the bottom).

As already pointed out (several times), I am not a programmer. But perhaps somebody with programming skill can have a look at this patch and help getting it ready for inclusion into Ubuntu?

@SRoesgen: You don't seem to be able to understand that a person can
like something a lot, but still sees room for improvement. I like Unity
a lot as it is, but I won't deny something can be improved. There's no
hypocrisy in that. That's normal. I'm thankful for Unity, since it's a
lot better than the classic Gnome interface (in my opinion) and made my
day-to-day work easier. It never hurts to compliment people for work
done, even though there is room for improvement. It gives people the
feeling that they're doing something good, they're on the right road and
maybe it motivates them to move further and improve the product.

This bug is not a motivation, it just highlights that many people are
not satisfied with Unity. There are two options from that point on:

 1. Try and help to make things better
 2. Do what you do and be frustrated

I've seen a lot of 2 and a little of 1.

Rome wasn't built in one day and Unity can't be perfect all at once.
Incidentally, not everybody wants to live in Rome and it's the same
thing that makes people dislike Unity: personal preference.

If everybody hates Unity so much: don't use it! There are plenty of
other options available. It's quite clear by now that Unity may not
become what some expect of it. Stop doing 2 and move on.

Maarten

On 11/02/2011 11:49 AM, SRoesgen wrote:
> Now, I am the one, who does not understand the fuss.
>
> I actually thought we went one step further down the right direction. At
> least in the direction that most of the people here wanted this
> discussion heading.
>
> > * we could have an option to reveal the launcher after a top left
>> corner hit (so the movement returns to being the original
>> slam-into-top-left-corner, then move to your app icon)
>> * we could allow the launcher to move to the bottom of the screen.
>> However, this would require a patch which took into account all the
>> related issues, like animations and transitions, and the direction of
>> various arrows. We would not accept a patch which reduced the quality of
>> the existing experience for those who like it.
>>
>> Mark
> To me this reads like "Canonical won't pay anybody to program a moveable
> launcher, but will accept a well written patch which allows the launcher
> to be placed at the bottom of the screen". So if all design requirements
> are met the new option for the launcher will be accepted. At least this
> is how I understood it.
>
> I do not know why anybody would now want to leave the Ubuntu train.
> Nobody could expect Canonical to invest money into a development when
> they see other, more pressing, features to be implemented.
>
> I was complaining here, because I thought that "won't fix" means that
> the also will not accept any patches. But with this new answer I am
> pretty pleased. I am no programmer, so I am afraid I cannot implement
> the code for a moveable launcher myself. But still this gives me hope
> that there is the possibility of a moveable launcher. That is all I
> wanted. To hear "it could be feasible and we will accept a patch, if it
> is well written".
>
> @Maarten Kossen:
> Don't you think yourself that you sound somewhat exaggerated and hypocritical? Look...

For everybody that is frustrated with Unity (like me), my suggestion
is to open a terminal and type
sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

If you don't want Unity to get in your way when trying to open the
terminal, I can tell you the following options:
 - hold ctrl + alt + F1
 - hold ctrl + alt + T

Both will bring you a terminal to accomplish that.
After the process finish, you can type
sudo reboot

After your PC return from the reboot, select XFCE as your default
desktop manager.
With this, we can leave Unity developers alone and don't get bored
with their behavior.
As I can see, suggestions are not welcomed and will not be heard.
Let's leave them with their heavy weight, power inefficient,
inflexible desktop manager.
Maybe someday they might change their mind.

On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 1:09 PM, Maarten Kossen
<email address hidden> wrote:
> @SRoesgen: You don't seem to be able to understand that a person can
> like something a lot, but still sees room for improvement. I like Unity
> a lot as it is, but I won't deny something can be improved. There's no
> hypocrisy in that. That's normal. I'm thankful for Unity, since it's a
> lot better than the classic Gnome interface (in my opinion) and made my
> day-to-day work easier. It never hurts to compliment people for work
> done, even though there is room for improvement. It gives people the
> feeling that they're doing something good, they're on the right road and
> maybe it motivates them to move further and improve the product.
>
> This bug is not a motivation, it just highlights that many people are
> not satisfied with Unity. There are two options from that point on:
>
>  1. Try and help to make things better
>  2. Do what you do and be frustrated
>
> I've seen a lot of 2 and a little of 1.
>
> Rome wasn't built in one day and Unity can't be perfect all at once.
> Incidentally, not everybody wants to live in Rome and it's the same
> thing that makes people dislike Unity: personal preference.
>
> If everybody hates Unity so much: don't use it! There are plenty of
> other options available. It's quite clear by now that Unity may not
> become what some expect of it. Stop doing 2 and move on.
>
> Maarten
>
>
> On 11/02/2011 11:49 AM, SRoesgen wrote:
>> Now, I am the one, who does not understand the fuss.
>>
>> I actually thought we went one step further down the right direction. At
>> least in the direction that most of the people here wanted this
>> discussion heading.
>>
>>   >  * we could have an option to reveal the launcher after a top left
>>> corner hit (so the movement returns to being the original
>>> slam-into-top-left-corner, then move to your app icon)
>>>   * we could allow the launcher to move to the bottom of the screen.
>>> However, this would require a patch which took into account all the
>>> related issues, like animations and transitions, and the direction of
>>> various arrows. We would not accept a patch which reduced the quality of
>>> the existing experience for those who like it.
>>>
>>> Mark
>> To me this reads like "Canonical won't pay anybody to program a moveable
>> launcher, but will accept a well written patch which allows the launcher
>> to be placed at the ...

I couldn't find the source code (only the link to download the compiled
library for 32 bit systems).

Em 02-11-2011 09:13, SRoesgen escreveu:
> Now, to be a little bit more productive, I stumbled upon this several times now during the last three days:
> http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/how-to-move-unity-launcher-to-bottom-of.html
>
> So, there is currently a rough patch to make the launcher moveable (or
> rather to move the launcher to the bottom).
>
> As already pointed out (several times), I am not a programmer. But
> perhaps somebody with programming skill can have a look at this patch
> and help getting it ready for inclusion into Ubuntu?
>

@Maarten, @SRoesgen:

Unity is a nice interface, on the correct hardware platform it's a pleasure to work with. But I didn't choose Ubuntu for my sub-desktop, I chose it for my work environment, where - out of the box - it was a step up from Microsoft / Apple offerings. Yes, it suffered from options-overdoes thru its use of Gnome. But less so than Windows or even Mac OSX.

But, like many people I know who had started to switch to Ubuntu and many of the people I had recommended Ubuntu to, I don't /need/ Ubuntu. I made the switch because:
a) 10.10 provided me with a better desktop experience **out of the box** than Windows.
b) I frequently need Linux shell access

So, running a Linux-based desktop was simply a convenience.

For me - it's not about the ability to while away my day moving the task bar around the screen, it's about the ability to operating system to my hardware. I mean how come the position of the bar is so critical but the screen resolution isn't? If you can change the screen resolution, you can effect changes on the dimensions and supportability of the bar...

I just wonder that the back button issue has been addressed only three times within this discussion. Today I counted how many times the sidebar stepped on my nerves by appearing and blocking the back button of my web browser and the total number so far is 43.

I think, the main problem is just that i am using 11.10 on a Notebook which happens to have a touch pad just like pretty much every notebook out there and these things aren't really precise. And since i am running the 64bit version of Ubuntu, i actually have only 2 choices: live with this situation until it gets properly fixed or use XFCE. And the worst thing about this, i really like Unity a lot, but this sidebar issue completely ruins it for me. This thing constantly pops up and i never wanted it to be there in the first place and i cannot even move it as there is not even a hidden option to move it to the bottom (which is in my opinion the only acceptable place).

Microsoft tried to do the same thing with Longhorn and guess what: they discovered that having a sidebar on either side (left or right) just doesn't work.

@Robin J. Rogge
"And since i am running the 64bit version of Ubuntu, i actually have only 2 choices: live with this situation until it gets properly fixed or use XFCE."

I'm not sure what you're thinking, but in addition to ubuntu-desktop (Unity and Unity 2D), and xubuntu-desktop (Xfce4), gnome-shell (GNOME 3 with the GNOME Shell instead of Unity), gnome-fallback (GNOME 3 Fallback, which looks like the old GNOME 2 interface), lubuntu-desktop (LXDE), and kubuntu-desktop (KDE4 Plasma) all work on both the 64-bit and 32-bit versions of Ubuntu. There are no graphical interfaces packaged for Ubuntu that work just for one or the other architecture.

You might be thinking about there used to be only a 32-bit version of the Lubuntu desktop install CD. Well, (a) there are both 32-bit and 64-bit Lubuntu live CD's now, as of Lubuntu 11.10 (see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu), and (b) it has always been possible (and pretty easy) to install a 64-bit Lubuntu system by installing a minimal command-line only system (either from the alternate install CD or the minimal install CD, see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Lubuntu/Documentation/AlternateInstall and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Lubuntu/Documentation/MinimalInstall) and then installing the lubuntu-desktop package. And anyway, if you already have Ubuntu installed, you don't have to reinstall to get a new interface--just install one (or more) of the packages listed above.

If you decide you want to continue using Unity / Unity 2D, then you might consider setting the launcher to *never* hide. Then you'd have less usable screen space, but at least the launcher wouldn't be popping out at you when you don't want it to.

See, thats the thing ... as i wrote, i really like Unity, for various reasons, but especially because i've got the most available screen estate for my applications as i run most stuff maximized and since the application menus are merged into the top bar, i actually win about 3% available screen estate.

As i said, the only thing that really bugs me is that the sidebar unintentionally pops up all the time and blocks me from clicking on icons to the far left (like the back button of firefox, all the open/close folder icons in eclipse/gedit/Outlook Web Access etc.) and that happens far too often. It is just a very user unfriendly behavior, which i would like to be able to change and I wouldn't need a user interface for that.

I would be happy forever (in that regard) if there was something like a hidden setting, command line switch, environment variable to be exported or whatever, just so i can move this annoyance to the bottom of the screen.

As for the mentioned alternatives, XFCE is just the only viable alternative for me, as i never liked Gnome at all and KDE is in my opinion the worst of them all (and yes i've tried them all, i even most of them installed right now just so i could see whether things have changed for the better or worse). However, I really prefer Unity to all of them, if just that launcher bar wouldn't interfere so much with me working. It sits at the wrong position.

I mean i totally understand the urge to compete with other companies, platforms, designs and architectures and to provide the best possible user experience, but seriously, *all of them* competitors grant me that little freedom - to move the tool- and launchbars to where I as a user/customer want them to be.

Also, switching back/reinstalling to a 32bit OS just so i can use a hacked sidebar instead? You can't be serious.

And never hiding the sidebar is obviously also not a alternative. I (like millions of other people) am using a notebook and you probably know that you never can have enough screen estate (and as i already said, i get more of that with unity than with any other desktop).

Hi All
I am glad that it is not just me that not happy with the bar on the side. yes it a pain that it keep doping out all the time. But I must say I don't like unity very much at all, I guess that is one reason, the other things are harder to find.

I have found though that using Cairo-Dock as well helps to keep it at bay. then it makes for a "good" second bar for less used icons. I started using cario in 11.04. Before that I used awn, not sure if awn will keep it hidden or not.
but it is a help. hopefully Ubuntu will change it soon.
I must admit I am still using 11.04 as my main desk top in classic mode 11.10 is on another HDD. I'm not ready to change over just quite yet.

BUt if installing Cario -Dock help any one thats great.
Neil

I just switched to Unity after my upgrade from 11.04, so I don't quite follow most of your arguments. However, for a new Unity user like me, I just cannot understand what's the big deal to move the launcher to the bottom. Sure, there's going to be conflicts with existing configurations but I think those can be easily fixed (After, we built a whole Unity on top of Gnome if I'm correct). Linux is about choices isn't it? If the users don't like it, they should be free to change it. So why couldn't we offer a simple configuration of launcher position to the users?

Richard, as I see it the programmers behind Unity made a project mistake of not making it configurable at the beginning (probably hardcoding every thing that should be changable parameter) and now it's quite hard to change. That is the main reason they don't want to fix it [IN MY OPINION, based on my observation of this and other discussion on this topic, I might be wrong] - they probably told Mark Shuttleworth that it will take a lot of time (not really wanting to do probably, I don't blame them). He doesn't want it, well because he is paying for this time and there are other important things to do (or fix) and in the same time people are mad because they can't move it even if it's in the center of their monitor setup... It's a mess. I learned quite fast learning programming that the worst thing you could do is a project mistake - it often requires rewriting half the project to fix or even to start from the beginning.

Here's a first solution: http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/how-to-move-unity-launcher-to-bottom-of.html

Finally Unity feels right, even though there's still room for improvement regarding the dash