What I love about Unity
 

In light of a recent thread on this list, I thought I'd provide my
perspective of what Unity is, why I think it's important and why I
actually came to love it. Just to eliminate any doubt, I'll start by
saying that I'm not affiliated with Canonical and I'm not part of the
Unity project. I have no stakes.


I think the most important thing to understand about Unity is that it is
not primarily a program or a desktop. It is primarily a set of
specifications which are implemented in different ways. The two most
prominent implementations are Unity and Unity 2D, but there are already
several others. Since Unity is a set of specifications, it is possible
to implement parts of it without that being considered an incomplete
implementation. For instance, the indicators are supported on LXDE,
Xfce, Windows, KDE and others. This is very important. For instance,
people are complaining about not all Gnome Panel applets being ported to
Gnome Panel 3 yet. This is because the applets become part of the panel
itself, meaning that it has to be completely compatible or it won't
work. This is not the case with indicators, which is why all indicators
are already supported on Gnome Panel 3. The panel just needs to support
the indicator specification and then all indicators automatically work.
It is also an uncomplicated specification, so it's easy and quick to do.


So an indicator actually connects to the indicator service and tells it
what it wants to display. Then it's up to the service to display it
properly according to its environment. This means that indicators will
look native to the environment it is used in without any kind of extra
work. For instance, an indicator that's primarily targeted at Ubuntu
desktop, will look as if it was designed for KDE when that's your
desktop or as if it was designed for Windows when you run it in that
environment. It could also be displayed as text if you don't run a
desktop at all. Further, since indicators are implemented using remote
procedure calls, you could easily run an indicator on a website and have
it integrate with the desktop -- regardless of operating system.


Indicators and notifications are omnipresent across devices and
operating systems. Having a uniform way of adding support for all
operating systems without any kind of extra programming, is highly
valuable. It's valuable to users as well, since it means that an
indicator written in GTK will look and feel identical to an indicator
written in Qt. This increases knowledge re-usability.


Quicklists are also useful. These provides useful actions for an
application. What useful means, is up to the application and how to
access these tools is up to the environment. Unity launchers and Windows
taskbar entries work mostly the same way in this regard. That's not
necessary at all. Again, application developers decides what is
available and the operating system says how to access it.


Unity lenses and scopes are also interesting. Here too, there is a clear
separation between user interface and background services, to an even
higher degree. First, you have the scopes that provides data from a
given source. This can be anything from your personal information, a
corporate server or an online search engine. Then you have the lenses
which chooses which data sources to use when searching, and finally you
have the presentation. Since the scopes provide data in a uniform way,
the lens developers doesn't have to know anything about the source. The
lens developer then simply selects what data sources to search and
retrieve data from, and how this should be laid out. It doesn't do the
presentation itself, but only defines _what_ to do. Finally, you have an
application that displays the lenses according to the definitions. This
means that once an operating system or desktop supports lenses, all
lenses will automatically work and will look native to that desktop.


In summary, Unity is not about how things look. Indeed, we should have
different ways of interacting with your computer and applications. Unity
dash and other components should look and feel different in Lubuntu,
Kubuntu, Windows and OS X. Users should not be expected to understand
the difference between Qt, GTK, XUL or any other toolkit. What
programming language was used to create the software is also not
relevant to the user. Whether the primary focus of the developer is on
Gnome or KDE, should not matter. If it's a browser application, it
should still become part of your desktop like any other application.
This is why the name is so fitting; it unites programming languages,
toolkits, desktops, platforms and operating systems.


In the upgrade from Gnome Panel 2 to Gnome Panel 3, we have "lost" some
applets. Of course, applets can be upgraded as well, but all of them
must be upgraded and there's reason to believe that not all of them will
be. This is a problem, and something that we must actively try to avoid
in all future. This is part of what Unity does, and is probably one of
the things I love most about it. The implementations are not perfect,
but the specifications are really good. I would much rather use a bumpy
implementation of a good specification than to use a perfect
implementation of a bad idea.


Thanks for reading.

Jo-Erlend Schinstad

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What I love about Unity
 

On 12/29/2011 02:23 PM, Jo-Erlend Schinstad wrote:

In light of a recent thread on this list, I thought I'd provide my
perspective of what Unity is, why I think it's important and why I
actually came to love it. Just to eliminate any doubt, I'll start by
saying that I'm not affiliated with Canonical and I'm not part of the
Unity project. I have no stakes.

I think the most important thing to understand about Unity is that it is
not primarily a program or a desktop. It is primarily a set of
specifications which are implemented in different ways. The two most
prominent implementations are Unity and Unity 2D, but there are already
several others. Since Unity is a set of specifications, it is possible
to implement parts of it without that being considered an incomplete
implementation. For instance, the indicators are supported on LXDE,
It is really nice that you put effort in explaining what is all about
Unity. From your description I could understand that motivating reason
is an architectural change how applications interact with underlying
data providers, services and APIs underlying operating system provides.
A story about indicators, etc. sounds as really good set of
architectural choices. Having said that, architectural cleanup should
not negatively affect existing user base by removing some workflows.
Backward compatibility might slow down overall progress but green field
development results in own set of problems. Ironically, technical people
who would otherwise support architectural changes introduced with Unity
are resistant to these changes because of some user interface
shortcomings.



Xfce, Windows, KDE and others. This is very important. For instance,
people are complaining about not all Gnome Panel applets being ported to
Gnome Panel 3 yet. This is because the applets become part of the panel
itself, meaning that it has to be completely compatible or it won't
work. This is not the case with indicators, which is why all indicators
are already supported on Gnome Panel 3. The panel just needs to support
the indicator specification and then all indicators automatically work.
It is also an uncomplicated specification, so it's easy and quick to do.
This about simplicity of specification is very nice. Simple specs have
chance to survive reality checks across releases (and get more
complicated later).
According to your description these specs are easy to implement for
remaining panels, then why support for look & feel of Gnome Panel was
marginalized remains unclear.


So an indicator actually connects to the indicator service and tells it
what it wants to display. Then it's up to the service to display it
properly according to its environment. This means that indicators will
look native to the environment it is used in without any kind of extra
work. For instance, an indicator that's primarily targeted at Ubuntu
desktop, will look as if it was designed for KDE when that's your
desktop or as if it was designed for Windows when you run it in that
environment. It could also be displayed as text if you don't run a
desktop at all. Further, since indicators are implemented using remote
procedure calls, you could easily run an indicator on a website and have
it integrate with the desktop -- regardless of operating system.
From your description, data providers are cleanly separated from
application logic and application presentation layers and this is also
very reasonable.


Indicators and notifications are omnipresent across devices and
operating systems. Having a uniform way of adding support for all
operating systems without any kind of extra programming, is highly
valuable. It's valuable to users as well, since it means that an
indicator written in GTK will look and feel identical to an indicator
written in Qt. This increases knowledge re-usability.

Quicklists are also useful. These provides useful actions for an
application. What useful means, is up to the application and how to
access these tools is up to the environment. Unity launchers and Windows
taskbar entries work mostly the same way in this regard. That's not
necessary at all. Again, application developers decides what is
available and the operating system says how to access it.

Unity lenses and scopes are also interesting. Here too, there is a clear
separation between user interface and background services, to an even
higher degree. First, you have the scopes that provides data from a
given source. This can be anything from your personal information, a
corporate server or an online search engine. Then you have the lenses
which chooses which data sources to use when searching, and finally you
have the presentation. Since the scopes provide data in a uniform way,

Looks like some variant of Model-View-Controller. Also fine.


the lens developers doesn't have to know anything about the source. The
lens developer then simply selects what data sources to search and
retrieve data from, and how this should be laid out. It doesn't do the
presentation itself, but only defines _what_ to do. Finally, you have an
application that displays the lenses according to the definitions. This
means that once an operating system or desktop supports lenses, all
lenses will automatically work and will look native to that desktop.

In summary, Unity is not about how things look. Indeed, we should have
different ways of interacting with your computer and applications. Unity
dash and other components should look and feel different in Lubuntu,
Kubuntu, Windows and OS X. Users should not be expected to understand
the difference between Qt, GTK, XUL or any other toolkit. What
programming language was used to create the software is also not
relevant to the user. Whether the primary focus of the developer is on
Gnome or KDE, should not matter. If it's a browser application, it
should still become part of your desktop like any other application.
This is why the name is so fitting; it unites programming languages,
toolkits, desktops, platforms and operating systems.
Similar attempts in past decade or two: with multi platform libraries
and frameworks (e.g. Qt, ACE, boost, Apache libs, ...) and of course
with VM such as Java, .Net etc.
All of them contributed in serving some user groups, and none of them
fulfilled "One size fits all" promises. The same will happen to Unity I
guess.


In the upgrade from Gnome Panel 2 to Gnome Panel 3, we have "lost" some
applets. Of course, applets can be upgraded as well, but all of them
must be upgraded and there's reason to believe that not all of them will
be. This is a problem, and something that we must actively try to avoid
in all future. This is part of what Unity does, and is probably one of

True.

the things I love most about it. The implementations are not perfect,
but the specifications are really good. I would much rather use a bumpy
implementation of a good specification than to use a perfect
implementation of a bad idea.
True, clean architecture is often a good investment. Just is needed to
take care more about transition from old to new in a way that existing
users are seeing benefits and are not left with feeling of being
marginalized. I think that your post provides good, high level overview
of Unity. Thank you.


Thanks for reading.

Jo-Erlend Schinstad





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What I love about Unity
 

Den 30. des. 2011 20:30, skrev Ted Gould:

Hey,

Thanks for writing this up. I appreciate it. We're never perfect, but
it's nice to see some positive reviews every once in a while :-)

Thanks again,
Ted


It was not meant as a positive review and I don't want it to be
understood as such. The point was to separate between what users see and
what programs see and why that's important. The ultimate goal for me, is
to teach everyone that there are no fundamental differences between
10.04 and 12.04. Obviously, it's still Ubuntu, but it's also still GNU
with Linux, it's still X. It's still Compiz. Gnome Panel is still
available for those who may want it, and there's no radical difference
in that either. There are no radical differences at all and all
competent participants know it, but they're tired of trying to revert
the bad communication of these last cycles. So we're left with those who
blog more than they explore.


Some people have said that I'm tilting against windmills. I see the
giants in the horizon. I know exactly what they are. They are what I
call "misconceptions". I will fight them. What I cannot do, is to fight
continuously bad communication from community leaders, such as Canonical
and Gnome. In this specific case, it's been bad all over. Gnome has been
horrible. It's like they _want_ to loose. Canonical has done _nothing_
to rectify this.


This is assumption and speculation. I believe that Gnome wanted to hype
the Gnome 3 desktop by reducing the value of the old one. That was a
poor choice. They should instead hype the benefits, that have been
completely forgotten in the shadow of the pale benefits of Gnome Shell.
We _must_ make everyone aware that there are no radical changes. This is
continuity. We have all the software we've always had. There is no Mark
Shuttleworth who can remove software from our society. Well, there is a
Mark Shuttleworth who can add to it, and maybe even overshadow others,
but not even he could ever take away from it. This is the core of Free
Software. Even if he could, it's highly unlikely that he would ever even
try. We know this. We've spent time. We've read. But we are preparing
for a different kind of community, when millions of people suddenly
join. How do we react? We need to react with strong and clear communication.


In essence, what I perceive is that Gnome has felt threatened by Unity
and that Unitys followers have felt as if they were under attack by
Gnome Shells followers. Mark Shuttleworth warned against this kind of
tribalism a long time ago. This is a classical example of a false
dilemma. You're either with Unity or with Gnome Shell. Reality falls
victim. The simple truth is that Unity 2D uses the same Window Manager
that Gnome Panel primarily used, which is called Metacity. So does
Unity, except that it uses Compiz, which has also been a vital part of
our desktop for a long time. Canonical should've made it obvious to
everyone what the differences really mean. It is still my perception
that supporting Gnome Shell actively and giving people a smooth
transition will eliminate all doubt and help people focus on real issues.


There are no radical differences between Gnome 2 and Gnome 3 from any
users point of view. Any other belief is a misconception, unless someone
enlightens me. And I am certainly willing to learn.


What we must do is to keep the fog away and remember that this has been
the primary reason why we have not succeeded in the past. We will win by
providing good software and lucid documentation. Now, we are going to
provide Precise software and Precise documentation. For that to happen,
we must eliminate this crap before it ruins the entire GNU with Linux
community. We who are confident, understand the situation. There is no
loss if people want to progress onto Fedora, Debian or anything else. We
are the ones who make things easy to understand. If people want to delve
deeper into the system, that's a good thing. Ubuntu is not so much about
software as it is about users. Ubuntu is still the small kid. We are not
in any way ready to dictate to anyone and everyone knows it. There is a
growing misconception that we're now taking things way. It's not true.
We who are very interested, know that. But it really doesn't matter what
we do if people misunderstand our intentions. This used to be crystal
clear; We are the ones who do not ever tell people to RTFM. We are the
ones who explain. We are the ones who will never give users the
impression that we are taking things away from them when we're not.


This is very important to me. Ubuntu is not something I adapted to or
adopted. It is my core belief of how we should do things. All this
nonsense with MATE and that crap, and I don't apologize because I've
read the code. It is crap in relation to its hype. It doesn't _do
anything_.


Canonical have neglected its role as a supporter of Ubuntu. This is
obvious. As a provider of software, it's done a great work. It's not
enough. Now, people blame Canonical for everything, because it is
somehow regarded as the "creator of Ubuntu". That would never have
happened before, because it is obvious that Canonical does not have the
position of Apple or Microsoft. Should never want to, either. Canonical
should be the beacon of knowledge that makes it easy to learn and become
part of the community. The moment that Ubuntu depends on Canonical, we
have lost. Even the perception is destructive.


We desperately need to improve Ubuntus communication. If we do not, then
we _will_ fail. If you want me to, I'll be happy to spend any amount of
time helping Canonical in private, but everyone must always know that
they are different things at all times. Otherwise, Ubuntu becomes an
ideological product instead of societal effort. The difference is radical.


Oh, I seriously didn't intend for this to become so long winded. Thanks
for your patience. :)


Jo-Erlend Schinstad

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What I love about Unity
 

Den 30. des. 2011 15:28, skrev Nenad:


A story about indicators, etc. sounds as really good set of
architectural choices. Having said that, architectural cleanup should
not negatively affect existing user base by removing some workflows.
Backward compatibility might slow down overall progress but green
field development results in own set of problems. Ironically,
technical people who would otherwise support architectural changes
introduced with Unity are resistant to these changes because of some
user interface shortcomings.




I completely agree with that in some senses. Unity does not take
anything away. Nothing is lost because of Unity. I often compare desktop
shells to the web browsers. They can be considered "web shells". They're
not technically comparable, but from a users point of view, they do the
same thing. When Google entered the scene with Chromium and Chrome, they
added to our choices. Some distros use it by default, and that's fine. I
think it's a good browser. My preference is still Firefox and I would
always install it as quickly as possible. Unity adds to the number of
desktops you can choose from and does not remove any choices.


However, I disagree with the notion that Unity should depend on the
workflow from Gnome Panel. I would much rather that Gnome Panel
continues to be developed with respect to itself and that Unity is
developed with completely different goals. The world has changed a lot
since the mid nineties. I think Unity reflects that, Gnome Panel not so
much. But that's fine. We don't all have to be modern and walk in lines.
Nobody has the legal power to remove any free software. But if software
should be kept, it must be maintained, or it must be deemed to be
perfect. That's difficult. If you want it to evolve, then you also need
someone to actively develop it. If you want that to happen, then you
need to give it attention. You should not focus on why you think Unity
or Gnome Shell is bad, but on why you think Gnome Panel is good. Because
that's what counts.
According to your description these specs are easy to implement for
remaining panels, then why support for look & feel of Gnome Panel was
marginalized remains unclear.




It's not unclear to me. Someone is paying the bills. Those someone have
a different view of what the future should look like. The only thing
they agree upon, is that it should not look like the past. Nothing wrong
with that. Gnome wants to focus on the future of Gnome Shell and
Canonical wants to focus on its vision, which is Unity. We cannot expect
any of them to focus much on Gnome Panel, because that is not their
vision of the future. So, if we want to keep Gnome Panel around, then we
need to find some developers who are willing to keep maintaining and
developing it. Perhaps people like Vincent Untz can be persuaded. If
not, then we either need to find new developers, or let the old software
die in peace.


Just keep in mind that _anyone_ can start developing Gnome Panel. If all
the anyones on the entire planet choose not to do so, then users should
begin to wonder why.


All of them contributed in serving some user groups, and none of them
fulfilled "One size fits all" promises. The same will happen to Unity
I guess.




It's not comparable. You can use any programming language to interact
with Unity and it's very high level. Literally. If you wanted to, you
could write it by hand and not require a programming language at all.
It's DBus. By the way, Gnome Panel switched to that from Bonobo a few
versions back. I think maybe in 10.04 or something. It was a radical
switch then, too. Most people didn't notice it, though. I didn't, even
if I knew it was going to happen. That's how it should be. We should do
these things from time to time, but we should do them because it needs
to be done, not because of hype. Whenever something dramatic happens, we
must always have a large number of users who can explain why it is so.
Otherwise, we get massive amounts of speculation, conspiracy theories
and general disarray. It's not a matter of who's right and who's wrong.
We just have to learn from this and never repeat this mistake. Proper
communication would have ensured that all the nonsense would've never
happened.


Users should never be expected to understand the difference between
Bonobo and DBus, GTK2 or GTK3, GConf and Dconf...As a consequence, they
shouldn't care about Gnome 2 or Gnome 3. It's Gnome. It really isn't
that much different.



And I think that concludes todays pontification. :)

Happy new year, everyone!

Jo-Erlend Schinstad

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What I love about Unity
 

On Fri, 2011-12-30 at 23:03 +0100, Jo-Erlend Schinstad wrote:
> Den 30. des. 2011 20:30, skrev Ted Gould:
> > Thanks for writing this up. I appreciate it. We're never perfect, but
> > it's nice to see some positive reviews every once in a while :-)
>
> It was not meant as a positive review and I don't want it to be
> understood as such.

Sure, it wasn't a review really. I guess it should have read "noting
some of the positive aspects." Though, in general, I was less careful
with my words since I wasn't replying to the mailing list ;-)

> The point was to separate between what users see and
> what programs see and why that's important. The ultimate goal for me, is
> to teach everyone that there are no fundamental differences between
> 10.04 and 12.04.
<snip>

In general, you are correct, but I think your language there might hurt
your argument. I think that, for most people, it seems drastically
different because the data is presented in a different way, but it is
fundamentally the same data. So instead of saying "nothing changed" it
might be easier to say "only the emphasis changed."

As an example we could look at the use case of finding applications.
You can still browse for the applications in groups like you could in
the Applications menu of 10.04. But, it's not as handy. On the flip
side searching them is much, much, easier. So we've switched the
emphasis from browsing to searching.

--Ted

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What I love about Unity
 

On Sat, Dec 31, 2011 at 11:58 AM, Ted Gould <ted@ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-12-30 at 23:03 +0100, Jo-Erlend Schinstad wrote:
>> Den 30. des. 2011 20:30, skrev Ted Gould:
>> > Thanks for writing this up. *I appreciate it. *We're never perfect, but
>> > it's nice to see some positive reviews every once in a while :-)
>>
>> It was not meant as a positive review and I don't want it to be
>> understood as such.
>
> Sure, it wasn't a review really. *I guess it should have read "noting
> some of the positive aspects." *Though, in general, I was less careful
> with my words since I wasn't replying to the mailing list ;-)
>
>> The point was to separate between what users see and
>> what programs see and why that's important. The ultimate goal for me, is
>> to teach everyone that there are no fundamental differences between
>> 10.04 and 12.04.
> <snip>
>
> In general, you are correct, but I think your language there might hurt
> your argument. *I think that, for most people, it seems drastically
> different because the data is presented in a different way, but it is
> fundamentally the same data. *So instead of saying "nothing changed" it
> might be easier to say "only the emphasis changed."
>
> As an example we could look at the use case of finding applications.
> You can still browse for the applications in groups like you could in
> the Applications menu of 10.04. *But, it's not as handy. *On the flip
> side searching them is much, much, easier. *So we've switched the
> emphasis from browsing to searching.

Switched the emphasis? You mean to say that there is actually a way to
browse applications by category in Unity, similar to how the menus
were structured in Gnome2-panel? Well, that's news to me, and I've
used Unity on 11.10 for tens of hours in a virtual machine while
testing my software for Ubuntu compatibility. I would sometimes get
pretty fed up with having to type in the name of the application I
wanted to launch, instead of just clicking through a few menus. And
scrolling through the huge list of applications (I accrued many, many
of them because of all the development packages etc) is not
convenient, either; nor is it particularly snappy.

If this is in fact an explicit feature of Unity, I'd like to know how
to access it! I think one of the biggest flaws of Unity isn't a flaw
of the software at all, but of the human beings who use it (remember,
Linux for human beings?) -- 80% of the users don't know about 80% of
the hidden nugget features of Unity, because it's new, different, and
likes to "hide" a lot of stuff behind the obvious veneer. So yeah,
your attempts to "emphasize" one thing over another have essentially
produced a piece of software where the vast majority of the people
will only see the obvious features that you stick right under their
nose; and if they happen to desire a feature that's in any way
occluded or hidden behind a hotkey or whatever, they simply will never
ever use that feature because it's not apparent to them. Again,
probably not a software flaw as much as a human flaw, but that's how
it is.

Imagine shipping Ubuntu with a Unity tutorial video on the CD, or (if
that makes the CD spinners cringe at the file size of such) a video
player that pops up and streams the video from the internet....

Or even, a *series* of videos: one for beginners that just enumerates
the most obvious, basic stuff, and two or three more that go more and
more in-depth with hotkeys and things that most people don't know
about.

Your biggest challenge for Unity is similar to what others before you
(PulseAudio, systemd, etc) have faced: user education. So educate the
users, in an accessible, highly-visible manner! Nobody's going to read
the manual; I'm sorry but that just doesn't happen. A video is
probably the best way.

-Sean

>
> * * * * * * * *--Ted
>
>
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What I love about Unity
 

Den 31. des. 2011 21:16, skrev Sean McNamara:


Switched the emphasis? You mean to say that there is actually a way to
browse applications by category in Unity, similar to how the menus
were structured in Gnome2-panel? Well, that's news to me, and I've
used Unity on 11.10 for tens of hours in a virtual machine while
testing my software for Ubuntu compatibility.
Just click Filters in the applications lens. Screenshot:
http://ubuntuone.com/2zjemTsrtnehofubbOYOlv



Imagine shipping Ubuntu with a Unity tutorial video on the CD, or (if
that makes the CD spinners cringe at the file size of such) a video
player that pops up and streams the video from the internet....


Stuff like that would be nice. It'll probably be easier to make things
like that when things calm down.


Jo-Erlend Schinstad

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