Ubuntu Unity Hud (Head-Up Display)

[mahesh2k 0]

I don't know if i am the only person out there hating the HUD or head up display? It is made for the typist or should I say tablet users. But it is forced onto the desktop and laptop users as well. i found that by forcing it on other users theyre trying to prove some usability point. But i dont; think there is any good benefit of using the HUD UI change. Atleast not for quick usage. Also it is like mixture of GUI and CLI forced on users who prefer point and click interface. Not sure how many windows or mac migratnts aer going to love this, personally i found it useless and not worthy for laptop or desktop usage. I do see it's importance for the tablet interface thought.

You can check out the views of mark shuttleworth on this new HUD on his official blog entry. I think it is fored on multiple distros in future. Something like Xubuntu or kubuntu next in pipeline? If that happens then I guess most fo the users will migrate from the ubuntu and will move to mint or elementary OS. Some of the users of ubuntu are already suggesting others to move to elementary which is frugal and simple with their interface.

You can check the video here: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/. Though this may impress some of you. If you're using the laptop and desktop, you can imagine how difficult it is to use the desktop while working with gnumeric, libre office and some of the other tasks where you can choose the menus with mouse and manage the combo boxes or checkboxes. I don't know if the aim is to replace all this. In any case i am not happy with HUD.

What do you think about HUD?

[manuleka 0]

very cool and innovative, great to see the Ubuntu team bringing in some new concepts to the old Desktop platform... one doesn't have to use it if not want to...

[mahesh2k 0]

I thought it was just me. There is huge shift going on in between UI world. In case of windows there is already tiles interface which is more annoying than what HUD is offering to the users. I have seen that flipping the tiles waste your time. Most of the UI stuff is overrated in case of windows 8. I never thought it would someday come to the linux desktop. I was wrong with this as mark shuttleworth seems to like such ideas.I agree that it is good for the tablets but think about the desktop and laptops. I don't see a good use of this. I mean while using the word processor how you're going to figure out what is spellcheck or where is tools or tables menu. No one is going to remember that stuff just to enter in the command line. I guess this is where it goes too much. Atleast for me. I would love to know what other forum members think about this type of UI.

[H.O.D 0]

All this hubbub about user interfaces is truly annoying. First it was Unity, then it was the metro interface for Windows 8, and now the HUD for ubuntu! The worst part is that all of these changes are being forced upon users. In case of windows there is no hope of users being offered a choice anyway. In case of ubuntu, it is always possible to go back to the old gnome interface, but with it is simply no possible for new users to learn how to properly install gnome without messing up their system! Coming to HUD, I think it is a little bit interesting, but on a regular basis it might not be a very good idea. Yes, at the moment the interface does seem to be a little interesting, and it will certainly appeal for tablet users, but for power users who use ubuntu as their primary OS, HUD can be painful. The whole concept of HUD is not something new. It's somewhat similar to Google Instant Search, but it has been implemented for an operating system now! The intention is to save the user's time, but it can end up annoying the user a lot more than expected.After 11.04 came out, I got discouraged using Ubuntu, and just like many other users, I tried using Linux Mint. While a lot of people stuck with Mint and made it the most popular linux distro, I remained with Ubuntu 11.04 running the classic mode. The upgrade to 11.10 was ruled out because the classic desktop mode was removed, and the various options to install gnome were not satisfactory.Then came the news about HUD in version 12.04. While the demo video seemed slick, it was easily noticed how the new interface could become annoying soon. I only wish there were some new and easy way for users to switch to the classic gnome mode. Speaking of gnome, even they've "upgraded" their interface! The new gnome "shell" featured in Fedora is again slick, but annoying. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a better option to switch back to a classic gnome environment? Do all "upgrades" have to include major changes to the UI?!

[mahesh2k 0]

As I said earlier MATE desktop seems to be the good alternative for the gnome and unity. You can see from their current release that MATE retains the top bar with menus. I think that is what many users are missing. If they get this back with the help of MATE then I don't think there is any problem. What I find confusing is the rewrite of the code. I mean rewriting mate desktop from scratch. I am looking forward to the MATE release in future. I just hope that they use the existing gnome 3.x code and just add the menus in the top navigation. That way many of us will get back what we lost in earlier ubuntu release due to the unity interface. I have tolerated enough of unity desktop and i don't have any plans of tolerating more keyboard stroke dependent UI -HUD. I think XFCE and xubuntu are two good options for those who are fed up of all the ubuntu and unity stuff. I guess I am going to test my productivity on each of these. I just dont like it when corporation force it on us in the name of profit and then free software groups force it on us in the name of free. It's just frustrating that none of the developers in the top hierarchy understand the common users issues.

[manuleka 0]

i'm sure there's a lot of disappointed Ubuntu followers with this Unity implementation... although i don't really like Unity i don't hate it either... but like you starscream i prefer the old classic layout... i use Xubuntu 11.10 due to speed and simplicityLinuxMint is quite nice too (Fully Loaded with tons of necessary codecs)

[mahesh2k 0]

There is a heated discussion going on over at ubuntu forums. You can find that discussion in this thread. If you check it from the start of the thread, I think ubuntu users are way too cool compared to windows and apple folks. I have seen windows and apple folks literally going for name calling over some issues. But in case of ubuntu, I guess they have a lot more tolerance for broken things. If this is how they think then surely ubuntu and linux is coming from a long standing history of tolerance and hard work. I was just scrolling all these pages on forums and came to that conclusion. I know that many are moving away from ubuntu for some reasons - be it mint or any other debian fork. But it goes to show that there is some vision.

Like it or not, I realized that I am low on funds and using the old hardware. I have one computer at home which is shipped during 2003 and only motherboard of that computer was replaced and last month mouse was replaced. Which I consider minor. So overall I have a lot to catchup atleast for my home computer. I have asked ubuntu community for the feedback on hardware specs which is low but it seems that without graphics card I can still run compiz without any issues. I may not get the 3D Bit but surely there seems to be issue with the 2D.

Coming back to HUD, I think in future more and more interface are going to be like HUD. As the code is in GPL, soon there are going to be some copycats and some are going to be more efficient. I can think of apple and microsoft moving in this field. They are already coming up with the tiles interface. I don't know if it is good but old types of GUIs are going to be replaced. I hope it is going for the good, touchscreens are going to change the way we live and do work. So it is going to be possible that HUD and their future implementations are here to stay?

[manuleka 0]

i find the Ubuntu Online Forum to be very very lively and queries gets replies almost instantaneously.... that's one of the reasons why i went back to Xubuntu because there's quite a lot of Ubuntu Users...back to HUD... yes Apple and Windows will follow because this HUD interface seems to have quite an attention...

[mahesh2k 0]

Just 4 days left for the ubuntu release and i am sure they have packed the HUD interface with community guidelines. I don't think there was much positive votes for the HUD but in any case they have got enough votes that they soon will make more changes and make it usable system. In order to not to make it hard for old users on learning curve they have kept old gnome shell intact.Gnome classic and the changes in the unity are made to make it easy to use new version of ubuntu. I have seen few youtube videos for the precise pangolin updates. I do feel that they have some interesting stuff coming out for all of us. Just have to wait and see how this is going to work for tablet and the desktop interface.Anyway, going to fireup my torrent this monday for the ubuntu disc. I have some positive expectations from the ubuntu, so lets just see how gnome classic, hud and other stuff in this long term release is going to perform.