Well, it depends. On my dual core 2GB RAM pc, Ubuntu starts A LOT faster than windows. Usually it’s half the time. Some times windows take like 5 minutes to start. And I’ve only had them for a month. Probably there’s some problem with one of the drivers (cause the first time after the format, windows booted up fast), But still, Dapper is faster than windows even for a few seconds.

Ok, I admit, Breezy was slower than WinXP at boot time. But Dapper? No way.

I think perhaps that the GNOME community needs to advertise more to indicate what work is being done to resolve outstanding issues. Davyd does a great job in highlighting the new features when a release is imminent but then we have silence for six months unless we are members of the various mailing lists or go to individual blogs like this one.

As you note, work is going on in various areas such as resolving redraw issues and rethinking the applets but perhaps this could be publicised a little more to those not in the development community. Even if what is promised is only “vapourware” at this stage, it could add to the hype and interest around future releases. Could also backfire if you don’t manage to deliver in some cases but it is worth considering…

With regard to the specific comment that “GNOME needs a better default layout for its panels” I do disagree and find the current top and bottom panels eminently usable especially as I run a number of applets. One comment that seems to have come out of the various usability studies is that many users do not know how to right-click to access functions. In my own system administration experience, I have anecdotally found this to be the case as well.

I am highly concerned about the conclusion of the recent Novell studies mentioned above however as “innovations” such as the start menu and recommendations surrounding the clock applet and task bar seem intent on providing a Windows clone rather than true usability. Just because a majority of current users are more familiar with XP certainly does not make it a more usable system. We need to innovate and learn from Microsoft’s mistakes, not copy them.

You still can’t expect anybody to work on your specific requests unless you sponsor him (or unless you pay a company for support), you can just hope. You are encouraged to help out, though. In fact, FOSS gives you the possibility to do what you couldn’t do with CSS: Improve it yourself, i.e. you don’t even have to depend on others. Of course, every company has its own priorities and projects, and their TODO list might but usually doesn’t match yours.

Last time I checked I wasn’t paid to work on GNOME. I know enough real developers that are not paid to work on GNOME as well. Even if I was, if I am paid for some company to work on GNOME, this does not mean random GNOME users pay me to work on GNOME. Rant to the company, not various developers with different interests. Oh, and even if I was paid by users, I’m not going to allow those users or random people to rant to me. I’ll likely ignore it.

Gnome is developed by paid developers from what… Canonical? Sun? Red Hat? Novell? Companies are using Gnome as the GUI to sell support plans for their Linux distros? This isn’t some stupid X-Window game or genealogy program and Ubuntu is hardly Debian.

Really. I have a MythTV box I upgraded from Breezy to Dapper this weekend, and it’s a complete LAMP stack in action. Its boot time is no faster than Breezy’s.

1. Better hardware support: Ubuntu is doing an excellent job on this so far. The jump between 5 to 6 (Dapper) was astounding. Most of the hardware that was not supported in an older version is now supported. Although not to the best level, most now work moderately better. Improvement can be had and hope to see this same leap with the next version of Ubuntu.

2. GUI goodness: Ubuntu seems to take care of this pretty well, where most other distributions fall short. One of my major concerns at this point is a file backup/sync solution and a new mouse GUI capable of setting up mice with many buttons (which already seems to be on the bill for Edgy).

3. Gnome/KDE integration: I would like to run some KDE programs on GNOME, and I am sure some KDE people like to run GNOME apps. This seems to be less of an issue in Dapper, but I have still had a few crashes/bugs when running KDE apps in GNOME.

4. KDE Sound: For me, installing a fresh KDE desktop has absoulutely NO sound support. Many others seemed to have the same problem. A few tweaks/installs fixes it, but should come with better sound support out-of-the-box. Not that I complain much since I use GNOME mostly.

Overall I enjoy Ubuntu much more than Windows, but believe it still needs some upgrades and tweaking before the computer-illiterate could truely step in. I currently have not supported Ubuntu to those who are computer illiterate solely for the fact that I know I would have to become a tech support specialist to them (already am one to them for Windows).

I love the new features in Dapper, and can’t wait to see what’s in store for Edgy.

Keep up the great work!

Releasing Free Software shouldn’t mean people have to PubSub every damn news site and blog on the planet for their usability bug reports. Basically, free-range usability testing is a good thing, but it works better for the readers if the results get plugged into the system.