100 More Papercuts for Ubuntu 10.04
Coming on the heels of the campaign announced last summer to fix 100 “papercuts” in Ubuntu before the 9.10 release, a new round of usability bugs have recently been targeted for Ubuntu 10.04. Here’s a look at some of the most notable ones slated to be fixed in coming weeks.
Before taking a look at the papercuts targeted for Ubuntu 10.04, it’s worth noting that the papercut campaign for Ubuntu 9.10 wasn’t exactly perfect. Not quite all bugs were fixed–many of the holdovers have been pushed into the new effort– and even if they had been, there would still have been plenty more to fix.
Nonetheless, many of the current papercuts represent issues that are very irksome, even if they’re not showstoppers. The most obnoxious issues that I’m personally dying to see fixed include:
- Inconsistent spelling of “Filesystem” vs. “File system”: maybe spelling consistency matters more to me than to most Ubuntu users, and non-English speakers probably don’t care about this bug. But grammatical and stylistic issues like this make Ubuntu look unprofessional and cobbled together, and are definitely worth fixing.
- Name the home folder consistently: in a similar vein, Ubuntu would be more straight-forward if its interfaces described users’ home directories in a consistent manner.
- More specific descriptions in Startup Programs manager: some of the descriptions criticized in this bug report aren’t really that bad, but others are. By describing what each item does in less technical and ambiguous language, Ubuntu will become more appealing to non-geeks.
- Clean up the PDF printer dialogue: one of my favorite things about Ubuntu is that I can print almost anything to PDF out-of-the-box. One of my least favorite things is that the default choices in the PDF printer dialogue window are never close to what I want, and I have to waste time changing them every time I print. I’ll be really pleased to see this cleaned up, and I doubt I’m alone.
- Resizing windows with the mouse is hard: this is also a pet annoyance of mine. Resizing windows shouldn’t require the hand-eye coordination of open-heart surgery. I gather from the bug report that this doesn’t bother others as much, but making it easier to click and drag on a window border certainly wouldn’t hurt anyone.
- Gnome panel applets move around arbitrarily: since my first days as a Gnome user, this issue has frustrated me to no end. If the Ubuntu developers can succeed where Gnome’s programmers have failed for years and finally make my panel icons stay where I want them, I’ll be well pleased.
The bugs above are drawn from only the first few weeks of the papercut campaign. There are plenty more worth mentioning when they get closer to completion.
Maintaining momentum
The latest papercut campaign, like its predecessor, promises to do a lot to streamline and professionalize the Ubuntu experience for new users, while also resolving pet usability peeves of longtime Ubuntu devotees.
Identifying these issues is easier than actually fixing them, however, and the developers and volunteers committed to this effort should take care not to lose steam. As of today, the project is already behind schedule, with fixes released for only two of the ten bugs targeted to be dealt with before December 3. At this rate, things don’t look good for getting a majority of the papercuts cleaned up in time for the next LTS release of Ubuntu in April.
That issue aside, there’s still something to be said for the mere fact of concentrating on usability. While many other Linux distributions cater to geeks or worry about pushing out the latest and greatest versions of software instead of streamlining what already exists, Ubuntu has at least made an explicit commitment to the experience of the everyday user with this campaign, which is rare in the free-software world.
Number 6.
Original patch to fix this was produced by Mark McLoughlin (Red Hat employee) in 2005 in response to a Fedora bug report and reported to upstream gnome (gnome ticket 314235). Updated for gnome 2.26 in Ubuntu by Ryan Maki in 2009 and re-reported to upstream gnome (gnome ticket 341441).
The question is what’s holding up the application of the fix by Gnome upstream.
-jef
I am unable to comment on the paper cuts that were fixed for 9.10 or still exist in 9.10. I have noticed that the *.10 releases always have more bugs than the *.04 releases, so I upgrade once a year. But I do agree about the paper cuts you mention here, it is unprofessional to reference things in a different manner in different places in OS. It also does not look that professional when things are misspelled. The one thing that I am aware of in 9.10 that was on purpose is the changing of the placement of the notifications 25% lower, almost in the middle of the screen, WHY, WHY, WHY??? That is the stupidest thing I can think of. It was perfect the way it was! It’s stupid things like this that make me question this distro’s governance and think about going back to fedora!
calm down, Adam.
These generally should be passed upstream, and so most of these issues should be fixed not only in Ubuntu, but in any software package which the *buntus use. We’ll see if that happens…
lefty.crupps:
The rate of upstream patch submission in the Karmic papercuts is quite good. Feel free to confirm that for yourself by datamining launchpad. I’ve spot checked for the paperpaper cuts I was interested in and didn’t see a problem. I personally don’t have any criticism on the rate of upstream patch submission for the papercut bugs in Karmic and have no factual basis to imply that there may be a problem with Lucid patch submission rates. I fully expect the Lucid papercuts patch submission to be at above 90%.
-jef
Bug number 6 is the only one that annoys me. Although of late it’s not been an issue. All my icons are staying put.
Also, get rid of the steaming pile of crashiness that is Evolution. Those who really need the Exchange web interface screen scraper which is its main feature know where to get it. Just like Gimp.
Jeez, people are concerned with misspelled objects while Ubuntu software store is such a mess! It’s user interface can be used as an example “how not to make a UI”! It’s confusing, annoying and became totally useless. Since it was introduced I started using only apt-cache and synaptic. I still don’t understand why it wasn’t included in 100 papercuts.
What’s wrong with the software center (not store)? It seems quite usable to me. You just type in the name or a description of the app you want in the search box and up it comes and then you click install. Easy as pie.