I wanna go home

UniSuperBox

So, what have we learned this week?

Everyone wants a home
No one can agree on what home is
Some people like the desktop "stuff on your desktop" paradigm, others hate it
New Unity8 already provides features we're used to seeing on a home screen, but not somewhere that is a home screen

Quite a few shades of gray here. I don't think we'll be able to reach consensus for everyone without just getting in and doing something, then taking the feedback from that. It's really hard to describe dynamic functionality in words and sometimes it doesn't make sense until it's put in front of you.

Personally, I think Kugi said it best early on:

I guess I could live without "home" until we get a great idea that's really a game changer

Let's try some things out and see what sticks, starting at the simplest first. The best ideas will naturally float up and get traction behind them. As they develop past their initial stages, we'll see more development toward interfaces which are consistent at every point.

I must reiterate that (since my job title is "development manager" and I feel the need to protect the time of our paid and volunteer developers) I do not support adding lots more settings or compromising between ideas. I truly believe we can make one really good way to use a mouse, keyboard, and/or touchscreen on any size personal device and the only way we'll do that is by working together. If that is totally not to someone's liking, we are not the only mobile operating system.

So, to put what is next more concretely:

We may experiment with Jan's idea to tap the background (it's only a few lines of code to change what tapping there does) and ask for feedback from small groups.
Otherwise, we don't want to make any huge changes to new Unity8 before it is released to Stable the first time. We'll release then iterate.

Go out and make.

Giampy

This home is ubuntu touch, not android or ios or others, is ubuntu touch!
Any other modification does not satisfy everyone, maybe there is a solution,a conky for ut would be liked by everyone!!!

Keneda

@Giampy said in I wanna go home:

Any other modification does not satisfy everyone, maybe there is a solution,a conky for ut would be liked by everyone!!!

One would. Make it like you can do a desktop with it like @Flohack and other said.
Those who don't wan't to use it as a desktop just don't and let it empty...
Everyone satisfied.

ImmyChan

I do wish there was a way to choose between the old scope layout and this new lack of home screen

ToxyPoxy

This is perfect! Who needs a Home!

safriddle

I like the new app drawer instead of the last ui which had scopes. It reminds me a LOT of the unity 7 dash. If only it had the functionality of the Unity 7 dash of ubuntu 14.04(when it came out) such as universal search(search for applications, files, contacts, music and video from local as well as online sources) it would be cool.

In fact, bringing the concept of lenses and scopes to THIS drawer makes more sense. Maybe the drawer could become the universal home scope and have lenses for different file types. This could also work for convergence and bring in a lot of the Unity 7 fans who are unhappy with Gnome3(like me) and perhaps even reduce maintenance of Unity 7 post 2021. I don't know if it is possible.. or feasible. An intriguing idea nonetheless.

dobey

@Keneda PRs welcome.

Making the code much more complex to satisfy a smaller number of users, does not "make everyone happy," particularly those who are left to implement and maintain the more complex code.

Keneda

@dobey said in I wanna go home:

to satisfy a smaller number of users, does not "make everyone happy,"

Did you make a survey?

UBPorts themselves ask us to discuss about it :
https://ubports.com/fr_FR/blog/notre-blog-1/post/call-for-testing-ubuntu-touch-ota-12-273

We expect the removal of scopes will be the most talked-about change in this update, as it will change the home screen for everyone. This topic was heavily discussed in I wanna go home on the UBports Forum, and we expect this discussion will continue with this update. The whole forum topic is required reading before sharing your thoughts, we think. Many excellent viewpoints were raised.

So let coders tell what they want or not to implement.

PRs welcome.

Don't know what "PR" means...

stanwood

@Keneda I guess PR means « Pull Request » but not 100% sure...

UniSuperBox

@Keneda,

So let coders tell what they want or not to implement.

You've been told by one coder, I'm making it two. I wrote that blog post asking people to come here, to my post. And asking to read the entire thing before adding their thoughts.

It's taken us six months to bring up this update without needing to implement a classical desktop too. If a classical desktop can be made in a way that it is automatically tested, works across all screen sizes, and works across all input methods, I'm all for it. Maybe you'd like to design and implement such a thing? I haven't made a survey or anything, but if you're sure that I'm completely wrong and you'll have enough people helping you to successfully complete the task, do it!

UniSuperBox

@safriddle,

Indeed, the Drawer right now is pretty barren. It really should be able to search for more things and surface more useful results. That's something for the future, of course, and we'd love help with it.

UniSuperBox

@ImmyChan, please see the response to this in the original post:

Note that "just add another setting to..." is not an acceptable compromise. More customization means more development overhead, makes it more difficult to support users (you might have to do this, or you might have to do that), and takes away from a consistent experience. (If you want to discuss this metatopic, please make another thread.)

Keneda

@UniSuperBox said in I wanna go home:

I wrote that blog post asking people to come here, to my post. And asking to read the entire thing before adding their thoughts.

So that's what i do... If the point of this is to tell people that think a different way "just do it yourself", then it is pointless.

Maybe you'd like to design and implement such a thing? I haven't made a survey or anything, but if you're sure that I'm completely wrong and you'll have enough people helping you to successfully complete the task, do it!

Linux is not going to grow up if people is being told "just do it yourself".
Most people are not coders, most people can support coders many ways, in other hands.
People won't support anyone who treat them like that.

UniSuperBox

@Keneda, I don't know what else to say. It's a direct insult to you if I lie and say our team of three full-time developers can successfully implement your request in a reasonable amount of time, when it's taken six months just to make OTA-12 happen. But it's also an insult if I say we can't do it, and another option must be taken.

How would you prefer I word this? It's a rock and a hard place.

Keneda

@UniSuperBox said in I wanna go home:

@Keneda, I don't know what else to say. It's a direct insult to you if I lie and say our team of three full-time developers can successfully implement your request in a reasonable amount of time, when it's taken six months just to make OTA-12 happen. But it's also an insult if I say we can't do it, and another option must be taken.

No that is not, but that's not what you told me earlier.

Like i didn't tell you DO IT NOW, i just told i agree with previous users that said making a desktop would be a good solution for everyone : you like desktop you use it, you don't you let it blank.

I know dev is not easy, specially on open source side, where most project is on free time with few people.
So i don't expet to have features immediatly IF implemented.

And maybe include other devs in core project, like the Launcher Modular dev.

flohack

Guys please,

we had to do some decisions about where we would go, how all of this can be made also more compatible for non-Android-phones like the Pinephone, and how we can do this with our limited resources. So decisions have been made, and they can´t satisfy all users.
Android also does not satisfy all users, but probably people take what's happen there as a reference and say "I want to have that" simply because they accept it as a global standard.
So if our environment uses different paradigms, workflows, UX experiences, people are just confused why its like that. Also, I agree, some of the things are not "as easy" as with Android or iOS.
On the other hand of course it can be worked on, so that in the future there are more customization options for everyone. But for now, for this OTA, we had to remove stuff to make our live easier, otherwise we would still not be release-ready. And we are working on this for months now.
And please believe us when we say that the scopes code was horrible for us to keep, and would have slowed pretty much everybody down. It made no sense to keep that, and so its not a matter of asking users if we should keep it or not.
If other devs dont agree they can spin up their customization that brings scopes back, if they like, but then they also must maintain it themselves and keep it alive. Good luck with that.
So of course nothing is set in stone, but we cannot make heavy-lifting and change everything and then still have no bugs and everbody is happy. That´s not how software development works nowadays. Its about small increments, small changes, see how they fly, make again changes etc.

Lakotaubp

Agree with @Flohack We need the strong well maintained OS that works. On top of that if others have the time and inclination to work on other projects that fit with/work on UT then all power to their elbow and good luck.

UniSuperBox

@Keneda Ah, I see. I apologize, I assumed intent where there was none. Getting defensive in my stressed state.

For the record, I don't believe that a desktop where you can put things is impossible, but there are several questions that aren't easy to answer with it. For example:

How do you reorder the desktop when the user goes from a small screen to a large one? What about when they go back again? What if they have too many items on their desktop, and they float off the available real estate?
Desktops have files on them too. But we don't work with files, we work with content. How do you put content on your desktop, where content could be a file, or a database entry on someone's service. For example, you could have an odt file or you could have a document on your NextCloud server.

That's why my suggestion is to gather people to answer these questions rather than assert that they should be answered. I agree, if we think that a traditional "desktop" is the best way to present content that the user wants to come back to often, we should make that happen. But what's more interesting is how, not if.

And honestly, it's hard to answer if if we don't know how.

@Flohack and @Lakotaubp, I think everyone understands this. I directed people here if they are angry (or just slightly miffed) at the change, so expect more replies here over the next few days.

dobey

@Keneda said in I wanna go home:

And maybe include other devs in core project, like the Launcher Modular dev.

Anyone is welcome to contribute to the core projects, but when we suggest they do, give them hints on where to look, and they decide to go off and make their apps which abuse the system instead of helping to improve it, there isn't much more we can do about that.

But we need to actually understand needs, where things fail, etc… before we can build quality experiences and quality software. We can't simply assert some truth with absolutely zero data, such as having feature X will make everyone happy, because at the very least, such a statement will never be true. Adding every feature that gets asked for, with no understanding of the underlying issues, will only end up with a worse experience for everyone (cf. MS Office).

Furthermore, Open Source Software is built up from people scratching their own itches, for the most part. If you are unable to scratch that itch yourself, it's fine, but making denigrating comments about the state of Linux and Open Source, will not help nor change things. Developing software takes much time and energy.

Keneda

@dobey said in I wanna go home:

but making denigrating comments about the state of Linux and Open Source

I didn't. Read again please...
And, i love open-source.

Anyone is welcome to contribute to the core projects, but when we suggest they do, give them hints on where to look, and they decide to go off and make their apps which abuse the system instead of helping to improve it, there isn't much more we can do about that.

Are you telling that's what launcher modular dev did?