Oh No My Buttons
Remember when people made fun of the Mac OS for having its window buttons (minimize, maximize, close) on the left instead of the right, like on Windows? And how Ubuntu first opted to have the same button order as Windows? But then some Ubuntu users cited Mac OS's "intuitiveness" as a reason to put them on the left? Well, it appears that someone in the middle got confused, and with the new Ubuntu 10.04 beta, we get this:
The buttons are on the left, allright, but they're in all the wrong order! For me, this was the only flaw I see so far in the beta release, so I am writing this short guide blog entry on how to change these buttons to something we are all more familiar with. Sadly, the shiny buttons of this theme have the "dug in" background hardcoded, so if I were to plain fix it, they would look screwed up:
Plus, the theme doesn't even show the icon of the program. So, let's use a more "sane" theme for demonstration purposes: the default GNOME Clearlooks theme.
Allright, let's get started. We will need to use the GConf settings manager to edit the setting telling where the buttons are to be placed. It works similarly to "regedit" of Windows, except with less chance of completely breaking your computer. To get started, push Alt+F2 and type in "gconf-editor" in the text box that comes up. Hit enter.
You will be greeted with something that looks like this:
Open the "apps" folder. Metacity is the name of the default GNOME window manager, so scroll down and open the "metacity" folder. Then, open the "general" folder. You will see the top right pane fill with a list of settings. Scroll down in that list until you see one called "button_layout".
By default, it has the "maximize,minimize,close:menu" value. In short, if you want to get the "classic" button layout in the top right, you have to change this to: "menu:minimize,maximize,close".
For those who want a bit of a deeper understanding, here is how it works. The setting is basically a list of what should appear. The names of the buttons are pretty self-explanatory, except for menu, which is actually the context menu of the window. Depending on the theme, this might show an icon, or a simple button. There is also an extra (unused here) button called "spacer" which is just some blank space. The setting lists the buttons as they should appear from left to right, separated by commas. To determine whether they are on the left or right, a colon (:) is used. So, by setting it to "menu:minimize,maximize,close" we are telling it to display the menu icon on the top left, then whatever title content it needs in the middle, then the minimize, maximize, and close buttons on the top right, in that order.
The result is a comfy look of familiarity:
Personally, I like gray, stylish themes better than Clearlooks, and I don't particularly care for having the buttons labeled if I already know which is which, so I switched to using the Dust Sand theme to finish this off.
Success! Now, if only Solitaire was that easy...
A more in-depth review of the Ubuntu 10.04 beta is coming soon, once I get to mess around with this shiny new piece of software more.
Update: Here is a text-based script for quickly changing the titlebar to a few presets.
It makes sense to put them on the top left of the window. If you're going to click a button, that's where your mouse is most likely to be, as that's where the menus are, etc. That's why some older programs also have the scrollbar on the left.
What I fail to understand though is why does Mac OS X, if they truly put the buttons on the left to be more efficient, put the desktop icons on the right! Yet the scroll bars are on the right.
Anyways, for as much sense as it makes to place the buttons in the title bar on the left, what does not make sense is changing the layout in this major, but trivial (code-wise), way after users are accustomed to another layout without at least providing an option of switching back. I thought Ubuntu was all about making Linux accessible to the masses at the expense of "the true Linux way" (text configuration files, terminal stuff, etc). That's one major reason I removed it from my hard drive right after Dapper Drake came out; I like my configuration files, not a Linux distro trying to be Windows. If they're trying to do this, then they're not doing too good of a job at it. How hard would it be to make this an option that could easily be changed by the user? Not hard at all, yet as far as I've read (as I said, I haven't used it myself in ages, so this is from reading a bunch of blog posts like this one), they have refused to do this.
Anways, I haven't hit one of those buttons in ages, and mine have been on the left since I switched from gnome/sawfish to enlightenment a few years ago. Keyboard shortcuts do everything I need and are far more efficient than hunting for any tiny button with the mouse. As far as desktop icons go: what desktop icons? I do not have any, and I like it, along with a bunch of other modifications to my workspace that make working with my computer faster for me. But that's not for everyone, and users do not like having new workflows forced upon them.
I think you may be right that Ubuntu isn't succeeding in being Windows. I don't have to constantly watch my back for security holes, outdated software or frequent restarts.
More seriously, yes, Ubuntu is trying to be more "hands-free" than other Linux distros. It's not appealing to the crowd of people who like to manage every single aspect of their computer, but rather is aiming to take some of the main computer userbase. I cans see the appeal of "ultimate power" that Gentoo and other (*shudder*, Slackware) distros hold, and why Ubuntu is inconvenient for those users. For example, I could in no way at all use the default Apache config system that comes packaged in Ubuntu for my blog needs. Even if stupid, the configuration did serve as a sort of "training wheels" when I first got into web development. These "training wheels" solutions get average users through everyday situations, and can be easily replaced for a more intense management should the user want it.
What annoys me is that it seems that in their rush to appeal to said user, the Ubuntu crew is making some hasty/poorly thought out training wheels, that sometimes end up being square: weird button placement, Empathy replacing Pidgin, Yahoo search as default, Compiz mishaps, etc. There have been successes too, like the new libnotify popups and the Ubuntu Software center.Trying out new stuff is okay, but maybe the main user base is not the right thing to test on?
That being said, did you just implicitly state that I use the top buttons to manage my windows? I'm offended! I do everything with my keyboard only! Mice are for noobs!!!1!1one!
Well I know lots of people use the title bar buttons. Perhaps not you in particular, but I've heard a lot of complaining about the button movement. People are used to the old way and are now being forced to change, unless they edit the gconf settings, which most people do not know how to do. There is no easy way to change the back to what it was, from what I've seen. That's what bothers me the most, that the designers change this without making it configurable. KDE has a screen under system settings that allows you to drag and drop elements in your title bar. I think Ubuntu should have something similar that is easily accessible, even if it's just two options for left-aligned and right-aligned title bar buttons. But alas, Gnome (and Ubuntu, to an extent) is all about defaults with fewer options, to not confuse the user or something, so I guess this would go against their design philosophy. This then prompts people typing random sudo commands they find on forums to fix stuff, which is another issue all in itself.
Having said that though, I'm not being all pessimistic about Ubuntu -- that's just for this topic. I was pleasantly surprised the other day when trying to fix a friend's Ubuntu install with the livecd. When I insert the network cable, there is a little notification that says the network has been enabled. Neat.
That has its own problems too, of course. I hate the idea of NetworkManager running under the user and moving most of the network configuration there. Perfect example of why this is bad: his X on the disk installation was broken, and the network does not come up until after X login as as result of NetworkManager. So here I am trying to install packages with apt from the terminal. Of course it fails, because the network did not start. I'm sure there's probably a way to start it, but I just used good old ifconfig and the dhcp client directly to get the ethernet active.
I do not think Ubuntu will become quite as easy to use as Windows, at least in the near future, but it is getting closer at least. I know I will probably never use it again -- the system tries to do too much for me, and it often fails miserably due to my "unusual" setup -- but Ubuntu gets people interested in Linux, and it works on most "normal" systems, which are both good. Forcing users to change their configuration or execute "magic terminal commands" is not helping with the "hands-free" approach though.
Let's take the Windows analogy. After all, xkcd says Ubuntu is really just Windows Vista with a few custom themes. Windows has, for all intents and purposes, looked the same for the last 15 years (Windows 95). With the exception of 64bit vs 32bit drivers and a few other things (16-bit mode, etc), it's mostly backwards compatible. If Microsoft, after having lots of people learn to use Windows, were to move the title bar buttons to the left side (highly unlikely - but this is a what-if case), they'd certainly have an option to move them back. I can still make my Windows 7 desktop look just like Windows 95, start menu and all - title bars would be a no-brainer. So in this case, Ubuntu is actually giving the user less options than Windows. I do not think that course of action makes sense at all. Linux is all about empowering the user.
That's why I am on Gentoo with Enlightenment. I control just about everything in my system, and I know my system is not going to modify a single configuration file unless I let it. Total control over the system - it's not good for everyone, but I certainly like it. :)
Ubuntu just needs to find the right balance between configurability and simplicity that works best for the most people. In this case, I think they're going too far towards simplicity. It's their project though, so they can do whatever they want. Design by committee certainly is not any better, so maybe this will just be a small speed bump that everyone will forget about in a few months, when the new title bar buttons are the "Ubuntu style", not the "trying to be like Mac OS X" style, which is what many people think right now.
Way to compromise, Ubuntu.