Predictions of Unity and Ubuntu

I've been spending quite a bit of time lately reading away at the Linux Hater blog, both for the laughs and for the near epiphanel head nodding moments of realizing that linux does indeed still suck. Not that I don't love it. But it does suck.

But, regardless of suckage, I got thinking a bit more about what things are going to shape linux in the next year or so, and I decided I wanted to jot down a few notes on how I see things shaping up in the coming releases of Ubuntu.

Gnome or Unity

The Ayatana mailing lists are always a good spot to grab a hold of a few nuggets of perhaps unintended communication and stretch them into to near absurd speculation. But some recent discussion about devs and the time that the Ayatana team has available to particular projects, and which things take a priority (namely, laying framework quickly rather then polish) has led me to somewhat of a conclusion.

Canonical has every intention of never using gnome-shell.

I mean, yeah, they've said that they'll include it, and make it easily accessible or whatever. But with unity, the indicator applets, even the windicators, they are solidifying their own personal control over what shows up on the Ubuntu desktop by removing more and more upstream Gnome elements. Naturally, theres a lot of behind the scenes framework from gnome that Ubuntu is still dependent on, but gnome-panel and the notification area are, mark my words, on their way out, and all of gnome will be taken out of Ubuntu as soon as possible.

Because, after all, its the common UI stuff that has to get nailed down first. All of the work on panels, indicators, all that is worthless in Gnome-Shell, because the work is all duplicating work that gnome-shell is doing. None of it, not a single spec, will be in Gnome-shell, and thus there is no reason to use it unless they do not intend to use gnome-shell. They can rely on the gnome-backend for who knows how long, and any gnome devs that don't like shell can stick around for Ubuntu's own personal desktop.

I would like to temper this prediction by reminding anyone reading this that I am far from understanding all the technical side of dependencies and builds and all that. But still, Ubuntu - gnome = 11.10. Thats my guess.

Zeitgeist

Gosh dang zeitgeist is cool. There's a lot going on here, and a lot of potential. I've just been sort of goofing off with it, and I'm really impressed with the possibilities. Here's a few thoughts about what will make or break it:

1. Integrate that UI. It just feels awkward and unnecessary for me to open up the activity journal to open up documents. I know theres plans for this, so nobody flip out about doing research or something. I know they want it. I want it to, thats all. But integration in nautilus elementary (again, its getting hacked up even now) and even further into docky will be fantastic. But more then that, a really smooth integration into compiz for a activity journal overview would be great. Thats one thing I'm going to have to hand to gnome-shell right now, they've got that all figured out. But those of use without gnome-shell are totally missing out on that goodness.

2. Browser anybody? I mean, 75% of what I do on the computer is probably going to be online. This, in my mind, is feature need number 1. We need integration with all of our browsing actions, at the very least for email, rss feed reads, and bookmarks. Not necessarily full history, although eventually I'd like that too. It would feel fantastic to see the large majority of a computer users use to show up, instead of being absent. Oh, google docs too.

3. All ways of opening docs. Right now, zeitgeist only seems to notice things that I open with the good old double click from nautilus, not if I open from the open dialogue of open office, or if I save a document under a different name. I open documents a variety of ways (gnome-do, nautilus, open dialogs) and they don't all register. Please?

All right, thats all for now. I gotta write something for OMG!

Taking Notes and To-Do Lists

Its really difficult for me to actually bother use to-do lists or notes, because I simply have never found a system that really works as well as I need it to. When it comes to software notes or To-Do, either it takes to long to punch in tasks, its a cluttered interface, or I can't get at my information on every device. I am, in case you hadn't noticed, very picky about what does and what doesn't work for me. Its rare for me to see an app that really makes me go "Wow!" and unfortunately, I haven't found a notes or a to-do app that works for me.

What I Use

First of all, why am I grouping these two things together? To-do lists and Notes may overlap, but they are not the same. Not at all. Yet the need they both often service is the same. We have things that we need to remember, so we write them down. The problem is that sometimes, its an assignment for school that needs to be done by a certain date. Sometimes its a quote from a book. Sometimes its a schedule for an event, or a band you hear about. Sometimes its a story idea, or a reminder to send a check. The problem is really trying to find some sort of interface that works for all of these ideas; loose ideas, and notes tied to specific dates.

Right now, I use both Tomboy and GTGnome!. Unfortunately, neither really works all the way I need it to. With GTG, there is a significant level of tags implemented, but unfortunately, the sorting heirarchy is unclear and when tasks are marked as done, deleted, or dismissed, I just get confused. And really, I'm not dumb. Its just confusing. The fact that I must add a faux-task in order to create some categories makes it worse. I like the due date and start date, I like that I can add as many notes or subtasks that I like. I don't just want to write "paper due," I want to hash out a topic, or a brief outline, or link to notes, or whatever. I like that I can do this, I don't like that I can't hide it underneath a header of school, work, or personal, but instead its all together. My primary use for GTG is for longer term things that have a specific due date.

On the other side, I've got Tomboy hidden in the widget layer. This is what I use for a number of different things, like writing quick reminders, anything that pops into my head, outlines and ideas for blog posts here or at OMG!Ubuntu!, school assignments, books I want to read. I have a note on their named ToDo, and another named Home. This shows the really problem. There is a system of hyperlinks to navigate, which works great for some things, but causes problems if I don't name things complicated enough names and they just show up in the content of my other notes (like if I have a note names Ideas, linking to notes named 1, 2, 3, 4, they can only be used once). This makes it difficult to get down what I need, because I have to always think of a name original enough to keep it clean, but also simple enough to easily link and remember where it is. Again, hierarchy is an issue, as all notes are given equal weight. While Tomboy has a Search all notes window, which includes the ability to sort notes into notebooks, its again awkward. Why sort my notes into different notebooks, when it really does nothing? It doesn't change labeling, hierarchy, appearance, or anything else when I assign a note to a notebook. So instead I just make my own from an imagined layout and by hyperlinking to my own directories.

Where They Fall Short

The biggest problem with taking notes or keeping to-do lists in GTG and Tomboy is that HyperLinks and tags, while very neat and useful for some things, fall woefully short of helping the user visualize his tasks and notes. The problem is not that the features present are not good, its that there are more features which could easily enhance the experience.

Tomboy
First, lets look at Tomboy. Its fantastically freeing to just create notes, left and right, and link to those notes from any other notes that I feel like linking from. This is a wonderfully fantastic feature. However, the weal implementation of notebooks does little more then organize the Search All Notes dialogue, if, of course, you bother actually sorting it. Anything more then 20 unsorted notes, or 20 in each category, leads to it being far to unwieldy to actually use. Especially given that. within the Search All Notes dialogue, all notes are given equal weight, it is very difficult to use Tomboy for complex note keeping or task organization. If I have a random personal idea for a story and I file it in my Personal notebook, it carries just as much weight as important ToDo lists. There comes a point that this becomes to difficult to actually made use of. Add this to the fact that the search all notes in cumbersome, just kinda bugs me.

Getting Things Gnome!
On the other side of things, GTG was pretty fantastic the first time I used it. I typed in my weeks to-do list, all my assignments and research things and all that. I forced myself to open it every time I was on my computer, and I forced myself to check things off, add notes, and link to Tomboy notes (which, by the way, is totally fantastic). But the useful feeling quickly seemed to wear off. Not that its horrible or anything. But all I have to do is type my things into Google Calender instead of GTG, and suddenly I have all my schedules neatly packaged and accessible on any computer, in the clock applet in gnome, on my iPod touch, on my phone, email, sms, windows, everything accessible. Neither GTG nor Tomboy really allow for that kind of accessibility, which is really truly necessary for real life to-do lists. To make GTG more then just a weekly check list that must be updated manually, I would love to see better tie in with other apps. I like it, its just tedious to type my stuff into multiple programs based on whether or not I think its worth the time to do so.


Now, for both of these, its not a matter of bugs or issues, its basic functionality. I could point out some issues (like Tomboys refusal to properly start with the same notes open and not the search all notes, or GTG's awkward evolution syncing) but those are not the point I'm trying to get across.

Road Map

Here's what I wish these apps were. (Note, these are extreme generalizations, across both apps. These are not meant so much as attacks on the developers, so much as what I think the gnome desktop needs from such a category of apps as notes and to-do lists, so that people can make use of them easily)

Full integration with just about everything - Let GTG sync with Google Calender, both ways. This is by far the feature that I want most. I, simply put, will not recommend GTG to any of the people that I've been prodding into Ubuntu until it has this feature, because I do my best to assure them that Ubuntu will make their lives easier, not more difficult. I will not recommend that they install an app that will require them to retype everything they have to do for whatever period of time, which is then inaccessible from their phones, iPods, other computers, etc. GTG is great as a workstation task list (which I still use it for) but kinda sucky when it comes to full out life-task planning. I would love to be able to tag GTG tasks in some way that would add them to my Gcal, on the date start and due. Not every task needs to be pulled both ways, selective sync would definitely be the best option.
Tomboy, meanwhile, could greatly benefit with something that may seem a bit crazy, but hear me out. Twitter integration (or ident.ca). Sign up for a new account, make it private, log in via Tomboy, and then post anything on the account from your cell or whatever mobile (or someone elses) and then Tomboy watches that account, and creates new notes based on what shows up there. Pure win (at least, IMHO). This means when I'm watching a movie and I think "whats that other movie this actors in?" I tweet myself the note, which pops up on my desktop. Or if I need milk, bam. Or I'm at the store and I see a good price on something and I want to store it to compare to internet prices, there. Or if I'm at a pawn shop... the list goes on.
Now, you could just do this with twitter, in general. But I really would love the ability to have Tomboy live through UbuntuOne for full device sync for this sort of note taking. It would easily take the role of non-browser version of Evernote.
In addition to both of those options, theres a multitude of other integration options available (evolution, other computers, better syncing, dropbox, phone, clock applet). I want them, and theres to many to list here. But integrate them everywhere!

Heirarchy - People don't give the concept of Heirarchy and Categories nearly enough credit. In fact, far too often you see lots of categories where its not helpful (like inbox's in email programs. I want to see whats new, not hunt through ever folder. Some stuff I might want to manually hide, but not 20 different folders!) and then when it is helpful, its nowhere to be found. Tomboy is a great example of just barely starting. I went over earlier how the slightness of the application of the concept of notebooks, but it only applies in the search window, nowhere else. Yes, I want to link to any of my notes from anywhere. But I don't want to have to open the menu to hunt through everything every time. Instead, I think it should work more like this:

I click on tomboy. Instead of a random generation of whatever notes out of however many I have, I want to see 4 options. School, Personal, Work, Blog (or whatever, totally user defined). Clicking that brings up a whole selection of notes in that category, which would be like Projects or whatever, but could really just behave as standard notes with hyperlinks. These would bring me to my standard notes. Meanwhile, non-notebook sorted notes would be constant. So, in application, I could have a 'to-do' list which would be constant, and I could click personal, giving me 4 directories of my personal notes (totally defined by me), or click work, and get my work projects, or any of the other notebooks I have set up, but the 'to-do' note stays put. Hyperlinking stays the same, can be linked anywhere, but then it actually behaves like a notebook. If I grab a work notebook from my shelf, I don't want to have to flip through all my story ideas, or blog outlines, or random notes to self about looking up '80s movies. I want my work notes, accessible through hierarchies of projects.

It should be noted, by the way, that I hide Tomboy on the widget layer, and like to have a whole bunch open at a time.

The same basic concept could be applied to GTG, but with vastly different end use. Mostly I want to be able to organize without creating dummy tasks that could accidentally be deleted.

Full User Configuration - This is my simplest point. I'm no programmer, so I don't know how hard it is to do, but leave the choice to the user. I know using plug ins suck, but let the user turn on or off the different features. If someone doesn't want google sync, make sure you can turn it off, all the way, hide the button, everything. If they just want ridiculously light note-keeping, let them turn off all the notebook features. Leave it to the user to decide how to use it, but give them the tools to do it how they want to.

Giant Disclaimer:

I love these apps, and am so thankful that the developers have created such great programs, usable for free and open sourced. Totally rad. I wish I had the programming chops to help (still learning... slowly) do some of the things I've flapped my jaws about, but I don't. But that doesn't mean I can't say I want it, right? :D

Workspaces, Part iv - The things I heard from you

A few days ago, I asked OMG!Ubuntu! readers how they used their Virtual Desktops. The results were, ultimately, very very interesting and not exceedingly surprising; at least not generally speaking. I've been talking quite a bit about workspaces (i, ii, iii) here on my blog, and I have to assume that you're at least somewhat interested if you're here. :D


So what did I find out? I asked 6 questions, and I want to look in particular at the results of 4 of these questions. For a review, the 4 questions I want to look at are:
1. How many Virtual Desktops do you use?
2. How do you navigate within them?
3. What method do you use to use them?
4. What features do you want in virtual desktops?


The first of these questions is the easiest to look at. 37 of you used 4 workspaces, far and above every other number. Check out the chart:

So, admittedly a small-ish sample size of 84 users in this graph (I got another 4 or 5 late admissions, but I already had these saved to png and everything! Ok, so really there was just nothing very different about the late entries). Theres actually more to this than just which one has the most users; theirs definitely some other information we can pull from this. First of all, not a single person used 7 workspaces. Not one. For much of the way across the board, odd numbers have less users than their even counterparts (2 has more than 1, 4 more than 3, 6 more than 5). But once we get up to 9, it has more users then 8. What does that mean?


Quite honestly, I think this speaks to one very clear point. Users want order in their desktop. For most people, it makes the most sense to use even numbers. A majority of users who used 4 desktops had them laid out in a wall, not in a cube or even a line. 16 used a wall, 12 used a line. This is not, by any means, a conclusive study, or a conclusive poll. But it does show an interesting trend, especially given many of the people who used 4 desktops had set applications or tasks assigned to the workspaces, but usually one was set to miscellaneous use, or they stated that they didn't use the 4th one at all.


So, is there anything conclusive? I think that it shows peoples basic trend is towards even number of desktops, and regardless of even or odd, 4 and less are the most practical for most users use.


Lets go back to the charts! Heres one, which looks at peoples basic mode of use for their workspaces:

Use number one, again with a huge margin, is having Assigned Applications or Tasks to workspaces. I know, thats vague. But what we often got was something similar to this: "I keep my browser in workspace #1, put my current documents in workspace #2, Email and IM in #3, and my media player in workspace #4."


Especially once you consider that basically all of the statements really say the same thing. Virtual desktops are being used often for one application, run fullscreen, just to get it out of the way. I mean, that really makes sense, considering you can only use one workspace at a time. But I was surprised that there weren't more people who were running 4 or 5 or more documents all at the same time, and switching entirely based on the exact task. But it seems my original assumption was off; While I tempered my original analysis by saying that it was not either or, it seems that no is really either or when it comes to task-centric or workspace-centric. Rather, it seems a very large majority of users (contained within the polled group of, notably, nerds) have some applications which claim their own space, and use one or two workspaces only for varied, task centric use of virtual desktops. So, while not directly lining up with my original thoughts, it does line up with some more underlying thoughts: that users of Virtual Desktops are using them basically to keep full screen apps like evolution, rhythmbox, and pidgin open and running.


Charts:

This shows the primary ways of control that users make use of. Now, this one is not a 1:1 chart, as many users use two or more of these control systems. However, we do see some trends. As a whole, its all about the keystrokes. Expo is up there, but there were only 6 people who only made use of Expo, while the other 21 people mentioning expo use it in addition to keyboards shortcuts and/or dragging windows. I would say, easily conclusively, that almost everyone uses keyboard shortcuts the most. Many users only used something besides the keyboard to take a window along with them, such as dragging a window to the screen edge or using expo.


Lastly?

These are the things people want. Honestly? I only see two things here: People want to be sure that their work flow won't get totally screwed to crap by gnome-shell, and some people recognize a desire to see their workspaces be distinct in some ways: Some, just to be distinct in appearance, some, to be totally distinct in terms of appearance, controls available, basic set up. This, for some people, is app specific, some task, some actually work and social specific, giving the user easily switchable workspaces for different uses.


Well, thats some good quality info, in my opinion. More, later!

Workspaces, Part ii - The Workspace Metaphor

Part i is Here

So, based on the last post, I think there is a basic understanding of why and how we want to use workspaces. We want to use them to avoid clutter, using workspaces as either task centric, application-centric, or a combination of the two. We want to be able to spread out and understand clearly what it is that we are working on, and to see all that we are doing. In the compiz-enabled Gnome desktop used in Ubuntu, this is accomplished by virtual desktops which act like viewports to one large desktop, sort of 'zooming' in on equal parts of the desktop while leaving other portions out of view. This has been modifiable for some time, by number of workspaces available, the layout (either adding horizontal desktops or additional rows of vertical desktops), the structure of either a cube or wall, and many many other variables concerning basic layout and in use. However, the basic paradigm in place is, in many ways, sub-optimal. This post is about my ideas about what the most optimal use of virtual workspaces should be, and in future posts, I will look at how this can actually be implemented.

So how should workspaces work? Lets look at the current paradigm in a little more detail concerning the basic metaphor of virtual desktops. I want to look at the current default Ubuntu setup, as well as my own current usage, and we will also take a look at other popular and common custom uses.

In a default Ubuntu install, there are two workspaces. These are laid out side by side, like this:

These two workspaces are identical, with the same panels, launchers, desktop icons, and wallpaper. The only different between them is the open documents and programs on one, are not on the other.

The metaphor in place here is 'desktop' or 'workspace.' Unfortunately, this metaphor does not carry well, and being a very avid user of multiple workspaces, it becomes quite clear that there are serious shortcomings involved in calling it a desktop. Where are your tools on a real desktop? In one particular place, such as a drawer or a pen holder or something along those lines. If you have something similar to what I have, you have a very clear computer portion of your desk, and a portion for writing, a place for documents to get dropped and sorted, and any other variations of the sort. This makes sense: if I'm using my computer, I have my computer peripherals at hand, if I'm writing by hand, then I have a space dedicated to that task.

But when this metaphor is applied to the desktop, it falters. If my goal is to be a desktop environment, then it doesn't makes sense to have the exact same tools in every place. Far from it; I discussed in my previous post how the primary uses of virtual desktops are to spread out according to either task, or by application. Yet in the Ubuntu desktop environment, the tools are identical in every place.

I know, I'm really carrying out this metaphor idea, and I'm really stretching it to the furthest extent. But I do believe that this metaphor (which every new user will at some point scratch his or her head at) is a weak one, that has limited innovation to some degree.

If the primary use of virtual desktops is to separate by task or by application, but the primary application currently available is to create an identical area with the exact layout and tools, then we are really not being optimal. At all. This would be like setting up a second desk, next to my current one, so that I could stand up and walk to it to read a letter, then stand up and walk back to my first one to get out paper to write a reply, and stand up and walk back to start writing.

Ok. Lets put aside the weak metaphors that I am taking way to far and worrying way to much about and think about other uses. I currently have a set up slightly different then the default, with 4 workspaces aligned like this:

This basic configuration is more or less just more of the same from the default, with minor tweaks. Using compiz, I have set programs like Evolution and Liferea to automatically open on workspace 4 and 3, respectively, out of the way from my basic work flow, but still easily accessible.

So now perhaps you begin to see my desire for a different use. It makes no sense that in my primary workspace, I have browsers with multiple tabs all stacked up, file browsers and video players aplenty, download dialogs and anything else I might be working on, some of which bleeds to 2 and 3, but in 4, its an entire workspace with one full screen app. Its silly. And its more then just my silly way of doing things, too. Its really the only way I've found to make these things work.

And I'm certainly not the only one that does this. I've read plenty of forum posts and blog posts wherein the author talks about how he likes the workspaces soooooooooooooo much because they can always leave their music player open, or their email, or a terminal, or whatever. But does that really make sense?

The problem is a failed attempt at a literal desktop metaphor. The fact is, in real life, if my desk gets too full of tasks that I am working on, I must simply put things elsewhere, not set up a second desk. While for some major tasks, it makes sense to have that clean, brand new area to set up a whole new environment in, for many of the things we use it for, it makes no sense whatsoever to use the whole 'second desk' idea. There is a better way of doing it, in my opinion. This better way requires an entire rethinking of much of the way we use windows, how we close things, and where things go when we aren't looking at them. I'll be looking at that in Part iii.

Introductions and Workspaces

Due to a recent conversation stemmed from the announcement by Canonical that they will be removing the notification area from Ubuntu over the next year, an interesting discussion arose due to one current helpful use of the notification area, that of a place to store applications so that they are available to multiple compiz virtual desktops. In response, Mark Shuttleworth wrote back, saying:

"It's a good point. The workspaces experience has languished, and I'd

like for us to climb in and improve it substantially. At the moment, we
do a half-hearted job - we ship what's there but as you say, only
configure two workspaces. I'd be inclined to say "ship without
workspaces" so that we are at least definitive about the position for
the moment.

I'd welcome a discussion about how we could make workspaces *great*. If
we can do that, then we would make more of them. And your contribution
above is a useful start: great workspaces give you easy access to some
apps regardless of the workspace you happen to be in."

This sparked a continuing conversation that quickly grew unwieldy for a simple email mailing list, and particularly in me, it started a new found desire to actually finally begin a blog on, hopefully, usability and design within the world of Linux and Ubuntu. I am not a designer, a programmer, or a developer. I am simply someone who switched to Ubuntu some time ago, and have been happy using it as my primary operating system for just over a year now. Many such Ubuntu blogs have been started, but my hope and goal for this blog is to foster and process discussion and proposals about new functions, features, and tweaks in Ubuntu. While occasionally I may link blog posts from other blogs, my primary goal to begin with is not to give how to guides or instructions (although, I will try to as it is still not natural for me to think in terms of terminal commands, so I won't expect you to either), but to really get to tear apart how we use our computers and come up with new exciting paradigms.

That said, the first idea on the docket is that of making multiple desktops the best that they can be. So for this first post, I'd like to take a look at why we use multiple desktops, how exactly they are useful, and possible goals for improvement.

A bit of information about myself: I use 4 desktops, laid out in a square grid. This is accomplished by setting 2 options within CompizConfig Settings manager, under General Options. Set horizontal desktops to 2, and vertical to 2. I do no use the desktop cube any longer, something I'll explain a bit later. To access these different desktops, I either: 1., Drag a window to the top, bottom, left, or right of the screen to take it with me to the next desktop, 2., move my mouse to the bottom edge of the screen to activate the Expo Compiz plugin, or activate Expo using Win-E, and then clicking on the appropriate workspace, or 3., by pressing win-1,2,3, or 4 to go to the assigned workspace, or pressing Win-Tab to cycle through them.

I primarily use the first desktop for whatever is active at the moment, such as a browser or document, and the desktop to the left and below are for secondary reference documents, file navigation, terminals, and or update managers. In other words, anything secondary to what I'm doing, but that I want totally out of the way. The bottom right workspace is home to Evolution Mail client, and Liferea, which are both set to auto-open there.

Now, we have the basic idea of how I use workspaces. Lets talk about why we use them.

The way I see it, there are two primary ways that Linux users use multiple virtual desktops (please, forgive me and inform me if you have other uses for them). The first is to reduce clutter on the primary workspace by have task-centric workspaces, such as one for school, one for work, one for a current project and so on, and the second is for application-centric workspaces, such as one for an always on Email client, one for terminals, one for gwibber. This is not to say its an either or situation, far from. I am about halfway in between, using the bottom right desktop on my setup as a home for email and RSS feeds, and the top left as a browser home, while the other two get populated with more task-specific documents and programs. So the why becomes apparent through these two uses. People want to spread stuff out.

Its certainly not a new idea, or an astounding discovery. I want the ability to not close what I'm working on, but also to not have it currently present and staring back at me. I don't want the distraction of what I currently have open, and so I switch to a different, clean, open desktop. This concept has been around since 1986 by Xerox (then called Rooms. Yes, I used wikipedia), so its obvious that people have always desired a way to expand the computers ability to display more then just the current screen size, although not necessarily at the same time.

Currently, Ubuntu ships default with 2 desktops, side by side. These are generally discovered by accident, which is usually a horrifyingly frustrating thing. I remember my first Ubuntu install, in which I had no clue about how virtual desktops worked, or that there were already 2 turned on by default. I lost the restricted hardware driver dialog, and then the network manager, and I was at a utter loss as to where my windows were going to. While eventually I got the hang of it, it was still a serious matter of trial and error to remember where I was already and whether or not there were several dozen accidental file browsers orphaned in some other desktop.

So for Ubuntu, Linux for Human beings, what should multiple workspaces look like?

While I'm interested in other opinions (and seriously, I've got time on my hands, send me links to huge reports, I'll do my best to read anything sent my way), I've obviously got some of my own, thus the blog. :D

Optimally, I think that this is what virtual workspaces should work like for Ubuntu.

First of all, they need to be easily visualized. It needs to be instantly understood where it is that you are going when you flip around to different places. This is actually rather well done currently, by way of a small little graphic that pops up on desktop change:

This captures well the current idea: You are viewing the top right quarter of your workspace.

And I know, we're all thinking "Duh"

But Ubuntu is linux for human beings. Guess what? My mom doesn't understand it. My Dad doesn't. They use computers every day, they own 3 of them, they use Firefox and Hulu. They are actually rather adept for average users. But virtual desktops is too much. Why?

Because even though we've made this visualization work, and we make it easy to understand what is happening, the very nature of what is happening is not easy to understand.

AKA, we've done a decently good job of explaining what is, by essence, more complicated then necessary and in need of more explaining then it ought to be.

My solution? Well, we'll talk about that later. :D

Please, share your thoughts about what I've posted so far. I'll be back with the next bits of what I think virtual desktops should optimally be, and then eventually my concept of how to fix them.