Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

I'm a mostly-neutral observer. I don't use Ubuntu, GNOME, KDE or Unity and haven't for years. I left when GNOME 2.2 made it clear that 1.4's features weren't coming back.

I dislike what GNOME Shell and Unity are doing because I do not feel that these things will appeal to the masses and I want the masses to want to use Linux because I want Linux to be the dominant operating system.

Spirit, fragmentation and superiority do not matter, just market success, and I don't care who has that success. I bought the argument that GNOME 2.x improved in GNOME 1.4 for the average user, even though not for me, and I believe I saw GNOME 2 succeeding, even from the first release. I do not buy in to the argument that says GNOME 3 is a further improvement on GNOME 2 and I do not believe I see it succeeding so far.

With Unity it's the same story with the difference that some of the things that I see as broken are not broken by design but, apparently, due to inattention. The case for mass appeal *now* is a little better and the case for improved mass appeal *over time* is better. Even so I do not believe that Unity improves on GNOME 2 and I do not believe it is succeeding in appealing to the masses, but I believe that eventually it may.

Given the above it's quite dismaying to see GNOME 2, once a bastion of making Linux work for the masses, be replaced by two competing and incompatible successors that do not appear to be capable of appealing even as broadly as their predecessors appealed.

I know my opinions don't count. I don't exist and I wasn't even an existing user, so no one is going to listen to me. I hope, however, that this post comes off as criticism free of irrational hatred.