I figured this was coming, well not the switch to Wayland but the deviation from the mainstream. And to think it all started with moving the buttons to the left...
Wayland will eventually become mainstream and replace Xorg. Or so I hope. This is exciting news and I don't understand the FUD. The window button change wasn't for the sake of change. They thought about it and came to the conclusion that it's better that way (I believe they are right, according to basic HIG design rules). The only problem they didn't take into account is muscle memory...
I certainly didn't mean to spread FUD. I just didn't understand the changes. Thanks for explaining the button change. It's been bugging me.
The FUD part was more directed at dan_maran One comment on the blog caught my eye: I also want to mention one aspect: security. This is a great opportunity to fix desktop security (see https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=280781) MeeGo is using Wayland already, gotta try it in a VM (note to myself).
I don't know if that is the definitive plan as I remember Linus saying something against that. I think is more to the effect that the Linux world saw Canonical as force that could help drive the adoption of Linux in general not just Ubuntu as a different animal outside the main stack. I still don't know where they got the metrics for this change, I actually followed my usage for a while right after this change and noticed that my cursor was most of the time, by default placement of hand, on the right. I tried to use the left side controls but found I would have to move the mouse from the right across the entire screen to the right and not just up. It may just be the way that I tend to position my cursor, but I attribute it to the fact that, at least stateside, we go from left to right and I found the cursor was in the way more times than not while typing etc. To each their own though. It's easy enough to right the ship for now, but with unity coming I don't know how that will change. I just chalked it up to another reason I will not be using Ubuntu in the future or anymore personally.
Hey no fud here, I dind't say it was a POS, which in my opinion I could. BUT again to each their own. And that is the beauty of it, I didn't like it so I managed to switch my systems away(back to Centos) before it got to ingrained in the network.
I do not care for Unity at all. I was very surprised to find that Unity doesn't measure up to the most basic docking application. For them to force this on us as the default interface in the future is a bad move.
Unity isn't a finished product, who knows how it will look once it's considered a full GNOME replacement? Same for Wayland, there's the instant critique (and fear) that some features will be missing like X forwarding. Those are no issues that couldn't be fixed or worked around in the time frame mark laid out.
I will just wait for Natty to come out before passing judgment on Unity and Wayland. BTW, my window buttons are on the right side now--courtesy of Ubuntu Tweak
http://openceo.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-wayland-is-good-for-future-of.html More on why it's good. Note: I don't concur, as I have deployed thin clients with 128mb of RAM and the experience is manageable. And who is still sticking out terminals with that little of RAM, hell 2 years again 256MB was tiny in a LTSP setup. Gah, more flipping fragmentation for fragmentations sake.