I like the idea of open source software and I try to use the open source alternative to any closed source software I may need whenever possible, though sometimes I just choose for the closed source software instead of the open source solutions. Such a choice might have a couple of reasons.

On my laptop, I have Ms Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.10 (just reïnstalled today) in dual boot. I mainly use Windows, however, as the ugly ubuntu user interface bugs me, and then I’m not only talking about Unity but also about Gnome 2. (By the way: Gnome 3 is not an option for me. I *need* multiple windows open). One of the things that bugs me about Unity is the global menu that they borrowed from Mac. It is all but user-friendly or intuitive and the fact that, by default, the Unity application bar (or whatever it is called) disappears when you maximize an application is just plain stupid. Of course, you can change it, but if you want a gui to change it? Guess what, you have to install an application! Well, that is *very* user-friendly, Ubuntu…

So, let’s talk about office suites. I use Ms Office, Google Docs and Libreoffice, in that order. I use Google Docs because I like the idea of having everything in the cloud and installing as little as possible, but for some stuff, you just need more. However, when it comes to Ms Office vs Libreoffice, I can choose without a doubt. Again, when being used to the beauty and convivialité (that must be one of the few french words that I like and spontaneously use) of Ms Office, using Libreoffice is like going back in time 10 years. The disorganized and unstructured UI, the endless menu’s, … I didn’t really like the ribbon at first, but now I must say that Microsoft nailed it.

It seems like a general thing, open source being less convivial and good-looking then its closed-source counterpart.

There is also the ever-lasting conflict between much configuration options for advanced users and few configuration options for novice users. I don’t see why that has to be a problem. Haven’t software installers had options for that for quite some years now? “Click here if you would like to change the default options (advanced users)” or something like that? Why can’t we just, when making accounts on an operating system, indicate which level of experience the user has? For example: when I’m installing ubuntu and I make my user account I could indicate that I am an advanced user and thus which to see more configuration options. For novice users, these options could be hidden, totally hidden or hidden behind the click of a button.

I already said that I like having my stuff in the cloud. I mainly use Google Chrome as my browser (dev channel, synced through my google account) and I have many tabs open. The tabs from my previous session open by default so most of the times I have between 10 and 30 tabs open at the same time. I, however, like having some web applications in separate windows and chrome lets me solve this elegantly with the “Create application shortcuts” option. The application, in a seperate window, launched right from my windows taskbar! Great! I am also planning to do some research on Chromium OS in the next few months.

However, as I understand it and as I’ve seen so far, you can’t run classical applications on that thing, which is logical. However, sometimes that may be needed. To come to the point of my post, I want to try to combine these three things: A linux distribution with (a) a simple, up-to-date and elegant UI; (b) A difficulty setting for user account based upon which options can be hidden or shown; (c) A web-first strategy going as far as being a bit of a browser on it’s own.

Now, that may be a little vague. How do I see this concretely? As for the first part, I’ll explain how my windows is set up: I have the task bar to the right of my screen with the small icons option on. Now, why do I do that? The small icons option is just because I like the smaller icons and I think the big icons are too big (and, truth be told, because I have so many icons on there, that windows shows a scroll bar to display them all if I use big icons). Second of all, I have it to the right of my screen because (a) it doesn’t draw much attention; and (b) most screens are wider then they are high, these days. So that is what I would propose for this distro: an application bar, default to the right, with combined application launchers and indicators, like in Windows 7/Unity.

As for the web-first thing: I imagine switching between webkit (default) and GNOME 2 as is needed per application. Either webkit could be directly built-in to the operating system, or a chromium-build could be built in. Of course, advanced users should probably be able to configure this, but switching from webkit/chromium to gecko/firefox could be a bit of a hassle. I also imagine a different kind of desktop. One where it would be more like a home screen with a search bar (internet and local) and widgets (both stuff like facebook status updates and your computer’s CPU usage should be possible). So, that would be kind of a combination of the Unity lens-stuff and a traditional desktop. Optimally, this would also be implemented in HTML5/CSS 3/JS.

I do realize that these are all rough concepts and I am not a designer nor a software programmer (I am a webdeveloper) but I am planning to actually look into this because I am sick of searching for a linux distro with a UI that I like to just end up with the same old stuff.