Comments on: Ubuntu 10.04 Gets New Logout Dialogues

By: Dylan McCall

Dylan McCall — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 07:46:00 +0000

Indeed. GNOME did a really good job with the timeout when it was added (2.24, I think?) by having a friendly explanation. They made sure the timer wasn’t distracting, too; it counted down in 10 second increments.

Unfortunately, for some insane reason, Ubuntu has always had its own shutdown dialogues which go on top of the Gnome ones. (The Gnome shutdown dialog still appears if you press the hardware power button). Ubuntu’s dialogs have – being downstream additions – had a shorter history, and I think it shows.

Oh well, at least the rest of the shutdown process has stayed intact.

By: zeke

zeke — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:09:00 +0000

I have to be frank: this is beyond fugly
Its drab and lifeless like some old Windows 95.

Ive been using the default one from Kubuntu these past 1-2 years and I like the three choices they give along with color codes, I love the countdown clock and even the moon hasnt gotten stale.
Throw in the new light fading effect from KDE4.4 when you are about to leave and youre set.
.

By: aliendude5300

aliendude5300 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:59:00 +0000

This really does seem like an anti-feature

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:05:00 +0000

timer was useful, I sometimes forget doing something before shutting down and it helped me not to reboot again. so… how about the boot time goal, is it anywhere close to 10 seconds?

By: ashwyn

ashwyn — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:58:00 +0000

I’m with everyone else. The timer is near essential, back in my windows days, where there is exactly this arrangement (computer asks if you want to shut down after you tell it you want to shut down) I wasted a fully charged battery on my laptop a few times because I clicked shut down and expected it to shut down.

The timer was handy, if there’s to be an improvement it should be to explain to whoever these poor things are that think they have to wait through it that they don’t, I think that a message “If you do nothing, the system will shutdown in X seconds” should really suffice. For those who still can’t understand it, what’s better, having people leave their computers on all night accidentally, or having people wait 60 seconds to shutdown?

Think about the power savings!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:59:00 +0000

Apart from the fact that it removes the timer, which some people obviously used, it’s a good change because it makes it more clearer what the computer is going to do.

By: MLC

MLC — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:59:00 +0000

Yeah, I kinda’ like the countdown a lot better. It looks like they’re completing the “don’t do what I told you to do when I tell you to do it,” thing, so no one ‘accidentally’ shuts down when they just wanted to change their IM status. Still, I think a timeout was good enough. It’s good that they’re still revising the menus and including human phrases with everything.

I’m pretty sure most users get this already, but it’s nice if you’re new to computers.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:53:00 +0000

Gee, all i see here is a dumbed down dialogue :/ “are you sure you’re dumb enough to not know that restarting the computer requires everything to be turned off?” No – Yes

By: daas88

daas88 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:35:00 +0000

look at that fugly tomato metacity button xD

By: hugmyballs

hugmyballs — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:25:00 +0000

That’s right. Also, it’s not clear that answering “No” to “Are you SURE…” should cancel to the current operation. Maybe I’m just not SURE because I’m a radical skeptic and I believe I can’t be sure of anything. There’s not much one can be sure of!

By: AndrewNoNumbers

AndrewNoNumbers — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:16:00 +0000

I agree. Removing the countdown increases clicks to shut down from 2 to 3.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:34:00 +0000

I expect Lucid will still have a timer on the dialog that appears when you press the power button – which is different from the dialogs that appear when you press restart/shut down/suspend from the panel menu.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:24:00 +0000

It’s a shame the message is no longer coherent with the possible actions. “Are you sure …” should be answered “Yes”, “No” or perhaps “Cancel”. With the previous messages, it would perhaps have made sense to label the button for the restarting case “Restart now” to let users know it would skip the countdown, but apart from that the available options were more coherent with the message box text.

By: TheNinthDegree

TheNinthDegree — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:24:00 +0000

Ok seriously. ANYONE who doesnt understand what “Shutdown, Restart, or Log Out” means should unplug their computer, pack everything into a box, and send it back to where ever they bought it. Period, end of discussion.

This is by far, without a doubt, the most useless ‘addition’ Canonical has made .. and they’ve made ALOT of them.

By: hugmyballs

hugmyballs — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:14:00 +0000

The only improvement that I can see is that the user is now informed that the currently running programs will be closed, whence information lost if not saved. But you’d have to be a retard to think that you could shutdown/restart/etc. without the programs being closed, so this is an improvement only for retards. For the rest of us these new dialog boxes are unnecessarily verbose and lack the timer information.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:12:00 +0000

If people want to stop a process, be it counting down to restart, downloading updates or any other interruptible task, the user might not want to look for a cancel button no matter how much bigger it is than the close button – but just want to close whatever is going on before the timer runs out, etc.

By: bhm

bhm — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:52:00 +0000

sudo shutdown now

By: Mirek2

Mirek2 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:45:00 +0000

Hmph, I’m not sure how exactly it clears up the difference between log off and restart. And it sucks that the timer is gone: now a user might choose “Shut down” and leave, thinking that a single button will shut the computer down without confirmation and the computer stays on for… well, long. A better solution would have been to make the timer wait longer.
But the “close all programs” is nice, I guess.
P.S. The awkward close button needs to be fixed.

By: aliendude5300

aliendude5300 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:44:00 +0000

They should should add something like “Your computer will automatically _________ in X seconds” to the end of the dialog. Seeing as it was already implemented, a monkey could code that in… :P

By: aliendude5300

aliendude5300 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:41:00 +0000

I somewhat experience the same problem — my Wired Internet icon turns into a black square, but still works, so I don’t mind. Properly restarting the computer makes the proper icon appear.