I'm an OS X user by day but very pro Linux generally and have tried hard to use Ubuntu (in particular) as often as I can "on the side".
And.. my biggest problem is there are niggling things that no-one seems to want to fix because they're cross disciplinary. For example, take window moving and resizing. Seamless in Windows and OS X, but on the default GNOME it's a hit and miss affair. Yes, you can press Ctrl and click and easily move windows, but if you try and clickdrag the title bar in the usual way, half the time you don't "grab" the window for some reason.
Worse is resizing (see: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/8473/ ). Only a 6 pixel wide or so region at the bottom right of a window is grabbable, which makes it a real job. It's not seamless like in OS X or Windows. They need to add a transparent grab zone for this. Yet, despite many complaints, metacity developers seem to think it's a theme problem, and themers think it's a metacity thing -- https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/human-gtk-theme/+b...
With too many disparate elements and tiny fiefdoms, it's hard to dictate good practices from the top down. Once they sort that out, a lot of the UI issues - including those you raise - could be solved, but the dictatorial technique probably isn't going to fly with this community.
That's the thing - that method exists but.. it's not default, and something as simple as resizing a window should be seamless by default without the need for hacks.
As a hacker, I love Linux to bits and it beats OS X and Windows in a crazy number of ways. As a user (and it's a hat I proudly wear quite often) I find the UI glitches infuriating, especially as it makes it so hard to recommend to other users I know (because I'll inevitably get the "why can't I resize windows properly?" question 100 times a year).
whoa--that was cool! On fedora 9, that increased the transparency of the window (so I could easily see beneath). That is sweet for this display, where I don't have the room to lay things side-by-side. Thanks!
And.. my biggest problem is there are niggling things that no-one seems to want to fix because they're cross disciplinary. For example, take window moving and resizing. Seamless in Windows and OS X, but on the default GNOME it's a hit and miss affair. Yes, you can press Ctrl and click and easily move windows, but if you try and clickdrag the title bar in the usual way, half the time you don't "grab" the window for some reason.
Worse is resizing (see: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/8473/ ). Only a 6 pixel wide or so region at the bottom right of a window is grabbable, which makes it a real job. It's not seamless like in OS X or Windows. They need to add a transparent grab zone for this. Yet, despite many complaints, metacity developers seem to think it's a theme problem, and themers think it's a metacity thing -- https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/human-gtk-theme/+b...
With too many disparate elements and tiny fiefdoms, it's hard to dictate good practices from the top down. Once they sort that out, a lot of the UI issues - including those you raise - could be solved, but the dictatorial technique probably isn't going to fly with this community.