Ramón Calderón

A love story coming to an end

It’s very sad to say this, since I’ve been an Ubuntu user and supporter for five years, but the truth is that in recent times Ubuntu has gotten worse with each design iteration.

Ubuntu’s new interface, so-called Unity, has been surrounded by controversy from the very beginning. With a brand new interface being developed for GNOME —the desktop environment upon which is built Ubuntu—, the Ubuntu team decided to use a custom interface —the aforementioned Unity— rather than sticking with GNOME’s new one. At that moment I personally wasn’t sure that was going to be a wise move. However, a few months later GNOME still looked a bit messy, unpolished and not particularly beautiful, whereas Unity offered a simpler, more streamlined and refined interface. So it didn’t seem such a bad decision after all.

But then the Ubuntu team started messing around with their initial design. They not only added a number of supposed improvements that were actually to the detriment of the user experience in my opinion —such as a global menu that remains hidden until you hover the mouse over the top of the screen—, but also moved Unity towards a more futuristic and allegedly impressive look, turning a reasonably sober desktop into some sort of videogame. Ubuntu’s most confusing and ridiculously cluttered interface ever had landed. Meanwhile, GNOME’s new interface showed an incredible amount of progress since its initial state and got much, much better. Nowadays it sports a clean and beautiful interface that is a wonder to use and makes managing windows and workspaces a real pleasure.

So I don’t know if I’ll stick with Ubuntu and just install GNOME Shell to replace Unity or —more probably— move to another distribution that ships with GNOME Shell by default, like Fedora, for which I’ve developed a certain sympathy lately. What I do know is that I won’t be using Unity after my next clean installation of a Linux distribution.

I hope you prove me wrong with your next iteration, Ubuntu. Because if not, I’ll probably end up saying that it was nice while it lasted.

Beauty at 5 centimeters per second

I’m no anime expert —in fact, I haven’t seen more than a few anime films in my life— but I’ve watched Byôsoku 5 senchimêtoru (5 Centimeters Per Second) this weekend and found it visually overwhelming.

Every shot is carefully crafted: colors, lights, framing, camera movement… The movie mimics real cameras behavior so there’s depth of field and even lens flares, and they’re wisely utilized to create beautiful images. There are tons of details everywhere. Everything is exquisitely arranged. It’s really surprising.

Of course I’m only talking about the images here; the narrative —a bit plain and oversweetened for me— would be a different discussion. But even if one don’t find the plot especially compelling, this film is still very worth watching. Sixty minutes of visual delightfulness are guaranteed.

Facebook, privacy and security

Tuenti is a very popular Spanish social network similar to Facebook. I use the example of Tuenti in this text, but the underlying reasoning is valid in general terms and applies to another web services.

I know Facebook and Tuenti quite well. I’ve got a Facebook account that I use almost everyday and I’ve also been on Tuenti until recently. I’m the kind of user that goes through all the configuration options when joining a new service and tweaks everything to its liking. That’s why it surprises me so much when I know of people that own a Tuenti account but stay away from Facebook due to security and privacy concerns. They should know their behavior doesn’t make any sense.

The relatively widespread thought that since Tuenti is an invitation-only website, personal data is hence “more private”, better protected or more safely stored, is just wrong. Not only Facebook implements some specific security features such as secure browsing (HTTPS) or account activity logs —whereas Tuenti doesn’t—, but also a huge amount of privacy settings that let you fine-tune every aspect of how all your data is shared with others, from personal information such as name or studies to tagged photos or status updates.

Let me put one simple example that illustrates these differences between Facebook and Tuenti. Do you want to hide the pictures in which you’ve been tagged from everybody, including your friends, so you’re the only one who can see them? Well, you can do that on Facebook, but not on Tuenti: your friends will inevitably be able to look at every picture in which you have been or will be tagged, no matter what you do.

So in conclusion, Facebook is as safe as most social networks —or even safer— and offers way more control over privacy than many of them, including Tuenti. You just need to go to your account settings, take some time to read all the options and adjust them to your taste. If you’re not willing to spend half an hour doing so, perhaps you’re actually not that concerned about your privacy.

Finally, the obvious solution: if you really are that worried about privacy and security of your personal information, don’t join this kind of websites in the first place —or do it with a false name—. It’s that simple.