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Mark Shuttleworth has just blogged about a new way to use applications menu.

Called Head-Up Display, or HUD, this new feature will ultimately replace menus in Unity applications. HUD is a new means of invoking commands where users can search and launch menu commands from a console. It has a smart mechanism that prioritizes frequently used commands in list. Every application that support Ubuntu global menu currently will have the ability to use new HUD menus.

Check out the video:

You like what you see?

Here’s how you can get it!

To install HUD from PPA, run following commands (Ubuntu 12.04):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:unity-team/hud

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

I think HUD will make a wonderful addition to Ubuntu on newer computers! I have reservations though… Now I’m going to close off this blog entry by explaining my reservations about HUD.

It’s not a HUD!

Understand, I have great respect for Mark Shutterworth and his thesaurus/dictionary which, on any given letter in the alphabet, manages to find animal names paired with amazing words I didn’t know before they became distros.

But calling this system HUD makes it seem like the thesaurus/dictionary lost it’s muse. It’s not a HUD. Look it up! Or better yet, here’s a definition I pulled from the internet about what a HUD is.

“An acronym for Heads up display which is a system of mounting gauges so that the read-out is shown on the Windshield. In this way the Driver does not have to take his eyes off the road to see how his vehicle is performing.” - By this definition, the Linux package Conky is more of a HUD than “HUD” is! According to the blog and video above, all HUD does is replace an application menu. It doesn’t display gauges, or program information. Also, that part about “a driver does not have to take his eyes off the road to see how the vehicle is performing”? Could we say the same about HUD? Will it allow you to use it without taking your eyes off the program? It covers half the screen, so I think the answer is no.

Now, there was a name in Mark Shuttleworth’s blog that I liked much better than HUD. To quote directly from his blog:

a way for you to express your intent and have the application respond appropriately. We think of it as “beyond interface”, it’s the “intenterface”.

Intenterface!! Now I like that name! No, I LOVE that name! It sounds so much better than HUD. I think the name should be changed from HUD (which it isn’t) to Ubuntu Intenterface.

Intenterface/Unity vs Older Computers

And this beings me to my next issue with Ubuntu Intenterface. It won’t support older computers. Unity barely supports older computers now!

Remember the olden days when you could reformat an old computer that wouldn’t run Windows because of being too slow, but you could slap Ubuntu on there and it would run just great! In fact, using Linux probably extended the life of many computers by years simply because it was a slim OS (didn’t need much in the way of memory or hardware).

Those were the days…

I started testing Unity starting with 10.10, when the first change to Unity came. The results were disastrous! Unity, based on Compiz, uses so much video memory, it crashed and burned on older laptops and desktops that just needed a small life extension. Unity 2D was only slightly better, but it also lagged horribly when put under test. Here’s why: everything had to be indexed in order for Unity to work. All the programs, and documents needed to be indexed so Unity could shortcut to them.

Unity worked okay on new computers where the processor could handle a Unity search. But even new computers tended to lag once you loaded them up with documents, movies, and music. The sheer number of options for any 3-to-4 letter Unity search would lag… and on an older computer, that lag could turn your hair gray.

Now, with documents, music, videos being indexed, along with nested menus, shortcuts, bookmarks, etc. in a beautiful interface that uses lots of video memory… I don’t feel that the Ubuntu Intenterface HUD is going to work well on older computers.

All That Indexing!

Pre-Unity if you wanted to hide documents or files on a computer, all you had to do was put them in a folder and preface the name of the folder with a period - .private

Then came Unity, and along with it indexing every file on the computer came unwanted results. It indexed every file and would display those files regardless of their being hidden or not.

That bug still hasn’t been solved! Still in Oneiric, you can do a search for hidden files and they will obediently show up! There is a fix, but it doesn’t always work. You can download the Activity Log Manager and fix Unity so Zeitgeist doesn’t log everything, but occasionally this breaks and suddenly hidden files start showing up again.

We thought everything was indexed before… now, it literally is, EVERYTHING. Can anything be hidden now?

That Being Said… In Conclusion

I am a very negative person at times… and changing things that weren’t broken causes me to be doubly negative.

But I always try to be fair, even when I’m negative. With that in mind, I do plan to trying out Unity in 12.04 along with Unity’s new intenterface HUD.

I’ll probably have a different opinion then… and even if I don’t, at least having tried it, I have a better idea of what needs to be fixed than I do now from just watching a video and reading a blog.