Great work!

Great touches. But how does this all link to Wayland, Weston or Whatever it is now called: I’m referring to the accelerated GUI.

Excellent. I had a play with the new interface and really like it. One of the things I appreciate the most (which drove me a bit bonkers about LXDE) is the fact that you can click pretty much anywhere in the box containing the ‘X’ to close a window (and it highlights on mouseover). In LXDE it seemed like you had to click right in the middle of that X or it wouldn’t work.

Your version works as it should, and the whole thing looks a lot nicer too. Nice job! Thanks :)

Great work!

Are you planning to port your improvements to upstream LXDE? So that non-Raspbian LXDE users can also benefit from them?

Thanks :-)

Simon’s done a great job! I can’t wait to see what’s next.

Hello Simon,

I got a new Raspberry Pi A+ and used the new raspbian image (24-12-2014). I was very astonished about the new look of the GUI presented after start has been called. It’s a great step! I like it!

What will coming next?

Best regards

Andreas

Awesome improvements!
It looks much better now ;) .
Mav

Any plans to install synaptic by default?

A simple way to manage software was the glaring omission I noticed and I think a lot of of n00bs will be a find apt-get a little scary to start with.

Nice simple look and feel (but I hardly use X so I’m the wrong person to ask)

Keep it up

Hopefully some updates on Maynard soon. It makes the pi desktop fast and smooth, but lacks important basics like screen lock.

I beg to differ about Microsoft getting it wrong and Apple getting it right.
Yes, the top left corner is the prime position. So give that to the software I’m actually using, not to a start button or a toolbar that I’m only using to launch applications from.

So thanks for letting me move it back where it belongs.

great work Simon.. I really liked the reasons that you gave for making the changes that we now see on the new UI interface. With respect to the new wifi gui interface better diagnostics as to why a connection did not take place or why a connection just dropped would be greatly appreciated and unique. I really don’t see that on any of the platforms out there now.. thanks again for all your hard work

I don’t know if it’s possible but … For the A+ … could we have a mouse controlable on screen keyboard by default? … So we can log in and input simple text via mouse …. I’ve got an A+ coming in the new year and am trying to figure out what item is going to use the one precious usb port! … P.S. You have a very easy writing style .. I’ve learned a lot about gui’s without consciously realising I’ve been learning … Please take another turn at this blog soon, You have a real gift for teaching .. regards Pete

So…there is (technical) life after HR. Interesting to know.

While you’re looking at wpa-gui, take a look at wicd, a connection manager I find preferable.

Hi, I’m new to Raspberry Pi and LINUX. I love what you’ve done. I’ve recently ran sudo apt-get update/upgrade, but I’m not seeing that update. Is there something I need to do? Thank you for all your hard work!
– Kent

Very nice.

Can you show Canonical how to do a UI? ;)

WOW! That’s some great touches! I really like the design! :)

The presentation of Mathematica is also much improved.

Previously, subsequent notebooks opened after the first one did not quite fit the screen area – now they do.

I don’t know if credit should go to Simon or to Wolfram – but thanks a lot, anyway!

Alan.

Hello, I love the new upgrade to the UI it makes it feel so much cleaner and the resource use has dropped drastically. I love how there is an actual percentage on the CPU meter along with the flow bar same with the RAM. I am using the adafruit hdmi touch display and i need access to the config file. it seems that the config file lay out is far different in this version of raspbian than in the previous. https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-5-800×480-tft-hdmi-monitor-touchscreen-backpack/raspberry-pi-config those are the changed that i need to make to the file but I no longer have access to it I am just wondering if this is a glitch or I am just doing it wrong.

Thanks for your amazing work

Scott

Posted via a B+ running xrdp, remoted in from my laptop. Using the pi remotely via rdp the browser improvements and the new gui updates really make a difference. Congratulations and thanks, a significant improvement.

Something has munged the symbols though, not sure if it’s xrdp or your keyboard that’s at issue, still investigating.

Cheers Harry

hello

Oh, this looks very promising. :) LXDE is quite nice but it always lacked polish. I can hardly wait to test it on my RasPi, in a few days, then I’ll be eagerly waiting for the network manager updates. :)

About Synaptic, it is indeed a very good package management tool but it’s quite stuffed with a lot of options that can confuse regular users. How about giving mintInstall a shot?

http://www.linuxmint.com/pictures/screenshots/petra/mintinstall.png
https://github.com/linuxmint/mintinstall

I see this more fit as a starting point/inspiration for a RaspberryPi software/package manager. It’s simple and reasonably efficient. And its developers are also active and willing to collaborate, so it could be a win for everyone involved.

Great work. I think that the GUI changes are a definite improvement. The old one looked a bit cobbled together, the new one looks designed – much more professional.

I hadn’t realised that the “other” menu actually included everything. Including a graphical package manager would allow users to see in the GUI what software is available on the system.

Most users of the Pi will probably be coming from Windows so putting the panel at the bottom of the screen would be more familiar. Maybe not a good enough reason to repeat Microsoft’s mistake though.

I don’t know if you are following the forum thread http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=94750#p659570 but one thing that could do with changing is the colour used to indicate CPU usage in the graph – you might be adverse to the old green but we definitely need something a bit more contrasty than light grey on white :)

It only has one job :)

Simon

I have installed the new user interface with the following results:

(1) in addition to the new trash can icon, the previous desktop icons remain, but without their names;

(2) the menu bar remains at the bottom of the screen;

(3) most disturbingly, the dark menu bar at the bottom of the screen completely obscures the clock read-out in the lower-right corner of the screen.

Being completely new to Raspberry Pi and Linux, I would welcome any suggestions to get the new user interface to replace the old one (and especially how to make the time read-out visible once again).

I like the changes, as shown in the screen shot, however not all the changes are showing up after I did a sudo apt-get dist-upgrade. I’ve been able to fix the color of the menu bar, but that’s about it. The LXDE icon background color changed on update, but I’m not seeing the new icon. I’m not seeing the new window design, and I can’t move the menu bar to the top of the screen for some reason.

Is there a reason that only some of the changes would show up after doing an update. Really don’t want to reinstall as I’ve installed a number of programs that took some time to configure.

Not everyone understands the purpose of the RaspberryPi so I ended up defending it against misinformation:

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?111600-Raspberry-Pi-s-LXDE-Interface-Is-Being-Refined&p=460985#post460985

to get the update, is it just sudo apt-get update?

This is a really excellent consolidation of the UI and makes LXDE as user friendly as Linux Mint Debian is on the PC desktop.

Hopefully the large user base on Raspberry Pi will influence the general acceptance of this version of the UI in the upstream.

Richard

Move the menu bar on the top is one of the worst thing that could happen. a) from usability, you loose the facility to push the mouse cursor to the top of the screen without caring about precise movements and then find easily the menu of the applications or the X to close the window. Now you have to carefully step below and try to find if with accurate movements. b) most people is used to task and menu at the bottom (i.e. previous raspberry, lxde, kde, M$ crap, etc).
Sorry to be very negative, but I see no good reasons for such a move and only a lot of troubles.

I like the new interface.

Markit: if you want the panel at the bottom right click the panel and choose “Panel Preferences”. Then you can have it where you like.

There seems to be a small bug, at least on my pi. Help/Raspberry Pi does not work. The file does not exist.

Hi Simon!

I have to say I very much like the changes, thanks a lot!

I would be interested in hearing your opinion on the following, and perhaps even suggest a feature request or two:

– Why is it so difficult to resize a window by dragging its lower left corner, if it has no status bar? I don’t to point fingers but just to give an example: Xubuntu has 1px wide grab-area and while LXDE adds a few pixels vertically, I still find it a bit uncomfortable. Wouldn’t it make sense to add some sort of large-ish invisible square over the corner, like e.g. MacOS X does? [1]

– Ad consistency: in the whole GUI one can copy&paste by using the Ctrl+[CV] shortcuts, except in terminal. For instance, to copy&paste an URL from browser to terminal I have to hit Ctrl+C and Shift+Ctrl+V. What is the reason for the different behaviors?

Thank you!

[1] http://xubuntu.org/news/window-resizing-in-xubuntu-and-xfce/

Well Done Simon!
You’ve long realised that design works are not in the realm of democracy.
As much as you can take feedback, comes a point when you have to assert what you’ve done, and hope explanations help people understand. But happily the community is supportive.

Apparently, it is ‘Unable to locate package raspberrypi-ui-mods’ please help.
thank you

Hi Simon,

Love the new interface. Looks much cleaner and easier although I agree about the usage graph not really showing up in grey on grey :-(

How do I add an application to the menu system now though? I use the application “Xastir” which used to add itself to the “Other” group on a clean installation — now it doesn’t add itself anywhere and I’ve not found the instructions to add it manually.

Any hints where to look?

Is there a way to rename something that I put on my desktop. I have Iceweasel set up as my google calendar. I was hoping I could rename it Calendar, and maybe change the icon to a Calendar icon.

If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, and it wasn’t broke. You **** about with GUIs at your peril.

New GUI looks nice! The grey-on-grey CPU monitor is rather subtle, but readable on my screen.

Hi,
did a new install on a fresh SD card and thought I had done something wrong as the interface had changed. Maybe people used to Linux will like this but for someone with limited experience it is not helpful. I can’t do things that were straight forward on the old version. There are no programs other than the ones you have added few of which I am interested in. There is no obvious way to configure Bluetooth so I can use my BT Keyboard. The graphical interface is used by people with limited Linux experience and who are used to Windoze – there is no point in having it if it means you have to start to customise (not even sure how!) it in order to do things that were very obvious on the older version. As one person says it ain’t broke – maybe from a UI “expert” perspective it was broke but it worked for me where the new version leaves me stumped – I was getting somewhere with the PI with the old version, if it stays this way I am not sure I will continue using the PI.

Regards

I like the look of the new desktop after spending time to reconfigure the desktop arrangement and file manager settings back to the way I had them previously. So far I only found two items that need “fixing”:
1. There is no Screen Lock button available for the panel. I used this function a lot. Like my Windows systems, I lock the screen when I’m away from them.
2. There is no way anymore to set the display preferences for the panel digital clock mouse-over display.

In previous Wheezy release in Sept 2014, I was able to auto start applications within the Desktop by doing the following:
$ sudo nano /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart
Then adding the required program to autostart, in this example DecoderPro from JMRI
@~/JMRI/DecoderPro
In the new Wheezy release (24/12/2014), this doesn’t want to work. Have I done something wrong or has something been changed with the new GUI?
Thanks

I’ve had a few problems after adding the new desktop.First Minimal Kiosk Browser 1.6.2 would not work. I solved that problem quickly by downloading it again. Secondly my read/write USB stick is not recognised when the Pi is started. It is recognised when I take it out and then put it back in again I get the “Removable Medium is inserted” and then click on “Open In File Manager” . I can then access the USB Stick’s files but the problem reappears when I switch on the Pi again. I do not know whether the problem is being caused by using two words in titling the USB Stick and needing to put double inverted commas around them i.e. “USB DISK”

Hi guys,

I think the new UI get better and better. But I still have a question. I installed Raspbian’s image, but when I am not able to see the menu bar at the top of the screen. Has anyone encountered this problem before?

Many thanks in advance for any advice.

em-Houston we have a problem

We have this blog
We have a technical forum

I don’t know about the rest of you but I only have 24hours in the day to circle round information sources and checking blog comments isn’t very efficient

Can we direct to the forum for tech stuff and just leave the lovey dovey/its terrible stuff here

SimpleSimon :)

I love it!
I have to say it reminds my of my Atari days with a GEM desktop!

Well done and thank you :-)

I love it!

Really well done, it looks so much fresher than the previous interface. It feel much more RPi than we had before.

Great work Simon!

I went though this when I made the Raspberry Office Kit and ended up with something pretty close to what you have, except you’ve done a noticeably better job of it.

I know this kind of bloats up the disk image, but I’ve found these a worthwhile addition for making setting up printers a much easier process:

—————————-

# sudo apt-get install cups

add lpadmin group to pi user to enable administration of printers.

# sudo usermod -a -G lpadmin pi

# sudo apt-get install cups-pdf

To access CUPS Web Based tools open epiphany and enter this URL:

http://localhost:631/

Install GhostView

# sudo apt-get install gv

Install Printer Config:

# sudo apt-get install system-config-printer
—————————-

This improves PDF support while CUPS and system-config-printer make adding printers very easy. “system-config-printer” is not a very descriptive name, but the UI is well designed and very easy to use.

I’m not sure you have to install all that to get it working, but this is what I ended up with after going through the process myself for the Raspberry Office Kit.

As Unofficial Resident Curmudgeon, Ubergeek, Historian of Computing in SillyCon Valley, STEM Educator, and Reminder of Why We’re Doing This, I will paraphrase the Foundation’s purpose for creating the Pi: Education. It was not developed for us hard-core geeks to perform high-end calculations at the maximum level of performance (pretty obvious, huh?), or satiate Ubernerds’ desires for The Way Things Have Always Been (which they haven’t BTW, or the Pi would be a rock if you really want to go all the way back to literally the Stone Age).

The Prime Directive is to ease students (of all ages, it turns out) into the Wonderful World of Computing – not just hardware, nor software, but in all its forms, including sensing and controlling stuff in the Real World. As Einstein put it so eloquently about the mathematics underlying his physics concepts, “Things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.” So, every time the Foundation makes a change for the sake of the children (again, of an amazingly wide range of ages, as some behavio(u)r here indicates), don’t get upset and go stomping off Stage Left, rapidly even (as Snagglepuss would say), threatening to take all of your marbles with you. We won’t really miss you as there are now millions of Pii Out There (many of them appearing increasingly in schools with nascent support in the form of already very harried teachers), and therefore that many votes as to How Things Should Be. As that number seems to keep climbing To Infinity and Beyond, more accommodations will need to be made to Those Less Educationally Well-off Than Thou. As has been pointed out, it’s a pretty straightforward matter of copying and editing some configuration text files in order to get Things to the Way They Were.

“I complained I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.” Be careful what you wish for – you just might get it.

Hey, nice new layout.

This has likely been suggested before, but why not add the following to the raspi-config software:
– wlan setup
– mounts setup (as in fstab file)
– camera led off

Also, in the startx gui, there should be an integrated option to move the mouse pointer with the keyboard arrow keys or similar.

Great work guys (and particularly Simon).

A real improvement. Much sharper.

One minor niggle, I get why you would rename IDLE and IDLE3 to Python 2 and Python , but it has created an inconsistency between the raspberry pi and every other OS and I do worry that it will create confusion ‘hang on – a school this program is called IDLE?’, why is it called ‘Python’, or where’s IDLE gone? Could an alternative be “IDLE (Python 2)” “IDLE (Python 3)”

Thanks again,

p.s. I dont like default desktop icons either :)

I’ve had to rewrite the above since it missed out a number of words because I did not read the HTML tags and atributes information. I think I have solved more of the problems I had when I installed the new user interface. I could not access the two USBs I have The first contains media files taken from my PC and is read only while the second is a read/write one formatted for use on the Raspberry PI. An underscore symbol (_) has been added to the USB title on the Directory Tree. To download from get_iplayer. i had to change from get_iplayer –get 1947 -o /media/”USB DISK”/Downloads to get_iplayer –get 1947 -o /media/”USB DISK”_/Downloads to download a short test programme to see whether it worked or not. Is there any special reason why this underscore symbol (_) has been added to the USB title?

Why move the menu bar to the top (Suspect you come from a Gnome background as also have gnome icons) should be left where >90% of computers have it, at the bottom.
If you make a dark background to everything digital clock stays black text. Raspberry logo ‘Start’ button looks cheap would be better with 3D look

I’ve installed the new GUI according to the instructions and rebooted. I tried to change the position of the panel to down, but it quickly jumps back up. I use resolution 720×576 (PAL) and the GUI is Swedish.

I want to thank Simon for all the work he has done.

Perhaps the others could write their own UI and submit to the fourms and those who wish to use it can follow the links.

I am not a power user just an appliance user and find the whole concept of Raspberry Pi facinating. I am for all education and try and expose any one interested in computers to have a look at Rpi. I don’t think that any others have come up with a better plan.

I have noticed that a number of clones have come on board and and number of evaluation kits have come down in price, some drastically. That is nice to see.

I liken Rpi to KhanAcadmey as ablolutely necessary to the education of children.

Best of Luck in the New Year.

sincerly John

Some great changes. Thanks Simon.

When upgrading the wifi, would it be possible to include the option of a static address for the RPi instead of dhcp?

Hi, nice UI.

How do I save a desktop layout

I am RaspberryPi user since 24-11-2014 ~

Sub: UI Changes is a complete mess (Sorry Simon Long) Why you are looking it as a consumer platform rather than a developers platform? RaspberryPi is a developers platform.ok.

Hi,

1. All installed applications should be shown at the start menu (like the one before you made the changes to the UI). And logically, Start menu should show all the installed apps because RaspberryPi is a developers platform & not a consumers platform like android or something else… So don’t think that amateur developers will get confused. Sorting it in correct category-wise should have been done actually. U should show all webBrowsers,IDE’s,etc…

2. “Opening current folder as root” from the Tools menu was so ease to use feature. which has now been removed. It was so ease of use. & now its cumbersome to type command for that.

3. when “windowKey+D” is pressed, it allowed us to access desktop icons with keyboard itself, but after UI changes when “windowKey+D” is pressed, only start menu opens and we are not able to access desktop icons with only keyboard.

4. And warm colours should be used for UI (like Ubuntu does it) Colours should not poke ur eyes and make you blind… colours should be soothing to your eyes.(If u want to know what i mean by warm colours, try Ubuntu14.04LTS with “Forever by Shady S” wallpaper) warm colours will never harm your eyes.

The reasoning for moving the panel location is completely flawed – Microsoft got it correct. Why would you want your eyes drawn to the main system menu, everytime you glance at the screen, no matter what application you are using?

I want the application I am working with in the top left hand corner. I want that application’s menu at the top of the screen.

I don’t need the taskbar/system menu taking prime screen real estate. If anything, it belongs at the bottom – out of the way – because I generally don’t care about it when working within an application – only when switching or opening.

So thanks for changing the default. I will be changing it back after any new install. #baddesign #poorusability #hci101

I’m ssh X-forwarding into my pi from my laptop and the new desktop is not present, just the older version. When I use vnctightserver and vncviewer it shows up as the new.

I prefer x-forwarding, is it possible to use that method and have the new desktop?

Among all the things that Simon has done that seems to have been overlooked here, but really shouldn’t be, is that he’s made it a lot easier for us to change the UI. Perhaps a walk through of how to do some of that would be appropriate.

Simon, maybe you could do a quick and dirty “Pimp My Pi” video :D

Hi,
I was just wondering if I could get a graphical login. I don’t particularly like logging into a terminal. I’m kind of a security freak though so I don’t like booting straight to the GUI. It would be great if I could but if I can’t, hey-ho.

Thanks!

Hi,
I have been playing with the new layout. At first there was no changed, but then panel at the bottom was flashing on and off, and then the icons disappeared, several reboots did nothing, same for power off.
So the took the bull by the horns and deleted the panel and then recreated it, had some problem getting it to stay at the top for a while but now all appears to be well and I have everything back.
I have several other PI’s and will be changing them to the new layout as well soon.

I love the new update but I have a few suggestions (please correct me If these things can be done). I made the whole top panel transparent because I think it looks much better but the menu and window boxes contrast my dark-ish wallpaper too much. I would like the ability to change the colour of the menu box as well as the background of the open windows.

Thanks for all the hard work that has been put in! I was an early adopter of the pi and Raspbian and it has been so exciting to watch everything transform.

Also, I’m loving the new browser!

Thanks!

I like the changes for the most part, but I would like to know how I can add icons such as Minecraft to a panel. Can anyone tell me how?

Great new U/I….love the changes and I always support the Pi! One question though…is there a way to change the clock format to 12 hour from 24 hour? Thanks for the time and keep up the good work!

Is there anyway to get my question regarding the clock settings being reset and the digital clock settings being greyed out approved and hopefully answered, or are you only approving posts that fit your pre-defined agenda?

I THOUGHT this was a PUBLIC project, but refusing to post a comment because it points out an egregious failure in your work is more akin to Apple than it is to an open project.

I guess Pi is just becoming a commercial enterprise with no concern for it’s users that refuse to walk in lock-step with them. Truly a shame, but there are others out there will gladly take every penny that people would normally spend on Pi.

Looks cool, going to test tomorrow. Taskbar is not themeable/color not changeable? Hopefully comes in future.

And now, Mesa-driver and some more cool games please ;)
Ah, and Tabs for the new browser would be also cool!

(not to forget, hopefully the existing hardware-accelerated Vlc-player will also find its way preinstalled to OS or to the repos^^)
Regarding the ´others´menu: that was a thing I asked my since I first had contact to Pi and Linux…never understood until today :) 1 time really is enough. Maybe helpful in a hidden place, to recover something fast if you lost symbol for example – but definately not necessary as a complete menu-point.

How do I Open current folder as root with this new UI?
How come I cant change the digital clock settting? I used to have it display 12h like 03:30 PM by tweeking some box to %I:%M %p

@ Simon Long

It would be great if you add these following features:

1. we should be able to open a folder or files with single click instead of double clicks.(like its done in all Puppy Linux & also give option of changing it to double clicking).

2. @ all developers – please give 1 proper web browser so that codecademy.com website can work properly(maybe not flawlessly but atleast reasonably.). OR co-ordinate with codecademy maker to fix this. Not that i am begging for this feature but Codecademy.com is a very helpful site where a great purpose of raspberrypi users is solved i.e learning programming.()

Am finding the passion about the position of the Taskbar great fun, I was using Amiga before Windows95 came along and found the Windows decision really jarring, but got used to it eventually until it felt ‘normal’ just because that was where it was.

Anyone else remember the bittuer AmigaMUI war ;-)

Off-topic, but really enjoying using the Pi, every day. Just spent £6 on another microSD card and now have a terrific XBMC working (all installed without a 2nd PC). Having fun with a computer again!

Before you had 2 desktops that you could switch between. Is it possible to add this feature back? I could not find it.

Love the new GUI, but I tried installing luvcview, which is in the other menu area of Raspbian 1.3.10, but it did not show up in this version. Also does this version allow for remote access? I have two posts in the forum on these.

It’s different than what I am used to, but I think I am going to like it.

Is this new interface creating a lot more errors in
~/.xsession-errors ? I run iotop frequently to make sure
I dont have uneeded writes to the SD card, and noticed a lot of writes to xession errors. However I did do a dist-upgrade after a long time, so the change might not be ui related.
Making the .xession-errors file unwritable seems to solve the problem. My usual logs are on a tmpfs

How do I get the new GUI? Can it be done without reformatting the SD card?

Following up in what ebrobotic has said.

Simon, what does happen with applications that don’t fit into any of your predefined categories (assuming they have the proper desktop files installed in /usr/share/applications)?

If they don’t appear in the application menu, I consider this to be a severe bug.

Oh, well done, Sir!
-now all I’ve gotta do is figure out why raspi-config won’t let me change my keyboard anymore…lets me change language to Finnish, but not KB…
And I’m not really a ‘noob’

great work from you guys!

I use a black wallpaper and I would like the task bar to blend in better. It looks like the “Appearance” tab of the lxpanel’s “Panel Settings” ought to allow for this, but it seems font settings here have no effect. So I have black text on a dark bar… not very readable. I want to change the text to a light color.

On one of my older rpi’s, I can change the text color with the lxappearance utility (‘Customize look and feel’). The ‘Normal window’ text color changes the text on the taskbar. Which I guess would be great if my taskbar was the same color as normal windows. Not so great otherwise.

Great new UI, but it seems an awful lot of work…

LXDE will be replaced by LXQT eventually

Raspbian Wheezy will become Jessie

Surely the time and energy would of been better spent on Raspbian Jessie and Wayland DE ?

Would someone from the RPF care to comment why this short term redesign ??

I am not whingeing, just trying to understand why !!

Great work Simon.

I’ve just read all the comments in one session. What a fascinating overview of the intricacies of UI design. The lesson here is that we are dealing with a complex system of interdependent modules and the more you try to automate UI configuration options, the more complex the system becomes and the greater the system resources required.

It made me realise what a fine job Canonical has done with its Unity desktop which, although I’m now a senior citizen, I am now comfortable with.

One point no-one else has mentioned regarding the issue of icons on the desktop, is that the many users have been acclimatised to constellations of app icons icons by their smartphones and tablets. However, Simon has already explained how easy it is to add icons to the desktop if so desired.

I would class that as tinkering. You can use Raspbian as the foundation for creating you own re-spin. This is what’s been happening in PC Linux land and why there are 150 different distros to choose from. I suspect this may come as a surprise to dyed-in-the-wool Windows enthusiasts.

Now to help my grandson tinker with Raspbian.

Happy nw year evefyone.

Great work Simon. It is a good experience to work with new UI. Still there is some improvement is required. I am pointing two things here, for your consideration:
1. Internet proxy setting must be included in the network connection. It is too tedious to set the proxy setting.
2. Interactive program manager is included in such a way that user can easily install or uninstall the program based on user requirement.

Thanks.

slight inconsistency:
When deleting a desktop icon, the context menu entry is ‘Move to Trash’, the confirm message then is ‘do you want … to rubbish bin’, and then it is found in ‘Wastebasket’ on desktop. Three words for the same thing.
Regards
Gerhard

PUT IT BACK AT THE BOTTOM NOW!!!
And bring back the others category too please.

Just a general question really, but do you have any idea yet when we can expect the next ‘NOOBS’ (or Raspbian) update?

Thanks! :)

Hi
With the new GUI the MENU BAR does not display at all when running the pi remote using ssh -X … (using X11 on OS X) everything seems to work though, except the menu bar is gone. No X11 settings seems to matter.
The “old” version displayed same as a local screen.
Have not tested using Putty and Xming on Windows yet, but I assume this is related to the GUI or?

Br
Thomas

Very please with the new user interface – a great update and great to use!

You can disparage my concerns all you want, it still remains true that a system that takes something as common as configuring the clock from a simple process to one that requires you to now edit a config file is a step BACKWARDS not FORWARDS.

Rapsberry Pi is supposed to be aimed at newcomers, not veterans. Expecting someone new to Linux to have to ferret out an obscure config file simply to adjust the clock is 100% ANTI-INTUITIVE.

It’s saddens me to see that dissenting attitudes are met with childish diatribes rather than taking the time to actually try and UNDERSTAND the concern that is expressed.

MANY great ideas have suffered a premature death merely through such an attitude.

Considering that the clock is probably one of the FIRST THINGS that many people configure on their system, removing the NORMAL MANNER of accomplishing such a task and burying it in a config file is something that should have been elucidated from the very beginning.

I hate harping on the the clock, but I really cannot wrap my mind around disabling the clock controls. My comment regarding a commercial enterprise arises from the fact that removing clocks ettigns is something that I would only accept from a commercial enterpirse, not a community-driven one.

Ultimately, I think the new gui is great, but I still believe that when any functionality is removed as part of an update, that should be clearly dilineated right up front, along with an explanation of where that functionality can now be found.

Due to my use scenario I am forced to have a very specific clock configuration, and when that was taken away with no ready explanation it forced me to begin thinking that the THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS (notpennies, thank you very much Eric) that I had invested in Raspberry Pi was being thrown out the window.

I am booting raspbian directly into lxde, using raspi-config setup.
During installation of my systems, I create a user ‘root’ for system administration. I do not change settings for user ‘pi’.
Now, when starting LXTerminal from task bar, the user reported is ‘root’. This is not as expected. In the old setup,the user was ‘pi’.

Is it possible to change this to have ‘pi’ as lxterminal user ? I would not like to have the kids in my school course to have root access by default.

Thank you
Gerhard

Re the topic ‘menu bar at top or bottom of the screen’ – I was told by a physiotherapist that looking down is much less strain on the neck muscles than looking up. Looking up also reduces bloodflow to the brain substantially.

Using my desktop monitor I must admit I myself find it much more relaxing looking down to the bottom of the screen than looking level to the top of the screen. Worth keeping in mind if you suffer from neck/back problems or headaches at the PC… Any comment Simon?
(p.s. I do think you have done a great job on the interface, nevertheless!)

I hate to belabour this issue but I was successful in updating my B+ to the new GUI and I liked it. However, when I did the exact thing to an older B model it seemed to install but, in the end, the older GUI remained unchanged. During the reboot it seemed to be the same but nothing changed. Perhaps I misunderstood some of the comments which solved the problem by installing a new ïmage—I thought that upgrading (sudo apt-get dist-upgrade) created a new image. Does this mean that I have to reimage the SD card or replace it with a new card?
Bill

Hey Simon,

I seem to have lost the option to change the mouse double click interval which was present under mouse & keyboard settings in the old gui. I’ve always found the default setting too short.

Otherwise, a nice cleanup.

Cheers,

Neil

I found the bit where the cpu graph can display in %, what I can’t find is how to turn it back to green again, the light grey on slightly lighter grey is hard to see with my aging eyesight.

This is pure nonsens:
“Apple got it right and Microsoft got it wrong”
“the first place you instinctively look in a UI is the top left corner”
Tell me, when you work with a computer, do you work with the menu or the software that you install? The system-menu is just for starting the applications not for working with the applications.
It is just a question about being used to things.
When I search for the fan control in the car I don’t start top left, I know it is in the console in the middle, I habitually look in the middle, I’m used to it.
You probably used to mac or linux and you like it better, it’s habitual for you, hence the change.

The colorful tratment is attractive but I would prefer to be able to read the text. Whoever thought light grey on white was a clever idea? How about white on black or the old video terminal choices of orange on black or green on black? I am fortunate to be able to reverse my image to enhance contrast.

Another suggestion:
Today I’ve done a fresh install…and trying since hours(!) to configure the screen-size….and its still bad! And I dont know why :(

Have a 40″-TV with 1080i, startup and everything is fine – but fonts and everything is much to small if you sit 2 meters away. So I try to configure it via config.txt to 720p – and the horror begins…

I am sure it was not so hard before! Now ive managed to fit screensize through overscan (after ~10 reboots….) – but now I realize, that fonts and so on in the browser here is fine – but not on desktop itself! All the buttons and so on are much too large – I am not able to see or press the buttons down in the Openbox-config for example, the window is too large for the screen! Whats going on there? And I cant move it up more…

In short words: its totally frustrating to setup 720p on my (almost new) 1080i-TV. Hopefully that will be made much easier in future anyhow!

Some more suggestions:
– # overscan_scale=1 definately should be in config.txt in my opinion
– font size 12 (every) is too large for 720p, 11 is much better
– panel:setup: enty panel-appearance, in it font size is changeable – for what? Couldn figure out any difference if I change. Color, too. No function?
– any way to make symbol size of taskbar independent from menu-entrys?
-openbox: If I open explorer and any menu there, there seems to be the font, I’ve selected in openbox-theme-window. But for what are the entrys in openbox-appearance-config? There I can change font for window-active, inactive, menu-button, menu-entry and so on…but for me it seems, that only the functions “active-and inactive- window-title” have a function. The rest seems to be shown in the font, i’ve selected at theme-selection, and not the font selected here. Confusing…

Now I am very disappointed, nothing seems to work like before:
Configured my design a bit (chosen a wallpaper and added temp, weather and cpu-frequ to taskbar), done update+upgrade+raspi-update, reboot (after that and startx taskbar was blinking often alredy but it started, so I thought it maybe is normal after that update-´orgy´), then installed Openoffice and ScummVM through sudo apt-get update openoffice.org and scummvm. After a reboot I tried to run ´scummvm´ from console (without startx (another problem: ScummVM is not possible fullscreen in X, but that was also same before I reinstalled everything) – blackscreen, ScummVM does not open.

Then I turned power off and on again, console started normal again – but now I am not able to startx anymore:

Taskbar is only flickering. After exit back to console (strg+alt+back) I see alot of errors:

***glibc detected *** lxpanel: free(): invalid next size (normal/fast): (hundrets of cryptic adresses) ***

Aaargh….hours of work and then this?

Seems Raspbian needs lots(!) of more work…….

Thanks a lot Simon. Some PLUS:
(I’m french, a rare species here, and a former UI designer for Eureka ECMA PCTE, a European Eclipse’like…)

What about BeOS and Web UI? :

– screens are now wide…
while documents and web pages are verticals: I agree with a former comment a menu should be vertically positioned to leave as much place as possible to the “data”, not the “tools”.

– Web IS the universal world:
Now for info/data, tomorrow for tools. And Web pages UI are on the top (thanks then to have followed it (and not the Mac ;D))

– BeOS made it great with “tabs”, not “bars”:
what do you think about making the general purpose bar -and any windows tabs- just a “tab”, therefore leaving much more space to the rest, and showing the “general purpose” (or “RasPi”) menu as the first (main) tab?
Google made this with Chrome, and its success shows everyone liked this way too…
(and… no “windows vs mac” comment anymore ;D : it’s now “Web like” and noone will get confused nor against it!)

– One or two click to launch an app? Web again: one click?

Forget about Mac, Windows, Ubuntu… : today our OS is the Web. You love consistency, so let’s be consistent with the Web (no one in the Pi community can change the web pages UI so let’s adapt ourselves to it:) , from menu to clicks and so on.

Agree?

Brilliant work. The new UI struck me immediately as incredibly rational.

Champion!

It seems that pulseaudio 9.15 is not available for this newer version Raspbian. I can no longer send audio via bluetooth.

I have an interesting problem. I have two SD cards, the older image with the menu button at the bottom and everything works fine. The second image with the menu button at the top and the mouse does not work within x and dmesg shows the mouse disconnecting every minute or so. Everything is the same except for the SD card image.

has anyone else encountered this problem?

I am puzzled as to why installed packages do not show up in the menu any more, and there is no intuitive way to add them. I am not a *nix guru, and am not familiar with menu editors or the config file maze.

Any thought as to adding a native menu editor? Or restoring the adding of packages to the menu?

Quite disappointed. Having got used to the Raspberry Pi B+ for months, I now find that everything I learned about the UI has changed. And I’m afraid, not for the better.

How am i supposed to customize the menu?
How am I supposed to launch a Root Shell?
How am I supposed to access all those Applications you deemed “unnecessary”

Please give us a way to go back to the previous layout. I was so looking forward to my Quad-Pi but now I’m stuck with a seriously inferior interface :(

Hi all, I entered the following commands following a tutorial to make my old Pi image usable on the new version 2 Pi but received an error at the last step


apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get install raspberrypi-ui-mods

E: unable to locate package raspberrypi-ui-mods

any ideas ?

Hi All,
In File Manager in the new Raspian User Interface how do I ‘open current folder as Root’?

I’ve been googling my brains out for the last couple hours – and I’m GOOD at it – but have been unable to find out how to change the appearance of the display clock in Raspbian. When I click the clock, I get a calander ONLY, with no option to set parameters for showing days, seconds….. whatever. Why can’t I do this? Isn’t there some nice command line I can use. So far I’ve come up with nothing that works in Rasbpian….I feel I GOT to be missing something obvious here…..

where can i download this!!

Great work!!! Before, I had the original LXDE desktop on my raspberry pi and it was ok. After I accidently uninstalled everything off my sd card, I wanted to get raspian back. I reinstalled it, and I looked at it and it looked great! Much better than before.

i want maynard! when’s it coming? maynard looks great (and i think i saw mcafee virus protection in the demo…)