UI Rant: Computer Janitor
I won’t deny that the Ubuntu repository has plenty of software with badly designed UIs. Not much of it, however, makes it into main, and I’m even more puzzled to see something like this in the default installation—developed by Canonical, no less.
Look at it. Look at it.
UIs like this usually come from applications whose developers wrote them to scratch their own itches. Their purpose and the purpose of their controls are obvious to the developers, not much to Joe Average, Jr.
The description for this application, the Computer Janitor, suggests that its purpose is to “bring the system to a state close to being freshly installed”. Based on that, I assumed its purpose was to delete all packages except for the default install and revert system settings to the defaults as well. I was wrong—it does something different. In fact, I still have no idea what exactly it does.
The only hints at its function are the fact that the list entries in the Unused window are package names. Otherwise, it seems to be designed as cryptically as possible. You can probably guess that it’s designed to remove unneeded packages, but where is it stated? And what’s supposed to go into the other two list views? When there’s an empty list, a good UI usually gives me a hint what’s supposed to appear there. Here, I’m left without a clue.
Now, on to minor nitpicks:
* No window icon, even though there is a taskbar one.
* There is a “File” menu, even though there is nothing to suggest that this application works with files. The only menu item in it is, of course, “Exit”. In fact, the menu is so small that it could easily be moved into buttons in the window itself.
* The “Optimize” list view is for some reason narrower than the other two.
* It suggests me to remove (I guess) libsane-epson-perfection-1670, which is a package with binary firmware for my scanner that I installed manually. It’s not on apt-get autoremove—what is it doing here?
* The spacing between widgets doesn’t comply to the GNOME HIG—there is no spacing between the list views and the edge of the window at all.
In short, we have an application whose UI is designed “for hackers” rather than for the general user (which is itself puzzling—“hackers” will just use command-line apt instead of a GUI utility like this). It would be no harm done if it was just lying somewhere quietly in universe, but what is this doing in the default install?
Concur. Computer-janitor is an obnoxious exercise in poor UI design. I seem to remember previous versions of Ubuntu shipping with an earlier version, or perhaps a different tool altogether, which actually had a sensible interface.
I believe that the current incarnation of computer-janitor was designed as a proof-of-concept, and no one got around to finishing it before 9.10 shipped..