Ubuntu 11.04 -- Unity Interface is not usable

I have just updated my Ubuntu 10.10 installation to 11.04. To be honest, I do not like the new Unity interface. I would say the old Gnome interface is much easier to use. Windows 7 is also way better. I might be able to get used to it in the future, but for now I will go back to the classic desktop and wait for Ubuntu to fix the Unity interface.

Major problems:
1) The launcher is basically useless, the autohide works too well so that it does not come out when I need it from time to time.
2) Software center is getting better but I still prefer Synaptic. Anyway, Synaptic is still there.
3) There is no "Show Desktop" icon. This is not that bad but still I prefer to have it.
4) I miss the gnome-panel applets.
5) I do not like the global menu. This is the most annoying feature. I do not have a Mac and I am not used to this "feature".
6) I do not quite like Dash, I prefer the old Gnome menu system where I can access the applications with less mouse clicks.

Anything I like about Unity? Nothing!

I think Unity will be like KDE 4 when it was first launched (I still do not install KDE now) and it will take some time for Ubuntu to fix it. Maybe Ubuntu Unity can get usable next year, say 12.04.

Anyway, there seems to be a good guide for those who want to use Unity.
http://castrojo.tumblr.com/post/4795149014/the-power-users-guide-to-unity

Edits on 1 May 2011:
After disable the global menu and fix the launcher to never hide and add some common application to the Launcher, the Unity Interface is at least tolerable again.

Still need to find a way to move the maximize/minize/close buttons to the right when application is maximized. When it is not maximized, the buttons are on the right which is fine, but they move to the left when the application is maximized. This is quite annoying.

Notes on 17 July 2011:
Enabled the global menu for a while and still does not like it very much, but it can be tolerable now. And I keep the maximize/minimize/close button to the default left side now.

So Unity interface is usable now, but still not that good.

OpenUSB is alive again

After a long gap, Michael Lewis just announced the release
of OpenUSB 1.1.1.

Website: http://sourceforge.net/projects/openusb.

Highlights of the release:
1) Removed the HAL/DBUS dependency for hotplug events.
2) Improved kernel version checking for the bulk continuation flag.
3) Improved support for zero byte transfers
4) Changed the maximum control transfer size to 4096

According to Michale, these changes are primarily in response to making OpenUSB compatible with the latest distributions.

Compared to libusb-1.0, OpenUSB is not used by many projects. However, it does have two advantages compated to libusb-1.0. It also claims to have better multi-threading support.
1) Hotplug support
2) Solaris support

libusb-1.0 is more widely used and the Windows backend will bring even more users for libusb-1.0. However, it is also good to see that OpenUSB is still alive. If Windows support for OpenUSB is done within a reasonable timeframe, then it would be even better.

Python and USB HID Device

(This is my post to pyusb mailing list on 27-April-2011)

Just a summary for the situation.

Firstly you may want to see if you really want to use
a generic HID device, in most cases, you can use
a custom device and then use libusb0.sys or winusb.sys
as the driver under Windows and then use pyusb with it.

Using a custom device will also make it possible to use
pyusb under Mac OS X. Recent Mac OS X makes it
very difficult (or impossible) to detach the kernel HID driver.
In that case, it is not possible to use libusb (0.1 or 1.0)
and thus pyusb with the device.

So if you really want to use pyusb and care about
cross-platfrom, then you should forget about generic
HID device and use a custom device instead.

If you really need to use HID device, there are a few
options.

1) If you only cares about Linux, then you can use
pyusb with no issues. libusb under Linux can detach
the kernel HID driver.

2) If you only care about Windows, you may want
to look at pywinusb.
http://code.google.com/p/pywinusb/

3) If you really want to use pyusb under Windows with the
HID device, you can use libusb-win32 filter driver for
that particular HID device. Please use the latest
libusb-win32 for this purpose. And take note this is
not a recommended solution.

4) If you want to have cross-platform support for the
HID device, then you need to look at HIDAPI and
use the python binding for it. Take note the python
binding for HIDAPI is not mature yet.
http://libusb.6.n5.nabble.com/Opinion-HID-and-Windows-back-end-td3716872.html
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.pyusb.user/749

5) Another option under Windows is to use the HID branch
of the libusb-pbatard git repo or older version of libusb-pbatard
(up to pbr332). This is not recommended as the official stand
of libusb-1.0 admin is not to support HID native backend under
Windows.

libftdi and OpenOCD binary download

libftdi-0.18 and libftdi-1.0 binaries and OpenOCD git binaries download
http://code.google.com/p/picusb/downloads/list

I have uploaded some Windows (32bit and 64bit) binary of libftdi and OpenOCD to my Google Code picusb page. Most of them are cross-built under Linux with MinGW and MinGW-w64. So if you have some difficulties getting them to be built under Windows, you may want to try out the binaries I built.

Updated Microchip USB Links and Microchip Stack Anomaly list

PIC USB related web sites
http://www.microchip.com/forums/m123533.aspx

PIC USB Firmware Framework Confirmed and Potential Anomalies
http://www.microchip.com/forums/m275422.aspx

The above links should help the users of Microchip USB PICs.