Following a survey carried out last month, Ubuntu will begin shipping with the minimise, maximise, and close buttons on the right-hand side of windows. In the survey 46.2% of people said they prefer their window controls on the left-hand side and 53.8% said they prefer them on the right.
The decision comes after seven years of window controls being on the left, at the time it had plenty of detractors but Ubuntu founder, Mark Shuttleworth, maintained that the controls needed shifting to the left because they"d be in the way of the then newly introduced window indicators.
In a blog post detailing the results of the survey mentioned above, Canonical said:
“We also polled our users for opinions on where to place the window controls. In Unity we had window controls placed on the top left, however it probably makes sense to follow GNOME more closely here especially considering how some apps take advantage of the GTK Header Bar. Our poll showed that users are split nearly down the middle on this, slightly favouring the right.”
The first version of Ubuntu which will ship with controls on the right will be Ubuntu 17.10 due for release in October. Unlike stock GNOME, Ubuntu will include a minimise and maximise button alongside the close button to make managing windows a little more familiar for those more accustomed to Windows. Those who want to move the controls back to the left can use the GNOME Tweak Tool and shift them back to where they were.
Source & Window controls image: OMG Ubuntu