Ubuntu in 2013
markshuttleworth.com
markshuttleworth.com
Translated:
We're going to push our own goals rather than asking what people want, you know like Amazon again.
We're including everyone in our statement, apart from those people with an opinion other than ours.
Giving, giving, giving dammit giving giving!
We're lying about Unity with a sample size of 15 people that we all knew already, even though the community hates Unity. It's like Ballmer saying how everyone loves Windows 8 Metro but it's not selling.
Mobile bandwagon jumpy jump. Let's dumb it down so it can be use for gefingerpoken as well as anything else (not going to happen - probably worse than Windows 8).
More cloud tie in - we want your data just like all the other vendors.
Completely ignore the foundation that everyone else such as GNU, Linux kernel people, Xorg and surprisingly Debian have provided them.
Completely ignore the humongous bug database which makes Ubuntu like a pre-Alpha release of Windows for reliability.
Ugh it makes me sick. Sorry to sound cynical, but the above is 5 years of using Ubuntu canned in a few statements.
Do the capitalist thing and stop giving them money if you hate it ohsomuch.
I did stop giving about 2 months ago and poured it all into debian.
Now I'm doing the capitalist thing of whinging about how my investment was misused.
Quote from the linked article, emphasis added. I'm actually interested in the methodology in use by Canonical. I can find the following reference easily...
http://design.canonical.com/2010/11/usability-testing-of-uni...
together with some work on application software
http://design.canonical.com/2011/08/thunderbird-evolution-us...
Anyone got anything else solid from Canonical?
PS: I know and rather like Unity as manifest in 12.04/12.10. It will be interesting to see how the UI changes and what implications the UI have for the underlying system as the transition to mobile device moves forward. I think that users should stick to LTS or move to a 'rolling distro' if they need very reliable and/or specific interfaces. Of course, that will reduce the pool of testers and the range of hardware tested, but it looks as if Canonical will be working with hardware manufacturers anyway.
really, can't you just go somewhere else? ubuntu is fine for my laptop. it might even do for my mother's next time i visit. if you want something else, either use something else or at least have the graciousness to complain without "fuck up" and "muckety muck". you're beyond tiring. go away. please.
The Ubuntu community got so large because Ubuntu was something that people found very useful. Then a few years ago, questionable decisions started being made. They brought a very poor experience to a huge number of people, without offering any benefit.
The criticism is valid, and it should be voiced loudly and often.
It's not isolated to Ubuntu, either. There are other major open source projects that have started to actively defecate upon their existing user base. Firefox and GNOME are two big ones. We see the same kind of widespread, large-scale anger from their communities, too.
The leadership of Ubuntu, GNOME and Firefox have all chosen to essentially ignore the ever-growing disillusionment within their existing communities. I think it will cost them dearly. We've already seen a lot of people moving to alternatives.
More importantly, these are the power users who are moving away. These are the very people who are needed by any project that really wants to succeed. They're the ones who help drive others to use the given product. Without them, the project is nothing. It may take a few more years, but I do think that we'll see GNOME, Ubuntu and Firefox go the way of XFree86, if things don't change today.
I know we live in the age of hyperbole but statements like this "There are other major open source projects that have started to actively defecate upon their existing user base." are not constructive in any way. Ubuntu adoption is growing not shrinking, Firefox market share while not growing is holding steady. Claiming that these projects are going down is nothing but FUD. (I know many people would love to see Ubuntu and Firefox go down just so they can have a chance to see their pet distro on top and Chrome on top but alas it ain't happening any-time soon)
The level of anger and displeasure within the Ubuntu community is at an astounding level. It's not a healthy community these days.
Clearly, the growth isn't there. Android has become the most popular Linux distribution around. DistroWatch shows more interest in Linux Mint, and a declining interest in Ubuntu. The general sentiment when following discussion online is that people are unhappy with Ubuntu, and trying alternatives, including Windows and OS X.
The same goes for Firefox and GNOME. The sentiment within the existing user communities is not pleasant. The only "positive" (more like non-negative) articles are coming from the leadership of these projects, and they often read much more like advertising or propaganda than informative articles. Much of the user-generated discussion is some expression of displeasure.
Contrast this to some of the other major projects. We see people openly happy to use Chrome or Opera. We see people happy to use Xfce and KDE. We see people happy to use Linux Mint or Debian. The difference is like light and day.
Ignoring, or even denying the existence of, the simmering tension within the Ubuntu, GNOME and Firefox communities just isn't helpful. It's going to boil over at some point, unfortunately.
>> How exactly have their decisions "paid off"?
The main complaint over the last year and a half against ubuntu esp in 11.* days was Unity. At this stage in its life can anyone with a straight face claim that Unity on 12.04 is a substandard experience? I highly doubt it, and if there is that person is most likely still holding on to the bitterness of their initial experience with it rather than any substantial criticism against how it is currently.
>> Clearly, the growth isn't there. Android has become the most popular Linux distribution around. DistroWatch shows more interest in Linux Mint, and a declining interest in Ubuntu. The general sentiment when following discussion online is that people are unhappy with Ubuntu, and trying alternatives, including Windows and OS X.
Saying that Android is the most popular Linux distro out there is grasping for straws, our discussion here is obviously in context of desktop OSs, bringing up Android is a non-sequitur and like comparing apples and oranges.
>> The same goes for Firefox and GNOME. The sentiment within the existing user communities is not pleasant. The only "positive" (more like non-negative) articles are coming from the leadership of these projects, and they often read much more like advertising or propaganda than informative articles. Much of the user-generated discussion is some expression of displeasure.
Once again this is all anecdotes. It's funny you mention Firefox, I use both Chrome and Firefox but the strongest criticism I see against Firefox is something as trivial as version numbers. In pretty much every Firefox related thread there is atleast one person complaining about the rate at which new versions are being churned out all the while not appreciating the irony of being a Chrome user and making that complaint. I read an article today with some guy ranting and leaving Ubuntu for Windows after his web-cam stopped working in a newer release, I consider this kind of trivial criticism to be irrelevant and sadly that's the kind of criticism that is directed at these projects these days.
I have called you on this above, and I will call you on it again. You make this statement as if it is fact, yet you have provided no justification.
The only noises of displeasure come from those who don't use Ubuntu anyway. You might argue that they left when Unity was created, except that real community members (edit: who don't like Unity) still use Ubuntu through Xubuntu, Lubuntu or simply a stock Ubuntu installation with GNOME added. Every argument made against Ubuntu does not apply to these users. Thus the arguments cannot be being made by members of the Ubuntu community.
> ignore the ever-growing disillusionment within their existing communities
You assume that the voices of dissent come from within their existing communities. I don't think that's true. I think they come from people who wish their own favourite project/fork were as popular, but fail to see why it isn't.
I got the impression that they were second-class citizens within the Ubuntu world, whether they're intentionally held down, or just neglected and without as much attention.
I have consistently found that the integration of Xfce and KDE with Debian, for example, is much more robust and sound than what's offered by Ubuntu "flavors" like Xubuntu and Kubuntu.
Deny it if you wish, but the anger within the Ubuntu, Firefox and GNOME communities is coming from long-time users who have known better times. It's much more about people who now suffer from a far worse experience when using said software. People who have seen their productivity drop because they've been forced to use Unity, or because Firefox's UI has been screwed up, or because GNOME 3 embodies just about every bad decision that can possibly be made.
I think it's an extreme minority of people who complain out of some ideological want for their chosen project or variant to be more popular.
Then please spend some of your time making it better. Your contribution will be welcome.
With fewer people helping, any open source project will suffer from being horrible and unpolished.
> whether they're intentionally held down, or just neglected and without as much attention.
There is definitely no intentional holding down that I'm aware of. It is clear that the flavors do receive less attention, but that's just down to popularity. Those who care about them more than the Unity route should contribute!
> People who have seen their productivity drop because they've been forced to use Unity
Nobody has been forced to use Unity. Xubuntu has existed for a long time, and more recently so has Lubuntu.
If anything has been forced, it is the dropping of GNOME 2. But that has happened upstream (including in Debian) and Ubuntu cannot reasonably be held responsible (even though this seems to be an unfortunately common misunderstanding). AIUI, difficulties with GNOME upstream is one of the reasons that Unity was created.
Then there are the performance issues. They remain to this day. We constantly hear from Firefox advocates that it doesn't have poor performance, or that it doesn't use excessive memory. Yet somehow the release notes for each major release talk about "fixing" such problems.
At some point, one just gets tired of being strung along. The alternatives aren't necessarily perfect, but at least they're better in some way. If Firefox is going to try to look and behave like Chrome, yet have far inferior performance and consume more memory, we might as well just use Chrome.
I don't really know what to say about the performance issues though, as I don't have any. Also, Firefox uses far less RAM than Chrome on my PC. I don't understand why people worry about RAM use so much anyway. If it's not it use, it might as well not be there.
People are genuinely upset about Canonical's direction, the tech community knows the context and history here, it does not need explaining. A simple "fuck you" reaction is sometimes appropriate.
Canonical is clearly taking the wrong direction and the simple solution is to switch to a better community, there are literally tons of them,
Maybe people who haven't contributed anything are unhappy to see a good thing go seemingly bad, as a matter of principle. Or, like someone mentioned, they're sad that Ubuntu's remaining community resources (which might not strictly be Mark's to spend) will now be spent in a way that doesn't benefit them and their friends.
Then there are people who might be offended that they were excluded from Ubuntu's audience in the name of "not excluding people from Ubuntu's audience".
Anyway, today I'm transitioning my parents in law to Windows 7. It will be a pain for me, but at least it will work for them. It won't freeze.
Good luck Mark S. You will end up with a "very interesting" user interface that nobody will use, because of stability problems or because of the pain caused by such an interface.
Glad you found something that works for you and your father in law.
I'll just mention that CentOS 6.3 (and the other RHEL 6 clones, Scientific Linux and Springdale, formerly PUIAS) have a kernel and applications that are similar roughly to Ubuntu 10.04. Ubuntu 10.04 is still supported on the desktop until April 2013 so people have three months to explore alternatives should they have hardware problems or find recent Ubuntus not to their taste.
There is another option, which would be to change the video card of the computer.
But I don't have much time. This is my parents' in law computer not mine, and when I go to visit them with my wife, I don't want to stay the whole day in their office doing computer maintenance. So I decided to use W7, which was already installed in their computer.
I was posting my suggestion for others in the same boat. I detect a 'blind spot' sometimes in some replies to discussions like this about the fact that the operating system is GNU/Linux, and a distribution is just that, a convenient collection of packages and an update system/policy. If someone else finds (say) Ubuntu 10.04 works really well on their hardware, they are likely (but not certain) to find that CentOS 6 will do just as well.
I use a recycled Thinkpad with Intel graphics, so any major Linux distro is a half hour install, with most things working out of the box. Debian is strict about proprietary binary blobs, and so needs a wired connection to install and add the firmware appropriate to the wifi card. CentOS I recollect 'just worked'.
My reason for using CentOS on the laptop is that there is a definite update life published. Debian release their new version 'when it is ready' and the current stable then drops to old-stable with a year of updates. This approach admirable, but I find it easier to slap CentOS on and forget about it until the laptop dies! Sort of the XP of the Linux world.
I'm more pissed about the fact that there are so many show-stoppers moving from 12.04 to 12.10. I like 12.04. It's solid. 12.10 is not. I'm going to bitch about it.
edit: By the way, I did not know "muckety muck" had a negative connotation. I just use it as a synonym for boss. I should probably quit telling my boss he's a muckety muck.
Of course if you don't like it you could switch to arch or something, but then you have the problem that you want to install program X that only has ubuntu install instructions and you end up having to read forums just to install the thing.
Cool, but don't fuck up my desktop experience with your experimentation like you have been doing.
I eventually wound up switching off Ubuntu altogether when I realized that I seriously disagreed with its general direction of removing customizability and features for marketing reasons, that I disliked most of its core applications, and that Arch, with its AUR, had a more complete and up-to-date repository of software that I cared about. That particular switch was pretty time consuming, but I learned a decent amount about the modern Linux userspace. I have a nice sleek system now that does what I want it to, and not the other way around.
Have a nice life, Ubuntu. Good luck getting grandma to install you.
The future looks dark because applications won't be able to support Wyland and X11. There will be a fork and Ubuntu is betting on it with the goal to compete with Android and iOs. On this path, users like me are left as orphan. I've change OS before, I can do it again.
My use case is disjoint it seems. All I want is a pinnable launcher dock panel (preferrably with app integration, but that gets nutty), systemwide smart learning search with system key, a working system tray and clock, and decent multiheaded monitor support. None of the current Linux desktops really provide all those in tandem.
HUGE fan of LXDE, stable as a rock and perfect for my requirements. I require a couple of minutes of fiddling around with the launcher to get the positioning right but apart from that it's a very solid desktop.
Xrandr is a great program to know, especially if you use projectors a lot.
Yes, Microsoft has a patent on that with the release of Windows 8... :D
Xubuntu in particular provides what I think of as a regular no-surprises desktop --- exactly what I want and expect from a desktop OS.
Also, worth trying is crunchbang(debian w/ openbox) and pinguyos(ubuntu w/ gnome2).