I think the major distros defaulting to GNOME is not going to end well. I tried very hard to use (and like) GNOME Shell for a while, and put it on my wife's computer as well. I always ended up finding completely wrong for the way I want to interact with my computer. And my wife long complained "why don't you switch my machine to the nice interface you use" and finally last week I did switch her off of GNOME and she's much happier.
Mark Shuttleworth on where Canonical and Ubuntu Linux are going next
11–20 of 61 posts
Re: Mark Shuttleworth on where Canonical and Ubuntu Linux are going next
#12I have to agree with him on Unity, the reaction to it seemed to outweigh it’s presentation. I gave it a try and liked some aspects but ultimately ended up on Cinnamon. I realize that’s a totally subjective statement but I was surprised by some of the reactions I heard about it.
Have they fixed the problems with Firefox on Cinnamon? I ran it for quite a while, and was thoroughly frustrated by dropdowns showing up in the wrong place on Firefox (this on 16.04). Moving over to XFCE was an effective workaround, but other than the Firefox problem, I preferred Cinnamon.
I've been running Mint Cinnamon as my primary OS for a few years on both a Dell Latitude E74xx and a homebuilt mini-ITX box with no such issues. The laptop is integrated gfx and the desktop is a 1050gtx at 4k. FF is my main browser and I have not seen any such behavior.
Re: Mark Shuttleworth on where Canonical and Ubuntu Linux are going next
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have they fixed the problems with Firefox on Cinnamon? I ran it for quite a while, and was thoroughly frustrated by dropdowns showing up in the wrong place on Firefox (this on 16.04). Moving over to XFCE was an effective workaround, but other than the Firefox problem, I preferred Cinnamon.
I've been running Mint Cinnamon as my primary OS for a few years on both a Dell Latitude E74xx and a homebuilt mini-ITX box with no such issues. The laptop is integrated gfx and the desktop is a 1050gtx at 4k. FF is my main browser and I have not seen any such behavior.
Hmmmm... I've had the problem on a 960/Ryzen 7 and an old 9600/FX-6100 rig, and also on a ThinkPad X201 Tablet with integrated Intel graphics. However, I installed Cinnamon from the Ubuntu 16.04 repos, so maybe they had a bad version there.
Re: Mark Shuttleworth on where Canonical and Ubuntu Linux are going next
#14I have to agree with him on Unity, the reaction to it seemed to outweigh it’s presentation. I gave it a try and liked some aspects but ultimately ended up on Cinnamon. I realize that’s a totally subjective statement but I was surprised by some of the reactions I heard about it.
I actually stopped using linux as my main OS in 2010 because of Gnome3 and Unity. The "Applications","Places","System" menu was clear, intuitive and desktop oriented. I never liked KDE, and MATE seemed like a rather unoptmized fork. So it left me with using Xubuntu VM on a Windows host (and I hate Windows because of it lacks bash). Once I moved to the US I started using Mac and never looked back. The best thing that…
> The best thing that Apple does is that they don't try to merge desktop and tablet UX
With all the IOS apps they keep bringing to macOS, the merging of the IOS and macOS dev teams, and the imminent release of ARM macbooks I wouldn't get comfortable
Re: Mark Shuttleworth on where Canonical and Ubuntu Linux are going next
#15Are those cloud usage numbers missing some zeros? "Ubuntu dominates the cloud with 209,000 instances."
This "Cloud Market" stats they quote (which they've quoted in the past) seems like a very dead website.
Looking at the site: http://thecloudmarket.com/stats#/by_platform_definition
The numbers haven't changed in the last 2 years, looking at "Popular Images": http://thecloudmarket.com/#/popular
The top listed image is Ubuntu 7.10 ("Gutsy") from 2007...
.. and looking at recently added the most recent is from 1 year ago: http://thecloudmarket.com/#/recentlyadded
So a bit of a bad journalism moment there I think that's a very bad source!
I'm sure theres a more recent source but one 2015 article claimed that Canonical was claiming "In 2015, over 2 million Ubuntu instances were launched in the cloud – Based on their statistics, Canonical claims that 67,000 new Ubuntu cloud instances are launched every day! That’s by far the largest number that any OS vendor can dream! Ubuntu dominates the LAMP deployments in the cloud."
So indeed, probably missing a few zeros :) I can't find a newer public source, but this blog post from 2015 has some numbers for Ubuntu: https://blog.ubuntu.com/2015/12/22/more-people-use-ubuntu-th... - At least 20 million unique instances of Ubuntu have launched in public clouds, private clouds, and bare metal in 2015 itself. - In fact, over 2 million new Ubuntu cloud instances launched in November 2015. - That’s 67,000 new Ubuntu cloud instances launched per day.
Of course some instances last minutes or days, but never the less.
(Disclaimer: I work at Canonical just in case that matters to you)
Re: Mark Shuttleworth on where Canonical and Ubuntu Linux are going next
#16I have to agree with him on Unity, the reaction to it seemed to outweigh it’s presentation. I gave it a try and liked some aspects but ultimately ended up on Cinnamon. I realize that’s a totally subjective statement but I was surprised by some of the reactions I heard about it.
People (me) were just mad because seemingly in the blink of an eye they went from having a stable mature linux desktop, sometimes even approaching "it just works," to having that ripped away and replaced with a choice between [radical new desktop] or xfce. Unity or GNOME Shell might really be great, but that's a huge change to force on unsuspecting neckbeards. Wish Canonical would have just created MATE themselves.
This is exactly right, it was timing.
I have been using Ubuntu since 2005 and it was a rough grind on the "just-works" front in those beginning days. By 2010, desktop Ubuntu was in great shape and laptop Ubuntu was nearly there (moreso on suspend/resume, not so much on battery). People were just starting to breathe and then Unity came and threw any semblance of stability out the window.
Re: Mark Shuttleworth on where Canonical and Ubuntu Linux are going next
#17I think the major distros defaulting to GNOME is not going to end well. I tried very hard to use (and like) GNOME Shell for a while, and put it on my wife's computer as well. I always ended up finding completely wrong for the way I want to interact with my computer. And my wife long complained "why don't you switch my machine to the nice interface you use" and finally last week I did switch her off of GNOME and she's…
> I think the major distros defaulting to GNOME is not going to end well
I agree. While standardization has its benefits, I think homogeneity also has significant drawbacks. Unfortunately, rare is the Linux desktop environment that gets things right for me. KDE comes close, I guess.
> And my wife long complained "why don't you switch my machine to the nice interface you use" and finally last week I did switch her off of GNOME and she's much happier.
What did you switch her to?
Re: Mark Shuttleworth on where Canonical and Ubuntu Linux are going next
#18I think the major distros defaulting to GNOME is not going to end well. I tried very hard to use (and like) GNOME Shell for a while, and put it on my wife's computer as well. I always ended up finding completely wrong for the way I want to interact with my computer. And my wife long complained "why don't you switch my machine to the nice interface you use" and finally last week I did switch her off of GNOME and she's…
> I think the major distros defaulting to GNOME is not going to end well I agree. While standardization has its benefits, I think homogeneity also has significant drawbacks. Unfortunately, rare is the Linux desktop environment that gets things right for me. KDE comes close, I guess. > And my wife long complained "why don't you switch my machine to the nice interface you use" and finally last week I did switch her off…
> I agree. While standardization has its benefits, I think homogeneity also has significant drawbacks. Unfortunately, rare is the Linux desktop environment that gets things right for me. KDE comes close, I guess.
I haven't seriously tried KDE, though I've heard lots of good things about it recently. I don't know why Ubuntu chose GNOME over Mate, the latter seems a perfectly fine typical desktop environment paradigm.
> What did you switch her to?
AwesomeWM (which is technically a windows manager and not a desktop environment, but it's full-featured enough to be essentially like a DE), which I keep coming back even after trying other DEs/WMs. I had hesitated to put her on it since its configuration isn't user-friendly (it's a .lua text file..), but I just essentially copied over my configuration, and she's been much happier than on GNOME.
Re: Mark Shuttleworth on where Canonical and Ubuntu Linux are going next
#19I think the major distros defaulting to GNOME is not going to end well. I tried very hard to use (and like) GNOME Shell for a while, and put it on my wife's computer as well. I always ended up finding completely wrong for the way I want to interact with my computer. And my wife long complained "why don't you switch my machine to the nice interface you use" and finally last week I did switch her off of GNOME and she's…
I'm interested to learn why they chose to switch to Gnome instead of KDE plasma. What was the thinking behind it? Why wasn't the community involved in the decision? Gnome has the backing of Redhat and is the default DE on Fedora, so Canonical backing an alternative would have been desirable.
I'm biased, but Plasma or even Mate would have been much better choices. Plasma has been so good lately and seems to take community feedback seriously. Stability has been great, it's extremely lightweight and the customization options make me...happy. I've been kicking myself for not switching from Gnome to plasma sooner. For anyone skeptical of plasma, I urge you to give it a try : kubuntu, kde neon, fedora kde, arch + plasma, opensuse are all great.
Re: Mark Shuttleworth on where Canonical and Ubuntu Linux are going next
#20Found as users -- and Shuttleworth himself -- of the Linux desktop... Good grief. Presumably that should be " Fond as users... are of the Linux desktop"...
Also, "... Snap contanizeried applications ...". That 'z' is way out there.