Ubuntu in 2013 • Hacker News Board

Re: Ubuntu in 2013

#41

Post by PommeDeTerre » Wed, Dec 26, 2012, 4:15 PM UTC

rlpb wrote: post #31

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe there's something to the huge amount of criticism? You know, maybe we should all consider listening to it? 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 i…

Remember that Ubuntu flavors such as Xubuntu and Lubuntu exist, and that their existence is supported from the top (just read TFA). Members of the Ubuntu community who don't like Unity just use them instead. No dissenting voices are needed within the community, since all are accommodated. > ignore the ever-growing disillusionment within their existing communities You assume that the voices of dissent come from within…

Any time I've tried Xubuntu or Kubuntu in the past, I've found the experience to be quite horrible and unpolished.

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.

Re: Ubuntu in 2013

#42

Post by tomrod » Wed, Dec 26, 2012, 4:15 PM UTC

pekk wrote: post #32

talloaktrees wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just switched to lubuntu, i recommend it even for powerful pcs

LXDE's multi-monitor capability is broken in several ways, otherwise it's pretty good

Indeed. I used arandr to make an xrandr script that runs at login. Works beautifully.

Xrandr is a great program to know, especially if you use projectors a lot.

Re: Ubuntu in 2013

#43

Post by b87ggga » Wed, Dec 26, 2012, 4:16 PM UTC

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #26

andrewcooke wrote: post #8

it's hard to read that without feeling the huge weight of criticism (all the kow-towing and talking about experts). and then i come here and 2 out of 4 posts are complaining. 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…

Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe there's something to the huge amount of criticism? You know, maybe we should all consider listening to it? 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 i…

What's your problem with Firefox?

Re: Ubuntu in 2013

#44

Post by b87ggga » Wed, Dec 26, 2012, 4:17 PM UTC

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #41

rlpb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that Ubuntu flavors such as Xubuntu and Lubuntu exist, and that their existence is supported from the top (just read TFA). Members of the Ubuntu community who don't like Unity just use them instead. No dissenting voices are needed within the community, since all are accommodated. > ignore the ever-growing disillusionment within their existing communities You assume that the voices of dissent come from within…

Any time I've tried Xubuntu or Kubuntu in the past, I've found the experience to be quite horrible and unpolished. 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 o…

How has Firefox's UI been screwed up?

Re: Ubuntu in 2013

#45

Post by keithpeter » Wed, Dec 26, 2012, 4:28 PM UTC

pqs wrote: post #35

andrewcooke wrote: post #8

it's hard to read that without feeling the huge weight of criticism (all the kow-towing and talking about experts). and then i come here and 2 out of 4 posts are complaining. 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…

It works on your laptop, but not on my father's in law desktop, where it used to work. Ubuntu used to work on this machine and, somehow, after each upgrade it has become less stable. It freezes completely and there is no way to solve the problem. In fact, there are some bugs in Ubuntu's buck tracker that might be related, but they are marked as "won't fix". Anyway, today I'm transitioning my parents in law to Windows…

"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."

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.

Re: Ubuntu in 2013

#46

Post by PommeDeTerre » Wed, Dec 26, 2012, 4:28 PM UTC

theshadow wrote: post #39

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe there's something to the huge amount of criticism? You know, maybe we should all consider listening to it? 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 i…

This post is nothing but a nice heaping of FUD. Looking at it from a distance the decisions made the Ubuntu brass have largely paid off. I like many others had my doubts when I initially played with Unity in 11.04 when it was slow and lumbering, however in 12.04 I doubt there are many people who would categorize Unity as a substandard experience. I haven't played with the latest GNOME so I can't comment there but Uni…

How exactly have their decisions "paid off"?

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.

Re: Ubuntu in 2013

#47

Post by rlpb » Wed, Dec 26, 2012, 4:34 PM UTC

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #41

rlpb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that Ubuntu flavors such as Xubuntu and Lubuntu exist, and that their existence is supported from the top (just read TFA). Members of the Ubuntu community who don't like Unity just use them instead. No dissenting voices are needed within the community, since all are accommodated. > ignore the ever-growing disillusionment within their existing communities You assume that the voices of dissent come from within…

Any time I've tried Xubuntu or Kubuntu in the past, I've found the experience to be quite horrible and unpolished. 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 o…

> Any time I've tried Xubuntu or Kubuntu in the past, I've found the experience to be quite horrible and unpolished.

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.

Re: Ubuntu in 2013

#48

Post by chez17 » Wed, Dec 26, 2012, 4:36 PM UTC

andrewcooke wrote: post #8

it's hard to read that without feeling the huge weight of criticism (all the kow-towing and talking about experts). and then i come here and 2 out of 4 posts are complaining. 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…

So a major distribution being used all around the world should stop being criticized because it's "fine for your laptop"? That seems astonishingly myopic.

Re: Ubuntu in 2013

#49

Post by PommeDeTerre » Wed, Dec 26, 2012, 4:39 PM UTC

b87ggga wrote: post #43

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe there's something to the huge amount of criticism? You know, maybe we should all consider listening to it? 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 i…

What's your problem with Firefox?

Well, the changes to the UI starting with Firefox 4 made it much less productive to use. Maybe they didn't realize it at the time, but the toolbars, traditional menu bar and status bar provided a lot of useful functionality. Getting rid of them, or at best forcing the use of extensions or reconfiguration to bring back such functionality, hurt the usefulness of Firefox. The minute gain in space for displaying the web page has not been worth the loss of usability.

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.

Re: Ubuntu in 2013

#50

Post by rlpb » Wed, Dec 26, 2012, 4:40 PM UTC

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #46

theshadow wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post is nothing but a nice heaping of FUD. Looking at it from a distance the decisions made the Ubuntu brass have largely paid off. I like many others had my doubts when I initially played with Unity in 11.04 when it was slow and lumbering, however in 12.04 I doubt there are many people who would categorize Unity as a substandard experience. I haven't played with the latest GNOME so I can't comment there but Uni…

How exactly have their decisions "paid off"? 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 pe…

> The level of anger and displeasure within the Ubuntu community is at an astounding level.

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.