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Mark Shuttleworth: Canonical leads Ubuntu, not 'your whims'

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Mark Shuttleworth: Canonical leads Ubuntu, not 'your whims'

#31

Post by Lashawndazqd »

JasonFruit wrote: post #14
macspoofing wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Unity is far from perfect, but it is functional. If that's the best you can say about it, then Canonical failed.

Unity is functional — you can use it. Its problem is that it's designed to meet the needs of a mostly hypothetical group of people that Canonical hopes will want to use it someday. That's a long-term proposition, and a valid gamble to take — but I don't think it's going to succeed. More importantly for me, I don't care whether it does or not, because I'm neither Unity's nor Ubuntu's target market any more.

One of the things I have tried to do the last decade or so is set up Linux for the "non leets" like my mom, girlfriends, friends / family etc. This is Canonical's target audience and not a single one of them likes the Unity interface. While not a scientific study I just don't think it's hitting the mark.

Lately, I've been putting MINT on a few people's machines, and the love the "windows like" feel (necessary for the transition) and it's still based on Debian and very solid.

Re: Mark Shuttleworth: Canonical leads Ubuntu, not 'your whims'

#32

Post by fakeer »

monkeyfacebag wrote: post #8

I found myself agreeing with a lot of the sentiment expressed in Mark's post but ultimately, I lack faith that Shuttleworth and Canonical have what it takes to pull off the stated goal of creating "an experience that could challenge the existing proprietary leaders." For example, I don't find Unity to be better in any meaningful sense than the "community-driven" GNOME 3. Canonical has come up with some interesting id…

>>I don't find Unity to be better in any meaningful sense than the "community-driven" GNOME 3

It's not better even in a meaningless sense. I just not that good.

There are times when you stick to your idea long enough because you are passionately convinced about it and there are times when you stick to that idea because others said it was a bad idea, somehow they were true and now you do not want to accept it. Well, Canonical is Mark's and Ubuntu belongs to Canonical. They must have a plan. I hope.

As per whining about it and whims. That was normal reaction and Mark should have accepted it, if not as feedback.

After trying all the Linux distros I settled with Ubuntu, then it was ruined. Moving to OSX was painful. Moving to an (very) expansive and very very closed ecosystem.

Re: Mark Shuttleworth: Canonical leads Ubuntu, not 'your whims'

#34

Post by anoncow »

What I undestand is that he wants people to rise above petty politics and work at making Ubuntu better. Imo he could have just said the latter and let the former lie. Sometimes it is better to do that. A substantial chunk of the community does not like unity and even more hate the amazon integration. Telling them to shut up is not a great idea. You cannot keep everyone happy, not in a project of this scale. Mark is doing this to keep the people at canonical happy and driven. I hope he succeeds, because I would like ubuntu to be better.

Re: Mark Shuttleworth: Canonical leads Ubuntu, not 'your whims'

#35

Post by charonn0 »

>Just roll your eyeballs at the 1337 crowd

This is not leadership. If Mr. Shuttleworth truly wants to provide leadership for the FOSS community, then blaming people for disagreeing with him is not a good start and "my way or the highway" is not a sustainable model.

Re: Mark Shuttleworth: Canonical leads Ubuntu, not 'your whims'

#36

Post by mikevm »

GhotiFish wrote: post #22
aroman wrote: post #7

As someone who has been an active contributor to desktop Linux in the past, and particularly very close to Ubuntu (I was sponsored to attend UDS-O), I have to say that I am happy Shuttleworth is finally taking this much needed stand. I can absolutely understand the blowback to his sentiments, because really, the diversity of use and mindset in the Linux community is one of its defining characteristics. But frankly, h…

That's basically saying the linux community and their mindset are antithetical to modern computing. What a massively backhanded insult. Yet also a tragically true statement. The world is flying towards Sim City always on DRM with open arms, and mark shuttleworth wants to lead the charge? Fine. Coddled computing for everyone. For god sakes, A pox on the people who actually choose to use Amazon Linux.

No one's forcing you to use Ubuntu. Don't like it? Move along.

Re: Mark Shuttleworth: Canonical leads Ubuntu, not 'your whims'

#37

Post by lennel »

fakeer wrote: post #32
monkeyfacebag wrote: post #8

I found myself agreeing with a lot of the sentiment expressed in Mark's post but ultimately, I lack faith that Shuttleworth and Canonical have what it takes to pull off the stated goal of creating "an experience that could challenge the existing proprietary leaders." For example, I don't find Unity to be better in any meaningful sense than the "community-driven" GNOME 3. Canonical has come up with some interesting id…

>> I don't find Unity to be better in any meaningful sense than the "community-driven" GNOME 3 It's not better even in a meaningless sense. I just not that good. There are times when you stick to your idea long enough because you are passionately convinced about it and there are times when you stick to that idea because others said it was a bad idea, somehow they were true and now you do not want to accept it. Well,…

The HUD makes no sense on a desktop environment and since I have not tried it on a mobile device I cannot make a final judgement. My gut instinct is that the HUD will work on a mobile device and as the platform matures it will become better. Most people prefer Gnome3, let them use it with other distros.

I feel the true battle for Canonical lies in mobile devices and being an entity which can stand up against all the other closed eco-systems and manufacturers in this space. If they can keep it open for everybody so much the better for us all.

I have nothing but respect for shuttleworth, he is an extremely smart bloke who has invested a lot of his money in this, this obviously does not make Canonical exempt from criticism.

Re: Mark Shuttleworth: Canonical leads Ubuntu, not 'your whims'

#38

Post by mikevm »

ihsw wrote: post #23
aroman wrote: post #7

As someone who has been an active contributor to desktop Linux in the past, and particularly very close to Ubuntu (I was sponsored to attend UDS-O), I have to say that I am happy Shuttleworth is finally taking this much needed stand. I can absolutely understand the blowback to his sentiments, because really, the diversity of use and mindset in the Linux community is one of its defining characteristics. But frankly, h…

The problem is secrecy and authoritarianism run directly contrary to the spirit of open source software, and if we're going to go down that road then we need to stop calling it a community-driven Linux distribution. Where will we be when Amazon et al start leaning more heavily on Canonical for more invasive features? What recourse will the existing user-base have other than being callously told to "fuck off if you do…

>Where will we be when Amazon et al start leaning more heavily on Canonical for more invasive features?

You'll be on a different Linux distro.

Re: Mark Shuttleworth: Canonical leads Ubuntu, not 'your whims'

#39

Post by cmccabe »

It makes me sad that Canonical is doing so many things to split the community. First they stuck to upstart, after everyone else moved over to systemd. Then, they decided to snub GNOME3 in order to create a new windowing environment called Unity. Now, they're trying to build their own copy of Wayland, codenamed Mir. Ubuntu still uses bzr, when most of the rest of the world uses git.

I guess maybe this was inevitable. They wanted to differentiate themselves from Red Hat and similar distros that were using the "normal" stack. But do we really need so many duplicate projects, so many of which seem to be duds?

Ultimately, Ubuntu wants to be Android. And it never will be, because Canonical doesn't have Google's engineering or financial resources, or a business model that would support such an undertaking. I understand the idealism, but as they say, "hope is a good breakfast, but a poor supper."

I feel like Ubuntu's decision to include adware like the Amazon toolbar is the first of many such decisions. Ultimately, they have to make a profit, and they're going to have to turn to "traditional methods." The traditional method for PC OEMs to make a profit is-- let's be honest here-- crapware. I fear that this is going to blacken the name of Linux for a lot of people. Already a lot of people think that "Linux" can't do suspend or hibernate properly, because Ubuntu often can't. Soon people are going to think that "Linux" is full of adware and spyware, simply because Ubuntu is. Sigh.

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