Key parts of Ubuntu 13.04 will be developed in secret

#1

Post by mrsebastian » Thu, Oct 18, 2012, 5:29 PM UTC

Key parts of Ubuntu 13.04 will be developed in secret
extremetech.com

Re: Key parts of Ubuntu 13.04 will be developed in secret

#2

Post by stephengillie » Thu, Oct 18, 2012, 6:00 PM UTC

Is developing from within a "glass house" a stressful downside to FOSS?

Re: Key parts of Ubuntu 13.04 will be developed in secret

#3

Post by mrsebastian » Thu, Oct 18, 2012, 6:13 PM UTC

stephengillie wrote: post #2

Is developing from within a "glass house" a stressful downside to FOSS?

I know that Mozilla struggles with this -- that it's a whole different PR ball game, when tech writers have access to the nightly FTP server.

Re: Key parts of Ubuntu 13.04 will be developed in secret

#4

Post by Karunamon » Thu, Oct 18, 2012, 6:18 PM UTC

Shuttleworth is sick of Ubuntu features being torn apart by critics before they’re ready.

Well maybe if Shuttleworth didn't require a crap interface and built in ads on the desktop and making smartass comments when challenged about it, they wouldn't be torn apart by critics.

Re: Key parts of Ubuntu 13.04 will be developed in secret

#5

Post by dude_abides » Thu, Oct 18, 2012, 6:29 PM UTC

I can see how Shuttleworth is drawing inspiration from Apple and MS Surface, but normally, you don't announce that X will be developed in secret, you develop X in secret, and then announce it!!

Re: Key parts of Ubuntu 13.04 will be developed in secret

#6

Post by benologist » Thu, Oct 18, 2012, 6:33 PM UTC

Rewrite of http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1200 written and submitted by one of five Ziff Davis (ExtremeTech.com, Geek.com and PCMag.com) employees that spam HN.

Their other employees/accounts include:

- http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=11031a

- http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ukdm

- http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=adeelarshad82 (their social media manager)

- http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=russellholly

Then there's also maxko87 and evo_9 but I haven't figured out what their connection is yet, maxko87 autosubmits extremetech articles and evo_9's usage mirrors ukdm's who submits ~50% geek.com + ~50% a small group of other sites, but for extremetech.

Re: Key parts of Ubuntu 13.04 will be developed in secret

#7

Post by abc_lisper » Thu, Oct 18, 2012, 6:33 PM UTC

Canonical has gone mad. More and more it seems like this company is the worst thing that could happen to linux. Seems like embrace and extinguish to me. Make a distro the best among others, so novices can tentatively take their first steps in it. Now botch it, kill it and burn them so badly they would never come back to linux again.Sigh!

Re: Key parts of Ubuntu 13.04 will be developed in secret

#8

Post by kkowalczyk » Thu, Oct 18, 2012, 6:36 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #4

Shuttleworth is sick of Ubuntu features being torn apart by critics before they’re ready. Well maybe if Shuttleworth didn't require a crap interface and built in ads on the desktop and making smartass comments when challenged about it, they wouldn't be torn apart by critics.

Maybe if we didn't have "critics" like you that are quick to rant and diss other people work while not doing anything themselves, highly-visible projects wouldn't have this problem and wouldn't require such steps.

I lead a fairly successful open-source project and I'm on the receiving end of this attitude of entitlement as well.

People don't realize how much work goes into developing of software and when you give it away for free, with source-code, it's very demoralizing to have non-constructive, abusive comments like the above ("crap interface" ?).

I'm sure Ubuntu, being vastly more popular and visible, receives vastly more "constructive criticism".

Re: Key parts of Ubuntu 13.04 will be developed in secret

#9

Post by imchillyb » Thu, Oct 18, 2012, 6:37 PM UTC

IMO, Mr. Shuttleworth is a douche.

This is the person that forced his user base into living with interface and design decisions they did not want. The decisions made by Shuttleworth have nothing to do with FOSS or the users. His decisions were made solely with personal goals in mind. Mr. Shuttleworth desired a single code base for Ubuntu. That meant merging the desktop version of Ubuntu and his proposed baby, the portable device version of Ubuntu. Mouse and keyboard do not function well on portable devices so...enter Unity.

All of these things would be fine, if Mr. Shuttleworth did not claim that all of this was to provide his users with a superior experience. We already had a wonderful experience. Now, not so much.

I will now be replacing all of my machines', and our corporate machines' Ubuntu installs with an alternate flavor of Linux. I was willing to live with the Unity change, I was willing to live with the Grub change. I am not willing to live with this.

FOSS is not built upon secret sauce Mr. Shuttleworth. For shame!

Re: Key parts of Ubuntu 13.04 will be developed in secret

#10

Post by zzleeper » Thu, Oct 18, 2012, 6:40 PM UTC

(Honest question) Is there any user-friendly alternative to Ubuntu?

I switched from Win7 to 12.04 a few weeks ago, but it's full of tiny-yet-annoying bugs. EG: sometimes a program disapears from ALT-TAB and I need to minimize everything else to find it. Or the resize-window border that is barely half a pixel thin.