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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'

#51

Post by res0nat0r »

jff wrote: post #20
JasonFruit wrote: post #5

This bit annoys me: "There are lots of pure community distro's. And wow, they are full of politics, spite, frustration, venality and disappointment," he wrote. They may be full of those things, sure, but at their best they also have quality, usability, flexibility, power, and beauty. I hope Canonical succeeds in making Ubuntu useful to people who would never have used it before, but I'm sad that that success — if it…

And without one of those spite-filled, frustrated, venal, political distributions, Debian, they could never have created Ubuntu.

And because of some of those verbs above is why Ubuntu exists in the first place. A distro that isn't paralyzed by too many cooks in the kitchen and that can be nimble.

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

#52

Post by gnuvince »

mikevm wrote: post #36
GhotiFish wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The actions of Ubuntu affect people using other distributions. If Mir is completed and Nvidia, ATI and Intel decide that they will support it and no longer maintain their X11 drivers, that means that other distributions will suffer because of Ubuntu's actions.

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

#53

Post by JeremyMorgan »

res0nat0r wrote: post #49
JeremyMorgan wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's been the attitude at Canonical since they got into the game. Definitely not sustainable.

Why is that? I don't see any evidence of mass users leaving Ubuntu anytime lately. Only minor whining on nerd forums about the default desktop and other quibbles.

It's not sustainable because the type of people who are generally attracted to something like Linux are the very people Mark just insulted. The facts are clear: the average computer user doesn't care about an operating system that much. It's a means to an end. Most people are just using their OS as a portal to access media anyway so they really don't care.

Yes Canonical/Ubuntu has brought in a lot of new users but the simple fact is if you want the platform to keep advancing you need geeks. Suzy soccer mom and Bob the casual user are a great audience to attract but they aren't going to writing the next breakthrough software or fixing major bugs. They might bring money to fund the development and that's great, but once you shut us out we'll go to another distro and make that one better.

If he was a true leader he would diplomatically find a way to attract the widest audience possible. By intentionally provoking the same people who built Linux he's just ensuring that someday they'll move to something else that will blow them out of the water.

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

#54

Post by res0nat0r »

JeremyMorgan wrote: post #53
res0nat0r wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that? I don't see any evidence of mass users leaving Ubuntu anytime lately. Only minor whining on nerd forums about the default desktop and other quibbles.

It's not sustainable because the type of people who are generally attracted to something like Linux are the very people Mark just insulted. The facts are clear: the average computer user doesn't care about an operating system that much. It's a means to an end. Most people are just using their OS as a portal to access media anyway so they really don't care. Yes Canonical/Ubuntu has brought in a lot of new users but th…

He is searching for the widest audience possible...and that is the soccer moms like you mention, not the nerds that care about the 1% of features 99% of their target audience had no need for. He is basically saying that it doesn't work to have 100k people's input from all backgrounds and opinions on a project like Ubuntu because nothing will ever get accomplished.

Which is a perfectly reasonable assumption in my view if you want to put out a polished product, which Linux has had a very hard time doing since inception. No one complains that Apple didnt have a committee of 10k Apple users vote on how the latest version of OSX should have been implemented. Shuttleworth is trying to do the same.

I'm not sure why everyone is so upset by this. I think people just believe if anything involves Linux they think they should have an opinion in the matter no matter what the project is, which for Ubuntu isn't the most efficient way of moving the project forward.

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

#55

Post by gnuvince »

Lashawndazqd wrote: post #31
JasonFruit wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Mint Cinamon or Mate?

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

#56

Post by flomo »

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…

> I see it as Ubuntu finally having the balls to .. move ahead with their grand vision on bringing free software to the masses

Actually, I don't see that at all. Where's the marketing initiative? Where's the retail channel? Where's the Linux Genius Bar/Geek Squad? Who really desires/wants/needs Linux and why can't they obtain it?

This is all Open Source development politics where nerds project their prejudicial ideas of what "normal people" want in some sort of bizarre appeal to popularity. None of this is backed up by serious UI research. None of this is actually trying to solve a real market problem, even assuming they had the resources to do so.

Eventually, I hope that people will let Linux be Linux. It should be just an environment focused on the needs of Programmers and Free-Software lovers. It should stop trying to be a totally baseless appeal to the "the masses".

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

#57

Post by yxhuvud »

gnuvince wrote: post #52
mikevm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The actions of Ubuntu affect people using other distributions. If Mir is completed and Nvidia, ATI and Intel decide that they will support it and no longer maintain their X11 drivers, that means that other distributions will suffer because of Ubuntu's actions.

That may be true, if and only if, Mir turns out worse than X11. If it turns out better, then it is a step in the right direction.

I really don't see how it could be worse than being stuck in X11-land though.

Sure, Wayland may(or may not) end up even better. But why should I care, as long as there is a great improvement to the current situation?

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

#58

Post by desas »

donniezazen wrote: post #12
ameen wrote: post #4

While the community is ready to dismiss anything Canonical does, they also seem to overlook the work Canonical has done. Unity is far from perfect, but it is functional. Also, the whole issue of inclusion of Amazon links could be solved with a single command, "sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping". And it's ridiculous that Canonical gets flak for trying out a new revenue stream (one that can easily be removed if i…

There is no way anyone could justify inclusion of Amazon ads. Creating backdoor for direct snooping by Amazon is just atrocious. That being said. In my personal experience Ubuntu has not been a community driven distribution for at least half a decade. Most community members spend their time justifying actions of Canonical and community leaders explaining and backing Canonical instead of representing community. I also…

There's no Amazon back door. The search string gets sent to Canonical, they search amazon using that string and return results with their snazin affiliate link.

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

#59

Post by desas »

ihsw wrote: post #26
nwienert wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know the parent comment will be downvoted, but I'll reply anyway. I'd like to hear how this "sucks". One could argue they may track you, invasion of privacy or that it's "just the beginning" and will lead to more adware. Those are what I'd call minor complaints. You can say you think it looks bad, or that it slows down your system, or that you'd would never use it. Those are even more minor as you can uninstall it…

It sucks because it stinks of authoritarianism and selfishness. How do users benefit? How does the community benefit? Why are you trying to justify that users should be glad that they're being spied on and spammed?

How does the amazon shopping lens spy on users? The search string gets sent to Canonical, they search amazon using that string and return results with their Amazon affiliate link.

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

#60

Post by mich41 »

mtgx wrote: post #44

I'm not sure what it means for the Linux community that Canonical is doing this, but I do think they are doing the right thing for "Ubuntu" if they want to make it a more mainstream OS, and also an OS that works on mobile hardware, and it's fast and smooth. If that means they have to break clean from a lot of legacy stuff, then so be it. Ultimately, I want a strong mainstream OS alternative to Windows - one that is p…

> I want a strong mainstream OS alternative to Windows - one that is popular enough and gets support from all major software vendors for apps. If Ubuntu got at least as popular as Mac OS, it would be amazing, and I don't really care what they have to do to get there.

I can understand that Canonical wants to become a "mainstream alternative to Windows" because this means money for them. But why do you care how many buggy Windows or OSX clones are out there if you can just pay few bucks and get the real thing?

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