Why Mark Shuttleworth is important to desktop Linux

I am fascinated with the idea of customizable window managers. I haven't delved that deep, but the difference between XFCE and Unity is night and day. I can choose color schemes, window decorations, and make custom task bars. This should be table stakes for graphical interfaces.

libc alone took ~48 hours on my P2-266 with 32MB RAM...

(My gentoo experience may be somewhat out of date)

"Canonical does its best to bring closed-source commercial desktop applications to the operating system through the Ubuntu app store. With good reason: they know the developers of these commercial applications will only target Ubuntu, since unlike open source programs where the distribution’s packagers do the work of bringing your application to their OS for you, that can’t be done very well with just binary packages compiled against x version of y library. Thus forcing users who want to use one of these applications to switch to Ubuntu."

First, I drove the App Store both strategy and was responsible for development - in other words _I know_ why we did it. I am my own citation!

Strategically, what do you think the biggest reason is for why end-users don't move across platforms? Guess what it's application software, specifically lack of important application classes and brand names end-users are familiar with. It comes across in all the user-research. So, what you want to do is to encourage commercial software developers and prove out a market - which leads to a situation where familiar applications are available on an unfamiliar platform.

Guess what the other problem is in the Linux ecosystem compared to other 'alternative platform' ecosystems - the lack of a set of commercial software developers. Think back to Apple in the mid-90's a period where the media thought they "were dead". They could still attract thousands of developers to MacWorlds and there were lots of software companies developing great software for users of the platform. Desktop Linux doesn't have that because it never created a market. The result is not as much fully polished, long-term end-user grade software.

So finding a way to create a market place and create the ability for commercial software developers to target the platform is good for end-users. That's the strategic reasoning.

Next, consider the problems that developers face.

If you go to some conferences and ask developers why they don't target Linux - go ask at some Game developers conferences - they'll tell you two things a) Linux users don't pay for anything/market is too small b) developing for Linux is too hard. Now a) is just a hard problem and the only thing that changes is it is time. But, when you dig into b) what you discover they mean is that the development tools on Linux are hard and that the swathe of packaging options is confusing. Which is exactly why Ubuntu started cutting through the "tyranny of choice" to provide information on how to develop/port - see http://developer.ubuntu.com . It's also why we reduced the complexity of packaging, provided tools and a web portal which is what developers are used to on other platforms - now a developer just has to use the autopackaging tool and the system takes care of the rest of it.

Result is that there are more commercial applications available on a desktop Linux (Ubuntu) than every before. Result, some of the commercial tool developers are targeting a Linux desktop in a way never done before. I'm proud of that. And, since by definition it's easier to port from one distribution of Linux than it is to port from another platform to Linux - you should be proud of that as well.

Either way, that's the _facts_ on _why_ Ubuntu targets developers and full explanation of how it's not an evil genius plan.

That market segment is shrinking. Not disappearing but shrinking. Their idea is to make the phone the desktop (or rather their desktop the phone).

I for one, am excited. Their edge device looks great as far as design and specs so far.

> There's basically C++, python, and various red-headed step children. Canonical should put some backing into bindings for Rust, Dart, and ES.Next once they become stable.

I'm highly suspicious of Mark Shuttleworth and the Canonical guys... hopefully that suspicion is misplaced. It's true that they've done an immense amount of good for desktop Linux - hell, I'm not sure I ever would have gotten into Linux without Ubuntu. On the other hand, they haven't shown that they're really willing to play nice with the rest of the community.

Going off on their own to develop Mir is a big deal, if for no other reason than it looks alienating. Adding Amazon search (by default) to the unity lens is an even bigger deal! I don't come to Linux for that shit! Unity as a whole is not a big deal because you can still just install something else.

I'm just not sure any more. They've burnt a lot of bridges with the community. How is that a good strategy? How is being an asshole a good thing if what you're achieving is partnering with Amazon to snoop on users? What are they trying to achieve here? I don't want to suggest that just because they're trying to make money means that what they are doing is automatically evil, but intentions do matter. What are their intentions? Just to spread awesome free software? I don't think that's all they are trying to do. And honestly, who needs another Apple, Microsoft or Google? We need something better.