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Canonical asks desktop users to “pay what you think Ubuntu is worth”

arstechnica.com

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Re: Canonical asks desktop users to “pay what you think Ubuntu is worth”

#81

Post by gabemart »

freehunter wrote: post #63
gabemart wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you think Ubuntu provides you with $X in value but you literally do not have $X to your name, well, I'm not sure how it could be providing $X to you, then. I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. Imagine I have disposable income of $0 and I currently use Ubuntu. By your reasoning, Ubuntu is worthless to me. However, let's say that if you offered me $1 to stop using Ubuntu, I would say say "no". We can safely conclu…

You certainly do pay for national parks. If you're a citizen, you pay for it in income taxes and any money paid to local businesses while shopping that they then owe in taxes. If you're not a citizen, you're still indirectly paying through taxes paid to businesses while you are on vacation. National parks are not all funded by the entrance fee, they're government-subsidized. To answer the question, no it is not uneth…

>You certainly do pay for national parks. If you're a citizen, you pay for it in income taxes and any money paid to local businesses while shopping that they then owe in taxes. If you're not a citizen, you're still indirectly paying through taxes paid to businesses while you are on vacation. National parks are not all funded by the entrance fee, they're government-subsidized.

Yes, but if you're a citizen you "pay" for it in a legally obligated way, so that payment tells an observer nothing about your preferences.

I spoke imprecisely, but my point was that there are resources which are free at the point of use which still have value to the user. Perhaps a national park was a bad example, I should just have said "the countryside".

Re: Canonical asks desktop users to “pay what you think Ubuntu is worth”

#82

Post by taneliv »

buro9 wrote: post #74

I saw this yesterday when I was experimenting switching from Linux Mint to Ubuntu on one of my laptops (multi-monitor problem that forums hinted were fixed in latest Ubuntu). What confused me about that page was this: "Pay what you think it's worth" is a question based on past experience... you either have no experience and think the value is zero or you already have experience and think it's worth $x. But then all o…

I agree that the page is a bit poor in communicating why you should pay, and cumbersome to use. OTOH, the paypal order page does indicate how much money you put towards each of the goals, so I suppose it is possible they abide with the UK laws.

Personally I would be happy to have a monthly subscription to simply keep Ubuntu improving, even without any additional value on top of what they already provide. I realize this could be done by simply donating monthly. However, in a subscription model they could probably set up a two-way communication channel between them and paying customers, to both help refine their goals and estimate how well they're being met, in a more continuous manner than random donations at download time.

Re: Canonical asks desktop users to “pay what you think Ubuntu is worth”

#83

Post by buster »

cpearce wrote: post #70
gknoy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize it's not part of the default distribution, but installing xubuntu-desktop is a nearly-painless way to ditch Unity for XFCE. I've been very happy with it.

You can install Cinnamon (the window manager used by Linux Mint), and it's very good. It behaves "traditionally" (i.e. like Windows 7), and it's much prettier than XFCE.

I recently switched to Cinnamon and couldn't be happier. I never really liked Unity, i used Gnome Shell and it was usable ok. But for my work nothing seems to beat the good old taskbar-based design.

Re: Canonical asks desktop users to “pay what you think Ubuntu is worth”

#84

Post by vlisivka »

gizmo686 wrote: post #48
dholowiski wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use Ubuntu and I am carrying on. But... that download page http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/questions?distro=desk... A) makes it a pain to drag everything to $0 (8 sliders to drag) B) makes it seem like you're getting a t-shirt too C) makes me feel bad for downloading it for free. D) is any of that money going to the Linux Foundation? It's not clear - if not, shame on them.

The linux foundation is responsible for a very small portion of Ubuntu, and is probably one of the most funded parts. When I donate to Canocial to support ubuntu, I expect that money to go to where it will be most useful to making a good product.

Canonical is responsible for a very small portion of Ubuntu, and is probably one of the most funded parts.

Re: Canonical asks desktop users to “pay what you think Ubuntu is worth”

#85

Post by morsch »

fdr wrote: post #71
cooldeal wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The headline doesn't seem awful considering the actual screen which speaks for itself. http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/how-mu... Also, it's not a traditional donation in the Mozilla Firefox sense because you cannot deduct it from your taxes because Canonical is a for-profit commercial organization.

In this form, Canonical overstates an appropriate objective in the tips: support more hardware? How about supporting any , thoroughly? I have done my best to buy hardware that I thought was to be well supported (on the desktop! because I thought power management would be "too hard", so I've given up on laptops), but as far as I can tell, nobody is home doing the QA and holding back releases (or, by any other means, m…

I know how you feel. I'm afraid rock solid QA regarding hardware support seems almost impossible unless you get the manufacturers on board. Apple obviously has it easy in this regard.

For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure the support for laptops is more dependable than the support for desktops, especially if you go for an unexciting configuration with Intel graphics etc.

Re: Canonical asks desktop users to “pay what you think Ubuntu is worth”

#86

Post by morsch »

madmaze wrote: post #30
fingerprinter wrote: post #4

Holy freakin' hell that is an awful headline. This is a DONATION, nothing more. Canonical is not asking people to pay, it is asking people to donate if they are so inclined. The press releases states that Ubuntu is and always will be free. Use Ubuntu and want to give some money for it? Great. Donate. Now there is a way where previously there was none. Use Ubuntu and don't want to give money? Great. Don't donate. Don'…

I wish Ubuntu/Canonical would give you the option to donate somewhere else on their site besides via the download page. I set aside ~50$ per month to donate to open source projects. Until now I have not donated to ubuntu since they dont sport a regular donations page

Apart from the fact that they did have a regular donation page, what on earth is stopping you from donating "via" the download page? For all intents and purposes this is the donation page.

Re: Canonical asks desktop users to “pay what you think Ubuntu is worth”

#87

Post by pbhjpbhj »

sandGorgon wrote: post #59

So, I use Ubuntu as my daily driver. But, I am deeply conflicted about this. Primarily because I have heard/read that Ubuntu does not spend its money on developers (expecially core, kernel, fs) and rides on Debian and Red Hat. Secondly, until fairly recently, parts of Launchpad were closed source. Third - there are other groups like Postgres, Openssh, etc which need funding more desperately. What will the donation am…

Don't Ubuntu publish company accounts?

Re: Canonical asks desktop users to “pay what you think Ubuntu is worth”

#88

Post by vacri »

mekoka wrote: post #41
ivansavz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To many people, Ubuntu represents nothing but a shiny front end build on top of the years of hard work spent on building Debian, the universal OS. These people (we) are willing to use Ubuntu, since it is pretty much the same thing, but they (we) will never go out and actively support the Ubuntu project as we believe that Debian is more deserving of our support.

I think I (sorta) understand your reasoning, but it doesn't make much sense to me. When I write some application that makes it easier for my clients to do some previously complex tasks and I ask them to tip me, I don't expect them to tell me that the previous system or database did most of what made my work possible. These "donations" aren't just there to thank developers for past works, but also to equip the distro…

Mint did go 'all the way down to debian' - there is a Linux Mint Debian Edition.

Re: Canonical asks desktop users to “pay what you think Ubuntu is worth”

#89

Post by sethrin »

Wilduck wrote: post #26
systematical wrote: post #19

Not a bad idea. The areas where I have the biggest problems with Ubuntu is hardware support and new updates just breaking my system. It's so bad that I REALLY want to just go to Debian Stable as my primary OS. I just can't handle that much downtime to switch over at home and the office. I'm a developer. I don't give a shit about a fancy desktop. I just want my hardware to work good with the O.S. and for updates not t…

I used Debian stable as my primary OS for a couple of years. While I was just fine without the fancy desktop, at the time Firefox was stuck on version 3.0 even though 3.6 was available. I don't know what the situation is like now, since I haven't used linux on my laptop for a couple years, but if I were to go back, I would want something like Debian stable, but with an updated browser.

I am using Crunchbang, which is based on Debian stable. It is trivial to download and install either Firefox or Chrome from the internet, and they automatically update themselves (FF since v12; the betas have had auto-update for longer).

For a more general solution you could look into apt-pinning, but there are some downsides depending on which way you go about it.

Re: Canonical asks desktop users to “pay what you think Ubuntu is worth”

#90

Post by vacri »

jrockway wrote: post #76
munchhausen wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you insinuating that Ubuntu is just a Debian with a different name slapped on it? If that is the case, then you must not have used Ubuntu at all. As a Ubuntu user, I like the Ubuntu Software Center and being able to install Skype and Dropbox through it and not having to scour the web for packages compatible with my system. I like some Unity features such as the dash and the HUD, because they greatly simplify disc…

Canonical adds all the fun stuff and Debian adds all the boring stuff. But, you can't have the fun stuff without the boring stuff, and it's easy to argue that Ubuntu would not exist without Debian. Letting the user kick a few bucks back to the Debian Foundation wouldn't be the most horrible thing ever. (I do use Ubnutu, BTW, but regret the decision on a regular basis. I especially like waiting 15 seconds to get a she…

On the wait-to-run-commands thing: I've been starting to familiarise myself with the redhat ecosystem and... it's crazy. Want to get yum to provide some installation info on a package on your system? Please wait while we check the servers for any updates...
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