Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go?

inkscapee writes "Used to be Ubuntu was the big Linux hero, the shining knight that would drive Linux onto every desktop and kick bad old Windows to the curb. But now Ubuntu is the Bad Linux. What's going on, is it typical fanboy fickleness, or is Canonical more into serving their own interests than creating a great Linux distro?"

Comments

What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

"What's going on, is it typical fanboy fickleness, or is Canonical more into serving their own interests than creating a great Linux distro?"

Yes

Re:What's going on?

[kenh]

Exactly!

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

So... we're all going to use Windows now?

Re:What's going on?

[vlm]

So... we're all going to use Windows now?

Actually use iPads while endlessly promoting Android ipad-killer tablets.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

I want you to die, sooooooooooo bad

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

How long before the truth is flagged as flamebait?

Re:What's going on?

[dnebin]

OMG, what a troll!

At least I hope this jackass is a troll; if he honestly believes this crap, he should consider a long walk off of a short pier...

Re:What's going on?

[amicusNYCL]

I'm thinking that this is a loaded question, due to the fact that the only link in the "summary" is on the text "Canonical more into serving their own interests".

Slashdot summaries are frequently a bunch of opinions stated as if true, followed by pointless questions, submitted by people with a vested interest in the topic. Is this actual journalism, an opening for debate, or does this suggest another purpose?

Re:What's going on?

[smoothnorman]

Damn... you beat me to it. Yeah, those aren't remotely mutually exclusive; in fact, they're correlated.

Re:What's going on?

[h4rm0ny]

Actually, have we established that something actually is going on? Maybe I've been too busy to notice the tides of distro-politics, but asking why people are turning on Ubuntu is the first I've heard of people turning on Ubuntu. So is there somewhere else that would back this up and show it's not just someone muck-raking?

Re:What's going on?

[pixelpusher220]

did you miss 2000-2008? truth was pretty well damned to the circular file...

Re:What's going on?

[martin-boundary]

"What's going on, is it typical fanboy fickleness, or is Canonical more into serving their own interests than creating a great Linux distro?"

Yes

Kosh, is that you? Fancy meeting you here! Last I heard you'd left the galaxy!

Re:What's going on?

[q-the-impaler]

/. != journalism
Journalism is dead. Most submissions have an agenda.

Re:What's going on?

[HermMunster]

For the longest time I would not consider another distro. Each distro has their own agenda. Each one is self centered. Few if any really understand the goal of bringing this powerful easy to use operating system to the masses. Canonical has that goal still, even if they have become more financially centered--less altruistic.

Some of Canonical's choices of recent are not synergistic to my goals. I am not interested in Unity (total piece of shit software--pardon my bluntness). It shouldn't have been proposed and absolutely it's seems a violation to consider it.

Right now the problem with desktop Linux centers on the desktop managers. KDE 4.6 has become better, but every single release of that product has them screwing something up on the desktop (i.e., if you have double click selected (for launching files and opening folders), you can't move icons around on the desktop--if single click is selected it works fine.) Some of these changes are extremely annoying. Anything having to do with icons on the desktop needs to work perfectly, but no, KDE just can't get it right. Gnome has it's share of usability problems. Overall though, the products work, if not for the bugginess of them.

Canonical seems to want to drop those desktop managers supplying their own. I can understand their promotion of competition on the desktop, but this Unity product doesn't cut it. Attempts by the community to get Canonical to listen are ignored. Several other changes are also happening in a heavy handed way.

Even so, these are little stumbles. With enough stumbles people will consider other options. That will take some time. Just keep in mind, Canonical is forging forward in a way that moves us along. Every journey begins with that first small step.

Re:What's going on?

[roc97007]

Try to use, and be constantly frustrated by ipads, wait in vain for an affordable and usable Android tablet, eventually go back to Windows on laptops.

Re:What's going on?

[orphiuchus]

And this is why racism keeps coming back. You don't learn this type of racism from your parents, you develop it on your own by living in the US(especially the south.). Regardless of other societal causes of the crime rate disparity, the thing that you see on the ground living day to day life is exactly the racist shit the AC just posted.

The solution?

There isn't one. Just do your best to be as good to the people you meet in your life as you can.

Re:What's going on?

[jvin248]

Ubuntu has always suffered in the Linux community for its popularity ... there are many that think if it's not Slackware then it's nothing; if you use a gui and not the cli then you're not a real computer user. And those that want Alternative Rock (that later went mainstream) and down play anything in ascent. But if it's ever to be "the year of Desktop Linux" it will necessarily need to be popular.

Ubuntu caught up to Windows gui useability a long while back, and to get on par with the leading gui interface design and features requires doing what is going on with touch and the iPad and iPhone. Ubuntu will continue to improve and get there (with a six month Ubuntu OS cadence vs the three year Apple cadence it won't be long).

So expect more button moves from right to left (which is actually useful if you do a lot of remote desktop work).

Re:What's going on?

[fredjh]

First I've heard of any problems, and I've been using Ubuntu since 7.x... so... sounds like someone's muck raking to me, probably a small group of "disenfranchised" users.

Re:What's going on?

[semi-extrinsic]

Some of Canonical's choices of recent are not synergistic to my goals.

I regret to inform you that the remainder of your statement was rendered void by your use of the (non-)word "synergistic".

Re:What's going on?

[DerekLyons]

Slashdot summaries are frequently a bunch of opinions stated as if true, followed by pointless questions, submitted by people with a vested interest in the topic.

With the exception of 'vested interests' (which could usefully be replaced with 'extreme bias'), how is that different from Slashdot discussions?

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

I want you to die, sooooooooooo bad

You want a human life to end merely because that person said things you don't approve of? Aren't you the civilized one. I am glad your political correctness has made you such a loving, tolerant sort of fellow.

I have to admit you're quite a bit more savage than me. Yes I have problems with the way black people are conducting themselves in our society. But I don't want anyone to die. I don't want them to be harmed. I want blacks to take a hard look at what they do to society and to each other and become better people.

There's just no excuse for a father to abandon his own children, goddammit, and 70% of them doing that is just plain fucked up. I am sorry that their great-great-great-great-great grandfather was once a slave. But they are still CHOOSING to abandon their own children. Whitey didn't make them do that. A slaveowner who died 150 years ago didn't make them do that. It's time to let it go and take care of what's important. Until then, they'll never admit it but this is what Whitey thinks: if you don't give two shits about each other or even your own children who are we to argue with you?

You know there was a time in Western history when saying things that went too much against mainstream thought could get you turned over to the Inquisition and tortured to death. We call that time the DARK AGES. You would have loved it. It was full of people who thought like you do. It would have given you all the visceral satisfaction you could possibly consume. Of course if you somehow ended up on the wrong end of the Inquisition's attention, at least it would be for something you believe in.

Re:What's going on?

[PopeRatzo]

Slashdot summaries are frequently a bunch of opinions stated as if true, followed by pointless questions, submitted by people with a vested interest in the topic.

Exactly so. It's funny that within a few hours we had a story with a single link in a summary that posited an inexorable decline for Google because of a "slew" of "negative stories" and then another summary, with a single link, that describes Ubuntu's decline. Somebody took the time to post these stories, to post those single links and to wrap them in a summary with an air of inevitability. Google's run is "finished". Ubuntu is "done" These links were not posted with summaries saying "This is what so-and-so said" but rather "This is the truth". Faits accomplis.

A rapidly increasing amount of our "news" is driven by press releases put out by astroturf specialists which get polished by lazy journalists into stories that serve the interests of their bosses. In the last few days, I've read at least a half-dozen news stories about the "over-privileged" schoolteachers of Wisconsin, whose average "gold-plated" pensions of $20k/year makes them "bottom-feeders", "pigs" and "fat cats". The peaceful protests are characterized as "riots". Who stands to benefit from these mis-characterizations?

When such a large portion of the information that people consume is agenda-driven, and barely concealed agit-prop in support of groups with the resources to saturate the media, what chance do we have to make decisions, to act based on reliable data? But I guess that's the whole point.

Re:What's going on?

[AngryNick]

I am not interested in Unity (total piece of shit software--pardon my bluntness). It shouldn't have been proposed and absolutely it's seems a violation to consider it.

Even my 9 and 12 year-old Ubunutu fangirl daughters hate Unity! If little girls with puppy and monkey desktops don't like Unity, then who does?

Re:What's going on?

[trollertron3000]

*Troll mode off *

In fairness to them it's really just a commentary and discussion site. Yes they're biased. But aren't we all? They post that way because It sparks conversation, which is the draw here. I like the threaded format and you can really find some "gold nuggets" of knowledge here. There are some very sharp guys that linger and post. Not as many as there used to be AFAIK but you still see a great rotation of good commentary.

Re:What's going on?

[commodore6502]

>>>we're all going to use Windows now?

Windows is okay as long as you stick with nothing but open source (Firefox, LibreOffice, VLC, et cetera). Avoid the Microsoft crap as much as possible, even if you have to use stuff that isn't strictly open source (like opera or winamp).

Re:What's going on?

[BitZtream]

you develop it on your own by living in the US(especially the south.).

Actually, you have to be pretty ignorant to be a prejudice fuck, the south has little to nothing to do with it, I know, I grew up there. But you've shown that you're very ignorant and prejudice against 'the south'.

Racism isn't a bad thing, stop acting like it is. Each race has unique attributes, strengths and weaknesses, mostly to the geographic area the people decended from.

This is FACT, it is not opinion, it is reality. You're just as ignorant for ignoring it as the prejudice fuck above.

Prejudice and HATE are bad.

Examples:

Rasicm: Black people are better at playing basketball

Prejudice: Porch monkeys are better at basketball cause they are used to swinging from the trees in the jungle.

See how one is perfectly acceptable and the other clearly isn't?

There isn't one. Just do your best to be as good to the people you meet in your life as you can.

I believe the first solution is for everyone to stop talking about racism like we do. Our children grow up prejudice because we start beating into their heads at an early age that its not okay to point out differences in people like skin color, and that we're all equal ... WE AREN'T, AND THATS OKAY. We need to stop making it such a point to children, stop forcing race issues in their face as their trying to form an opinion and view of the world.

Stop making race an issue and it'll stop being such an issue, but the last bit of your post is the important part. If we all just go back to treating people the way we want to be treated the world would be much better off.

Re:What's going on?

[gd2shoe]

How long before the truth is flagged as flamebait?

It's flamebait because of how it's phrased and where it's posted. Yes, it must have been intentional. Off topic is an appropriate mod, I think. Even stanch racists should agree that this doesn't go here.

(Granted, there is anthropological truth in it. Those who need it will never listen without a much greater degree of respect. Some of it was totally uncalled for.)

Re:What's going on?

[BitZtream]

Summaries are assumed to be true, not opinion. Comments are assumed to be personal opinion, though they may state facts.

We assume the summaries are true because we want to use slashdot to save ourselves the time of tracking down and debunking every story on the Internet. We get annoyed when topics like this happen where its clear that its a opinionated TROLL.

We get even more pissed off when its done by someone like Taco, who through the years most of us have come to expect will have done a basic sanity check on the summary/story. We expect stupidity from kdawson and timothy, hence why half of slashdot has their stories not listed on the front page.

What has happened however is that it appears that slashdot has become completely unconcerned with presenting facts and truth and more concerned with not 'censoring' any submission and just letting the shit flow in.

I have uncensored Internet, I really don't want it, I have things to do, I use sites like slashdot to avoid having to do basically what it seems you have to now do for every slashdot story regardless of which person posted it to the front page.

Re:What's going on?

[Creepy]

Well IMO the problem isn't really with Unity, which is meant to draw a younger audience, not codgers like me, it is the fact that Unity still doesn't make Linux play Windows games, so their attempt to draw in teens will probably backfire (and WINE is still far too difficult to use in many cases, even if it works).

I've been helping a Linux noob, and several suggestions:
1) avoid acronyms and abbreviations. Everyone is guilty of this, but Linux is worst - do you think /dev/sda means ANYTHING to a Linux noob? Well I can tell you for a fact that it doesn't, because I've been helping one. She didn't even know that was referring to her primary disk drive until I told her (and she's a tech geek in every way except Linux - and yes married [to my best friend, but he's less of a geek than she is]).
2) Program names need to tell the user what they do. Do you know what "Ruby" is? I'd guess a color or a gem, not a scripting language. Windows isn't very good at that, either (Microsoft Silverlight? wtf is that?!)- Apple is much better (for instance, iTunes makes a pretty nice mnemonic for what it does, but they've had their failures too - QuickTime?! The only time I want time to go quick is when I'm working and not under a tight deadline).
3) Shortcuts for multiple package select that can be dropped in. Why? Because installing them from package manager is too tedious, so people knowing how always go to terminal and do an apt-get. I want to copy the names of the packages I need from a URL and drop them on an installer and have them magically appear.
4) Icons should at least nearly always appear for new software, and if you need command line arguments there should be a way to add them and convenient help. I know that is a lot to ask, but for ease-of-use it is essential.

In many distributions there is also a program with an odd name that manages packages like Package Manager, and to a noob that means fedex packages, not software.

Re:What's going on?

[DerekLyons]

Summaries are assumed to be true, not opinion.

On what planet? Slashdot summaries have been a mixture of fact, fancy, opinion, etc... as long as I've been around. (I.E. over a decade.)

Re:What's going on?

[gd2shoe]

The above AC is clearly racist. That said, it wasn't "racist shit" that he posted. He just took what the social sciences are finally starting to admit and regurgitated it in a racist manner. (Very rude of him.)

There's nothing about skin color that is causing this problem (besides the racial identity feedback loop). It's entirely a cultural issue, and it's hurting a lot of people. Labeling it racism doesn't make it go away. It only allows it to persist and fester. That would be the racist thing to do, I think.

Re:What's going on?

[Draek]

Same here. I've read the odd trollish article here and there (not unlike this one) about Canonical's alleged self-interest, but user reaction is generally to the tune of "they're not a charity and their goals still align with ours, so why is this news?" rather than outrage of any sort, and as far as I'm aware their share of the Linux pie keeps growing.

This stinks of FUD, either by a zealot for another distro or a professional astroturfer.

Disclaimer: I'm a Debian user and haven't used Ubuntu in years.

Re:What's going on?

[GameboyRMH]

Ubuntu's made some dumb choices recently in GUI layout and package selection. Not huge issues, but they are PITA issues and that's what's caused a lot of Ubuntu hate. Also over the years people have been getting increasingly pissed off at the fact that Ubuntu is a bleeding-edge distro and updates tend to break stuff. Because of these issues a lot of people have been switching to Debian.

Re:What's going on?

[vadim_t]

1) avoid acronyms and abbreviations. Everyone is guilty of this, but Linux is worst - do you think /dev/sda means ANYTHING to a Linux noob? Well I can tell you for a fact that it doesn't, because I've been helping one. She didn't even know that was referring to her primary disk drive until I told her (and she's a tech geek in every way except Linux - and yes married [to my best friend, but he's less of a geek than she is]).

There are several things here:

1. It's a device file. Changing names for those can lead to problems with little benefit
2. It is hard to give them intuitive names. You'd prefer /dev/scsi/hard-disk/primary/master perhaps? But now it's long and still confusing. What's a primary master? Or maybe /dev/scsi/INTEL_SSDSA2M080G2GC would be better? (that's what my disk calls itself). This stuff isn't for end users, and tends to come out ugly any way you slice it. Something of this sort was tried before with devfs a few years back. It was a huge pain to switch over to, had little benefit, and didn't stick.
3. As an end user, you're not supposed to mess with this stuff in /dev anyway. The GUI is supposed to make it accessible easily.

2) Program names need to tell the user what they do. Do you know what "Ruby" is? I'd guess a color or a gem, not a scripting language. Windows isn't very good at that, either (Microsoft Silverlight? wtf is that?!)- Apple is much better (for instance, iTunes makes a pretty nice mnemonic for what it does, but they've had their failures too - QuickTime?! The only time I want time to go quick is when I'm working and not under a tight deadline).

This is already mostly solved. In my Ubuntu install stuff appears as:

in the "Internet" section:

BitTorrent Client
KTorrent

Seems pretty clear.

Ruby is something you shouldn't even see really, it might be needed for some program to work, but those are implementation details.

Re:What's going on?

[Draek]

Few if any really share the goal of bringing this powerful easy to use operating system to the masses.

Fixed that for you. Many distros, such as Gentoo and Arch, follow a BSD-like philosophy of "make the best distro we can" rather than worrying about winning any popularity contest, and it pains me how many people on Slashdot can't (or don't want to) understand that.

Re:What's going on?

[damaged_sectors]

>

Right now the problem with desktop Linux centers on the desktop managers. KDE 4.6 has become better, but every single release of that product has them screwing something up on the desktop (i.e., if you have double click selected (for launching files and opening folders), you can't move icons around on the desktop--if single click is selected it works fine.) Some of these changes are extremely annoying. Anything having to do with icons on the desktop needs to work perfectly, but no, KDE just can't get it right. Gnome has it's share of usability problems. Overall though, the products work, if not for the bugginess of them.

Just to clarify - you do understand that Ubuntu/Canonical has absolutely nothing to do with developing KDE or Gnome right? (demanding is not contributing).

Because you sound like so many of the Kubuntu fans - who insist that right from the start KDE4 should be production quality *despite* what *actual* KDE developers say. If so please take the time to listen to what the KDE developers have to say about your demands - ditto for all the other early adopters - with the possible exception of SUSe who actually made some contributions.

Chances are that you're not one of those irritating Ubuntu fans - but many of us have developed a knee-jerk hatred of Ubuntu users - *especially* debian developers and support, but also many, many LUG members. In my area where for many years the montly meeting would bring an average of a dozen people, and several dozen posts a week to the mailing lists - the LUG was over-run by Ubuntu users. It's kind of hard to help people who refuse to RTFM. And stablity is difficult to achieve when the user insists on an OS choice that requires daily updates. (a stable bleeding edge is impossible).

Re:What's going on?

[Maritz]

I think there's definitely some confusing of cultural issues with 'race' issues. In genetic terms 'race' is an almost complete irrelevancy. There is more genetic variation between individuals of the same race than there is between races. Although it's fair to say, such-a-person is black and therefore is statistically more likely to have certain attributes, it's always evil to prejudice any given individual in these ways.

So yeah studying 'race' as a genetic issue is fine, however most of the evidence people find to support their prejudices has everything to do with culture and very little to do with genetics.

Re:What's going on?

[xOneca]

Slashdot summaries are frequently a bunch of opinions stated as if true, followed by pointless questions, submitted by people with a vested interest in the topic. Is this actual journalism, an opening for debate, or does this suggest another purpose?

Yes.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see you've never been on identica. Quite a few, mainly archlinux users who think lowly of Ubuntu. I have used both and I'm sticking with Ubuntu although I love Gentoo more. ;)

Re:What's going on?

[zill]

Summaries are assumed to be true, not opinion.

Don't assume. It makes an ass out of you and me.

Re:What's going on?

[mug funky]

the only answer is censorship on slashdot...

the whole double-edged sword thing.

the only acceptible solution is that people develop better bullshit detectors and participate more in the pruning of submissions.

but me? i like to watch the shitstorm. it's good entertainment and small things amuse small minds.

Re:What's going on?

[mug funky]

it's HBGary Federal again.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that prison numbers are vastly inflated - if our drug laws actually banned all recreational drugs, and not just the kind of drugs black people use, we'd see a large increase in white inmates.

Re:What's going on?

[pixelpusher220]

Obama has the high distinction of carrying on many of the policies GWB implemented. He should get plenty of criticism for that. And does.
But starting A WAR under false pretenses stands out pretty damned far ahead of *anything* Obama has or has not done.

Re:What's going on?

[Draek]

Huh. Now find yourself the data for men vs women, and rich vs poor people.

Lies, damn lies and statistics. There's a reason why you need to spend years of your life studying to become a sociologist, let alone a statistician. Of course, that's one of those pesky facts that simply fly over the heads of racist cowards like yourself, but oh well.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a point. I think this means Slashdot is finished.

Re:What's going on?

[Dishevel]

All races are equal.
All people start out equal.
All races are different.
All people are different.
All people become more worthy or less worth of my respect due to their actions.

Re:What's going on?

[Ira Sponsible]

I must agree that Unity is very nearly unusable. Not just because it's new and buggy, but because the entire concept is flawed. Cramming ALL the icons to the left of the screen is retarded when you claim you want to optimize for smaller/wide screen formats. The solution to the small screen is to fill the entire damn screen with program and utility icons. Palm did this way back in 1997, and iOS is doing the very same thing now, ditto Android. This is a good paradigm for a usable universal desktop, not trying to cram everything to the edges so you can look at your pretty wallpaper instead of being able to find the program/utility/app you want with a glance. Unity is fundamentally broken and needs to be scrapped or thoroughly reworked before pushing it out to end users.

Re:What's going on?

[Jorl17]

I've rediscovered the World as Gentoo Linux.

Re:What's going on?

[Evil Pete]

Eh? The word is a valid word with a useful meaning. However its typical usage is invalid, as in the quoted text.

Re:What's going on?

[newcastlejon]

it's good entertainment and small things amuse small minds.

Not so amusing as those who do not appreciate the (usually omitted) last part of that saying:

Simple things please simple minds, while greater fools look on.

Re:What's going on?

[Arancaytar]

... synergistic? Seriously?

Re:What's going on?

[lordmetroid]

If I am not suppose to mess around with the files in /dev, how am I ever going to mount my media? Sorry to say but you are speaking crazy. Better to learn the simple way instead of relying on the ill-functioning script some kiddie at Canonical wrote.

Re:What's going on?

[lordmetroid]

Heey, don't say that, Canonical's biggest contribution to the open source world has been to Gnome as they created a a set of icons. Accidently that is pretty much the only contribution they have made upstreams.

Re:What's going on?

[bobstreo]

I think the marketing bloggers at Microsoft have too much time on their hands after the success of the Kin and
windows 7 phones.

Re:What's going on?

[macs4all]

Except that prison numbers are vastly inflated - if our drug laws actually banned all recreational drugs, and not just the kind of drugs black people use, we'd see a large increase in white inmates.

You are talking about the United States, right?

If so, please point me at the recreational drug that is legal (alcohol doesn't count for the purposes of this question, and is moot because it is used in abundance by all races). Please. I want to go buy some, now!

No, the prison system is disproportionately black, partially because of some blacks' own doing, and partially because the Judicial system, and especially JURIES, are disproportionately WHITE. It is far easier for a Persecutor, er, Prosecutor to "demonize" and "dehumanize" a person of another race. Then, when the jury sees a defendant not as a person,but rather just as a "race", the jury feels no pangs of compassion, and most of the time, no interest in deeply examining the evidence against, said defendant. And the (predominantly white) Prosecutors use that tactic to up their "conviction rates", and thus their chances for reelection/career advancement, every single day.

BTW, I am caucasian; so this is not a case of making excuses for my own race. Nor is it making excuses for the failings of another race. The GGGGP actually had some salient points. However, his, er, "delivery" left something to be desired.

However, YOUR comments about the drug thing are just silly, Mr. "I'm afraid to own my own words" AC.

BTW, what ARE the "drugs black people use", as opposed to the "drugs white people use"?

Re:What's going on?

[treeves]

Yes, it is a perfectly cromulent word, etc. etc.

Re:What's going on?

[pixelpusher220]

glad you agree with my assertion that it was false pretenses.
did you mention anything else that even matters?

Re:What's going on?

[rockfistus]

Windows is okay even if you don't stick with nothing but open source. It's even more okay if the majority of your dev tools require it. I've tried to get all my gear running in linux and it's just a straight pain in the ass no matter what distro I've tried. I'm a musician, artist and I make games with Multimedia Fusion which doesn't render the layout screen when using hardware acceleration, and Renoise, my music software just kicks my brain repeatedly trying to get sound out of it with linux. Compile my own linux sound drivers from Creative's source? Fuck that noise man. I recently switched to Win 7 and it has been so painless, I love it. Before that I was desperately trying to replace everything with Linux. My opinion has changed to "fuck linux." It's fun to hack around in but I can't use it for anything serious. Especially since there is a high chance it will completely explode when I install updates. In nerd speak.. I fail the saving throw about 40% of the time when updating and Linux won't even boot from then on. I'm going to leave it at that before I start a rant up.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've rediscovered the World as Gentoo Linux.

You'll get over it soon enough.

Re:What's going on?

[pixelpusher220]

I don't have a pathological hatred of Bush. Or Cheney. Or Palin. I do tend to have an aversion to malice and stupidity though.

Did I condem Bush or anyone else? No I called out the actions taken by him and his cohorts.

Their actions speak volumes that cannot be explained away or justified in any way shape or form.

The Patriot Act is an abomination, we agree on that. Obama is continuing it and supporting it much like most presidents would be in his place I suspect.

To say that is 'worse' than originally proposing it is quite a stretch though.

(this new formatting is uuuuggggllllyyy!)

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fixed that for you. Many distros, such as Gentoo and Arch, follow a BSD-like philosophy of "make the best distro we can".

Come on, Arch developers don't give a damn about it's users. They just like to tinker - that's all. Here I quote Allan McRae, leading developer of Arch package manager:

‘I think I know every distribution using pacman as a package manager and (unless there is an enterprise level distro I am missing) if peoples lives depend on one of these distros, then I am sorry to say it but in my opinion they are stupid and deserve to die.’

“I am responsible for nothing. I only choose to pull together the package signing patches in my spare time Contracting my services would actually motivate me to implement this. My standard consultancy rate is USD1000 per day or part thereof Minor performance issues interest me a hell of a lot more than package signing.”

Re:What's going on?

[Scott Lockwood]

I'm guessing you've never read http://funroll-loops.info/, an excellent collection of quotes from actual Gentards.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

I left Debian for Ubuntu 6.06 because I liked the direction it was heading. I then left Ubuntu for Mint last year because instead of adding new UI functionality to make it look the way they wanted, they decided to break the old UI settings and forced things to be shuffled around as they wanted them. That's after I had already dealt with the fiasco they did with xorg.conf. Then they decided they want to take the knife to the Gnome desktop and going with their own Unity interface. Now Mint has a new version that's based on Debian, and that's what I'm planning to run next.

I'd rather stay with an OS that does incremental updates and builds on functionality, rather than one that breaks existing software just to try something new. Their main distro seems to introduce more bugs than Debian Unstable. That's not a good way to release for what has become the "newbie" GNU/Linux distro.

Re:What's going on?

[Nick Ives]

The Windows counterpart to /dev/sda is \\.\PhysicalDisc0, is that more or less intuitive? Windows hides all that stuff from users, which is what all the issues you list boil down to: Windows has something approaching a clear and consistent UI, something Linux still lacks.

Getting a clear basic interface on Linux wouldn't be that big a challenge these days I don't think. I use Windows 7 on my desktop simply for DirectX 11 support, but aside from games the only apps I use are Chrome and a media player. I also use Office but would quite happily use an alternative on my home desktop.

So basically, to make "The Year of the Linux Desktop" actually happen all that's needed is a clean, minimal interface and support for games. That's not going to happen though.

Re:What's going on?

[Culture20]

glad you agree with my assertion that it was false pretenses. did you mention anything else that even matters?

Perhaps the fact that whether the pretenses were false or not is a moot point? That the U.S. was already at war with Iraq and only the Coalition members joined that war under the reasons stipulated (and although I didn't mention it, all of them, including GWB, actually believed those reasons were true)?

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been brewing for quite a while. Back in the 6.x and 7.x Ubuntu was really good. With each new release there has been a lot of good changes, but little things began to break. The big one for me was when Ubuntu broke 64 bit kernel for the IBM e325 AMD server. The upgrade or install would work, leave the system unable to boot. Mind you, it was only Ubuntu that broke. Debian, Red Hat/CentOS, Solaris/OpenSolaris all booted 64 bit no problem - it was Ubuntu specific. Plus, with each upgrade, different friends would have problems with things breaking after upgrading (most notably on laptops), such as video, network configuration and most notably VPN connectivity. The end result is that upgrades began to be planned for times when pain could be dealt with.

Not to mention the "ship it on time" mentality often led to seriously questionable releases. The last two LTS releases had some serious issues that weren't fully baked out until the .1 or even .3 updates.

Last, but for me certainly not least, kernel config for servers were not very robust for systems under heavy load. As long as the boxes more or less idled, things were fine, but far too often they'd wander off into the weeds under heavy load. To be fair, other distros (Linux in general) would sometimes to this, but CentOS at least was far more reliable for heavily loaded servers in my experience. [In this case, same hardware, similar loads, used CentOS, Ubuntu, and Solaris; of the three Ubuntu was least stable.] Great for the desktop (most of the time), but I stopped recommending Ubuntu for servers after that - especially where my reputation is on the line.

Re:What's going on?

[vadim_t]

You select it in the menu.

If you use KDE, and insert a CD, or connect a USB drive you get a popup offering things like opening it in a file manager, or looking for photos on it, and it makes an icon in the systray too.

I don't have an ubuntu box on hand right now to make 100% sure, but I'll try to get back to you later.

Re:What's going on?

[keith_nt4]

I guess you know how the "tea baggers" feel now, eh?

Re:What's going on?

[Chris Mattern]

Yes, I miss the days of journalists, like William Randolph Hearst, who didn't have any agenda.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

They did break a lot of stuff on legacy machines in the last couple of updates. Ubuntu used to be good for hand-me-down computers, but not so much anymore. Was great at one point because the ol' folks computers and the guest terminal stopped getting viruses and malware B.S. On a 'buntu box they could browse whatever the hell they want and I could care less. Stupid shit and 'sploits simply wouldn't be able to run.

Primarily whatever Canonical did often disappears the icons and panels, which tends to turn people off. I shouldn't need the latest and greatest hardware just to have a usable desktop. (If I wanted to go through that routine I'd be going back to Windows or blowing the budget on a Mac.) Particularly when your distro of Linux is supposed to be GUI based. If I have to go bring up the terminal with some key combination every time I reboot the computer just to pkill gnome-panel or whatever it gets old fast. (Got a launcher icon to do it now, but still.) Following all known suggestions involving poking at grub or one of the startup or themes settings has done nothing to fix it.

Other than that, I have found Ubuntu is easy to use. But perhaps they should do some more case studies. Maybe do some routine to detect older computers or computers with Intel chipset graphics and perhaps leave a message that it's wiser to not do update past a certain version. If they can't leave certain shit alone, at least warn us so we're not stuck with a borked computer from a typical user usability perspective.

If it gets too much worse, I'll have to figure out how to transition to some other distro. The trick is to find something that's fairly basic like Ubuntu and GUI-based, but without the unnecessary overhead from new things or dramatic changes in file structure that leaves a lot of hanging dependencies. When you're not exactly an IT specialist or a CS major, finding a friendlier desktop Linux may be a bit of a challenge.

Re:What's going on?

[orphiuchus]

People who grew up in the south often cant see how utterly fucked up it is. I moved there for 5 years when I was 22. Its fucked up. If you cant see that then I'm going to guess you own at least one garment of clothing with a confederate flag on it.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

The target audience: grandmas... ?

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

well come to the world of PR and spin. Glad you could have made it. Its really not a very nice place at all now is it??? try this : http://www.truth-out.org/

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Synergational?

Re:What's going on?

[shellbeach]

Ubuntu's made some dumb choices recently in GUI layout and package selection. Not huge issues, but they are PITA issues and that's what's caused a lot of Ubuntu hate.

Well, the great thing about linux is that you can change stuff as much as you like. I've never liked any distro's default choices ... but I'm prepared to take the time to tweak things to my own liking, safe in the knowledge that I can.

Also over the years people have been getting increasingly pissed off at the fact that Ubuntu is a bleeding-edge distro and updates tend to break stuff. Because of these issues a lot of people have been switching to Debian.

The funny thing is that when I started using linux back in 1999, the big criticism of Debian was that it wasn't bleeding edge enough! I guess you can't win in the linux world ...

Personally, I've been using Ubuntu for the last few years. I used to use a really minimalist distro and compile everything myself, but I don't have the time or inclination to do that any more ... and for that purpose, for me, Ubuntu works great. It's the first distro I've been confident enough to present to my parents as an alternative to windows, and one which they actually liked and preferred to windows.

But, you know, if people don't like Ubuntu they don't have to use it. There's a billion and one distros out there, catering for any whim or fancy in the world ... and if not, you can always roll your own. If Ubuntu changes enough to be unpopular with end users, then some other distro will catch on and we'll all be praising that one. Plus ça change ...

Re:What's going on?

[GameboyRMH]

I considered switching to Debian around the time Ubuntu started machine-gun-blasting itself in the foot, but I'm still sticking to Ubuntu for the time being. It requires the least customization to work how I want.

Re:What's going on?

[Darkness404]

If you use GNOME and use only GNOME programs (or, to a lesser extent, KDE and only KDE programs) you get a clean minimal interface (yes, Linux still sucks on the games department), but really, Windows isn't much better. (see http://origin.arstechnica.com/articles/culture/microsoft-learn-from-apple-II.media/vista-small.png ). The problems with graphical inconstancy comes when people choose programs for their features rather than their UI and different people have different preferences.

There are two barriers to widespread Linux adoption the first is niche software support. Things like professional audio and photography programs and games. And the second is that people expect it to work just like Windows. OS X avoids this because people are getting a brand new computer when they get OS X and they expect it to be different. People don't know what an operating system is and assume that if its running on the same box it should be the same if its running Linux or Windows.

Re:What's going on?

[tqk]

I want you to die, sooooooooooo bad

I just want him to be wrooooooooooooong, so bad. Is he?

Re:What's going on?

[HiThere]

I think it's probably someone who had a problem with a system. Certainly I know that after a recent install of Ubuntu Natty (late beta) my system wouldn't boot. I doubt that the problem is widespread. OTOH, I didn't report it, because I had to wipe the OS to get a bootable system. (I went back to Debian, which shortly had a similar problem. I fixed that by installing gdm rather than gdm3, so I suspect it's a gdm3 problem. OTOH, the Debian problem didn't keep me from getting to a text screen. Perhaps I could have done the same thing on Ubuntu, and I just didn't think about it?)

So, yeah, as systems get more complex, they aren't tested as thoroughly. Sorry about that, but it's pretty much inevitable. Especially if you put up large warning signs that say "Don't test this version if you value your data!" around all of your betas. (OTOH, if you don't, then you get flamed when people who don't realize what they're getting into try it out.

Re:What's going on?

[StikyPad]

Kudos, sir, on the ultimate troll.

Re:What's going on?

[Sleepy]

Yep. Looks to me like "inkscapee" is a brand new account created this week, almost zero posts, and already submitting stories. Hmm. More likely, the summary is really a carefully-worded link designed to either create a word-link association in Google, or simply to drive traffic to earthweb.

I liked Slashdot.org better when the editors picked the stories. Some days, Slashdot feels like Digg...

I tend to not take seriously anyone who tries to portray Ubunutu users as "fanboys" - they are usually *fanboys themselves*, or they're unrepentant software pirates whose roles as "software gurus" (collectors, really) are undermined by the real free software movement.

I've been a Ubuntu fan last 5 years, but started on Slackware ~ 1994. I still target development at CentOS (RHEL) but there's no way I'd put anything but Ubuntu on my desktop. Ubuntu's not perfect, but they've taken many of Debian's goals to a much much larger audience. Good for Ubuntu.

Re:What's going on?

[mjwx]

Kosh, is that you? Fancy meeting you here! Last I heard you'd left the galaxy!

yes

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD is dead, Netcraft confirms it.

That one's more than 10 years old. There's never a shortage of scaremongers, with statistics and anecdotes rustled up from somewhere to support them.

Re:What's going on?

[StikyPad]

she's a tech geek in every way except Linux - and yes married [to my best friend, but he's less of a geek than she is]

Ah, right, I like to "help out" my friends' wives too when their husbands just aren't up for it.

Her: How do I fix this dirty bit?

Me: Well, you gotta get root and fsck it.

Her: Ohh, that sounds hard!

Me: Yeah, girl, it is. REAL hard. Lemme just remote into your box real quick...

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

synergistic actually is a good word, with a defined meaning (the effect of two things at the same time is greater then additive) but it has been so misused, like unique, or exponential that it has become a buzz word
but don't blame synergistic for what people have done in it's name

Re:What's going on?

[oliverthered]

Yep, I'm never worked out what was so 'great' about Ubuntu..

I'm currently working on stabilizing my own Linux variant, using Ubuntu as a base since it's got lots of third part packages etc....

But I really want to clear out all the dead wood and build some proper solid foundations that's nice and easy to support instead of having a half arsed LTS or a half broken moving target to work with.

MY thoughts are stability and bug fixing over the latest and greatest half implemented bollocks, I have no idea who'd want the latter but it's only a deb away if they do want it.

I have myself and quite a few other people that I support running Linux.. it's less of a pain that windows in many many ways and works very nicely on old kit.
They don't need 40k of packages or a trillion different desktops to try, nor do I. I just want something I can iron the bugs out of.. give them.. along with all the open source software the man on the street needs to do anything and be done with it.

If they want to go fucking around with the system... well there's a PPA for that.

Re:What's going on?

[jrumney]

What media have you needed to mount manually in the last few versions of Ubuntu? Just put the media in and it appears on the desktop is my experience.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

In theory, netbook users. Possibly mythical iPad converts.

In practice, nobody.

Re:What's going on?

[HermMunster]

Poor word use, Mate. Have another drink. haha.

Re:What's going on?

[oliverthered]

here little consume... you like being lazy and fed like a little duck don't you... good consumer... now u are under my control... consumer... don't think for yourself... consumer... expect everything on a plate from now on.... consumer....

The only think wrong with Ubutu is that I have a patch right here on my desktop.... but I ain't got a clue how the fuck to get the idiots at Ubuntu to include it.... hell I may just post something on the internet with a fix and hope someone finds it.. the people at Ubuntu can't seemed to be arsed with it.

Re:What's going on?

[tqk]

The Patriot Act is an abomination, we agree on that. Obama is continuing it and supporting it much like most presidents would be in his place I suspect.

To say that is 'worse' than originally proposing it is quite a stretch though.

No it's not. Continuing it after you've learned what it is doing is worse than imposing it in the first place. It was imposed during days of panic, but we've had years to rethink it, so it ought to be gone. Freedom is not to be found there. Disband it.

Everytime I listen to the $POTUS_SUCKS people, I wonder why he'd bother to listen to a word they say. Then I wonder WTF is he continuing this $!@#?

Re:What's going on?

[QuantumBeep]

You have to assume things. I assume there is solid ground under my desk chair. I don't stare at the ground nonstop for confirmation.

I assume my family loves me. I don't act like an insecure teenager and seek confirmation every day.

I assume the people around me act in good faith unless demonstrated otherwise. That way I don't come off as a paranoid bastard.

I assume my car will start, my PC will boot, and my health will continue to be good. I can't function otherwise.

Sometimes I make an ass of myself and others. It's better than being stodgy and difficult.

Re:What's going on?

[Belial6]

Sure you can win in the linux world. You use Debian until you decide you would rather have a bleeding edge distro. Then you switch to Ubuntu. When you get tired of the issues of having a bleeding edge distro, you switch back to Debian until you start wanting bleeding edge again. Maybe you use one of the in between distros for a while when you feel like it. Sounds like a win to me. There are time and uses that I want bleeding edge. There are times and uses that I want stability. The fact that I get to choose means that I win.

Re:What's going on?

[Grapes4Buddha]

You've been reading Slashdot with IE for over a decade? You should be ashamed of yourself. Use Firefox or Chrome like all the other cool kids.

Re:What's going on?

[damaged_sectors]

Heey, don't say that, Canonical's biggest contribution to the open source world has been to Gnome as they created a a set of icons. Accidently that is pretty much the only contribution they have made upstreams.

:-D

Not quite - they have made other contributions. They are, however, just contributions - not commitments. They could have done things the IBM way by funding development in the areas of their interest (x86 gnome desktop) or the RedHat way - build their own and feed it back to the upstream developers in consultation with them, or even the Google way. But they chose to piss off the Debian community instead.

In the case of Kubuntu they chose to piss off their users, and the KDE developers too.

Ubuntu - it's unique. You don't get Mandriva (or whatever it's called this week) and Mephis users pissing off the RedHat folk, and I can't recall any of the users of the many Debian-based distros clogging the Debian-user lists and forums. (sigh). When (space)Shuttleworth first announced the intentions of Ubuntu I was as impressed as I was by Kennnedy and Obama.... so the question is not, where did all the love go - but why did I believe there was any in the first place. I've just spent half an hour searching and can't find any trace of the original announcements about Ubuntu's plans for those left out of the "Digital Revolution". Just another Camelot that turned out to be true for only a very limited few.

I'm looking at ewe Johhno fanboi Bacon

Re:What's going on?

[shutdown -p now]

I've rediscovered the World as Gentoo Linux.

Mine's still emerging.

Re:What's going on?

[QuantumBeep]

It's not incredible, it's just good.

You're too used to bloodsucking modern corporate behavior. Our grandparents would not have been surprised at an inflation-adjust 20k pension.

Re:What's going on?

[filthpickle]

I changed my mind. This post is funny.

Re:What's going on?

[oliverthered]

Nope, I just RTFA... it's canonical not serving the interest they mouth off about, but instead living in some kind of wonderland.

Stable release cycles and all that.... well go on then Mr Shuttle worth.... fix bugs upstream and work with the community instead of adding more shit and string it up... put your money where your mouth is...

hardly surprising they ain't making a profit... They don't seem to realise that a disrto should do the stabilisation and hand back bug fixes into the community and the community does the ivory tower stuff... after all if u want to make money, work for it ;->

Re:What's going on?

[oliverthered]

I usually prefer the rebuttle... When you'r heads not full of complicated shit, everything is simply pleasing.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of Canonical's choices of recent are not synergistic to my goals.

I regret to inform you that the remainder of your statement was rendered void by your use of the (non-)word "synergistic".

Synergistic Syn`er*gis"tic, a.
  1. Of or pertaining to synergism. "A synergistic view of
  regeneration." --Shedd.
  [1913 Webster]

  2. Cooperating; synergetic.
  [1913 Webster]

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought you could make up words in english...

How many words are there in the English language? There is no single sensible answer to this question. It's impossible to count the number of words in a language, because it's so hard to decide what actually counts as a word.[78] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language

(I dont't speak english by the way)

Re:What's going on?

[PopeRatzo]

the only acceptible solution is that people develop better bullshit detectors and participate more in the pruning of submissions.

I've met some very powerful minds in my life, but none of them, not one, was capable of completely making themselves immune to the science of well-funded marketing or public relations. Even though we all laughed at those poor losers who majored in "Communications", it seems that they are having the last laugh. Using the extremely potent psy ops weapons at their disposal, they can convince you of nearly everything, sell you almost anything, and make you doubt your most strongly-held beliefs. They can't do it perfectly, but they can do it well enough to turn our world to shit.

Honestly, I'm starting to believe that we need serious regulations on advertising, public relations and commercial media. Even though that goes against everything I believe (back to those "most strongly-held beliefs") I'm watching the society in which I live turned against itself to satisfy the urges of a very few powerful folks. Net Neutrality would be a step, but you've got those poor simpletons driving around in their cars listening to the radio and buying into the most shameful propaganda since The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Every day. And they come home and pop on Fox News and that stuff beams straight into their heads, into their reptile brains, bypassing judgment, bypassing morals, even bypassing the survival instinct.

I don't mean to sound so pessimistic. I'm not really so. But I think we're at a point where we're going to have to write off huge sections of our society and prepare for some very very bad times ahead.

And that's just my reaction to about an hour of channel surfing. If I had to watch an entire evening of reality shows or Fox News I'd probably be driven to do a great deal of damage, probably to myself.

Re:What's going on?

[PopeRatzo]

A $20k/year pension with $0 contribution over your lifetime isn't just gold-plated it's adamantium-plated. It is EXTREMELY over the top, as excessive as a king's ransom

You bonehead, three decades ago, a whole lot of private sector workers got pensions just like that.

Then Ronald Reagan happened and now you see a $20k/yr pension after a lifetime of hard work as excessive.

You poor, dumb bastard. You can't even see the number that's been done on your head.

Re:What's going on?

[PopeRatzo]

I guess you know how the "tea baggers" feel now, eh?

It's not hard to figure out. I mean, they write it all right on their signs. If you can make out the spelling, you can make some pretty good guesses about how they feel. And why. And who benefits most from them feeling that way.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

We are all Kosh

Re:What's going on?

[PopeRatzo]

try this : http://www.truth-out.org/

See, but that's an easy one: "You can't believe that truth-out.org because they're a bunch socialists pushing the islamo-homosexual agenda. They'll say anything to get people to try to turn away from their Churches and the generous owners of corporations who are nice enough to give us jobs".

See, the problem is, once you've planted a message into the part of a person's brain that deals with fear and anger, no facts, no information, no truth is ever going to make a dent. They're even given a list of talking points with which to refute any facts you present them. It's all a nice neat package that's been made for them, and it cannot be changed. Have you never talked to a committed Fox viewer? You can take them by the hand and let them touch the wounds, put their fingers in the holes, feel the truth itself and they'll still put their hands over their ears and clamp their eyes shut. Then, they'll accuse you of being "one of THOSE people". The best you can do is make sure they never, ever get anywhere near a position of power or anywhere near a dangerous weapon.

The problem is, that the people who are responsible for turning them this way are very rich and very powerful and very committed to making sure they get near positions of power and near dangerous weapons. Because it suits their plans. Honestly, it's way way too late for this nation. At least during the rest of my lifetime. It's going to get very very ugly here and there's going to be a whole lot of suffering. And I love it too much to bear to watch.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually - that's a good question. Is he wrong? I'd like to have a sit-down talk with the number one black man in America. As I recall, President Obama had comments to make that were similar in content, if not tone. Things that make you think - or, should make a person think, anyway. I look around me, and I see most of America sinking to the "lowest common denominator". Today, white boys don't seem to be any better than those black boys who don't give a small damn about family values. Ehhh - I don't know who has the answers, but it's pretty damned obvious that the "politically correct" group doesn't have any good answers.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is more genetic variation between individuals of the same race than there is between races

No: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewontin's_Fallacy

Re:What's going on?

[ryanov]

Penalties for crack are much worse than penalties for other types of cocaine, for example. This isn't exactly what GP said, but you get the idea. So black folks disproportionately end up in jail often because of prejudiced juries, but they stay there because of penalties.

Re:What's going on?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Yeah, it's not like there was a story on Slashdot today about how the German government got fed up and went back to Windows after a decade long experiment, citing among other reasons Ubuntu switching around the UI constantly.

Re:What's going on?

[SQL Error]

You bonehead, three decades ago, a whole lot of private sector workers got pensions just like that.

Then all the companies that provided them went bankrupt. How did that happen?

Re:What's going on?

[Risen888]

You're not that new here.

I don't know who this "we" is, but "they" may want to find a new forum to troll. The rest of "us" damn well know better.

Re:What's going on?

[Risen888]

Slashdot is not a news site. Slashdot has never been a news site. Slashdot is an opinion site, it's always been an opinion site, and has never tried to misrepresent that.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/synergistic

Re:What's going on?

[Risen888]

Not so. I only have anecdotal evidence, but I have a lot of it.

I think it's two things. First you've got people like me. I bailed on Ubuntu several years ago for reasons mostly technical and partly political. I just didn't like the look of where things were going. But I kept selling it, for another couple years, actually, which brings me to my next point.

Then you've got people like some of my clients. (I sell Linux desktops. Yes, for money.) I have been in the business for five years (last month!), and for the first four I sold Ubuntu exclusively. And you know what? I have had complaints about the interface lately. Specifically, when they started fucking with Gnome. And I mean several, from people who no one reading this would consider "savvy Linux users." It got so nerve-wracking I now also ship Kubuntu (it frustrates me that I feel tied to Ubuntu at all in terms of my product offerings, but I do), and am looking for another friendly KDE based distro, although I haven't found one yet.

Why? Because KDE offers a more stable desktop experience than Ubuntu. (I mean stability in terms of interface predictability, not software stability.) Think about how damning that is for a minute. I mean, I love KDE, I've used it myself since I think 3.4.something, and it's really nice that the 4.x branch is now really and truly stable enough for me to ship. But until about 4.4 it wasn't what anybody would call a "stable desktop experience." The fact that it's now an all-around better and more reliable desktop option for me as a vendor than Ubuntu is speaks fucking tons.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm thinking your comment is a loaded question, due to the fact that the only link in your "comment" is on the text "another purpose" linking to ulterior motive.

Slashdot comments are frequently a bunch of opinions stated as if true, followed by pointless questions, submitted by people with a vested interest in the topic.

Re:What's going on?

[sick197666]

Who the hell said having a child out of wedlock is abandoning them? Oh no, families that are different than mine are scary!!!! And who said one of the biggest logical fallacies, generalization, is kosher again? Luckily we all know you're too cowardly to ever act upon your beliefs, or else I would be worried about your hate speech. You're allowed to think and say whatever the hell you want, but if you come close to any of my African American or Haitian American relatives, you are dead.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/synergistic

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

I applaud input from the one and only black member of the slashdot community .
He is clearly of nearly of the same evolutionary level as most of us.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually no; speaking as a person responsible for licensing Ubuntu for a large corporate, this guy, their COO Matt Assay started mouthing off about OpenCore. I wanted to arrange Ubuntu as a platform for our developers who mostly target RHEL but want to work well with the rest of the office. Assay's idiocy seriously affected their credibility and suggests that, unlike people like RedHat they planned to take other people's contribution OpenCore I didn't want to find out six months down the line that the developers are deliberately ignoring us (they are allowed to use whatever they want; I have to sell to them not tell them what they use). Now that he's left I'm waiting to see if there is some change in policy.

Sorry for posting AC; I know that affects credibility, but I'm not willing to put the company name up. Canonical needs to make it clear that they won't put other people's contributions into OpenCore and I'll be back like a shot. I'm not willing to have them attempting to trick their way in through another route.

Meanwhile, if anyone wants to start a Linux Distro which has a) proper back end support like RedHat has and Canonical was beginning to have and b) long term credibility that they will stay committed to F/OSS so that our developers will be happy to work with them then I'm seriously interested. I guess the best hope for this is RedHat, but there are other companies that have the capability and patents to do it (IBM; I'm looking at you). Alternatively a bunch of serious looking (yes I'm talking guys with suits) Debian consultants with a single company name, at least a 5-10 kernel hackers, 20 app developers including strong presence in OpenOffice and presence in each continent and the ability to sell support based on things that look like product licenses would also be worth considering. Think about it.

Re:What's going on?

[kale77in]

> faits accomplis

"Fate's Accomplice?" That's subtle and clever... or you're just very very bad at Latin. ...*flips a coin* ... Alright then. That's subtle and clever!

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

umm you become a sociologist because you flunked med school.

Re:What's going on?

[thegarbz]

Mount media? What's that? In Ubuntu I just stick my USB stick in and a shortcut magically appears on my desktop.

We are talking about end users here. The blond tutsy at the reception will hear the word "mount" and will think to the nightclub binge the night before, not something that she needs to type into that thingy with the letters on it at work. You're right, it is better to learn the simple way. But if you're doing anything at all that needs to open a terminal or type a command then you're not doing it the "simple" way. You're a poweruser at that point.

Re:What's going on?

[ZzzzSleep]

I've heard that Puppy Linux is a good choice these days for older PCs...

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the U.S. government 70% of all black children are born out of wedlock. That's a nice way of saying they're bastards because their fathers don't care that children in nuclear families have a far higher quality of life than bastards. It's also a nice way of saying that black women who are not ready to have children need to learn how to take the fucking pill.

Assuming that the statistic is even true, all it proves is that some people's parents don't bother to get married. Here in Sweden, this is the norm rather than the exception, and has nothing to do with whether fathers live with and/or support their kids.

Re:What's going on?

[Knuckles]

Not in Europe, where such pensions are still pretty much standard for the middle class. Ask Ron Reagan how he did it.

Re:What's going on?

[Knuckles]

Uh, in case you're not joking: it's French. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/faits+accomplis

Re:What's going on?

[Knuckles]

Certainly I know that after a recent install of Ubuntu Natty (late beta) my system wouldn't boot.

Natty is in alpha, https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NattyReleaseSchedule

Re:What's going on?

[paimin]

Or, for the reasonable among us, use iPads, iPhones, Android, OS X, Ubuntu, AND fucking Windows, and quit complaining constantly.

Re:What's going on?

[Knuckles]

If you had read the comments you would have found the links to a story on netzpolitik.org, which shows that is was a political decision by the conservative party. They even had a partially leaked McKinsey study from the project to prove it.

Re:What's going on?

[MrNiCeGUi]

Allow me to disagree, but i think they end up in jail because they sold crack. It's not like the juries made them do it. I agree to the second part, though.

Re:What's going on?

[gl4ss]

ubuntu has always been a publicity project.

that's it's biggest change to some other distros.

Re:What's going on?

[ChienAndalu]

People want sane defaults

Re:What's going on?

[uglyduckling]

It's a case of "don't you think she [it] looks tired?".

Re:What's going on?

[uglyduckling]

If your friend is a "tech geek in every way" then I'm sure she could get a book and learn about linux. "C drive" is no more indicative of the primary disk that "/dev/sda" - surely "A drive" should be the first disk? It's simply familiarity with a particular set of jargon. Like back in the day, I was constantly being told by friends 'Nokia phones are more intuitive', when they actually meant 'Nokia phones are more familiar'. Plenty of Unixisms make a lot more sense than their Windows equivalents, it just takes a little investment of time to understand the basics.

As a starting point, suggest to your friend that she types "/dev/sda" into Google, see what the first entry is, she might find it enlightening.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

precisely observed!
correctly guessed!

Re:What's going on?

[Culture20]

You have to assume things. I assume there is solid ground under my desk chair. I don't stare at the ground nonstop for confirmation.

It's good that you don't. There's no reason to believe that photons hitting your eyes in certain patterns have anything to do with whether the floor is really there. For that matter, electrochemical stimulus from your optic nerves might have nothing to do with photons.

Re:What's going on?

[AliasMarlowe]

Yes, I miss the days of journalists, like William Randolph Hearst

So, about how old are you? Considering that Hearst lost control of his publishing empire in 1937 (and died in 1951), I suspect your slashdot ID should be a negative number...

Re:What's going on?

[gpuk]

You have to be joking. We have massive unfunded pension problems across the board.

Re:What's going on?

[Seumas]

A stitch in time, saves nine.

Re:What's going on?

[Seumas]

Same here. It has been quite awhile since I've used Ubuntu (except for an app running on Ubuntu via vmware), but I had no real problems with the distribution and I had not heard of any unrest then or now, until this article. As a Debian fan since about 1998, I started using Ubuntu/Kubuntu at 4.10 and found them to be a great Debian-based option. Especially if I wanted to curtail the amount of time I spent getting things up and running rather than fiddling around with the lower level crap (something that has become progressively more important as I've gotten older).

Re:What's going on?

[devent]

What the end user is concerned Linux and Windows behave almost the same. Except maybe for the package manager, but anything else behaves almost the same as in Windows. And of course that you don't install drivers for your devices, you just plug them in and they just work.

You plug your USB drive in, a window pops up with the option to open a file manager. Drag&Drop your files to copy/move. The "start menu"; click on an icon to start the application. Download an application, extract it somewhere and click on the executable to start. You have even a "control manager" or "system manager" (or whatever it is called in Windows).

Please what behaves completely differently from Windows in a modern Linux desktop like Gnome or KDE?

The package manager for installing drivers, software and libraries (if you a developer) and the wide "out-of-the-box" hardware support in Linux are the only differences from Windows.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

These links were not posted with summaries saying "This is what so-and-so said" but rather "This is the truth"

So then WTF is the inkscapee writes part? Whatever inkscapee wrote is true for him and him (her?) only. Nobody is forcing that sentence down your throat as if it were truthful. Your UID suggests you have been around for quite some time, but your intellect suggests your a godless aspie.

Re:What's going on?

[hazem]

Is OpenSuse a viable alternative for you? I think it defaults to KDE.

For some background, from 1998 to 2002 I had a job where we had lots of machines with unix variants... SunOS, Solaris, whatever Sequent computers ran, and on PCs, we used Caldera, and most of these were all running fvwm.

For the last 6 years or so, I've been primarily in windows at home, dual-booting into linux. This is because several pieces of software I use (simulation packages, etc) are only available in windows.

In January I had a harddrive crash and decided to take the opportunity to try out some of the more modern linux distros. I was particularly happy to find that VirtualBox ran windows well enough that I could use all my windows-only software. So now I find myself happily using Linux for most of my computing, only booting up my virtual windows to do simulations and turbo tax.

I am currently settled on Ubuntu because it overall works pretty well for what I'm trying to do. I also downloaded and tried installing a few others with mixed success. It took quite a while to tweak the screen to get back my vertical space, with 2 bars (one on top and one on bottom), then an app's title bar and then menu, already a 6th of my screen was taken up. I have it all lined up on the bottom now, but getting some of the things to move there was tricky, and there is still some odd behaviors in that area. I wish they could set up a vertical bar, since my screen is a lot wider than it is tall.

I prefer Dolphin as a file manager to whatever comes with Ubuntu, but the integration is not as tight as I would like - I suppose that's the penalty for using a KDE file manager. I'd be thrilled too, if someone could tell my why gnumeric always opens up in the "next" virtual desktop. The flash screen shows up in the current desktop, but then the app opens up in the one to the right. Very irritating. Java is also really slow for some reason. When I run Netlogo "natively" in Ubuntu, it is dramatically slower than running it in a virtual machine running windows; or even using Wine. It's sad to see side-by-side simulations where the virtual machine in a virtual machine (java in wine/virtualbox) is so much faster than just the virtual machine on the OS.

Debian crashed during every attempt to install, so I can't say much about it.

I tried OpenSuse, which seemed pretty nice, and I liked the interface better than Ubuntu. However I couldn't get several of the apps I wanted to work (Oolite, VirtualBox) and so on, so I gave up on it after a day. I may try it again.

I also tried Fedora but I can't remember why I decided not to go with it.

I'm curious to hear about other current and well-maintained linux distros. I'm at a point in my computing where I don't enjoy tinkering and fighting with the operating system as much as I used to. I want it to "just work" so I can do what I need to, yet still be flexible enough to make it "the way I want it."

I'll close with saying how thrilled I am with VirtualBox. It's what has allowed me to switch back to a primarily linux system and I love that! When I first played with virtualization 10 years ago, it was very much hit and miss. VirtualBox runs really well for nearly everything I must do in windows, and it's even quite fast. Even better, I got my mom set up on her Vista box with Ubuntu running in a Virtualbox - she loves all the varieties of solitaire and such... I never would have imagined my mom liking having linux on her computer.

Re:What's going on?

[scamper_22]

And private industry had to give it up when it was deemed unaffordable.

It's easy to start a pension system and promise people money for the future. Much like health insurance, it was promised in lieu of wages with the expectation that the company would keep growing.

Well what happens when you actually have to pay out? Ooooops.

So private industry realized how insane this was and backed out of it.

Government just keeps on going.

Re:What's going on?

[marcello_dl]

mint has released a debian based release.
Crunchbang has switched to a Debian Squeeze base.
gNewSense plans to switch to debian.

I think it happens because ubuntu tries too hard to be unique. Get back to "simply" be more polished even if less universal than debian, and love will be back.

Re:What's going on?

[tsa]

That joke has a beard as long as the Eiffel tower is high.

Re:What's going on?

[jschottm]

Linux is worst

No, it's just that almost everyone has been exposed to Windows and have been desensitized to its quirks. Ever try to explain the lettered drive system to someone who's 50+ and hasn't used computers before? It's just (if not more) bizarre - skipping A and B (except for computers that still have floppy drives and unless a USB drive pretends to be a floppy drive), the difference in drive naming on systems that ship with recovery partitions, the semi-random drive letter assignment to different flash drives (or even the same one mounted at a different time)...

Or try explaining the registry to a newbie.

Re:What's going on?

[h4rm0ny]

That's an interesting comment. Thanks. Regarding you staying with Ubuntu for want of a better option (I also prefer KDE to Gnome, btw), if you're providing the hardware yourself and thus can choose stuff you know will be well supported, have you considered just using Debian with a KDE environment? Or is there too much missing?

Re:What's going on?

[AmiMoJo]

This is the classic Linux chicken-and-egg situation. No matter how polished the OS is there are no enough users to justify porting many commercial apps or spending money developing Linux drivers. Because the commercial apps they want and the hardware they want is Windows only the users won't switch to Linux.

I don't know how you can fix that, short of investing vast amounts of time and energy making these apps work in WINE and writing good quality drivers.

Re:What's going on?

[h4rm0ny]

Heh. Is that a reference to what I think it's a reference to? "I can bring down your distro with just five words". ;)

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm a musician and artist.." so you work at McDonalds. Ok. I get it. All your pirated tools work on windows only. That's fine. Use what works. I have a bootable windows partition on a couple of systems, so that I can play the odd lan game or two. All my other systems are linux and mac. That's where my important shit is done. I know people at Pixar, and some large recording studios in Houston, to engineers. What I'm surprised at is how few use windows.

Re:What's going on?

[AmiMoJo]

My girlfriend uses iPads but I don't see how robotic panty liners would be much of an improvement.

Re:What's going on?

[damaged_sectors]

Sure you can win in the linux world. You use Debian until you decide you would rather have a bleeding edge distro. Then you switch to Ubuntu. When you get tired of the issues of having a bleeding edge distro, you switch back to Debian until you start wanting bleeding edge again. Maybe you use one of the in between distros for a while when you feel like it. Sounds like a win to me. There are time and uses that I want bleeding edge. There are times and uses that I want stability. The fact that I get to choose means that I win.

Bleeding edge Debian is called unstable, but you can have experimental if you wish, or just go stable and pin backports (or testing). If that's not Gentoo enough you can compile every package from source. Hell you can even do that without having to do a single make. You can run Woody, Spud or Sarge - pick a damn CPU, go on, pick any CPU you like - don't like people who eat reindeer for Xmas dinner? Drop in a HURD or BSD kernel instead. And if you're really bored you can install Ubuntu packages - Ubuntu holds your hand and provides you with the sort of support experience only Windoof users can expect, meaning quality paid support, good commercial documentation and training, and totally shitful forums full of bullshit advice (no debian-users list there). What Ubuntu currently tries to do has been done successfully by others, with less money and greater stability (Xandros anyone?).

Ubuntu has brought a lot of new users to the world of GNU Linux - and some of them stick around, fewer still become contributors.

I've found a lot of people's first experience (these days) with GNU Linux is Ubuntu, it's not perfect 'cause bleeding edge never can or will be, and after trying other distros looking for something that "just works" (as if Windoof ever "just worked") they either learn to learn, or go back to Windoof and perpetual rebuilds or wormfarming. They're the OS equivalents of ISP "churners". In some respects todays new Ubuntu user is the Slack user of last century (an I'm not calling Slack ancient). Without trying to badmouth Ubuntu (and I'm no Ubuntu fanboi) - it's the (semi)GNU Linux aimed and massively promoted for the lowest common denominator of computer user. To say that there is no bad feeling towards Ubuntu or it's users is dangerously naive - I'm not the only person who's quick to avoid Ubuntu users. But then, I found the whole "Linux is the best OS, Microsoft is evil, viva la penguin revolution, dual-boot is bliss" thing boring a long time before Ubuntu appeared on the scene.

Ubuntu, and Ubuntu users - they're like young people, I appreciate the need for them, I just wish they'd stay the fuck off my lawn! ;-p

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen, brother.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Re:What's going on?

[PopeRatzo]

And private industry had to give it up when it was deemed unaffordable.

It wasn't "deemed unaffordable". It was deemed that they could make a bigger profit if they just dropped some benefits, and with Ronald Reagan setting the pace breaking unions and Bill Clinton buying into the "global market" myth, all the corporations had to do was say, literally, "my way or the highway".

But does it really end when American workers are on parity with the pay of workers in China and Africa and South Asia? Can you live on $3/hr? Less?

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's great and all... but why aren't you dead yet?

Re:What's going on?

[PopeRatzo]

Then all the companies that provided them went bankrupt. How did that happen?

Did they "go bankrupt"? Really?

Or did they move overseas or get eliminated in the slew of consolidations (that should have been prevented by the Sullivan Act)?

Re:What's going on?

[PopeRatzo]

We have massive unfunded pension problems across the board.

I don't think "massive" means what you think it means. Take a loot at what GM or some of the states here in the US did with their pension funds.

The problem is not that the pensions are too expensive, it's that the bankers and board members can't resist raiding the pension funds when they see big money being made in scams like credit-default swaps. When they see big pots of money sitting in one place, the believe it's their god-given right to get them some of that.

Re:What's going on?

[Max Littlemore]

Ummm, Multimedia Fusion is not intended to run on Linux. I don't know what problems you have getting Renoise to work, but I know I left Windows behind for Linux years ago and I haven't looked back. I get better performance from audio applications than I could every get on Windows and everything I use is usually integrated through jack so I could never return to windows for that stuff.

As far as things exploding with updates, care to be specific? I have had that happen more with windows systems than with my linux systems at home.

You, sir, are an idiot.

Re:What's going on?

[Grapes4Buddha]

I know. For some reason I couldn't help myself.

Re:What's going on?

[PopeRatzo]

Slashdot is an opinion site, it's always been an opinion site, and has never tried to misrepresent that.

If they really are "an opinion site and has always been an opinion site and has never tried to misrepresent that" don't you think that having the motto "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters" is a wee bit of a representation that it's a "news site"?

The opinions that matter here at Slashdot are ours - yours and mine and even the right-wing trolls and their sock-puppets. Even the ACs. When the stories at the top of the page become saturated with astroturf press releases we've got a problem. That doesn't mean there isn't a point of view in those stories, just that they should not be the product of organized campaigns.

Re:What's going on?

[PopeRatzo]

That's subtle and clever

No, that's French.

Re:What's going on?

[gl4ss]

it's just that ubuntu has been in the scene long enough that it's users are also noticing what it is, and how much of it is just base linux type of stuff - and the extra the ubuntu crew threw on it is just ui guys coming up with stupid ideas about where to move the X.

Re:What's going on?

[gl4ss]

with windows, you can run programs from '1995 and have them decor correctly with the current skin. try that with a mac.

problem with ubuntu is that it's about time they started delivering something that made a splash outside of the linux for dummies department. they can talk big. they can throw big pr. they can get people involved on totally meaningless stuff about looks. but they couldn't change the desktop.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

We are all Kosh.

Re:What's going on?

[cycleflight]

Not that I don't agree with you, but man... if your comment were just a /. Summary, it'd be the funniest thing I read all day: *Assertion *Assertion stated as fact about opinions being stated as facts in summaries *Rhetorical question It's almost as though your post would be writing about itself. Of course, it's a comment, so it's a totally different context.

Re:What's going on?

[Risen888]

don't you think that having the motto "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters" is a wee bit of a representation that it's a "news site"?

No, I think it's an obviously ironic slogan.

The opinions that matter here at Slashdot are ours - yours and mine and even the right-wing trolls and their sock-puppets. Even the ACs. When the stories at the top of the page become saturated with astroturf press releases we've got a problem. That doesn't mean there isn't a point of view in those stories, just that they should not be the product of organized campaigns.

I agree with that, and that's a problem and it does happen from time to time around here. But this isn't an example of that. It's exactly what you said: An opinion forwarded by a contributor (Bruce Byfield posts on Slashdot fairly often, he may be in this thread somewhere). I certainly don't think this is any kind of "astroturf press release."

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's the solution? The age of the Internet and easy, free access to information is obliterating traditional news providers. This reality guarantees that we will get our news less and less from skilled, professional, relatively objective investigative journalists, and more and more from, well, whoever has a motive to provide the information.

Access to high quality information is essential to democracy. However, we are living in an age where few consumers of information are willing to pay for it, so the providers of information are looking to other sources. I really don't know what the solution is. Do you?

Re:What's going on?

[Myopic]

I can't let that slide. Windows does NOT have a clear or consistent UI. I am constantly frustrated by the inconsistent ability to use "ctrl-A" to select text in text boxes. I am daily confronted by silent failures where I tell Windows to do something, and it doesn't do it, and doesn't give an error message. I am daily angered when Windows tells me it can't delete that folder because something, somewhere inside it, is in use by some process somewhere on the computer, but it won't tell me which file, or which process. Windows is less compatible with media. Windows can take multiple minutes instead of multiple milliseconds to list the contents of directories. I'm always wondering why the hell it's so hard to find stuff in the Windows filesystem. I have none of those problems (NONE) on Linux, and few of them on Macs. Sure, Linux has its own imperfections, but they are TINY compared to Windows.

Basically I'm an unapologetic Windows hater.

Re:What's going on?

[trollertron3000]

I meant it, wasn't trying to troll if it came off that way. I like to joke a lot on here but I do commend them for giving us this site for so long. Where else can I cause so much trouble :D

Re:What's going on?

[overlordofmu]

Your corporate overlords would prefer you stop thinking.

Just believe the in the stories on the box and consume. Comsumption is very important. All will be well as long as you consume.

Re:What's going on?

[damaged_sectors]

Well IMO the problem isn't really with Unity, which is meant to draw a younger audience, not codgers like me, it is the fact that Unity still doesn't make Linux play Windows games, so their attempt to draw in teens will probably backfire (and WINE is still far too difficult to use in many cases, even if it works).

Try PlayonLinux - or fork out the bucks for Crossover, or maybe just run Windoof games under Windoof.

I've been helping a Linux noob, and several suggestions: 1) avoid acronyms and abbreviations. Everyone is guilty of this, but Linux is worst - do you think /dev/sda means ANYTHING to a Linux noob?

It /dev/sda means you need to learn uuid, 2009 wants its fstab back :-D

Well I can tell you for a fact that it doesn't, because I've been helping one. She didn't even know that was referring to her primary disk drive

It doesn't necessarily mean it's the primary drive.. and this is computers you're talking about, it's either exactly right or it's fucking useless, there is no "you know what I mean", or close enough. Having spent an evening trying to install packages by cutting and pasting words from a web page I'd of thought you'd learned that.

until I told her (and she's a tech geek in every way except Linux - and yes married [to my best friend, but he's less of a geek than she is]).

Let me remove all those acronyms for you, even the ones that aren't acronyms so you can "help" you best friends wife (though if she's the "technical geek" she's probably better off on her own without some patronizing bloke "helping" her). Lets call the first partition on the first drive C: shall we? Or maybe just replace partition with thingy.... Your problems start when you want to add other "thingies", the second one we'll call D:, but pretty soon you're simple system ceases to be "intuitive" or even understandable (so which one if F:?). And we've got such a nice naming system too! dev - it's short for devices 'cause people not only naturally shorten words, they complain more about long ones than they do about abbreviations. And it means nothing to you because the only system that you can conceive of is a standard desktop, our system is designed to describe *all possible configurations of hardware*, even the ones you can't conceive (like the one this forum runs on, and I don't mean just the cms) of - fucking amazing huh?

Keep reading for my explanation on why you shouldn't be allowed near an install if you have to make suggestions like that. I'll skip the whole Universal Serial Bus , Digital Video Disk thingy 'cause I don't agree with you on the abbreviation thing, (and I think you're full of it).

And good for your teeth apparently

(for instance, iTunes makes a pretty nice mnemonic for what it does, but they've had their failures too - QuickTime?! The only time I want time to go quick is when I'm working and not under a tight deadline).

Please post me some of that shit you're smoking - Outlook, what the fuck was Microsoft thinking - it should be called email client obviously, like Coca-Cola should be just fizzy drink. Can you see a problem here? I don't know about Gnome - though I'm willing to bet a large amount of money that's the desktop environment you're talking about, but most menuing systems allow you to show either the package name and/or it's function. Did you read the documentation?

3) Shortcuts for multiple package select that can be dropped in. Why? Because installing them from package manager is too tedious, so people knowing how always go to terminal and do an apt-get. I want to copy the names of the packages I need from a URL and drop them on an installer and have them magically appear.

And the only thing stopping you from doing that is your own ignorance or laziness - Ubuntu has a graphical package i

Re:What's going on?

[Risen888]

I've looked a bit at OpenSuse, but I'm really nervous about moving away from a Debian-based platform on the machines I ship. I've gotta support these things after the sale.

Have you looked at Kubuntu much? A lot of the issues you describe are not issues for me, especially the title bar/panel stuff, and Dolphin really shines when you actually run it on KDE like it's meant to be run.

But I'm always glad to hear a success story, even if nothing's ever quite perfect.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I, for one, welcome our new corporate overlords."

Flavor Aid tastes, nice, too (it wasn't Kool-Aid). ;*)

Re:What's going on?

[Noughmad]

And then your discover Arch. Bleeding edge, yet everything works.

Re:What's going on?

[Darkness404]

There are a -lot- of differences, especially when applications are concerned. For example, Thunderbird/Evolution/etc. behave differently than Outlook. Open Office behaves vastly different than Microsoft Office. Pidgin/Empathy behaves different than AIM/Live Messenger/etc. The configuration tools are vastly different, etc.

Now, this doesn't mean that Windows/Linux is better than the other, it is just most people thing Linux is a free version of Windows, which it isn't and will never be. The problem is the vast majority of Windows users don't know how to use a computer, they know how to use Windows. They don't think about it, they just know that the fourth icon from the right is the internet. Heck, many Windows users have sticky notes with detailed instructions on how to do simple tasks that are rather intuitive on Windows.

Re:What's going on?

[ArhcAngel]

Actually, you have to be pretty ignorant to be a prejudice fuck

Then I guess every human being on the planet is ignorant because we are all prejudiced. You see the word has been co-opted to mean racial prejudice but in fact it only means you are predisposed for or against something regardless of empirical data. To use a car analogy (strange on /. I know) a perfect example is the love of a certain brand of car over another regardless of whether said brand is in fact "superior" is prejudice FOR the particular brand. In fact I wouldn't dare mention a specific superior brand (Dodge) because I would be inundated with hate replies from people prejudiced to their inferior (Chevy) brand.

Rasicm: Black people are better at playing basketball

Prejudice: Porch monkeys are better at basketball cause they are used to swinging from the trees in the jungle.

See how one is perfectly acceptable and the other clearly isn't?

Actually Racism is a form of prejudice and as such can also be for or against. Being proud your Irish is a form a racism and is celebrated the world over by Irish and non-Irish alike while in Africa different tribes hate each other because they are different shades of brown. Being proud of your heritage is good and healthy but belittling or looking down on someone for their heritage is bad. They are still both forms of racism.

I believe the first solution is for everyone to stop talking about racism like we do. Our children grow up prejudice because we start beating into their heads at an early age that its not okay to point out differences in people like skin color, and that we're all equal ... WE AREN'T, AND THATS OKAY. We need to stop making it such a point to children, stop forcing race issues in their face as their trying to form an opinion and view of the world.

Stop making race an issue and it'll stop being such an issue, but the last bit of your post is the important part. If we all just go back to treating people the way we want to be treated the world would be much better off.

I understand your point but don't see it ever actually happening. There will always be people who feel they are superior to other people and will pass that on to their children. We must be vigilant with our own children and help them grow to maturity with a healthy sense of self while preventing them from feeling entitled or superior. it will always be a delicate balance

Re:What's going on?

[pixelpusher220]

the reasons for going into Iraq in 2003 weren't false? do tell...

Re:What's going on?

[tqk]

Whether or not Lewontin's Fallacy is a fallacy depends on how one defines the concept of "difference" between two genomes.

It doesn't look like the question's settled yet.

Re:What's going on?

[gpuk]

I'm referring to state pensions. Don't even get me started with corporate pension pots (e.g. British Airways).

Re:What's going on?

[perryizgr8]

Java is also really slow for some reason.

java was slow and will always be slow. even though microbenchmarks show that java performs similar to c++, i haven't seen any improvement in applications like vuze, the aduino compiler, openoffice. they are slow as ever. the problem is not with your installation. its java.

Re:What's going on?

[drjzzz]

good point. Example: William Shirer observed in his "Rise and Fall" that when stationed in pre-WWII Berlin he was somehow influenced by the Nazi propaganda, although he found the Nazi "ideology" repugnant and he read newspapers from Paris and London and New York daily. Probably the best guide is to avoid sources of "information" that try to persuade you in a certain direction. I've watched Jim Lehrer on the News Hour for decades but I am not certain which way he votes or wishes me to vote.

Re:What's going on?

[StikyPad]

Right, right, I was joking. ;)

Re:What's going on?

[tqk]

Yes, I miss the days of journalists, like William Randolph Hearst

So, about how old are you?

Yeah, let's not bother reading history books. That stuff all happened long ago and has nothing to do with us.

You need to write a flip little joke about him remembering WRH, instead of thinking of the implications of his statement? Sad.

Re:What's going on?

[cayenne8]

Well, it *is* very difficult to get windows apps to run on linux.

If you're doing for a DAW type thing on linux, you really should go for an all linux approach. Use tools that are there..Jack, Audacity, Rosegarden, Ardour...

I've even read about distros out there are are almost turnkey for you, tuned for very low latency. If you want to go the linux route, you should try to use more native linux tools.

You have your windows box and it works for you. I'd say just set up another separate linux box for DAW..and start to slowly try to work with it...see its strengths, etc....you can actually have the best of both worlds that way?

Re:What's going on?

[cayenne8]

I've been running gentoo on all my home boxes for years.

Really..with a modern computer, compiling really takes very little time, and it isn't like the box locks up while compiling.

Where you DO get the biggest bang for the buck with Gentoo, is on older hardware. Custom compiling flags and all do help for giving new life to old hardware.

On these..sure it take forever to compile some things...but it will get a benefit from this, and it isn't like the old stuff *IS* my primary computer(s) in the house..so, I'm not missing out on anything letting it chug along.

Right now..I'm putting gentoo on an old iBook G3. I can't get any new versions of OSX for it, newer apps like firefox's latest versions won't run on older OSX, so, with linux on it...it will be responsive and useful again, maybe as my kitchen computer.

Sure, it took 4x days for KDE to download and compile on it, but who cares? I just have it in the corner, fired off the job, and let it roll. I'll finish setting it up at my leisure. But when done, it will be useful again.

Also, I don't think a lot of current linux distros out there are supported older PPC architecture...gentoo is still a good one for that.

Re:What's going on?

[marcosdumay]

"The funny thing is that when I started using linux back in 1999, the big criticism of Debian was that it wasn't bleeding edge enough! I guess you can't win in the linux world ..."

it is more like you can't please everyone all the time. Came-on, Ubuntu has more than 1/4 of the Linux install base (or at least it had last time I looked at distrowatch), and it is very unlikely that the other 3/4 of the population will want exactly the same things their distro provides, so the other people just won't like them. Don't make that confuse you, they've already won.

PS. That comes from somebody that doesn't like Ubuntu.

Re:What's going on?

[tqk]

... your intellect suggests your a godless aspie.

You say that like it's a bad thing. WTF is an aspie?

Re:What's going on?

[uglyduckling]

That's the one ;). L.

Re:What's going on?

[Chris Burke]

Despite knowing how to manually mount all kinds of crazy media, I haven't had to in years. I stick in CDs, flash cards into my USB reader, my camera (set in Mass Storage mode not Sony Proprietary Crap Mode), external HD, keychain flash cards, whatever, it pops up on the desktop automagically. The only time it failed was on a disk whose partition table was hosed, and ultimately unrecoverable because the disk was going very bad. Messing around with files in /dev couldn't have helped.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

+1000

Re:What's going on?

[Derek]

Kosh, is that you? Fancy meeting you here! Last I heard you'd left the galaxy!

LOL!! Years of coming to Slashdot have now been validated. Thank you!

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

...and now another FUD article about Google collecting children's SSNs:

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/02/23/1425218/Why-Google-Wants-Your-Kids-SSN?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nixon was the "end of innocence" for a previous generation, TV commercials and "infomercials" was another, and dealing with pervasive propaganda will be the adjustment of a new generation.

Re:What's going on?

[BitZtream]

The problems with graphical inconstancy comes when people choose programs for their features rather than their UI and different people have different preferences.

No, the problem for UI consistancy is that there is no consistent UI 'with Linux'.

Windows has one.

Mac OS X has one.

Linux has at least 4 that I can think off off the top of my head with many applications written for them, and countless other toolkits that are less common.

Your quote illustrates the problem perfectly. You're blaming users for picking based on features they care about and ignoring the fact that users should freaking have to be concerned with making sure the app matches their theme.

Contrary to the popular Linux mantra, choices are not ALWAYS a good thing.

Re:What's going on?

[BitZtream]

Ever try to explain the lettered drive system to someone who's 50+ and hasn't used computers before? It's just (if not more) bizarre - skipping A and B (except for computers that still have floppy drives and unless a USB drive pretends to be a floppy drive)

Okay, so its a little confusing to people who have never used a computer, but for the other 99.99999% of the population they already understand drive letters and its not really a big deal. My 82 year old father picked it up in one sitting, its not difficult. Its certainly far less difficult than explaining something like a devfs.

the difference in drive naming on systems that ship with recovery partitions, the semi-random drive letter assignment to different flash drives (or even the same one mounted at a different time)...

Most recovery partitions are done in such a way that the only time the user ever sees them is when they've triggered the recovery key sequence at boot, otherwise they remain hidden on every machine I've dealt with. They remain hidden so things can fuck them up, like the user who doesn't understand what its for. Have you actaully used a PC with these 'issues' you're making up or are you truly just inventing random crap that was solved 10 years ago as if it still happens?

Or try explaining the registry to a newbie.

Why the hell are you explaining the registry to a newbie? You've already done it wrong. Whats next, you'll say that Linux isn't any worse because car mechanics also have a difficult time explaining the CAN bus to grandma? Newbies don't need to know about the registry. If you need to explain the registry to newbies then you need to stop subjecting them to software written by 12 year olds. There is no reason a normal user should ever be messing with the registry, the only reason they are is because of a bad application ... and lets be realistic ... its still easier to open regedit and navigate a tree of keys than it is to scramble around and search for a setting in a config file using grep to figure out which file its in. This 'complaint' has absolutely no merit and just indicates you're making things up to support your position when you really don't have a reason to maintain that position.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he was killed, no? Must be K2.

Re:What's going on?

[HiThere]

OK. That would explain it. I still suspect that my problem was with gdm3. And I still didn't have any way to report it. (And I still *thought* it was in beta...so maybe this guy did too.)

Re:What's going on?

[PopeRatzo]

It's exactly what you said: An opinion forwarded by a contributor

Then it might be useful for him to indicate that this was his opinion.

I'm looking at the front page right now, and I see only news stories. Not an opinion piece in the bunch.

Re:What's going on?

[amicusNYCL]

Yeah, I tried to phrase it like the summary I was commenting about. I think it's amusing how most commenters fall right into the trap - they start arguing about the pointless rhetorical questions instead of the supposed "facts", as though they actually are facts. It's a nice tactic for making several assertions, getting your audience to assume they are true, and then leading the discussion where you want it to go. Some marketer has been doing their homework. I just don't really like seeing it on Slashdot, I wish the editors saw through that more often and re-worded the summary as submitted.

Re:What's going on?

[roc97007]

It must be nice to be able to afford all of that.

Re:What's going on?

[PopeRatzo]

Access to high quality information is essential to democracy. However, we are living in an age where few consumers of information are willing to pay for it, so the providers of information are looking to other sources. I really don't know what the solution is. Do you?

Well, one solution that the Founding Fathers of the US Constitution decided on was to subsidize high quality information (newspapers) via the postal service.

Today, we have public radio and television, but the Republican House of Representatives has just passed a bill wiping out all government subsidies to them.

The only possible explanation is that the people who are in power (who have nothing to do with "government") just don't want people to have access to reliable, high-quality information.

The only solution to that is the same one that the French people used in 1789, and it involves separating the heads of the people in power (the 18th century French equivalent of the Koch Brothers) from the rest of them.

Re:What's going on?

[PopeRatzo]

I've watched Jim Lehrer on the News Hour for decades but I am not certain which way he votes or wishes me to vote.

That's very interesting.

It's also interesting to note that the people on the Right would have us believe that Jim Lehrer is a screaming liberal with a Socialist agenda.

And anyway, they've passed their bill cutting off public-funding for PBS, so you probably won't have Lehrer to rely on much longer. We're under attack. It's not playing any more, it's end game.

Re:What's going on?

[PopeRatzo]

I'm referring to state pensions too. The states raided their pension funds. They're in trouble not because the pensions were too high, but because their bankers raided those funds.

It's the same on your end, too. People are being told that they have to have more "austerity" because the bankers have simply taken all the money. Did you know that the bank bailouts here in the 'States, which bailed out some EU banks, too, made the bankers whole to the tune of 100 cents on the dollar? There was no effort to negotiate a bailout. It was just assumed from the beginning that they would be made completely whole with taxpayer money.

No austerity for bankers, CEOs, or the Koch Brothers.

Re:What's going on?

[Risen888]

It's Bruce Byfield. He's almost entirely an opinion columnist (and really, aren't all "tech journalists" really opinion columnists? i keed, i keed). Did you read the article?

And I just looked at the front page and counted four opinion pieces (not counting Idle). Maybe our front page settings are different though.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do public sector salaries 30% below private sector salaries really count as $0 contribution over your lifetime? Most people will still get better salaries AND "pensions" in a similar private sector job with 8% going to their 401k.

Re:What's going on?

[Knuckles]

We are talking about the Gnome Display Manager, right? AFAICT gdm3 is just a virtual package and has been for a while, it's probably just there to help with some upgrade scenarios.

aptitude show gdm3
No current or candidate version found for gdm3
Package: gdm3
State: not a real package

The proper package is gdm, and it's at 2.32 in Natty. Though I'm not sure how a gdm issue would prevent a boot in the proper sense of the word - gdm is started pretty much at the end of the boot process. Anyway, you should be able to choose recovery mode from the initial grub boot screen, after the BIOS, which puts you into a text mode boot that finishes with a nice menu were you can choose options like "try to free space" or "let me log in in text mode". Though I think that in Natty and Maverick before that the default is not to show the grub menu in order to be prettier and not to scare away noobs. You can press Shift to make the menu appear (see "Hidden" here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#Boot%20Display%20Behavior), but yes, that's not very well advertised.

Re:What's going on?

[Knuckles]

Yeah, because companies have stopped paying taxes. Nevertheless, a $20,000 pension per year is not considered obscene after a life of work, and rightly so.

Re:What's going on?

[Rakarra]

You bonehead, three decades ago, a whole lot of private sector workers got pensions just like that.

Yup, and then a number of those companies went out of business and the rest discovered that they were way too expensive. It's easy to promise someone now that you'll pay them in 30 years. Far harder to actually do it.

The pension system is just a -bad model-. It doesn't work.

I'm not saying there should be no retirement system and no retirement savings, but pensions seem to be the riskiest move, but easiest to set because you have to pay for them in the future, not now.
Except the future is now, and now we're collapsing under the weight of past promises.

Re:What's going on?

[Rakarra]

pushing the islamo-homosexual agenda

I think my brain just exploded like that guy in "Scanners."

Don't give that phrase to the Westboro Baptist Church, because they'll run with it.

Re:What's going on?

[h4rm0ny]

Heh. Your post was fantastic. And you know what? So was mine! :)

Re:What's going on?

[jbolden]

You target niches and go after those. And that includes creating apps for the those niches which are stronger than the commercial applications or where the price differences are substantial enough to make a difference. A good example where FOSS has done that is the programmer niche. In 1995 the vast majority of programmers used proprietary, platform specific languages and paid for development tools. FOSS has changed that.

High end hardware manufacturers (server) have Linux drivers because Linux has real market share on the high end server market. They don't have share in the Music market. To get share they would need FOSS apps that steal market share from commercial apps.

Re:What's going on?

[jbolden]

1) Mac uses /dev as well. They just shield end users from knowing about it. There is no reason a noob needs to know about the dev file system.

2) I agree. Creative names are a problem. Though directories organized by function can fix that somewhat.

3) I'm not sure what you mean here. Most distributions have pretty good GUI package managers for over a decade.

4) Methinks you haven't counted how many executables there are on a typical Unix system. You don't want 10,000 icons.

Re:What's going on?

[jbolden]

Heey, don't say that, Canonical's biggest contribution to the open source world has been to Gnome as they created a a set of icons. Accidently that is pretty much the only contribution they have made upstreams.

No Canonical's biggest contribution was marketing. With the rise of the Mac as a Unix, Linux as a desktop OS would have likely died with Canonical.

Re:What's going on?

[PopeRatzo]

. Maybe our front page settings are different though.

Oh yeah, that's right.

I'm still trying to decide if I believe that "News for Nerds - Stuff that Matters" is really supposed to be ironic.

No, I'm pretty sure Slashdot really is supposed to be news for nerds, yet inviting the opinions of readers. Either way, it doesn't change the fact that an increasing amount of the "opinion" that shows up here and elsewhere is organized and agenda-driven. And I'm pretty sure there's not nearly the same level of astroturfing being done on the Left as on the Right. Being the foremost Left-wing troll on the Internet, you'd think Comrade Soros would have contacted me by now offering to make me rich.

But I'd still refuse. I do it for the love. A true amateur troll.

Re:What's going on?

[HiThere]

Well, "pretty much at the end of the boot process" describes what I experienced. The screen went blank (dark) except for a blinking underline cursor at the upper left. There was no response to the keyboard.

In Ubuntu I didn't think to try using the ctrl-alt-fx keys to fix things. After reinstalling Debian, when the same thing happened, I did. I fixed it with "apt-get -f install gdm", I probably rebooted at that point, but I couldn't say for certain. Just now I got the same screen with ctrl-apt-f7, so quite plausibly it just left me at the wrong screen. Would the same thing have worked in Ubuntu? Don't know. Didn't think to try it. But if I was a newbie that would have really freaked me out. (As it is, I was just testing anyway, so I didn't care a long as my home partition wasn't damaged. [I do have a backup, but using it would be a real nuisance.])

P.S.: Just rebooting wouldn't fix things. I ended up trying that several times before I gave up and re-installed.

Re:What's going on?

[Knuckles]

It's a bit weird - I don't understand how "apt-get -f install" could have helped unless gdm was incompletely installed in the first place. Oh well, too late. Yes, the Ctrl+Alt+Fx works just the same in Ubuntu.

Re:What's going on?

[justforgetme]

You can't tell a newbie "device file" because by the time you have ended saying it he/she will be more confused than when you started and will probably ask you teary eyed if it is a device or a file...

And unfortunately the question will pop up in every single one of the distro installers there are available right now. Either while partitioning or while writing bootloaders.

Anyway, it always confused me too. I mean you are doing a graphical installer anyway these days, why not display storage media visually instead of a simple text list? why ask "do you want to install #distro# in /dev/sda?" instead of "install on xxGB storage drive #Label# connected to sATA port YY?"

For most people it isn't such a big deal but I do happen to know some non-geeks who were tempted into trying out Ubuntu (which should have the least intimidating install) and still were intimidated by it.. at that time it was 8.4 or something in that range and to be honest I don't know if the install has changed much from then (Fedora guy).

Re:What's going on?

[hazem]

Have you looked at Kubuntu much?

Just downloaded and installed it. It's fantastic! I enjoy the interface much more than Ubuntu's gnome. And so far, everything I need to run seems to be working.

Thanks for the tip!

Re:What's going on?

[hazem]

java was slow and will always be slow.

Yes, I understand that as an interpreted environment, Java will be slower than any natively compiled code. However that's not the issue I'm calling out.

In Ubuntu, I have Sun's java installed. I use Netlogo, an agent-based modeling environment and it's written in java.

If I run Netlogo so that it's using java directly in Ubuntu, it is very slow.

If I then set up Wine and install Netlogo that way, I am actually adding a layer, since I'm now running the java machine on a virtualized windows instance on top of Ubuntu. Even so, the same simulation runs much faster (up to 100 times faster) than it does running with the java running directly in Ubuntu.

It's not a java problem per se, but a problem with the implementation that works in Ubuntu. I do not know if it runs this slowly in other linux distributions.

Re:What's going on?

[HiThere]

I *think* it probably was improperly installed. On the Debian install when I went to the text screen "which gdm" didn't report anything, and I couldn't find either startX or startKDE. Or anything similar. (I can't remember whether it's supposed to start with a period, and what the capitalization of "KDE" should be in "startKDE".) So I assumed that either X or the logon manager wasn't properly installed. But I just checked, and the startX file isn't there normally anymore. Oh, well. Things do keep changing.

The weird thing is that it happened with two different distros, so my guess is that the package was bad. But if so I'd expect a LOT of people to be reporting problems. (It *was* the Debian testing [post Squeeze], and, apparently, the Ubuntu alpha, but still, that's not the kind of flaw I'd expect to lie hidden.)

Re:What's going on?

[Knuckles]

Here (Natty alpha):
which gdm
/usr/sbin/gdm

which startx [note: no capitalization]
/usr/bin/startx

I don't have KDE installed, so using apt-file:
apt-file search startkde
kdebase-workspace-bin: /usr/bin/startkde

Again no capitalization as usual; I don't think I've ever seen a Unix command using caps.

Re:What's going on?

[orngjce223]

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=aspie

"An aspie is one who has Asperger's Syndrome, which is believed to be part of the autism spectrum."

N.B. IAAA (I Am An Autistic)

Re:What's going on?

[HiThere]

Well, it's been a long time since I've used them, but I'm pretty sure they used to end with at least one capital. And be in the home directory rather than in /usr/bin. I see that it's still a shell script, though now it says:
# This is just a sample implementation of a slightly less primitive
# interface than xinit. It looks for user .xinitrc and .xserverrc
# files, then system xinitrc and xserverrc files, else lets xinit
and it once didn't claim to only be a sample implementation.

I'm gathering that it's a remnant of an older way of doing things, that may eventually just disappear. (I think I last used it back around the time of Red Hat 5.x...definitely in the days of the 2.4 kernel.) I remember it as being customized with many user specific options, though I never set them by hand so I don't remember any details.

OK, I've just checked some old documentation, and there was a /usr/bin/startx command. Perhaps startX invoked it? (I still believe that that was the name of the shell command in the user's home directory.)

Re:What's going on?

[Knuckles]

Didn't use RedHat for long, and a long time ago, so I dunno what they dumped into $HOME. Anyway, I've never seen such a command on Debian and Ubuntu, both of which I used for many years. Ubuntu tells me: knuckles@chronic:~$ startX No command 'startX' found, did you mean: Command 'startx' from package 'xinit' (main) Command 'start' from package 'upstart' (main) startX: command not found

Re:What's going on?

[Knuckles]

Damn /. formatting options. Should have been

knuckles@chronic:~$ startX
No command 'startX' found, did you mean:
Command 'startx' from package 'xinit' (main)
Command 'start' from package 'upstart' (main)
startX: command not found

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as a point of interest, born out of wedlock doesn't equal abandoned. Also as a point of interest, I kind of agree with the vast majority of what you are saying. The bit I disagree with is the bit about colour. I couldn't give a flying fuck at a rolling donut what colour a person is. I dont care what their religion is and I couldnt give a shit what they rub their genitals against, providing it is either a) an inanimate object or b) a consenting, aware adult. Nicely trolled though, I dont usually respond to pinheads posting like this.

Re:What's going on?

[HiThere]

Seems reasonable. I used Red Hat and close derivatives from 4.x until they killed the Professional Edition. Then I switched to Debian (and close derivatives, like Ubuntu). Usually I stay with Debian testing, but every once in awhile testing throws a fit, so I switch to something else (often Ubuntu) for a week or so.

Re:What's going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good.

Re:What's going on?

[rockfistus]

Nice assumption. Wrong and wrong. I work at a PC Repair shop, And I paid for my tools dick.

Re:What's going on?

[rockfistus]

I may be an idiot. Thanks for pointing that out. Typical Linux "Wayne the Brain" attitude. I forgot to mention how much that puts me off of using it. Thank god a know it all put me in my place. Apparently I've crossed the line by pointing out any problems I've had with Linux. I forgot, it's flawless. It does no wrong.. My bad. Let me just go back to my pathetic life, flipping burgers and clicking next boxes. There's no way I could be worthwhile since I've not had great experiences with Linux.

Re:What's going on?

[Max Littlemore]

That was not a typical "RTFM n00b" response, that was me pointing out that the problems you had would be just as easily encountered switching from Mac or Linux to Windows.

In fact, switching to windows is potentially more difficult than any other direction because you have that whole circular shit fight that is "My Computer"/"My Documents"/etc that are quasi links to hidden locations on the file system. I know I have introduced non technical users to Ubuntu and they have loved how simple it is to use compare to Windows. For example, when they want to edit a photo, they look under "Graphics" in the "Applications" menu rather than looking in "Adobe" or "Accessories" in the "Start" menu. Everything under the home folder makes sense and points to where it actually is on the file system. The whole "Windows is more user friendly than Linux" argument is a bad joke.

It seems to me that you are confusing "I am used to the polished turd that is Windows" with "Windows is fundamentally easier to use". I would suggest that switching to any other operating system will be difficult for you because you use something that makes no sense as a benchmark.

Free software

[devxo]

Freedom means you should also be able to make money and act selfishly with your distro or open source project. I really don't get why it's always such a problem for open source advocates. If you want truly free software you let everyone do whatever they want with it.

Re:Free software

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you're not only supposed to follow the license but all the unwritten rules of the free software hippies which usually includes not making money from it. Because that violates the "spirit" of the license or some such nonsense.

Re:Free software

[jedidiah]

Being free to do what you want never means being free from community criticism.

If you treat 3rd parties like they work for you personally, or do various stupid things then you are likely to inspire some enmity.

It is far less likely that everyone will follow you off the cliff in the Unix community.

Re:Free software

[trollertron3000]

And as long as the source code is provided how can people really object to their focus on things that make a profit? They need to survive and that means making money.

Re:Free software

[inKubus]

That "nonsense" is why Linux runs 89% of the web. Stallman and GNU made all this possible by being geniuses. Unix is about communication, community, sharing information. That's what makes it powerful, that's what makes COMPUTERS powerful, which is why more and more things either are looking like Unix (Windows) or are Unix (OSX, everything google runs as a service, everything amazon runs as a service, etc). No one complains about RedHat because they aren't a bunch of hipsters trying to be the next big thing and stick to the real side of Unix, which is stability and service to the computing community at large. RHEL6 is an amazing product. Yes, it doesn't have the bleeding edge kernel, but that's because what's the hurry? Let's focus on a broad based capital investment in the computing future and not jump on the latest bubbles and trends. Knowing my OS distro will not only be updated but supported with GOOD SUPPORT (from a real person) for 8 years but I also know that I have a distribution of known stable, known secure packages that are also good contributers to the community and adhere to all the standards such as file locations, etc. which are LIKE THAT FOR A REASON, and debated 100000 times before.

That being said, if it takes a commercial company to make a decent Unix desktop, Apple already won, so we should be trying to copy that. THAT being said, I do think Ubuntu has the easy install down, and spent some time to make their desktop nice. But just because you get a little success does not mean you have a right to start making big, un-thought-through changes in system land.

Re:Free software

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a universal truth that absolute freedom can only exist in solitude. If you want to please other people, you have to do what they want, at least to some extent. There are people who frown on making money by distributing open source software. If you want to please them, don't make money that way. The point of open source software is that you don't have to please them. It's your choice.

"Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go" isn't about licenses. It's about pleasing people. It's also sophism, because it implies that the love is no longer there (it's a so called "loaded question").

Re:Free software

[Bob9113]

> Freedom means you should also be able to make money and act selfishly with your distro or open source project. I really don't get why it's always such a problem for open source advocates. If you want truly free software you let everyone do whatever they want with it.

You are confusing "Free" with "Laissez-Faire". America is "free" because the government is prohibited from certain actions. The "free market" requires government inhibition of monopolies, trusts, cartels, false advertising, and various forms of payola/kickbacks/bribery (see Adam Smith, among others). Freedom of expression requires that communities be barred from passing blue laws. Racial freedom requires that stores and employers be barred from discrimination.

"Free" and "Laissez-Faire" are not equivalent. "Free" is more complex, more subtle, more difficult to achieve, and -- on the upside -- vastly more beneficial to long-term GDP growth.

Re:Free software

[ebuck]

While you are true, freedom doesn't have anything to do with wisdom.

What I found telling was the reports about two years ago where Debian developers were complaining about Ubuntu. You don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Re:Free software

[narcc]

Ack!

These ... truths ... they conflict with my preconceptions ... must ... watch more ... Glenn Beck ...

Re:Free software

[HermMunster]

The key here is that if you don't want to use free software you don't have to. Move on. If you don't like the philosophy you don't have to. Move on. If you want to make money off your software programming skills then you can. Move on. But, please don't come here with your jaded point of view and expect anyone with a modicum of common sense to even consider your point of view as valid. You can ignore the Linux world and move on. I wonder what could honestly drive people to believe that no one that following the FOSS philosophy is making money.

Re:Free software

[q-the-impaler]

"Free" is very difficult to retain because it is so easily corruptible. It requires strict adherence to principle. America is no longer free because the government has become the monopoly. If the federal government were to relinquish its policy power back to the states, then it would be arguable that "America is free." But that's enough libertarian mumbo jumbo from me.

Re:Free software

[Alex Belits]

Microsoft fanboys/marketing people are at it again. The link you shown counts SALES of operating systems. I am sure, in some other comment you foam at the mouth about "not being able to sell software" if it is free.

The rest of your comment is a mix of trolling and recommending things that would be between stupid and suicidal.

Re:Free software

[trollertron3000]

Yes but I doubt RMS would have a problem with Ubuntu making a profit or focusing on it's customers as long as one can get access to the source without restriction and they give their work back to the community through said source code.

Re:Free software

[epine]

America is no longer free because the government has become the monopoly.

How is it that the government became the black box for incomprehension? You know, the systems theory diagram of human society that wouldn't fit into twenty volumes of Wikipedia. This corrupt black box meme seems to appeal most strongly to atheists who deeply crave some one-stop shopping.

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

• • ~ Mark Twain

That was around the age he turned his attention to the government, wasn't it?

It's deeply wired in our species for males to look around and decide what political force is denying the rightfully deserved fawning attention of nubile females. Step two: howl with outrage until that primate is you.

A Libertarian is a guy who isn't getting any, with no ambition to complete step two. The howl is directed at the institution least likely to go away. Outrage as comfortable status quo.

Here's the same joke as told by Lazarus Long:

In 1000BC, the Romans were becoming so vile, I couldn't stand to have them around. In 2000AD, I was astonished at the durability of indoor plumbing.

Now, what was this tread about again? I'm not sure if I'm still on topic.

Re:Free software

[Duradin]

"You can ignore the Linux world and move on."

The real world: ok.

Re:Free software

[GameboyRMH]

I personally believe he'll just have to give the community the finger and fork Ubuntu away from traditional Linux, simply because making Linux friendly to the masses WILL require changes that the CLI heavy nerds and server admins won't care for one damned bit.

He successfully made Ubuntu GUI-runnable to the same level as Windows about 3 years ago, all the interface dumbing-down that's been going on since then was entirely unneccessary.

Re:Free software

[damaged_sectors]

Freedom means you should also be able to make money and act selfishly with your distro or open source project. I really don't get why it's always such a problem for open source advocates. If you want truly free software you let everyone do whatever they want with it.

And more power to your arm sir.

I look forward to testing your code - though you seem to have neglected to post your repository link.

Never mind - at least you're providing the solution unlike all those whiners who just demand it. Or worse, those that create the straw men to.... oh wait....

Re:Free software

[damaged_sectors]

Because you're not only supposed to follow the license but all the unwritten rules of the free software hippies which usually includes not making money from it. Because that violates the "spirit" of the license or some such nonsense.

Of course when you release Troll OS we'll all regret having shunned you for bringing your Teapot opinions to the table.

Do you ever get bored just making shit up? Those damn free software hippies - the only thing that stands between you and your mega-wealth, instant stardom, getting laid, and having friends visible to real people. I'd write more, but your lips will just get sore.

Re:Free software

[Caerdwyn]

Microsoft fanboys/marketing people are at it again. The link you shown counts SALES of operating systems. I am sure, in some other comment you foam at the mouth about "not being able to sell software" if it is free.

The rest of your comment is a mix of trolling and recommending things that would be between stupid and suicidal.

I am sure that in "some other comment" you advocate drowning puppies. And anything you disagree with me on proves your genetic inferiority, that you are stupid, and that the world would be better off if you are suicidal.

See? Others can use that tactic too. Your low UID doesn't make you less of a troll. It just makes you someone who should have known better by now.

Re:Free software

[Anonymous Coward]

Except Stallman is 100% okay with selling software. The first release of GNU Emacs was a $200 tape with the source on it.

Re:Free software

[jimrthy]

How long has it been since government paid more than lip service to all the things they aren't allowed to do?

Matt Taibbi has a piece in Rolling Stone this month that shows how the SEC is pretty much totally in bed with the companies they're supposed to be regulating. It's well worth reading, if you can put up with the profanity. Why isn't Wall Street in Jail?

.

Re:Free software

[Anonymous Coward]

> You are confusing "Free" with "Laissez-Faire".

No, devxo had it right. Freedom means you can do what you want.

> America is "free" because the government is prohibited from certain actions.

These days, America is hardly free. Cannot smoke pot. Cannot fly on an airplane without being body-scanned by the government. All emails are monitored. Cannot anonymously buy political advertisements. Cannot get married without government permission. The list goes on and on.

> The "free market" requires government inhibition of monopolies, trusts, cartels,

No, no, and no. The above are erosions of freedom.

> false advertising,

Actually, government should not prevent false advertisements from being published (that would be censorship), but it might retroactively punish the publishers for committing fraud.

>and various forms of payola/kickbacks/bribery (see Adam Smith, among others).

Payola is freedom. Kickbacks and bribes paid to the government are not freedom.

> Freedom of expression requires that communities be barred from passing blue laws.

Yes. Freedom requires a limited government.

> Racial freedom requires that stores and employers be barred from discrimination.

Freedom would be employers and employees negotiating contracts on whatever basis they want to.

Racial freedom would mean that the government cannot require employers to discriminate against (or in favor of) certain racial groups. Anything more is government eroding freedom by preventing employers and employees from freely negotiating their own contracts.

> "Free" is more complex, more subtle, more difficult to achieve,

Freedom is very simple. When the government starts falsely advertising government control and interference as "Freedom", that is when Free becomes "Free" (in quotes). "Free" (in quotes) may well be complex, subtle, and more difficult to achieve. But "Free" is clearly not Freedom, and the quotes are therefore well deserved.

Re:Free software

[Anonymous Coward]

The key here is that if you don't want to use free software you don't have to. Move on. If you don't like the philosophy you don't have to.

No, the key here is that a bunch of whiners are complaining despite Canonical doing NOTHING wrong either with regards to the terms of a free software license or ethically. These people are just whining because *gasp* Canonical is trying to make money to support itself. People like you are the reason why so many corporations disallow FOSS because they don't want to put up with the headaches of freetards.

Re:Free software

[bakes]

The "free market" requires government inhibition of monopolies, trusts, cartels, false advertising, and various forms of payola/kickbacks/bribery (see Adam Smith, among others)

Just as well, too. Can you imagine what would happen if these sort of things were allowed to happen?

Oh wait...

Re:Free software

[scrib]

servers != web servers.
Lots of companies, particularly small ones, have an in-house Windows server and pay to have their website hosted elsewhere. I don't know the stats, but when I was looking for a Windows web hosting company for an ASP site that needed to relocate, it was easier and much cheaper to find a LAMP host. So much so that I converted the site to PHP. (It was a small, simple site that mostly used ASP to include header and footer files - an easy thing to rewrite.) It is possible to be serving up the most web pages, or even have the most web servers, without having a majority of the "servers."

As for what else you say, I agree. You can tell from my first line that I'm a CS nerd, but I'd really like to have an alternative to Windows for family members. My desktop is Ubuntu 10.04 and I have been struggling to get the alpha of 11.04 working well enough to be truly useful. It is an alpha, and I like that they are moving from Xorg to Wayland, but things do not "just work" on it. Yet. It has a lot of potential, but I'm holding my breath to see how things turn out in April.

Re:Free software

[Nick Ives]

As pointed out below, that ZDNet link highlights server sales; it's worth pointing out that will be largely driven by enterprise sales and not web servers. The virtualised Linux server is pretty much the de facto choice for web development.

Re:Free software

[Trogre]

Your freedom to use my software stops when you try to restrict other people from using/modifying/distributing it in the same way you were permitted to.

Just like your freedom to swing your arm stops at the tip of my nose. Or your freedom of speech stops at yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre.

The freedom you're putting forward is more like anarchy. And trust me, you really *really* do not want that.

Re:Free software

[cynicist]

You are trying to suggest that the force of the government is necessary for freedom, a concept that takes quite a bit of logical wrangling to come up with. Freedom is about voluntary participation, which is the antithesis of government. The reason you are using quotes around free market is precisely because you are trying to describe something as free while saying it requires control, which doesn't make much sense at all.

"Free" is more complex, more subtle, more difficult to achieve, and -- on the upside -- vastly more beneficial to long-term GDP growth.

In theory, however in reality you can see what government intervention in economics achieves simply by looking at the problems in the US economy right now.

Re:Free software

[macs4all]

I find it sickening, personally, that the parent's post has been downmodded, simply because bratty Linux zealots can't take the truth. I have made the exact same points before myself, and now have the Bad Karma to show for it.

Ya know, Apple fans have NOTHING on Linux fans, as far as "Reality Distortion" goes. There is nobody as out-of-touch with the COMMON user than a LInux fan.

Re:Free software

[Trogre]

These days, America is hardly free. Cannot smoke pot. Cannot fly on an airplane without being body-scanned by the government. All emails are monitored. Cannot anonymously buy political advertisements. Cannot get married without government permission.

Cannot stab your neighbour in the face with a soddering iron, cannot steal cars, cannot forcibly take over another house that happens to be nicer than your current one. The list goes on.

My point is that, while the things you mentioned are overly restrictive, *absolute* freedom is a very, very bad thing. Unless you manage to establish yourself as an alpha male I guess.

Re:Free software

[slimjim8094]

"The real world" would have a big problem ignoring Linux. Of the top million sites on the web, 65% run Linux (or at least Apache, and who runs Apache on Windows?). The majority smartphone OS is Android, and everybody from IBM to Google to Amazon to Grandma trying to watch DVR'd shows on her TiVo or use the Internet through her wireless router would have big issues.

Re:Free software

[hairyfeet]

Oh don't worry I expected it. if you look at my past comments they are always evenly split between insightful and troll/flamebait, with the nasty mods coming from zealots that stick their heads in the sand and refuse to accept the truth. instead of actual debate all you get is accusations of "shill" astroturfer, etc.

And I agree wholeheartedly that Apple fanboys ain't got shit on the RDF that surrounds FOSSies as I call them. I've found there is a BIG difference between a FOSS users and a FOSSie, but sadly it seems the FOSSies are winning control and the fact that any that dare to say anything other than "Gee Biff, isn't Linux perfect? It sure is Bill, and RMS's beard smells like roses!" gets modded down is just proof of that.

Is Linux ready for the masses? Sadly not by a long shot, as while Canonical has made great strides once you get past the top layer it is just a mess, and one of the reason why he is trying to ditch X-Server and GNOME for Unity/Wayland. With Windows a good 90% of problems can be solved by GUI alone, and most fixed with a simple reboot or system restore.

With Linux even trivial problems will often give you as the ONLY answer "open up bash and type" this big huge CLI mess that 1.-Assumes the users even understands half of it, 2.-The user has intimate knowledge of the hardware since it is nearly always tailored to a VERY specific chipset/hardware combo, 3.- the skill to "tweak" said "fix" because they have hardware f rev d and the fix was designed for hardware c rev b and simply won't work without tweaking, and 4.-That the user has the skill to type a huge list of arcane commands into a 70s era term with NO autocorrect or spellcheck and get everything perfectly right, with a serious risk of breaking the machine if they get anything wrong (which they will get NO visual cues before getting boned).

But if they want to look up server numbers by absolute share which is what seems to have so many butthurt by my earlier links here is the latest I could find by Gartner which shows Windows-66.8% and climbing, Linux-23.2 and falling while Unix-6.8% and falling. The other link I found with overall shows 89% Windows, 5.9% Mac, 2.05% iOS, and Linux just barely above Java ME in overall share at 0.95%.

So I'm sorry if the numbers make FOSSies all butthurt but just remember you have the power to change it by giving the customers what they want. Lose the CLI, demand a hardware abi so drivers that work in foo won't be broken in foo+1, push for better UIs and simpler layouts, etc. And for the one that says "Linux thanks to Ubuntu is ALREADY dumbed down?" if you think Ubuntu is dumbed down enough for the masses it just shows why Linux hasn't got a chance. Try Windows 7 sometime, it is simple enough my 67 year old clueless dad installed it by himself with NO assistance required and EVERYTHING "just worked". All the drivers were downloaded and installed FOR him the worst question it asked him was whether he was at home or at work (which set up the firewall policy without him having to touch it) and frankly the ONLY thing I had to do when I got there a week later was show him how to get Firefox. Hell it even pointed out he had no AV on first boot and pointed him to a free one. So I'm sorry but while Shuttleworth is making strides Ubuntu is in NO way up to that level of simple yet, it just isn't.

Re:Free software

[Anonymous Coward]

When did governments and law come into it? "Freedom" as applicable to software, is as in "free will". From wikipedia:

"Free will is the putative ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints."

To me, "free software" is software where anyone can contribute, even people who want to make money off of their contributions. It's critical to allow that, because many of the best contributions come from people who make a living off those contributions, for example KHTML was a tiny project hardly anyone had ever heard of, and since Apple and Google decided to contribute with the goal of making money indirectly off them, webkit is now the most advanced and probably soon the most widespread html rendering engine.

Re:Free software

[macs4all]

Oh don't worry I expected it. if you look at my past comments they are always evenly split between insightful and troll/flamebait, with the nasty mods coming from zealots that stick their heads in the sand and refuse to accept the truth. instead of actual debate all you get is accusations of "shill" astroturfer, etc.

And I agree wholeheartedly that Apple fanboys ain't got shit on the RDF that surrounds FOSSies as I call them. I've found there is a BIG difference between a FOSS users and a FOSSie, but sadly it seems the FOSSies are winning control and the fact that any that dare to say anything other than "Gee Biff, isn't Linux perfect? It sure is Bill, and RMS's beard smells like roses!" gets modded down is just proof of that.

Man, dontcha know it!

If you want to see a victim of some serious punish-modding, you need look no further than my comment history. I went from Excellent Karma to Terrible Karma in one day's worth of battling the Linux Faithful

With my Username, you can guess that I am an Apple supporter; however, that doesn't change the fact that, in fifteen years, Linux really is, for all practical purposes (and the plural of anecdote is not data), no closer to being accepted on the desktop now than when Linus wrote his fateful email. A shame, really; but it is the constant, immature, backbiting and lack, of (horrors!) or-gan-i-za-tion, that will forever relegate Linux (and also, sadly, a zillion other wonderful F/OSS projects!) to the statistical detritus level that they now "enjoy". And considering the number of F/OSS projects that my favorite OS (OS X) incorporates, that is of more than just an academic concern.

As to your suggestions on how to "modernize" Linux, one of the fundamental design limitations keeping LInux from being ready for prime time is also one of its performance strengths, and so will never be changed: That is, the macrokernel architecture. That, and the F/OSS zealots insisting on the source code to every driver (guyz, there IS such a concept as a TRADE SECRET, ya know...), application, API, etc. But what they DON'T get is that Joe and Jane SUV-driver simply don' be' a-carin' 'bout no source code. They jus' wanna do what they wanna do, when they wanna do it. And Linux isn't there, either; let alone ready for the corporate desktop...

No real progress. In over fifteen years. Why?

Re:Free software

[Alex Belits]

I am sure that in "some other comment" you advocate drowning puppies.

Actually in my system of values drowning puppies is more ethical than using Windows -- it does not increase Microsoft's mindshare.

Re:Free software

[blahplusplus]

"Freedom means you should also be able to make money and act selfishly with your distro or open source project. I really don't get why it's always such a problem for open source advocates. If you want truly free software you let everyone do whatever they want with it."

I agree with this post. There is this thing that developers need $ to pay the bills, and the only way I could ever see Ubuntu going mainstream is if they basically cloned windows GUI to ease the transition. Some days I wonder if anyone is sane at the wheel of these companies.

Why is it that many nerdy types have horrible business sense?

Re:Free software

[bit01]

See? Others can use that tactic too. Your low UID doesn't make you less of a troll. It just makes you someone who should have known better by now.

Hairyfeet is engaging is extremely biased commercial propaganda by quoting sales rather than numbers. He is deliberately trying to deceive the reader. Just because he is using "polite" words doesn't mean he is not being extremely rude. He is also probably engaging in fraud for commercial gain ie. astroturf.

As such he is a first class arsehole and you are an arsehole by by attempting to support such mendacity with misdirection. You both deserve all the flack you get.

---

There are many corporate shills on social media sites like slashdot fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Make these scums' life hell.

Re:Free software

[inKubus]

Progress, in your sense of the word, means "making it easy for dumb people". Whereas progress in my sense of the word means "making dumb people unnecessary." So, maybe you should stop blaming everyone else and start realizing that it's you that's not good enough for Unix, not the other way around! Unix is perfect. The community is solid. We don't need any more designers! We don't need more bloggers! We need real creations, automations, and real code and that's just not point and click stuff. Sorry, go study it for another year and your opinion WILL change. We don't want you right now (but please come again). Pft, also, I'd say there's been some progress when there's around 10-20 million linux phones, 50+ million linux routers, and most of the people using them don't even know they're running linux.

Also, read a probably 20 year old but insightful essay, by Neal Stephenson, which will open your eyes to actual purpose of an operating system, which is a library of common functions. Which, by the way, the most extensive of which in existence is GNU stuff, which was wrought and given away for free, often copied for commercial purposes. Because they can't do better for money. Oracle, uh, that's a fork of ingres isn't it?

Really, Microsoft has done more than any other company I can think of to actually create new stuff from scratch. Too bad it all duplicates functionality that's been in Unix for EVER, and less completely. But it is mostly original. Unfortunately, we can never know for sure since it's...a trade secret. Luckly, as you'll read in that story above, Operating systems are useless without extensive documentation of the functions they provide to the developer (not the end user). Unfortunately the best documentation is the source code, so you can actually see what it does, not what some writer says it does. But, Microsoft is getting better, and learning. I hear they even have a new "Command Line Only" installer for Server 2008, because (who would have thought this, I'm sure you're surprised) there's apparently no real point to having a big GUI running on a web server. Turns out a command line "mess" is the most efficient way to manage it. Weird. But true.

Re:Free software

[Anonymous Coward]

I was referring to the Feb 2011 netcraft survey, and added up Apache, nginx and Google. I have no doubt that there are more Windows "servers" out there, simply because Microsoft sells the shit out of them, to ignorant Windows sysadmins. Whereas a good Unix admin knows how to maximize resources, buy fewer servers. Apple is now selling Unix to ignorant designers and stuff so I'm sure they are growing faster also. Happy to see Unix growing though, even if it all has to run on Apple's obviously and hideously overpriced hardware. But it looks good, and that's all that matters, until the bubble bursts ;) Anyway, obviously the largest sites in the world run apache on linux because it's the best. Although you personally lack the skils to run one of those sites, if you did practice and study for long enough to get those skills, you too would also run your large website on Linux. It's a no brainer. Obviously, the topic is linux desktop, and more distinctly Ubuntu. Why kick the one child that seems to be making progress finally with the Linux desktop!? Because, they are cheating. So, maybe it's not possible to have a mainstream desktop in the conventional Apple and Windows sense that runs linux and still follow the rules of the road? Maybe that's the problem. But they sure are selling a lot of phones with a PDA interface on top (and linux underneath). And routers with a web interface on top. And desk phones. And Tivos. And everything else reliable and good and a sort of computer type thing. Not to mention rip offs. iTunes App Store. Uh, that sounds like a RPM repository to me. The only innovation there is that they somehow got your credit card in there and 30% of whatever you buy. Wow, that's amazing Apple!

You can slob on Apple's knob all you want but they're riding you to the bank, they don't care about you. They aren't planning on giving you more for less any time soon. Or sharing what they learned to others to allow them to benefit and build on it. If you value shiny stuff that much and are that lazy, then by all means, trade your money for lack of input. Linux doesn't want or need you.

Re:Free software

[bit01]

I find it sickening, personally, that the parent's post has been downmodded,

Oh gosh, crocodile tears! Get a life, you obviously need one.

simply because bratty Linux zealots can't take the truth.

Actually, the brat and zealot here is you. Grow up please. Either that or you're a shill fraudulently misrepresenting yourself as a third party. "hairyfeet"'s post is deliberately trying to deceive the reader by misrepresenting paid installations (sales) as all installations. That's dishonest and typical of the alleycat ethics of the M$ marketing department. The world would be a better place if they grew a pair and stopped engaging in wholesale misrepresentation and fraud.

---

Paid marketers are the worst zealots.

Re:Free software

[bit01]

with the nasty mods coming from zealots that stick their heads in the sand

Actually the zealot here is you who can't cope with alternate points of view. Time for you to grow up I think.

Linux supporters are well aware of the numbers and desktop challenges. The fact that you like to pretend things like android don't exist, that embedded linux is not everywhere, that preinstalls and the economic network effect are not the main reasons Windows is common, that an Ubuntu install disk doesn't work as well as a Windows install disk if the user hasn't been FUD'ed, that for naive users the linux GUI is as easy/difficult to use as the windows GUI and that server sales numbers equate with all server numbers etc. shows you are a dishonest broker worse than the people you are attempting to accuse.

M$ marketing is attempting to keep a bandwagon effect going by claiming that windows is the be all and all and that people will be using it until the end of time with no reason to consider alternatives. Quite simply, that's bullshit.

---

Paid marketers are the worst zealots.

Re:Free software

[hairyfeet]

So your answer is "We are superior in every way, do it our way or piss off noob!" and you wonder why Linux has no share, typical. The user asks for simple, you give him a 70s era term and tell him "RTFA noob!". The user asks for drivers that work in foo to work in foo+1 (which FYI, everyone else, from OSX to Solaris to BSD has had driver APIs that "just work" for ages now) you tell him either "learn to recompile!" or "wait for the next rev luser!".

Are you REALLY surprised when for all you elitist bullshit your numbers are less than the margin for error? Or that when given a choice the majority would rather pirate an OS than take your precious product for FREE? Or that not a single B&M will touch your product even though it would lower our upfront costs? Frankly it is the shitty its not Linux's fault, it is you or your belief that PITA equals superior design that has the VAST MAJORITY, something like over 800 MILLION at last count, go "How much is Windows Home again?" This is also why OSX is royally kicking your ass even with a $1000 barrier to entry.

It really is simple Chuck: Give the customers what they want or they will go elsewhere and you can sit in your basement smug that you are right there with Amiga users in the "who gives a shit" dept. Your choice Chuck.

Re:Free software

[hairyfeet]

Hi MR FOSSie! You do realize that when you write M$ everyone assumes everything you post is coming from this guy yes? BTW like your Star Trek uniform!

As for your "points" why yes nobody ever bought or pirates MSFT Windows when your free wonderfulness was there, it is all network effects because nobody tried selling Linux...wait a tick...Hasn't everyone from Dell to ASUS and Walmart actually tried selling your OS and thanks to the PITA factor and shitty QA (which for a nice example see this little gem about how the Dell Ubuntu offering breaks if you update it) was labeled by the public a giant DO NOT WANT in fifty foot letters?

Or do you think it was a secret "M$ conspiracy" that OEMs saw 4 TIMES the returns with Linux or that when given a "choice" (you as a FOSSie ARE for freedom of choice, yes?) the customers ran to Windows as fast as they could even on netbooks which were supposed to be designed to take advantage of the strengths of Linux in the first place?

It really is simple MR FOSSie, hell it is practically first day business school 101: Give the customers what they want and listen to them and you gain share, give them a mess of CLI and "RTFM Noob!" bad attitude and watch as they stay away in droves it really is that simple. look at how Apple just waltzed in and royally kicked your ass, why is that? It is because they listen to their customers and designed an OS around the philosophy of "it just works" with little to no hoop jumping required, whereas Linux despite the pretty on top is really just CLI at heart. Which would have been fine if this was still 1997, but it is 2011 and the customers have made it clear all the CLI and hoop jumping (not to mention the driver mess or "update foo broke my drivers" which frankly we haven't seen in Windows since the end of Win9x or OSX since 10.2) is a giant "do NOT want!".

It really is simple: you are busy growing or you are busy dying. The only "growth" we have seen in Linux is Android (which is gonna be TiVo tricked right out from under you and therefor is as useful to the FOSS movement as having a Linux router) and despite FIFTEEN YEARS you are still below the margin for error. I didn't make those numbers up friend, and if those numbers would have been posted by any business they would have closed up shop by now. But you keep on thinking that you can force users to do things your way and that it is a big M$ conspiracy when you find users don't actually enjoy reading man pages or trawling forums for fixes. You DO know what the classic definition of insanity is, right? If it ain't worked after FIFTEEN YEARS perhaps it is time to try a different approach, ya?

Re:Free software

[hairyfeet]

That is why I believe you and I benefited from Gates and Jobs with their singular vision and ability to get everyone on the same page. With FOSS you have 50 million guys reinventing the wheel (how many text editors are they up to now, 200?) and everyone "scratching their own itch" instead of working together as a cohesive unit. This leads to lost time and wasted efforts (how many distros are they up to now,500+?) and just makes a mess in the marketplace, ala what Apple had under Sculley with the Performa line, or Gates having to keep both Win9X and WinNT until he could merge the OS lines.

But sadly without real leadership and cohesive unity what you get is 50 million little fiefdoms and a HELL of a lot of zealotry. Too many here are of the "ZOMG M$ ZOMG!!" that it feels more and more like Boycott Novell instead of a place where we discuss the merits/demerits of the TECH, and no matter how many times you point out the numbers don't lie and something needs to change to draw the users you just get labeled a "paid shill" (I wish, where is my check Ballmer?) or astrorufer for pointing out the emperor has his Willie swinging in the breeze. If it was gonna sell it would have done so by now which is why I support what Shuttleworth is trying to do. He may fail but at least he isn't just repackaging the same shit and expecting people to "do it the Linux way" which has been shown time and time again to be a giant "DO NOT WANT" as far as customers goes.

BTW since you are a Mac guy you might want to check this out for one day only Paragon are giving away their excellent Windows/Macs interoperability tools on GAOTD. I have picked up several Paragon tools because of trying them on GAOTD and they really are top notch. These will give you read/write access between Windows and OSX at near native speed either way. Pretty cool and you can't beat free!

Re:Free software

[tqk]

The majority smartphone OS is Android, and everybody from IBM to Google to Amazon to Grandma trying to watch DVR'd shows on her TiVo or use the Internet through her wireless router would have big issues.

It's awesome when you think of it that way, but the drawbacks come out, too. It's the Sysadmin's Dilemna. "If all this stuff works so stably and reliably, why do we need a sysadmin?" If they're stably and reliably using FLOSS everywhere else, they should be running FLOSS on the desktop too, yes? Why?

As for Linux/FLOSS on the desktop, who cares? It's been on mine for close to 20 years. What's the problem? Your Mom wants to use Windows/Mac/AOL? That's her problem. Warn her that you don't to Windows/Mac/AOL support, and carry on.

I think it pretty odd that Bill Gates managed to build his empire doing it the way he did, but it's no skin off my nose that he got away with it.

Re:Free software

[tqk]

My point is that, while the things you mentioned are overly restrictive, *absolute* freedom is a very, very bad thing.

There can be no such freedom of unprovoked physical attack. The limit to your freedom is the tip of my nose.

You initiate force directed at me, and I have every right and duty to defend myself. That's hardly anarchy.

Re:Free software

[steveg]

I suspect that the IDC data reflects actual installations of servers, and not just sales of server operating systems.

However, server =! webserver. The last time I looked (which has been a while) the numbers were a lot more even in webserver space. Also, I'm not sure how IIS is in number of sites per server, but I've run a hundred or more unique sites on an individual webserver. At the time, IIS couldn't do that, Apache could. I don't know if you can now. You can also run Apache on Windows, but I'm not sure how much it's done.

Re:Free software

[Trogre]

See my other post in this thread, where I pointed out the same.

My point is that freedom must always have limits, or anarchy is exactly what you get.

Re:Free software

[jbolden]

But Linux has had fifteen years to get people to switch using the CLI heavy nerd way and what has it gotten you? 22% of the server and falling, and so low on the desktop it is literally below the margin for error.

Huh? Well actually its more like 20 years but. Lets look at where things are:

a) Server. Linux is now the dominant Unix variant, using your data having a higher percentage than all other Unixes combined 4.5x over. That's crushing defeat of companies like Sun. Look back at the discussions even a decade ago. Its even around 50% in terms of revenue which is amazing for a free system.

b) Applications. FOSS software is standard in many companies. Open Office, Firefox, gcc, apache, MySQL are huge players in their fields. The way Linux beat Sun was:
i) SunOS or Solaris running proprietary applications became
ii) Solaris running mostly open source applications with a few commercial thrown in
iii) Linux running mostly open source applications with a few commercial thrown in

The (i) -> (ii) transition is happening (but very slowly) on the Windows world.

c) In areas of Linux's traditional strength it continues to be dominant. For example of the top 10 hosting companies 9 are Linux and the other 1 is using its own custom OS. None are primarily Windows based.

d) Embedded has been a huge win for Linux over the last 13 years.

Desktop is a disaster but the Unix desktop crowd has a pretty excellent solution in OSX/Darwin. Linux got beat there.

Re:Free software

[jbolden]

Linux is the 2nd most popular desktop Unix variant.

20 years ago: IRIX, SunOS, AIX, SCO (Unixware), Digital Unix, NeXT, Xenix, HPUX would have all beaten it. So in 2 years Linux is at about 7% of desktop Unix share, and NeXT (essentially) came in 1st and everyone else with the exception of AIX is essentially dead.

That ain't so bad. I wouldn't call that a failure of the GNU project.

Re:Free software

[jbolden]

The numbers are terrible. Of the 10 largest hosting companies 9 use Linux/Apache and 1 uses a custom OS/Apache. While they all offer windows its a fraction of their sites.

Re:Free software

[hairyfeet]

To shamelessly rip off an old joke saying you are "the number 2 Unix variant" like that is a good thing is like saying "Well my horse doesn't eat much at all...now that its dead".

I mean I'm sure the C64 guys can brag they "are the number 1 Commodore computer" but that really ain't saying much anymore, now is it? Not when your competitors (which despite what many FOSSies claim yes, you are in competition) are numbering something like 800 MILLION for Windows and probably close to 100 MILLION for OSX.

Look, as a retailer I want Linux to succeed, I really do. I remember the good old days of Atari and Commodore and how new ideas were popping up all over the place, and that doesn't even bring in the fact I believe in free market competition being good for everyone and having a lower cost "third way" would help me reduce my costs while still remaining legal (sadly many shops just use pirated Windows, which makes it hard in a recession for legit shops like mine to compete with their unfair advantage).

But the difference between me and a FOSSie is that even though I'm a computer nerd I spend my days with the common man and therefor have unique insight which the average CS nerd FOSSie simply doesn't have.

And I can tell you this with 100% honesty, without trying to be mean or piss you or anyone off (notice how I got modded down without a SINGLE response? Could it be they had NO rebuttal and could only get mad at being told the truth?) that in its current incarnation while Linux is just hunky dory for webservers and embedded devices, both of which have highly trained CS grads to write programs and admin them, as a desktop for the common man LINUX SUCKS with a capital S!

Now why does it suck? Lets start with the guy at the top, old Linus himself. While myself and other have been begging for a proper driver ABI (which FYI ALL the major OSes, BSD, Solaris, OSX,, hell even OS/2 have had since the dawn of time) if you read Linus's arguments it basically comes down to "I don't like them because it limits me fucking with the kernel later on". Which coming from a man who actually admits that the way he does things is that Linux isn't designed, it grows like a virus which of course is a REALLY shitty way to develop an OS since without a plan shit breaking is naturally the order of the day.

And it is THIS, the shit constantly breaking, drivers that work in foo not working in foo+1 without jumping through major hoops, 6 month releases that break more than they fix, no QA at all to where even Dell has to run their own repos just to keep from having their Ubuntu install from being bricked the first time the user updates, hell I could go on all day.

If you actually want to compete, if you actually want Linux to be something more than an OS for webservers and basement nerds, then the community needs to ask itself "what are we doing wrong, and what is the other guy doing right?" which guys like me in the trenches will be happy to tell you. With Windows you are looking at nearly a decade (since they tie both the home and pro versions together so patches for one work on the other) where a machine will be updated without it breaking. Apps work for years and years (thus no need to retrain) and CLI on both Windows and OSX is nonexistent Now is the time a FOSSie will point to Powershell, while they conveniently ignore that Powershell is a server technology and that a home user will NEVER see a CLI, not even once.

All I want is a little honesty Mr FOSSie, is that too much to ask? If you like things the way they are, if you don't want to change to gain users, fine, I'm really happy for you and wish you nothing but the best. But please, don't delude yourself into thinking that Linux in its common form is in any way usable by your non CS grad common man. He has NO desire to learn your ways, he has NO desire to learn arcane Bash commands, he has NO desire to trawl forums because

Re:Free software

[macs4all]

I find it sickening, personally, that the parent's post has been downmodded,

Oh gosh, crocodile tears! Get a life, you obviously need one.

simply because bratty Linux zealots can't take the truth.

Actually, the brat and zealot here is you. Grow up please. Either that or you're a shill fraudulently misrepresenting yourself as a third party. "hairyfeet"'s post is deliberately trying to deceive the reader by misrepresenting paid installations (sales) as all installations. That's dishonest and typical of the alleycat ethics of the M$ marketing department. The world would be a better place if they grew a pair and stopped engaging in wholesale misrepresentation and fraud.

---

Paid marketers are the worst zealots.

Oh, how I wish I was paid for my opinions!

And, as hairyfeet predicted, and right on cue, he is accused of being a "shill".

Sorry that you arrested-development types can't handle the truth. Perhaps you oughta start listening, and watching, what everyone REALLY wants; instead of TELLING them why they are stupid for not wanting what YOU want.

Re:Free software

[macs4all]

That is why I believe you and I benefited from Gates and Jobs with their singular vision and ability to get everyone on the same page. With FOSS you have 50 million guys reinventing the wheel (how many text editors are they up to now, 200?) and everyone "scratching their own itch" instead of working together as a cohesive unit. This leads to lost time and wasted efforts (how many distros are they up to now,500+?) and just makes a mess in the marketplace, ala what Apple had under Sculley with the Performa line, or Gates having to keep both Win9X and WinNT until he could merge the OS lines.

But sadly without real leadership and cohesive unity what you get is 50 million little fiefdoms and a HELL of a lot of zealotry. Too many here are of the "ZOMG M$ ZOMG!!" that it feels more and more like Boycott Novell instead of a place where we discuss the merits/demerits of the TECH, and no matter how many times you point out the numbers don't lie and something needs to change to draw the users you just get labeled a "paid shill" (I wish, where is my check Ballmer?) or astrorufer for pointing out the emperor has his Willie swinging in the breeze. If it was gonna sell it would have done so by now which is why I support what Shuttleworth is trying to do. He may fail but at least he isn't just repackaging the same shit and expecting people to "do it the Linux way" which has been shown time and time again to be a giant "DO NOT WANT" as far as customers goes.

BTW since you are a Mac guy you might want to check this out for one day only Paragon are giving away their excellent Windows/Macs interoperability tools on GAOTD. I have picked up several Paragon tools because of trying them on GAOTD and they really are top notch. These will give you read/write access between Windows and OSX at near native speed either way. Pretty cool and you can't beat free!

You're preachin' to the choir here, man!

I've been singing the same song for about 7 years here on /, And my voice is getting hoarse as hell...

I guess it will never change here: And in fact, entropy seems to be making the entire /. experience degrade non-gracefully over time. Sad, really.

Anyway, thanks for the link, and I will check that stuff out!

Because nothin' beats GOOD free software...

Re:Free software

[jbolden]

I think you ignored the core of my comment. The goal of the GNU project was to have a free Unix that was reasonable close in quality to the commercial offerings so that a free software could exists which didn't tie the non commercial software community to expensive software vendors. In other words a system user friendly enough that a moderately skilled Unix system admin could handle it. My point is that goal has been exceeded, the free BSDs and Linux met and exceeded that goal so much that today the commercial Unixes don't exist.

The second level of the GNU project, in some sense the Minix project, was a desktop Unix that a programmer, not a Unix system administrator, could successfully install, configure in unusual ways if they needed to, and use. Again I think Linux has clearly met that goal. Using myself as an example in 1994 I couldn't get Linux to work right, but in 1996 I could. Where "work right" for me meant running the Unix software I cared about, not playing .mp3s, for that stuff I still used (and use) a "business OS" which was Windows until about 2001 and then OSX. But no question by 2000 installing Linux plus a software suite was way easier than installing Solaris, Irix, HPUX or AIX. And in terms of cost, Linux was been incredibly successful. Dell's Unix which was a good OEMed SCO in 1993 was $1000, and a Dell with SCO was much cheaper than what a full featured Unix workstation from Sun, SGI, IBM, DEC would cost you where the OS was $2-4k in addition to the hardware being a few thousand extra. Today Dell will give me a Unix for nothing and even if they won't I can get Unixes that run on Dells for free. The PC hardware is far better and more reliable than it was. The dream of a $2k PC Unix workstation beating a $7k workstation was realized by the early 2000s.

Then there was the goal of replacing Windows. That project has failed, because the target market changed. The Windows consumer line died, and was replaced by their enterprise NT line with the emergence of Windows XP. How do you replace something that doesn't exist anymore? The Windows enterprise line was naturally a better choice for consumers than Linux since it was so much closer to how they did things. And arguably the NT kernel is a better desktop kernel to boot. The binary driver problem that you are focusing on being a good example. And the cost of the OEM Windows enterprise is now (and was since the XP days) very low, so its hard to make a financial case. The cost today of commercial operating systems is tiny and the quality is excellent today. How can Linux compete?

But even here I think FOSS is doing a good job though in doing what the GNU project was doing in its very earliest day on the Unix platform. Getting people to run some open source software alongside their mostly commercial offerings on their commercial OSes. For example in the early 1990s the FOSS people were getting programs on Suns to use GCC (FOSS) instead of CC (Sun's $2000 C compiler). Firefox / Chrome, Open Office, VLC... are all thriving on Windows and OSX. Apache, GCC, MySQL/Postgres, Perl/PHP, have broken the barriers in the commercial market and now thrive. And we now have close 13% of the population running an open source kernel even. Yes 90% of them are running a BSD kernel (Darwin) but that's not a bad number.

On the cell phone market where the commercial offering are weaker we see something half way between embedded and desktop and open source is doing very well. You point out a lot of things that ultimately come down to poor user interface and driver problems. And yes those are problems. But there is a more substantial problem. What significant advantage has Linux ever had to offer the common man in a first world country?

So in short: I reject your analogy to Commodore. The Unix has grown not shrunk in the last 20 years and Linux is a huge player. Even on the desktop being 2nd in that market isn't bad. Did IRIX, which was at its height in 1991 when Linux came out have 1/2% ma

Re:Free software

[jbolden]

Your specific complaints are:

a) The kernel abi is not binary stable.
b) The operating systems rarely require a CLI interaction.
c) Commercial applications are better, in particular easier to use.

In all 3 areas I think you are failing to take into account the difference in spend.

(a) has been a major area of debate. The advantages of stable binary drivers have been discussed ad nauseam, and that's because they really do exist. The problems of bad binary drivers corrupting systems have been discussed ad nauseam. I'm not going to get into the details but there really are tradeoffs. The general direction over the last 15 years has been for
* Windows to move closer to the Linux way of doing things
* Linux to move closer to the Windows way of doing things
* Most vendors to just write their own and limit hardware

Microsoft's driver solution literally costs multiple billions of dollars per year. It is simply not an option of the Linux community in terms of manpower needed. If you need excellent hardware support across the full range of PC hardware, you have one option in terms of OSes. No one else is going to be comparable for a long time. Linux does an excellent job at less than 1/4000th of the cost. But yes 99.98% reduction is spending does have end user impact. If you have $2b a year for a driver lab I'm sure Linus would love the help and would be happy to do it Microsoft's way. The Linux solution has worked so well that the Linux kernel is the dominant embedded kernel because of the huge range of hardware it support. So I think you either being completely unrealistic about what is achievable and failing to appreciate how good a job the Linux kernel team has done in terms of hardware support given the tremendous differences in spend.

On (b) CLI bleed is a result of cost savings. Just to pick an example, Excel never implemented the GUI features of ideas like Jazz from Lotus because of the additional complexity; so Excel functions are CLI "sum(a7..b23)" with some level of GUI interface and not "sum(sales table)" like you had on Lotus products because at the time Excel wasn't making that kind of money. CLI is much cheaper than GUI, by about two orders of magnitude.

The first attempt to even build a real GUI for Linux didn't start until 1996. By 2001 or so there was a GUI, which still required some CLI, on par with say Windows 3.1 (so say about 7 years behind). Today's Linux GUIs are better but the commercial GUIs have massively improved over the last 10 years so Linux has lost ground. I definitely think you can argue Linux GUIs for the last 5 years are as good as Windows 2000 was and are approaching XP. So maybe they've lost a little ground and are more like 9 years behind but its been a very tough decade to keep pace. Further Windows 2000 was a premium product. I had to mess with config files on Windows 2000 quite a bit. Similarly I think you can compare Linux GUIs favorably to OSX 10.1 where people frequently did have to drop to terminal to get things to work. Those systems were usable by end users at the time, I think you are exaggerating.

If you point is that Linux GUIs are worse than those that represent tens of billions of dollars in GUI development, well yeah. But again I think you can say that Linux has far and away the best GUIs of any non mainstream operating system. I don't disagree that there is no particular reason an end user should want to downgrade their experience. I will comment those same end users often run software that is 5, 10, 15 years old, as you mentioned so perhaps they dislike change more than they like features and so it really doesn't matter very much.

In terms of apps., your point (c) I think its worth noting that widgets sets like QT and GTK are now the standard for most non platform specific software development so overtime you will see Linux applications improving in the commercial sector. .NET and Cocoa are really really good so for applications makers willing to inc

Re:Free software

[bit01]

Hi MR FOSSie! ...

And the rest of your post goes downhill from there. You haven't responded substantively to anything I've said; just content free emotionally loaded words trying to distract the reader. You're not an honest broker. Ever thought of getting a real job and contributing to the community rather than being a parasite? You might earn less money but you'll be richer in the things that matter.

I didn't make those numbers up friend

I'm your friend? That's just sad.

---

Adopt an astroturfer. Make their life hell.

Re:Free software

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...how EXACTLY has "Windows moved towards the Linux way" with regards to drivers? The only major shift has been to go back to having drivers outside the kernel which was how it was originally done in WinNT so if anything they are just going back to Dave Cutler's original design.

And how would having a stable ABI cost Linux billions? If anything it would save billions because companies like Nvidia wouldn't have to pay entire development teams just to deal with whatever fucking off Linus did in the kernel. But that is the real crux of the argument isn't it? With Linux it is less about a functional OS and more about religion thanks to RMS and his militant faction. BTW did you know the man will ONLY use a rare funky MIPS netbook because it is the ONLY machine that will fit his militant agenda? Or that the man doesn't even use the web but instead uses scripts to download web pages to his email? Frankly anybody THAT loonie having the ability to have major affect on your OS really isn't a good thing.

In the end I'd say it isn't the money that is holding Linux back, its the attitude both from the community and from the twin heads of Linus and RMS. Linus is the classic "scratch an itch" kind of developer that doesn't give a shit what he breaks as long as HE gets to do things HIS way. See my earlier post about how the man honestly believes not having any plan with regards to kernel development is a "good" thing.

Then you have the RMS faction that doesn't care if the user has a horrible experience as long as the religious philosophy (and that is what it is, with no compromises and dogma just like any religion) of GPL is strictly upheld. I can take 10 year old Win2K drivers and run them in XP SP3 nearly a decade later, same for Vista drivers in 7. In all my years of working on PCs I can count the number of "update foo broke my driver" since leaving Win9X for WinNT on one hand with fingers left over and it is THAT, that right there, that more than anything makes Linux shit for home users.

I mean Good Lord Man, when you have Dell, one of the largest OEMs on the entire planet having to run their own repos because the QA in Linux is so shitty that you can't use the standard repos without breaking drivers when we are talking about a tiny subset of machines there really is NO excuse for that level of incompetence, there really isn't. How is Linux supposed to gain inroads and get small shops like mine to sell and support your product when even Dell can't get decent QA from the community on such a tiny subset of machines? All the bling bling GUIs (which frankly I don't agree Linux is up to Win2K yet, I'd argue it is more like Win9X where there was GUIs but often it was just DOS with a GUI shell) in the world won't help if the machine can't even be updated without breaking.

Maybe in another decade Linus will quit acting like an ass with regards to stable ABIs and Linux might, just might, get the desktop up to XP standards of stability and ease of use maybe. But by that time everyone will be on Windows 10 and OSX 11 and you'll be so far behind it isn't even funny. Maybe it is time for Linux to "pull an Apple" and just focus on a subset of machines and make them "just work". A good start would be the Dell offerings. Refuse to allow an update to leave the door until those Dell machines "just work" instead of everyone "doing their own thing" and fucking everyone else's shit up, how about that?

Because as it is now there is simply no way I can offer your product because the apps suck, the OS can't even be updated reliably without the risk of major breakage, there is NO way to simply look at the box and tell whether a device works or not (which with a stable ABI a company could "put a penguin on the box" and know it will still work when Ubuntu 12 comes out) and frankly for the common man Linux in no way, shape, or form "just works" and in fact spends more time broken that it does functional. This isn't 1987 guys, that kind of shit just won't fly anymore.

Re:Free software

[jbolden]

I have yet to hear any reason from you would want to use Linux or for that matter any Unix.

a) You hate the GUIs
b) You hate the apps
c) You don't want to support non typical usage.

As for drivers, features like kernel patch protection. And yes, the NT mode that Cutler proposed is also closer to the Linux philosophy.

Your post is basically a rant of: "I hate Unix, I hate everything that's different between Unix and Windows. I have no need for any Unix features or applications". Well in that case use Windows. I don't like golf, I don't playing golf, I don't want a golf membership; ergo you aren't going to be able to sell me golf clubs regardless of what you do with them. Why would anyone expect your small hardware shop to support or offer Linux? Were you supporting SCO or OS/2 15 years ago?

Dell's PowerEdge Line has had solid Linux support for most of a decade now. Including excellent driver support and compatibility with most distributions. No serious problems remotely like what you are describing. Today, they ship with Suse Enterprise or RHEL with no need for specialized repository. The M Series seems to be doing well and the N series has existed off and on with no problems. Because those people want to run Unix applications they are willing to do things the Unix way. And there Dell gets excellent support.

  But in terms of Dell not getting support they've gotten great support. I've been dealing with Dell's and Linux for 17 years, I can always find excellent information from the community on how to configure Dell's and deal with their quirks. That's good support. Now if you mean working out the box. That's Dell's job, they create an OEM version config file just like they do for Windows today.

As far as the Ubuntu line. Horrible garbage low end hardware for cheap machines.... I can see Linux going downmarket in the 3rd world but what 1st world customer wouldn't rather just pay $30-40 for an OEM version of windows 7? Netbooks were a missed opportunity. Cell phones are working out.

In terms of GUI features:
* -- XML building so that the GUI can be complete reconfigured by end users (or OEMs). Apple sorta supports something like this, Microsoft doesn't allow it at all.
* -- Entourage like window management
* -- desktop grid: allows zooming in and out of virtual windows.
* -- transparency and opacity

Those things didn't exist on GUI's in the 1990s at all. Apple introduced them last decade and Microsoft with Vista. So lets cut the non sense about Windows 9X. Try doing those things on 9X.

I think you need some realism. Linux is not a product its a community. You want people to work to service your needs, call Microsoft. You want to help build a culture of information sharing, then we have something to talk about.

Re:Free software

[inKubus]

There's not an infinite number of positions needed in the Unix world, because the computers do the work. We don't need more users. The users that we have do most of the real work in the computing world already. And, like I said, there's lots of entertainment and other home user things running linux. The idea that you need a user friendly "operating system" is really just a marketing idea created by Microsoft. The true purpose of an operating system is to provide reusable high-level functions and libraries. Unix already has every theoretically possible interprocess construct (messaging queues, timers, locks, etc) and every useful base function (copy, malloc, etc.). Unix is second to none in programmability. There is literally nothing you can't do. So it fulfills the need of an operating system as perfectly as possible.

The problem with your message, here, is that you are confusing "operating system" with "window system" or "desktop", which of course is not your fault because you've been taught that your little pictures on the screen are an "operating system" and not an application. But even the programmers that made windows consider those things an application. That's why you have (on Windows) an application called "Explorer.exe" and on Mac OSX "Finder.app". Of course there are some OS calls for displaying graphics but they are largely similar between different Windowing systems. Underneath it all, the developers making software for your machine are using... a command line.

The reason Microsoft is so "far ahead" in the market is because they were a monopoly that used heavy handed tactics to get it's product installed by default on almost every cloned PC out there, starting back during the command line days of dos.. Apple, well.. Apple is a hardware company. And Apple was almost dead about 12 years ago until Steve Jobs came back and brought with him NeXTstep (the new windowing system), which, on top of FreeBSD basically became OS X (after a lot of graphic design). You can see the same basis in GNUStep, minus the graphic design of course. But you see, Apple, the inventor of the consumer windowing system, couldn't survive without taking some open source stuff and pumping money into it to POLISH it. By the way, OS X didn't save Apple, the iPod did. What I'm saying is Microsoft cheated, and Apple stole to get where they are in the consumer desktop market.

Now, of course, they have the public trained and brainwashed to use their product not unlike the car industry has you trained to use a steering "wheel" and three pedals in a certain order. And, since the majority of consumer grade applications that run in said windowing system are not able to run on the linux windowing system, well.. There you go. You're left with a chicken and egg scenario about who's going to make the jump to something new first. And if that thing doesn't have marketing and support behind it, consumers won't do it because they hate change. So Ubuntu had something going there, but then they pissed all over the community that really helped them get there. So no one likes them any more because they got a lot of free help and then decided to screw everyone else at some point.

Anyway, if you ask me, there's just no interest in the computer expert community of trying to build a new general purpose OS or windowing system that runs on it when there are real problems to be solved. It's just not that interesting to see how much you can dumb down the essence of a computer so the general public finds it useful. And when I'm doing general public stuff, I use windows at home and a mac at work. But I use all the linux systems that come out and it's really not any harder than windows, it's just more powerful and therefore most confusing to the novice. Sort of liek the difference between you getting into your father's camry and then a fighter jet. It's not ever going to be possible to make the fighter jet as easy as the Camry. It's a tool for professionals. But, I do

Re:Free software

[hairyfeet]

And here we have the twin psychotic face of Linux thing. On the one hand time and time again (hell sites like /. are practically bursting with articles written by the community) we here you Linux advocates say "Linux is ready for the desktop!" yet when anyone points out the serious problems that give way to that lie you basically say "Oh its not an OS, its a community! Go back to Windows if you won't do things OUR way". So which is it? Can't eat your cake and have it too you know.

As for why I wanted Linux to succeed (but after having read too many logic hoop jumping posts such as yours I honestly believe it is doomed to failure on the desktop) it is because a monopoly is inherently a bad thing and thanks to the failure of the "community" to deliver anything but serious logic hoop jumping that is what we have now, with MSFT owning the sub $1000 market and Apple owning the high end. I remember the days of Amiga and Atari where there were new ideas and innovations happening constantly, and had hopes that Linux would foster such an environment. Sadly what we get is the 300th text editor and arguments over via VS emacs.

Which brings us to the second bit of Sybil sized logic hoop jumping, what I call I can't win the game, so I'll just change the rules as provided with your posting about Poweredge servers and the quality of Dell netbooks. What does either of those have to do with the fact the drivers don't work? Why not a God damned thing! Hell we weren't talking servers, nobody had brought up either servers nor cell phones, but since your argument on the desktop would require you to admit the current design royally sucks why we'll just change the subject!

But don't worry, what dealing with the "community" and the Empire State Building sized logic hoops being jumped has taught me and other retailers is your product will NEVER be ready for public consumption and should therefor be avoided. And PLEASE bet the community on cell phones, because we all know you are talking about Android and it is about to get SOOOO funny! Ever see "pirates of silicon valley"? Remember the scene where Jobs is railing about IBM and his engineer is trying to warn him he's about to get fucked by pointing to the IBM logo and then to Gates? Well guess what? Ever notice anything....funny...about Android? Like how Google has gone out of their way to avoid GPL V3 and refuse to have GPL V3 code in the DroidOS? Why do you think that is? I'll tell you, it is because Google and the handset manufacturers are gonna "TiVo trick" your asses and you don't even see it coming and in fact praise Google for using FOSS! It is just TOO FUNNY for words!

So don't fret, the constant logic hoop jumping, the evasion and calls of "shill" for daring to ask things like "WTF is it that you can't even make drivers that survive a single update while everyone else can?" and after setting up a half a dozen testbeds in the shop, running everything from PCLOS to Ubuntu and watching with horror as not a single one survived a single update fully functional has convinced me, oh wise Linux user. it has convinced me that Linux will NEVER "be ready for the desktop" and is in fact only good for embedded and web servers unless you are a nerd with more time on your hands than you know what to do with and see keeping your OS running as a "hobby" of some sort. While I really hoped to sell machines with the much vaunted "Linux security" to the average man the truly fucked up mess that is the Linux update treadmill has convinced me otherwise. I will just block Linux from my /. through preferences and pretend it doesn't exist, which for the common man is 100% true.

Re:Free software

[jbolden]

And here we have the twin psychotic face of Linux thing. On the one hand time and time again (hell sites like /. are practically bursting with articles written by the community) we here you Linux advocates say "Linux is ready for the desktop!" yet when anyone points out the serious problems that give way to that lie you basically say "Oh its not an OS, its a community! Go back to Windows if you won't do things OUR way". So which is it? Can't eat your cake and have it too you know.

Well there is two things.

The first is that your only experience is with Windows desktop environments. There are millions of people all over the country using non Windows OSes right now on desktops. Companies like Burlington Coat Factory, Autozone, Pep Boys were able to switch easily, because they had a Unix not a Windows culture in their workforce. Education of HS or less so its not computer geeks. Millions of people still use mainframe OSes, and curses style interfaces. You simply lack experience as to what is else is possible. Your feeling is that if it is not done "the windows way" then its just wrong. The purpose of the GNU project was never to replace the NT kernel it was to change the computing culture. Having Linux do things the windows way, would subvert the broader goal. Having people use Windows while running ever increasing amounts of free software and become more concerned about open protocols (see the debate about net neutrality) advances the agenda.

Now as for the rest. It is ready for the desktop, and has been for a decade. Which is different then saying it is ready to overthrow Microsoft Windows. If Linux were the dominant desktop today, Windows would not be able to overthrow it either. The cost of switching between them is high in terms of the entire community of expectations. But for those people who have some reason to want to switch it is a fully viable desktop and has been for years. So I'm rejecting the equivalence you are making between an absolute worst case scenario for Linux and "the norm".

Assume for a moment Microsoft raised the OEM price of Windows to $1000, you don't think you would see computers shipping with high quality well maintained Linux distributions quickly? That's what ready means. That if Linux had to step in, it could step in. Now you made very specific claims about Dell which were easily refuted by looking at the history of the Power Edge for example. The point about the Power Edge is that with a motivated vendor long term driver updates were possible. Which I think should tell you that maybe you need to re-examine your assumptions about the way the Linux community works and the fact that it is able to support hardware when there is a genuine motivation. Which is different than your case where there isn't.

Richard Stallman, 1983
To begin with, GNU will be a kernel plus all the utilities needed to write and run C programs: editor, shell, C compiler, linker, assembler, and a few other things. After this we will add a text formatter, a YACC, an Empire game, a spreadsheet, and hundreds of other things. We hope to supply, eventually, everything useful that normally comes with a Unix system, and anything else useful, including on-line and hardcopy documentation.

The goal was to provide a Unix system. First and foremost Linux has to be a Unix and do things the Unix way. The goal was not to build a free Amiga. There is another project that aims to do that, Syllable and maybe what you should do is work with them.

And the reason your arguments much credit is I remember very much the same arguments being made in the late 1990s and early 2000s by big box Unixes. "Linux is fine for hobbyists but its never going to replace Solaris"...

Re:Free software

[hairyfeet]

Oh Dear Lord who art is heaven, please say me from the crazy that is Linux fanboy hoop jumping! Seriously WTF has Dell Poweredge servers have to do in ANY way shape or form with netbooks and desktops the correct answer again is not a God damned thing! You want to know WHY Dell Poweredge servers work? Do You? It is because Dell spends assloads of money it shouldn't have to because Linus is constantly breaking shit in the Kernel for the lulz!

I mean sure if every company on the planet hired 100 full time Linux driver developer teams to do NOTHING but constantly fix broken drivers why, it would all be roses and sunshine! But you are kinda missing the point friend, the point is why the fuck should they have to when NOBODY, and I mean nobody, not BSD nor Windows, not OSX nor Solaris, hell not even OS/2, have this problem. Why is that? Oh yeah because the head of kernel development doesn't go around breaking shit that's why!

And if Windows was $1000 then Linux "would be ready"? Again that is one of those "and when monkeys fly out of my butt" kind of "what ifs" since number one it is never gonna happen and it still is classic straw man building and logic hoop jumping!

Look it really is this simple, here is the statement of fact: Your shit don't work in the consumer market by a LONG shot. It doesn't work because your driver model makes Win9x look like FreeBSD in terms of stability, the software that FLOSS trumpets as shining examples is absolute shit (Gimp? F-Spot?) and most importantly for retailers you either disable ALL updates and run the serious risk of turning every customer into a spambot or you spend a damned week every six months doing nothing but free fixes because people naturally tend to get pissy when they run updates and are greeted with a black screen or no sound and a busted wireless.

Frankly it shouldn't have to be Dell's job to spend millions fixing a fundamentally broken design, and it shouldn't be your customer's job to spend more time trawling forums hoping to find "fixes" because your shitty design fell down YET AGAIN when it updated! Look I ain't making this shit up friend, go to ANY forum after the update and see how many THOUSANDS of "update foo broke my driver" posts you find. When Ubuntu went from 9 to 10 just for shits and giggles I decided to count on their forum, know what I found? I quit counting at over 600 posts.

But the part that really pisses me off? YOU have the power to fix it. Yes YOU Mr Linux advocate, you and your precious "community" have the power to fix it, not by spending the rest of your lives in a losing battle to fix all the fuckups but by refusing to take shit sandwiches handed down by the developers. DEMAND that Linus quit fucking up the kernel just to squeeze some 18th of a percent in some benchmark or AT LEAST build a stable ABI so no matter what he shits on at least drivers will still work, DEMAND that minimum standards be written and adhered to when it comes to the UI, DEMAND that NO RELEASE should be allowed unless it can reliably work on the bog standard hardware (Realtek sound and networking, Intel and AMD IGP, and the top three wireless chips) that 90%+ of the PCs come out with.

YOU CAN DO IT Linux advocates, You can change the world and make it a better place for all of us but ONLY by standing up as a group and refusing to take the shit sandwich approach. Just because a pile of shit is free doesn't mean you should accept it when it is given to you between two slices of bread, nor should you have to put up with such substandard workmanship especially when it is wholly preventable It CAN be done Mr Linux user, just look at how Jobs took BSD and made it the centerpiece of a company that now beats MSFT in market cap and who makes devices desired by nearly all.

Maybe I'm just

Re:Free software

[jbolden]

If MSFT or Apple released updates every six months that broke at least a third of the hardware out there, wouldn't you deride them mercilessly? Of course you would. So why take that shit from your own OS?

Because it doesn't. Your facts are just wrong. Updates from OS version to OS version don't generally break anything. I don't see any evidence for Dell spending boatloads of money on anything Linux related, including the Poweredge. Suse, and RedHat do the suport work, Dell doesn't do much of anything. If they did then they could just take the data from Linux on Laptops and build their own port tree for a few thousand, not millions.

Linus changes to the kernels rarely break hardware. You simply recompile the kernel using the same static config, the way Fedora, RedHat, Mandriva, Debian.... do and the new stuff doesn't change much of anything. Ubuntu uses the Debian branch not Linus' branch (the vanilla branch) so his changes don't even affect them necessarily. You want a stable branch: Andi Kleen's, Greg Kroah-Hartman and Adrian Bunk maintain stable branches. Don't use vanilla.

And more importantly, if you like the more stable branches why use Ubuntu which doesn't support them? Frankly everything Ubruntu stands for is making Debian less stable. Another example of a very stable Linux is Cent.

Think about your argument in the last dozen posts, and ask yourself if this were true why Linux is so dominant on server, on supercomputing, on embedded. Your arguments aren't desktop specific anymore. Open Solaris had great binary compatibility I don't remember them being all that popular on the desktop.

what?

[Tumbleweed]

Since when is Ubuntu the 'bad linux'?

Re:what?

[Anthony Mouse]

Since when is Ubuntu the 'bad linux'?

Since they put the window buttons on the left hand side, if I remember correctly.

Re:what?

[SpeedStreet]

Since when is Ubuntu the 'bad linux'?

Since a blogger blogging for a blogging website blogged about it. Also, blog.

Re:what?

[Lord Ender]

Since when is Ubuntu the 'bad linux'?

... since some blogger realized he gets more attention by writing inflammatory nonsense than by being honest.

Re:what?

[Ironchew]

"It's popular, so it sucks" is the mantra here.
Some fanboys just want to make their e-penis bigger by saying they use obscure, obfuscated distro X all the time. Nothing new here.

Re:what?

[Night64]

Since when is Ubuntu the 'bad linux'?

I was thinking the same thing. Someone mod parent +1 please?

Re:what?

[vtcodger]

***Since when is Ubuntu the 'bad linux'?***

Great question. I used Ubuntu for a while and didn't much like it, but I think I'm one of a very small minority. Except for a few eccentrics like me, the only reason that I can think of for not using Ubuntu is that when malware starts seriously attacking Unix, it'll probably go after Ubuntu first.

Re:what?

[jedidiah]

I dunno.

There's nothing more obscure sounding than dumping the standard GNOME desktop and X along with it.

It doesn't get much more set apart from Linux and Unix in general than that.

Re:what?

[Stenchwarrior]

... since some slashdotter realized he gets more attention by writing inflammatory nonsense than by being honest.

There, oblagitoried that for you

Re:what?

[h4rr4r]

Yeah, a real tragedy that you have to go switch the side the buttons are in the settings.

Re:what?

[ElectricTurtle]

Same thing happened to Red Hat and Mandrake/Mandriva, etc. Except those actually did suck. Meh, idk, I use ubuntu-derived Mint at home.

Re:what?

[mlts]

I must not be up to current events, but from what I see, Ubuntu is still a very strong distribution being arguably the front-runner when it comes to the desktop Linux offerings.

Every distro has their growing pains. RedHat went through theirs, Slackware had its trials, and so on.

Regardless of the drama that might surround Ubuntu, it still will be one of the top distributions out there. Of course, there may be forks, but Ubuntu has a solid development effort behind it and is standing up to the test of time.

I don't see any "bad linux" distros in the mainstream. In my book, only way a distro can be "bad" is if they stomp on GPL requirements and refuse to have source code available as per the license. Or if they are outrageously sloppy in how they build binaries, so the executables might not be what the source code compiles to.

Re:what?

[ozbird]

Apparently the "fully sick Linux" was already taken.

Re:what?

[Desler]

There's nothing more obscure sounding than dumping the standard GNOME desktop and X along with it.

Almost no distro uses the "standard" GNOME desktop. Almost all distros have it tweaked and modified from what comes from upstream. Secondly, Canonical is not dumping X.

Re:what?

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." Yogi Berra

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The latest trigger for this post is probably the dispute with Banshee which has now been made the default music player but had its Amazon MP3 store turned off because it competes with the Ubuntu One music store. The controversy is because the Amazon profit goes to the Gnome foundation.

Note you can still use the Amazon MP3 store it just won't be enabled by default in Natty.

Re:what?

[BitZtream]

I've used UNIX for ~20 years and have NEVER used a GNOME desktop.

Linux != UNIX

Re:what?

[ddd0004]

That's right I use a distro without a shell or any method of user interaction on my desktop.

Re:what?

[PCM2]

Which setting is that? I've looked in Appearance and Windows... nothing.

Re:what?

[Dracos]

I prefer my desktop to be free of mono, that's why I use Mint KDE.

Re:what?

[rwa2]

Since when is Ubuntu the 'bad linux'?

Since the 80s came back and "bad" is the (re)new cool.

The Ubuntu love is still strong over at http://www.nixiepixel.com/ (who runs plenty of fairly technical Ubuntu vlogs and actually knows what she's talking about)

Re:what?

[Georules]

Yeah, a real tragedy that you have to go switch the side the buttons are in the settings.

In the first rollout, there was no setting dialog to change it. You had to google ubuntu forums and modify files.

Re:what?

[MonsterTrimble]

There's nothing more obscure sounding than dumping the standard GNOME desktop and X along with it. It doesn't get much more set apart from Linux and Unix in general than that.

That doesn't mean it's the wrong decision.

Re:what?

[Skreems]

At the same time, though, who really cares? As long as the standard suite of Linux-compiled applications still run, they can do whatever they want with the basic components that power it. The fact that these components ARE so modular and interchangeable is part of why Linux is such a great starting point for someone looking to roll their own distro. If they think they have a reason to swap them out, more power to them.

Re:what?

[Chris Mattern]

"Ubuntu used to be cool, but then it went all mainstream."

Re:what?

[rishistar]

That was definitely the case in our house. Long story short Ubuntu went from being used on our communal home built desktop to being replaced by a new Windows 7 PC within two weeks of the installation of a version with the buttons on the other side, and the move to get a new PC came mainly as it became unusable to the other half because of the buttons being shifted round. (It was an oldish PC but did the job it was used for). This was particularly ironic as when I first got her to start using it (four years ago) as the main desktop PC I was filled with trepidation about how easy it would be for her to use - but she took to using it very well and I'd smugly being going round saying how Linux desktops are ready for common use. I've switched to Kubuntu myself.

Re:what?

[supersloshy]

"It's popular, so it sucks" is the mantra here.
Some fanboys just want to make their e-penis bigger by saying they use obscure, obfuscated distro X all the time. Nothing new here.

Not all the time. I used to use Ubuntu, and I loved it at first because it was my first Linux distro, but it kept breaking when I did auto-upgrades to new versions and some of the decisions they made really make little sense. The window buttons issue where they moved them over to the left side for some obscure "feature" that never even got implemented (and I'm not sure if it will ever be) was absolutely awful, and I shouldn't have to explain why. Not to forget that they have a sort of obsession with patching perfectly fine software, introducing incompatibilities, inconsistencies and bugs almost everywhere.

I switched over to Arch Linux, which, while not being nearly as simple to set up if you're a "n00b", only patches applications when absolutely necessary and lets you build your desktop how you want it from near-scratch. No annoying "click here to upgrade and break your system" situations every six months, the newest versions of every package, no unnecessary patches, no awkward interfaces, and no bloat (for some reason, XFCE on Ubuntu is more bloated than vanilla XFCE... weird)! Of course this isn't specific to Arch, and Fedora/Debian/etc. are also very great in this respect. Ubuntu, however, is an absolutely bloated mess with stupid design decisions that I wouldn't recommend to anybody any longer.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked the part where you said blog*

Re:what?

[revlayle]

So they're "tech hipsters"?

PLEASE... NO!

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's perfect. Yogi Berra and Sam Clemens, along with Douglas Adams are probably three of the best writers for just pointing out how absurd things are sometimes, things that most people just take for granted.

Re:what?

[causality]

I've used UNIX for ~20 years and have NEVER used a GNOME desktop.

Linux != UNIX

What do those two sentences have to do with each other?

GNOME is available for many Unix and Unix-like systems. It is not exclusive to Linux. You may have never used or even seen a Linux PC but could still have used GNOME.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

See particular blogger's other posts...almost everything Ubuntu/Canonical does is bad, a plot to undermine Open Source and take over the world.

Re:what?

[ArcherB]

Is this a setting, now? Because when I tried it, you had to hack up a bunch of images as well as change some files somewhere. Wasn't really fun.

No you don't. Click here for instructions with pretty pictures.

Or, just followed the instructions I so thoughtfully copied and pasted

Press Alt+F2 to bring up the Run Application dialog box, enter “gconf-editor” in the text field, and click on Run.

The Configuration Editor should pop up.

The key that we want to edit is in apps/metacity/general.

Click on the + button next to the “apps” folder, then beside “metacity” in the list of folders expanded for apps, and then click on the “general” folder.

The button layout can be changed by changing the “button_layout” key. Double-click button_layout to edit it.

Change the text in the Value text field to:

        menu:maximize,minimize,close

Click OK and the change will occur immediately, changing the location of the window buttons in the Configuration Editor.

Note that this ordering of the window buttons is slightly different than the typical order; in previous versions of Ubuntu and in Windows, the minimize button is to the left of the maximize button.

You can change the button_layout string to reflect that ordering, but using the default Ubuntu 10.04 theme, it looks a bit strange.

If you plan to change the theme, or even just the graphics used for the window buttons, then this ordering may be more natural to you.

Re:what?

[Homburg]

They're not doing either of those things, though. They're using their own window manager and panel program by default, instead of the new GNOME window manager and panel program, and they're thinking about maybe moving to a new display backend which is being developed by a number of prominent X developers and is supported by other major Linux distributions, at some point in the future (at which point it will still include an X compatibility layer).

Re:what?

[Computershack]

That was definitely the case in our house. Long story short Ubuntu went from being used on our communal home built desktop to being replaced by a new Windows 7 PC within two weeks of the installation of a version with the buttons on the other side,

Say what? Why didn't you just simply either change the theme or go into the gnome desktop manager and switch them back? Its hardly like being able to switch them back to the right hand side is some trade secret - shit, people knew how to do that in the BETAs.

Re:what?

[h4rm0ny]

And some distros tweak it more than others unfortunately.

Re:what?

[DiSKiLLeR]

Since when is Ubuntu the 'bad linux'?

Since they put the window buttons on the left hand side, if I remember correctly.

Indeed.

That was the worst decision they EVER made.

Re:what?

[Attila Dimedici]

I believe that this blog was written and posted on slashdot in an attempt to make it true. If they can get people thinking that enough others think Ubuntu is "Bad Linux", they think they can get people to think that Ubuntu is "Bad Linux". Unfortunately for them, many of the first slashdotters to see the post went, "What are you talking about? I think Ubuntu is great/nice/pretty good, even though I use a different distro."

Re:what?

[idontgno]

Yeah, you get a huge amount of Hipster Kitty "too mainstream" posing action here. It's amusing.

Re:what?

[Dr. Tom]

Since when is Ubuntu the "good linux"?

Re:what?

[LWATCDR]

It is nothing to do about being popular sucking it is all about quality. I use HEXED Linux. You have total control because you had configure everything in HEX so you have total control. Every real Linux users uses it so it is very popular within that group of people that know what they are doing. It is like everything else. If a common person can understand and us it then it must be dumbed down so it must suck. If you know what you are doing like me then everything is easy so way deal with dumbed down software! I am thinking about trying BINARYBUILD LINUX as soon as I finish building my front panal so I can toggle it in!

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which requires installing a third-party module to accomplish.

Re:what?

[pjt33]

Yep, calling it KDE is a massive tweak. Er, hang on.

Re:what?

[Cthefuture]

I hated it too at first but now I like the buttons on the other side. People are just hard-headed and resistant to change, even if it's better.

Also, as Ubuntu gets popular the "geeks" won't feel special/superior any more and have to go somewhere else to boost their ego.

I think I'm a pretty hard core Linux person. I have been using it for something like 17 or 18 years now. I used to like hacking the system but once I got a handle on that what I want to do now is get work done. I'm happy Ubuntu is popular, that's what I want. I want stuff to "just work" and all my hardware to be supported so I can get real honest work done on a system that is fast, stable, and secure. Screwing around with the OS is the last thing I want to do.

Re:what?

[silanea]

Why? Part of "Linux" is the ability to do with it whatever you want. We already have KDE (in different versions, mind you), GNOME (with the upcoming version 3 being discussed rather heatedly), Xfce and its offspring, Enlightenment, FluxBox and the other *Box environments, and all the really obscure ones (xmonad etc.). Why not throw another one into the mix? It will either live or die depending on how the user base reacts to it. If it lives we get another option. If it dies we get a better understanding of how not to design a desktop environment for a certain target audience. It may not be for everyone, but then again no Linux distro is for everyone, and still that pluralism is generally seen as a good thing.

Re:what?

[jedidiah]

>> There's nothing more obscure sounding than dumping the standard
>> GNOME desktop and X along with it. It doesn't get much more set
>> apart from Linux and Unix in general than that.
>
> That doesn't mean it's the wrong decision.

In the absence of something really compelling to the contrary, yes it does actually.

Being unecessarily obscure doesn't serve anyone's interests. I'm not even sure if it benefits Canoncial.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which of course requires the gnome equivalent of regedit, and the knowledge of not only where to find a relatively obscure key but how to properly format the key value to get what you want. Not exactly a tragedy, but certainly a "piss off a good number of your user for very little reason"-edy.

Re:what?

[dnahelicase]

Bad? I love Ubuntu. It might not be for the /. crowd, but for people who call the box on the floor their hard drive and can't find the internet because they don't see the IE logo, Ubuntu is a godsend.

It takes about 7 reboots to get Windows XP SP3, and a couple hours, installed and updated. I can put an Ubuntu live disc in, show people how it's just as easy to use facebook and check email, and then reformat the drive.

It takes a lot less time, and 1 reboot to get it updated and running. It's perfect for people that check email, use facebook, watch youtube, occasionally edit word documents or simple spreadsheets, and can't afford a mac.

Really, people get excited they don't have to buy Norton. Ever since Netflix came out for Wii, it hasn't been an issue with Ubuntu anymore (since most people prefer to see it on their TV.

Ubuntu could have a much greater market, but they tend to alienate some techie people just because it's too easy.

Re:what?

[jedidiah]

> at some point in the future (at which point it will still include an X compatibility layer).

There you go right there. Legacy support and network access is relegated to vaporware by Ubuntu and friends.

I've seen how that ends up on a Mac. It's not pretty.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since they sold out, maaaan.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since upstart/plymounth/mountall, the unholy trinity.

Re:what?

[Vaphell]

no, gconf-editor is as standard as it gets in gnome

Re:what?

[HermMunster]

He's not talking about the buttons being switched to the left side of the window title. He's talking about the heavy handedness of their actions.

Re:what?

[ebuck]

Yeah, a real tragedy that you have to go switch the side the buttons are in the settings.

They changed it without writing the simplest of gui configurable dialog to set it (or set it back). Instead you had to work around the default configuration with gnome's own command line configuration hacking. Then in the same breath you mention that Ubuntu is a "desktop" distro, meant for the masses while your CEO then takes the time to lambast the complaining user base that "free doesn't mean you get what you want, you get what we want".

Technically, Ubuntu didn't do a thing wrong; however, people go out of their way to avoid such behavior in friends, associates, or even strangers.

Re:what?

[rdforsyth]

Hey, I don't know what you're trying to get across, but it'd be so much easier if everyone just converted to CRUX. Now THAT'S a distro! Not some crappy cartoon. :)

Re:what?

[gad_zuki!]

XP is an 11 year old operating system. Are you really comparing it to the latest version of Ubuntu? No one is buying Norton, everyone is using Security Essentials for free.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make other than comparing apples to oranges. I think Ubuntu is very well done, but its growth is limited by its demand. We have a great linux desktop, its just that no one wants one. They're overserved with Windows and OSX. Unless they have some extreme motivator - ideology, want to play with something new, run a server, etc then they won't even bother. Honestly, its basic economics. Ubuntu is probably doing as well as possible considering the low demand for linux workstations.

Re:what?

[gad_zuki!]

>You can change the button_layout string to reflect that ordering

"Grandma, quit calling me, just change the button_layout string with vi. Sheez. No lets do it the easy way, type menu:maximize,minimize,close in the earlier box."

Yeah, I wonder why Ubuntu isn't at 99% marketshre.

Re:what?

[number11]

Long story short Ubuntu went from being used on our communal home built desktop to being replaced by a new Windows 7 PC within two weeks of the installation of a version with the buttons on the other side, and the move to get a new PC came mainly as it became unusable to the other half because of the buttons being shifted round.

Um.. so you seem to be saying that any interface changes potentially disqualify it from further use? I'll grant that the developer tendency (not just Ubuntu) to equate "improved" with "changed" is annoying, but that's not a very big change.

Me, I'm annoyed because FF4.0 removes the "recent pages" button from beside the "forward" and 'back" buttons. But I'm not going to switch to IE because of it. Sooner or later, either I'll get used to it, or Toolbar Buttons (or some other addon) will fix it.

Re:what?

[grcumb]

>You can change the button_layout string to reflect that ordering

"Grandma, quit calling me, just change the button_layout string with vi. Sheez. No lets do it the easy way, type menu:maximize,minimize,close in the earlier box."

"No, Granma, everything's fine. I just logged into your machine using ssh and made the change from here.... No, I'm not in your house, Granma. I just connected to your computer through the Internet. The Internet. It's a... a series of tubes... no, not so much like a truck. Granma, look. Everything's fine now, your buttons are on the right side again and they'll stay that way.... Okay, love you too."

Yeah, I wonder why Ubuntu isn't at 99% marketshre.

I don't give a shit about market share. I give a shit about my granma. And if using Ubuntu means I can manage her PC from a continent away, then yeah, I like it.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since my laptop runs longer on battey running Windows 7 than running Ubuntu

Re:what?

[ZDRuX]

You may be partly correct, but I don't think it it covers all the possibilities. I am first and foremost a windows user.. I was raised on it, it was "easiest" to get into, and I got to play all the new video games on it.

When I started dabbling in Linux recently I was faced with that dreadful dilemma and the million dollar question of "Hey guys! Which Linux distro is the best?!" .. of course by now I've learned there's no answer to this question and probably never will be.

A lot of people recommended Ubuntu since it's the easiest, has the most support, and an active user base of fanboys.. EVERYBODY was using Ubuntu! I would be stupid not to do the same - I was told.

Well.. for that reason alone I chose not to go ahead with it and went with using Fedora.

In short, Ubuntu to me is the Justin Bieber of Linux distro's.. the new hip thing on the block that everyone loves, which by default I hate.

Re:what?

[gad_zuki!]

>I just logged into your machine using ssh and made the change from here..

In other words you need a dedicated linux sysadmin to do basic tasks for you that you can do in Windows with right-clicking. Windows is far from perfect but lets face it, you need to get in the command line to do anything useful with any linux desktop.

Regardless, I actually like Ubuntu because it lets me do things cheaply/free that I don't want to pay for, namely run various services. I am absolutely not interested in running it as a desktop and the idea that there's an overwhelming demand for Linux workstations is silly. Ubuntu has probably maxed out the real demand for Linux workstations, many of which are cases like yours where you force it on a relative and then play sysadmin and pat yourself on the back. Seems a little odd that its only feasible if you have someone in your family who is very familiar with supporting linux workstations.

Re:what?

[zixxt]

Yep not touching mono on a Linux that is not Novell blessed(SuSE)! Since I use Slackware, Arch and Debian I do not get a coupon to not be sued by Microsoft!

Re:what?

[ob0101011101]

It wasn't just the moving of the buttons. It was the moving of the buttons (after 20 years of collectively keeping them right), without asking, and without a simple way of moving them back. And then it was the inclusion of Pulseaudio, which for quite a number of people was a complete PITA. The next bad thing will be the (Dis) "Unity" non-desktop with it's ridiculous side-panel, yet constant menus.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that they have not. They said they would like to in the future, but last time I checked that is not the same thing.

Re:what?

[Cwix]

Disturbing. I certainly hope an adult didn't make this.

Re:what?

[h4rr4r]

You need a cli to do anything useful on windows too. Just most people never do much of anything useful. Try renaming 1000 files at once based on a regex from the Windows GUI.

Most people have unsupported windows boxes full of malware and spyware, the fact that you deride his choice to make sure his grandmother does not suffer that way is pretty sad.

Re:what?

[dougisfunny]

"Grandma, quit calling me, there is no way to change the button layout. You're stuck with it the way it is."

No wonder [Windows|OSX] isn't at 99% market share.

Re:what?

[causality]

I must not be up to current events, but from what I see, Ubuntu is still a very strong distribution being arguably the front-runner when it comes to the desktop Linux offerings.

Every distro has their growing pains. RedHat went through theirs, Slackware had its trials, and so on.

Regardless of the drama that might surround Ubuntu, it still will be one of the top distributions out there. Of course, there may be forks, but Ubuntu has a solid development effort behind it and is standing up to the test of time.

I don't see any "bad linux" distros in the mainstream. In my book, only way a distro can be "bad" is if they stomp on GPL requirements and refuse to have source code available as per the license. Or if they are outrageously sloppy in how they build binaries, so the executables might not be what the source code compiles to.

For some reason this is discussed as though it were a Linux issue. It isn't; not to a philosopher anyway.

The pattern occurs in a very wide range of otherwise unrelated subjects. It can be summarized easily. Canonical is not forcing anyone to use its distros. If you don't like something, don't use it, don't listen to it, don't watch it, don't practice it, don't support it, etc. The problem is, that isn't good enough for many people. They won't be happy until everyone else feels the same, like it personally offends and affronts them that someone else would choose differently.

That's the real driving force behind this phony controversy. Yes this is a flamebait story and that driving force is what makes it successful flamebait. Even the most humble propagandists and marketers know how to exploit these things to get more page views. Some of you would be horrified to see what the truly skilled manipulators can do.

Re:what?

[GameboyRMH]

Good point. You either muck around in labyrinthian depths of the gconf database (after installing the GUI frontend to do that, which IIRC isn't installed by default anymore) or you enter the "one-liner of the year:"

gconftool-2 --set /apps/metacity/general/button_layout --type string menu:minimize,maximize,close

Far from user-friendly.

Re:what?

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Instead you had to work around the default configuration with gnome's own command line configuration hacking.

Are you sure about that? I am pretty sure I found a window configuration dialogue somewhere down in the preferences menu that had a window box layout (multiple if I remember correctly) which put all the buttons back on the right. I'll have to take another look when I get home, but I don't remember touching the command line once for that particular workaround. Now, trying to get CUPS to print to a certain wireless print server on my network, that requires some command line magic.

Re:what?

[GameboyRMH]

It's definitely not better. The menu control buttons are on the same side as the application's menus, increasing the chance of clicking on the wrong object. They broke decades of good GUI convention for the purpose of making things worse.

It's exactly like swapping the clutch and brake pedals on a car. Different from everything else on the planet, which was like that for a reason, and it made things worse.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or just pick a theme that has them on the right.

(System -> Preferences -> Appearance, for anyone who didn't know.)

I'm a fan of Clearlooks, myself.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Button position is part of the theme, change it (one click in Appearance) and they go back.

Re:what?

[AvitarX]

How dare they use an open source project (Wayland) that Fedora is likely going to use too.

But what's worse is that they made a replacement for sysvinit that others are using. Actually creating a project that becomes upstream to other distros is the epitome of bad.

Maemo is using both, Palm used Upstart, Fedora may use both, but is switching to a newer sysvinit replacement (evil). OpenSUSE is offering Upstart too.

If a chosen replacement for sysvinit (upstart) was lacking (thus systemd) I would think that upstart was a worthy project.

Wayland is hardly Conical's fault (coming from a Red Hat employee), the article is stupid and flamebait, as the premise is false IMO.

Unity on the other-hand is just stupid, and blech, but certainly started on a valid place.

I am curious what they felt was lacking with GNOME2 + Compiz + Wayland, as that would on the face of it be a good way to skip GNOME3 (which from what I can tell is OK, but about KDE 4.0 or 4.1 in quality (I felt 4.3 was the first KDE to feel usable with more than 10 minutes of use, and 4.5 the first to be usable).

What I like about GNOME3 is it appears to be moving towards Desktop Wall + Expose for task switching, I find this is very scalable vs a taskbar, though I am torn between picking it strait out over the Windows 7 taskbar.

Re:what?

[AvitarX]

A real tragedy that the start application and the close current are so damned close to each other. Stupidest design I've ever see. A complete and utter fail for usability.

Re:what?

[rishistar]

At the time I did a hunt for changing the positions round on the Ubuntu forums, and from what I read there there seemed to be there was no way of doing that. Maybe noone else there also knew how to do it - it certainly didn't come up on the desktop manager options available at the time - and in fact the ability to switch was put in as a feature request on the ubuntu feature request system which it sounds like has since been implemented. The one attempt I had at changing themes just didn't work - maybe the graphics card was too old for what I tried but I just didn't have the time to go around debugging this, getting a new PC was the easier option.

The point being - something that worked nicely and had been something I viewed as a selling point for Ubuntu (that the GUI had been perfect out the box for a non-techy traditional Windows user to start using straight away) - got messed up to the point the person who I was maintaining this for who had been using Ubuntu quite happily for two years, refused to use it anymore.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it's not different from everyone else on the planet because MacOS has been using it for decades. That's doesn't mean it's a good thing, I have always disliked the convoluted Mac way of doing things (like driving on the left side of the road).

I do like the buttons on the left though. It seems to reduce long mouse moves way over to the right to do window operations. I have found that usually the mouse cursor is closer to the left.

Re:what?

[rishistar]

It was a big change for the person who used the system to decide she never wanted to use it again within a week of using it - and getting a new PC was the easiest way to sort things out at the time.

Personally I know I can dislike something at first but trying the old system brings home that the new system is better. On 90s UNIX systems I remember switching from an OS where the active window was whatever the mouse cursor was hovering over to one where the active window needed to be clicked on to be active. Hated it at first, but then switching back meant I had to start paying attention to the position of the mouse.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you enjoy being rooted. Arch's package manager doesn't do package signing so it's vulnerable to trivial man in the middle attacks. A couple of Arch users got rooted by this at Defcon when they tried a "pacman -Syu" from their hotel room. Furthermore, several of the larger package mirrors have been compromised for extended periods of time in the past...

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not dumping GNOME quite yet, just the user interface/shell. And the move to wayland is something that many (most?) people in the X.org proyect wants to do eventually

Re:what?

[treeves]

You just have a different opinion what is useful than many people. Most people have no need to rename a thousand files at once. They need to create a few new ones, find a few old ones, send one here or there, and be done with it.

Re:what?

[Third Position]

Yeah, first the Distro of the Hour was SLS, then Slackware, then Caldera, then RedHat, then Mandrake, then Ubuntu... I finally decided that if I needed a desktop unix, it was just simpler to get a Mac. Whatever else, at least I don't have to go through the contortions of having to recreate my user environment every year or two. The first few times that might have been a learning experience. After that, it was just a nuisance.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

needs moar blog

Re:what?

[gearloos]

That is a bold (couple of) statement(s). I'm so impressed. Next time try saying "I taught 20 people how to actually use UNIX and never used a GNOME desktop" and you might actually be a contribution to our society. It's this kind of "I'm a god because I know *NIX" mentality that keeps it from being adopted. The more people that understand and can use it = the more user base = the more developers willing to put time into it = the more software available = more people actually willing to learn to use it= Keep your egotistical comments to yourself. They make you look the fool. -oh and FYI: your 20 years only puts you to 1991 anyway.. nothing to see here, move along...

Re:what?

[scrib]

Yeah, the buttons on the side "Unity" interface is not ready yet. I stuck with 10.04 LTS because of that. They have made great strides with 11.04, but I suspect it'll be 12.04 LTS before I'm really happy with the changes.

Re:what?

[scrib]

Unless I misunderstand, Ubuntu would like very much to replace X with Wayland.
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551

If "retain the ability to run X applications in a compatibility mode" is not considered "dumping" X, well, then alright, maybe it's a semantic difference...

Re:what?

[Krater76]

... since some blogger realized he gets more attention by writing inflammatory nonsense than by being honest.

This is how all media is now, you can't have a descent well-structured argument and expect anyone to respect what you are saying. This isn't just the Internet either. Fox/MSNBC feed of this sort of 'journalism'. Politics is all about sensationalism.

Was it ever any better? I like to think that journalists like Woodward and Bernstein were honest, find-the-truth, no-agenda journalists. If they were looking into Watergate now they would've been lambasted as the 'liberal media' with a 'Democrat bias' and the corruption of the Nixon Whitehouse all would've gotten lost in the noise of the day.

Re:what?

[narrowhouse]

And if Grandma wants to switch the button layout in MS Windows or OSX? How would you talk her through that? I am not fond of the change in ubuntu either, but it is only a big deal to people who expect them to be on the other side. So if you are saying your Grandma is already used to MS Windows, then just get her a MS Windows machine. If you are saying this is easier in Windows, then I think you are just wrong.

Re:what?

[Junior J. Junior III]

Bob Loblaw.

Re:what?

[GameboyRMH]

So what you're saying is, you're a hipster?

I've used many different distros and Ubuntu really is the best for general desktop use, far better than Fedora. If you want to be different for the sake of being different, try Debian or Mint, at least that way you aren't punishing yourself.

Re:what?

[Xyrus]

They refuse to open their eggs from the little end!

Re:what?

[PCM2]

(after installing the GUI frontend to do that, which IIRC isn't installed by default anymore)

No, gconf-editor is still there in 10.10. It's not in the default menus, though, so you need to launch it from the command line.

Re:what?

[gad_zuki!]

That is not a typical task and malware isn't the problem it used to be. Enabling automatic updates and running a basic free AV like MSE works wonders.

Not to mention deriding windows as not having remote capabilities is being silly. Remote Assistance in built in not to mention free services like logmein, gotomypc, etc. On top of it, if you want to get cute you can install an ssh daemon/cygwin and powershell and have the cli coolness you like.

Re:what?

[HiThere]

You are too charitable. It's true that they didn't violate the license. Or at least I haven't heard any reasonable claims that they did. And that's about as much as I'll give them.

OTOH, they did create a base of fans. So I guess they must be doing something right. And it's the system I have installed on a portable, because Debian didn't do a good job of managing the power usage. (The battery kept dying.) Ubuntu seems to handle that much better. (But even so the battery seems to live down around 3% full, with the computer plugged in 24X7.)

Still, from what I've heard of Unity, that's NOT on my upgrade path. It's a lousy idea for a general computer. KDE4 is bad, and I'm dubious about Gnome3, but Unity looks like a disaster. Maybe it would be a good fit on netbooks, perhaps, but that's not where I'm at.

Re:what?

[HiThere]

From what I've read, if you want the buttons on the right without fiddling then you need to download and use a different desktop theme. Not a big problem, but annoying.

OTOH, this *is* second had information. No guarantees.

Re:what?

[tombeard]

So why did they switch them without my asking?

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

wow. Alt+F2 gconf-editor. that was REAL tough command line hacking.

Re:what?

[jedidiah]

> XP is an 11 year old operating system. Are you really comparing it to the latest version of Ubuntu?

You could compare it to an 11 year old copy of Linux and get the same result.

The KDE and GNOME stuff wouldn't be as well developed, but all of the underlying guts that make XP look like dry rot.

Besides, XP isn't 11 years old. It's as old as it's latest service pack.

Re:what?

[TwistedPants]

You know; I'm fairly sure I just updated the skin I was using which magically did this all for me... even via a GUI.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blogging? I can't read all those words. Twitter is where it's at. If you can't make your point in 140 characters it just doesn't need to be

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, come on. I like buttons on the right like every long time Linux user who has used WMs starting with FVWM2 and has had a love-hate relationship with Apple's ideas on what constitutes usability (more varnish than polish). I bounce back and forth between Linux and Mac, but see no real reason for Ubuntu to cargo-cult Mac UI idioms. But really, how hard is gconf-editor? New users won't care, and existing users can Google for a 90 second fix.

At least Canonical is investing in UI guidelines, consistency, and innovation.

Re:what?

[yotto]

You just have a different opinion what is useful than many people. Most people have no need to rename a thousand files at once. They need to create a few new ones, find a few old ones, send one here or there, and be done with it.

Which is why those people use Windows (or Mac) and we use Linux.

Like grcumb, I don't give a shit about market share. Taking that further, I don't give a shit about if Cannonical gives a shit about market share. I want an easy to use Linux distro and for me, that's Ubuntu. When something else comes along that is easier, I may move to it. I may not, if Ubuntu doesn't get significantly worse than it is now. And, for the record, I don't think it's bad at all right now.

Re:what?

[grcumb]

>I just logged into your machine using ssh and made the change from here..

In other words you need a dedicated linux sysadmin to do basic tasks for you that you can do in Windows with right-clicking.

No, in other words you have support options in Linux that simply do not fucking exist in Windows.

If you weren't so dead set on scoring points, you'd realise that I was replying to a scenario in which someone was trying to explain how to perform a simple action over the phone. That characterisation was stupidly inaccurate.

And yeah, if you're the family tech support guy, then.. guess what? You're going to be performing sysadmin tasks. And if you're doing them on Linux, you're way ahead of the game, because these kind of tasks are easy compared to Windows.

(By the way, the issue of the 'X' being in the other corner is a stupid example anyway. The real conversation is more like: "Granma, the X is on the other side. Just like on the Mac.")

I cannot express to you how tiring it is to seeing people bitch about Linux because it's not like Windows. If you like what Windows does, then use Windows. But please, at least be willing to accept that other options are allowed to exist.

And by the way, you can run GUI apps just fine over SSH, thank you very much.

HTH HAND

Re:what?

[yotto]

Since when is Ubuntu the "good linux"?

I was thinking the exact same thing. I've been using it since Sarge, and am generally happy with it, but I have never, ever thought that the Linux community in general loved it and thought it was the most wonderful thing ever. In fact, what this blog* says about this "new" opinion of Ubuntu is what I thought was the opinion of it all along.

*At least, the first page of the blog. I like how they question Ubuntu's business decisions as looking at the bottom line and not caring about users, when they split a blog post over 3 pages to generate extra ad views.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a problem with my nvidia drivers and Ubuntu. For some reason, those little popup dialogue boxes that appear in programs like Skype to state a contacts status appear with no text, at least using the default style.

I found the solution by clicking System>>Preferences>>Appearances. There, you may choose from a multitude of styles that effect the gui. Popups now work for me and window buttons are on the right. You should try it, sometimes a new engine is not needed to fix the faulty indicator light.

Yours, an anonymous end user that gets lost in terminal but has hugely enjoyed Ubuntu since its earliest incarnations.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Canonical is successfull, then its stall will become heavily frequented, the community will grow around it, and we will will speak of the wisdom of the bizaar.

If its decision to veer from the well travelled path ends in failure, then we will criticize Canonical for its hubris.

Right now most of the bobbling heads are criticizing Canonoical without really knowing how its decisions will turn out, which begs the question.

Re:what?

[FoolishOwl]

The default distribution comes with alternative desktop themes, including the default desktop themes from previous major distributions, so you don't even have to do any extra downloading. Changing to a theme that has the prior button arrangement is trivially easy. The people complaining about the new themes have no legitimate complaint.

Re:what?

[Risen888]

(What follows is actually my honest to God uncensored reaction upon reading your post. I haven't used Ubuntu myself in some time.)

WHAT?! Are you fucking serious? The option to change the goddamn window buttons back is in fucking gconf?!

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

And better yet, "Note that this ordering of the window buttons is slightly different than the typical order; in previous versions of Ubuntu and in Windows, the minimize button is to the left of the maximize button. You can change the button_layout string to reflect that ordering, but using the default Ubuntu 10.04 theme, it looks a bit strange."

Really?! People still bitch about KDE and they put up with this?! Get the fuck out of here!

Re:what?

[Risen888]

You can change the order of the window buttons on Windows through the right-click menu? News to me.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

...And X along with it? Sure, the work on Wayland is interesting and surely the way to go for desktop distros, but it's not even being considered as a replacement at this time. It's a long term goal. Also, Ubuntu is not "dumping the standard GNOME desktop". It's available and you can choose it with two clicks before you login.

Sure, it does cost you a couple of seconds extra, one time. Is that a catastrophe?

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is Ubuntu the 'bad linux'?

Since they put the window buttons on the left hand side, if I remember correctly.

It was for Unity. The future interface. Get with it. Those buttons have no place over the system tray!

Re:what?

[thegarbz]

Why is the lack of configuration choice a bad thing? Providing a consistent stable UI is something that Apple is praised for. Someone makes a design decision it shouldn't mean that it is automatically configurable. How do I set in windows to put the buttons on the left hand side, how do I do it in OSX? We may not like the design choices, but as a system designed for the "desktop" it should be consistent between the same versions of the system. Our support calls shouldn't have to go like, "Ok I see here you're running Ubuntu 10.04, lets start fresh, click the x in the top left of the window. ... What do you mean there's no X in the top left?"

Re:what?

[Funnnny]

They have one, Apperance. Y U No choose another theme?

Re:what?

[dslbrian]

I used to use Ubuntu, and I loved it at first because it was my first Linux distro, but it kept breaking when I did auto-upgrades to new versions and some of the decisions they made really make little sense. ...
I switched over to Arch Linux, which, while not being nearly as simple to set up if you're a "n00b", only patches applications when absolutely necessary and lets you build your desktop how you want it from near-scratch. ...
Ubuntu, however, is an absolutely bloated mess with stupid design decisions that I wouldn't recommend to anybody any longer.

I second all these points. Same exact experience, been through all the "main" distros and they all have the same breakage problems. With RH, Fedora, or Ubuntu it seemed the system took forever to get tweaked, and by the time it got settled it was outdated and EOL'd. Rebuild and repeat. On the other hand there is Centos or RHEL which are such long releases that it feels you are forever anchored in time (we have work machines stuck on RHEL4, which was released what 6-7 years ago - long enough that when the time comes those machines don't get updated they get replaced).

For the last couple years I've been using Arch, and the rolling release model is much nicer experience than the others. The only rebuild I've done is to move a physical machine into a virtual machine. Updating a machine a year out of date isn't any more difficult than one that is a week out of date.

More bonuses for Arch is that it is not Gnome-centric (Metacity should be shot multiple times and buried somewhere), doesn't pre-install a crapload of unneeded services (sendmail running by default?!? only on every RH version ever), and by the time install is done you know exactly what is running (/etc/rc.conf FTW, not a bunch of config hidden in a directory somewhere and buried under a GUI).

Re:what?

[Knuckles]

Change the theme.

Re:what?

[Knuckles]

To cancel that out, my wife's sister (not a nerd) called me a week after purchasing a Sony Vaio with Windows 7 to ask about how to install Ubuntu from a USB stick because Windows was so annoying (she had used Ubuntu on another machine before). Told her to switch boot order in the BIOS and that's the only thing I had to tell her, everything else she did smoothly on her own. There you go for anecdotes.

Re:what?

[rrohbeck]

Of course my Gentoo is bigger than your Ubuntu. And longer, much longer... to install.

Re:what?

[pmontra]

I don't like many Apple's design choices so I don't buy Apple hardware because I know I can't fix the GUI they designed. Is that a bad thing for Apple or for me? It's hard to say but one thing is sure: if they left some space to configuration (no global menu, no application launchers at the bottom of the screen, no buttons on the left of the windows, and more) I might be using an Apple computer now. I concede that their choices played out well for them. Could have they done better if they left more freedom to customers? Nobody knows.

Re:what?

[cronius]

Instead you had to work around the default configuration with gnome's own command line configuration hacking. Then in the same breath you mention that Ubuntu is a "desktop" distro, meant for the masses while your CEO then takes the time to lambast the complaining user base that "free doesn't mean you get what you want, you get what we want".

Seriously, I cannot fathom why people are so hung up on this. It took me just two hours with the new button positions before my muscle memory had completely forgotten that they had ever existed anywhere else.

I just don't understand why people care. It such an unimportant detail, I wouldn't dream of thinking about it if it wasn't for the fact that people keep bringing it up over and over.

And we're supposed to be the smart guys. We're supposed to adapt to our reality, like evolution and "survival of the fittest" has taught us. Apparently we're all screwed, 'cause we can't adapt to some stupid buttons changing place in our computer interface. There's not even a disadvantage having it on the left side, it's just *change*. Just get over it all ready. We expect people to change their entire operating system and switch to Linux (or Mac or whatever) but we can't stand the fact that someone moved a couple of buttons from the right to the left side of the window decorations. That's ... great.

Anecdote: When I was getting my driving license, the car had three rear view mirrors: One for me, one for the tutor, and a third one that the tutor directed at my eyes (so she could tell if I was looking for traffic at an intersection etc. without moving her head). At one time the third mirror had been moved to the bottom of the wind shield, and I asked her why. "We loaned the car away to another tutor, and he moved the mirror because he didn't like the way we position it. I'm making a point by not moving it back: I don't care where it's placed, I can adapt, and so should he."

Anecdote #2: I do support on my Mom's Ubuntu installation, and she has never complained that they moved the buttons. (And she's your average grandmother.) This leads me to believe the average Joe doesn't care (or is better at adapting to change than us).

(This is obviously not directed at the parent poster, just a general rant.)

Re:what?

[pmontra]

Right, that's why I put scrollbars on the left any time an application lets me do it, as in Gnome Terminal. But the close button must be on the right where I don't risk to click it by mistake. That's a thing I need to click only once per application so there isn't much time to save anyway. To maximize a window you can double click anywhere in the title bar. Iconize... well if you really have to iconize windows a lot then ALT-F9 does it (GNOME) and it's faster than grabbing the mouse or even sliding a finger on the touchpad.

Re:what?

[MichaelSmith]

The alternative desktop themes are built in. Changing theme is four clicks. I don't really notice it because I always change the theme.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet the important thing, moving the scroll bars to the left is still impossible. Damn right handers forcing me to use their paradigm for desktop controls!

Re:what?

[mpe]

They changed it without writing the simplest of gui configurable dialog to set it (or set it back). Instead you had to work around the default configuration with gnome's own command line configuration hacking.

This wasn't the only thing changed without a simple way to revert to the previous behavior. Also notable was GDM defaulting to listing all users.Something which might be useful when you have 3 years, is rather cumbersome with 30 and utterly daft when you have 300 (or more).

Then in the same breath you mention that Ubuntu is a "desktop" distro, meant for the masses while your CEO then takes the time to lambast the complaining user base that "free doesn't mean you get what you want, you get what we want".

The interesting thing is that Ubuntu offer "desktop" and "server" distributions. But the "server" version has many of the same quirks as the "desktop" even ones which make little sense for a server.

Re:what?

[Carewolf]

No. Ubuntu went from the distro where everything "just works!" to the distro where everything now "just doesn't work!". Adding to that the idea of hidding option and details from the users, means that not only doesn't anything work out-of-box, you can't even fix it yourself.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, I can change the layout of the close, maximise and minimise buttons on Windows with a few clicks of the mouse?

Where?

Re:what?

[drinkypoo]

In other words you need a dedicated linux sysadmin to do basic tasks for you that you can do in Windows with right-clicking.

That is a staggeringly stupid thing to say for a broad variety of reasons. Reason the first: I have had to remote edit a registry to fix a Windows problem... REMOTELY. Reason the second: You can't move the gadgets to the other corner of all windows on Windows except with a theme which you will have to use hacks to install and which ALWAYS reduces windows' stability, I themed windows for years, but now I just use Linux.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

while your CEO then takes the time to lambast the complaining user base that "free doesn't mean you get what you want, you get what we want".

Technically, Ubuntu didn't do a thing wrong; however, people go out of their way to avoid such behavior in friends, associates, or even strangers.

But, that IS what FREE means. If I give someone something for free,
they don't get a damn request to modify it... they get what they get or
they can gtfo and stfu.

-@|

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh. Ambiance_R and Radiance_R. What is it we're complaining about again?

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

They changed it without writing the simplest of gui configurable dialog to set it (or set it back).

You don't need the command line.
System -> Preferences -> Appearance

Change the Theme to "Clearlooks" or something similar.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

there's a windows button in ubuntu? miguel has won.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

They could dump bash/dash and go for csh only?

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

buttons make more sense with unity. It took about a day and a half to get used to the new location. I find myself going to the wrong side on windows computers now as it is just second nature for me.

I think that they really want to stand out more from the crowd and being just another distro. they are doing something right as I just saw a RSS that showed there are now over 50 Distros based on Ubuntu.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

/---/ Instead you had to work around the default configuration with gnome's own command line configuration hacking. /---/

gconf-editor is a GUI-application (found in the Ubuntu system menu), nothing "command line" about it (you can also use your favourite text editor to edit individual configuration files, but that is more complicated, or, as you mentioned, the gconf command line tools, simpler then gconf-editor if you know exactly what key you want to change, or cut and paste from a web forum). You can also choose a windows-scheme that doesn't follow the standard configuration.

In gconf-editor, go to key: apps/metacity/general/button_layout (metacity is gnomes window manager), make whatever changes you want. My favorite is "menu,minimize,maximize:close" (off topic: a window tack button is just about the only thing I miss in gnome from other desktop environments/window managers, but at least you can get the same functionality from the window-menu, even if it is a bit inconvenient).

As you can see, there are a lot of configuration that can be made with gconf, most of them lack a simplistic configuration tool and that is a feature. Most users would only be confused with hundreds of thousands of configuration options, the GNOME "power users" (even those unfamiliar with unix/linux, like former windows "power users") can use gconf-editor. Using gconf-editor is usually simpler (and safer) then searching for the right configuration file to edit, but the old fashioned configuration files are still there when needed.

In gconf-editor, you can choose keys to use as standard configuration for all users, just mark them and use the right click menue (will effect users that haven't made any changes of their own).

Re:what?

[KevinColyer]

I agree. I'm not sure it was fully thought through either. For example, when you open one window if defaults to upper left. The next window you open overlaps it offest down and to the right a little.Standard tiling. However this tiling assumes that the close window button is on the right. Otherwise you would tile from the top right to bottom left for left handed close buttons.

I don't know if you follow me here. I just realised that the right-handed-button-ness of the desktop is coded far more deeply than just the physical location of the buttons. Not sure how OS X does it as their buttons are on the left too, but I think the whole "philosophy" of the desktop is more cohesive in the OS X case.

Re:what?

[Elbowgeek]

I only use distros you've never heard of.
                                                                                          - Hipster Geek

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not fair... Ubuntu sucked long before it became popular.

Re:what?

[Russellkhan]

Mine switched to the other side when I picked a different theme. Not that I cared much about which side the buttons were on. I just tested it now, still works - go to the default theme, buttons on the left, pick "Clearlooks" (or something like that) and they're on the right.

I'm running 10.4, BTW.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when:
- they dropped "Linux" from their name
- registered Canonical at tax paradise to avoid paying any taxes to anywhere
- hided Canonical financial state by not telling does the company have any changes to survive after Mark pulls plug.
- Started to market Ubuntu as a own operating system and not one distribution of Linux operating system (you know, the knowledge to have options is freedom?)
- Pretending to be a highly innovating corporation and pushing open source to desktops while they mostly repackages other projects work and call it as own
- Started to pull other projects to their own development network so control them
- Started to demand that everyone else would follow their 6 month release cycle
- Started to abuse peoples security manners with sudo by teaching to use only one password for user account and for full system management
- They did pretend to be big contributer for open source, while they did not even give code back (year ago situation) by the amount what they pretended
- Did not care about usability experts studies and went to push own non-accepted API's and features to Ubuntu to lock Ubuntu customers/users to Canonical
- causes unfair financial situation among Linux distributors who are all up and running only by their own services, without anyone giving millions of dollars own money from "magical pocket of Mark"
- ???

The list can be continued to be so long that Ubuntu fans just wants to bury a head to the sand and pretend that Ubuntu, Canonical and Mark are just so awesome. Building a same kind a cult what is the biggest problem among Apple users (small group there) what is loud and is annoying every one else.

I dont myself run Ubuntu anymore, since 8.04 when I found all the dirty tricks and bad habits what the Ubuntu fans causes to F/OSS community. But I still suggest it to someones if any other distribution is not enough for them (95-98% are in better hands when using other than Ubuntu).

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Alt+F2 gconf-editor

Easy to remember and intuitive!

Re:what?

[AaxelB]

From what I've read, if you want the buttons on the right without fiddling then you need to download and use a different desktop theme. Not a big problem, but annoying.

OTOH, this *is* second had information. No guarantees.

There are a bunch of alternate themes that come with a default install, and all the other themes have the buttons on the right. Unless you specifically want everything else to follow the default theme, it's really quite easy to fix with no downloading required.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like a real penis, there is nothing you can do to enhance your e-penis. You are stuck with what you got. ;P

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

They changed it in order to differentiate Ubuntu from Windows in one more way. It's silly, but just think that Webster decided that we should have different spelling than the British... Center/Centre; Color/Colour, etc... If you don't like it, change to another distro... or use Ubuntu Tweak, which is a GUI to tweak many settings in Ubuntu (including the side on which the window buttons appear, and the order in which they appear).

Re:what?

[cycleflight]

LOL... thought the exact same thing. You've probably never heard of my favorite distribution. /tightjeans

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

you don't need to use the CLI you just need to use gconf-editor.

Re:what?

[damaged_sectors]

XP is an 11 year old operating system.

Yep - it's not beta any more, what Microsoft hasn't reluctantly fixed third parties have provided replacements for, and a great deal of the unknowns are no longer. Somewhere on the shelf behind me I've got an old Thinkpad running Spud from the days when floppy installs were the still available - it still works fine too. And Windoof 98 (SE) makes a neat little vm when you lite it and replace most of the Microsoft bloat with third part stuff. And Windoof ME still sucks shit through a straw - I suspect 7 years from now I'll be saying thing about Vistass. Actually W2K lites up nicely too. The difference is that I can run a modern true 32-bit OS on old hardware using a GNU, but not Windoof (or Apple). Doesn't matter which distro I pick, I can leverage more life out of old hardware with new software.

Well actually it's a bit harder with Ubuntu, because despite Shuttleworths original announcement, Ubuntu doesn't do a lot to support old hardware (or Africa). And there's my main grudge against Canonical, Fedora (OLPC) do more to bring computers to those that don't have them than Ubuntu does.

Re:what?

[mmclean]

This is maybe the first time ever that the word blogosphere would have improved a sentence.

Re:what?

[steveg]

I've run Gnome on Solaris. On Sparc workstations.

Re:what?

[similar_name]

In other words you need a dedicated linux sysadmin to do basic tasks for you that you can do in Windows with right-clicking.

Where do you change the button order in Windows?

Re:what?

[jbolden]

Was it ever any better? I like to think that journalists like Woodward and Bernstein were honest, find-the-truth, no-agenda journalists. If they were looking into Watergate now they would've been lambasted as the 'liberal media' with a 'Democrat bias' and the corruption of the Nixon Whitehouse all would've gotten lost in the noise of the day.

They were blasted that way at the time. Do a web query on Spirow Agnew and his relationship with the media. What's changed now is that we have the kind of variety we had in the 1960s in newspapers and magazine on the TV, while we don't have variety in newspapers in most cities.

Re:what?

[jbolden]

I don't think Canonical will pull this off. I think they've underestimated the changes they want by 1.5-2.5 orders of magnitude in terms of cost. That being said....

This isn't unnecessarily obscure. They are doing it to be able to get integrations that just aren't offered by X/Unix apps. You could layer all the features of Aqua on top of X but by forcing every app to use Cocoa you force every app to have a standard way of dealing with specifics. Like for example video content and thus cut and paste for video works.

Re:what?

[jbolden]

X works pretty well on the Mac. Its not vaporware it ships with every OSX and has worked pretty well since OSX 10.1 (though often requiring separate installation). The thing is most of the apps aren't X apps.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm; Didn't just changing theme move the buttons to correct position? Last time I checked (30 sec ago) 4 of the 8 default themes had buttons on the right and 4 had them on left?

...Instead you had to work around the default configuration with gnome's own command line configuration hacking...

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's also what they did when they claimed Ubuntu was the OS that could replace Windows and take Linux into the mainstream.

Re:what?

[badran]

So you can easily switch the buttons around under Windows?

Re:what?

[Murdoch5]

It's never been a good Linux system, sure it took the configuration away but it left the user with a bloated and slow system. If thats what you want just run windows.

flamebait

[bsDaemon]

I don't even particularly care for Ubuntu (as if my nick name wouldn't be a tip off), but even I think this is probably the most flamebait summary I've seen on Slashdot in a while... wtf?

Re:flamebait

[druke]

Agreed, what the hell is this?

Here's my try:

Slashdot: where did the quality go? Used to be, slashdot was the was the big geek hero, theshining knight that would drive geekry onto every desktop and kick bad old productivity to the curb. But now slashdot sucks. What's going on, are the typical trolls all that's left, or is the joke that is the random mod system is finally being shown for what it is.

my take:

Ubuntu has always been a gateway niche, and canonical has always used Ubuntu as a vehicle to make 'linux for human beings'. That is a nicer way of saying dumbed down linux.

Simultaneously:

slashdot has always sucked. It's not anything new.

Re:flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

How about yesterday's?
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/02/21/1734259/Why-You-Shouldnt-Reboot-Unix-Servers

Another strawman posted by Taco. Maybe it's his version of 'anti-laser' -- get the most hit counts for zero news.

Re:flamebait

[History's Coming To]

That's why I'm tagging it 'dontfeedthetroll', doing the same to other flamebait articles and making no comments after this one.

nope

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone's entitled to their opinion though of course.

Did I miss something?

[Anonymous Coward]

When did Ubuntu turn bad?

Re:Did I miss something?

[jedidiah]

Deciding to make a mobile interface the default desktop for 28" monitors was probably somewhere close to the turning point.

Re:Did I miss something?

[rubycodez]

that's just silly, Ubuntu has more desktops to choose from than the furniture section of the Office Depot near my house. I can think of ten other desktops just an apt-get or software center click away if you don't like the default and there are more.

Re:Did I miss something?

[somersault]

We don't actually know that it's going to be "bad" yet though.. I really want to see what they come up with.

Re:Did I miss something?

[jedidiah]

Yes. Because THAT is the answer for the masses: install WindowMaker or something equivalent because the defaults suck.

Whatever happened to the Unix design principle of sane and useful defaults?

THIS is the sort of stupidity that rightfully gets Canonical criticized.

Re:Did I miss something?

[ShavedOrangutan]

When did Ubuntu turn bad?

9.04 Obnoxious Orangutan or 9.10 Farty Ferret, if I remember correctly. I found that tasks that were so simple 10 years ago in Redhat 5.2 were impossible in the 9.x versions of Ubuntu. It's like there was no testing done at all.

10.10 absolutely rocks. I take back all the curse words I yelled at Ubuntu. It's stable, easy to set up, and easy to use.

Re:Did I miss something?

[rubycodez]

Most of the users don't think the default "sucks". The GUI issue is of no consequence and the most trivial and superficial of things, as it is so very easily changed, faster than getting up to go change socks. Yet you whine.

Re:Did I miss something?

[Knuckles]

In Natty you can simply choose "Classic Desktop" from gdm

More importantly...

[froggymana]

Where their grammar from summary go?

Perhaps Ubuntu could change their slogan into "All your base are belong to us!" to help gain popularity again.

Fincancial realities? Stick with Debian

[G3ckoG33k]

Fincancial realities? Stick with Debian (www.debian.org), they have showed that their commitment is consistent. BTW, Ubuntu is a slightly rewoked [sic] version of Debian. RedHat created Fedora so they wouldn't 'taint' their commercial version. Again financial realities. No news in that.

Re:Fincancial realities? Stick with Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian is exactly why some of us don't like ubuntu.

Gentoo would still be preferable to Debian, in spite of the twits running it who take up half the bandwidth on the mailserv bitching about top posting.

Re:Fincancial realities? Stick with Debian

[thrillseeker]

Yeah, I hate that.

Gentoo would still be preferable to Debian, in spite of the twits running it who take up half the bandwidth on the mailserv bitching about top posting.

Re:Fincancial realities? Stick with Debian

[MrNiceguy_KS]

In lieu of mod points, Bravo, good sir.

Huh

[Anrego]

I admit I’m not a ubuntu fan, but I don’t take the fact that the entire FOSS community hasn’t immediately dropped everything to fall in line with Ununtu as a sign of hate.

Ubuntu seems to be as popular as ever. In fact a lot of my fellow die hard “ew, ubuntu” friends are now using it (not me though.. never.. NEVVERRRR!!!).

I think much like the google article earlier, ubuntu has gone from young upstart to just “there”. Still strong and doing it’s thing.. but everything they do is no longer news worthy, and they have attracted the usual amount of criticism and people who just plain don’t like them. This is normal.

Re:Huh

[lwsimon]

I was a die-hard ArchLinux user for a couple of years - but then I got a new generation of hardware that had Windows 7 pre-installed, and found it to be... acceptable. These days I'm in Win7 100% of the time, with a LinuxMint VM for most of what I do.

Rolling release sounds great until you have to download 100MB of updates every week on a shitty "broadband" connection in rural Arkansas. Stability has its place.

Re:Huh

[RotateLeftByte]

perhaps you should be using something that is a tad more stable.
Debian or perhaps (here comes the heresy) CentOS?
you certainly don't get 100Mb a week of updates with CentOS. I sometimes get my updates over 3G...

Re:Huh

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you *have* to download the latest packages every week? If the system is working for you at any point you can just stop upgrading, and it is like making your own "stable" release...

The whole idea of a rolling release is to give you power to decide exactly how up to date your system is, even to the level of individual packages. There is nothing forcing you to stay on the bleeding edge.

Re:Huh

[Alex Belits]

Congratulations, you are a tool.

Re:Huh

[Anonymous Coward]

OCD.

Re:Huh

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations. You're a fucking pathetic troll, tasked only with attacking anyone who doesn't agree with your viewpoint. Get a clue. You are an unimportant speck of shit, and no one cares about you. If you died in the next second, no one would notice, and the world would move on having never known about the sad, insignificant waste of atoms that make up the shit heap that is you. Kill yourself and rid us of your worthlessness.

Re:Huh

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually tried to use Ubuntu twice lately and both times it would not work properly on my hardware. On the quad core Lenovo, I now use OpenSuse and on the Lenovo netbook, I use Fedora. A few years ago, when I tried it, I had much the same experience on different Dell and HP hardware - it just would not work properly and I ended up using Mandriva.

So yeah, Ubuntu is probably not quite what it is advertised to be, since judging by the comments on ubuntuforums.org and my own limited experience with it, their QA seems to be slightly worse than other distros.

Re:Huh

[lwsimon]

Nope, CDO. It's like OCD, but the letters are in alphabetical order.

Re:Huh

[lwsimon]

Because if I didn't download 100MB per week, I'd eventually run into a dependency on some important security update, and have to download a couple of gigabytes over my 512kbps DSL line.

Re:Huh

[lwsimon]

LinuxMint is stable enough for my purposes --- it's based on Ubuntu, and I can download an ISO at work and take it home to install once every six months when a new version comes out. Between versions, I really only do security updates.

Re:Huh

[RotateLeftByte]

Mint is the exception to the rule in the Ubuntu camp. IMHO, it is what LTS should be. That only my opinion though.
My personal sticking point is the Six monthly re-release. Yeah, I know I get that with Fedora.. But all my essential systems are CentOS or SLES.
CentOS 5.0 was installed on one box and just applying the updates (no re-installs) is identical to the latest 5.5 + patches. That is what I mean by stable (2.6.18 kernel) over years.
 

Re:Ubuntu got popular.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I like Debian before it was Ubuntu"

Who's this guy ?

[burdicda]

Every single word is negative
Just like he's being paid
A Microsoft Ad to begin the article
All other articles at bottom of page also negative towards Linux

I say this guy's a troll in the first degree

ciao

burdicda

Re:Who's this guy ?

[numbski]

Burma Shave

Re:Who's this guy ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your article reads

Like a haiku written in prose

While petals fall

Re:Who's this guy ?

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree.
Are you
Out of breath?
Or do you
Just like poor poetry?

Pardon me; I was having an asthma attack in the text box.

Re:Who's this guy ?

[ebuck]

Your Linux is just rotten
The command line's long forgotten
Be quirky if you're brave
Burma Shave!

Re:Who's this guy ?

[AdamThor]

hahaha

Re:Who's this guy ?

[zaivala]

Every word is negative
Just like he's being paid
I think this troll's from Microsoft
Or just needs to get laid.

Burma Shave.

...that's how to do it...

Re:Who's this guy ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit that is holy
Best free verse or the worst haiku
Either way, congrats

Re:Who's this guy ?

[Trogre]

Burma Shave? Sounds painful. Is that some scary variant of a Brazilian Wax?

Re:Who's this guy ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Burma Slave

Re:Who's this guy ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The story is published at earthweb.com.

Whois says that earthweb.com is registered through QuinStreet Inc.

From their web site (http://www.quinstreet.com/who_we_are)

"QuinStreet|The Leader in Vertical Marketing"

"We've become the leader in vertical marketing and media online because
we've consistently delivered the right leads at the right volumes of qualified
customer prospects to thousands of industry-leading consumer and business
brands since 1999."

These folks obviously speak for the Linux community.

Gads I love marketing ...

Re:Who's this guy ?

[arielCo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave#Roadside_billboards

Re:Who's this guy ?

[Ash Vince]

Every single word is negative
Just like he's being paid
A Microsoft Ad to begin the article
All other articles at bottom of page also negative towards Linux

I say this guy's a troll in the first degree

ciao

burdicda

Well you can be damn sure he isn't writing that drivel for nothing. Here is a wikipedia page on him though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Byfield

In his defence he does try and put a sort of balanced point across as he sites some counter opinions next to each point a he raises. For instance:

When changes proposed by Ubuntu were slow to be accepted in GNOME -- some say out of hostility -- Shuttleworth began making interface changes to GNOME within Ubuntu.

In the case of the quote above though he does conveniently ignore the fact that Linus had a similar problem with the Gnome devs a few years ago.

The big problem though he he fails to recognise that most of what Ubuntu is trying to do is actually a damn good thing. The Linux kernel is a pretty good peice of software, and with modern PC's being as powerful as they are it has the making of a damn good foundation for a usable OS to complete with Windows. The problem though is that it lacks a central vision. Sometimes two projects that want to pull in different directions just need someone to step in and dictate how they should proceed. This is what Ubuntu brings to the table. In cases where the projects refuse to comply Canonical simply cut both projects loose and roll their own, and this is probably for the best. It might not be the best thing for the projects concerned, but it is the best thing for Ubuntu and if Canonical ultimately open source their own replacement projects it is damn fine thing the open source community as well.

The biggest problem with managing any project, open source or otherwise is managing the ego's of the people involved. This is particularly true of young developers who are freshly out of uni. They usually mellow a bit more with age (I know I have) but even then, nobody likes being told that the way you are going about something is wrong, even if the person telling you is absolutely right. Most of the time though, there are no absolutes and either side can be partially right. In this case compromise from both projects or developers is essential. You only need to browse a few open source mailing lists to see how hard this is for some, and when you couple this with how caustic and socially stunted many young genius developers are I am not surprised that the paid devs just opt to in house the work to people they can reprimand if they behaved in such a manner.

Hopefully, Ubuntu will succeed in its endeavours. Regardless, I do have a feeling that some of the projects they create will end up with a life of their own and be integrated into other distributions. There will always be detractors from it though some with good reasons built on sound arguments. After all, companies are like people in one way: No ones perfect, all they can do is try their best. We just need to remember that their best attempt might go in a different direction to our own.

If anyone does think they can do better than Canonical and Mark Shuttleworth then they are more than welcome to do so. Such is the joy of open source, you can take Ubuntu, and roll your own derivative distribution without Unity or whatever just like they did with Debian.

There are also many in the open source community though who like being in their own small elite cadre of users of another, more geeky OS. These people will always hate anyone who comes along and tries to make their niche OS a mainstream entity that any old fool can use.

Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[SpooForBrains]

Ubuntu has always been the villain. Or, you know, the thing that you watch other people use in bemusement and begrudging appreciation that your goals at least are getting served even if it's not by methods of which you approve.

The old joke was that Ubuntu is Swahili for "can't install Debian". I may even have heard it here.

Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[Dutchmaan]

Ubuntu has always been the villain. Or, you know, the thing that you watch other people use in bemusement and begrudging appreciation that your goals at least are getting served even if it's not by methods of which you approve. The old joke was that Ubuntu is Swahili for "can't install Debian". I may even have heard it here.

I have the distinct feeling that because Ubuntu is viewed as a distro 'for the masses', and die hard Linux users tend to view themselves as 'above the masses', it makes perfect sense that Ubuntu was/is seen as the 'villain' distro. After all, if the masses started using Linux then all the die hards would have to go somewhere else to feel superior.

Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[Ancantus]

I consider it a 'gateway linux'. It has the usability that anyone coming from windows can pick it up and use it. However the hard-core Linux users will usually like to play around with many different operating systems until they find one they like. I have suggested Ubuntu to many of my friends just cause its easy to install and play around with. None of us were born as Linux Vets, (except Linus Torvalds, he may have come out of the womb designing the kernel in his head).

Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is you're an elitist that wishes everything was done via cryptic command line options that require years of study? Ubuntu brought an accessible Linux to the masses and you hate it for that, just say it. (It will still never be enough to make Linux "mainstream" anyway, beyond things like phones and tablets, but even then, that's Google's hard work).

Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[iserlohn]

I love Ubuntu. I don't use it on my desktop or notebook, but I love it nonetheless. I install it for friends and family that don't want Windows, the reasons why are numerous and not really relevant to this discussion.

The feedback from them is usually very good. Some get annoyed now and then that some program doesn't run as it's only available on Windows or OSX, but more and more, the application that people use is found online. The Internet is the great equalizer for operating systems. The platform has essentially moved onto the server side and the browser.

Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[Xtifr]

So what you're saying is you're an elitist that wishes everything was done via cryptic command line options that require years of study?

Never used Debian, have you? At least 95% of Ubuntu's easy "magical" configuration is inherited directly from Debian. The complaints about Debian that lead to the rise of Ubuntu were: too many confusing choices (Ubuntu avoids this by offering several pre-defined "flavors") and a too-long release cycle. Debian is not and has never been hard to configure--it simply offered little or no clue which of its thousands of packages you would want to install in the first place. (The Task manager now solves that problem in part, but that's a more recent development.)

Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[kwark]

>The old joke was that Ubuntu is Swahili for "can't install Debian". I may even have heard it here.

I've been running Debian for years (slink). From stable on servers, testing on the development machines and unstable on my personal (desk|lap)tops. But I finally caved for Ubuntu for my personal desktop after I found that a Ubuntu live CD managed to work out of the box on my HP TX1100, the usual exceptions off course the fingerprint reader and ndiswrapper for wlan (thank you Broadcom for crappy drivers and HP for breaking the mini pciexpress slot so other cards wouldn't work in this machine).

For the first time I could use the touchscreen like intended, something I couldn't get to work with Debian/unstable (and when I finally figured how to get it to work the crappy machine died (and judging from the number of owners reporting the exact same breakdown symptoms HP managed to deliver a fine piece of crap)). So when a new laptop arrived (Thinkpad) I popped in a kubuntu dvd, wiped the Debian install and have been happily running a functional machine since, except for yet again the fingerprint reader everything just works. Ubuntu may be evil by someone his standards, I'm becoming to lazy to keep up to date with Debian/unstable.

Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[jedidiah]

> Ubuntu brought an accessible Linux to the masses and you hate it for that, just say it

Nope. Redhat and Mandrake brought an accessible Linux to the masses.

Ubuntu is just the last in a long line of ease of use distributions that pushed things forward.

This fixation on Ubuntu to the exclusion of every other contributor also ruffles a lot of feathers (and rightfully so).

Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[epine]

The old joke was that Ubuntu is Swahili for "can't install Debian".

I bailed from Debian during the three year Sarge release cycle. Any for what purpose? To paraphrase Spiro Agnew: frittering fruitloops of freedom.

Ubuntu is Swahili for "pissed off about mending my broken backport LAMP stack". Maybe I shouldn't have gone down that road and just stuck with what worked out of the box in 2002. I mean really, if a three year old LAMP stack isn't broken, why fix it?

To my mind, Debian submitted a formal resignation from the torch that Ubuntu now carries.

Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[Anonymous Coward]

They already did, it's called #openbsd. Seriously, if you want to talk to a bunch of people who think that they're a gift to mankind just visit their channel and do something stupid...like ask for help.

Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[user no. 590291]

After all, if the masses started using Linux then all the die hards would have to go somewhere else to feel superior.

I heard Hurd is looking for new users.

Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[ndege]

The old joke was that Ubuntu is Swahili for "can't install Debian". I may even have heard it here.

Great quote! Thanks for sharing. It made my day!

Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu has always been the villain...

We are at war with Ubuntu. We have always been at war with Ubuntu.

Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[quickOnTheUptake]

I consider it a 'gateway linux'.

I think this is a great way to look at Ubuntu.
Easy to install.
Gives you a taste of what Linux offers compared to Windows (virtual desktops, no virus scanner, able to automount your USB, and yeah, your webcam works)
GREAT community for beginners.
Eventually though, I think many people who start this way realize that Ubuntu can be quite a bit buggier and hungrier than Linux needs to be, and once they are comfortable with Linux, they migrate to something else.

Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[thsths]

> I have the distinct feeling that because Ubuntu is viewed as a distro 'for the masses'

It is: it works out of the box, does most useful things without installing loads of additional software, and it is nice to look at.

But that does not have to be a bad thing. I could run Debian, but what do I get apart from a big pain setting up everything? The smug smile on my face saying that I still have what it takes? Sorry, but I think I have matured past that stage.

Ubuntu is pragmatic. So is Windows, or Mac. They are all mainstream. You may not like it, but mainstream is where most people are, and it makes perfect sense.

Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not Swahili. Swahili is spoken in central East-Africa, in South Africa -where Ubuntu's from- it would be Zulu or Xhosa, or one of many other Bantu languages.

Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[Compaqt]

>After all, if the masses started using Linux then all the die hards would have to go somewhere else to feel superior.

Well, maybe for some people, but I think it was great for both noobs and old hands who Just Want Things to Work.

The decrease in love recently seems more related to Mark Shuttleworth's recent moves to turn Ubuntu into Mac. He says he wants to create a new way, better than both Win and Mac, but it's seems more and more just a Mac clone with some arbitrary differences.

Throwing away Xorg in favor of Wayland for dubious benefits.
Unity shell (OK for netbooks) on desktops too.
Global menus (at the top of the monitor). Yeah, that's great for total noobs. On a 24-inch monitor (increasingly standard), the menu to perform commands on a window sitting in the lower right corner is way at the top left of the monitor.

The Mac obsession even extends down to the ugly purple wallpaper. Weird.

Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[tixxit]

I am now a long time Ubuntu user. Previously, I have used (in order) over about 10 years; Red Hat, Slackware, LFS, Debian, Gentoo, Ubuntu. I like Ubuntu because I am a programmer and as a programmer I like to program. I love Linux, but don't like fiddling around with it as much as I did when I was a teenager. I'd much rather be doing things I currently enjoy. However, I'm happy that us Ubuntu users make you feel better about being able to install an operating system.

Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[Requiem18th]

Not true. Many are making this mistake, assuming this is about elitist decrying Ubuntu because it's mainstremish. Also, as some have noted. Ubuntu is still one of the most popular distros. At the same time it's true that there is an appreciable change in critical reception. You just don't hear people praising it as much as before. Like the post says, the love is gone.

What happened? What happened is that Canonical...Mark, alienated a lot of the evangelist types in community by a series of bad decisions.

For starters Mark overthrow the work the community had done massaging Ubuntu's identity into something nice, they just finally worked the earth tones into something gorgeous (pic Karmic) and hired as designers a bunch of Apple rejects who changed ubuntu into this colorblind abomination (pic Lucid). This by itself was no big deal, it's just a theme.

But Ubuntu was a community process. The active community rejected the change. Mark response was "Ubuntu is not a democracy". That was the big deal. He might as well just have said "fuck u lolololol". And it got worse. People in the community tried hard to avert this change by using the proper channels. The forum and the brainstorm sites. The forum threads got locked, the brainstorm issue was safely ignored. This in turn turned attention to the fact that the brainstorm site is being dutifully ignored. The feature list of new releases is all about Ubuntu One, Ubuntu store, preparation to sell stuff through the package manager, and other unasked for changes like all the fidgety with the notification area, with Ubuntu basically reinventing its own notification area and trying to integrate media players, twitter, OS management and facebook into the same spot.

Ubuntu still has an active community but it used to have a "movement" that it no longer has. At least for myself, I can describe the change from "Woot best OS in the world!!" to "Uhm, yes it's one of the most acceptable Linux implementations out there."

Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Put another way:

It is only possible to be hip in inverse proportion to the speed of communication within a civilization...

Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, the die hards have nothing to worry about.

poor inkscapee & his imaginary friend

[rubycodez]

Ubuntu use is growing year by year, more people must think its OK than the "bad" Linux There are other distros with a better philosophy, sure, like Debian. But they lack the polish to allow me to get up and running quickly, I've years ago tired of having to spend dozens of hours to get everything to work. Ah well, I could say my ubuntu desktop is 85% Debian

Wow, terrible article

[raddan]

The author seems to intentionally conflate normal differences of opinion as "controversial", and he clearly sees forking as a bad thing. Anybody who's spent time on github knows that forks are a sign that a project is interesting enough to attract eyeballs... Anyway, as a regular (and satisfied) Ubuntu user, this is the first I've heard that I'm not happy...

Re:Wow, terrible article

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that you know that you are not happy, could you, and everyone else, please get to expressing it? This blog posting was kind of relying on that, you know...

Re:Wow, terrible article

[notsoanonymouscoward]

Agreed! My desktop... Ubuntu, my Mythbox... Ubuntu. My always on ancient laptop ... Puppy Linux (Ubuntu based now). I stick to the LTS images and don't move until a new release looks good wrt forum chatter. Thus far I'm pretty content. The only other dist catching my eye has been Mint and oh look what that is based on... ;-)

Re:Ubuntu got popular.

[hoggoth]

The unwashed masses run Windows.
The elite run OSX.
The elite of the elite run Ubuntu.
The elite of the elite of the elite run Debian. ... ... ...
I run AmigaOS. Yeah, you feel my cool don't you?

Not up to par with others

[Anonymous Coward]

It feels weird when using it....when moving the mouse around and viewing menus and stuff it just doesn't feel user friendly or like OS X or Windows. I think its still a poor version of Linux. Its alot better than others, but not up to par with Windows and OS X.

Re:Not up to par with others

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone shit in your mouth today?

Re:Not up to par with others

[jedidiah]

It doesn't have enough confusing menus (like Windows) or isn't nearly crippled enough (MacOS).

The love went

[Hatta]

To Arch. A bare bones distro with excellent documentation turns out to be a much better experience than layers and layers of GUI junk that never works right anyway.

Re:The love went

[Beelzebud]

I've been using Arch for nearly a year now. I distro hopped until I found Arch, and never looked back.

Re:The love went

[rubycodez]

that's a fantastic server distro, but still not having massive market share of Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Sabayon, etc.

Re:The love went

[Beelzebud]

It's really not for everyone though. Those other distros come pre-configured with a lot of software, whereas in Arch you start with a base system and customize every aspect of it. As I said, definitely not for everyone, but for the niche it's focused on, it's amazing.

Re:The love went

[Hatta]

It might not have the market share those big names have, but even as a desktop Arch is far and away superior. Arch is capable of all the GUI niceties the others have, you just have to follow some simple instructions to get them. Since it's so well documented, and it actually works as described, this adds up to a better experience than Ubuntu, where things may or may not work as expected, and when they break you have to delve through forums instead of a nicely edited, fully hyperlinked wiki.

Re:The love went

[Anonymous Coward]

The big problem with Arch is the lack of signed packages. I would never use a distro without this extra level of security. Everything else in Arch is perfect.

Re:The love went

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, arch likes constantly breaking stuff as well (resulting in "not working as expected"), and even though it only takes me about an hour to get my standard arch setup running (includes compiling some stuff...), I kinda tend to run Ubuntu more and more. Less maintenance required and still up to date software.

Re:The love went

[Beelzebud]

The Arch community rocks. Period, end of story. Their Wiki is the reason I stuck with Arch, and ended up learning all about how Linux works, in the process.

Re:The love went

[supersloshy]

Don't forget how Ubuntu is absolutely patch-crazy, whereas Arch only patches when absolutely necessary (like the recent python3-becoming-default incident)

Re:The love went

[Anonymous Coward]

I approve of this sentiment. =)
Too bad Arch can't fix their ati driver (over a week now)...

Re:The love went

[Anonymous Coward]

It might not have the market share those big names have, but even as a desktop Arch is far and away superior.

Arch is bad as a production server distribution. Why? It's maintainers officially don't give a shit about security. Arch doesn't even have package signing. Even Windows does.

Re:The love went

[Anonymous Coward]

Slackware has been doing this for years... still going strong.

Re:The love went

[Anonymous Coward]

Enjoy the free rootkit included with every "pacman -Syu"!

Re:The love went

[Anonymous Coward]

The veteran community likes arch, and there's a good reason for it - it's awesome. for the masses, I don't think anything compares to the ubuntu experience.
they have achieved something that no other distro have achieved before - usability for non technical people, cutting edge and pretty stable.
currently, no other distro provides it. they have made a great step forward for the linux world.

Re:The love went

[Anonymous Coward]

My thoughts exactly. Also, when I tried Ubuntu years ago a big turnoff was the lack of a root user. I don't want to type my password every five minutes when I'm configuring my system. I was happy to know it was possible to enable root user, and that's what I did. However, it broke pretty much everything not broken before.

Re:The love went

[Securityemo]

Hell yes. I used to run Slackware for four years until I switched to Arch. I don't manage server farms, I don't need complicated internal configuration systems - the package and configuration system is simple enough that you can get it by just skimming the manpages. And the source package repository AUR is just wonderful, since usually someone has already repackaged and fiddled with the source so it compiles, which I always found a pain to do under Slack.

Re:The love went

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you should be using FreeBSD.

They kept

[Anonymous Coward]

They kept fucking around with the interface instead of making it actually work.

Mint's doing a better job of being The Desktop Linux For Ordinary People than Ubuntu is.

I didn't hate Ubuntu BEFORE it was cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Nerds are the worst hipsters and the minute I saw that Ubuntu was going for a Linux usable by everyone that it would eventually be hated by a decent segment of nerds. I'm actually surprised that it is as respected as it is.

Re:I didn't hate Ubuntu BEFORE it was cool

[jedidiah]

...perhaps that's because companies and projects don't start pulling stupid sh*t until they are popular enough to think they can get away with it?

"We don't have to really pay attention the the users anymore. We have enough inertia to get us past any criticism."

It's unprofitable?

[trollertron3000]

The article claims the company is unprofitable but how would anyone outside know if Canonical is profitable? Isn't it privately held? I've never heard of a private company publishing their numbers. I couldn't find any data to back up either side outside of rumor or hearsay. Does anyone have any info regarding this?

Re:It's unprofitable?

[RichM]

I've never heard of a private company publishing their numbers.

They are a British company and in the UK a company's accounts are public information - you get them from Companies House.
http://www.companies-house.gov.uk/toolsToHelp/WCInfo.shtml

Re:It's unprofitable?

[l-ascorbic]

Last I checked, they're an Isle of Man company. Big difference.

Re:It's unprofitable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every UK company publishes annual accounts that are considered public documents.

Re:It's unprofitable?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have heard that privat companies have told their financial situation. But only when it is going well on them. As publishing good situation lures more partners and deals and so on grows the income.

No one wants to put their money to company whats financial situation is not well known.

And that is the problem at Canonical. When the Mark stops feeding money to Canonical, it will drop off. Mark is just bluffing so much as he can to get as many other partners and clients to place their money to Canonical so Mark can stop feeding money. Pretending that Canonical is doing fine but "still needs support".

If Canonical would be well running and succeeding, it would have revealed their financial status right away. Showing the financial grow and how big it has been and how Ubuntu is the future.

 

Satisfied Ubuntu user

[airfoobar]

User satisfaction renders your flamebait irrelevant.

What?

[Yaos]

Some guy that has nothing to do with computers creates FUD about Ubuntu for no particular reason, other than unsourced criticisms that don't exist; that's supposed to convince us Ubuntu is bad?

Slashvertisement

[aBaldrich]

One thousand ads for a shitty article, half of which is Ubuntu's history and not actual information.

Cont3mpo

[Anonymous Coward]

And Unity?
And GNOME 3?
And Global Menu?
And Software Center 4.0?
And Banshee?
And Qt integrate?
And LibreOffice?
And Wayland?

All the answers: Ubuntu 11.04
(well, Wayland in 11.10, he)

TFA is BS; Ubuntu is pushing Linux forward nicely

[dkegel]

Really? Bruce Byfield is upset that Ubuntu switched its /etc/init.d handler to upstart? That's an awfully picky thing to complain about, especially since other distros did, too. Switching to the Unity shell is a bit edgy, but hey, it's been a while since there's actually been competition in desktops, we could use some. Most people long ago picked Gnome or KDE, and those projects have to some extent been coasting. Perhaps Unity will light a fire under Gnome like Chrome did for Firefox...

It's M$ again

[hesaigo999ca]

M$ sending in fake linux programmers in to help destroy and add code bugs to the distro, as REAL linux programmers would never do that... ; )
also, M$ blasting linux and open source what ever chance they get, means I need to blast them every chance I get...catch 22, who came first, them or me, ....I guess it depends on the position ; )

Re:It's M$ again

[BitZtream]

I'll bet $100 Bill Gates was born at least 20 years before you and somewhere between 10 and 15 before Linux (too lazy to look for exact dates), so Microsoft came first.

Re:It's M$ again

[hesaigo999ca]

Ooops, your sorely mistaken, because Linux is based on Unix, and Unix came way before Windows...

Typical cat fight

[pearl298]

that you get when trying to herd cats! It is mazing that most FOSS users will even agree on using the Linux Kernel and a quick search reveals plenty of bruised egos even there. IMHO this is both one of t e great advantages and the great disadvantages of Linux - INFINITE customisation! There are not merely 2000+ "distros", but 20M "custom installations"!

Re:Typical cat fight

[marcosdumay]

"It is mazing that most FOSS users will even agree on using the Linux Kernel"

We have no choice. GNU HURD still didn't release. But when it is out you'll see, there will be no need to agree on anything anymore about the kernel!

Re:Ubuntu got popular.

[froggymana]

Real men write their own OSs and drivers.

BLOGMYGOD

[SpeedStreet]

Yet another incendiary post on a site that generates revenue by number of browser clicks. I'll skip TFA, thanks. Ubuntu seems to be doing just fine. They are generating attention with their new UI, the Ubuntu Server release is one of the best out there, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of reasons for people to 'hate' on it since it benefits upstream as well as down. Who's letting this trash get to the default RSS?

Re:BLOGMYGOD

[reub2000]

I read the article, and I must say that was good decision. Every 6 months they ship a set of ISO images that are both up to date, and usually just work. I mean really, trying to accuse canonical having nefarious plans with upstart?

Re:what? - Exactly!

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is Ubuntu the 'bad linux'?

You have never gone to your Linux distro and say "You've been a very bad distro! You bitch! You need a spanking!"

And then gone off to your favorite porn site and...well.... you know.

And considering the Ubuntu is the desktop Linux for the casual user as opposed for the corp. environment like Fedora, Ubuntu is of course the very bad filthy little whore of a Linux distro!

2 words Mono and Moonlight

[Anonymous Coward]

well thats actually 3 words but the point is that shoving in Microsoft's "Sue-Bait" into the interface/programs has really turned people off..... that and the fact that older versions looked nicer(my opinion) really turns off more people(ie people that don't know that Mono and Moonlight could get people(not necesarily users) sued or put out of business).... one site that covers this/did cover this for quite some time is techrights.org

Re:2 words Mono and Moonlight

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. All the love went to Mono. You want love? Then go Mono!

I feel the same way

[Presto Vivace]

Freedom means you should also be able to make money and act selfishly with your distro or open source project. I really don't get why it's always such a problem for open source advocates. If you want truly free software you let everyone do whatever they want with it.

But what would I know, I am a humble marketing communications consultant.

Re:Ubuntu got popular.

[Desler]

The elite of the elite run Ubuntu.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha *deep breath* hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Good joke...

Re:Ubuntu got popular.

[BitZtream]

Freaking awesome, I knew writing an OS for an ATmega chip instead of just using FreeRTOS would make me more manly. Now I have confirmation, my wife is so gonna do me tonight.

10.10

[jimmerz28]

I thought they did a very nice job with 10.10 as well as their entire re-branding and re-design of their website.

There's really no way I can see Ubuntu as "evil" as their usability certainly increased from 10.04 to 10.10, but I guess I need to be a blogger to make sweeping generalizations to bring viewers in.

Easy Linux != Linux for Linux Lovers

[natehoy]

If you want to make an easy-to-use, accessible Linux that your average user can use out of the box, you have to make a series of compromises. If you want to do so for profit, you have to make even more compromises.

First thing to go is the notion of a completely "libre" copy of Linux. Your average computer user expects to be able to listen to MP3s. They expect to be able to watch DVDs. They want full support for as much of the hardware as they can, including the full capability of their video card and wireless network card. If you block binary drivers and license-encumbered codecs, you'll alienate vast thundering herds of the very same users you really want to attract.

Second thing to go is a complex security model. A desktop user wants (at most) one set of credentials. They don't want a userland profile and a root profile and to have to remember to "go root" every few days to check for updates. You can make them comfortable (mostly) offering up their user credentials for updates and software installs, but you aren't going to get them to drop to a command line and su or sudo for simple tasks.

Third thing to go is an expectation that the user wants to make zillions of choices at install time, or desire the infinite configuration flexibility that is Linux. Average user does not want to hand-craft a kernel to the exact specifications of their chipset, because they haven't the faintest clue what a "chipset" means or what instruction set works for them. They don't want to choose between 5 desktop managers. They don't want to optimize the crap out of every possible aspect of the user experience by modifying xorg.conf. They don't want a 45-slider volume control. They want to be able to install it and choose between a few themes, shuffle a few fonts, set a background image of their grandkids, and adjust the speaker volume.

That's the funny thing. The people I give Ubuntu, Mint, Peppermint, etc to are the people it's designed for. If someone comes up to me and starts nattering on about worrying about having the latest version of Samba and how they are agonizing over whether KDE or Gnome is God's Gift to Window Management, or showing off a perfect chi in the form of an xorg.conf file, I'm not about to open a can of Ubuntu on them.

But the people I give Ubuntu and its variants to are still running it and enjoy it.

Distrohoppers (like me) have our loves come and go. I run a new distro in a VM about once a month, and distrohop like I'm a Jack Russell Terrier hyped up on crystal meth. I've got a couple of old machines that probably have spent as much time in various Linux distro installers as they have running Firefox.

But my desktop machine (which I share with my wife) runs the latest Mint. So does my wife's netbook. Because I want them to work, and I want them to be easy to use, and I want to be able to do what I want to do, when I want to do it.

Ubuntu is really good at that.

Re:Easy Linux != Linux for Linux Lovers

[Compaqt]

Well, that was before.

If the people you've given Ubuntu to love it, by definition wouldn't necessarily love all the changes Mark is making in the UI (Unity netbook interface on a desktop). They may, they may not, but they won't love it just because it's called "Ubuntu".

After all, if they want something that Just Works, they don't have any desire for tinkering and changing things for the sake of it. As Mark is currently doing.

Your other points are great. Ubuntu used to be a great distro for normal people.

Re:Easy Linux != Linux for Linux Lovers

[natehoy]

Possibly, and when Unity becomes the default (I don't see it on 10.10, and the users I give Ubuntu to tend to stay with LTS releases so they are mostly on 10.04), I'll have to reevaluate it. My understanding was that Unity could be turned off and the UI could remain pretty Gnome-like, and if that's the case by the next LTS then no worries, I'll change the default after the install.

I don't actually use Ubuntu directly, I actually tend to use one of the Mint variants (Mint for desktops and newer laptops, Peppermint One or Peppermint Ice for older laptops and netbooks). I find that it insulates me a bit from the "Shuttleworth Shuffle". :)

Re:Easy Linux != Linux for Linux Lovers

[jbolden]

I think you are being unfair in saying he's changing things for the sake of it. He's doing what NeXT did when they started breaking from the X / paradigm.

It failed in its mission

[atomicbutterfly]

Used to be Ubuntu was the big Linux hero, the shining knight that would drive Linux onto every desktop and kick bad old Windows to the curb. But now Ubuntu is the Bad Linux. What's going on...

Ubuntu was hailed as the distro which had everyone excited that FINALLY, Windows would have some decent competition from Linux such that Linux might actually achieve double-digit desktop percentage use. That was, after all, its prime goal: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1

After 6 years, Ubuntu has failed in this goal. It's certainly brought a lot more attention to Linux on the desktop (it was enough for me to make the switch at least), however in terms of developing a more mainstream effect on the desktop computing world - nothing much has happened. Linux is still mostly unknown when it comes to desktop systems, at least with overall market use. The goal has not been achieved, and most likely won't be achieved by the time mobile platforms/cloud operating systems outrank traditional desktop OS's.

People got disillusioned, that's all.

Re:It failed in its mission

[Beelzebud]

And yet it's still the most widely used distro by a lot, and still gains new users... Did you think they'd get double digit numbers quick, or that they should give up when it didn't happen over night? It will take dedication to make Linux something that will enjoy double digit usage, and I see nothing wrong with the Ubuntu team not giving up, simply because they didn't achieve that goal overnight.

Re:It failed in its mission

[atomicbutterfly]

I know it's the most widely used disto, but compared to the number of users of Windows users which fixing bug 1 is suppose to displace, that's not a lot. I also never thought they'd get double digits quick, but 6 years is NOT OVERNIGHT.

Re:It failed in its mission

[melting_clock]

Ubuntu is so locked down that Windows is free in comparison. I have run a Linux distro since the mid 90s and have had Linux as my primary OS for many years, with a dual boot for Windows XP so that I can play the occasional game. Ubuntu has made it increasingly difficult to upgrade to new versions of applications that are important to me, like, openoffice, firefox, vlc player and many more. You are locked into whatever outdated version they offer in their repository. It makes it a painful exercise to install the proprietary Nvidia drivers that I want to use. As a Linux user, I don't care about some ideological extremists view of what constitutes "free" software and have no problems with using proprietary software when it is the better option for me. In Windows I can upgrade existing applications, install current versions and new drivers at any time. The OS and applications are not locked together. I realise that it is not as easy to do this with Linux, as there is no agreed standard of an OS installation and probably never will be. This is both a strength and a weakness.

Re:It failed in its mission

[notsoanonymouscoward]

Adding other repositories to your package manager / software sources is really that difficult? Might want to try a few searches and check out a howto or two...

Re:It failed in its mission

[judeancodersfront]

It just redivided the 1%.

It's always been crap

[metrix007]

Except now people are starting to wake up and realize that as well. It is a buggy bloated distro that got lucky because they mailed cd's to people. However now people are starting to realize Fedore and Mandriva exist. It's that simple.

Re:It's always been crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Fedora and Mandriva suffer from an inferior packaging system which has weak dependencies and can't handle upgrades/downgrades well.

Re:It's always been crap

[jbolden]

Except now people are starting to wake up and realize that as well. It is a buggy bloated distro that got lucky because they mailed cd's to people. However now people are starting to realize Fedore and Mandriva exist. It's that simple.

Mandriva doesn't exist anymore. The company went broke again. http://www.mageia.org/en/ is the replacement if it works out.

Distro fads.

[Anonymous Coward]

At the end of of the day, it's all the same penguins all the way down. You can apt-get, yum, urpmi, emerge, pacman, even ./configure, make, make install but it is still the GNU/Linux core underneeth the spinning cubes stuff. Something cooler will come along and be the next big distro, just like Geocities/Myspace/Bebo/Twitter/Aol/Facebook/Diaspora are fads.

Re:Distro fads.

[Anonymous Coward]

cd /usr/ports Fin

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Ubuntu got popular.

[somersault]

I wrote Linus

The Linux "Community" (gack!) can be embarrassing

[sgage]

Perhaps this trolling story has accomplished its goal: I'm about to abandon all Linux Distros forever just to avoid being considered a part of such an assholish "community" (gag). Seriously, people were down on Ubuntu the minute it became popular. If Ubuntu was successful, obviously it must be evil. And if their distro is coherent, easy to install, use and update, well then it's for the newbie masses, and must be ungood.

Or they set up defaults in a way that didn't please you, though you can easily configure it any way you wanted. No, they were "ramming their dictatorial decisions down my throat". Godz, how many times have I heard that! Oh, but asking someone to configure something is too hard for the newbies. But wait a minute, I thought Ubuntu was bad because it was too newbie-friendly.

A bunch of confused, hypocritical, self-contradictory, whining assholes. If you don't like a distro, FFS don't use it - it's really quite that simple. There's a distro out there for everyone.

Just Works - no longer

[Eric Wayte]

I quit using Ubuntu with 9.10 after it would lock up my eee PC 1005HA during the install. It even locked up running off the USB!
I filed a bug, which promptly went to /dev/null. Now I run Fedora and it Just Works.

Canonicals interest IS creating a great Linux dist

[BitZtream]

is Canonical more into serving their own interests than creating a great Linux distro?"

Thats a fucking retarded statement. Canonical is in business selling Linux, making a great Linux distro IS there business even if you're too much of a pickle smoking fanboy to realize that.

If you think Ubuntu sucks and your distro is far superior, you qualify as a complete and total idiot, and a fanboy too boot.

Its not THAT much different, so you're really starting to argue user preference and you've left the realm of qualitative measurements and went to pure opinion, in which case your statement doesn't matter to anyone anywhere as ... you're nothing more than a fanboy fawning over your beau rather than discussing the merits or shortcomings of an OS.

The only people who think Ubuntu suck or its 'the bad Linux' are fanboys. Any sort of sane person with a normal amount of socializing can easily discuss Ubuntu in context with other distros without going over the edge because they did a few things that they particularly don't like.

Ubuntu does all Linux many good deeds. I'm sorry if you don't like it because its popular, you're just an idiot. I'm sorry if you don't like it because they are doing things to make money, you're just an idiot too stupid to not know you shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you, but thats pretty much the typical OSS zealot anyway.

Finally: CmdrTaco - STOP LETTING KDAWSON AND TIMOTHY POST STORIES USING YOUR ACCOUNT. There was a time when you wouldn't have posted such retarded trolls to the front page, and you wouldn't have given them the clicks for what is a blatent attempt to gain page views by inciting the raging mob of fanboys. When did you guys start officially taking slashvertisments? Hell, I'm willing to pay to get slashdotted too, how much?

Ubuntu bad!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly why Windows/Apple is dominant! Because the Linux community?, can't stand together for toffee! Get a f0££en life!

Re:TFA is BS; Ubuntu is pushing Linux forward nice

[MonsterTrimble]

Perhaps Unity will light a fire under Gnome like Chrome did for Firefox...

Mod parent up please. Unity (specifically 2D) is the only DE that is making me look long and hard at jumping from LXDE. I love LXDE but I miss the polish. (Disclaimer: Former diehard KDE user who left after it became clear that real development had stalled except for it being 'pretty').

Ad banner troll

[David Gerard]

The story is an ad-banner trolling exercise in synthesizing a controversy. Thanks for helping them, Slashdot!

Never bought...

[alexborges]

"Used to be Ubuntu was the big Linux hero..."

I stopped reading right there. Real Linux people do not think on those terms. Linux is linux, distros are distros and some of them are pretty nice and dumb (suse), nice and slow (ubuntu), fast and ugly(RH and incarnations), huge and cumbersome but cool (debians/fedoras)... and nobody is out there to save the world.

Re:Never bought...

[Anonymous Coward]

you forgot slim and fast (slackware)

not an xor

[sootman]

"is it typical fanboy fickleness, or is Canonical more into serving their own interests than creating a great Linux distro?"

yes. :-)

Since they

[hackus]

..started the whole Wayland thing.

I am all for a new display system, as long as it does everything X does, only better and more.

So far though I don't see that from Wayland.

So I feel annoyed, and visions of administration nightmares I will have to face with X gone and stuck with a immature, hastily assembled replacement by another "Lets Invent the Wheel 2.0" again.

-Hack

Re:Since they

[Anonymous Coward]

..started the whole Wayland thing.

I am all for a new display system, as long as it does everything X does, only better and more.

So far though I don't see that from Wayland.

So I feel annoyed, and visions of administration nightmares I will have to face with X gone and stuck with a immature, hastily assembled replacement by another "Lets Invent the Wheel 2.0" again.

-Hack

You mean the whole Wayland-thing that Red Hat started? Yeah, totally sucks that Canonical started that.

Re:Since they

[Error27]

They didn't start the Wayland thing. Keith Packard and the other Xorg hackers started Wayland. It will be good. Linux people have been lying to ourselves for too long that X11 is an acceptable windowing system.

Wayland will still have an X server in it for legacy apps.

Re:Since they

[hackus]

I am talking about Canonical announcing they will be using Wayland and replacing X.

-Hack

Re:Since they

[Knuckles]

Like Red Hat will. You would have preferred that they not plan to use, when it's ready, the X replacement that was coded by X hackers to address the shortcomings of X, and which will have an X server built in for legacy apps anyway? Really?

Re:Ubuntu got popular.

[hoggoth]

Ummm.... thanks.
You can just mod me funny or send money or something next time.

Where'd the love go?

[Grizzley9]

At least in my book, it went to Linux Mint. http://www.linuxmint.com/

Ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Bruce Byfield seems to be completely illiterate about open source. Linux is much bigger than Ubuntu, Redhat etc.. etc.. Using an analogy - If open-source is government then Ubuntu is the president, for now. Democracy remains strong only if the current head gives way to a new elected head. So it doesn't matter whether Ubuntu is rising or falling.

Subtroll

[Dimes]

Given the pre roll ad, the split to three pages format, and the "middlemanagement" focus of the web site I consider the article to be somewhere between circumspect and irrelevant. However, I'm not a fan of"init" either :)

Perception

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is your initial perception was off and eventually it came down to reality.

Because like anything else in life...

[scottbomb]

...you get what you pay for?

Re:Because like anything else in life...

[jedidiah]

So that's why my Mac is falling apart right now and I can't do half as much with MCE as I can with MythTV?

The summary sucks...

[bmo]

And the article itself is a bunch of hooey.

It's almost like I'm on 4chan/g/

Personally, I like Ubuntu even while I find fault with it. While nothing is perfect, out of all the distributions, it has the least amount of BS.

That is until you try to add the kubuntu meta-package. Friends don't let friends add the kubuntu meta-package - they do kde-full instead.

Speaking of which, the Pardus team could certainly teach the kubuntu idiots how to configure KDE. Pardus is god-tier KDE.

Particular note to any Kubuntu devs here: You have done more harm to the adoption of KDE than anyone else on the planet. You're incompetent.
--
BMO

Re:The summary sucks...

[Anonymous Coward]

>Implying /g/ is to talk about technology.
(lol! 4chan cant be taken seriously)
Also, Kubuntu is no that bad nowadays.

but
+1 the summary is a flamewar igniter.

Ubuntu, we love you

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't ever go away....

Vista SP1 and Window 7 came out?

[jgtg32a]

Vista SP1 and Window 7 came out it which dealt with a great deal of the "complaints" that the target audience of Ubuntu had (more or less beginners and XP converts). Couple that with them not really being in the news (free advertisement) and that'll do quite a bit to your reputation.

Re:Vista SP1 and Window 7 came out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu still has equivalent features to even the latest version of Windows! For example, while Windows 7 will decide to randomly brighten my day by herding all my desktop icons to the top-left corner of the screen, destroying my carefully-organized desktop you bastards how hard is it to preserve icon positions it's been doing this since Windows 95 why haven't you fixed it you LAZY INCOMPETENT IDIOTS ... *deep breath*... *calm*... GNOME on Ubuntu tries to provide the same experience by randomly shuffling the order of my panel items with each boot! Sure, it's not quite the same, but at least they're trying!

Re:Vista SP1 and Window 7 came out?

[James_Duncan8181]

GNOME on Ubuntu tries to provide the same experience by randomly shuffling the order of my panel items with each boot!

This. I don't know why this is so hard to fix, it drives me a bit crazy.

Shouldn't the troll be in the comments

[lordbeejee]

instead of putting up summaries?

Re:Shouldn't the troll be in the comments

[Alex Belits]

The original trolling is in the article. Trolling in comments is done by article author's colleagues from marketing companies.

unity

[synapse7]

I find it amusing he mentioned Ubuntu as "ripping off debian", so by that means how many other distros are ripping off debian, or even ubuntu... I disregard the entire article as bunk, there is only a single mention of the change to the unity desktop, which explain most of the "unexplainable" changes he brings up. The unity desktop is also in a very alpha state and will undoubtedly change substantially prior to a beta release and it will feature functionality similar to the mac by moving the menubar into a taskbar/panel. This will obviously (probably) not be the choice for ppl with 24" monitors, but will be beneficial to smaller PCs. Jason

Pfff, nothing new

[SmallFurryCreature]

There have been a LOT of Linux distro's over the years and more then one has been the darling and then lost in the crowd. Once Red Hat was the darling as well, then it got to the point that it didn't move fast enough on some releases, RPM dependency hell was getting old and people looked for something better.

Mandrake/Mandriva/whatever, Suse have been in the same position. Then one was hailed for its excellent hardware manager, then one for getting sound to work from the start and later Wifi.

Ubuntu has a path, it's path just as all the other distro's is based on what its controllers think is the best. By nature, it will be VERY rare for your idea of the best path to be the same as someone elses.

Do I agree with the moves Ubuntu has made? No, not really. Xorg is a beast but many of us actually make use of one its more obscure capabilties. Not everyone of us thinks a single screen or dual-head on a single GPU is enough. The unity interface seems yet another attempt to start something new which will suffer from lack of testing and not be able to deal with all the edge cases that are out there.

But does it matter? If Ubuntu guesses wrong, then it will simply become another also ran and someone else will take over. Or not.

The beauty about opensource is that ultimately the software does NOT have to be commercially successful to be successful. If ONE user, even the developer himself, finds it useful, then it is useful. Ignore all those "this is the year of Linux on the desktop" people. The very nature of opensource means that this will never happen (it would be Distro X on the desktop) and it just doesn't matter.

The simple fact is that bone headed choices that ruin a distro are nothing new. Just ask MS about ME, Bob, Vista and all its mobile versions. Just that somehow people accept they got no choice when it comes to MS software but think every opensource developer should be at their beg and call.

He! Apple fanboys, how much say did you have about the switch to OSX? He! MS fanboys, soundblaster support in Vista/7, did you give approval for the sound system to be overhauled and make your soundcard useless?

Gosh no. But Ubuntu changes the default layout that you can easily switch back and the sky is falling.

Don't like it? Then you as a user have to accept it because that is what users do. I don't go to McD and insist they serve a tofu-burger do I? No. Then why do you insist into going into the soupkitchen and insisting on what they should serve? Are you that entitled you can decide what other people should do with their time?

Ubuntu is only hated by those who have an agenda, usually the downfall of MS. The real unix/linux users simply see it as a distro that did remarkably well in the "just works" department but does need work if you want to get anything special done.

It is what everything devolves into.

[fwarren]

Eventually it is all numbers, nickels and noise....oh, and who gets credit.

Question is, why was the love there?

[countertrolling]

Ubuntu has always been very convoluted. Damn near impossible to install without a connection, or from the ISO with a USB boot stick. What's up with that? I want a system that can operate locally.

Re:Question is, why was the love there?

[Knuckles]

What are you talking about?

Always been there...

[Urza9814]

Pfff, I hated Ubuntu before it was cool :P

Seriously though, Mandriva is a MUCH better distro for new Linux users. There's some hardware (big brand OEM laptops, nothing exotic) that I can't get the Ubuntu installer to even boot up on. Meanwhile, I've installed the latest version of Mandriva on everything from top of the line new machines to fifteen year old hardware without ever seeing any issues. And even when you get Ubuntu to install, I've never managed to get everything to actually work easy - usually it's three to four days messing with things - and this is from someone who knows a decent bit about Linux (currently running Arch). With Mandriva, everything just works right out of the install. Even the weird Dell branded Broadcom wifi chips will work fine without any effort in the recent Mandriva releases.

Re:Always been there...

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh, I hated Mandriva back when it was Mandrake, I hated Ubuntu since I heard of it, and I hate that I'm such a hateful person ;)

Really, user-friendly distroes are overrated IMO. The tiny bit you're forced to learn installing Debian or slackware (mostly just new terms for conceptx anyone competently adminning their own NT box already grasps) is enough to get you rolling -- it's not the old days where you might have to download patches and recompile the kernel to make your NIC work so you could download those patches in the first places, and those days have been gone a dozen years or more for all the big distros. And if you get a distro that thinks it's UNIX, whatever further learning you do maintaining your system actually leaves you with useful knowledge, but all the "learning" to use distro-specific front-ends leaves tou with zero applicable knowledge whem you go to another distro.

So unless you can predict that you'll use the same distro on all your machines the rest of your life, and never use someone else's machine, and that your distro won't change its own tools around significantly, going with a "user-friendly" distro is ensuring you have more effort in learning less useful knowledge over the long-term -- for a short-term benefit of being a little easier to get started. I just can't see how that makes any sense -- buy a UNIX-using friend a pizza, buckle down for a few hours, and get it running right once, then forget about learnng useless trivia about some particular version of configuration wizard.

If you dont like it dont use it

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm fairly new to Linux, I've only been using it for about 11 years or so. Ubuntu is my main Distro atm and has been for sometime but by far is it my only distro. Now recently it has become easier to customize it or even build your own custom Distro.

Here is my stand on it. If you don't like to eat shrimp you don't eat shrimp. right? ok so same with Linux if you don't like Ubuntu no one is forcing you to use it, use what you like and others will do the same. There is more than 1 Linux distro to choose from and you are free to choose. With this said what makes you want to complain about something you use by choice?

It's likely ill be away from my PC for a week so it may be some time before i read up on this, by than maybe you will grow up and make your own choices, if you cant do that please ask you parents to choose for you.
But hey thats how i see it. maybe it is because im fairly new to Linux

How about a Linux for appliance users?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not looking for a Linux distro for people who already know how Windows works. I'm looking for a distro that's for people who never touched a mouse, don't know the difference between left-click and right-click, the difference between single-click and double-click, etc. Imagine an non-technical adult from 1960-1970 if that can help you.

I'm looking for a Linux distro that's more like the iPad: big Web, Mail, Instant Messaging, Music, Photos and Videos icons. No access to the filesystem if it's possible (too complex for non-computer users, let the music/photo/video applications deal with the files themselves), just the extreme basics.

There's so much to learn when you want to start using the internet that it's overwhelming. We all know someone who thinks Google is the internet, who can't understand the difference between email and instant messaging, who think that a photo on their Facebook wall is stored in their computer, etc.

And don't tell me they should learn how computers works. I would say that 99.9999999% of drivers on the road have no clue how their car engine works but they can still drive.

Then what's good?

[Anonymous Coward]

So when I port my video games to Linux and only have the capability to officially support one distribution, which one should I go with? I had thought Ubuntu was the winner because it's the only one I've heard anybody talk about for the past five years.

Re:The Linux "Community" (gack!) can be embarrassi

[Anonymous Coward]

go with FreeBSD. different community altogether, and great manpages and documentation.

Re:The Linux "Community" (gack!) can be embarrassi

[Alex Belits]

The author of the article is most likely a Microsoft contractor.

Why I left Ubuntu for Debian

[neiras]

I used Ubuntu from Hoary until Lucid. Before that, I used Debian. Now, I run Debian again.

I switched to Ubuntu because I was tired of thinking about Linux, but still wanted to use it. Ubuntu seemed to prioritize making things 'just work', even with non-free hardware and software. Bonus, it was essentially Debian at the time, just with more up-to-date packages and some pretty-juice.

Over time, I watched as Canonical made decisions I knew weren't in service of the 'big picture'. Maybe it was my Debian roots and the fact that I was used to community discussion counting towards decisions about which way the OS was going. On one hand I enjoyed experimenting with the 'weird' stuff Ubuntu pushed - Upstart, for instance. On the other hand, they pushed broken PulseAudio packages and then took forever to fix them, thus turning the fanboi crew into raging "fuck-Lennart-PA-sucks" drones.

As time went on, more and more 'weirdness' made its way into Ubuntu. The new notification area still feels unpolished and was developed without real input from GNOME. Ubuntu One, Gwibber, and DesktopCouch were all released without much polish and royally stunk the desktop up for a while there - crashes, conflicts, and sync issues were common. They are much better now, but man 6 months with Gwibber's background process crapping out, that sucked. Too much new crack got dumped on me before it was ready.

And Launchpad has devolved into a real cesspool. I still have open bugs from many releases ago that get a "Hello! There's a new Ubuntu out! Please see if your issue was fixed!" every 6 months. Triagers seem unfamiliar with basic terminology and will keep closing bugs until you go away, even if they demonstrate that they don't understand the reported issue.

I guess that's what happens when you encourage people on the "BugSquad" to triage 5 bugs a day. Gotta make the quota so I can claim my propz, yo. Communitaaaahh! *rocks out to Severed Fifth and throws up the horns*

I've given up. I'm tired of being a beta tester. It takes less time to make Debian pretty than it does to deal with the unpolished, weird apps that Canonical insists on bundling. I trust Debian to take upgrades seriously and not to transition to new subsystems without letting them shake out for a year or so. Plus, my bug reports are actually listened to, by people with some experience and domain knowledge. The Debian Developer approvals process is a wonderful thing - it keeps the posers out.

I wish Ubuntu all the best with their move to replace X with Wayland, and replace GNOME Shell with Unity, etc. etc. They will have legions of users shaking their bugs out for them, and that's actually enviable if you have the trained staff and developers to fix the issues quickly.

Debian is big enough for multiple SysV replacements, multiple X servers, multiple desktop environments, icon themes, wallpapers, etc. etc. Ubuntu could have just added the packages they cared about, and released Debian installer CDs that set things up their way.

Gee. I wonder why that didn't happen.

Re:Why I left Ubuntu for Debian

[thsths]

> And Launchpad has devolved into a real cesspool. I still have open bugs from many releases ago that get a "Hello! There's a new Ubuntu out! Please see if your issue was fixed!" every 6 months. Triagers seem unfamiliar with basic terminology and will keep closing bugs until you go away, even if they demonstrate that they don't understand the reported issue.

I have to agree here. Ubuntu is a nice system, but the way they treat bug reports is terrible. Now bug reports are always tricky, with every system or company. You have to get past the first line of droids before anything happens, but you have to be nice enough towards the developers, too. Sometimes you are asked to jump through useless hoops. But at the end of the day bugs are usually looked at by somebody.

Not so at Ubuntu: you jump through all the useless hoops for nothing. At least most of the time. And they never get documented either.

Who gives a fuck?

[damaged_sectors]

Ubuntu *was* a great idea. Provide the majority of the world with an OS that aimed to support their languages, their lack of broadband, and their low end hardware. In return the GNU Linux world would gain a huge new user base and the world would become a better place.

Nice idea - first mistake was allowing free postage of CDs to places *other* than India and Africa. Guess where most of those CDs were posted to? Guess North America and you're right.

Free CDs? I'll have 50 of those, every month - said every irritating n00b Windoof user. You know the sort - they use a computer as a substitute for a life - having the latest hardware is important so you can post your 3D benchmarks in your signature in the various spyware forums. Well now those pricks are Ubuntu fans. Check out the Ubuntu (Debian *is* too hard, for them) forums - see any African posters there? Nope - it's all "why isn't my multi-core 64-bit just released this morning CPU supported"? "I demand you support my iPod".

Ubuntu was never meant to be a version of Debian for n00bs, no matter how many (l)users demand and insist that is should be. Ubuntu has become an OS dominated by rude, ignorant, wealthy, spoilt, retards - who've not only perverted the original aims of Ubuntu, but managed to piss off all the other GNU Linux users.

Disclaimer:- I mostly run Debian, I'm sick of people posting Ubuntu questions to Debian forums - they consistently refuse to RTFM, post useful details, provide feedback, or even be honest about their OS. Check the debian-user mailing list and see how many requests for help with "Debian" are actually Ewepunter - they're the rude posters who abuse, demand, and complain - usually before even stating their problem, and often append their bitch with "it works fine in Windows7", and "no wonder Linux hasn't taken over the desktop". See how many of their posts are long threads where they are continually asked for useful information about their "debian" problem only to see "root@karmic#" as part of their cli output. Politely point out that they'd be more likely to get useful information at an Ubuntu forum and cop abuse.

And sudo?

And I so love the new breed of GNU Linux administrator - the one trained in Ubuntu - (ALL)ALL == fail. I'd never considered the possibility that anyone would actually be stupid enough to ssh as root until I met Ubuntu users. These are the same fucktards who'll critisize me for saying "GNU/Linux" 'cause it's all Lin-ucks. That last comment was from a recent employee - working in an all GNU environment, for a Finnish manager (called Linus) while complaining about the lack of sudo (and root access). Linus is pronounced "Lean-us" unless you're an American cartoon character, and yes Virginia - you *are* entitled to smack people who tell you how to pronounce your own name. And dickwad (you know who you are) all those servers you insisted were "Lin-ux" are Debian with the BSD kernel, the laptop you insisted was a customized Ubuntu (presumably because it's the only machine on site using Gnome) has a Hurd kernel.

Note to future applicants - stick your Ubuntu quals where they belong - from now on only LPI, RH or tertiary quals will be considered.

In closing may I suggest to any Ubuntu user I've upset - enjoy your Kubuntu (don't worry about what the KDE developers say - U tell em), if you need to update on a daily basis *it is not* suited to a production environment, if you can see your eye-candy, dancing bears and other 3D effects you *are obviously not* doing any fucking work! And when you tell me the "advantages" of dual-boot - I get the urge to kick you with both feet. It's a workplace fool - rebooting is not work, if you need Windows install it on another machine. Oh - you have 5 OSs on your laptop.... you must be "very" productive.

---

How do I add APK to my host file?

Re:The Linux "Community" (gack!) can be embarrassi

[Shikaku]

I'm about to abandon all Linux Distros forever just to avoid being considered a part of such an assholish "community" (gag).

http://bash.org/?277337
This quote is apt. It's also kind of like OSX, which I think does a lot of things well, but their fans...

In short, just use whatever you want, other people be damned.

Revolution vs. Evolution

[megli]

To me the gist of the article is that the author is disappointed that Canonical is building replacements for existing OSS projects like GNOME and Xorg, even though the obvious reason is right there in the article: they couldn't get the teams behind these projects to align with their priorities.

So in summary the author is upset because Canonical is prioritizing the quality of their own distro over some ideal of "community involvement."

Blah . . .

[bedouin]

For the past 5 years or so Ubuntu has been the only distribution I have no problem recommending and installing for friends. This dude can piss off. Debian for servers, Ubuntu or OS X for desktops.

...same old story

[YankDownUnder]

Ubuntu's "general" evolution is the same as every other distribution - they all follow the same pattern. "Community Support" follows the same pattern - I've seen it with RH and Fedora and Mandrake/Mandriva and SuSE and PCLOS and everything else under the sun. Always the same. On that token, IRC support always follows the same patterns. That part, I find quite sad - especially in that after all these years, sometimes the "Community Support" frightens away more "wanna-be converts" due to paramilitary attitudes, snobbishness and elitism. At least, in this decade, Ubuntu has truly forged some new ground in being publicly "known" - and created a mass following. Kudos to them - and kudos to those that would otherwise not have tried linux in the first place if it wasn't for Ubuntu. And thanks, Ubuntu, for making it more than easy to convert MS Windows users to linux, and for making server installations so bloody simple. (Saves me heaps of time and effort - more bang for the buck).

You can easily change that!

[Anonymous Coward]

Although the default windows appearance has the buttons on the upper left corner, under "appearance" there are windows schema's that put those buttons in the traditional place. Changing the location is so simple that even someone that is new to Linux can find it. It is very easy to find.

Where did the love go?

[rivaldufus]

www.apple.com

The remaining fanbois went on to post on phoronix.

Re:Where did the love go?

[Chuck Chunder]

There is some truth in that I suspect.

I got the shits with Ubuntu when they went from FSpot to Shotwell with no migration path. I have a large amount of data that means a lot to me personally and all of a sudden it's simply deprecated. (FSpot is still installable but bugs that render it useless simply don't get fixed).

Changing window managers, colour schemes etc is one thing but abandoning software that looks after things that people have significant personal investment in is a recipe for justified discontent.

Seeing as I would have to re-import all my photos into Shotwell anyway I decided to buy an iMac and have them all tucked safely away in iPhoto instead.

I still have my Ubuntu box and will continue to follow future releases but I'm not sure I will trust it with anything important until it demonstrates that transitioning user data to new releases is looked after well. I like the sometimes experimental nature of Ubuntu but it needs to temper that with supporting users through any change.

Re:Where did the love go?

[pmontra]

I was upset by Shotwell's inability of importing FSpot's database so I kept using FSpot. I didn't think about buying another computer instead. Furthermore that was a feature announced for future versions of Shotwell and it got it with Ubuntu 10.10.

By the way I can say now that Shotwell is much better and much faster than FSpot so it was a good decision from Canonical but they should have handled the transition better.

Re:Where did the love go?

[Anonymous Coward]

If F-Spot is broken...
1. maybe that was part of the reason for dumping it, and...
2. you should be blaming F-Spot developers, not Ubuntu.

Re:Where did the love go?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I got the shits with Ubuntu when they went from FSpot to Shotwell with no migration path. I have a large amount of data that means a lot to me personally and all of a sudden it's simply deprecated"

NOT true. Stop lying.

http://tinypic.com/r/5wyr81/7

How about a car for appliance users?

[Shikaku]

Then you want the iPad. There are things like this (see Ubuntu Netbook edition) but it's not the iPad obviously.

Don't try to make a problem more complicated than it should be.

Re:How about a car for appliance users?

[Anonymous Coward]

iPad = from 550 to 880 Canadian dollars.
Old PC with Ubuntu Netbook Edition = free to almost nothing

This is the year...

[mr_lizard13]

This is the year of Bad Linux on the desktop.

Not especially bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I chose Ubuntu/Kubuntu over Redhat for our product platform, and I can say that its not especially bad, however I'm unsatisfied with the quality of the releases. We had to choose Kubuntu 10.04 since it is their Long Term Support version and it continues to have issues that go unpatched. They claim that developers have tested the proprietary display drivers, but the task bar redraws with an area of it all black and its existed since the first release and through all patches. And we need the 3D acceleration capability of the vendors drivers...the open source drivers still don't have 3d acceleration.

I fear that the only way to improve things is to go to 10.10, but its not a LTS release. That seems to be the answer to a lot of things- upgrade to a newer release where there are new versions of software that fix issues...but their LTS release seems to have flaws that don't get patched. I know they endeavor to patch a lot, but this is a pretty blatant graphic glitch in the KDE taskbar that must have an explanation and has occurred with every machine we've installed on. Right now its livable, but I'm not sure I want to ship the product on a platform that seems glitchy...even if its in appearance only.

So its not a bad distro...but they are having growing pains I think. I still prefer it to Redhat. Debian may be an option in our future though.

Re:The Linux "Community" (gack!) can be embarrassi

[leetleguy]

I totally agree, the community is full of I-write-Kernel-modules-for-breakfast-Your-distro-sucks types.

And boy, do they hate Ubuntu. Some weeks ago, I made the (unforgiveable) mistake of not being very precise in a comment I made in a bug tracker - I actually had something to add, that was not contained in the original bug description, but I may have complained a little, too...

Anyway, the reply was "This is not Ubuntu, this is not the place to talk about your feelings."

I think that sentence has it all, in 14 words.

I never had Ubuntu installed, I've been using debian ever from the beginning, but I still think Canonical are the only ones who do it right for beginners. Convincing a normal user to switch over from Win7 to debian (or any other "cool" Linux distro) is simply impossible. They just suck when you're new to the whole thing. I know it, I was new to it 10 years ago and not so much has changed in that respect.

Re:TFA is BS; Ubuntu is pushing Linux forward nice

[bhcompy]

Unity sucks. Tablet interface on a PC? No thanks. Hell, it's made to be friendly on small form factors like netbooks and I can't stand it on mine. It takes up permanent space and reduces horizontal viewing size rather than vertical. Realistically, for a touchscreen interface it's nice. For a mouse interface it's balls.

Oh crap...

[jburroug]

I hadn't realized Ubuntu was now the bad Linux, thanks random article from tech website I've never heard of! I'll go wipe this scourge from my desktop and replace it with an even trendier distro right away!

Wait before I do that can anyone tell me who or what the hell itmanagement.earthweb.com is and why should I give two shits what they say about Ubuntu or any other distro? I really have to discount the ramblings of any 'publication' that has the following headline anywhere on it's site "53 Open Source Replacements to Spice Up Your Desktop" which appears in the related stories box for this article. What is this Cosmo for penguin fetishists? Shouldn't crap like this be on idle or something?

Cheers,

Josh

Gawd awful post

[Anonymous Coward]

Facts asserted without evidence or reference: 2 ("Used to be Ubuntu was the big Linux hero", "now Ubuntu is the Bad Linux").
False dilemma, with a side helping of question begging: 2 ("is it typical fanboy fickleness, or is Canonical more into serving their own interests than creating a great Linux distro").
References to related articles, uptake statistics, latest Ubuntu news: 0.

Who posts this gibberish? And why do the editors let it through?

Re:The Linux "Community" (gack!) can be embarrassi

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some amusing parallels in the claimed community vitriol against Ubuntu and the hate you seem to feel against this "community"...

Totally! Journalists should...

[Isaac Remuant]

So journalists should find information they do not care about and heartlessly report about it?

That whole "They have an agenda" talk is starting to get old. We should stop looking at ulterior motives ans start checking if reports are facts or not.

Re:Totally! Journalists should...

[SomeJoel]

So journalists should find information they do not care about and heartlessly report about it?

Yes, they should. It's called "being objective", and is one of the tenets of good journalism. It's odd that you think otherwise; perhaps you are hiding some sort of agenda?

Re:Totally! Journalists should...

[RockoTDF]

"Ulterior motives" really don't matter if you have presented a good argument, and have addressed opposing arguments and points of view. Unfortunately, people generally suck at the latter.

Re:Totally! Journalists should...

[ifiwereasculptor]

<quote><p>So journalists should find information they do not care about and heartlessly report about it?</p></quote>

<p>Yes, they should. It's called "being objective", and is one of the tenets of good journalism. It's odd that you think otherwise; perhaps you are hiding some sort of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106677/">agenda?</a></p></quote>

That'd be great. No more agenda-setting networks like Fox News! Of course then we'd be flooded daily with articles about llamas and guides on how to classify pinewood by color tonality. The only ones to write about almost universally interesting topics, like government elections, economics, media censorship, new science findings etc. will be either autistic morons or the socially retarded, that don't really care about anything other than profit and ratings. So, Fox News.

Re:Totally! Journalists should...

[quickOnTheUptake]

This is a nice ideal, but I think it is naive.
Setting aside outright propaganda or distortion, every reporter (whether a journalist or historian) writes from a perspective. Even if he does his best to be objective, avoid commentary, and just stick to the facts his perspective will influence which facts he finds relevant.
I prefer sources of information that clearly label themselves as having a particular position; That way I know whose perspective I'm getting.
Counterintuitively, a news source with a clear opinion or party line is more objective than a new source that refuses to admit it has a perspective because the latter gives a false sense of objectivity, while the former clearly identifies what it is serving.
Of course this is setting aside cases of outright falsification and other cases of questionable journalistic integrity.

Re:Totally! Journalists should...

[notsoanonymouscoward]

So it'd be Kuro5hin?

Re:Totally! Journalists should...

[Isaac Remuant]

If a media outlet reports a fact. It's still a fact. It doesn't matter if they want world peace, war, high taxes or anything else. The BAD thing happens when they omit/hide portions of the truth because they're contrary to that "agenda" you talk about.

We can try to be as objective as we can but we will always favor one policy over another, one path, one faction, etc.

Arguably, you won't find an objective news source. They ALL have agendas. What you have to be wary of is if they are willing to resort to lying, hiding or distorting instead of just reporting facts.

Re:Totally! Journalists should...

[tbannist]

Except that's exactly why "ulterior motives" matter, it means the person presenting the argument wants the audience to believe something in particular, so because they have ulterior motives they will generally choose to present their audience with the best arguments for their position, and only the worst arguments against. As long as the presenter has ulterior motive, then the presenter has little incentive to address good arguments against their position.

So ulterior motives are bad, ok?

Re:Totally! Journalists should...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget your closing quote tags.

Re:Totally! Journalists should...

[TheCRAIGGERS]

Setting aside outright propaganda or distortion, every reporter (whether a journalist or historian) writes from a perspective.
Even if he does his best to be objective, avoid commentary, and just stick to the facts his perspective will influence which facts he finds relevant.

Is it that hard to simply state "both sides of the issue" and let the readers make up their own minds? I don't think it is; I do it all the time in my research papers.

Yes journalists should report on a topic they don't care about. It's called a "job" for a reason. If they feel a topic is too close to their hearts and they would find it hard to be objective, they should pass on the story if possible, or perhaps disclose their viewpoint at the start of the article.

Various scientists go through this every day. Its just that we require published scientific papers to be of a higher caliber than what Fox publishes.

Re:Totally! Journalists should...

[tqk]

So ulterior motives are bad, ok?

Really? Then what are you doing here? I'd wager 80% of the articles posted here can be ascribed to ulterior motives (marketing and sales, raise corporate profile, call out your competitors, ...).

So sweeping generalizations are always bad, ok?

Re:Totally! Journalists should...

[tbannist]

Really? Then what are you doing here? I'd wager 80% of the articles posted here can be ascribed to ulterior motives (marketing and sales, raise corporate profile, call out your competitors, ...).

I seriously doubt the number's that high, and even if it were that wouldn't be a good thing.

So sweeping generalizations are always bad, ok?

Actually, they're not. Sweeping generalizations can actually be incredibly useful to the cognitive function of the human brain. It's an important part of our ability to understand the world around us. Inaccurate, inflexible, or unchangeable generalizations are real problems, but generalizations that are accurate are useful.

Re:Totally! Journalists should...

[RockoTDF]

But what is bad is unnecessary invocation of "good for the brain." It is a bit like saying that "this new version of linux is good for your CPU" when really it just works a bit better. Speaking as a neuroscientist, if there is one thing that annoys me more than crappy journalism it is crappy science journalism, and how it tends to start talking about the brain when really cognitive psychology will do.

Re:Totally! Journalists should...

[tqk]

Really? Then what are you doing here? I'd wager 80% of the articles posted here can be ascribed to ulterior motives (marketing and sales, raise corporate profile, call out your competitors, ...).

I seriously doubt the number's that high, and even if it were that wouldn't be a good thing.

What's a post about an EFF initiative doing for EFF? Marketing, and there's nothing wrong with it. I like to hear about what they're up to. I've got the bumper sticker and t-shirt. I never suggested ulterior motives are bad, just prevalent, but there's nothing malicious about people writing about their hobbyhorses.

So sweeping generalizations are always bad, ok?

Actually, they're not.

Erm, whoosh. That sweeping generalization is obviously wrong, and of entertainment value only.

Re:Totally! Journalists should...

[quickOnTheUptake]

Is it that hard to simply state "both sides of the issue" and let the readers make up their own minds

Yes, that's my whole point.

I don't think it is; I do it all the time in my research papers

When I was taught to write research papers, having a clear thesis or conclusion that the paper was written to substantiate was an essential aspect. If that was lacking, so the paper didn't take a position or form an argument, but just summarized facts, it was a glorified book report.

Yes journalists should report on a topic they don't care about.

But who decides what makes a news-worthy story? And who decides which facts about a story are news-worthy?
If I'm reporting an issue in which there are two factions involved, and as far as I'm concerned one side is just a bunch of whiny, illogical SOBs, I'm probably not going to paint them in the best light even if that is only because I don't actually understand what they stand for. The best way to get an objective idea in a debate is to read the best defense of each side written by the brightest defenders of each side. If you try to read a third party's summary of each side, you are going to get an account tainted by his view of the debate.
If I'm an editor, how do I decide what is front page material and what is to be found on page 12? When I trim an hour long--or even 5 minute--speech into 1 or 2 one-liners, how do I decide which lines to pick?
I'm just saying that there is no single sheet of pithy bullet points that are "just the facts", just like there is no single, authoritative list of a day's news-worthy stories. Even if there were (either of the two) the order you arrange them in would be significant.

or perhaps disclose their viewpoint at the start of the article

You do realize this is exactly what I was advocating?

Various scientists go through this every day. Its just that we require published scientific papers to be of a higher caliber than what Fox publishes.

You mean to tell me that scientific papers never argue for one theory over a competing theory? They just report facts with no analysis?

Re:Totally! Journalists should...

[tbannist]

What's a post about an EFF initiative doing for EFF? Marketing, and there's nothing wrong with it. I like to hear about what they're up to. I've got the bumper sticker and t-shirt. I never suggested ulterior motives are bad, just prevalent, but there's nothing malicious about people writing about their hobbyhorses.

I'm beginning to think you don't actually know what an ulterior motive is. Here's the definition from wiktionary:

An alternative or extrinsic reason for doing something, especially when concealed or when differing from the stated or apparent reason.

It seems to me that most EFF posts are about informing people about what the EFF is doing. Marketing is one of the the apparent reasons for running their web site and maintain their blog and publishing press releases. Writing about your "hobbyhorses" doesn't, by itself, qualify, as an ulterior motive. On the other hand, if someone is deliberately hiding their motives from you they are doing so for a reason and it's safe to assume the reason isn't good. If it was, there wouldn't be any need to conceal it.

So there are at least three levels of bad here, the first is the concealment of relevant information concerning the motive for providing information, the second is the presentation of biased information, and the third is that the person or people presenting the information intend harm to the audience. Sometimes the harm is incidental, for example some people have to die to protect the profits of health insurance companies, sometimes it's intentional, like a fraudulent make money fast seminar. But with few exceptions, ulterior motives are really quite bad.

Re:Totally! Journalists should...

[manifoldronin]

Ulterior motives are bad? Do you work to make a living? Do you put some money in the bank and hope to ear some interest? You would be doing bad things everyday if ulterior motives were bad. And following your own logic, since you obviously want us to believe that "ulterior motives are bad," are we to deduce that you had little incentive to address good arguments against your position? Hence your argument above was incomplete and imbalanced?

Re:Totally! Journalists should...

[tbannist]

You clearly do not understand what "ulterior motives" means. As I mentioned in a previous post:

ulterior motive: An alternative or extrinsic reason for doing something, especially when concealed or when differing from the stated or apparent reason.

Working for a living is not an ulterior motive, it is the apparent reason most people work.
Investing for retirement (or to earn money) is not an ulterior motive, again it is the apparent reason most people invest.
I have not in any way hidden the fact that I would like people to recognize that "ulterior motives are bad", thus by definition it isn't an ulterior motive.

I don't see any point in continuing this discussion if you don't understand what you're writing about. If you actually have something intelligent to contribute, please try again.

Us versus them

[gd2shoe]

People seem programmed to seek an us-versus-them mentality. You see it everywhere: High school cross town rivalry, political partisanship, nationality (vital, but frequently overdone), preferred sports team, even the sport itself!

It is only natural for racial stereotypes to persist for this reason alone. Ugly, evil, pernicious, worth fighting against at every turn, but natural.

Ubuntu's still strong?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the first I hear of ubuntu being shunned..

Oh well. It works for me, and that's all I care about.

Ubuntu is the Bad Linux

[forestgomp]

> But now Ubuntu is the Bad Linux

Really? Says who? Link please!!

There are many people (myself included) who favor other distributions (for various reasons -- including simply not wanting to go with the leading distro). But I've never heard anyone refer to Ubuntu in any such negative fashion. This post seems agenda driven.

Ubuntu unloved:

[Anonymous Coward]

Argle bargle, or fooforaw?

Re:The Linux "Community" (gack!) can be embarrassi

[Anonymous Coward]

You have discovered the difference between Linux users and Linux fanatics. I used to be one of those foaming-at-the-mouth Arch/Slackware/Gentoo fanboys, but I got over it. More to the point, I wouldn't have started using Linux at all if there wasn't something easy to use like Ubuntu to help me get my feet wet. I use Debian these days, and I work with people that prefer Ubuntu or Fedora. *Nobody gives a shit.* It's all Linux.

Mod up. Re:What's going on?

[foolish_to_be_here]

Mod this insightful person a 5 AND copy/mod as troll for me so see too. More truth in these few paragraphs than I have seen anywhere in the press (or here for that matter) for months.

vi don't you just go grep yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

As I said...

Bad linux?

[Windwraith]

First notice I have, is this really news or some random rant?

check distrowatch?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure I agree that it has lost its throne, if you look at distrowatch's hit counter it still shows Ubuntu as #1

Linux desktop is lolz

[ieatcookies]

I would love a distro that didn't require me to fuck around trying to get wireless, dual monitors, and printing to work. I don't care about the six gigs of other shit in ubuntu, make the basic shit work and Linux has a chance on desktops. Stop adding clever display options to make windows wobble like liquid when they move and identify my monitor and download the driver. I understand the 3rd party limitation, but as an end user it equates the same. For years I loved compiling software and kernels and messing around with x and whatever.... Those days are long gone, I just want it to work. Hello Mac, you just work and have a nice terminal to fall back on.

Falling standards

[UbuntuniX]

For me it was mainly the small things. Numerous bugs in the interface (GNOME shutdown button would become distorted and stop working, KDE 4 was initally disastrous) drove me crazy. Then there's the way they seem determined to stick to the release schedule, ready or not. Running the regular apt-get update led more and more to application bugs. Switched to Debian, no such problems. Now I'm not plagued by constant annoyances, and my OS problems are only ever significant.

Ubuntu is UI, should consider Meego over Unity

[Khopesh]

Many of the links in that article are actually quite useful, especially if you skip the internal references. One of them, from the 2008 Linux Plumbers Conference, which is dedicated to the lower-level aspects of the operating system (mostly the kernel, GNU, and X), was of particular interest as it talks about how Canonical isn't carrying its own weight, falling well below any other backer of a commercial distribution (or other Linux-depending company) on pretty much any metric and even well behind community-driven distros like Debian and Gentoo as well.

However, Canonical doesn't care about that layer of the OS; they want to improve the user experience, and have therefore focused almost all of their attention on the user interface. (It is interesting to note that the init subsystem rewrite is a salient counter-example, though its speed improvement still correlates to user experience.) From day one, Ubuntu and GNOME have been bedmates. Shuttleworth and therefore Canonical have therefore focused their efforts on GTK and GNOME while relying upon Debian and friends to care for the rest.

This arrangement seemed to work well for everything but the company's bottom line, which is where the value of this article really comes into play. They are in trouble as an unprofitable company built upon a for-profit model. (Easy solution: file for nonprofit status...)

Getting back to UI, Canonical is now getting bold and stirring the pot. They are pushing Wayland as an X11 replacement, which I think is a really good move (though forecasting when it might supplant X11 in Ubuntu seems extremely unwise). However, the friction they are creating with Unity as a replacement for GNOME Shell could be too much of a step, especially in a few iterations when the demands placed by Unity and GNOME Shell begin to differ. It is clear that Canonical wants (and due to its business state, perhaps needs) to have more control and be seen as a mover and shaker, but I question the wisdom of what might fracture the GNOME development community, especially given a target market of netbooks and smaller (given GNOME's bloat).

Were I in control, I'd steer Canonical to MeeGo.

With Nokia now fully removed from the picture, AMD added, and primary driver Intel redoubled in its investment, MeeGo is ripe for the shaping. From all appearances, MeeGo's design as something end-users might ever see has completely vanished. Intel's main intent for MeeGo may have been for demos, with widespread adoption merely being one possible future (remember, they're a hardware company). MeeGo products that have hit the market so far have all had fully customized user interfaces.

Canonical's designs for Ubuntu are to focus on the netbook and play a pivotal role in its user interface while improving overall speed and efficiency (key elements to the user experience). MeeGo, with its roots in the embedded space (including tablets and netbooks), fits here perfectly. Intel, who ranks near the top of all of those plumbing contribution lists in the LPC keynote I began this post with, would then become an ally.

(Yes, I know MeeGo itself has more in common with its Intel-backed Fedora-based predecessor Moblin than it does with its other predecessor, Nokia-backed Debian-based Maemo, and the main reason I'm a fan of Ubuntu is its compatibility with Debian, but those are minor hurd

I concur

[DeadTOm]

Been using kubuntu since 6.x and I'm still very happy with it. I don't get involved in the distro politics at all but the forums that I do follow have had no such discussion.

Re:Ubuntu got popular.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop lying, you didn't "write an OS", you just used a pre-programmed chip with the arduino bootloader and copypasted sketches like everyone else. And your wife^H^H^H^H "arduino powered" inflatable doll, on which you spent that extra $2k for parts on mouser, still looks and sucks worse than an $5 whore at the central train station in a random third world country's capital.

Re:The Linux "Community" (gack!) can be embarrassi

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Huh, funny, I've never noticed to Linux community to be any more assholish than any other community out there. There are elitist dicks in every crowd (Apple, MS, hell, even Google/Android is starting to get a following) but that doesn't speak for the community as a whole. In my experience, folks in the Linux community tend to be pretty friendly, and the ones who are piss-ranters that rip on newbies etc. etc. tend to get shunned to their mother's basements pretty quickly.

The only real difference I've noticed between Linux assholes and other assholes is the Linux assholes are at least honest about being assholes, rather than playing it off as if their condescension is somehow better for you. I appreciate the honesty.

We're hating Ubuntu now?

[SlightOverdose]

Wait, what? The hivemind has started hating Ubuntu now? Damnit, why didn't anybody tell me, I need somebody to tell me how to think.

Can somebody explain to me what Canonical has done wrong? (Other than, you know, being profitable while creating a great distro).

My experience...

[CAIMLAS]

I'm not sure what the fuck "Bad Linux" is, but here's my 0.02 USD:

I started using Ubuntu on the 8.04 release. I liked it. I installed it on my Thinkpad X30, where I'd previously run Debian Stable/Testing/Sid to try to reach a good blend of stability, performance, usability, recent packages, and the lovely dpkg/apt/aptitude combination.

I should note that I'm a 'minimalist' user - I disdain the larger desktop environments due to their bloat (though KDE 3.x I deem 'good'). The packages I use are 'minimal' and trend toward what you'd expect a sysadmin to use: disk, network, file, and server packages - as well as the awesome window manager, chromium, thunderbird, clusterssh, and a handful of others.

I left debian for desktop use for a couple reasons: I had repeated issues over a number of upgrades which I would consider "deal breakers". My CF card reader refused to work, the i810 graphics support was highly fluctuative (ie suspend worked, then it didn't, then it did...), and so on. Ubuntu (mostly) fixed these issues, and I had no issue with 8.04 whatsoever (even though its release of most of the packages was very similar to the Debian release I'd left behind).

Then I upgraded to 9.04. I had a hell of a lot of problems with misc. things not working and a little instability. A lot of the same problems I'd had in Debian were back, with some others to boot. I also had some severe IO performance degradation (seemingly due to CFQ and/or ext, but I really don't know for certain) resulting in any disk IO being crippling to the point of uselessness ("I think I'll make some coffee"). I don't overtly blame Ubuntu for it, but OpenSuSE of a similar vintage and kernel version ran just fine on that hardware.

I think that, between 9.04 (supposedly a stable release - not my experience) and 9.10 (a horrible release), Ubuntu has gained a bad name for itself as "too cutting edge" - though honestly, I don't think this is the case. Other distros have similar level of 'edge cutting'. Some of the bigger problems, I think, is that GNOME sucks, and that the Ubuntu KDE packages are just wretched. There are quite a few 'impact a lot of users' bugs out there which don't get fixed for several releases, as well - something that isn't really acceptable on a "long term support" release. And then there are the kernel stopping bugs that ship... (Part of me wonders how much of this has to do with the kernel.org boys/girls and their "just ship it, it has new features" approach to development for the last number of years...)

10.04 and 10.10 are another story. The adoption of upstart has soured me somewhat (and I hear Debian will be doing the same, too), which is particularly unsavory on the (otherwise quite appealing) Ubuntu Server. It's great for a desktop (and a fast start-up) but it greatly complicates the debugging process on a server (and isn't all that necessary to begin with, IMO). The performance is really quite good due to the later kernel versions, but the stability leaves something to be desired.

Personally, I pine for the days of "minimalist installs", when that actually meant something. Sure, I can install a full desktop in around 2Gb now, but there's a lot of cruft that will be running in the background, at all times. Getting rid of that crap takes a while on a fresh install.

I'd still say ubuntu is one of the better distros, if only because it's "debian based", and that the majority of the people who used Ubuntu "previously" went to something like an iPad.

Re:My experience...

[oursland]

Unless you have info from other sources than I, Debian decided to update the Sys V init scripts to work with event based kernels instead of reinventing the wheel as Ubuntu has with Upstart. I use Debian on all my embedded systems precisely for this reason. Things that worked well in the past continue to work well.

As far as "minimalist" goes, my embedded Debian systems are frequently under 100 MB and still are fully functional and provide many important services.

Upstart is the biggest error that has affected me greatly in day-to-day work, but Ubuntu has also decided to reinvent the wheel and discard the many years old tested and installed X with something written from scratch. If the video demos promoting Wayland are indicative of anything, I will be avoiding it like the plague and anyone having high expectations from it will be very disappointed. Ubuntu, with its large user base, could easily have thrown its weight behind correcting some of the designs and decisions of X to meet modern expectations, but once again, they believe that they can do better than the many millions of man hours in design, development and use that X already has.

Re:The Linux "Community" (gack!) can be embarrassi

[supersloshy]

A bunch of confused, hypocritical, self-contradictory, whining assholes. If you don't like a distro, FFS don't use it - it's really quite that simple. There's a distro out there for everyone.

You make it look so simple when in reality it's not; there are many, many valid reasons to dislike Ubuntu (excessive patching, bugs, questionable design decisions). Claiming that all of the "Ubuntu haters" are simply disliking it because it's popular is completely untrue.

Re:Ubuntu got popular.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, real men play football and have sex, and think a driver is something in racing.

Bwahaha!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bwahaha!

[insert LOTR reference]

Bwahaha!

[insert anti-Microsoft reference]

Bwahaha!

[insert pro-Amiga reference]

wtf

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a horrible post. The author should never write again. The worst part is this making Slashdot Look bad.

Ubuntu love

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu user for life here, except for my server of course :D

he made a solution

[rubycodez]

Since then that guy "IgnorantGuru" made the paccheck script, to be run before pacman update, which compares multiple mirrors Hey, it's a solution http://ignorantguru.users.sourceforge.net/downloads/paccheck-0.8.5.txt

Re:he made a solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Since then that guy "IgnorantGuru" made the paccheck script, to be run before pacman update, which compares multiple mirrors Hey, it's a solution

You are still vulnerable to trivial MITM.

Re:How the worm (PopeRatzo) turns...

[QuantumBeep]

Holy shit. I think we just witnessed a bipolar transition from sane to teabagger in 30 seconds.

I love Ubuntu

[mmaniaci]

Been my only Linux distro since 2007. Xubuntu to be exact, 'cause gnome is not my cup of tea. Oh, and this article is FUD.

EvilBuntu (coming soon!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Those vermin (having not even bothered to view the actual article as required by Slashdot subsection 2 paragraph 1)....let's all change to Linux Mint.

*crickets*

tl;dr

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA is flamebait so slashdotters will click through an interstitial and three pages.

Fedora follows Ubuntu now

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu chooses Unity ... fedora me two
Ubuntu has a people friendly website with people on it fedora me two ....

Just another successful OSS (not FOSS) company

[recharged95]

How is this different from Redhat/Fedora and Novell/OpenSuSE?

The author has a point: Canonical has finally reached the same levels of RedHat and Novell--that's the conclusion I got from his article, everything else is opinion.

FYI, all 3 make great products and work with the FOSS, they don't manage the FOSS community...

Re:The Linux "Community" (gack!) can be embarrassi

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you could go to the other two modern OS', which have, oh wait, the exact same problem. Heck, even BSD has some assholes.

Re:How the worm (PopeRatzo) turns...

[PopeRatzo]

Government, Teachers, Psychological Wards, Conservators, Judges, Administrative Trustees, Community Associations, Tax Collectors, USDA, SWAT, BATFE(ces), DMV, Social Services, Social Security Administration, Civil Engineers: you all are going to Hell, and anyone that sends you there quicker will get more bonus points by Almighty God because the lives that you wreck along the way to your jog to Hell are worth more that it is acceptable for a few volunteers to sacrifice their immortality and good nature to send you all quicker to Hell by ourselves going there with you to make sure you all get fucking plunged down faster.,

I want you guys to think about something. The above person is among us. He's probably one of your co-workers. He lives his life believing that civil engineers are deserving...uh, whatever being "sent to Hell" means (and I don't think it's good). And there's a good chance that he either already owns a powerful firearm or is trying to get one. He votes.

This sad sonofabitch is the product of exactly what I was talking about in the comment that induced him to say these things. This is why that as much as I love the country I grew up in, the city in which I live, the culture, the institutions, the people, I have to get out while the getting's good. Because what he's got? It's spreading and some very powerful people are doing their best to make sure it spreads fast and wide.

What do you want?

[iamacat]

People write code either for love or for money. Writting code usable by 6 billion people on the planet is not all fun. Doing so within bounds of GPL is by itself quite a feat. For everything else is Gentoo, that I persoally use exclusively after install it from Ubuntu live CD and copying their kernel patches and .config since Gentoo folks are too busy to get kernel modesetting work on real world laptops.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

You go to the Theme settings dialog and choose Clearlooks.

Ubuntu/Canonical and Gnome/fd.o

[Dennis Sheil]

Obviously there has been acrimony between Ubuntu/Canonical and some of its upstreams such as Linux, Linux plumbing and Debian. There had also been rumblings regarding Gnome, but I had felt that was unfair to some degree. Yes, Canonical does not send much in the way of patches to Gnome and freedesktop.org, but Ubuntu has reached an audience of some of the not-the-usual-suspects Linux users, meaning non-developers. As many Ubuntu users are not developers, the percentage of users sending patches upstream ratio will be lower. While a patch is a high level of help to send upstream, there are lower forms of help to send upstream like bug reports. As there are a lot of Ubuntu users out there pounding away on Ubuntu's Gnome GUI, I think this is helpful, an influx of non-traditional users has exposed many bugs in Gnome and fd.o which were unknown beforehand. Many have been fixed, and Gnome and fd.o all the better for it.

I do have some concerns over this Gnome/Unity fork. Not just how it will effect Gnome but whether Canonical and Ubuntu can handle a significant fork. I am fairly certain bugs like this are a product of the fork, and I wonder who is going to fix them. Canonical has trouble getting good bug reports for packages like cairo, poppler and evince upstream, never mind patching them. I can think of a number of examples, but is the aforementioned bug which was almost certainly probably caused by the fork going to be fixed before 11.04 is released? It is not the only bug caused by the fork either. Who is going to fix these? The fork is small now and these should be easy to fix, who is going to fix them as the fork gets bigger, and Gnome and Unity diverge even more? On the other hand, it's conceivable that Unity will be so awesome, that developers will flock to it, and Gnome shell will to some extent wither away. There are different perspectives, different problems and different possibilities for all of these things. I can tell you right now though that the Unity stuff is breaking stuff in Ubuntu's Gnome, and it is staying broken. Stuff that the Gnome developers will not be fixing either. We'll see what happens...

What's going on?

[commandZ]

Fanboy.... Yes... It is like when Apple was the massive underdog and had this elite cult following, now they are deemed as being the next Microsoft. As soon as something gets popular no matter it's quality the whiney little fanboys turn coat and go to the next underdog. I am just waiting for all the iPhone haters/Android lovers to do the same thing now that Android is kicking forward.

Bad Linux ?

[Phiu-x]

"But now Ubuntu is the Bad Linux " Excuse me, did I miss something ? When did that happened ? Cause I was busy with Win 7 while tending my linux server.

christian louboutin shoes

[Anonymous Coward]

thank you for sharing this .[url=http://www.mvpchristian.com]christian louboutin shoes[/url]ti is great !

Ubuntu better than ever-and non-users hate it why?

[Anonymous Coward]

So far I've heard that Ubuntu had lost support for certain Intel graphics cards as a reason to hate it. While that is true for a specific version (10.04) it seems like a bad reason to dislike it. Ubuntu is relying on upstream for packages and they aren't in the business of developing every piece of software that is in the distribution. Canonical does what they do pretty well. Put out a distribution which is tailored for the masses. They write a little software and bundle it with a certain configurational changes to make it easier to use. Just because another distribution does not have said Intel graphics chip set issue has nothing to do with Ubuntu. It could have just as easily been another distribution which bundled that particular package version with that problem.

I think as do most the minor change from the window buttons to be without good reason. However this is a minor change to get use to. Unlike Microsoft's drastic changes which make no sense the Ubuntu change was at least a non-issue for even the non-technical users my company caters to.

What distribution should we support? Well, my guess is the popular distribution today would be Mint. However I think that switch is without merit or justification. I'm not saying Mint is a bad distribution. Only that you better give me some serious advantage for using it. Until Canonical actually does something like what Novell, Linspire, or Xandros did by aligning itself with Microsoft I won't take issue with it. Mint thus far I have seen no significant advantage.

If my company was going to switch distributions today we would go with Trisquel. It is a real free distribution unlike Ubuntu that doesn't bundle non-free components. Mint from what I understand bundles non-free components and is the main advantage. Only problem is that Ubuntu makes installing those components simple. A click of a button simple. So I repeat what is the justification for going with it? It has no significant advantages as far as I'm aware. It is a very good possibility that we will eventually switch to Trisquel. If any distribution had an advantage over Ubuntu right now I think it would be Super OS. Super OS is an Ubuntu distribution with a repository that contains packages not found in Ubuntu like Truecrypt, Realplayer, VirtualBox (non-free although non-free is now GPL with a non-free extensions pack available) and others.

It seems likd the F/OSS dev community's problem

[ReedYoung]

... with Shuttleworth is that they didn't like a bossy n00b with no qualifications, who bought his way into the scene instead of earning their respect by contributing any work to the community as everybody else from Torvalds forward has had to do, to have any say in any projects in GNU/Linux and other F/OSS projects.

That is so weird.

However, the real turning point in Ubuntu/ Canonical policy appears to have been Shuttleworth's failure to convince other FOSS projects to coordinate their release cycles.

Shuttleworth first made the case in December 2006 that "it would be nice at the beginning of an Ubuntu release cycle to have a really confident picture of which projects will produce stable releases during those few months when we can incorporate new upstream versions. It would be even better if, during the release cycle, we knew immediately if there was a *change* in what was going to be released."

Dude, sure "it would be nice," for you, but that just isn't the way it works. Deal with it. Now, if you want to provide tools that facilitate greater coordination, that's kewl, but you just don't barge into an existing community which has its own norms and customs, and tell them how they must change. You can't expect people to change our ways for your convenience until you provide something in exchange of greater value than the inconvenience you with to impose.

xorg and init flexible?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Since both init and Xorg are flexible enough to provide the sorts of improvements that Shuttleworth advocates..."
This sentence betrays the author's lack of knowledge or his immense idiocy

Wrong from the beginning.

[crhylove]

Ubuntu has been going about nearly everything wrong from the beginning. It's been brown, orange, purple, every hideous color imaginable. It's been slow to boot, slow to run, wonky to use, and over all less well thought out, layed out, and organized than MS DOS, much less other more recent OSes like Mac or Windows. There are no games. The default applications are often the worst option, although NEVER the best option. Rather than a panel at the bottom like Windows, or at the top, like Mac, there's two. Both taking up real estate. The users in the forums are frequently rude, and condescending. Moderators in the forums will edit your posts, censor your posts, and in general just do what it takes to make your experience there more frustrating. Particularly if you say something critical of Canonical or Ubuntu. Good luck getting your feed back heard over there, nobody will listen. Instead, they'll go out on a limb on another untested technology and rebrand it another brown/purple/orange that looked even worse than before. Rather than speed and stability, there will be improved and added cruft, widgets, and other unnecessary detractors that are second in annoyance factor only to the prepackaged malware you might get on a bad OEM Windows machine.

Luckily, there's a solution for all these problems:

Linux Mint.

Linux Mint is fast, up to date, has 8 different versions (KDE, Debian, Gnome, LXDE in both 32 and 64 bit configurations). All of them are better than Ubuntu at nearly every task. In addition Linux Mint has ideal default apps, with the exception of VLC still not being the default video player. The community is exceedingly friendly, exceedingly open to criticism, and open to hearing and criticizing new ideas.

Go and try Linux Mint 10. You will never, ever consider going back to Ubuntu for any reason.

PS This is not a troll. Go and try Linux Mint RIGHT NOW. And YES I know that Mint was up until recently based on Ubuntu. But it has surpassed it on every level. TRY IT.

OK, I just updated Ubuntu

[tombeard]

Now double click doesn't work for selecting things or opening them. I can right click for selections, then pick open. #@$%$. It was working just fine before, but some stupid SOB decided he could change my defaults to something he considered "better". Yea, been here before, so I know that I can eventually dig down into some obscure menu and put it back as it was, but why the fuck should I have to. I don't go around changing other peoples computer setting, why does the Ubuntu team feel they have that privilege. Fuckum, I'll go Gentoo. Well, maybe Cent.

Re:TFA is BS; Ubuntu is pushing Linux forward nice

[Knuckles]

Try the version in Natty, which was always the version Ubuntu said would be usable for large screens than netbooks (and the first version that will use it by default). It does not take up permanent space but hides very neatly, I think.

Linux users are assholes

[sparrowcz3]

No, Ubuntu is still the good one, just a lot of Linux users are really assholes. They are not locking themselves at homes with computers not because they are intrested in them, but because they feel like master race over what operating system they use. Of course, there is many Linux users, inclucing most of the source contributors, sever admins etc. who are perfectly normal people..

m4f

[Anonymous Coward]

At the end of the first page of the blog post I cannot find a clue about why Ubuntu is bad. No facts, no figures, just a load of junk.
What is this, a tabloid?

Re:The Linux "Community" (gack!) can be embarrassi

[rastos1]

Seriously, people were down on Ubuntu the minute it became popular.

It is just a re-incarnation of Eternal September. The influx of users that want "ease of use" transformed to "hiding/removing flexibility/variability" ruins the experience for those of us that use it and want it.

It is just like story of SPAM. The masses discover something new - e-mail, cheap way of communication; the business see that as opportunity to make a buck; they hijack the system and those that engineered the system are pushed aside. Together with honoring standards and good design patterns and manners.

Hipster Kitty says

[Weedhopper]

Ubuntu? Nah.

You wouldn't be able to pronounce the name of the distro I use.

What a crapload!

[jprupp]

So Ubuntu is evil because it's pushing innovation?

Canonical is evil because it wishes to make a profit?

To hold up to an ideal being poor is a pre-requirement?

All this from an article heavily loaded with publicity?

I'm sorry, but it's the lamest article I've read in months.

At least I'm not the only one ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I used Ubuntu 10.10 until a regular security update left me with an unbootable system.

Why people are upset

[Compaqt]

>Seriously, I cannot fathom why people are so hung up on this.

Let me give it a try.

It was a combination of a couple of things.

1. The "my way or the highway" attitude.
2. Making the change right before the last freezes with no opportunity for community comment. Annoys people and makes them think what they thought was about "us" is actually about "me" (Shuttleworth).
3. Yeah, so you'll say it's free. True. Mark has the legal right to make the change. And people have the legal right to speak their mind.
4. Lame, mutually contradictory excuses from Mark like "The left side is closer to where the mouse is" and "I was thinking of doing something on the right side for the next release". If the mouse is always on the left side, why put stuff on the right?
5. So did he do something on the right in the next release? No.
6. Cramming everything into the left side is hardly a win for usability. It's different on the Mac because they don't have the menu in the app window.
7. The huge blank area on the right is supposed to be a big "easy to grab" area for noobs to drag an app window. The problem is some apps (like gedit) work like that. Others in the default install (Firefox) don't. For the latter, you have to drag starting from the actual "titlebar" area, which you can't distinguish because it's the same color as the menubar. Try explaining that to your mom. (The sheer insanity of the titlebar that is there, but you're supposed to know it's there should be apparent to normal people, always a check on the designs of geeks.)
8. Oh, but you say, instead of dragging, you can select Move from the window control menu in the lefthand corner? Mark, in his wisdom, dropped that menu to make space for cramming the close/max/min buttons on the left. On Linux it reduced a crucial aspect of discoverability and function (moving a window to a specific workspace with the keyboard).

The above problems could have been hashed out in the normal collaboration process. But Mark didn't do that, choosing to make the change unilaterally at the last moment.

That's why people are upset. And Wayland/Unity further confirm the attitude.

My comment as Ubutu user is this:

[aepervius]

1) it works

Normally I would stop at 1) but I cana dd a few more

2) it is maintained
3) I get the support I need when i want to (albeit it can be difficult to trawl forums as a newbie)
4) did i mention it works ?


The drama between fanboy and haterboy I don't care as a user, I was not even aware of it.

I am a Linux enthusiast for more than a decade

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a Linux enthusiast for more than a decade.

I see NO reason why a distro must be unfriendly, unpleasant to the eye, inconvinient to use.

And Ubuntu is user-friendly, pleasant to the eye, easy to install and use. Period!

Anything else is anti-Linux, pro-Windows propaganda!

Not to mention the best distros are built on top of Ubuntu - Mint, Ultimate, etc.

So don't listen to them, Mark, You are doing a great job!

I wish You best of luck!

Since they left the common Gui paradigm

[theolein]

I have really like Ubuntu ever since I first used it in the 7.x days, but, for me, the real problem is Mark Shuttleworth's direction. Unity is fine for Netbooks (although with Netbooks being a dying breed, one has to ask what the point is), but it is simply terrible for desktops and not ideal for notebooks. Canonical's increasingly erratic ventures, like Ubuntu One are also things I do not really understand as they simply do not have the clout to grab enough users from other online portals and music sharing services.

I think that Canonical should perhaps refocus its business on less radical changes and more solid improvements and working better with other OSes and distros, as those are not going away and paradigm breaking rubbish like Unity only serves to alienate people.

Also, if Canonical needs money, then they are only proving the rule that small esoteric devices and services rarely work with their current path. Taking a social approach to improving Linux by working with software developers instead of fighting them would really help things as well.

Replying to myself to rant some more

[theolein]

Adding to my comment above, something that rally irks me about Mark Shuttleworth is his current lack of originality. The move of the window buttons to the left hand side of the window was seen by many as something that was meant to badly imitate Mac OSX. Back then Shuttleworth said it was so that the buttons would not conflict with the applets on the top right hand side (or something, the justification was about some feature that is rarely used). Then, they came up with Unity which, as a Mac OSX user, is an embarrassingly obvious attempt by Shuttleworth to ape Mac OSX's Dock spring up folders.

This is why Unity is predestined to fail. When they took Nautilus out of the default install (hey fuckers, how am I supposed to connect to network shares?), it was the last straw for me personally. Ubuntu might be a popular distro,but it's trying too hard to be different.

Slashdot is dead

[shish]

After a one-sentence random guy's opinion of "google sucks" being posted as front page news, and now this, I wonder if the editors would publish the short story of their own demise -- slashdot turns from a geek news source to a political flamebait blog, posting articles based on how many page hits it'll get them rather than how interesting they are...

Re:Slashdot is dead

[jbolden]

Turns? Take a look at /. from a decade ago. Flamebait articles, especially on Linux politics, have been key to /. attracting the crowd they want since it started.

the crimes of Shuttleworth

[doperative]

the crimes of Shuttleworth or the bogus Canonical controversy ...

Nothing to complain about Bruce. What criticism and from what source, apart from articles like the above from Bruce Byfield, I wouldn't know about the controversy. I guess it does get people reading Bruce ..

So, to recap the crimes of Shuttleworth: using Launchpad , inviting openSUSE developers to join Ubuntu, introducing monthly release cycles, changing color codes and a new font in Ubuntu, moving to the more advanced Unity shell, switching from init to Upstart, switching from Xorg to Wayland,

"Since both init and Xorg are flexible enough to provide the sorts of improvements that Shuttleworth advocates, the suspicion is that such decisions are not technical, so much as political"

translated: I Bruce Byfield, propose that the decision to switch to Upstart and Wayland is a politically motivated surreptitious pretext to achieve domination over the Linux software stack. These views as expressed here represent no one except Bruce Byfield, and certainly not the FOSS community in general.

Hey Bruce, please stop being an open source advocate, would you ;)

Re:The Linux "Community" (gack!) can be embarrassi

[Anonymous Coward]

 

There's a distro out there for everyone.
 

...and it's called Gentoo? *ducks*

Avoiding Mono and .Net

[lamapper]

I prefer my desktop to be free of mono, that's why I use Mint KDE.

I feel the same way, now that Fedora has announced that they too will support Wayland, both Ubuntu and Fedora are off my list.

Microsoft has hurt Linux in the past by leading people down proprietary and technological blind alleys. While I have no ill will toward Wayland, I do not want to look up one day and find out that something has been automated against my wishes or that I no longer have 100% control over my PC hardware.

Wayland ~ Mono ~ .Net (dotNet) ~ Microsoft.

All Microsoft has to do is make a change to .Net that impacts Linux in a negative way and it will be pulled upstream into Mono and upstream into Wayland.

Anyone who says this will never happen has a short memory, practicing revisionist history or has not been in the field very long. The rest of us have seen this before...can you say Embrace, Extend and Extinguish, I knew you could.

To avoid Wayland is simple, pay attention to which distros are implementing Mono and/or Wayland by default and avoid them. Use this graphic - GNU/Linux distro timeline to make sure your distro is not impacted by those distros that are implementing Mono in their food chain!

Thankfully with Linux we have allot of other choices and this is a very good thing.

Re:Avoiding Mono and .Net

[MrEricSir]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but what does Wayland have to do with .NET? It certainly isn't written in .NET, nor does it require the .NET runtimes afaik.

So... what the hell are you talking about?

My greatest concern

[ThatsNotPudding]

is Canonicals increasing love for that trojan patent-horse called Mono. I still use Ubuntu, but one of the first things I do with an install is strip out all of the de Icaza taint; I suspect one day the infection will be dug in too deep to cure.

Re:My greatest concern

[h4rm0ny]

is Canonicals increasing love for that trojan patent-horse called Mono. I still use Ubuntu, but one of the first things I do with an install is strip out all of the de Icaza taint; I suspect one day the infection will be dug in too deep to cure.

I agree there! That's my biggest issue with Ubuntu too. None of the other criticisms of Ubuntu have ever been anything I particularly cared about. Even the building off Debian doesn't seem to be a bad problem as at least it gets more of the world using .deb rather than .rpm. ;) But Mono... Yeah - yeugh!

News to me

[Anonymous Coward]

Please point me towards this "assholish community" you described, so I can witness it for myself. (Strawman alert! And a lame one at that.) Sounds like you have an agenda just like TFA.

I think we all know the real story: in every interest group (and not just in the nerd world) there are a few loud, obnoxious, self-important "standouts" that make most of the noise. Consider that you might just be one of them. Meanwhile, the rest of us (the vast majority) would prefer to mind our own business and get back to work, realizing that the "war" has been fabricated by a vocal minority.

Let me comfort you...

[elkstoy]

Perhaps this is really just a problem with a secure feeling and warm fuzzies. Let's face it, people in the FOSS community are computer nerds (said in a loving way, as I am one) and that is our best way of scraping out an existance in this world. It is just a distrobution. Even if they do ruin it, the code is open and available everywhere. I love Ubuntu, but if it is sacrificed to the god of corporate bytes, I will simply use immerse myself in another distro. Newbies have a lot of sites and people ready and willing to teach the ways of the Linux world and the open source community. Perhaps this is even the event that will allow me one day to come to work and boot up to a Linux terminal.

X is a protocol and is not dumped

[tepples]

If "retain the ability to run X applications in a compatibility mode" is not considered "dumping" X, well, then alright, maybe it's a semantic difference...

Let me explain this semantic difference in a bit more detail: X11 is a protocol. Dumping the X.Org X11 server doesn't mean dumping X11, just as dumping XFree86 for the X.Org X11 server didn't mean dumping X11. So if we have an X11 server running on top of Wayland, then X11 is not dumped.

Re:X is a protocol and is not dumped

[jbolden]

Yes but Wayland is more than just an X server. Its primary mode is running a different type of windowing system. The situation is far more analogous to running an X server under GDI (windows) or Aqua (Mac) and primarily using the native system with a few X apps thrown in.

UNIX not on desktop, or UNIX with KDE

[tepples]

Someone who has used UNIX but not GNOME may have never used UNIX or a Unix-like system on a workstation, only on a server. Or he may have used only other desktop environments, such as CDE, KDE Plasma, or whatever is commonly used with Enlightenment or GNU Window Maker.

Mac OS X doesn't have GNOME either

[tepples]

There's nothing more obscure sounding than dumping the standard GNOME desktop and X along with it.

It's so obscure that even Apple did it when it made Mac OS X. It's a certified UNIX desktop system doesn't come with GNOME.

Did you get the memo?

[tepples]

It's Myanmar Shave now

Shuttleworth took you for mugs

[Anonymous Coward]

Shuttleworth took Debian and let you imagine that he wanted to help the community. You all helped by using the distro an helping with the PR.

Now Ubuntu has gained traction and the contracts are beginning to come in Shuttleworth doesn't need to keep up the pretence any longer. You can get stuffed.

Don't be a mug next time.

I agree with 1 of your points, 110%... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"Slashdot summaries are frequently a bunch of opinions stated as if true, followed by pointless questions" - by amicusNYCL (1538833) on Tuesday February 22, @04:51PM (#35284274)

Exactly man, exactly... agreed, 110%! So, why do they do that? Imo @ least, because they KNOW that IF/WHEN the post like that, fools will not question it... & assume that the poster is "some authority" or that they even have researched their statements & are able to support them.

APK

P.S.=> Bottom-line: I suspect it's done by competitors to "upset the applecart" & allow the underdog/loser to gain some ground, because the "sheeple" out there will believe just about anything... it's sad!

Now - Perhaps it's because they do not have the time to do some research, which IS their loss, or that they are just what I stated they are: SHEEPLE that believe anything they read... & the presses KNOW it! apk

xorg is not sufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is wrong in many ways...

xorg is NOT sufficient for what Ubuntu is trying to do. Ubuntu is gearing up to make a multi-touch Unity Desktop that can compete with the likes of WebOS and Android. The major problem with xorg is that although it guarantees you'll see what you render, it does not guarantee what you see in the process of rendering it..
Ubuntu has been struggling with xorg because of what it's showing to the user BETWEEN two frames of animation.. In other words, although xorg will do what they tell it to, there's no way to guarantee that xorg will display it without tearing, without flickering and without redrawing in the process of moving from one frame to another..

In that way, xorg has a mind of it's own that is very difficult to deal with when making a very highly refined visual desktop..

That's why Ubuntu is moving to Wayland.

People who keep saying xorg is "sufficient" need to hop on over to the Ubuntu developers forums and show Ubuntu how it's possible to have complete control over what the screen is going to look like in the middle of a render because as far as I've seen, it's not possible to do in xorg... If they can't accomplish that, then I think they need to zip it and let Ubuntu do what they need to do to bring Ubuntu where it needs to be to compete against WebOS and Android which are very heavily animated desktops.

When Canonical started demanding excessive

[sgtrock]

contributions from upstream projects.

As a hipster, I would just like to say

[elrous0]

Me personally, I use the world's most obscure distro. I would mention it by name, but I'm sure none of you poseurs have heard of it. Windows, OS X, Ubuntu--that's all well and good for people like you, I guess. But I'm better than you mainstream types, you see. As a true original, I have to use something exclusive. I would tell you more, but you just wouldn't understand.

Re:The Linux "Community" (gack!) can be embarrassi

[Anonymous Coward]

I just have to say that when I read your comment, I first laughed, and then I bent my head in reverence.

Not According to Distrowatch.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu is still the king of the ratings there and climbing.

Thank God slashdot is immune to sensational journalism.

Happens on both sides of the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to make sure we acknowledge both sides of this, I also saw stories about how "there is no budget crisis", "there is a surplus in wisconsin", and "this is all a surprise move by the governor".

None of the above is true, but there were plenty of people parroting stories that claimed it. So I agree with your premise that it is all agenda-driven - with the addition that all sides engage in it.

Re:Happens on both sides of the issue

[PopeRatzo]

So I agree with your premise that it is all agenda-driven - with the addition that all sides engage in it.

Sorry, my anonymous friend, but the examples you gave are all true. The amount that Gov Wanker is trying to take from the public employees is almost exactly the same as the tax break that he gave to the richest folks during the first weeks of his term.

And the "budget crisis" is entirely the making of the people who have been hostile to government for the past 30 years. What better way to attack the institution that you deride but to sabotage it by running up deficits and ensuring failure?

Even your closing meme of "they all do it" is one of the talking points of the agenda of those that would seek to deprive the people of anything like reliable, actionable information. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not doing it on purpose, which just shows how effective their agenda has been in your case.

they slowly mess it up

[higuita]

IMHO, they lost many support when they start to and still insist in release versions with high profile bug just to fulfill the release date. (even blockers, like the lack of 3G network, locking out many users for even search for a solution). there is no real reason to do that... EVER! its just the type of things that Microsoft do and is very bad for ubuntu to do it also, breaks the final idea that linux and ubuntu "always works fine"... ubuntu release many unstable or broken software.

Also, forcing the changing the look and feel made several people unhappy, a simple optional flag during the install to use the old look and theme would be enough... yes, users can change everything, but users that want and/or know how to do it usually dont use ubuntu.

ubuntu is user friendly, but not always listen to its users and the one-size-fits-all is always a problem

another thing is that many bug are closed too fast without solution, looks like that the ubuntu team needs to keep a "open bug" metric low and rush several bugs

finally, ubuntu is now the biggest distro and as again, one size-fits-all doesnt work, people with other needs and tastes dont like that some ubuntu choices are affecting then... ubuntu is a little arrogant to other distros

the love went the day the marriage proposal came

[Anonymous Coward]

ok sorry, distractions aside, Ubuntu *must* become commercial and make money. They must concentrate on making big money. At least as long as the Holy Arch, Debian, BSD, Gentoo, modder crowd happily elect governments that loot African riches every day. Ubuntu and Canonical *must* rise, become filthy rich...
... this time for Africa

Remember, remember, the other super controversial nutcase from South Africa is worshipped by the debian, arch, gentoo, BSD and general hacker crowd - Gandhi.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Ubuntu is going from stage 2 to stage 3.
And ubuntu wants to be fully prepared for it.
They're in it basically to win it all, including the long plundered African riches.

Ubuntu aint a distro. It's Africa's big tech revolution. Expect more from Canonical.
Rather than curse them, if you want *money* you are advised to invest in them.
If you want knowledge, you are advised to study them.

Laugh not at the big man from outer space - he's effing got it in his effing name!
He's probably the first Vulcan making First Contact.

This time for Africa!!!

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck are you talking about? Everybody I know who's playing with or converted to Linux in the last year (about 5 people) is using Ubuntu.

Hear, hear!

[Un pobre guey]

My sentiments exactly. Use whatever distro you want. Use a Mac. Use Windows for all I care. Just quit whining, FFS (excellent acronym, BTW).

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that Canonical moved the minimize/maximize/close buttons to the left (to look more like Mac OS X) is your first clue; what was the second?

GNU/Linux Ubuntu rocks!

[keneng]

And I'm certain Debian still rocks too!

Perhaps they make a few decisions some of us users may not like, but you have choices to make. You can change the source code yourself. You can report bugs to the development team telling them what you don't like. You can change distros. You can remain grateful for all that is in Ubuntu Linux and criticize constructively.

Apple product are slick, I admit, but at a price many of us can't afford and with digital restrictions included.
Windows products well....I constantly hear about people nagging about viruses on their Windows boxes and wasting all their time. One thing is certain. I don't waste my time fixing their computers because it's a lost cause. Their computers will successfully get infected again.

I prefer to simply say:
"I use Ubuntu Linux on my computer and it certainly helps me to prevent getting viruses on my computer. If you would ever want to try it or take a look at it, let me know."

Besides these days, I don't perceive myself as using Ubuntu, but living the way of Ubuntu. It's a choice of lifestyle, but it's not forced upon anybody else. When people are ready to listen, they'll ask for advice. I've learned to avoid giving advice unless it is asked for and especially when concerning lifestyle choices.
People will ask for advice when they are ready for it, but not sooner.

Re:How the worm (PopeRatzo) turns...

[Rakarra]

I want you guys to think about something. The above person is among us. He's probably one of your co-workers. He lives his life believing that civil engineers are deserving...uh, whatever being "sent to Hell" means.

I doubt it. He's probably just trolling (I've seen a lot of them lately) and doesn't really believe whatever he's saying. It's just to get a reaction.

Ubuntu is becoming windoze like

[twoHats]

As a user of Ubuntu since 7.04, and one who is making a switch right this moment, I am one of the disenchanted. I cannot say exactly why except with the generalization that Ubuntu seems more windoze like with each passing release. Most recently i am running 10.04 and the thing that jumps out at me is the "...Are you sure?" type messages, and other similar Big Brother OS type behavior. This has been a gradual process, and maybe it is helpful for noobs, but it is one of the reasons i abandoned doze a long time ago. Another windoze like trait is the idea that more complex is better - check out grub2, which was foisted on us in 10.04. I find absolutely no benefit for my use, and yet it is a huge pain to revert, as every update of the os wants grub2. These are just a few things that have bugged me lately about Ubuntu, but it is enough to get me off of it. btw - notice no bad mouth here, I feel Ubuntu is still a valuable OS for some - just not for me.

Re:The Linux "Community" (gack!) can be embarrassi

[twoHats]

So... you use Linux to be part of the Linux Community? Seems a little backward. I use Linux because i think it is technically superior, costs less, and is open. Then i seek the community for help, which i always find. I would not let some immature member of the community chase me from Linux, although i might try to educate them.

Perhaps the backward approach is the reason for your bitter view of the community? At any rate, as a happy, and well served member of that community I for one don't appreciate the total BS you laid out. To paraphrase ... If you don't like the Linux community please do go back to MS, Apple or whatever you think is better.

Re:TFA is BS; Ubuntu is pushing Linux forward nice

[Anzhr]

I'd buy a tablet running Ubunututu with Unity once they have a usable touch UI as I could then install the GTK apps I like. But they're farking around with the touch interface too, trying to chain together gestures.

Ubuntu too buggy

[Anonymous Coward]

The last 3 releases of Ubuntu broke themselves following the user of their automatic update system. Ubuntu has failed to do what every linux distro before them failed to do: release a distro that doesn't require spending 3 days pouring over forums to find an obscure set of commands and hidden configuration files needed to fix something that broke itself in the first place. Not to mention that any distro that resorts to needing to use a command line interface to fix it is automatically a failure in my eyes. After 15 years of GUI interfaces you would think that Linux would have caught up by now.

Just to piss off the spelling/grammar Nazi's = "realise", "that's to much", and "the killer rabbit is lose".

The disappointment of heightened expectations

[Anonymous Coward]

I can speak from my experience, which I don't think is that atypical for newbees. You get a recent distro up and running on your machine, and immediately notice a whole slew of advantages over the Windows you abandoned. It's faster - much faster in fact. It seems to be safer. You can use it on older equipment, and it doesn't hog nearly the resources that windows does. You become enamored of it, and marvel at the fact that your investment cash-wise is minimal, while MS is tapping you for $125.00. You join groups (where folks unanimously claim that it is only a matter of a VERY short time before Linux completely replaces Windows anywhere it is currently found), buy books and ebooks, and prepare for the involvement and self-instruction that you are likely, in reality, to never adequately have time for.

Then something goes wrong.... something seemingly basic.... like your screen resolution resets itself to 600X800 and won't offer you anything but that or 640X480. You go on line, spend a few hours reading what others have done with a similar problem, and eventually work through it. Maybe, six hours invested.

Then one day you get a popup telling you you need a newer version of flash player..... or there are no mousetweaks installed, so your setup is going to be lacking some function or other. You look around on the web and find the appropriate tar-ball for your machine. Now you look back on how it took you about five hours to fix that screen resolution thing with a bit of trepidation, but think, "Hell. This is just installing a program designed to go on your machine. How tough can it be? Windows..... go to web site. Click download button. Tell it where you want the file stored in a dialog box. After download is complete, click install button. Viola!

Linux.... Go to website, click download button, tell it where you want the file stored in a dialog box. After download is complete..... oops no install button pops up. Go online. Find several articles on how to install/ compile tar-balls. Note that the instructions vary slightly for each distro. Find instructions for your distro. Go back and try to copy the.gz file into the subdirectory you were instructed to work from. Your machine then tells you that you don't have permissions to copy files. Go back on-line. Find out that you have to 'own' the directories involved. Go back and check properties to find out that the involved directories are owned by root. Attempt to log in as root. Get told that you don't have permissions to do this from the login screen you were sent to when your "switched user" to root. Try a reboot, logging in as root to begin-with. Get told again you cannot log in as root. Login as yourself, but after about an hour of screwing with the various properties of the login screens, find a way to FAKE logging in as root. Do so. Change the ownership of the required directories so you can copy files. Do the file transfers. Open a terminal window. Extract the source code from the .gz file. Start using the set of instructions you garnered to install and compile your particular distro's version of the program. Note that in going through the instructions, you have to type the name of the file with the source code completely. One line of instructions might be forty-plus characters long, with undefined spaces. Leave out one space, have one typo... start over. After you have started over six or seven times and gotten either the message that the directory doesn't exist (you never named or called a directory that you were aware of) or that the file doesn't exist, you go back to the directory in question and find out... sure enough.... the executable that the instructions told you to use does not exist in the directory. Go back on line trying to find out where to get it, and find out it should have been incorporated in the gz file you expanded, but if it's not, it is probably because it expects it to be on your system, but in order to have it, you had to have initially installed the system with so

I perfectly agree with your reasoning.

[G3ckoG33k]

I perfectly agree with your reasoning. Ten years ago I had friend who refused to run Linux "because it was too mainstream", he was running some BSD variant at the time.

Re:The Linux "Community" (gack!) can be embarrassi

[Anonymous Coward]

99% of computer users are waiting for one that works.

Maybe creating another distribution was not the answer in the first place.

Ubuntu is the most professional Linux distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Years ago, I was a user of commercial UNIX workstations. Everytime I had to use Linux, I found it had a really "cheap", "unprofessional", feeling. It didn't work "out of the box", and moreover, the desktop was a bad copy of Windows.

Ubuntu is the only Linux distribution that I've found to provide an experience quite close to that of commercial UNIX workstations.

Regarding GUI choices, the 10.10 version looks awesome, and their new GUI project also looks awesome. I applaud all moves away from GNOME and KDE. I never liked them, they never looked as a professionally-developed desktop, unless you installed custom themes or patches, which is nonsense because it's the default look of the desktop the one that has to be serious-looking.

The other day, a friend invited me to see his new RedHat installation. I felt like if RedHat hasn't evolved for a decade, it really made me feel the same "cheap" feeling I had when I tried Linux years ago.

For me, Linux is Ubuntu. Period. And I really wish a great future for them, because if they fail, I don't know any feasible alternative.