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Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the why-can't-we-all-get-along dept.

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?"

41 of 778 comments (clear)

  1. What's going on? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "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

    1. Re:What's going on? by vlm · · Score: 4, Funny

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

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

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    2. Re:What's going on? by amicusNYCL · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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?

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    3. Re:What's going on? by h4rm0ny · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

      --

      Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
    4. Re:What's going on? by martin-boundary · · Score: 4, Funny

      "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!

    5. Re:What's going on? by semi-extrinsic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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".

      --
      for i in `facebook friends "=bday" 2>/dev/null | cut -d " " -f 3-`; do facebook wallpost $i "Happy birthday!"; done
    6. Re:What's going on? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    7. Re:What's going on? by BitZtream · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    8. Re:What's going on? by vadim_t · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    9. Re:What's going on? by zill · · Score: 3, Funny

      Summaries are assumed to be true, not opinion.

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

    10. Re:What's going on? by pixelpusher220 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people :-D
    11. Re:What's going on? by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    12. Re:What's going on? by shellbeach · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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 ...

    13. Re:What's going on? by Darkness404 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    14. Re:What's going on? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    15. Re:What's going on? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  2. Free software by devxo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. what? by Tumbleweed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Since when is Ubuntu the 'bad linux'?

    1. Re:what? by Anthony+Mouse · · Score: 5, Informative

      Since when is Ubuntu the 'bad linux'?

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

    2. Re:what? by SpeedStreet · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Since when is Ubuntu the 'bad linux'?

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

    3. Re:what? by Lord+Ender · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Since when is Ubuntu the 'bad linux'?

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

      --
      A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
    4. Re:what? by Ironchew · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "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.

    5. Re:what? by jedidiah · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    6. Re:what? by h4rr4r · · Score: 3, Funny

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

    7. Re:what? by ArcherB · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

      --
      There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
    8. Re:what? by ebuck · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  4. flamebait by bsDaemon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  5. Huh by Anrego · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. Who's this guy ? by burdicda · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

    1. Re:Who's this guy ? by numbski · · Score: 5, Funny

      Burma Shave

      --

      Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).

  7. Amongst the Linux veterans at least ... by SpooForBrains · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    "The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
    1. Re:Amongst the Linux veterans at least ... by Dutchmaan · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  8. Wow, terrible article by raddan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

  9. Re:Did I miss something? by jedidiah · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Deciding to make a mobile interface the default desktop for 28" monitors was probably somewhere close to the turning point.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  10. Re:Ubuntu got popular. by hoggoth · · Score: 4, Funny

    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?

    --
    - For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat /dev/random (may take some time)
  11. TFA is BS; Ubuntu is pushing Linux forward nicely by dkegel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...

  12. BLOGMYGOD by SpeedStreet · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?

  13. Re:Did I miss something? by rubycodez · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  14. The Linux "Community" (gack!) can be embarrassing by sgage · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  15. Re:Where did the love go? by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
  16. Re:Totally! Journalists should... by SomeJoel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

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