Shuttleworth: Trust Us, We're Trying to Make Shopping Better

An anonymous reader writes "In a blog post responding to the latest controversy over Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth says 'integrating online scope results' are 'not putting ads in Ubuntu' because the shopping results 'are not paid placement', but 'straightforward search results'. He goes on to explain his plans to make the Home Lens of the Dash a place to find 'anything anywhere'. Like a cross between Chrome OS's new app launcher, Siri and Google Now 'it will get smarter and smarter' so you can 'ask for whatever you want' it 'just works'."

Comments

Re:The future of operating systems

[Anonymous Coward]

And here I thought the ones that don't care about their privacy or workflow were using Windows.

And What of Other Retailers?

[eldavojohn]

From the Q&A part of his blog:

This is just a moneymaking scheme.

We picked Amazon as a first place to start because most of our users are also regular users of Amazon, and it pays us to make your Amazon journey get off to a faster start. Typing Super “queen marking cage” Just Worked for me this morning. I am now looking forward to my game of Ultimate Where’s Waldo hunting down the queens in my bee colonies, Ubuntu will benefit from the fact that I chose to search Amazon that way, Amazon benefits from being more accessible to a very discerning, time-conscious and hotkey-friendly audience.

Cool, thanks for at least being honesty about that part. Although I don't understand why this wasn't the front-and-center thesis of your blog post. You're getting paid to bring us to Amazon faster. Okay. You can opt out of it but it's enabled by default. Okay. I get that. It's okay, nobody's going to fault you if you're trying to figure out new revenue models. But you should really be up front with your user base about it or you're going to get some seriously knee jerk reactions that might doom your product before it's out the door (regardless of how true it is). You're running damage control now and that probably could have been avoided if your floated this out in front of "leaked" screenshots.

I'm also really curious about this next part of your answer to this question:

But there are many more kinds of things you can search through with Unity scopes. Most of them won’t pay Ubuntu a cent, but we’ll still integrate them into the coolest just-ask-and-you’ll-receive experience. I want us to do this because I think we can make the desktop better.

So what happens when it's time to integrate and "bring the user faster" to Barnes & Noble? What happens when you've "integrated" with both Amazon, B&N, Abe's Books, eBay, Go Hastings, etc and I type in "Ender's Game"? What happens when the outfit that sold you your "queen marking cage" doesn't sell them on Amazon and there's middle men re-listing everything at a higher price on Amazon on the chance that someone with a default scope searches for it through Ubuntu? I have reservations that this move is making an already omnipotent Amazon unduly more powerful ...

Re:And What of Other Retailers?

[MrEricSir]

You're getting paid to bring us to Amazon faster. Okay.

Faster? Heh. You've obviously never tried Unity lenses.

Re:And What of Other Retailers?

[Kjella]

What happens when the outfit that sold you your "queen marking cage" doesn't sell them on Amazon and there's middle men re-listing everything at a higher price on Amazon on the chance that someone with a default scope searches for it through Ubuntu?

You mean like today? There's always more places to look but there's a diminishing gain, for the most part I only check prices until it's reasonably optimal not check every store to see if somebody, somewhere offers it for $2 less. Your mileage - and valuation of your time - may vary.

Re:And What of Other Retailers?

[hairyfeet]

But the simple fact is, and I can't believe on a supposedly libertarian leaning site i even have to point this out, TINSTAAFL and sadly with the GPL there isn't really any ways to make money on the desktop other than ads or the tin cup model, which doesn't bring in enough steady revenue to keep the lights on, much less pay for all the devs required to even maintain much less update something the size of Ubuntu. Oh and before someone brings up servers we are talking desktops NOT servers, servers are a different animal and live and die by support contracts, which as RH becoming a billion dollar company proves you CAN make money off GPL software with the enterprise support model.

Does that mean in ANY way that the GPL is bad? of course not, it simply means that NO license can truly fit all possible use cases and desktops are simply one of the places the GPL model doesn't work. As I have pointed out it'll cost a good 100 million plus to bring a Linux desktop to where it can really stand toe to toe against Windows and OSX, all those "update broke my drivers" messes would have to disappear, which means major rebuilds or replacement for Pulse, the Wireless stack, and X Server as well, not to mention forking many of the internals so when Linus and the devs futz with something it won't break drivers. To truly compete you'll need to have at least 7 years of support (halfway between Apple's 5 and MSFT's 10) and the drivers that work at RTM will have to continue working right up to EOL.

But where will this money come from? You can't sell support contracts to consumers, they just won't buy them. You can try to sell hardware but that is a VERY risky game, you either have to get enough buzz you can make high margins like Apple or you'll get caught up in the race to the bottom, so where will it come from? The tin cup model simply won't allow a steady enough income to keep the lights on, much less plan for the future, and from the hatred we see across the web about Canonical's move its doubtful Amazon ads will even pay their light bill.

This is why I say what Shuttleworth should have done was base Ubuntu on one of the BSDs and NOT Linux, as the GPL model simply doesn't work on desktops. that way he would have a way to differentiate his version from the crowd, could charge some small amount (say $10 for Home, $20 for Business) and actually have been able to undercut MSFT while still making money per copy, and he wouldn't have to use cheap stunts like this just to get a working revenue stream.

The GPL and Linux works great on servers, works great when you are selling hardware like embedded, but there just isn't any money to be made with GPL and Linux on the desktop. I mean how many "based on Ubuntu" distros are there now? They can enjoy the millions of dollars worth of work Shuttleworth paid for without giving back a cent. To give an analogy...imagine you spent 10 million to make the perfect lightbulb and will have to sell it at $5 a copy to make a profit. Now imagine thanks to a license that you had to take to get the work started I can just take your design, have it made in China, and give it away to advertise my business without giving you a cent for R&D...how many do you think would buy YOUR lightbulb? How many do you think would be willing to invest their own millions to make it even better, knowing I can just copy and give it away without giving them a cent?

In the end coders have to eat, bills have to be paid, and if you truly want a "year of the Linux desktop" its gonna cost 100 million plus nobody seems to want to pay. At least with BSD, and again not saying one is better than the other, saying they are each useful for different use cases, they would be able to pay for the R&D required to really compete. Instead I predict within 2 years, probably less, Ubuntu will join Xandros and Linspire and all the other failed attempts to actually make a business around Linux desktops.

Re:And What of Other Retailers?

[Compaqt]

Although that's true, Mint has sort of worked itself into a corner. Since its claim to fame now is supposed to be as the un-Unity distro, they can't quite put it back in. And if they do, what's the point of bothering with Mint as opposed to stock Ubuntu? There have been some bugs with Mint, so that'd be another reason to just stay with Ubuntu.

Same goes for xubuntu, lubuntu, etc. They can't quite put shopping-lens-enabled Unity in the mix.

Re:And What of Other Retailers?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is Ubuntu hasn't even really tried the "tin cup model." If Ubuntu can reach say 10 million users (if they haven't already) and can convince 10% of those users to buy a $10 DVD every six months by conducting a public radio style campaign "buy a DVD or USB Key for $10 and become a member of Ubuntu Sponsorship Family...add additional $20 for official Rabid Rodent t-shirt" they could raise boatloads

  But now they are focused on becoming "self-sustainable" which sounds good but there is no such thing. Apple, Microsoft (well, if they didn't have an OEM monopoly) have to convince people to keep buying their products every year, unless Canonical becomes a volunteer project so will they.

Re:And What of Other Retailers?

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh..you DO know that Mint is a knock off and NOT a part of Canonical, yes? The same goes for Kubuntu and Xubuntu as they fired the devs that were making those a couple of years back so now its just some volunteers taking the Ubuntu source and building the DE they like for it.

And THAT is the problem in a nutshell, Canonical can pay $10 million to develop all these features like Launchpad and Wayland and fixing the problems but how will they make their money back, much less make enough to grow so they can do more?

They can't which is why they'll fail and no more advances like we saw from Caonical will be forthcoming. this is why Xandros and Linspire went bust, why RH and Suse only sell corporate, there is just no way to make money on the consumer and small business market with the tin cup or support contract models so companies that try...die.

Re:And What of Other Retailers?

[Compaqt]

Yeah, I know Mint is a remixing of Ubuntu. Same for *buntu.

What I thought we were talking about is: Ubuntu spends $$ on development, but can't recover the full amount, because anybody is free to make their own remix.

Let me elaborate why I think it's not a problem. Here are Ubuntu's revenue sources:

1) Desktop support contracts. Not affected by *buntu. People that buy support contracts are unlikely to load up Mint et alia.
1b) Server support contracts: these are expensive, but the businesses making money with Ubuntu Server can afford it.
2) Ubuntu One premium offerings. Not affected by *buntu, unless Mint wants to come up with Mint One.
3) Ubuntu Software Center (paid apps). Not affected by *buntu. If someone wants to buy a paid app, it'll be in Ubuntu.
4) Product results in Unity. Again *buntu can't "steal" this because their entire raison d'etre is that they don't have Unity.
5) Pre-installed Ubuntu on OEM computers.
6) They'll likely come up with something in relation to Valve/Steam.

Alternatively, if somebody comes up with Joe Bob's Ubuntu with the affiliate links reset, would you download it? Doubtful.

Note that 1B above is basically RedHat's model. The difference is that RedHat basically gave up on the desktop, which I think was a mistake because it gave Ubuntu the opening to grab mindshare. And the fact is, if you run something on the desktop, you are more likely to run it on the server. That's how M$ got into the datacenter. These days, startups use Ubuntu by default. RHell is like Windows for Workgroups 3.11, venerable and crusty.

So, even if they only break even on the desktop, that's getting them the mindshare for server deployment$.

Re:And What of Other Retailers?

[hairyfeet]

But none of those are bringing in enough revenue to keep the lights on which is why canonical is trying this, because desktops just don't sell support contracts (hear of anybody buying a support contract for Windows?) and their server offering is practically dead, everyone uses RH or Cent, and I bet my last dollar they aren't getting a dime for those Dell installs since Dell has to pay an entire dev team to run their own repo and backport everything (because if they use stock Ubuntu the drivers break) so there just isn't any money there, not enough to pay for the R&D and support and bug fixing and regression testing and advertising and all the other things required to compete with the other guys.

The reason RH can make money is twofold, one servers have guys with good educations making six figures to maintain them called admins, so the "update foo broke my printer" kinds of support you see on desktop simply aren't there, not to mention most servers run headless with no sound or other user level crap so its less area to break, and two if a corp finds a serious bug that their admins can't work around? they'll pay RH to fix it.

None of that exists in the desktop market, your users don't even know what they HAVE, much less how to configure it so drivers must NOT break on update, CLI has to go since the users simply won't be able to make heads or tales of it, and the most bug prone elements, such as Pulse, WiFi manager, and X Server, would probably need replacing or forking. Remember users are used to Windows where a PC from 2003 with XP still runs to this very day with ALL drivers functional, so that is the level of simple you'll have to shoot for.

The problem is a good 95%+ of the money spent on improving Linux is NOT in the DEs or userland, its ALL in the server tech as that is what the corps are paying to fix. So Canonical or whomever will have to come up with probably a good 100 million to do all the fixing, regressions testing, yadda yadda yadda,...where will they get the money? How will they recoup their investment, and make enough to continue?

As another user I was speaking to about this said "For a Linux desktop to flourish you'd HAVE to get rid of the redistribution clause" because as he rightly pointed out this isn't something one has to worry about in hardware, you don't have access to factories in China so you can't compete but with software? ZERO barrier to entry, hell any free file hosting would be all that it would take and since you're allowed to just take everything and hand out infinite copies you can't make any money on software ONLY on support or ads or tin cups.

That is why I said the smart move would have been to take a page out of Job's playbook and went BSD for the base. Then they could have made changes to the guts and shared those (as Apple does with CUPS) and kept their userland proprietary. That way they could actually sell copies and not have to worry about competing with their own work. Because the models that traditionally work on Linux simply don't work on the desktop, this is why no company has been able to make a go of it and I predict Canonical will be gone in two years or less, just not enough income coming in.

Re:And What of Other Retailers?

[Compaqt]

>everyone uses RH or Cent
Really? Depending on your point of view, you might call RHell stable or crusty, and Ubuntu featureful or unstable. Anyway, sometimes, especially for fast-moving young companies, you need the features in newer versions of packages to get you the features you need to enable your business, whether in haproxy, MySQL, or the kernel. E.g., Centos 6 uses 2.6.32, Ubuntu 12.04 has 3.2. You may not see it from where you are, but a lot of people view RHell the way RedHat users used to view Windows servers: legacy.

> I predict Canonical will be gone in two years or less, just not enough income coming in.

OK, we'll see.

Re:And What of Other Retailers?

[hairyfeet]

Have you actually WORKED in a server room? I can tell you conservative is not the word to describe those guys, because any buggy crap that screws something up and actually causes downtime COSTS MONEY so needless to say they are VERY cautious! Now sure RH and Cent may not be the most cutting edge but cutting edge software and servers don't go together anyway, what they are looking for is 5 9s uptime and that is something RH is damned good at. And why would they need the latest features? They are serving files, running DBs, serving up webpages, don't need cutting edge for that as its been going on for 20+ years.

And yes we WILL see, and I have actual evidence to back up my claim. look at what Canonical has done since Shuttleworth announced 2+ years ago he wouldn't sink anymore of his own money in...you had the netbook remix trying to catch the tail end of the netbook craze, you had them attempt UbuntuTV and Ubuntu Phone, you've seen Ubuntu Server and Ubuntu One come out,you've had Unity and attempts at getting out an Ubuntu tablet...why? Why would a company that had spent the last 4 years billing itself as "THE Linux desktop for humans" suddenly go so all over the map?

The answer is simple, the millions they got from Shuttleworth is going out in the form of payroll and lights and paperclips and the money coming in? Practically non-existent. So they have been throwing crap at a wall hoping something ANYTHING will stick and give them positive cash flow, this Amazon deal is just the latest in a long list of attempts. But it too shall fail, we see the forums filled with "apt get remove" posts so when you figure how many remove it and how many don't buy the amount they'll get from referrals probably won't pay their light bill, just as their previous attempt with Amazon, selling MP3s, has died. Notice they didn't bring that up anywhere in this announcement, why? because it failed and you don't bring up failures in press releases.

Its a shame, as the idea was a nice one, they simply chose the wrong OS to base it on, there is simply no money in Linux desktops.

Do we really need another find-it-all?

[OldKingCole]

Why can't you just integrate Google search into the lens?

Re:Do we really need another find-it-all?

[eric_herm]

Google do not give 15% of referral. In fact, Google already give money to Canonical for support while i am pretty sure they do not need to ( like they could simply hire half of Canonical engineers if they wanted ).

Re:Do we really need another find-it-all?

[OldKingCole]

My point exactly. This is not about enabling us to find the best answer to what we ask but rather push referral ads down our throats.

Re:Do we really need another find-it-all?

[afgam28]

Well, Google doesn't give 15% of referral to Canonical, but they do pay Mozilla $300 million per year to put a Google search bar in Firefox.

Imagine if Amazon and Canonical came to a similar arrangement, and Ubuntu gained a similar usage share as Firefox.

Re:Do we really need another find-it-all?

[slack_justyb]

Why stop at just Google? Why start with Google? I see this feature being more like the search bar in Firefox where you can install and remove search provides as you wish. They just implemented an Amazon one first because they can make money off of it. However, I doubt that Amazon will be the only search lens that gets implemented.

Re:The future of operating systems

[AE90]

And THIS is modded funny? Stay classy slashdot. But in reality Microsoft always asks when they want to collect some anonymous data and it's always opt-in. With Google they outright collect and you have to know where to opt-out (if you even can).

Re:The future of operating systems

[0racle]

I use CentOS, Fedora and Slackware. Where do they fit into your simplified future?

The Bill Clinton School of Wordplay

[stevegee58]

"It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is."
What's happened to plain speech Mr. Shuttleworth?

Re:The Bill Clinton School of Wordplay

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, even if they're "technically" not Amazon ads because Amazon didn't pay to place them there specifically, they're still "Ubuntu ads" for Ubuntu's Amazon affiliate program. You're still being served ads even if it's Ubuntu's servers. Plus, he's wrong about Super-A being a solution if you watch this video (starting around the 30 minute mark) you can see how annoying this is.

NSFW Search Results

[tcort]

There is no way to block adult oriented results from coming up....
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-lens-shopping/+bug/1054282

Re:NSFW Search Results

[eric_herm]

And once adult oriented results while be filtered, someone will ask to remove blasphematory results ( like India/Pakistan ), then someone will remove gay related content ( if this isn't already removed as "adult oriented result", as often with such filter ), then someone will remove violent game ( like in australia ),then users will also ask to not see song they already purchased songs from the result, and then RIAA will ask to not show pirate song and mp3.

And then Canonical will be screwed to have deployed a censorship system, because it will be abused like the others. in the end, Canonical will not enven get enough money just to pay the system, let alone engineers to make new products.

Re:NSFW Search Results

[mano.m]

India has never asked for a law against blasphemy in the UN, unlike Pakistan. Please don’t lump India in with the failed state it is forced to live next to.

Re:NSFW Search Results

[h4rr4r]

I looked at his images on that bug and cannot figure out which one is so horrible. Is it the boobs?

It seemed like stuff you could see on TV in much of the world.

Re:NSFW Search Results

[tcort]

What you see on TV might not be appropriate for small children or business meetings with potential clients.

Re:NSFW Search Results

[h4rr4r]

Small children see breasts all the time, that is after all how very small children are nourished.

I can not speak to the values of your potential clients.

Why is it that this bug was raised for sexual content and not voilent content? Do you really think procreation and other normal activities are more dangerous for a child to be exposed too than violence?

Re:NSFW Search Results

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be intentionally obtuse. The point here is that most of the world don't accept porn or even erotica in any "serious" setting. It's fine for your own private use, but if there's any chance of such search results turning up that instantly removes all potential use of ubuntu in the "real" world - e.g. offices, school, anywhere outside your home.

As to whether that's logical or right or wrong, that's an entirely different argument - it's the world we live in.

Re:NSFW Search Results

[h4rr4r]

In an office that deb would be removed from the standard desktop image.

No one ever rolls out stock settings in an office.

Re:NSFW Search Results

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it certainly can't be the Dungeon Sex porn. Being disingenuous does not make a great argument, it makes you look like the kind of asshole who calls themself a 'deadpan snarker'.

Re:NSFW Search Results

[Anonymous Coward]

Pakistan is not a failed state. American servicemen and women are fighting and dying to make sure that Pakistan never becomes a failed state. Characterizing Pakistan as a failed state, then modding up that opinion on /. , only serves to undermine their efforts.

          Pakistan was was created when borh Hindu and Muslims could not coexist peacably with each other in a single border.

By some people's measure,India is a failed state on accunt of rampant, unfettered official corrpution which extends nearly infitintely in both the "petty" and "ubiquitous" directions.

For that matter, the US itself does not fare all that well on lists of nations ranked for corruption and or tranparency either.

Finally, just to give some historical perspective, prior to WWII the US was basically a bunch corrupt municipalities embedded in a larger societal contexty of overt racism, sexism and cronyism run by gangs of various types, from well opiled political machines to outright thugs, gangsters and murderers.

india's and Pakistan's citizens hate each other. But that's how they became India and Pakistan to begin with. They can't even get along well enough to agree on a Wikipedia article covering the well known, historical roots of their animosity. From

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93Pakistan_relations

The neutrality of this article is disputed...

The world already has one pari of pair of nuclear armed, dysfunctional cousins with a blood lust for each other in the Jews and the Muslims of the Middle East. Part of the intractability of that situation owes directly to the non-stop campaigning and characterizing by one side of the other as a "a failed state" and "uncivilized" and the distorting effect that campaigning has had on public perception in the US.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/13/pro-israel-muni-ads_n_1773401.html

The right wing fundamentalists in Pakistan who want to blow the world up in a nuclear come-to-Allah moment are no different in intent or kind from their counterparts in India or the US. who, in the later case, feverishlyand gleefully await the arrival of Armageddon, when most people in the world will die horrible deaths. That accounts for fully 40% of the US electorate.

   

Intolerant religious conservatives represent an ongoing mortal threat to every nation they exist in and are the most likely flash point in a series of events leading to the nuclear annihiliation millions.

Pakistan is not a failed state. Pakistan is a state whose civil society, like a lot fo civil societies in a lot of nations, is in pitched war with its religious conservaties. This is a war in which we all have a vital stake.

  Refraining from mischaracterizing Paks actually represents a solid contribution to the situation and it's a contribution anyone should be able to manage.

Good day to you, sir.

Re:NSFW Search Results

[formfeed]

Sorry, Americans are sooo self centered when it comes to other cultures and keep mixing up India and Pakistan all the time.
Just one question - are the Patel the ones that own the gas stations or the hotels?

Re:NSFW Search Results

[Anonymous Coward]

No one? Wow, you must have worked in a thousand different offices at least, in all sorts of businesses, to be able to make such nice claims with any statistical value. I mean, you'd have to, since otherwise it's purely anecdotal and only valid for a very specific subset of offices. Meanwhile I've worked with/for/been in contact with plenty of offices where people bring their own laptops in to use on the side, or where the default rollout is windows with minor security tweaks. But that's just anecdotal, of course, even if it shows that your blanket assertion of "no one" is blatantly false.

Sure, some offices would roll their own modified version, but I have to wonder why these people would even look at ubuntu in the first hand, rather than looking at another option that required less customisation. After all, at some point it would become cheaper to license a commercial grade OS rather than pay a sysadmin to stay on top of something that will forever be known as "adware".

"Oh, they're not ads!"

Yeah, I've heard that before. Usually from the most intrusive and ruthless adware producers.

Re:NSFW Search Results

[h4rr4r]

They are adds, and yes most offices will stay clear of ubuntu for other reasons.

I have never seen an office where they rollout an unmodified install. The cost of dealing with those exceeds the ease of use for more than even a couple machines.

Re:NSFW Search Results

[mano.m]

Pakistan is not a failed state.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/failed_states_index_2012_interactive

It was Steve Jobs Idea First

[na1led]

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/04/26/1740234/steve-jobs-idea-for-an-ad-supported-os , but I'm sure Apple has found a way to use subliminal messages instead, considering how many people are buying new iPhones.

Re:It was Steve Jobs Idea First

[Celarent Darii]

Just a completely different question - if this idea was patented wouldn't Canonical run into problems? Maybe the patent system can save Ubuntu from this garbage....

Ubuntu desktop is dead to me...

[AmazingRuss]

...so many other things that need fixing, and they're whacking off about internet search.

If I want to search the internet, I pull up google and search. That crap has no business on my desktop

Re:Ubuntu desktop is dead to me...

[Microlith]

so many other things that need fixing, and they're whacking off about internet search.

To be frank, a lot of what needs fixing takes money to fix. Particularly integration and compatibility issues which seem to be, by far, the biggest source of problems. This requires labs full of hardware and people to develop and automate the testing.

If you're struggling to find sources of income (which wouldn't surprise me, given the attitude expressed here on Slashdot previously) then it's hard to step up and develop the QA infrastructure that's needed to resolve the issues. Most Slashdotters would simply write them off and move on to the next useless distro.

Re:Ubuntu desktop is dead to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

HOWTO: Get rid of Unity and switch back to Gnome in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

Re:Ubuntu desktop is dead to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

> and they're whacking off about internet search.

They are not. They are whacking off about making money. If Ubuntu is not sustainable otherwise, what would you like Shuttleworth to do? To simply close up shop, and send all the newbie Windows converts to Slackware an tell them how to start compiling kernels? After the Gnome2 debacle, Ubuntu dying away would be the last and final nail in the desktop Linux coffin. Ubuntu and Canonical are a major draft horse of the Linux ecosystem (think Steam wouldnt consider Linux otherwise), you really do not want them to die off. There is and never was _anybody_ out there to replace them.

Re:Ubuntu desktop is dead to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, ads are out of the question. Going even NEAR that income source is out of the question. Debian is a pretty damn fine operating system...

Re:Ubuntu desktop is dead to me...

[Microlith]

Debian is a pretty damn fine operating system

But in terms of out of the box usability it's still several steps behind Ubuntu. It's on par with Fedora, which I also avoid as much as possible.

Re:Ubuntu desktop is dead to me...

[gl4ss]

the way ubuntu is going being 5 steps behind and going down different path is probably better.

Re:Ubuntu desktop is dead to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Shuttleworth wasted a boat-load of money on idiotic ideas such as Unity.

Re:Ubuntu desktop is dead to me...

[v. Konigsmann]

Quite right. I never understood the appeal of Ubuntu, excepting when it acted as a strong emergency cd for hosed systems --- at which it was excellent; it's sudden lunge into Unity, like Microsoft's equal panic into Metro, seems both pure fail and stormy petrel of future accepted, planned-for, managed decline.

Oddly there are a few Linux 'personalities' who appear to actively favour Windows methodology, not to mention Microsoft's undoubted power, and wish either to join with them ( and be subsumed if the history of MS is anything to go by ) or become indistinguished from them. Personally, I have not the least objection to collaboration between operating systems ( as MS feared, such sharing would erode MS's leverages ), but if I wanted to use Windows I would, and not a Windows clone.

Since both KDE and traditional Gnome are perfectly usable, not to mention other managers, I doubt if the decline of Ubuntu thanks to Unity and other excitable ideas such as this will amount to more than a footnote in Linux history.

Re:Ubuntu desktop is dead to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu is nothing in the Linux world.

There are far better solutions.

You can get some NSFW results too

[Kardos]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-lens-shopping/+bug/1054282 (NSFW links included in the bug report comments)

Why is this a problem?

[HangingChad]

As long as it's not pushing forced ads, I have no problem with Ubuntu setting up a shopping network and app sales.

They have to make money somehow and this seems like one of the less offensive services they could implement.

Re:Why is this a problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ads are offensive: They encourage over-consumption. They increase the price of everything. They create privacy issues.

If Canonical needs money, the right thing to do is charge a small price for each copy of Ubuntu, without trying to stop piracy. Those who can afford it will pay.

Re:Why is this a problem?

[Loosifur]

Excuse me while I play devil's advocate.

1a.) In what way does advertisement encourage over-consumption beyond what would be caused by non-paid information from, for instance, a review website? And what proof do you have that people are more inclined to purchase anything (not more inclined to purchase one product over another, but inclined to buy something at all) because they've seen an advertisement? Keep in mind that these ads will be targeted based on search information the user enters. If I'm searching for "best espresso machines" I'm probably in the market, so I'm already going to buy something.

1b.) The term "over-consumption" is heavily loaded. How much consumption is "too much", and who decides what that figure is? In a market economy, consumption is what drives growth; if you have a problem with consumption, it's probably (and this isn't meant as a dig or insult) because you have a problem with markets. Talking about something called "over-consumption" is a tell that you're probably coming from a Marxist/socialist background, and so you're gonna have a problem with anything to do with markets, private commerce, or consumption.

2.) Ads don't increase prices, nor does consumption. Ads don't influence price, they influence demand. Vendors or producers determine price. The impetus is for price to be set in such a way that it's worth it to produce product X, and people are willing to buy all the product X that gets produced at price X. So, as demand increases, the price increases only if production doesn't also increase. Given that it makes sense to produce more in order to sell more, most rational producers will try to produce more if possible.

3.) Ads don't create privacy issues unless the information that you submit is linked to personally-identifiable information. Granted, at that point, you're trusting the search provider to do the right thing, which doesn't always happen. But, again, the issue here isn't that ads threaten privacy, it's that the technology used to deliver tailored results can potentially be a threat to privacy. Any time that search results are tailored, or, more broadly, user experiences are tailored based on personal information, users have to decide whether the benefits outweigh the risks. That's a decision that users have to make regardless of advertisements.

4.) Charging a price for Ubuntu is, IMO, a more serious violation of FOSS than ads are regarding privacy.

I'm not saying that I love advertisements. I turn them off or block them. But, I'm just saying that ads aren't the bogeyman that you're portraying.

Re:Why is this a problem?

[ifiwereasculptor]

2.) Ads don't increase prices, nor does consumption.

Unless the ad is free, they do.

4.) Charging a price for Ubuntu is, IMO, a more serious violation of FOSS than ads are regarding privacy.

No, it's not, as long as they publish the source so anyone can redistribute a "Freebuntu". Like Red Hat and CentOS.

Re:Why is this a problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ads can very well decrease prices over the long term. There's a direct cost which in some small way is built in to the supply curve, and a successful ad increases demand which is also an upward pressure on price -- but that demand encourages manufacture in volume which ultimately floods the market and increases supply efficiencies ultimately reducing prices on that product and any product where the manufacturing process is somewhat transferable.

(to the inevitable slashdot responder who takes that to mean "all ads always reduce the prices of everything: think about it for 30 seconds before responding).

Re:Why is this a problem?

[ifiwereasculptor]

While you're right, it's only in a vacuum or for small, local services if the competition doesn't decide to also invest in ads. When you and all your competitors engage in ad wars, like you pretty much have to do in a global market, then you keep investing hefty sums in ad campaigns just so you won't lose market share, and that increases everyone's prices. Given diminishing returns, frequently these corps are already making their products pretty much as cheap as they are always going to be, so the result is only increased cost to the consumer (because someone has to foot the bill). Look at Coca-Cola, for a good example. Advertising is to them as R&D is to Intel.

Re:Why is this a problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Affiliate "suggestions" could increase prices long term as the "host" (in this case Amazon) adjust their price upward to compensate for the lost margin.

Re:Why is this a problem?

[Nyder]

As long as it's not pushing forced ads, I have no problem with Ubuntu setting up a shopping network and app sales.

They have to make money somehow and this seems like one of the less offensive services they could implement.

If they have to make money, why don't they sell drugs like everyone else?

Re:Why is this a problem?

[JohnFen]

Ads don't influence price

You mean that the cost of advertising isn't built into the price being charged for the thing? Clearly, it must be, so ads do in fact affect price.

Ads don't create privacy issues unless the information that you submit is linked to personally-identifiable information.

As all, or nearly all, online ads are. Ad agencies and their clients love to say things like "we don't use personally-identifiable information", but they're playing word games. All usage information discloses some degree of PII, and there are quite a lot of things that are clearly PII but that companies don't count (like Apple saying that your location or your phone's ID number isn't PII).

Charging a price for Ubuntu is, IMO, a more serious violation of FOSS than ads are regarding privacy.

Huh? In what sense if charging for software even remotely a violation of FOSS? Remember, "free as in speech, not as in beer". That said, I also don't think that inclusion of ads violated FOSS. I won't use ad-supported software, but that doesn't mean it goes against FOSS principles.

Re:The future of operating systems

[inotrollyou]

A little scary. I wonder what price I have to pay Canonical to get Ubuntu Premium?

Re:The future of operating systems

[funwithBSD]

I am still trying to figure out what is not full featured about Ubuntu...

Nor do I see it any different from Bing integration.

Every Web 2.0 company eventually 'digs in'

[ickleberry]

These companies can only afford to give away free stuff for so long before the investors demand that they start making serious money from the fanbase (i.e the product, eyeballs in this case) and that means more invasive advertising. Google will do it too eventually.

Canonical does a bit of development work but its not huge. Linux would survive without them. Most of what they been doing the past while is unnecessary interface changes and cloud integration in an attempt to be in with the cool kids and also all these cloud things provide data for mining and if people get too dependent on it they can even charge fees to use it.

Re:Every Web 2.0 company eventually 'digs in'

[Microlith]

Linux would survive without them.

It would, but it would be a pale shadow of its current self. Sure it'd survive on servers and in the mobile space, but the desktop would be even tinier. What would Valve do, shift their target to Fedora? Which is even less end-user targeted than Ubuntu?

Re:Every Web 2.0 company eventually 'digs in'

[jedidiah]

A very miniscule proportion of what attracts Valve to Ubuntu has anything to do with what Canonical has done. Like any other distribution, Ubuntu is the combination of a number of upstream projects. Canonical really gets much more than it gives in this respect.

What Canonical does is mainly configuration management and that it tends to do poorly. They already have a bad reputation for pushing out versions before they're ready or making other bad decisions.

The fact that they've decided to put on the afterburners after having jumped the shark is really no surprise to anyone.

Re:Every Web 2.0 company eventually 'digs in'

[Microlith]

A very miniscule proportion of what attracts Valve to Ubuntu has anything to do with what Canonical has done.

Canonical has achieved a user base with Ubuntu that no other distro really has, as far as I can tell. That is what attracts Valve.

The fact that they've decided to put on the afterburners after having jumped the shark is really no surprise to anyone.

And by "jumped the shark" I take that to mean "they aren't being the difficult old hard to use pain in the ass Linux that I know and love," right?

Re:Every Web 2.0 company eventually 'digs in'

[SirGarlon]

... and that means more invasive advertising. Google will do it too eventually.

What could possibly be more invasive than tracking a user's every interaction with a Web site?

Re:Every Web 2.0 company eventually 'digs in'

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who doesn't use linux regularly, but like the idea of it, let me redefine "jumped the shark" for you as I see it:

I really want to use linux, and so every now and then I try, install a few distros, play around a bit, try to make it usable for me. But every time I hit snags where it can't handle what I need to do without way too much command line magic and shit that I really - as an end user - am not that interested in learning. I mean, I've got a car that runs well, but I bought one that ran well from the factory. I don't feel like having to learn how to be a car mechanic to drive from a to b.

So, I've tried Ubuntu in numerous incarnations from... well, when it first started getting insanely popular and everyone was saying that this was it, this was what would bring the average user to linux! Well, still the same problem for me, the things I do with a computer can't be done without first attaining mythical sysadmin powers.

At first ubuntu got better with every version I tried. It worked better, looked nicer, more and more was doable via GUI. It still couldn't do what I needed it to, but it got to the point where I felt that if I had a secondary laptop for vacations or something, just for mail and chat and such, it would do a wonderful job!

But then it jumped the shark. It got stale. It got unity. It got all kinds of weird. I tried a few more versions of it, and then I dropped it. It went from "usable as a simple desktop for a light (or even average home) user" to "what were they thinking? What is this? Why doesn't anything work any more? Why does all these settings not do anything?"

So yeah, it jumped the shark. It gained peak popularity, felt impelled to keep topping itself, and ended up totally ruining the idea of it.

That's my two cents, of course, and how I felt about it. I'm sure it'll be a great fit for some people somewhere, but I don't exactly seem to be the only one that spotted this problem.

Re:Every Web 2.0 company eventually 'digs in'

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm really confused by all the complaints about Ubuntu's interface. Ubuntu has a default desktop environment, Unity, that everyone seems to love to hate (personally, I've never tried it), but it has three other supported complete desktop environments: XFCE, KDE, and Gnome 3 (uh, actually I'm not 100% sure Gnome 3 is still supported by Ubuntu). On top of that, if you really like Gnome 2, you can use Cinnamon via a PPA (or, if you would rather, install Mint, which is a downstream distro of Ubuntu). Ubuntu is more than their occasional silly decisions about their default user interface. They provide a lot of polishing and release timing on top of Debian and other upstreams.

Re:Every Web 2.0 company eventually 'digs in'

[Ash Vince]

... and that means more invasive advertising. Google will do it too eventually.

What could possibly be more invasive than tracking a user's every interaction with a Web site?

Most modern complicated websites do this to be honest. It makes debugging problems raised by users much more straightforward since you can actually look in the logs (not apache logs, they don't provide enough info to debug the internals of your application when form posts or session stuff is involved) and see what the user was doing when things went wrong.

Ideally we would not have to do this but since most users can't file a decent bug report to save their miserable lives you have to be able to follow their exact user journey through the site to replicate their issue. Any information you need to help you diagnose problems in an application need to be gathered within the application as even support monkeys will not be able gather exactly what you need all the time as they are not familiar with the internals.

That is also assuming the user with a problem gets to speak to the support dude who is a wannabe developer biding his time and getting work experience instead of the vast majority in my experience who are too stupid and lazy to any investigation of a users problem before sending it on the dev team.

Re:Every Web 2.0 company eventually 'digs in'

[Anonymous Coward]

Before Ubuntu, the 'commerical Linux distro that was business oriented and not Red Hat' was SuSE. Regardless, I'll still use and recommend Ubuntu over Debian. Remember Ubuntu's goal: bring Debian to the masses.

Opting out is nothing new, and I expect that it will be a feature in the next anti-malware suite.

I welcome this and everything else it may bring.

[deusmetallum]

I have been thinking long and hard about this and I can only come to this conclusion. It is a nice feature. It needs tweaks, so results for photoshop don't pop up, or if they do it should explain it's not compatible with Linux. But what it needs more than anything, which is something Canonical keep missing out of all of their super new features is a simple tickbox for on or off. I understand that this is still beta, and it's certainly not LTS so it is more or less a testing platform, so I'm not jumping up and down right now. Canonical have proven to me that they can iron things out between normal releases and LTS, and I'm happy to accept that this may well be the case here. I'm basing this on evidence that I have seen over the last 4 years, not just what Mark says. This really is a great step forward for UX, as it is saying "hey, let's do more 'cloud' stuff from the desktop." Think about what else will be possible with a bit of thought. We could have it bring up all of your photos, from all sources (picassa, facebook, twitter) and present them in one place. I could type something like "London" into my dash and it shows me all the photos I've taken in London, a list of all my friends who are currently *in* London, and maybe sell me a London guide book. I cannot begin to express how awesome features like this can be. Amazon is only a single step to a full set of amazing features, and we must remember that these aren't *ads.* I am searching for a product, I can chose to buy it, and I won't get prompted to buy anything similar next time I fire up the dash. One thing that I also think is important to remember, is that we are a set of pretty clued up power users and as such we will see problems and we will jump to justify why something is a bad idea. However, if I were to install this on my Dad's laptop tomorrow, I can guarantee he would actually be quite thrilled with this feature. This is Linux for Human Beings and I think product searching is a very human thing to have.

Re:The future of operating systems

[dkleinsc]

Or Mint, or plain-old Debian, or Arch, or Gentoo, or rolling your own, or ...

Basically, GP's fundamental mistake was seeing OS's entirely through the lens of "How does the source of the OS make money?"

Remote search in home lens hurts privacy.

[Volanin]

Some people are also questioning if the home lens (the default lens to make any local search) is the right place to integrate these remote searches to third party services. In theory, amazon could gather information about every file you search, every program you launch through the lens, and such. There is even a bug report, marked as confirmed, questioning this very thing.

Re:Remote search in home lens hurts privacy.

[AndGodSed]

In theory, amazon could gather information about every file you search, every program you launch through the lens, and such

AGAIN. From TFA:

Why are you telling Amazon what I am searching for?

We are not telling Amazon what you are searching for. Your anonymity is preserved because we handle the query on your behalf. Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already. You trust us not to screw up on your machine with every update. You trust Debian, and you trust a large swathe of the open source community. And most importantly, you trust us to address it when, being human, we err.

And:

There is even a bug report, marked as confirmed, questioning this very thing.

That is marked as confirmed because it affects multiple users, and relates to a more broad list of concerns than what you infer. The way you word it points to a bug about Amazon seeing your keystrokes, while the bug report is more of a list of concerns such as opt-in vs opt-out, making the amazon lens separate from home etc.

Re:Remote search in home lens hurts privacy.

[Anonymous Coward]

And AGAIN from some other comment:

Just because I trust Honda to make a non-exploding gas tank and comply with other safety features, does not mean I trust them to install a GPS unit to improve my experience.

Re:Remote search in home lens hurts privacy.

[Anonymous Coward]

You keep quoting that part of TFA like it actually addresses the concern, but it doesn't. Canonical might handle the search for you but even if they do the search query ITSELF can contain private information. A lot of files on the average users computer are named by the people or companies or things contained in them, information that is in many cases PRIVATE.

Re:Remote search in home lens hurts privacy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, but you're clearly an idiot if you've read it twice and you still don't understand that just because Canonical is acting as a proxy doesn't mean that Amazon won't be able to figure out "[My Full Name] Bankruptcy Notice" when it's passed along as a query to Amazon. Oh wait! I just realized! I don't want Canonical to know that either. You idiot.

Re:The future of operating systems

[Missing.Matter]

But in reality Microsoft always asks when they want to collect some anonymous data and it's always opt-in.

No always. The smartscreen filter for Windows 8 is opt-out.

Better for who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not for me. That's for sure.

It dont matter.....

[Lumpy]

I have stopped supporting, recommending, or installing Ubuntu. Mark's "vision" is that of a useless future. Glad he is having fun with his pet project, but everyone that depends on Linux support from me has been told to move to Fedora to maintain a real computer interface instead of a dumbed down tablet interface.

Re:The future of operating systems

[Microlith]

ad-supported lite OS like Ubuntu and Chrome OS.

Really? Ubuntu is a "lite OS"?

Those who want full suited OS will get the premium one and those who don't care about their privacy or workflow will get lite OS like Ubuntu.

I want you to explain to me, in detail, how Ubuntu will be crippled such that it can't do what it can do today, and how it will be able to violate my privacy/break my workflow.

This is why I switched to OpenSuse

[yog]

Ubuntu was at one time an appealing alternative to Windows. I had it running on a desktop and laptop at home, and at least one VM at work ran Ubuntu. It just worked. But the minute they came up with this Unity dashboard thing, it broke the familiar UI and as far as I'm concerned, tweaking Ubuntu to make it usable again to myself and my users became more effort than it was worth.

Meanwhile, Suse has plowed ahead with a record of pretty consistent, solid distributions. Fedora's been pretty good as well, but once I got Suse I just got used to the Suse way of doing things and didn't look back.

Yeah, I miss how Ubuntu can locate printers very reliably on the network, while I have to manually plug in the IP addresses in YaST, but that's not a show stopper. What is a showstopper is when I can't find basic stuff like the calculator because it's been moved from a simple accessories pulldown menu and hidden in some goofy app picker.

This ad thing is merely more fuel on the fire. I don't get what those people are thinking. I guess they have to keep pushing the envelope, looking for ways to monetize their product and keep growing, but I would have thought they'd do better by just making it the easiest and most affordable alternative there is to Windows. Anyway -- R.I.P. Ubuntu!

Re:This is why I switched to OpenSuse

[Anonymous Coward]

The important thing is you switched to KDE.
Could have gotten the same improvements with Kubuntu, without abandoning all the Debian goodness.

Re:This is why I switched to OpenSuse

[Anonymous Coward]

>I don't get what those people are thinking.
I'll tell you what they're thinking: "Oh, jeeze, how are we going to pay the bills at the Canonical offices next month?" Thanks to whiners like you, maybe they won't.

Information wants to be free but who's going to pay people to put it together?

>Anyway -- R.I.P. Ubuntu!
R.I.P. Linux on the desktop, you mean.

Re:This is why I switched to OpenSuse

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu was at one time an appealing alternative to Windows. I had it running on a desktop and laptop at home, and at least one VM at work ran Ubuntu. It just worked. But the minute they came up with this Unity dashboard thing, it broke the familiar UI and as far as I'm concerned, tweaking Ubuntu to make it usable again to myself and my users became more effort than it was worth.

Meanwhile, Suse has plowed ahead with a record of pretty consistent, solid distributions. Fedora's been pretty good as well, but once I got Suse I just got used to the Suse way of doing things and didn't look back.

Yeah, I miss how Ubuntu can locate printers very reliably on the network, while I have to manually plug in the IP addresses in YaST, but that's not a show stopper. What is a showstopper is when I can't find basic stuff like the calculator because it's been moved from a simple accessories pulldown menu and hidden in some goofy app picker.

This ad thing is merely more fuel on the fire. I don't get what those people are thinking. I guess they have to keep pushing the envelope, looking for ways to monetize their product and keep growing, but I would have thought they'd do better by just making it the easiest and most affordable alternative there is to Windows. Anyway -- R.I.P. Ubuntu!

SUSE Enterprise is good too... I've always preferred fedora,suse and gentoo I've never used ubuntu

Re:This is why I switched to OpenSuse

[mister_playboy]

Have you ever used Kubuntu? It gives KDE a bad name.

This begins from the moment you first start up the desktop, when you get a series of notification about programs having crashed... :|

Seriously, please try out any other KDE distro before Kubuntu.

Re:This is why I switched to OpenSuse

[Bambi Dee]

I get Apport popups all the time in *buntu development releases, but then that's regardless of the desktop environment. I'm really quite happy with Kubuntu... the simplicity and mostly-just-working-ness of Ubuntu combined with little of the bother, some of the momentum, and a (by now again) very capable, configurable desktop environment. Of course, "works for me" is as anecdotal as "doesn't work for me".

Re:This is why I switched to OpenSuse

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't find basic stuff like the calculator because it's been moved from a simple accessories pulldown menu and hidden in some goofy app picker.

Press the Super key, type "c-a-l", press enter--done. Of course now you'll also be presented with a bunch of Ubuntu ads for their affiliate program.

Re:This is why I switched to OpenSuse

[kermidge]

classicmenu-indicator

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:diesch/testing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install classicmenu-indicator

solves a lot of "where did it go?" stuff; it's one of the first things I install along with synaptic

End users decry the command line, purists rail against sudo; I just want to have an easily-used desktop computer for my needs.

You may wish to check out Bodhi if you want to have a bunch of settings to play with; I've got it in a vm and it's interesting.

Nonsense

[betterunixthanunix]

I doubt that Fedora, ScientificLinux, Debian, or any number of other GNU/Linux distros or BSDs (or other free OSes that have yet to become popular or newsworthy) will all become ad supported. Believe it or not, some people are willing to volunteer time to help with an open source project. I have done it in the past, and I am not so unique.

The real future of OSes will be free versus non-free. The free OSes will be written by people who do not view their users as an exploitable resource, and those users will be allowed to installed and use whatever software they wish. The non-free OSes will be jailed gardens with mandatory application signing and arbitrary rules and censorship (sound familiar). People will use the jailed OSes because it will be the only way to legally watch movies or listen to music, or in a real nightmare scenario, to use certain websites.

And people are still asking why...

[lsolano]

... it will never be the Year of Linux in the Desktop.

I'd LOVE to use linux in the Desktop always (I love the Open Source philosophy) however, this kind of things make it hard.

Now what? Ubuntu users moving AGAIN to another distro? Mint? I do not know.

KDE/GNOME/Unity/X11/Mate/Cinnamon/LXDE/etc/etc/etc and still LibreOffice looks like Office 97.

I've decided a while ago to stay with debian, even if it does not look that "eye candy". Anyway, I'm old enough to not care at all if my desktop can not spin like a cube.

If someone cares about Linux in the Desktop, please stop this. Ubuntu is too popular between linux newbies, do not disappoint them. Please.

Re:And people are still asking why...

[characterZer0]

still LibreOffice looks like Office 97.

What is wrong with that?

Re:And people are still asking why...

[lsolano]

still LibreOffice looks like Office 97.

What is wrong with that?

It looks outdated for new linux users. I like it because is simple, but for people coming from a windows world, it looks just "old". I think it does not help to adopt linux users.

Re:And people are still asking why...

[Anonymous Coward]

> this kind of things make it hard.

A tiny feature you can uninstall with one click/command makes it "hard" for you to use it?

> Ubuntu is too popular between linux newbies, do not disappoint them. Please.

I dont see why newbs should be put off by a few additional search results if everything else is easy and polished. The only people bitching seem old Debian/Slackware farts like you.

Re:And people are still asking why...

[rubycodez]

nonsense, productive windows users with half a brain know the ribbon is work-impeding garbage and a useful menuing system is superior

Re:And people are still asking why...

[timmyf2371]

Whether or not the ribbon has had an adverse impact on you personally, it is still what users coming from a Windows environment are used to - and they will no doubt find that an interface based on Office 97-2003 does indeed look old fashioned.

I certainly know from personal experience that when I have to use a machine which has an older version of Office on, I really struggle with finding my commonly-used features and it takes me longer to do pretty much anything.

Re:And people are still asking why...

[fahrbot-bot]

still LibreOffice looks like Office 97.

What is wrong with that?

It looks outdated for new linux users. I like it because is simple, but for people coming from a windows world, it looks just "old". I think it does not help to adopt linux users.

Yes, it's too bad things that look outdated or old can't actually be functional and useful.

Re:And people are still asking why...

[Vince6791]

I actually like both LibreOffice(it's free and functions nicely) and office 2010 ribbon. But got used to the ribbon and it's not bad, very intuitive. Office 2010, the menu became the ribbon which are categorized and labeled nicely, clipboard, font, alignment, number, styles cells, editing, etc.. and under each of these categories you have the icons and yet again some are labeled which makes things a lot easier compared to office 2003 and libreoffice where the icons on the toolbar are not categorized, labeled(mouse over icon reveals label but time consuming), and it's all over the place. It takes time to get used to the Ribbon but once you become proficient at it, you will probably enjoy it more than the old menu and toolbar system. LibreOffice UI looks nothing like office 97 or 2003, it's actually better and cleaner looking than those 2.

Use whatever fit's your needs. I use both.

Re:And people are still asking why...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's wrong just because people need some reason to whine. It's stable and traditional? Complain about outdated looks. It's new and shiny? Say how it breaks traditional workflow. Don't be too shy, you can even combine both whining in the same post! Do not forget to add that there will never be the year of of linux desktop because of these critical problems.

Re:And people are still asking why...

[gl4ss]

most browser add on bars can be removed with couple of clicks.

still sucks though and most people can't do that.

Re:And people are still asking why...

[Anonymous Coward]

And I certainly know from personal experience that when I have to use a machine which has a new version of Office on, I really struggle with finding my commonly-used drop-down menu features, and it takes me longer to do pretty much anything. I don't know any drop-down menu power-users who were thrilled with the ribbon when it first emerged. They all complained about the work slow-down.

Whether the icon strip is better or worse is debatable. What isn't debatable is the difficulty anyone experiences when changing work methods. Since MS Office users didn't physically die when they were forced to use the icon strip, I seriously doubt the death toll will be any higher when they test the "old fashioned" model of icons and a menu bar.

Paid Placement

[Bob9113]

'are not paid placement'

Ummm, Are you getting paid? Would you still get the money if you removed the Amazon component from the OS? OK, let's see if you can follow this: When you get paid for a commercial placement, that is paid placement. The fact that the individual items displayed are not paid placements does not change the fact that the entire component is a paid placement.

This is just his nature. He is a sleazeball. That's why so many of us were so hesitant to use Ubuntu way back when it started rising. Do we really want to get an OS from this glorified PHB? What slimy crap is he going to pull next? On the upside, he also has some really stupid ideas about the direction of the UI, so it doesn't hurt to just walk away. Just walk away.

Re:Paid Placement

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo.

If this were really "straightforward search results" then:

1) By default, it would respect privacy - i.e. not send search terms to a remote server;

2) By default, it would not engage the user in a commercial transaction increasing costs for the user - i.e. not add an affiliate code to click-throughs resulting in money going straight into Shuttleworth's bank account.

I make a point never to click on adverts, not just because I hate advertising, but because I don't want to increase product costs by distributing my money to ad brokers, affiliates, &c.

Re:Paid Placement

[Microlith]

He is a sleazeball.

Delicious ad-hominem.

That's why so many of us were so hesitant to use Ubuntu way back when it started rising.

I suspect the hesitance was due to the fact that Ubuntu was bringing in new users by not being a pain in the ass to use, and long-time Linux users were incensed that someone would make it usable.

Not news: Slashdot is full of hate for a company and person who have worked to make Linux usable.

Re:Paid Placement

[Bob9113]

If what you are implying was true, I wouldn't have a Linux Mint machine right next to me (though, admittedly, this one is stripped-down Debian testing with XFCE). I have my hard-core machines, my user-friendly machines, and I even have two MacBook Pros. I even ran Ubuntu on one of my primary laptops for more than a year -- get this -- because it was user-friendly.

Go peddle your prejudice elsewhere.

Re:Paid Placement

[INowRegretThesePosts]

If what you are implying was true, I wouldn't have a Linux Mint machine right next to me (though, admittedly, this one is stripped-down Debian testing with XFCE).

People tolerate Mint because (AFAIK) there is no company behind it. See http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3140159&cid=41441261

Re:Paid Placement

[INowRegretThesePosts]

This is just his nature. He is a sleazeball. That's why so many of us were so hesitant to use Ubuntu way back when it started rising. Do we really want to get an OS from this glorified PHB? What slimy crap is he going to pull next? On the upside, he also has some really stupid ideas about the direction of the UI, so it doesn't hurt to just walk away. Just walk away.

Wow, that is the first time I have seen this. Please drink a glass of water, relax.

Re:Paid Placement

[Compaqt]

It doesn't increase costs: the commission is taken out of the normal price you would have paid anyway.

Re:Paid Placement

[Anonymous Coward]

"Delicious ad-hominem."

Since when is name calling an ad hominem?

You retards try to use big words without understanding its meaning.

Re:Paid Placement

[gl4ss]

ubuntu brought newbie friendly PR.

that's what they did. if it's really more newbie friendly is up for discussion, with every release plagued by newbie unfriendly bugs it's very debatable. but they brought install parties and all that shizniz.

Re:Paid Placement

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, that is the first time I have seen this.

You must be noob here.

No, No, thrice No

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not the way to go Canonical. You are losing users by the bucketload because of Unity. For many this will be the last straw.
IMHO, this is sure signs that Ubuntu is spiraling downward out of control. RIP Ubuntu, it have been nice knowing you.

Re:The future of operating systems

[geminidomino]

how Ubuntu will be crippled such that it can't do what it can do today

Amusing, the implication that it's not crippled today.

Seriously, networkmanager and resolvconf on the fucking server editions?

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

[Anonymous Coward]

Does nobody else remember this mantra? After 10 years, this is what I feel Ubuntu has done to the Linux desktop dream.

Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

[Anonymous Coward]

> After 10 years, this is what I feel Ubuntu has done to the Linux desktop dream.

And what was the Linux Desktops dream? Decade after decade languishing below 1% market share, being ignored by hardware/software/content creators and having no users except the few people who develop it? Is this the fucking dream? Thanks, but no thanks.

Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

[JohnFen]

All of my personal machines are Linux desktops, and they work better for me than any other OS I use. So, yes, I'm living the dream.

All of the "issues" you mention don't affect me in the slightest. I can do everything I want to do and more.

This is definitely a problem

[betterunixthanunix]

1. Advertising is a terrible way for an OS to make money. Support contracts are the right way, but Ubuntu is not even trying to compete with Red Hat for that sort of thing.
2. The ads are being shown at times when people are not actually trying to shop. That is also known as "spam."
3. This opens the door to Amazon controlling Ubuntu. Not at all good, not at all.

Re:This is definitely a problem

[Microlith]

You'll notice that Canonical is working in an area that Redhat outright gave up on. For the very reasons you cite. "Support contracts" don't work with end-users.

This opens the door to Amazon controlling Ubuntu.

And accomplishing exactly what?

Re:This is definitely a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hi Mark, it's Amazon again. You know, that music playing application you have there in your OS, it would be nice it it got integrated into our new music service. Yes, only ours."
"Hi again, you wouldn't mind replacing the user's home page just this month?"
"It's me again, we running a campaign, could you install this new shopping application which turns the user's desktop into a big red shopping button?"
"Did you like the last months pile of cash? Want another one? Fix it so that we get to see where users surf. Get to it!"
"Hey, now that we have a long term contract, we've got our new app-store. We want you to replace the following .deb:s."

Re:This is definitely a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Firefox definitely went downhill when Google made Mozilla prevent anyone from doing such things as changing their default search engine or browsing/using sites not made by Google.

Re:This is definitely a problem

[Grishnakh]

Support contracts work great when you're making desktop OSes that can be used in businesses. Then you can release the same OS (or a slightly different version) for free to home users and other non-payers, to build more mindshare. Exactly the way that Red Hat and Fedora do it.

Re:This is definitely a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Why aren't they promoting sells of DVD and thumbdrives? They could do a "fundraiser" every six months asking people to please buy these and sell a bundle. Announce a target, do a bunch a blog posts announcing goals, and at the end of the fundraising period post the total raised and post the download.

Re:This is definitely a problem

[Compaqt]

They are offering support contracts: http://www.ubuntu.com/business/advantage

Or do you mean they are not promoting them enough?

Re:This is definitely a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

They offer them without actually providing their end of the deal (For LTS releases).

Look at what RedHat are providing for RHEL 5.9

I don't think there has been the amount of work put into a single point release by RedHat (The hard stuff to backport) in any entire LTS release cycle.

They put all their money into marketing that allot of people don't see past but it doesn't fool anyone with complicated stuff that needs fixes / backports that cannot be allowed to fail.

(Pick a big expensive package that someone is likely to run on Linux e.g Cadence EDA or Any other random complicated engineering suite of programs.

Who the hell modded this down?

[betterunixthanunix]

Why was this modded down? For some people, this is actually a concern. You cannot say, "Well you can just not view pornography if it offends you" when by default your OS is displaying it.

No, a filter is not the answer. The answer is to not shove advertising into someone's desktop unless they opt in.

Perhaps it just needs to be framed right..

[3seas]

... as in an application/add on/option type of functionality. And to increase interest, not that google general search results always find what you want, provide the users with easy to use filtering.... so if they boycott a company, they don't have to see their ads when searching.

Just another reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just another reason to pick a different distro... Fedora...Arch....Debian....how about Mint?
Really if someone doesn't like this there ARE alternatives to Ubuntu

Re:Just another reason...

[Celarent Darii]

There is even FreeBSD .

Ask for what ever you want

[Stan92057]

I thought that's what i was doing with my browser using Google or another search engine they are the experts at it. Comical, why not just be honest and say its adware and it will help pay for the continued ability to download and use Ubuntu for free.

Trust us, we have root

[anarcat]

Apart from what's already been mentioned here, one bit particularly troubles me:

We are not telling Amazon what you are searching for. Your anonymity is preserved because we handle the query on your behalf. Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already.

I don't equate having root with having people's data, personally. I happen to adhere to a Ethics Code (SAGE's) that *keeps* me from peeking over people's personal data, *especially* for my own interests. Adding a snitch that report back not only the machine's existence (you get that through APT automated updates) but also personal search requests to Canonical headquarters by default does seem like a major privacy breach.

That the dictator of Ubuntu and Canonical brushes his responsibilities aside like this is downright scary if you ask me, especially given the argument is "we have root, we 0wn you already, sorry bud".

Re:Trust us, we have root

[at_slashdot]

The point was that if you don't trust them you should not use Ubuntu because they make it and thus have root access. I think that's a legitimate point to make.

Re:Trust us, we have root

[Anonymous Coward]

WHAT? They have root? Well, I need to reformat some of my *buntu devices with another OS asap.

Re:Trust us, we have root

[Anonymous Coward]

So if you trust them and you do, develop and install an application that turns on your built-in web cam and sends the audio+video feed back to Canonical. There's no harm in that, you can trust Canonical and thus every individual person working for or with Canonical and all users who have access to Canonical's systems (including any hackers) to not misuse any data which may/will get recorded. You must also trust the police and lawyers to not send a request to Canonical in bad faith to get access to your information.

Canonical is data mining your search queries, if not now then they will be soon. As every company is starting to realize, data mining is too easy to not do it (thank the magic-bullet pushing PR people). It really doesn't matter which company is data mining your data, some company is and whether you currently trust that company and all it's employees or not. Employees change which causes companies to change. Do you trust any company forever? Do they have perfect security? You'll never get them to delete all the data they have on you.

Having nothing to hide doesn't matter. When you go searching for something, you'll always find it if you look hard enough, no matter if it's actually there or not.

Re:Trust us, we have root

[lgw]

Why does my OS vendor need root access to my box in the first place? That doesn't seem right to me at all.

Re:Trust us, we have root

[at_slashdot]

it's a figure of speech, if they compile your kernel and everything else it means that you trust them, it doesn't mean that they can log in remotely to your machine using root access.

Re:Trust us, we have root

[seandiggity]

The point was that if you don't trust them you should not use Ubuntu because they make it and thus have root access. I think that's a legitimate point to make.

The (sensible) objections to Shuttleworth's comments all hedge on the fact that he's muddling different aspects of privacy and control over a machine with "got r00t?". Yes, those installing Ubuntu connect to Canonical repos to update their system, and there's a whole chain of trust that goes back to Debian, linux kernel devs, et al.

However, the root user (or user in /etc/sudoers) is the one that initiates system upgrades. That user is asked for their permission and supplies a password to the system, before APT contacts Canonical's repos (or one of the many mirrors). Then, files are downloaded and installed, and the machine is configured accordingly. The root user is handing over control and privacy, but it's not of the same type that people are worried about here. The user is executing code on their system that has already gone through a "community audit", and it's a big community with a good track record, and no incentive to bork your system. There are many eyes on that code, so it's really difficult to do anything (outwardly) malicious.

The worry here is the same worry people have with Google's tight integration with Android. Except in this example, Canonical drinks ur milkshake or hands it off to Amazon (with the promise of other data-miners in the future). Having this functionality and monetary incentive tightly tied to the desktop of a major distro is a threat to freedom and privacy, although how big remains to be seen...I have a feeling it won't get too far because of community outrage, or Ubuntu will lose more ground to Mint, etc.

This is one of the many reasons to install Trisquel as a base system and then add repos as appropriate. You know they'll strip out any crap like this, if not stay away from Unity completely.

Re:Trust us, we have root

[Karellen]

How are they going to install a security update to your kernel, or to the security update system, if they don't have the ability to run arbitrary code as root?

Re:Trust us, we have root

[JohnFen]

I think that's a legitimate point to make.

I don't. I think it's apples & oranges. That I may trust them not to spy on my secretly doesn't affect whether or not I trust them enough to willingly hand my personal data over to them.

Re:Trust us, we have root

[lgw]

Why should "they" do such things? I mean, OK, I'm trusting them to deliver non-evil bits as part of that kernel patch, sure, but one hopes there are many eyes on such patches. But the actual act of applying that patch? That's not "arbitrarty code" I'd hope, but a (small?) patching program that authorize to sudo something for that purpose, and provide my password each time. And, again, many eyes there on that patcher.

But then, I'm not a fan of transparantly patching constantly in the background (in fact, the frequency of patching Ubuntu wanted to do was part of what turned me off to it).

Re:Trust us, we have root

[anarcat]

I understand that point. The issue I see with it is that it is taken as an argument to justify what I consider to be a privacy issue. Saying "you should trust us with our data" needs a commitment, a show of *ethics* that actually makes us believe and understand they will be careful with it. Instead, we are presented with "well, you should trust us because... you already trust us, because we are root". It's a fallacy, more specifically begging the question.

I could also construe the whole intervention of Shuttleworth as an appeal to authority, but that would be pushing it a little since, as I said, the Benevolent Dictator doesn't even *need* to appeal to a higher authority. He is, in effect, your root and overlord, and is asserting his power without any shame or guilt. Whee. Also, to be fair, he is making a point that they should think about their responsibilities as admins of all those machines, I just happen to disagree with the path they are taking.

Re:Trust us, we have root

[at_slashdot]

Ah, quoting "fallacies" without really understanding what they mean.

No, begging the question is something else, this is a simple argument that goes like this: you trust us with something more, therefore trusting us with something less shouldn't be a issue. There's nothing begging here, no logical flaw in it.

Re:Trust us, we have root

[AdamWill]

"But the actual act of applying that patch? That's not "arbitrarty code" I'd hope, but a (small?) patching program that authorize to sudo something for that purpose, and provide my password each time. And, again, many eyes there on that patcher."

That's...uh...not how patches work. At all.

Re:Trust us, we have root

[anarcat]

I beg to differ, and request that you explain what "begging the question" is, since I obviously seem to misunderstand it. On the site which I refer to, they define it as:

You presented a circular argument in which the conclusion was included in the premise.

This logically incoherent argument often arises in situations where people have an assumption that is very ingrained, and therefore taken in their minds as a given. Circular reasoning is bad mostly because it's not very good.

Example: The word of Zorbo the Great is flawless and perfect. We know this because it says so in The Great and Infallible Book of Zorbo's Best and Most Truest Things that are Definitely True and Should Not Ever Be Questioned.

I definitely see a parallel in the above explanation and the reasoning behind the "we have root" argument.

Say the question is: "why should we trust Canonical or Ubuntu to have a peek at our personal search results?" The answer from Shuttleworth seems to be, "because we have root, it means you trust us". In other words, the response to the question of trust is trust, posed as a premise.

Also, the additional argument you are describing, we can summarize as "you can trust us with X because you trust us with X-1", which may be better presented as a slippery slope fallacy.

Then again, you are accusing me of misunderstanding logical fallacies, something at which I cannot respond to other than asking you to clarify how I misunderstand, or explain your accusation as a poorly articulated ad hominem attack, as opposed as demonstrating my argument as wrong.

Thank you for your comment and have a nice day.

Re:Trust us, we have root

[anarcat]

They don't need root access, but in a way, you are giving them the right to run any code on your machine if you accept the updates coming in without review. As we have learned throughout the Microsoft Windows, Apple iTunes and others updates, the upstream can ship software that users sometimes disagree with and while it's not equivalent of giving them "root", it does mean that, once you accept the update, code you don't like will run on your computer.

There are of course alternatives: switching operating systems, refusing updates or removing the malicious software, all three which have been suggested elsewhere in the discussions here.

Re:Trust us, we have root

[at_slashdot]

Wow, this is amazing, confusing an ad fortiori argument with a slippery slope and my pointing out your lack of understanding with an ad hominem attack (for what is worth an ad hominem attack has this form: "you are an idiot, therefore you can't understand the fallacies you listed" I merely said that you don't understand them, that's at most a unsubstantiated claim, but not an ad hominem attack)

I tend not to enter into debates with people who list more than one fallacy in their posts (even if they understand what they mean), I tried to show you the logic of his explanation since I observed you didn't get it in the first place, but I don't suffer of "there's somebody wrong on the Internet, I need to disprove/correct him" syndrome, so, I guess you'll have to find for yourself where your errors are, so sadly I let my claims unproven and you can continue to feel smug and right.

Re:Trust us, we have root

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh OK, so we're back to the You can't trust the Distro unless it's a Source only Distro. Well shit, if it's a "legitimate point" that they could simply execute anything they want on my machine, so I shouldn't complain about WHAT I WANT AND DO NOT WANT them to do -- I think it's time to move the fuck off of Ubuntu, eh?

Re:Trust us, we have root

[lgw]

Shouldn't it be? On Ubuntu IIRC, if I turned off the auto-patcher,it wouldn't do anything unless I explicitly gave it a "sudo apt-get update foo". Of course it would run as root for the duration of that comand, but it wasn't hanging out as root with a port open waiting to perform abitrary evil.

Re:The future of operating systems

[Microlith]

Amusing, the implication that it's not crippled today.

You suggested it was crippled, it's up to you to point how it is.

Seriously, networkmanager and resolvconf on the fucking server editions?

Explain how they're bad? Seriously. Just spouting off about some package and assuming everyone agrees with you that it's bad is silly. Not that network manager "cripples" a platform, or is somehow not removable.

Go on, explain your rage.

Time to drop ubuntu ...

[gstoddart]

Well, it looks like I might need to find a new distro.

Sorry guys, but if you're planning on adding ads directly to my operating system, you won't be getting any money from me as I'll be moving to another distro.

If I want to search Amazon, I'll bloody well go to Amazon.com.

In the end, they might hurt themselves more than they help themselves.

Re:The future of operating systems

[steveg]

Server edition, he said.

Networking starts up only after someone logs in? Really?

It's fixable -- just uninstall network manager (and resolvconf) and configure the standard Debian config files and you're good to go, but network manager is just silly on a server. It's silly on any machine that isn't a laptop, but it's really silly on a server.

Private information leakage.

[pavon]

Every time you search for a local file on your computer, the details of that search will be transmitted to a third party cloud service. That is a huge potential privacy issue regardless of who that service is. Worse, they they don't even make their users aware of this fact, which is completely unacceptable. That Canonical still doesn't understand this after being having it brought to their attention means they clearly cannot be trusted to assemble a secure Linux distribution.

Re:Private information leakage.

[AndGodSed]

From the TFA:

Why are you telling Amazon what I am searching for?

We are not telling Amazon what you are searching for. Your anonymity is preserved because we handle the query on your behalf. Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already. You trust us not to screw up on your machine with every update. You trust Debian, and you trust a large swathe of the open source community. And most importantly, you trust us to address it when, being human, we err.

Re:Private information leakage.

[Kjella]

I also trust Ford to build a car that won't get me killed in a car crash, I trust them do keep that up with spare parts, recalls and authorized service centers. It doesn't mean I want them to install a GPS tracker in my car so they can "improve my experience". Saying you should trust Ubuntu because they already 0wn your computer isn't exactly a confidence builder.

Re:Private information leakage.

[DaDaDaaaaa]

It can still be a cause for concern. Even if your IP is not transmitted to Amazon, Amazon receives a text string they were never meant to have, which may contain very personal information that could be tied to you in and of itself.

Re:Private information leakage.

[pavon]

I've read their response and it is bullshit. There is a difference between trusting someone to write software for you, and trusting them to receive your private information over the internet. For example, hospitals may trust software to process patient data. They don't (and can't by law) trust that software to send patient info to some random cloud service. Home users deserve the same respect as corporate users and should be informed of any services that transmit their information so they can decide whether to use the service or not. This is basic stuff, and the fact that Canonical still doesn't get why anyone might be concerned is very troubling and a good hint to stay clear of them in the future.

Re:Private information leakage.

[fahrbot-bot]

As I mentioned before, I don't want everything I type/search for sent elsewhere. It's my bandwidth and my information, *if* I want to search elsewhere, I'll explicitly query elsewhere. I have Google Instant disable for reasons like that...

Let's breed smarter users that know about things and how they work, rather than dumber users that rely on things that "just work" and have no idea how they work.

Re:Private information leakage.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was ready to trust them to send me software updates. I am not ready to trust them with the data they gather on me by snooping on everything I do. The distinction seems simple and obvious to me.

Re:Private information leakage.

[Anonymous Coward]

This comment is censored from Mark blog:

What kind of idiotic idea is this? You as a chef are cooking delicious linux distribution for users â" just like a real chef cooking a delicious soup. If the chef intentionally put a small piece of shit in the soup â" and the guest will find it out â" would you taste it? Would you recommend your family of your friend ? Would you taste the soup from the same chef again in your lifetime ? Just try it out as a chef in a real restaurant â" but be prepared to get beaten.

If you need money â" ask about donations or money. My files and my privacy belongs to me â" not to debian or canonical or amazon or google or microsoft or another idiotic data collecting or advertising entity in the world. Do you really think corporate environment will tolerate this kind of data and information leak ? Leak information about new product plans (eg.: new_amazing_productname_plan.txt, new_amazing_productname_deadline_2013_01_10.txt) ? What kind of moron think this will be acceptable to any corporate entity in the world? Iâ(TM)ll notify every commercial entity about a new emerging threat â" ubuntu data and information leak and adware function. You just lost the maximum (epsilon) trust â" we no longer trust ubuntu, every ubuntu privacy related move will be watched, and published. Respect privacy or get lost.

Re:Private information leakage.

[Yfrwlf]

Oh Slashdot, you're such a good opinion/polling testing site for corporations...

Mozilla, Google, and others make data mining revenue, so Canonical wants in too. Funny, since I've been doing a lot lately while browsing to prevent tracking with user agent strings, cookies, scripts, and am considering Tor to hide my IP even. Meanwhile, Ubuntu is headed in the opposite direction. Time to switch distros after this.

Mark,

[rubycodez]

straightforward search results pushing product are called "ads"; amazon sponsoring them makes them "paid for advertising".

with this & your crippled Unity UI, your distro is circling the drain; shape it up, young man.

Hey Mark,

[Anonymous Coward]

go "Shuttle" yourself!

Re:The future of operating systems

[Microlith]

Server edition, he said.

Yeah I saw that. Of course, truth is I don't recall Network Manager being used on Ubuntu Server for precisely the reason you point out. Last I checked you had to go out of your way to add it to server.

It makes no sense!

[Anonymous Coward]

As a fellow that's the family's tech support I agree. I installed Ubuntu on my mother's laptop because of the "noob friendliness" and it just working. Ubuntu had a Gnome interface and deb-package management which I am both familiar with and I never had problems with it.

I need to keep things consistent. And since this whole Unity thing was introduced as not just something that's a feature, but as the default window manager and me having to install Ubuntu again, I needed to install gnome-shell myself, and that lacked features! (I did it because I thought "It can't be so bad!", but it was just lacking features)

The Unity interface is built upon the icon-based navigation that's prominent in tablets/phones. (This is one of few things blame Apple for -- unwarranted? maybe) Unity is an offspring of Apple's "Look at all the shiny!". Even Windows 8's metro interface is going in this new "radical" changes direction. For anyone that uses computers more than an hour per day or for someone that's your family's tech support: it makes no sense! All these different UIs are going to be experimental, beta and incompatible. (Incompatible more so than the popular desktop environments in Linux)

Unity is the ugly offspring of Canonical and Apple. The icon-based interface, beta software as a window manger and now the including of just ads in Ubuntu is the last time I'll be using Ubuntu. And it is just that: advertising. I wonder, how do other businesses feel about this? Why not include Google search results instead of Amazon shopping? People use Google way more often than Amazon shopping.

Run a damn fundraiser, use donations, sell actual products! Don't earn money by bashing your users like this, Canonical.
Only if you turn your ship around *now* will I keep using Ubuntu. I speak for myself, but I feel I share the view of not the Ubuntu community, but a lot of the Slashdot users.

Congratulations Mr. Shuttleworth!

[Anonymous Coward]

First Unity. Then ‘secure’boot bandwagon. Now ads.
You managed to completely ruin the distro.
The only thing you’ll achieve with all of this is forks, like Mint, superseeding Ubuntu till oblivion.

Re:The future of operating systems

[AvitarX]

Funny, I'm using a stock desktop install (which I assume uses network manager) with the only extra packages at this point being kde-full, SSH, aptitude, nmap, and htop.

I can ssh in before logging in with any user, am i to assume this is before the networking starts, or that you are wrong about the implication?

Podcasts

[ThatsNotPudding]

About every podcast I listen to now has a pleading about supporting them by going to their website and clicking on the Amazon banner ad so they get their beaks wet. Now the OS wants to do it too? Pass. I never to remember to do the link thing when shopping on Amazon anyway.

I already switched to LMDE when the Unity debacle started. Ubuntu is rapidly becoming the MySpace of distributions.

Re:Podcasts

[Anonymous Coward]

About every podcast I listen to now has a pleading about supporting them by going to their website and clicking on the Amazon banner ad so they get their beaks wet.

So, listen to podcasts that don't have that kind of sponsorship...like KernelPanic Oggcast [http://kernelpanicoggcast.net].

Unity

[Anonymous Coward]

How can anyone trust Shuttleworth after inflicting Unity on the Ubuntu community?

#fail

Like proprietary software firms ...

[Rambo Tribble]

... before it, Canonical seems to have difficulty wrapping their collective heads, as well as that of their resident big head, around the concept of "opt in".

Give them a chance, too

[Anna Merikin]

I might find this useful if I could choose which retailers to include or exclude. No NewEgg? Add it. Don't like Amazon? Delete it.

Someone (not google, apple nor microsoft) should act as a clearing house for payment for these custom searches as these very "well-qualified sales leads" are much more valuable to a retailer than random Ubuntu-sent queries through a private Amazon acting as a commercial clearinghouse.

IMHO and YMMV

Re:Give them a chance, too

[ifiwereasculptor]

If they follow the example of Mint and Firefox, inclusion and exclusion would be fair game. Even if they don't, it's open source. And unlike carrier-defiled Android, they can't remove your administrative rights from the machine so you'd have to root it (well, they can, but that would be a whole new level of stupid). Shuttleworth already said he doesn't want the Unity dock placed on the bottom of the screen, but mods are trivial and aplenty.

Re:Give them a chance, too

[Compaqt]

If they have a simple on/off switch in System Settings: Privacy, this might be not so bad.

After all, the way you're doing it now is to go to Google and type in "queen marking cage". Why not type it into the Ubuntu search box?

And a simple way to customize your preferred search sites (like you can with Chrome and FF) would also be nice.

Re:Give them a chance, too

[Threni]

The obvious conclusion to all this is the likes of Mint - already sucking up millions of disaffected Unity victims - becoming the only way people actually use Ubuntu, leaving them with no choice but to try and prevent other distros from using Ubuntu as a base OS.

"Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root."

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFA: "You do trust us with your data already."

No, not anymore.

Slashdot like to bash Apple, but at least they have a business model based on hardware sales. Though even they can't be trusted with your data anymore as they like Microsoft will need to recoup losses as they're forced to offer more and more web-services to compete with Google. Android and Chrome OS are not only threats to them but to other Linux distributions and the whole idea of user control over their own software. How long before Google replace their own in-house Goobuntu installations with Chrome OS (which if you haven't seen it lately is pretty slick) and begin offering their own custom versions and support services to enterprise clients?

Free software makers and advocates need to get serious about offering an alternative to the new everything-in-the-cloud ad-funded model. If they're going to do that they will need to eliminate the difference between "the server" and "the desktop" and incorporate virtual appliances like Turnkey Linux offers in their distributions to turn every machine into a plug-and-play: "there's is no step three" web-server.

If Canonical were serious about donations and really need money they should simply: 1. tell users: hey, we need money. We want to hit xxxx fundraising target by yyyy. 2. Offer for sell Ubuntu DVDs and thumbdrives of the lastest version a few weeks early (before posting the download). Say: with this purchase you help keep Ubuntu free and independent. Thank you for helping fund the development of free software. Yada, yada, yada. 3. Watch the money roll in every six months.

Plus, if you click the link, Chrome OS's application launcher offers Google searches. Why would I want Amazon-only searches when I could have Google searches? I refuse to contribute to parasitic affiliate revenue streams. Even if I clicked an Amazon link I would remove the cookie as it's a business model I don't believe in. If you want donations, ask for donations. See: http://catandgirl.com/dderby/ and http://catandgirl.com/?page_id=2431 for a innovative and transparent way to get money.

Otherwise, rather than trying to become the new Windows, Canonical needs to build and design their own hardware and try to become the new Apple. (I refuse to buy System 76 because they don't design their own hardware and add insult to injury by pretending that they do.)

Also, why has no one forked Chrome OS yet? It arguably has the best user interface now. Although, I actually like Unity design and a launcher on the left with widescreen monitors. (When I use OS X I always move the dock to the left. So it felt natural to me.)

Instead of making the Dash the new Siri they should fix the Hud. Allow switching between the items in the Dash by pressing tab. Bringing resolution independence and retina support to Unity and Linux. Adding autosave like OS X. Improving multitouch which works but sucks in Ubuntu. Improving the Software Center and becoming developer friendly, both by making clear their plan for paid apps and revenue sharing, and having a better way for developer's to send patches and updates and be included in the official repositories. So that not only can they be included but so they want to be included. For example: Trelby is an excellent screenwriting app not in the repositories.

2013, the year of the Ubuntu Desktop.

[Anonymous Coward]

The title is based on the popular idiom (certain year), the year of the Linux Desktop. I did this because the direction Shuttleworth is taking is the only way that a Linux based distribution is going to make it as a mainstream desktop Operating system. Regardless of what Shuttleworth says, this will be way of generating income for Canonical and if Amazon had any sense, they would invest in Ubuntu and push it to get people who visit their site to try and install Ubuntu. If this was successful then it would be exposure that Ubuntu could never dream of.

Regardless of the what you think about this, Ubuntu is a distribution amongst hundreds of others based on Linux. If you don't like Ubuntu & Unity then switch it is as simple as that. If Ubuntu did make it to the masses to a point that it made hardware manufacturers sit up and notice to start providing drivers and more importantly Shuttleworth respects his roots and fights for more openness, then while this not benefit Linux as a whole?

Re:2013, the year of the Ubuntu Desktop.

[equex]

Yeah great, so we get hardware manufacturers that makes drivers that only work with their plastic ui ubuntu versions. would be great if ubuntu could be the martyr that brings hardware drivers to linux, as long as they are provided in the standard packaging formats....

Re:2013, the year of the Ubuntu Desktop.

[Anonymous Coward]

As I mentioned, as long as Shuttleworth respects his roots and fights the corner for Linux to ensure that drivers work on Linux rather than just Ubuntu then what is the issue?

Re:The future of operating systems

[geminidomino]

You suggested it was crippled, it's up to you to point how it is.

Actually, I wasn't the one who originally did. I only did so in response.

Explain how they're bad

Servers, almost by definition, don't move around much, and those that do will need a slightly more robust configuration by an intelligent operator, rather than having the static (or semi-static) configurations clobbered by a "helpful" utility. NM isn't much the issue anymore, but they replaced it with resolvconf, which makes a glorious pain in the ass out of itself by deciding it's smarter than you when it comes to your /etc/resolv.conf config file -- Even on workstations, but it's delightfully obnoxious on servers.

Re:The future of operating systems

[Tough Love]

Go on, explain your rage.

You do make yourself sound more than a little clueless with your obvious hostility to the opinions of people who actually know what they're talking about.

In short, NetworkManager is crude hack that may work reasonably well for some common laptop and workstation configurations, but otherwise tends to actively interfere with network configurations of any complexity. You would know this if you had ever used it with a network configuration of any complexity.

Hey Mark shuttleworth

[FudRucker]

you just made your distro in to Spamware

I want it.

[im_thatoneguy]

If I'm searching for a product, why wouldn't I want Ubuntu to point me to people selling it? It's a money making scheme which actually benefits the users. Ads are annoying because they push products you aren't looking for. Intelligent search results are just better search results. They're showing me what I'm looking for.

Re:I want it.

[fahrbot-bot]

I'm not sure I want everything I type/search for filtered through Amazon, or anyone for that matter. For example, I have Google Instant disabled for a reason: A) it's my network bandwidth, B) I'll send my query when I'm damn well and ready...

Re:I want it.

[Nyder]

If I'm searching for a product, why wouldn't I want Ubuntu to point me to people selling it? It's a money making scheme which actually benefits the users. Ads are annoying because they push products you aren't looking for. Intelligent search results are just better search results. They're showing me what I'm looking for.

Weird, when I want something, I just use google. If i want something from amazon, I can go to amazon's web page. If I want something from Newegg, I go to Neweggs web site. Otherwise, I use google and see what the various pricing is like.

Justify this all you want, but lets be real. It's about Ubuntu making more money and changing the face of linux forever, and not for the good.

Re:I want it.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use Firefox and you don't already, try using keyword searches. They're incredibly useful.

Re:I want it.

[JohnFen]

If I'm searching for a product, why wouldn't I want Ubuntu to point me to people selling it?

I can't speak for you, but for me, I don't want a third party to be involved in what was a simple transaction between me and the people selling it. Especially not the producers of my OS. It doesn't matter if they're Apple, Microsoft, or Canonical, what I'm looking for and buying is None Of Their Business.

This is even more important when we're talking about searching my own computer. Using the lens, Canonical will now know every search you perform, even if you're only searching locally.

It's a money making scheme which actually benefits the users. Ads are annoying because they push products you aren't looking for. Intelligent search results are just better search results. They're showing me what I'm looking for.

Assuming that's what you're looking for. If I'm searching locally and get results from Amazon, then those results are ads and do not benefit me one bit. If I want to be shopping, I know how to get to Amazon.

Re:I want it.

[slack_justyb]

Justify this all you want, but lets be real. It's about Ubuntu making more money and changing the face of linux forever, and not for the good.

Much like the search bar in Firefox is doing this to innocent users. Please, get real. Making money with Linux is not a sin. Android does it, different router makers have been doing it, server companies have been doing, it's been going on since the kernel's 2.4 days and earlier most likely, but I only have examples that go back to the 2.4 days.

Even if it is about Ubuntu making money, which it is not, why is that a problem? Why does a such a vocal group of people pull the handbrake the second someone talks about making money? How exactly does Linux succeed if there is absolutely zero money? Remember that we're in this as free beer, not this we're going to be penniless chumps. I don't particularly like Canonical, but making money isn't a sticking point for me. RedHat does it all the time, should we go burn their website down too?

Re:I want it.

[slack_justyb]

I don't want a third party to be involved in what was a simple transaction between me and the people selling it. Especially not the producers of my OS.

So you either don't use Android/iOS or you don't use Google to search.

Canonical will now know every search you perform, even if you're only searching locally.

Then turn it off, geez, other vendors wouldn't have even given you a choice on the matter.

If I want to be shopping, I know how to get to Amazon.

Again, you either don't shop around or you just loves you some Amazon. Paranoia at it's best. If the feature doesn't fit you, guess what, you can turn the crap off, change it, whatever you like to do with it. Why is this feature suddenly so freaking contentious? And we wondering what all those people who talk about in-fighting are talking about and why that prevents desktop Linux from really taking off.

I'd wondered why my child's school had picked Mint

[khb]

Having not used Ubuntu much since the Unity debacle (well, that is most of my Ubuntu systems stayed preUnity), I was curious about what my child was seeing in the library so installed Mint. Imperfect, but a lot more usable than Unity. Kudos to the school for taking the time to do a little homework.

I wish Mark and the Canonical team luck. The last several design choices have driven away technically literate people AND those aiming for the technically illiterate. No doubt there is some huge market that I'm just missing (Ubuntu Tablets ?) but I'll be darned if I can spot it.

The tablet market is, no doubt, huge. But Apple has a commanding share, followed by Amazon. Neither is likely to adopt Ubuntu as shipped by Canonical during my lifetime. Who does that leave left with enough presence to make a difference? If that is, indeed, the target market ... is it a wise one?

Unity lenses are speedy

[INowRegretThesePosts]

Faster? Heh. You've obviously never tried Unity lenses.

Unity lenses are speedy on my laptop (Corei3-350M, 2GiB RAM, magnetic 320GB HD), except when I have 100+ Firefox tabs open and the system is swapping heavily.

Re:Unity lenses are speedy

[Anonymous Coward]

Unity lenses are speedy on my desktop, except when Unity is running.

Re:The future of operating systems

[fwarren]

It is a problem for wireless. wicd does not have that particular weakness.

Morons

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey morons! It's open source! You can change what ever you want.

Re:The future of operating systems

[Anonymous Coward]

Wired or wireless?

I suspect he's correct for the limited case of wireless networking. Or maybe he's wrong about that, too -- wicd certainly does everything I want it to, including connecting to any network I've marked as automatic on bootup, while also allowing manual control once logged in. One would hope network-manager and it's corresponding daemon(s) could handle this, but tools that emphasize user-friendliness have a long history of omitting functionality like that.

Political ideology

[INowRegretThesePosts]

As long as it's not pushing forced ads, I have no problem with Ubuntu setting up a shopping network and app sales.

They have to make money somehow and this seems like one of the less offensive services they could implement.

This is seen as a problem because certain free software extremists* are too leftist and they hate the idea of a company making profit.

* Don't get me wrong, I love open source. I strongly promote Linux, Libreoffice, Firefox, Chrome and 7zip. My laptop uses open source exclusively (to the best of my knowledge). I just don't think that companies are necessarily evil.

Re:Political ideology

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm totally okay with ads. I'd accept banner ads. It's the fact that they are tied to my searches of my local machine that's a problem. Now people say it's okay because the data is dealt with through canonical somehow, so amazon never knows who sent the search. (Really? Then how do they know an individual clicked the ad rather than some bot at canonical?)

But that doesn't matter, because the search string itself can contain private information. Just as an example, I store my cv's and other job application data in the form "mylastname company_I_applied_to cv|personal_letter|attachement date" or something of the kind. Searching for one in particular would tell amazon exactly who I am, and where I applied to work. This is data gathering I do not approve of. There's also plenty of personal photos I could search for using names and information that I really don't want anyone else to track.

There's even business secrets on my machine from time to time, files with codenames for products yet to be released. Sending that data to amazon by "search" would likely be grounds for contract termination by breach of NDA in some cases. Yes, most companies I work with would be THAT strict, because they put quite a bit of money into their products, and stand to lose millions if they leak to the competition.

Now, for me this is a moot point - I've tried linux out personally and it doesn't cover my use-case, so aside from a nettop I use while on vacation for strictly personal surfing and communication I couldn't possibly use ubuntu anyway... But these are legitimate concerns that anyone wanting to use it should have. We store private data on our machines, and the fact that text portions of this private data makes it to amazon should never be acceptable.

Re:Political ideology

[INowRegretThesePosts]

Finally there's a legitimate concern. I in particular wouldn't care about it, because Amazon isn't interested in the names of my photos; and a big company like Amazon wouldn't sell the data (they would lose far more in brand damage than the petty change they would gain by selling the data).

Anyway, the details are still being worked out; this is the _beta_ stage of a _non-LTS_ release. There is time for Canonical to think and evaluate.
Today, it is already easy to opt out (sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping), and Canonical will possibly make it even easier (or even switch to opt-in).

Optional and open source

[INowRegretThesePosts]

I also trust Ford to build a car that won't get me killed in a car crash, I trust them do keep that up with spare parts, recalls and authorized service centers. It doesn't mean I want them to install a GPS tracker in my car so they can "improve my experience". Saying you should trust Ubuntu because they already 0wn your computer isn't exactly a confidence builder.

It is easy to turn off, and it is open source, so everyone can audit it.

Re:Optional and open source

[L4t3r4lu5]

It is easy to turn off, and it is open source, so everyone who can code in C and assembly can audit it.

I can't audit it. I can't audit any OS. I can't audit my car, my electricity meters, my gas supply... The only time I will ever know something is up is when it goes catastrophically wrong. Therefore, I won't know if Shuttleworth is being good with my data until I see details only found on my CV being used to serve me adverts. Just like everyone else who isn't a C / Assembly dev.

Re:Optional and open source

[INowRegretThesePosts]

I can't audit it. I can't audit any OS. I can't audit my car, my electricity meters, my gas supply... The only time I will ever know something is up is when it goes catastrophically wrong. Therefore, I won't know if Shuttleworth is being good with my data until I see details only found on my CV being used to serve me adverts. Just like everyone else who isn't a C / Assembly dev.

First, I doubt very much that unity-lens-shopping has assembly code.
Second, even if you can't audit it, there is a big number of people who can. It only takes one to find a privacy-threatening bug.

Ubuntu isn't only one.

[antdude]

Windows 8, latest Apple OSes, non-OS softwares, etc. seem to be having weird designs and bad ideas. It's like computers are not cool like the old days. :(

Re:Ubuntu isn't only one.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running most OSX native with VMs for Windows and Linux. I agree even Apple is messing up their new releases with Lion and Mountain Lion. My aggravation mounts and more and more I feel like I'm fighting being corralled and making to many tweaks to disable iCloud and other things. OpenSuSE would maybe be on my short list of alternatives. I had 11.2 running on one of my PCs for a while. It may be time to spin up the new release. Before I went Apple OSX I was a big KDE 3.5 fan. Sick of the phone carriers too. There may not be a new smart phone in my future. I may just get a minimal Pay as you Go. I mainly stopped in just to say as a heavy Apple user of late I'm interested in alternatives too. Ubuntu used to one of them.

Re:The future of operating systems

[webheaded]

Yeah, just like when they asked me if I wanted to install WGA, right?

Finding the calculator is trivial

[INowRegretThesePosts]

What is a showstopper is when I can't find basic stuff like the calculator because it's been moved from a simple accessories pulldown menu and hidden in some goofy app picker.

Click the Ubuntu icon (or press Super, or press Super-A), type cal, hit Enter.
Or press Super-A (or right-click the Ubuntu Icon and choose Applications), click Filter Results, choose Accessories.

Re:The future of operating systems

[PrimaryConsult]

which makes a glorious pain in the ass out of itself by deciding it's smarter than you when it comes to your /etc/resolv.conf config file

I never know what utility is overwriting my resolv.conf but editing it by hand and running "chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf" always seems to stop nonsense like that...

I shouldn't have to resort to that; chmod -w should be enough. It's pretty stupid when a utility doesn't respect the read only attribute.

Re:I welcome this and everything else it may bring

[fahrbot-bot]

I have been thinking long and hard about this and I can only come to this conclusion.

Thanks. I'm glad you know everything and can think for everyone about all things all the time. /sarcasm

My Debian/KDE spins like a cube

[Anonymous Coward]

The multiple desktop management in KDE helps with workflow imo.

Re:I welcome this and everything else it may bring

[jenningsthecat]

I have been thinking long and hard about this and I can only come to this conclusion. It is a nice feature. It needs tweaks, so results for photoshop don't pop up, or if they do it should explain it's not compatible with Linux. But what it needs more than anything, which is something Canonical keep missing out of all of their super new features is a simple tickbox for on or off.

If I use the tickbox you are suggesting to turn the feature off, will the system still be tracking my queries for use the next time I turn the feature on? I'm not suggesting that Ubuntu would do that *now*, but it strikes me as a slippery slope kind of thing, and they could easily justify it to themselves in the future, especially under pressure from their corporate partners.

One thing that I also think is important to remember, is that we are a set of pretty clued up power users and as such we will see problems and we will jump to justify why something is a bad idea.

I think that's really where a lot of the pushback is coming from. The typical "clued up power user" is only too aware of how such mechanisms can be used to destroy privacy, if not now, then in the future, and possibly surreptitiously. Giving big commercial entities a priveleged entry point into a free OS like Linux sets a dangerous precedent. At best it's crapware; at worst, it risks making Linux more like Windows and Mac in ways that most of us probably don't want. Corporations already have more advantages, rights, and power than any sensible society would give them. Do we really want to risk giving them yet another doorway into our lives, via an OS which was founded on the antithesis of that principal?

Ripped from TFS title...

[fahrbot-bot]

Shuttleworth: Trust Us, We're Trying to Make Shopping Better

Hmm... I though Canonical was trying to make computing better with Ubuntu. My bad.

openSUSE

[inkrypted]

This is why I stick with openSUSE.

Re:I welcome this and everything else it may bring

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been thinking long and hard about this and I can only come to this conclusion.

Your post needs paragraph breaks.

Article Title

[Anonymous Coward]

"Shuttleworth: Trust Us, We Have Root. Shopping Results Make Perfect Sense." This was the original title of the submission. In what way is "Turst Us, We're Trying to Make Shopping Better," you know, better or more accurate?

It also had links to the Reddit and Hacker News discussion in addition to Slashdot.

Of COURSE they aren't ads!

[Wee]

This is not about enabling us to find the best answer to what we ask but rather push referral ads down our throats.

"There are no ads. They're not even within 100 miles of Ubuntu. They are not in any place. They hold no place in Ubuntu. This is an illusion ... the online trolls are trying to sell to the others an illusion. We will crush any ads in Ubuntu. Faltering forces of monetization cannot just enter a distro of 26 million lines of code and lay besiege to the home lens! The haters are the ones who will find themselves under siege. Therefore, in reality whatever these miserable trolls have been saying, they were talking about their own ads! Now even the Red Hat has ads..."

- Canoncial Ali, September 2012

Re:Of COURSE they aren't ads!

[Anonymous Coward]

You do not know the meaning of the word ad (or your sense of distance is seriously wrong).

advertisement
noun
1. a paid announcement, as of goods for sale, in newspapers or magazines, on radio or television, etc.
2. a public notice, especially in print.
3. the action of making generally known; a calling to the attention of the public: The news of this event will receive wide advertisement.

I'd say these are damn well ads (paid for by Amazon, announcing goods for sale). The fact they are only shown when I search for something is only more annoying as they're disguised as normal search results.
I guess people like you will enjoy finding an ad for a TI calculator when launching a calculator application. Many others, including myself, do not. If I want to buy a calculator, I'll find the way to do so without forced advertisements in my lens.

Seriously, Ubuntu is going down the drain in terms of user consideration. It started with folding to Microsoft in the protected boot signature fiasco, on through Unity "design" decision preventing users from moving a frigging dash board to either edge of the screen and now enhancing our "shopping" experience with ads.

If I want a commercial company to decide what I can/can't do with my desktop, I'd go with Microsoft - they have the experience and they're not trying to force me to buy anything after the compulsory license through OEM.

Re:Of COURSE they aren't ads!

[Wee]

You do not know the meaning of the word ad (or your sense of distance is seriously wrong).

I (jokingly) mis-paraphrased Muhammad Saeed ("There are no tanks in Baghdad!") al-Sahhaf, and you think I am in support of the ads in Ubuntu?!

-B

Re:Of COURSE they aren't ads!

[OldKingCole]

Cynic interpertations get lost when too many psychos are around (-;

har har

[Anonymous Coward]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bug/1055766

Re:I welcome this and everything else it may bring

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that human beings keep shit on their laptop that they don't want amazon to know about. And to search amazon the things you type into your little box must be sent there. Everything. When you search for "Jenna bondage pics", that goes to amazon. When you search for "mom naked halloween" that goes to amazon. When you search for "deusmetallum cv google" that goes to amazon. When you search for "iphone6 specs classified" that goes to amazon, and you likely get fired for leaking information.

Do you see the problem here? I have a reasonable expectation of privacy when I use my computer. When you start sending things I type into it into the cloud, then I say that's as bad as wiretapping. Now if I had a place to "search the net", then that would be a different thing... but this is integrated into your main local search function. You're not making it easier for people, you are converting their private computer into a public space.

That's fucking vile.

Re:The future of operating systems

[AvitarX]

Just tested wireless (as it was wired), I am once again connected via SSH on a fresh boot (no login).

I find NetworkManager annoying because I don't know how it works, and can't change it with a terminal, like I used to know how to do. But I assume it uses some time of communication and a curses client could be made, if it doesn't exist yet.

The /etc/default folder was annoying to me at first (where'd all these things go), but I like it now that I can use it.

This is Ubuntu 12.04, so it may be within the last 6 months that network manager allowed for this.

I did as you suggested such as selecting "connect automatically" and also the "Allow all users to access" checkbox.

I've never actually used a server as a wireless client, so it didn't occur to me, and if I were it'd be in an extending type situation where I'd want a more router focused type distro (and probably use an ASUS router with custom firmware), but it looks like this is not a limitation of network manager.

Re:The future of operating systems

[tibman]

i'm not sure about server but desktop works without logging in.

Have a little perspective

[Tenebrousedge]

Linux would survive on servers, the mobile space, high-performance computing, embedded devices, and the desktop. Linux Mint is carrying that last torch pretty well, Fedora has never stopped being a good option, and there's always Gentoo for the masochistic and Debian for the ones that want all the fun of configuring their boot scripts by hand and none of the excitement that comes with recent packages.

But seriously, Ubuntu doesn't actually bring that much to the table. It has almost nothing to do with the success of Linux, even if we limit our scope to desktop environments.

The question we should be asking is, why does Red Hat bring in a billion dollars annually, and Canonical $30 million? (2009) Question two, what percentage of Windows profits come from home users?

For the grand prize, what do most home users say keeps them from switching to linux? Is it [a] games, [b] other applications, [c] what the desktop environment looks like, or [d] how easy it is to get Amazon search results.

Canonical stands out most not for their contributions to Linux, but for their disdain for their users.

Re:I welcome this and everything else it may bring

[Anonymous Coward]

They are *ads.* If they're not Amazon ads, they're Ubuntu ads for their Amazon affiliate program. When you search Google they give you "suggestions" based on your search, by your logic these are not *ads.* either.

I am searching for a product, I can chose to buy it, and I won't get prompted to buy anything similar next time I fire up the dash.

No, you will have something similar every time you "fire up the dash," every time you search there will be more ads.

Re:The future of operating systems

[steveg]

You may be right. I seem to remember it being a problem in the past (even for a wired connection) but I've avoided dealing with Network Manager for several years, and maybe it's been improved.

The last time I messed with it, I had trouble getting it to establish a static address on a wired connection even after logging in. I pretty much gave up after that.

Re:The future of operating systems

[Rutulian]

Networking starts up only after someone logs in? Really?

Uh, no. A wired connection starts up the same way as it always has. A wireless connection can be configured to start up before login, easily. In addition, you have all of the extra features NM provides, like VPN and DSL dialing support, which you could conceivably need on a server. Sure you can do it manually, but NM makes it so much easier.

It's fixable -- just uninstall network manager (and resolvconf)

What's wrong with resolvconf? It's just a script that updates the resolver. No different really than a lot of the other maintenance scripts (ex: update-rc.d).

Re:The future of operating systems

[Rutulian]

No it isn't. If you think it is, you obviously don't know anything about NetworkManager.

Re:The future of operating systems

[JohnFen]

At one corner we have premium OS like Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows and at another corner we have free ad-supported lite OS like Ubuntu and Chrome OS.

Pay for Windows? Never. If I'm going to pay for an OS, I'd want something that suits my needs better. I'd pay for Debian, though.

Re:The future of operating systems

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I read it on /. a while ago...

Some folks did a MIM on windows update (I think they used a dll shim or some such), and found that contrary to M$'s claims, it was transferring a bunch of data from the user's computer to M$.

M$ telling you that they would never do something isn't what matters. It is what they actually do. M$ was the least trustworthy, most abusive, company in tech (Apple has probably claimed their old crown now). M$ is still a horrible company, there just happens to be a worse company in tech now. I would NEVER trust M$.

As for Ubuntu-- don't care.

this is great

[Anonymous Coward]

I got sick and tired of Distro hopping. Have been with Ubuntu for the past 6 years (started with Linux in 1996).

No windows machines at all in my home, I'm also a strictly android user. What's so bad about this? Linux succeeding on the desktop? Everyone freaks? I guess it's because everyone on Slashdot is a freak (including myself it seems).

Go outside!

Re:this is great

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you blindly accept sleaze doesn't mean everyone else has to take it up the ass like you apparently love.

Re:The future of operating systems

[Rutulian]

I find NetworkManager annoying because I don't know how it works, and can't change it with a terminal

It depends. If it is a system-connection, you can edit in a terminal as normal (/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections). If it is a user connection, you have to use dconf. A little annoying, but not unbearable. Have a look at the gsettings tool. Makes it scriptable fairly easily.

Re:The future of operating systems

[Rutulian]

Servers, almost by definition, don't move around much, and those that do will need a slightly more robust configuration by an intelligent operator, rather than having the static (or semi-static) configurations clobbered by a "helpful" utility.

Perhaps you just need to learn how to work with said utility. I can complain that they screwed up apt because I can't edit /etc/apt/sources.list directly anymore. Or I can just realize that they moved custom configurations to /etc/apt/sources.list.d, which actually solves two problems. It allows you to more easily revert changes, and it prevents the package manager from clobbering the config file every time it updates the package. For system connections, NetworkManager does very little differently than the old /etc/init.d/networking script. It's just the config file that has moved to a different place.

but they replaced it with resolvconf, which makes a glorious pain in the ass out of itself by deciding it's smarter than you when it comes to your /etc/resolv.conf config file

And what's wrong with just editing the files in /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/? That one's in the man page. You can also edit /etc/network/interfaces like you always have. You just can't edit /etc/resolv.conf directly.

Re:The future of operating systems

[Rutulian]

I never know what utility is overwriting my resolv.conf but

Really? The first line of the file says "# Dynamic resolv.conf(5) file for glibc resolver(3) generated by resolvconf(8)". And if you just read the man page, you are told which files to edit to make changes to the resolver config.

The reason turning off write doesn't work is because resolvconf runs as root, of course. And it's not a good idea anyway unless you like breaking DHCP.

Wait. I can ask for whatever I want in 12.04?

[2muchcoffeeman]

Fine, let's try that.

2muchcoffeeman@thisbox:~$ sudo sandwich -ham -swiss -dijon -mayo -lettuce -tomato -bacon

I wonder how long it will take ...

Why not developer software instead of ad

[Vince6791]

Instead of shuttleworth doing this ad crap, since he has more than $500million, plus making money from support and other cash streams, why not just hire professional game developers or hire companies like Sega, Capcom,RockStar, Crytek, Activision, Konomi, etc... to either develop new games for ubuntu or port some of their old or current games over to ubuntu and charge the user for the product. Or hire libreoffice developers full time, excellent pay, and come out with a great alternative to office 2010/2013 and charge for it, or a product competitive to photoshop or maya, etc... Do something that will make users come to ubuntu instead of making them leave. Linux is in serious need of professional video games so why not target this.

Shuttleworth

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a delusional disingenuous fucksmudge.

Re:The future of operating systems

[Rutulian]

You would know this if you had ever used it with a network configuration of any complexity.

As someone who uses NetworkManager all the time on simple to complex configurations, I can tell you that it works just fine. In fact, for the fairly complicated kind (static routes, custom dhclient hooks, vpns, etc), NetworkManager makes it a lot easier than it ever used to be. It seems to me, linux users should be more capable of learning and adapting to new things than a typical computer user, but from the comments in this thread that is obviously not the case. Everybody just learned how to manually use the ifup script back in 1995, and anything different is just too complicated. Oh noes they moved the config file? Too bad there isn't anything like a man page that might tell you where it is....

In short, NetworkManager is crude hack

Far from it. NetworkManager is an actual robust network management tool, unlike the init.d/ hacks that existed before.

Tempest in a Teapot

[js33]

If you don't like the ads or the commercialism or anything else about Ubuntu, it's a rather minor change to go back to Debian, upon which Ubuntu was originally based. Otherwise, Shuttleworth et al. are free to do what they want, and if you don't like it, well, it's not like you don't have plenty of other choices. In the meantime, give the guy a little credit for massively popularizing and attempting to commercialize a GNU/Linux distro. Because in the long run, that's better for your other choices, too, and in this case, it's really more his own pocketbook than anything that gets hurt when he pisses off his customers. Or not, as the case may be.

Re:The future of operating systems

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps it was a joke about how virus and malware writers target Windows machines because Windows supports malware?

FTFY

Amazon? Of all companies, AMAZON?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did we collectively forget how when a random US senator ordered Amazon to take down wikileaks, with no legal authority to do so, Amazon complied with a ridiculous excuse about terms of service violations?

This is the same Amazon which Ubuntu is now working with?

Shame on Amazon, and now Ubuntu too... and "opt out" makes me want to puke. This is the sort of thing Ubuntu is supposed to be a safe haven FROM.

A better goal

[Anonymous Coward]

How about reduce Ubuntu's suckage?

In no way is a shopping app a part of an operating system and an OS company has no valid reason for doing this.

I have never used Ubuntu( I do not, because I do not accept crap) outside of 2 days in 2007 where I tried it and found it to be a lacking piece of shit like all Debian based distros and have not bothered since.

It does make me happy to see Canonical on the verge of death.

Re:The future of operating systems

[geminidomino]

Because it adds nothing but another layer of kruft to fail. Yes, I could jump through the hoops and overcome 15 years of habit to no good end, or I could just sudo apt-get uninstall resolvconf every time, and after every upgrade, just in case it tries to put it back again (and it has, at times).

At least, I can just do that until I get the time to do some research and see if this is ubuntu-specific suckage, or if it comes from debian. If the former, then I'll start using the latter.

Sorry, had to reply to this Debian comment

[sgtrock]

...and Debian for the ones that want all the fun of configuring their boot scripts by hand and none of the excitement that comes with recent packages.

Wait, what? I moved over from Ubuntu to a full time Debian stable configuration after Ubuntu 10.10 trashed my configuration (yet again!). I decided that enough was enough.

I also decided that if I was going to move, I wanted to move to a distro that was (a) as upstream as possible to be close to the app development teams and (b) would let me run a configuration that would Just Work. In my view, that meant one of several choices:

(a) Gentoo, an old favorite of mine that I think lost its way for quite a while (it's also focussed on the bleeding edge, which would risk my desire for a distro that would Just Work with no fuss),

(b) Slackware, a distro that I had no experience with,

(c) Fedora, a distro designed to be on the cutting if not bleeding edge, and

(d) Debian, a distro famed for both its flame wars over some pretty silly stuff (really? confusing trademarks with FLOSS?) and the very high quality of its stable distribution.

I had tried Debian for server builds in the past and had been impressed by its no nonsense attitude toward the twin goals of stability and security. I hadn't been thrilled about the need to drop to the command line, but I thought I might as well give it a go. After all, Debian is upstream of dozens if not hundreds of distros precisely because the breadth and quality of its repository is unquestioned.

What I found was a pleasant surprise. The Debian install script now has a GUI option. Again, in keeping with the Debian philosophy, it's straightforward, simple to use, and Just Works. In fact, if you have installed any distro in the past, you'll feel right at home. The list of tasks is pretty much the same for everyone, after all. That goes double if you have installed any distro that is derived from Debian (Mint, Ubuntu, etc.).

The stable version of Debian has also installed cleanly on every PC that I've thrown it at to date. (Granted, extremely small sample size but important to me.) More importantly, every admin task that I've had to do I've done through a GUI. Whether it was finding networked printers and selecting the right printer driver, upgrading several apps from Debian stable to the latest in the backports repository while keeping the core as stable, setting up a dual monitor configuration, adding users, managing access, you name it. It has been done through the same familiar GUIs that I had been using for years in Ubuntu.

Debian also gives me more choice in versions of software than any other distro. If I got bored with Debian stable, I could move up to Debian testing. Heck, if I really wanted to run the latest and greatest, I could just move to unstable. Or, if I REALLY wanted to go on an exciting ride into an unknown future, I could move to Debian experimental!

So, what are these problems you speak of? Where's my struggle to find the latest version of Firefox or LibreOffice? Where's my need to 'configure my boot script by hand'? Only in your fevered imagination, I suspect.

I'll be the first to say that Debian is not for everyone. The install GUI, while very simple and straightforward, could stand to be a bit better organized. Even that is more about style and presentation than having anything missing, though.

Nope, what Debian could use (but doesn't really need, IMNSHO) are some volunteers with real UI experience to clean up the install UI, and maybe help polish Synaptic. Other than that, I think the distro is in great shape.

Re:Sorry, had to reply to this Debian comment

[Tenebrousedge]

There must have been a missing element there.

I'm using Crunchbang, a Debian derivative -- my packages come directly from Debian stable 98% of the time. It is, as you say, extremely stable, and updates don't trash the system.

Most of the other popular distros have either replaced SysV init or have newer packages. I promise not to quit my day job to become a comedian.

Re:The future of operating systems

[AvitarX]

Thanks, I assumed it was possible, just didn't know how.

Re:The future of operating systems

[Rutulian]

Because it adds nothing but another layer of kruft to fail. Yes, I could jump through the hoops and overcome 15 years of habit to no good end,

Editing a different config file from the one you are used to is not "jumping through hoops."

or I could just sudo apt-get uninstall resolvconf every time, and after every upgrade, just in case it tries to put it back again (and it has, at times).

That, on the other hand, is. Why not just take the most painless route to get what you want? Seriously, it's not that big of deal. There have been tons of similar changes to the Debian userland over the years (pam.d, update-rc.d, modprobe.d, ...). All of them entail moving config files and using scripts or includes to keep master copies up to date. Yes, it might be frustrating to find something you already know has been changed, but it usually takes only about 5 minutes to get up to speed with the new setup.

There is a pretty good rationale for resolvconf on the developer website, if you actually really care about the why.

Re:The future of operating systems

[nobaloney]

I think this is how operating systems will compete in the future. At one corner we have premium OS like Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows and at another corner we have free ad-supported lite OS like Ubuntu and Chrome OS. Those who want full suited OS will get the premium one and those who don't care about their privacy or workflow will get lite OS like Ubuntu.

It's a gutsy move by Shuttleworth. I think it dooms Ubuntu, simply because it's aimed at non-geeks, non-techies, simple users if you will. And those are exactly the people who won't install Ubuntu.

The only way it could work would be if it came preinstalled with hardware.

And when was the last time that distribution model worked for any Linux distribution?

Re:I welcome this and everything else it may bring

[Shompol]

... and maybe sell me a London guide book.

I want to be in control of my computer. The minute my computer starts selling me guidebooks, it does not belong to me anymore.

Call me old-fashioned, but I call picasa, facebook, etc integration "crapware", and I still remember last time i had to spend a few hours to clean it out of a pre-installed Win7 machine. Some people like it, and they are Apple customer base: they don't want know how computers work, as long as Facebook loads. What Ubuntu does is alienate its user base more and more in a vain attempt to become the next Apple.

Re:The future of operating systems

[PrimaryConsult]

Really? The first line of the file says "# Dynamic resolv.conf(5) file for glibc resolver(3) generated by resolvconf(8)". And if you just read the man page, you are told which files to edit to make changes to the resolver config.

Really? Mine just says " Generated by NetworkManager". Different distros like to clobber resolv.conf in different ways, my method gets the intended result 100% of the time on the first try.

The reason turning off write doesn't work is because resolvconf runs as root, of course. And it's not a good idea anyway unless you like breaking DHCP.

1. A proper program running as root (ie: try editing a file with vim) will ask if you want to override read-only protection (and as a daemon, will simply choose to respect it). Just because it *can* ignore the permission doesn't mean it should. Samba for example will not write its LDB files if it does not have write permission, even though it runs as root.

2. How is preventing DHCP from writing resolv.conf "breaking DHCP"? I have my own DNS server that I would rather use than my ISP's which hijacks DNS errors.

Re:The future of operating systems

[Rutulian]

Really? Mine just says " Generated by NetworkManager".

So then you do know what program is editing your resolv.conf.

How is preventing DHCP from writing resolv.conf "breaking DHCP"?

Preventing the DHCP client from doing what it is intended to do is breaking DHCP. You can achieve the result you want by just editing /etc/network/interfaces. It's in the man page.

Another way of doing it is editing the the connection in NetworkManager, and instead of selecting DHCP under ipv4 settings, select DHCP (addresses only).

Bye Bye Ubuntu.

[Anonymous Coward]

For what it's worth, I won't be using Ubuntu any more. A large part of why I am using Linux instead of Windows is that it allows me to get rid of adverts. I especially don't like any targeted advertising. I'd rather stop using something than allow targeted advertising. So, time to move on to a different distro.

Re:The future of operating systems

[PrimaryConsult]

That is what it *said* created the file. Dhclient is still changing it and I really couldn't be bothered to figure out where to tell it not to.

In any case the "proper" method doesn't scale well. Editing /etc/network/interfaces works for Debian based systems (coincidentally what I use personally) but for RedHat based it's /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/[interface] (which is what I often deal with). That's already two different places. The target files also happen to have contents customized to the machine's hardware layout, not an easy situation to script.

So I can either manually edit one or the other config file every time a new system comes my way, or spend hours making a script to read and properly alter the appropriate files, or just run this:

echo "search example.com" > /etc/resolv.conf
echo "nameserver 10.0.0.99" >> /etc/resolv.conf
chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf

And to undo:
chattr -i /etc/resolv.conf

Throw in a "service network restart" or "dhclient" afterward and your resolv.conf is right back to normal.
Simple and clean. No dialog boxes, no editing text files, just clobbering one that gets recreated automatically anyway.

As far as:

Preventing the DHCP client from doing what it is intended to do is breaking DHCP.

Really? The important parts of DHCP (contact DHCP server, configure IP, routing, etc) is working just fine. How is hardcoding a nameserver breaking DHCP?

My procedure has the benefit of working on almost any Linux system with any network configuration. Other than a few wasted processor cycles when dhclient or what have you tries and fails to write resolv.conf, I can't see any benefit the so-called "right" way has.

Re:The future of operating systems

[AvitarX]

So, perhaps the issues were worked out before the shocking terrible decision to use it was made.

sounds reasonable to me.

"Trust Us"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, President of the White Star Lines "Trust us, it's unsinkable"... Nazi concentration camp commander, "Trust us, it's just a shower"....
makes me cringe when I hear those words.

Re:The future of operating systems

[geminidomino]

There is a pretty good rationale for resolvconf on the developer website, if you actually really care about the why.

In fact, I DO care about the why. But, since my posts are discussing the context of *servers*, the rationale is not, as you put it "pretty good." It's centered entirely around "mobile computing," which makes putting the change into the server versions foolish. That was my original point.

I'm only sad to hear that it's not an Ubuntu thing, so switching to debian on the servers isn't a fix.