Shuttleworth Calls Ubuntu Performance Art, Calls Out Critics

darthcamaro writes "Mark Shuttleworth has taken a lot of heat for Ubuntu's decision to use Unity, to move away from Wayland and about its stance on the community distros like Kubuntu. In a new interview Shuttleworth shoots back claiming no matter what he does people will always find fault due to...'competitive pressures.'"

Comments

He has a point, no?

[jawtheshark]

I mean, he does have a high-profile Linux distribution he's responsible for. He has the problem that people hate change and he needs to take decisions. The thing is: change can be right too. Unity has many haters, but from the latest LTS release on, it is actually pretty good. I like using it now, and I originally dreaded the switch for my two "normal" users on it, being my mother and mother in law. I expected support calls to no end, when I finally did switch them from 10.04 (Gnome2) to 12.04 (Unity).

Surprisingly, neither had any problems adapting. That shows me that he was right: for normal users it is actually not all that hard. That said: when Unity was released it really did have a lot of rough edges. That's what it gave a bad reputation, IMHO.

Microsoft has the same problem: change is hated by their users. Probably even more so, in the Windows ecosystem.

I'm normally a proponent of "don't fix it if it's not not broken". The problem is that the Gnome guys "broke" Gnome, and thus they said "we can do this better". Whether this "better" is truly "better" lies in the eye of the beholder. My experience is: the common user reacts positively to it. That's a win in my book.

Re:He has a point, no?

[aaaaaaargh!]

Unity has many haters, but from the latest LTS release on, it is actually pretty good.

I switched to Xubuntu for the time being but am willing to give it a second try. I only have one question: Does Unity by now have a menu of all applications reachable with one click or mouse hover?

When I had to fix the graphics drivers on my girlfriend's laptop yesterday, I had to guess the German localizations of applications for monitor settings and drivers and scroll through lists of oversized icons. The concept of searching for applications by a name (that you must remember) is inherently flawed and was discarded with the invention of the desktop and folders in the early 80s. If that has been fixed I'm happy to give Ubuntu another try. (The application "dock" is also pretty annoying, especially since it only seems to pop up every second time I try, but I assume it is easier to customize by now.)

Re:He has a point, no?

[slacka]

Say what you will about Ubuntu, of all the Linux distros, it has the most polished out of the box experience. In my career, I’ve probably installed close to a thousand Linux images and Ubuntu has consistently provided best hardware compatibly and least issues over the years. When Unity was started, the Gnome 2.x panel, was completely broken and useless in vertical mode, necessary for 720p netbooks and widescreen monitors. Gnome 3.x was looking to be the next KDE 4.0.

So I can understand Shuttleworth's desire for something like Unity, but what I disagree with is how he went about it. Instead of going off on his own with Unity and Mir forks, He should have worked with Gnome and Wayland to fix what was broken. See the Mint MATE project for how Ubuntu should have proceeded with Unity. All of these unnecessary forks just weaken and already stretched thin open source development efforts.

Mint

[roman_mir]

Moved to Mint sinse Unity. Competition in action.

And what about the spyware

[Antique Geekmeister]

The effective keystroke monitoring in recent Ubuntu monitoring is a _much_ bigger problem. The desktop search result is broadcasting your searches back to the Ubuntu mother company for Amazon search results. Despite Mark's claims, this is not "putting ads in Ubuntu" it is far more than merely adware. By effectively tracking local user searches, by default, it is clearly spyware. Worse, the queries were being sent in clear text, and there was no graceful way to turn it off. Those had to be top level decisions for the new release, and they were terrible decisions.

To quote Mark from his own response to this at http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182 .

> 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

Mark's claim that "your anonymity is preserved because we handle the query" is nonsensical. Tracking cookies and the sometimes abusive tracking tools of doubleclick.net provide thorough tracking of the search queries and the results, and to automatically be doing This, along with other recent changes, has demonstrated that Mark Shuttleworth and the leadership of the Ubuntu distribution _cannot be trusted_. Having "root" access is not an excuse: it's a reason that Ubuntu should never have even tried this obvious and adware and spyware attempt.

Also note: the queries are not going to be encrypted to protect you, the user. They're going to be encrypted to make them less obvious to network monitoring and tougher to block.

I don't get this

[Anonymous Coward]

I can understand normal users hating change, but techies? Come off it... There is nothing constant in tech but change. I, while not liking (or using) Unity, don't dislike it. I prefer KDE or Enlightenment, but whenever a new version of Ubuntu hits the mirrors, I dutifully download it and give it a week before redoing things to suit my tastes.

To those that bash Mark: running a company is no small feat. Running a tech company is a very difficult feat. Running a company with a release deadline every six months and still innovating is a moving target and he and the Ubuntu team do it very well. At least they are trying to innovate and deliver new ideas and functionality.