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?

[YukariHirai]

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

There's a reason for this: in the Windows world, change is mostly for the worse. Sure there are some important steps forward and changes for the better in amongst it, but it always seems like those are eclipsed by dumb decisions and change for the sake of change.

Re:He has a point, no?

[ozmanjusri]

in the Windows world, change is mostly for the worse.

Not just that.

In the Windows world, there are just two choices; run an old version, or put up with the awful interface. At least with Linux, you can use Mint, or even pick an XFCE, Enlightenment etc etc respin if you want Ubuntu and don't like Unity.

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.

Re:He has a point, no?

[BasilBrush]

There's a reason for this: in the Windows world, change is mostly for the worse.

There's a reason for this: in the Windows world, change is mostly for the worse.

Lets see. I remember Windows from v1 all the way through to XP.

2 was better than 1. It had overlapping windows!
3 was better than 2. Icons and early networking.
95 was a huge step forward from 3. e.g. People didn't close down Windows to run their legacy DOS apps anymore. They ran them within DOS boxes.
98 was a better 95. It fixed the rough edges.
ME was apparently a step back. I didn't try it. I took a sidestep to 2000.
Windows XP was a big step forward in reliability, merging consumer UI with NT kernel.

I can't speak for versions after XP, as I went to OSX at that stage. But I've covered most of Windows history there, and you're wrong with that statement.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Microsoft or Windows, that's why I moved to OSX. I had grown to have complete contempt for Windows by the end. But it's wrong to say that Windows changed for the worse with most versions. It did generally improve.

Re:He has a point, no?

[Vintermann]

Just because people will criticize you no matter what you do, still it may be the case that the criticism is valid. In the article, Shuttleworth does nothing to defend Mir - he calls it convenient and effective for them, but that wasn't the issue. The issue was why Wayland would NOT be convenient and effective for them.

Wayland isn't primarily a library, it's a protocol, and the big challenge for a protocol is getting people and companies (like NVidia!) on board, not that work has to be duplicated. Realistically, some will choose to go with one and not the other, and that means more wasted effort, whoever "wins" in the end.

Re:He has a point, no?

[pmontra]

I'm also a TB user so I'm happy you can use it on KDE (no surprise). However a mail application doesn't belong to an OS. It's a matter of personal choice and what one was using on other computers and in previous years. For example, I've been using TB for maybe 10 years over 4 maybe different computers and I'll keep using it on the next one, if I ever find a modern laptop worth buying. So, no good mail client on KDE should not be a problem. Actually, why bother developing an integrated client?

Same thing for a web browser: it's nice if the OS provides a default browser so the user can download the one s/he prefers after the first boot, but that's it. Any toy browser preloaded with links to the major ones would be good enough for that.

Re:He has a point, no?

[jones_supa]

Windows 2000 and Windows 7 are the best releases. Win2000 took the best parts of NT but also allowed consumer stuff such as most games to work. XP only brought extra bloat, slight instability and horrible security record (which was later mostly fixed with service packs). Windows 7 is the pinnacle of the classic desktop: polished, secure, fast and nice.

Re:He has a point, no?

[serviscope_minor]

have never yet had a straight answer as to what is so wrong with X11.

1. It was made by old people.
2. It works.
3. It's boring.
4. It's legacy.
5. It was bloated in 1987 and it's bloated now.
6. It was slow in 1987 and it's slow now.
7. It bogs down my Sun 3/60 so I don't trust it on my quad core i7.
8. Unix domain sockets have inexplicably high overhead and latency.
9. It's legacy.
10. It works so it's boring (still).
11. It's still legacy.
12. Did I mention legacy yet?
13. It has some old and little used APIs still hanging around for who ever needs them so we must nuke the entire thing from orbit because those old APIs must naturally be clogging up the entire thing because of legacy.
14. It doesn't look enough like Windows 3.11^W95^H8^XP^W^WOSX^WiOS.
15. It allows window managers which puts the user first and allows them to bend the system to its will.
16. It supports networking so every request has to go round the world via satellite makeing it slow.
17. It supports network transparency which no one uses (no you don't I said no one uses it so you can't be telling the truth and anyway you're only 1% of the users so who cares).
18. This one time X crashed so it sucks.

Re:Mark Shuttleworth is a copy of Bill Gates

[deusmetallum]

I don't know if you've seen/heard much of what Mark Shuttleworth has ever said, but he is clearly very passionate about Linux and open source. I get this feeling that a lot of people are attributing to malace that which can easily be attributed to a differing opinion. He doesn't want to destroy linux, he doesn't see it as a play thing, but he does want to give users a great experience, give administrators/engineers a great platform, *and* make some money out of it. The latter point seems to be what many people have an issue with, which to me is insane! Just take a look at Geary. They've been asking for $100,000 for an email client, yet Canonical are trying their best to give you the best desktop environment for free, while persuing a buck in other ways.

Ubuntu vs. Slackware

[oldhack]

An interesting contrast: Volkerding does what he does with Slackware with no fuss. Shuttleworth gets all defensive on what he does with Ubuntu.

Forcing change before you are ready is the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

IF Unity and Gnome 3 had taken the time to FIRST fully develop their products while at the same time fixing existing products, maybe they would have been better received. But they didn't do that. Gnome, Linux, Ubuntu are far from perfect. Nautilus for instance is a nightmare with samba shares. None of this has been fixed. If you got a spotty internet connection and connect a 3G modem, there is no easy way anymore to tell Ubuntu to prefer one over the other. Multi-monitor support finally works but you can still only select one wallpaper.

It works... but it could be better.

And then instead of improving, fixing what is there, KDE, Unity and Gnome 3 all decide to instead go for something new and unproven and give us highly buggy versions of it as non-optional replacements... and the users said FUCK NO! It isn't just that the basic core idea is wrong (more on that later) but that we would have prefered to:

A: have existing bugs fixed.

B: Not be forced to change how we use our computers.

C: Not be forced to deal with a whole lot of new bugs, on top of the old bugs.

Windows 8, Unity, Gnome 3 and KDE have taken a fundamentally flawed approach to the desktop. Their unified idea seems to be: The user wants to see his desktop and play with it.

Reality: The desktop is there to put things on, that then obscure the desktop which I never ever see again unless something crashes. In real life, if you can see a users desktop, the user is not doing anything productive. I got a large screen multi-monitor setup and the desktop is barely visible, what you do see instead are the applications I am running because THAT is where my work is being done.

Go back to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Desktop or Enlightenments animated wallpapers. All very nice, very cool and totally and utterly useless on an actively used PC because the moment you start using your PC, the desktop is hidden underneath the application you want to use. A pro has few desktop icons because to reach them, he would first have to close a dozen windows.

An active desktop is like the stock picture in a picture frame, useful to have something on the screen when the PC/frame is in the shop, but essentially useless once actively used. You take the picture frame, open it and put your own picture in front. Bye bye active desktop, won't see you again until my PC crashes and the few seconds between boot and me having opened my applications again.

OSX is just as bad with that gigantic dock at the bottom. Thank you Steve Jobs, just what I wanted, less horizontal pixels for my windows. At least Unity puts it to the side. Screen space is simply not cheap/available enough yet to waste pixels on stuff I don't "need". The only people that like Windows 8 and the likes are people who have toolbars installed in their browser. The rest of us want more SPACE! Not less.

And I be honest, once I had winamp/xmms installed with skins and made room for it in my windows layout. These days my music player lives on the notification bar and is 16 by 16 pixels or so.

Had these new "desktops" launched as optional side extra's (how many of you ever used Active Desktop or the various versions of Widgets), they might have been well received... well, as well received as their ancestors. Which is to say, not at all. Remember, ALL THE PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS AT TURNING THE DESKTOP INTO A GADGET ZONE: FAILED

So, instead of taking the hint, developers thought: "Well we just not going to make it fucking optional anymore!".

"Yah... well I am simply fucking not going to install it then".

With mobile phones the old idea got some new fuel but lets face it, how many of us think of our mobile phone as a marvel of usability? I sure as hell don't. It would be like taking away the mouse form a PC gamer and give him a touchpad instead... NO! It is not that touchpad on laptops are totally unusable but why should I replace the far superior mouse on my desktop with a laptops second rate input method?

The new desktop work slight

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.

Mint on sub GB RAM hardware

[xenoc_1]

Can't get Mint installed on sub GB RAM hardware, resource waste is my biggest beef with Unity and Mint doesn't solve it (and it seems only the installer is the bottleneck).

That's odd, considering I'm replying on my 2004-vintage HP Compaq Presario X1000 Pentium M 1.7MHz laptop with 768M RAM, running Mint.

Mint XFCE works just dandy on low-resource early 2000s hardware. I had it happily running on a revitalized homebuilt-in-1999 tower whose last upgrade was in 2002 to a Pentium III 850MHz (from original Pentium II 350), with all of 448MB RAM. Used that one as my primary computer for months at my old place before moving out, nuking the drive, reinstalling it, and leaving it out by the condo dumpster with a note with the password.

On this laptop, I can happily run Firefox and Thunderbird together, while running a VNC client into my other machine, and supporting a VNC server to go the other way, and manage to use LibreOffice or the GIMP at the same time. It streams videos fine, runs jEdit fine for a decent universal code editor. Runs Chrome OK, but just like on Windows, modern Firefox is lower-memory than Chrome once a few tabs and extensions are loaded, so Chrome is non-optimal on this, and was non-optimal on the tower. But Chrome is non-optimal on my wife's Windows 7 netbook with a dual-core N570 Atom and 1GB RAM too. This 768MB laptop even runs IBM Lotus Symphony decently, which I happen to prefer over its LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org relatives due to its tabbed interface and preference panels, especially when doing creative writing or articles where I have lots of research and notes open. (Yes, ducking tomatoes for using non-free-as-in-beer variants, but IBM did give the whole thing to Apache, so now it is.)

If you're trying to use Mint Mate, or Mint Cinnamon, or Mint KDE editions on a sub-GB machine, just don't. You'll be lucky to be able to install, or even boot the Live DVD with those, and if you do, a lot of the window chrome either won't paint, or will paint while you go out to get lunch. But Mint XFCE edition works like a charm. The previous low-resource official versions of Mint that had LXDE also were great on this hardware. I am staying on the Mint 13 Maya Long-Term-Support version, but prior to that I was using Mint 12 Lisa LXDE Edition which was slightly faster. You can always install LXDE but I haven't really seen the need. I think if I still had that tower, which was even lower resource, I might have gone back to LXDE, but I did use the heck out of it with XFCE.

I have to get around to switching the netbook to Mint LXDE one of these days. Everything that my wife and I use is available for Linux. We do switch off using that or the new better laptop (Windows 8 with Start8 login-to-desktop) depending on any given day's respective workload and deadlines. If I upgrade the netbook to Mint, maybe I can get the fast laptop back!