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?

[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?

[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.

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.

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.