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?

[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.

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.