Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Are We Witnessing the Decline of Ubuntu?
jammag writes "'When the history of free software is written, I am increasingly convinced that this last year will be noted as the start of the decline of Ubuntu,' opines Linux pundit Bruce Byfield. After great initial success, Ubuntu and Canonical began to isolate themselves from the mainstream of the free software community. Canonical, he says, has tried to control the open source community, and the company has floundered in many of its initiatives. Really, the mighty Ubuntu, in decline?"
They're making incredibly unpopular design changes without giving people any real option to do things their own way and driving their own userbase away. Unity and other ass backwardsness pissed me off SO MUCH that I learned to use Arch Linux just to get away from it.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
I used to use on my laptop (4 years ago?) as everything used to work out of the box, but gradually they changed things and Gnome bloat got worse, and the file system layout got more confusing and basically it is now non-standard in the *nix way of things. I moved back to Slackware which I use on my desktops. 10 times better.
If Ubuntu declines, then the question is to what?
We see a lot of ubuntu users going to arch linux for example, but these are the people who started out ubuntu just a few years ago.
Distribution diversity is a good thing.
But we still wouldn't recommend newcomers anything else.
Grtz,
Jasper Internet
Between unity, privacy concerns, moving away from intercompatability with a new package manager, having a PAY STORE as the default app manager, and attempting to establish a walled garden with a new package manager I hope they fall hard. Or at the very least I hope they get back to their roots.
Ubuntu got popular because the ordinary people who cannot figure out how a command line works could use it. It looked quite a bit like Windows, which was a good thing. A task bar at the bottom, and a menu with a lot of functionality. Unity is too different, and made it slower too. So, many people seem to switch to Linux Mint.
I mean, even the close/minimize/maximize buttons had to be switched around to the top left... WHY?
If I want unnecessary bling-bling and a lack of functionality, I'll get a Windows computer. If I want to be a hipster, I'll get an Apple. I use Linux because I like simplicity and functionality. As soon as Ubuntu stopped delivering that, I switched to Mint.
...if there was a tool able to transform an ubuntu install into a pure debian one.
I think they'll lose some users, and win some new. I don't care, as long as they're helping spreading free software dists, they can build whatever they want. Unity 34 and Mir 3. Sure, it's not my money.
I have to agree the Unity thing, along with Windows 8 seems ass-backwards as above. However, at least there are alternatives. Xubuntu. Mouse, Keyboard front end, The way God intended.
But it always felt a little ironic that Ubuntu crashes about once every 5 times on my desktop while Win8 (dual boot) runs flawlessly.
I mean c'mon, just make it f-in work out of the box. Won't install it anymore. Especially with a raspberry in my network for my dicking around in a linux distro.
Ubuntu ceased being relevant sometime around 2011. The walled garden approach does not work with the open source crowd.
Mostly harmless.
There is currently great declare for everything where x86 or x86-64 is usually involved.
Armdroid systems and Armios are where the growth is now.
BTW, maybe there is even decline on Slashdot given this article currently has so few posts?
Ubuntu is still one of the most convenient ways to install and use GNU/Linux. I'm using it daily for everything. The point is that Ubuntu is great despite Shuttleworth's and Canonical's stupid ideas and decisions. It's great because of the community and forums. For example, my girlfriend uses Ubuntu, and when there is a problem I (who else?) have to fix it. Right now, I just take a quick look at the Ubuntu forums and helpdesk, and it's done. I don't want to imagine what would happen if she used Gentoo. :O
Regarding the Desktop/GUI: The desktop is not a reason to switch away from Ubuntu. People who give a fuck can install another window/desktop manager, for example I give a fuck and use XFCE.
I've been a Ubuntu user and staunch defender ever since the hoary hedgehog release (2005), but slowly lost my appetite. It must have been the Unity straw that broke my camel's back,and oh yes Mint 14 (with Mate) was such a relief.. but then Mint 15 dissappointingly needed some touch-ups to make it behave...
So I'm still searching. What should my next Linux release be, I ask you?
I have no idea what all of you are going on about, I LOVE Unity, why? Because its not Windows 7/8 and its closer to XP, but its Linux!
This is the first time in 13 years of trying out Linux Desktop variants whereby I can actually feel in control of my system and feel like its my friend, instead of my "RTFM" enemy.
I have no idea what all of you are going on about, I LOVE Unity, why? Because its not Windows 7 and its closer to XP, but its Linux!
This is the first time in 13 years of trying out Linux Desktop variants whereby I can actually feel in control of my system and feel like its my friend, instead of my "RTFM" enemy.
Yes, I am aware of the myriad of problems involving proprietary drivers not being open and running proprietary code, Yes I realise that Ubuntu steps on the toes of the FSF movement. But you know what? I don't care. I've finally kicked the Windows habit and I'm loving it because this is the longest time that I have been off Windows, ever.
I say well done with the Unity interface and well done with the "It just works" functionality of installing/uninstalling apps, and if I dont want to bother sudo'ing in terminal I can choose to use USC.
To top it off, it runs Steam, what the hell happened? Why did everyone abandon it? Please dont.
Yes, I am aware of the myriad of problems involving proprietary drivers, Yes I realise that Ubuntu steps on the toes of the FSF movement. But you know what? I don't care. I've finally kicked the Windows habit and I'm loving it because this is the longest time that I have been off Windows, ever.
I say well done with the Unity interface and well done with the "It just works" functionality of installing/uninstalling apps, and if I dont want to bother sudo'ing in terminal I can choose to use USC.
To top it off, it runs Steam, what the hell happened? Why did everyone abandon it? Please dont.
To use a car analogy, Ubuntu is the Camry or Celica of the car world now, and if I want to change the oil filter I finally can because its right up on the front of the engine and easily acessible.
I'm a long time Ubuntu user through Kubuntu and Xubuntu, I have to say it's declining. And I also intend to switch in the near future.
Ubuntu used to be reliable and extremely user-friendly, but recently they've thrown that out of the window. These changes aren't radical, but a long sequence of tiny annoying and agravating changes. Canonical has officially thrown out KDE, it's forcing users to use the unusable wayland, has switched from udisks to udisks2 which has different hard-coded mounting path,... all these hapenned recently.
And people like me, who want to actually do some work on a computer and use a reliable system, frown on these shenanigans.
Therefore, I've decided to simply give up on Ubuntu. As they are essentially a rebranded Debian with a polished look, there's no point in sticking with them.
The only thing that still keeps me on Ubuntu is that I happen to have the latest LTS installed on the computers I work with, and while the one I use on my job can't be replaced to avoid producitivity problems (i.e., downtime) the ones I use at home are still useable mainly due to the lack of updates. But when I'll upgrade, I'll be Debian-bound and not looking back.
Ubuntu was useful, but now it's just annoying to work with. It's a shame how Canonical managed to create an awesome thing, and then decided to simply throw everything away.
Unity was the start of the decline of Ubuntu.
It's such a clusterfuck of a user interface that Ubuntu is dead to me now.
WE FSCKING GET IT
it not just the displaymanager - it's the 'store' app manager... that's why i dropped Ubuntu - i find it distasteful, much like using Windows... i feel soiled after a session...
Distributions come and go. Linux lasts forever.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
back when it was simply 'debian-done-right' -- now it's 'linux-done-wrong'
ubuntu's best use today is as a demonstration of what _NOT_ to do with a linux distribution or linux desktop. too bad gnome didn't get the hint either, it used to be my favorite linux environment (it's a tossup between xfce and lxde now).
we still use ubuntu daily, but an older version's live cd for rescue purposes only (e.g. copying files off of a broken windows install), not general workstation use. our primary linux desktop is debian testing now, which just happens to be what we used back before ubuntu existed. so you could say ubuntu has gone full-circle with us already.
Disappointed by ubuntu, I finally landed on centos
I am, at the moment of launching slashdot, getting rid of 10.04 from the last machine that had an ubuntu on it (this very box). Everywhere it's a rolling debian testing an no more non-sense from canonical.
This opinion piece is based on the faulty, or at least debatable, claim that Ubuntu needs to satisfy "hard core linux users" to be relevant. The core of Ubuntu users are more typically ex-Windows users trying linux for the first time. A large share belongs to casual gamers and that is likely to increase as Steam on Linux gains traction.
I switched to CrunchBang. Its less annoying than the Unity interface (i have no use for its features, they just get in the way and frustrate me) works great on my old (non-pae) notebook.
Now in CrunchBang i just have to right-click to start applications, and manually have to add new applications to that menu, but that was surmountable.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
+1 on the above.
Chinese government and Steam as clients and you dare to say there a decline in Ubuntu? The fact you write an article about Ubuntu in DATAMATION means there must be some validity in its rising popularity. In Germany, they are giving away Ubuntu CD's for all Windows XP users. That doesn't sound like a decline in fact the author didn't even mention that aspect. Gnome is still available as an alternative session along with other Window Managers(twm,KDE) from the Ubuntu repos although it isn't the default. Users that don't like Unity can simply change the session.
My clients are seeking alternatives to windows. When I show them Ubuntu, they are impressed and it's like a breath of fresh air for them. They didn't know they could do that. Even more important, they are starting to use Ubuntu to do their DATA BACKUPS. Does that indicate a sharp decline in Ubuntu? I would say quite the contrary.
With all the NSA distrust recently, people are actually going out of their way to familiarize themselves with gnupg, enigmail and tor in Ubuntu and other GNU/Linux distros which provide digital privacy/anonymity. I have been getting other clients wanting to learn about this aspect also.
He's right with respect to some decisions the users may disagree with the benevolent dictator now and then. That's why I also use Debian GNU/Linux because the other distros have their strengths and for each user to discover those themselves.
One last aspect, Ubuntu is part of the bigger GNU/Linux community. It does function as a separate business entity, but the backup plan is the source code remains available to the global GNU/Linux community forever through forks. The author's fear of jumping onto an Ubuntu sinking ship is bullshit. In fact it's far from sinking. The Ubuntu phone will be popular. It's just that not everyone wants to buy non-existant product without having experienced the touchy-feely try-before-you-buy aspect. I'm one of them. I have faith in Ubuntu's direction, but I prefer to see to product made before buying it. The hardware is coming and GNU/LINUX and all its flavors will rise and not just ubuntu.
I think, that what we see now is just a healthy turn for the linux ecosystem. Ubuntu has become too big. Too mainstream. They have accumulated a lot of power in the linux ecosystem. But it seems, they did not really find the traction with the developer community.
I've started with kubuntu some years ago, until they broke the kde installation so badly, that it became unusable for me. So I switched to ubuntu with gnome.
I've been happy with ubuntu until they brought unity. At first I liked the new design and stuff. But the obvious performance issues where just too bad! And they did not get better with newer versions.
So it was time to switch again. Almost to the place where I had started with linux un the late ninties. Debian. And now I'm happy.
I've seen the same movement in our local linux circle. 3 years ago it was almost all ubuntu (except for the obligatory gentoo user). Now whe have a wider ecosystem again. Arch, Mint, Mint Debian, Debian, Gentoo and Fedora just from the top of my head.
And this is a good thing in my opinion! We have the freedom to decide and the people did decide.
So yes, I see a decline in popularity of ubuntu (on a quite high level!) and many enthusiasts moving away to other distros.
Of course going fishing for flounder instead of concentrating on the business wil cause problems!!!l
Ok the desktop isn't going to die, but it is becoming more of a workstation than a personal computer.
That said, Windows, OS X, and Desktop based Linux distro's are going to take a hit.
All the big players are trying to make their OS more tablet like. However the desktop is becoming more niche in its use, so they really should focus their UI on what people need for desktops now aday.
Programming, Number crunching, CAD... Less sexy, but a move away from happy friendly OS for grandma to a serious work OS with work productivity in mind is important. I am not saying we should go back to all the old ways. There is a lot of new design work that needs to be done. But it is needs to be more business centric and less home centered.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's not like their trajectory is set in stone. Canonical may respond to the criticisms from users and begin to move in a new direction. Plus, Ubuntu is a fantastic base to build on cf Linux Mint, and I still think Ubuntu is the best way to introduce new users to Linux. I think it is nearsighted to proclaim the beginning of the end.
I think there a lot of normal users and developers that would be very satisfied using Ubuntu with GNOME Shell. However, that is not directly installable out of the box at the moment. Even though Canonical wants you tu use Unity, I think they would keep more users if they improve support for GNOME Shell.
Free/Open source is not always the right way to do stuff and distancing them self from open source zealot doesn't sound that bad
Hahahaha. Android? And I guess you don't even know what OS X are based on....(read up on that, so you'll learn something, and dont need to make moronic comments)
Ubuntu's been my default when I've needed to get Linux installed & working on a machine with minimal fuss for years.
I hate Unity, it's a dreadful UI. But hey, it's Linux - I install my preferred WM and copy my config files into place, and the UI is perfect again.
I dislike the package manager, but I install synaptic and stop caring.
I hate Upstart. I've never been able to use it for a single piece of software without having to jump through hoops (at best) or rewrite the code (at worst). Like Unity, it strikes me as a product designed with a philosophy of "It works pretty well for most cases, and everything else can get stuffed". But I don't often have to make anything work with it, so I can mostly just ignore it.
There was a time when Ubuntu was a distro I genuinely liked and was happy to recommend. That's no longer the case, and appears to be a common attitude. So they've definitely gone into a decline.
But I still reach for the latest Ubuntu when I need a new Linux box. I just take a few more minutes to work around the warts, whereas once I didn't have to. It's still very good at being an easy-to-install Linux distro that mostly JFW. So long as it keeps that, and doesn't screw up by preventing me from working around the crud, it'll do pretty well.
And hey, maybe eventually they'll get back to doing stuff that people like, instead of avoid.
So.. it has come to this
Ubuntu seem to be trying to go for mainstream with easier/better looking UI and tools - but they feel unfinished, actually buggy and not feature-complete; at the cost of pissing off the historical Linux community by going their own way on a lot of topics seeming to distance themselves from and piss on the community and the mainstream projects. I'm wondering who's left ? They also seem to be spreading themselves very thin. Could we have an nice, finished, desktop OS, instead of half-baked / pipe-dream stage phone, tablet, ...
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Hoo har.
We're witnessing the aftermath. I moved to mint a long time ago to get away from their silly 'one interface to rule them all' mentality. For a while they had a chance to recover from that, no longer. I think it's too late to recover what they lost when they went down that path.
Sorry.. I'm on Mint now thanks to the Unity stuff going on. You had real winner when Ubuntu was sporting the Gnome 2 interface. The XFCE version was a nice side track after Unity hit the main line. So I sat on Xubuntu for a little bit till I finally decided to shift more away to Mint. Now I'm thinking of going vanilla Debian because I can add stuff I want to work out of the box with a little work and it's pretty solid with 7 Wheezy and XFCE.
That ship sailed a loooooong time ago.
Server still isn't too bad, but Desktop is a botched abortion.
I switched to Kubuntu simply because I hate Unity's minimalism and lack of customization and I hate Mint's sluggishness. I haven't looked back. I like *buntu distributions simply because they're the easiest to get up and running. Unless you need a highly customized Linux system, you can't argue with *buntu's simplicity when it comes to installation.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
The Unity desktop has for years suffered of terrible stability and performance issues. Part of the blame goes to Compiz, which makes for a quite heavyweight graphics stack for simple desktop effects. On certain computers Compiz also crashes every now and then. If you put the vanilla Ubuntu desktop to a small Atom / Bobcat laptop, you can easily see that even the basic functions are painfully slow and thus the desktop unusable. When we go up to relatively fast Core 2 Duo machines, even then opening the Dash is laggy and also dragging shortcut icons from Dash to taskbar is a jerky experience. Just try it.
Additionally there are some weird issues that seem to linger from release to another, some of which would be easy to fix: /sys/module/video/parameters/brightness_switch_enabled to 0 can be used as a workaround. .local domain, which is incompatible with the Avahi network service and not recommended" popup. This just creates a bad out-of-box experience. What is Avahi? Why must I even care about it? Why did not the installer configure my hostname better then?
* Brightness is changed in two steps at a time. Apparently the button press event gets handled by both OS and BIOS. Setting
* Hibernation is disabled by default, while in practice it works just fine on most machines. (how to enable it manually)
* Bluetooth adapter on/off state is not remembered across reboots.
* I always get that "Your current network has a
Seriously, what was wrong with GNOME 2? I've tried using GNOME 3 and it sucks big donkey testicles compared to the straightforward menu system in GNOME 2. Given that the Ubuntu devs couldn't stop the switch to GNOME 3 I guess they decided to develop UNITY instead. Unity is dead simple, for the icons in the tray - but have you ever tried explaining how the "Dash" menu works to someone who can barely position a mouse cursor?? The fact that the window controls and menu bar is hidden at the top of the screen is also something that confuses the heck out of windows users too.
GNOME 2 may not have been fancy, but it was intuitive for users to learn, and it looked "just enough" like Windows so that the learning curve for people needing to switch was easy. Mint, errr - well - it's not quite as polished - and Ubuntu is now "too polished"
I guess I could install cinnamon on top of Ubuntu or something - joy!
At one time I really liked Ubuntu, because it was the one distro I knew of that would pretty much install on ANY hardware, with a decent set of pre-packaged apps. I could still run release 8 on machines that would otherwise be headed for a dumpster. Pentium II 450Mhz, TNT2 video card, 512MB RAM, 10GB hard drive - would still be usable on releases up to 8.04. For a little while I even ran the PPC version on an old G3 iMac although the lack of flash support sucked.
I still load 12.04 on user's machines when they can't find their original software - esp. with end of life for XP coming. Simplicity was a good thing but they are more intrested in market differentiation now. They're transitioning mythbuntu to "Ubuntu TV" and of course they have the "Ubuntu Phone" in an already crowded market. I guess I can't blame a business for trying to be profitable but it's just sort of sad.
I also have a bit of distaste towards the Ubuntu Software Center, but sometimes it can be quite nice way to discover software, compared to wading through repositories. It's a good application especially for newcomers.
I have been using Linux on my desktop for last 5years. And switched from Ubuntu to Debian last month when I built my new machine. Here is why I did it.
In 12.04, I configured it to the classic look and feel. But had to work hard to get what I wanted. It is not about just installing on package and everything will be like the old interface. I had to do the same for my new build but on 13.04 (12.04 didnt support my new hardware).
Had installed #! on my netbook last year and felt the interface more than efficient for daily use. So installed that and have been very happy till now. This is where Ubuntu failed for me.
I enjoyed it as a hobby but nothing more. I played around with about 4 different versions of Ubuntu and to me it's just a bastardization of redhat or centos. I'd rather use the latter because it works great as a server, higher output than ubuntu can do. Ubuntu's problem is like any other unix distro, it can't support the things that we use the most and as much as I applaud the open source community with their efforts, their efforts should focus on mimicking what Windows/Mac users are used to rather than doing it their own way. Why? Because people have a little bit of time to learn new interfaces, and they tend to get grouchy when they have to re-learn what they already spent time learning and with every revision of Ubuntu, the interface seems to change a lot and that's not very appealing to - MOST - people.
I'm just being realistic that they either have to copycat windows as much as they legally can out of the box, while also giving similar functionalities, or they won't make it big. Not everyone knows about vmware or wants to spend time learning it. Compatibility is increasing but not enough to sustain loyalty. So yeah, you could say that is A LOT to ask for, but it's what people generally want and if they want to appeal to the casual audience and not the enthusiasts, then they will have to do better.
Open source software is a dying fad. There's really no need for Linux. Windows and OS X are just fine for most people. Even half of the new supercomputers in the top 500 in the past year are running Windows or OS X. Linux was a fad in the past 15 years, but it's going away and people are switching back to Windows and OS X.
This is something I've begun to think lately too. During the long XP era, Windows was still a terrible kludge. Thus, Linux was the better choice: it gave me better performance and stability. However since the advent of Windows 6 operating system core, things have been taking a much better shape on the other side. I could as well install Linux...but then I ask myself, what problem(s) would it solve anymore? There is a risk of actually getting a more slower and unstable computer. So the roles on the desktop have been somewhat changing.
For servers, supercomputers and embedded operating systems, Linux still seems the best choice. As a developer desktop with the nice toolchains and the UNIX command line it is also really good, even though on the Windows side we have Visual Studio, which excellent but in different ways. On the other hand Visual Studio is quite heavyweight and requires a reasonably fast desktop machine to be used comfortably.
4.10 was revolutionary, but it was all downhill from there... at least in terms of expectation vs. reality.
I use Ubuntu now. I only have 1 PC that has a GUI and that is LXDE with XBMC running on top of it. My other Ubuntu machines are strictly CLI. I have not had any issues with Upstart, but I don't find Ubuntu very appealing as a platform on which to customize my preferable packages or even do custom kernels. That has given me good reason to learn Gentoo.
I switched to Ubuntu from Arch due to the frequent messed up upgrades Arch delivered during it's move to SystemD and it's move to "bork" the Linux filesystem. I knew Arch was a "rolling release" cycle distro when I started to use it, but I didn't expect so much "breakage and borkage". What I sorely disliked about Arch is their unwritten yet consistently enforced Forum policies about not "bad posting" the directions the Arch Devs want to follow. Post a negative comment about SystemD? It will never see any Arch Forum. Post any negative comment about any Arch Dev? It will never see any Arch Forum. That sounds like a severely dictatorial distribution to me that only allows comments that they want to see as compared to open exchange of viewpoints.
I switched to Arch before the Arch Devs "drank the SystemD kool-aid". Back in those "pre-SystemD" days Arch was truly cool and very stable for a "rolling release". It was a nice distro on which I could customize packages and kernels to suit my needs.
Previous to Arch I ran Fedora since before it was called Fedora; that's how I learned many Linux skills. I still have Redhat boxes that say "Version 4.0", etc. I jumped from Fedora to Arch when Fedora 15 proved to be such a screwed up release and Fedora in general became an extremely complicated distro on which to build custom kernels. I complained on their bugtracker about the upgrade from F14 to F15 causing my runlevel selections for various services to become messed up. One of the Fedora Devs took the case, found & fixed the issue, but responded with rather rude and insensitive comments about my expectations regarding better quality control in the releases.
A key feature that I want in a Linux distribution is to respect the current machine setup when I upgrade the entire distro or just upgrade a single package. I have noticed that Gnetoo meets that expectation for me. Yes, Gentoo has a very steep learning curve, but you are rewarded with a deeper understanding of "what makes Linux work". Some have compared Gentoo fanatics to "ricers" that fix up cars with so much 'kit' that makes no difference to overall performance. So what. Gentoo gives me the flexibility I like and respects my setup preferences. Yes, Gentoo is slowly introducing SystemD to the distro, but I can still run SysV Init scripts any which way I want. Only time will tell if Gentoo "drinks the SystemD kool-aid" and does away with SysV Init scripts entirely like Arch and other distros.
It will be a very sad day when all Linux distros have changed over to SystemD exclusively. My POV...if I wanted a bunch of specialized binary files and binary format log files on my PC and a kernel that I cannot customize, I would have stayed with Windows and never bothered to learn and support Linux.
The enforced helplessness of GNOME 3 and Unity eventually led me to UberStudent Linux, which currently uses XFCE.
- Damion
Last time I tried Puppy, its window manager stole Alt+drag as move window, and I had trouble finding how to change it through GUI. This interfered with GIMP gestures that use Alt.
Agreed.
But why so anonymous?
It seems every 7 years a distro rises from the ashes becomes popular and then implodes. Redhat, Mandrake, now Ubuntu.
I just wish the Gnome team would pull their heads out of their asses and work on functionality instead of ohh shiny.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Between Windows 8.1, which is revolutionary, and OS X there is simply no room left for Linux any more. I used to know half a dozen people who used Linux and now ALL of them have switched to something better. People are tired of recompiling kernels, looking at crappy fonts, having NO drivers for common hardware, and all the general stupidity and uselessness of Linux. And I haven't even begun with the security, performance and privacy flaws inherent to ALL open source software!
Canonical is doing a good job in pioneering or at least promoting gadget-based Linux systems. As a end user Linux company they try to copy Apple a little and provide typical shop and app-like things together with their distribution. They also provide cloud storage, cloud project management in short SaaS. Their only problem is the cooperation with the Linux community. It seems they had not much luck in positioning their own ideas in it (e.g. Upstart which was shortly superseded by SystemD) and they had really unsound politics regarding Wayland. Mir would not have made such a wave if they would not have told everybody that they want to use it. Their third problem is now (also in the Mir corner) their licenses around code contribution to Mir. While they might have their reasons for it, it looks like that they did not get that they are not perceived as the good. In a doubtful context you cannot drive their license scheme without creating a lot of negative energy in other people.
Therefore, a decline would not be the worst thing that could happen. It could also be a good thing to learn to fix the license issue and to learn how they can contribute in a more useful way. But most important they have to fix their communication. It is true that to fail in communication it requires two sides to suck at it, but in recent cases it my impression is that they could have communicated better.
"...but gradually they changed things and Gnome bloat got worse..."
Er, I think you're posting in the wrong story (try this: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/09/24/1252243/middle-click-paste-not-for-long). Not that they're doing a particularly good job of it, but Canonical/Ubuntu is moving off Gnome. To cite but two examples, Mir and Unity aren't Gnome technologies. It's beginning to look like a race between these two organizations as to who becomes irrelevant faster.
Doing xubuntu myself. Plain laziness. I'm out the minute zoneminder is made to work (sort of) out-of-the-box, and basic bluetooth picture transfer just works, without two weeks work of sifting through coments, searching and installing and testing and blind-scripting (and often uninstalling and hunting for leftovers). Ditto for open-source DLNA.
I switched from WIndows to Ubuntu years ago after evaluating many distro communities and distro directions. At the time, Ubuntu appeared to have a good vision, and good balance between "it just works" (my computer is vital to my professional life and MUST work with minimal effort) and "power users will be at home" (my first jobs were on UNIX systems decades ago, this was very important to me).
From a technical perspective, Ubuntu was just a little ways ahead of others, IMHO.
From a community perspective, it was miles ahead! Fewer trolls, easy to participate, easy to grow, good tools and sites for the community. Most other distro sites and fora were, well, slapdash, poorly conceived, for the cognocenti, and full of the usual Linux aggressive bullshit ("well, just do cmd-alt-bang-fork-shift-nano-vim, you stupid goof, it's obvious!").
That made the switch easy, and I recommended Ubuntu many times and used it for years.
Then Shuttleworth slowly became less benevolent, community tools became harder to use, information that had been easily available began to disappear, and the distro itself became muddled. There was just no way to be a comfortable power user anymore, at least not without major effort.
And if I'm going to spend major effort, why use a system I don't like? So I started switching.
I tried Mint, I tried pure Debian, I made mistakes and learned a lot. Great. But.
I enjoy being able to configure as desired and be a power user occasionally, but I don't want to have to be one all the frikkin' time. And Mint and Debian required way too much hand-holding. Eventually, because too many things didn't just work, I went back to Ubuntu. But it was nasty and ugly and difficult to use and didn't support my 4 year old laptop as well as it used to and just wasn't fun.
I caved. I bought a Mac a few weeks ago, a 13" Air. Wow. What a beast! It's fun to use, easy to use, I can get work done without pain. LibreOffice on this thing screams!
Sure, I don't power use much anymore, but you know what? That fun is gone. Life is too short to spend so much time tweaking config files, and too short to use ugly, obtuse, opaque systems like Unity. I never thought I'd ever say this, but I love OSX.
All the philosophical and principled reasons for using Linux have largely been abandoned by Ubuntu, other distros are way behind, and if I'm going to use a commercial OS - which Ubuntu clearly wants to be - I might as well use a nice one that works well on insane kick-ass hardware. I'll be on OSX on this Air for years. Goodbye Ubuntu.
I'm here EdgeKeep Inc.
This, but don't bother with installing on usb media. Instead, create a new partition for Debian. You can even share /home if you keep it on a separate partition.
Installing Debian is even possible from within Ubuntu. Just apt-get install debootstrap and follow instructions.
Oh, and it did me the favor of making my USB drives seem broken. All pulse knows how to do is make my favorite video and audio apps (and controls) slow and unusable without major fiddling. Everything is Broken (or too bloated to bother with).
Decision maybe unpopular but many companies have no choice. They either sign gag order of cease to exist.
"Ask Slashdot: Are We Aspiring the Decline of Ubuntu?" Fixed.
Open source software is a dying fad. There's really no need for Linux. Windows and OS X are just fine for most people. Even half of the new supercomputers in the top 500 in the past year are running Windows or OS X. Linux was a fad in the past 15 years, but it's going away and people are switching back to Windows and OS X.
It's a lovely day for feeding the trolls...
http://www.top500.org/statistics/sublist/
OS Family:
Linux: 476 out of 500 INCLUDING numbers 1-43 consecutively
Unix: 16
BSD: 1 (# 342)
Windows: 3 (#'s 187, 241, 289)
OSX: lol?
By the way, the 1 BSD system is SUPER-UX.
Should we all tell the city of Munich to rethink their recent plan to distribute Ubuntu CDs to all the citizens of Munich who are still using soon-to-die Windows XP?
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/09/17/1250257/with-xps-end-of-life-munich-will-distribute-ubuntu-cds
I think Ubuntu had reached its apogee. The declining is near, but I'm not sure it already began.
And I don't see this happening because God's Wrath or something in retaliation on some evil practices. It just happened that they already saturated their consumer niche: digital illiterates that prefers to be away from masses and opted to use something "different" (but not necessarily better).
[GNU]/Linux is still a developer driven solution. Ubuntu had his shot on Desktop, but decided to go for the end-Loosers =P, and the mess they did on the scene was just collateral damage. It's worth to mention that the mess is not their fault only. Some others (*COFF *COOF Gnome Foundation *COFF *COFF) did even worse.
Ubuntu's niche is just reaching saturation (meaning that they were growing fast in the past).
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
You mean you hate Mint Cinnamons sluggishness. Mint also offers the MATE interface which is a fork of Gnome 2. I dont think anyone could call a Gnome 2 based interface "sluggish" vs KDE.
Fortunately, you can replace Unity with Cinnamon and get the best of both worlds.
I used Ubuntu for a couple of years, until Unity came along. My history is all Microsoft, all the way back to DOS 3.3. I still earn my paycheck on C# and SQL Server. When I began using Linux, Ubuntu made the transition easy for me. And then they introduced Unity, and tried to pretend my laptop was a tablet. After trying a couple of others, I settled on Lubuntu and have been extremely happy with it ever since. I hope that train keeps rolling for a long time.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
hello, mark. when did you change your name to 'anonymous coward'?
From the end user's point of view, it's the operating system publisher's fault for failing to negotiate with hardware manufacturers. If Microsoft can for Windows, and if Samsung and Amazon can for Android, why can't Canonical?
agree...came here to post the same...
blame Canonical
they are a 2-bit business that is running an MBA-style playbook for 'monetizing' Ubuntu that they do not consult the community about *at all*
that's why they do this:
that's why Linux *exists* in the first place...because of M$ doing exactly the same thing...in the 80s, if M$ had not declared war on 'hobbyists' b/c of their awkward, assbackward business model of selling software like its a box of cereal and bottlenecking functions to profit from users
IMHO, Canonical has gone a bridge too far...they can't be trusted
Thank you Dave Raggett
Unity for the desktop was introduced back in fucking 2011.
You're a goner.
In case somebody's been living in a cave for the last year or so, I'm talking about the spy "lenses" in dash. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_os#Controversy
Why the hate for paid applications? Not everything can be developed as 100% free software and free cultural works. Games, movie rental streaming, and annually updated tax preparation software are the biggies.
Oh look, it's someone else that wants to feel special and stand out.
HI, SPECIAL FLOWER!
While I am not an Ubuntu fanboy, exactly in what arena is the "decline" occurring? Is Ubuntu more well known today than before? Yes. Is Ubuntu available preinstalled on more hardware today than before? Yes. Is the Ubuntu brand branching into more markets than before? Yes. The only metric, if it is even is one, is that Ubuntu has upset die hard linux users, many of which weren't Ubuntu users anyway.
Case point 1. Ubuntu didn't like the direction Gnome 3 was going so they came out with their own Unity desktop. Well, evidently most Linux users agreed they didn't like where Gnome 3 was going. Whether they like Unity or not is a moot point as every other desktop is still available under Ubuntu.
Case point 2. Ubuntu, having problems with x.org, along with everybody else, needed a new display server. They could have gone with Wayland, but they chose to go their own way (much like Redhat and OpenSuse have done with various core technologies). Can people still use/install x.org or Wayland, yes. Should Ubuntu be faulted for wanted to streamline the display server to work on various platforms? Evidently many people think so, but why?
Case point 3. Ubuntu has announced several products that never caught on or never made it past the technology preview stage. Does that mean they've lost their focus or are they just like all other "real" technology companies exploring new technologies that ultimately don't make it to market?
Case point 4. Desktop computing, while not dead, is not what it was just a few years ago. Does Ubuntu's trying to compete in mobile markets, while still maintaining desktop support mean that they are lost or that they are trying to stay current?
Now, I can also argue many points where Ubuntu blew it. But I can do the same for Apple, Microsoft, Google, Redhat, Suse and most every other tech company. The reality is that for every tech idea that succeeds, there a many good ones that never make it to market. That's the nature of the game. Ubuntu isn't declining, they are in the game, albeit as a small player compared to Apple and Microsoft and Google. However, unlike the big three, with Ubuntu, you still get freedom.
So, if the question is "Has Ubuntu as a desktop Linux only offering declined?" Then the answer is yes. But has Ubuntu as a brand and a technology company (really Canonical) declined? Well, that answer is not at all.
Seriously, has the submitter been in a coma for 5-6 years?
While there are many arguable points that have resulted in Ubuntu declining popularity, I can't help but think the biggest of them by a long shot is the awful Unity desktop. Everyone I know that used Ubuntu has switched specifically because of that desktop. Most have gone to Mint with Cinnamon or MATE, and some to xbuntu or other OS's. Unity, much like the Windows 8 shell, is just too App-centric and confusing.
They've done a lot to make Linux more mainstream, and that's great. Their rise led to many other flavours of Linux which are a more polished product though (like Mint Linux) and people are starting to migrate towards something that suits their tastes. Now with Valve's recent announcement about the SteamOS, I can see more folks moving away from Ubuntu and to a Linux flavour that fits their needs.
This is going to be the year of Slackware. On the desktop even.
I can't upvote this enough. Kubuntu is a perfectly decent distro. KDE 4 has finally come of age.
For a decade, I've set up a server with listening VNC servers for remote access through our switched network. Yes, it is somewhat undesirable from a security point of view, and we require SSH tunneling or VPN for machines off the immediately local network.
I can tell that less emphasis is going into "remote" use of X11 and more going into the "desktop" experience, because this work pattern is almost entirely broken of late. I can't find a display manager to reliably work with XDMCP (and supply session switching, language choice, etc.) under the most current update.
Crazy stuff is broken. The menu option of KDM just doesn't work (i.e. the widget is just broken). Some incompatibility with the new X11 apparently. LightDM is so unstable as to not be usable. WDM has an upstart bug that prevents the computer from booting (though this is the manager I use--I edited the rules in the script to fix the boot). GDM has the annoying 'Super-D' bug so no one with a D in their username can login (yes, this can be fixed and the session startup scripts are still a problem on my platform).
It's absolutely insane that you can't find a display manager that actually works properly over VNC. It breaks a straightforward work pattern that I've used for a long long time.
These people think they can make a phone. In my experience with Ubuntu that viewpoint is absolutely self-delusion.
People forget that not everybody lives in the US or Western Europe. There are millions, if not billions of people on this planet without computers and probably when they do get access to them, they won't be able to afford Macs and Windows PCs. Ubuntu (or maybe some other linux distro) is in a position to tap those markets when they open up.
Face it, their desktop, tablet, phone offerings, aren't going to make a dent in the West. They don't have to. It's in the 2nd and 3rd world countries, that future growth is going to occur and there, things could be very well be different.
At least in my world it's been declining. I was once an Ubuntu fanatic. "It's so easy," I would tell people. It passed my girlfriend test. It passed my parents test. I used Ubuntu every day for years. After 10.04 LTS, things started going downhill. Once 12.04 LTS hit the streets, things started going downhill faster. I have since switched to Ubuntu's upstream parent, Debian, with LXFE for the desktop. Clean, simple, elegant. I'll keep this.
Haters will hate. I Ubuntu is not developer focused on its mission. The trouble with Linux on desktop is developers. They are in the way, not the solution.
if ubuntu is in decline, then all of linux is in decline.
As much as Linux has any brand awareness in my non-geek friends it is Ubuntu. Friends might occasionally ask me if I'm running Ubuntu at home Slackware ... not so much. They might be able to rid the obsolescence wave a la Win XP for that reason: even if they aren't the shiny new bobble (or the best representation of what openness can do) they have a reputation for being easy to use which will likely win them new users for years to come.
...you are welcome back to the Warp community anytime Bruce :)
While I like xubuntu, wouldn't it have been easier just to download a new window manager? It is pretty seamless. Ubuntu was the easiest thing to get running on my old macbook pro, but I didn't like unity. It took less than minute to switch to my preference, which I will not state, as it is even less popular than unity. But if you want ice or enlightenment or windowmaker or kde, or classic gnome, they are all immediate options with just a few clicks. That said, I still wish I could get fedora running, but the UEFI for macbooks is not quite standard, and fedora doesn't put up with it last I checked.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
In the last few years, Ubuntu and GNOME stepped beyond the useful compromise Unix made between suitability for technical people and suitability for average people, and leaned towards the latter with generally no good reason. Sure, Ubuntu was pushing for an alternative to the X Window System, but so were the Wayland folk, supported by GNOME. The GNOME folk have been toying with the idea of making systemd a requirement for GNOME, making GNOME infeasible on other platforms.... because apparently your window manager should have a dependency on your init scripts? GNOME has removed all the options that make it usable in GNOME3, while at the same time embracing unreasonable defaults and suggesting the community write extensions to make it usable again? And so on.
I suppose if we want everyone eventually running KDE on FreeBSD, we're well on our way there.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Yeah. Because apt, aptitude and synaptic where removed from Ubuntu when the Software Center was introduced, right?
Sounds like 'I don't like the new wallpaper, so I switched to a different distribution.'
I installed Xubuntu after Canonical started pushing Unity hard in Ubuntu 11.10. It doesn't move the window when I Alt+drag it, but it does when I Super+drag it. Perhaps that's because I managed to find the switch in Settings > Settings Manager > Window Manager Tweaks > Accessibility > Key used to grab and move windows. It seems logical: hold the windows key to move windows.
I think outside the geekosphere Ubuntu has never had the impact that was assumed it would. While many geeks shunned it because they felt it was an oversimplified consumer version of a purposefully nerdy OS I think they just assumed then that the masses would adopt it because of its simplicity. But overall Linux as a consumer OS has never "inclined" and Ubuntu definitely did not blaze any new trails. I don't know any "non-nerd" that has ever heard of Ubuntu and only a few of my slightly-nerdy friends would even bother to install outside of curiosity's sake.
I think the whole LInux crowd needs to get over the idea of trying to make it on the PC, the PC is a dead platform. I mean while companies like Google and Apple have taken a *nixy product and made it mainstream for tablets and phones, the core Linux community is making the same exact mistake Microsoft is making:
Ignoring current trends and trying to win in a market that is in decline.
So while Ubuntu and whatever trendy Linux flavors at the moment are fighting it out to be the top Linux distribution, Ubuntu, and Linux for the PC, is in decline because the PC market is in decline. Holding on to the belief they can somehow take over from Windows is not a win because nobody is using Windows computers anymore.
Do not get me wrong here. I think Linux is an excellent special purpose OS for a slew of other devices. I am very excited at the possibility of a Valve Steambox driven by Linux (if it's more than just Gabe waffling about the future and actually doing something concrete now), and Linux has allowed an era of "smart" devices to do more then just have a limited amount of basic functionality.
But when it comes to Linux on the PC, I think the whole motivation of the platform has been misguided and myopic in nature.
While Linus Torvalds can proudly claim Linux is a win in the grand scheme of things, all PC distros of Linux have simply failed, period. The quicker Ubuntu and others realize this, the quicker they can start working on the platforms that matter today. Then we can start a new era of predicting the "year of the Linux tablet" and have something new to bitch about on Slashdot.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I hated Unity at first too. I even skipped 11.04 and 11.10 because I couldn't adjust. But when the LTS came out, I read how things have improved and decided to give it another chance. Now, I'm glad I did. Ubuntu 12.04 is my favorite release of Ubuntu. It works, it's fast, and I can get it configured the way I want in an hour or so. Sure, there's the occasional Compiz crash at first, but after updating and installing proprietary drivers, I haven't had any problems. I don't care if you use Debian, Arch, Mint, or whatever. As long as I can keep using what makes me happy, without making sacrifices to get things done, we can co-exist harmoniously, right?
I just wiped my Ubunutu box after a drive failure and went Kubuntu. It's early days but so far I love it. It's very polished, responsive and easy to get "functional" IE with binary NVIDIA driver, non-free codecs etc. It feels like a premium product I should have to pay for.
Downsides - not many.... I haven't found an easy way to mount and unmount drives through the GUI but I'm sure its there. Menues feel a bit too nested but again- there's a fix or I get used to it.
4 years on and off with it and I still have to reinstall it after it randomly craps out. the real reason people don't restart their ubuntu machines is because that's when it will mess up. And that's also the real reason it will never become maintstream.
Ubuntu jumped the shark around Lucid/Maverick. Indeed it was a horrible way to squander the unprecedented popularity of Linux that arose in the wake of the Vista disaster.
Mint's where it's at now.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
My guess is this is mostly about a decline in Ubuntu desktop users? I'm running Ubuntu server without a desktop environment and haven't had any issues or reason to switch. I love apt as a package manager. That is all.
I guess that rather depends on the user. The people posting to Slashdot are savvy enough to vote with their feet, whether it's to another 'buntu, or another distro. But Slashdotters aren't your typical Ubuntu users.
Ubuntu built its rep in no small part as the Linux that you didn't need to know Linux to use. A lot of the Ubuntu userbase are people who don't know how to change desktop environment or window manager. They're people who don't want to know how to do those things. All they know is that they found a computer system that they liked, and each release seems to be taking them further away from that system.
Well, not the people who work with your computers the way you do, clearly. But not everyone does. I mean I'm happy with an xterm, launching apps from the command line and alt-tabbing between them. It gives me everything you want in a desktop ... but I know from experience that most people hate working that way.
If that was true, they'd ALL be happy with an xterm, alt-tab and a choice of wallpaper. And the year of Linux On The Desktop(TM) would have happened ten years ago.
Ubuntu worked well for a large set of non-techie users. It wasn't a million miles away from what most of them were used to in Windows, except that for various reasons, it suited them a bit better.
Canonical seem to have an urgent need to fix something that wasn't even remotely broken. And while it doesn't affect me personally I still can't see what they're doing as a viable long term strategy.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Copy/Paste obviously works very well in Unity :)
Respectfully, this article is hogwash. Canonical has done more for Linux usability and the Linux desktop than any other company. I'm typing this on a Dell XPS 13 that shipped, in Canada, with Ubuntu 12.04. This is alone is a major accomplishment. Step outside of North America and you can find Ubuntu shipping on desktops and laptops from HP, Dell, Lenovo, and many other manufacturers. This is because of the strength of the Ubuntu desktop, and Canonical as a backer.
I use Unity on devices with small screens, and with multi-monitor setups. It isn't perfect, but I haven't found anything more productive, and it's improving quickly. Canonical's other efforts, such as the Ubuntu font, and integrated colour management and optimized fonts, also make Ubuntu the first out-of-the-box Linux setup that I can use for print and design work. Yes, I often do this using VMs to run proprietary software, but I know I can count on decent colour calibration. Unity is still in development, but I can see how it could scale from phone to desktop better than any other environment.
At work, we use Ubuntu on server and desktop. Their predictable LTS release, as well as continuing improvements such as their HWE updates make this a relative dream when compared to any other distribution. When I deploy using Ubuntu, I barely have to stop to wonder if the software will work, whether I'm considering the latest laptops, or older, obscure servers. More than any other OS, Ubuntu just works. My small business also makes extensive use of Ubuntu for server deployment, turnkey systems, and virtualization. Of course, Ubuntu is also my main software platform on all of my computing devices.
Ubuntu is the most used cloud computing platform, and Canonical's efforts on creating devops tools are again leading the pack.
From what I see, Mr. Shuttleworth and Canonical are working harder than ever on trying to do something amazing with open source software that scales from phone to cloud. Some efforts like the Ubuntu TV project are not bearing fruit immediately, but this, Ubuntu Touch, their cloud efforts, and more, are building an open platform and ecosystem that is unparalleled in the open source world, and goes toe-to-toe with the ecosystems being developed by Apple, Google, and Amazon. And they're doing all of this on a relatively shoestring budget.
You could argue that they should work more closely with some upstream projects, but at the end of the day, they are showing strong leadership and need to be able to move in the direction that they think is best. They are doing all of this openly, and the code speaks for itself, for better or worse. Personally, I very much believe that it is for better.
I appreciate and will support their continuing efforts.
A few releases before I switched to Mint.
I found Unity quite an interesting way to go when Canonical first released it and over time it has only gotten better with each release... if you dont like Unity then Xubuntu sports XFCE, Lubuntu has LDXE (my personal favourite) and Kubuntu has the all fancy KDE so their is an Ubuntu version for everyone...
Thats why I went back to my old love OpenSUSE for desktops.
CentOS for servers.
Does the classic gnome share that problem? Or are you talking gnome 3? You can select either. I like the new gnome 3, but I never used the mouse much and the keyboard shortcuts didn't change. If you are starting from scratch though, you are right, it makes no sense to pick a distro that you would have to customize, if there are others that are configured as you wish. I was simply pointing out that if it is already installed, and you decide you don't like the windowmanager, switching them is trivial, and because people have different preferences, each user can have their own window manager. That is one of my favorite aspects of linux.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Ubuntu did a great job moving usability in GNU/Linux forward, but it's time to let other distros shine, I think. I really like the direction elementary os is taking (though I wish they'd make more information about their system easily available on their website). They even have their own human interface guidelines, which is a great starting point for making a more usable and consistent system. There are a few decisions they made that I'm not fond of, but hopefully those bumps will be ironed out over time. I really hope it takes off; I think it could do a lot for the whole GNU/Linux scene.
If the technology languishes and is just the same stuff over and over again with hardware updates, then Ubuntu get into situation which Microsoft is in where people struggle to find a reason to use the new versions of the product.
If the technology is radically changed and experimented on, then Ubuntu gets into the same situation Microsoft is in where they did try a dramatic break and redesign and is reviled and people struggle to find a reason to use the new version of the product.
Can we have it both ways? Ideally Ubuntu should strive to give both a consistent and experimental experience but let the user choose the experience they like. Or an extension to that is to offer "Windows like" or "Mac like" or "Ubuntu like" experiences.
I have been using Ubuntu from before 10 and I don't mind the interface changes where I felt it is taking bits multiple platform interfaces and working well. I am more bothered by disappearing apps more than the changes in the graphical shell versions.
Unfortunately, those of us that write the software you use *do* care. Without us, you don't get your clicky clicky goodness - and we dislike your OS stepping on our FSF principles. Maybe you can find some other horde of intelligent coders willing to work for free?
I liked having the large collection up to date packages.
After 12.04 (with classic gnome) the privacy issues became a show stopper for me.
Now it's Mint on the desktop.
I wouldn't use it on a server though. That is Centos.
Just sayin'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG8ZSpUOJuw
Hubris is often associated with losing touch with reality which is, sadly for Canonical, an accurate diagnosis of their behavior and a recipe for their demise.
Canonical can always change their ways, but I'm sure they will be convinced to the bitter end that they are right and everyone else is wrong.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Canonical and Ubuntu left me no choice. With Wayland and Unity, they totally broke NX remote desktops in a way that made it virtually (sic) impossible to fix, even where the freenx package was still in the repositories (some audio lib dependencies could not be satisfied). Even going with Xubuntu failed due to dependency failures in these media libraries that could no longer even be install from external repos or built from scratch! I couldn't even compile from source. Finally ripped all Ubuntu off all of my systems, servers, laptops et al. There was simply no option to have Ubuntu on a system and loosing my NX remote desktop capability. So Ubuntu had to go.
Fedora et al with Gnome3 and systemd are not far behind. Sigh... I've had to resort to XFCE with the old Enlightement 16 window manager to avoid the brokeness of Gnome3.
Well, now we can say BSD, Linux and Windows are all dying :)
Really, I mean it... Been reading a lot of the comments above, and all I feel like saying is, learning Arch isn't that hard yes it really is worth it. The Arch wikis will take you by the hand the whole time, and once you understand it, you'll feel like the true owner of your computer, no more such frustrations you guys are having with Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Suse, Fedora or whatever... Arch solves all the problems these distros have plus gives you extreme control over your machine.
Unlike all the other generic distros, Ubuntu continues to grow thanks to their unique interface and continued efforts to improve the underpinnings of the OS. Whenever you hear of a new system coming to market that runs Linux, it runs Ubuntu. They're growing in China and India, and are entering the phone/tablet market next year. No one wants to run any of the generic "seen one, seen them all" distros, it's Ubuntu or GTFO.
I switched to OS X for all my workstations and when FreeBSD 10 is stable I'll switch my last Ubuntu box over to BSD.
... good riddance!
They fucked up a perfectly nice Unix system for a non-standard Window'sy pseudo desktop experience - also coming to a server near you!
After 10+ years of installing Linux (Redhat 6, Gentoo, Debian, Ubuntu) on desktops and laptops I craved a supported system so I might finally have everything working 100%. I bought a Dell XPS Developer Edition that ships with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and I LOVE IT. Unity is fine. Most of all, everything works and is fully supported by Dell!!!
Ubuntu LTS is a good system for vendors to support. They can't support several distros, especially when they change frequently. And I like that I don't have to dist-upgrade every year. By the time 3 years is up I'm ready for new hardware anyway or at least a fresh install. Longer support cycles and fewer technical issues mean I get more work done and enjoy my computer more.
Just some little things I enjoy now. I can close my lid and after several days of sleeping (reliably), the battery charge is unchanged - and it's not hibernate (no POST). How cool is that? Built in 1920x1080 display and external display work without any problems (had strange problems with Ubuntu on Macbook Air before). Battery life between 5 and 7 hours depending on use.
Ubuntu works with hardware vendors better than any other desktop Linux OS. And why you may not care, that in turn provides a nice platform for proprietary software such as Steam.
You say, "Why did everyone abandon it? Please dont."
I'm curious as to why you would care what distro I run. If I abandon Ubuntu for Arch, say, who cares? Why care? (there's probably a dedicated population who will automatically switch distros when one gets "too popular". It's dumb, but there it is. But who cares? Why care?)
While I like xubuntu, wouldn't it have been easier just to download a new window manager?
Shhh! Talk like that is going to start a flame war between people that don't actually know what a WM is. Linux distros are like political parties to the uninformed. Many believe they have to take the entire thing, no substitutions allowed, and no matter what never ever admit your choice is wrong or that other choices are nothing less than pure evil.
Within a week of using linux for desktop use (as opposed to headless server) I had unity, xfce, and gnome 3 all running on the same box. Users can pick on login. Easy and absolutely no reason to reinstall the entire OS. This is not Windows. You can make it your own. Just pop the hood (bonnet) and start doing what nerds do.
Are We Witnessing the Decline of Ubuntu?
My main concern is whether the blunder with Unity will jeopardize the Canonical repository.
(Unity is a non-issue for me personally. I just use Linux Mint KDE for the desktop.)
But regardless of the future of Ubuntu, I certainly hope we don't see the decline of the huge, stable, well-maintained, and popular Canonical repository.
Hatta, the times you actually have to intereact with an update are actually pretty rare on Arch. Maybe once every few months. They usually coincide one someone upstream deciding to do a large architecture change along with your own personal config customizations. Arch decides to NOT automatically overwrite your customizations, unlike Ubuntu. This is the largest reason I do not use Ubuntu now.
Now, most of the work for these updates is usually fairly small. Even when you do have this extra works to do, I'm 99% sure, you'll still finish with your Arch Linux updates before your Ubuntu updates. On top of that, with Arch you don't have to waste hours (or days) of your time every 6 months reinstalling your OS so you can have the newest version with a funny name.
The only times you will run into hot water with Arch is if you decide not to update for 6 months and then decide to suddenly try to catch up. Or MS Windows error dialogs have trained you to stop reading any text from the OS.
Those are my 2 cents.
Fedora rules!
People loved Ubuntu when it was still driving improvements that benefit users. One big step to userbase was when they pushed the system boot time to under a minute. Since then Ubuntu seemed to jump into current "experience" fad, and just started removing features people used. Long gone are also the days that system startup became faster after each upgrade, nowadays system startup takes at least double the time it took year ago. It is really sad they also force all the most hated unity/zeitgeist/lens/ubuntuone/whatever things into the ubuntu-desktop package, which makes uninstalling them a non-trivial job even if one has a functional XFCE desktop. People hate the unneeded features a bit less, if they can be removed at will. But if not, it really changes the attitude back to the system. Nowadays I just install and recommend Debian on each new machine, whereas a year ago it was Ubuntu.
I just want a stable linux distribution that will let me and regular users be productive on the desktop.
I think Ubuntu is the only Linux distribution that is attempting to be that. They are the only organization that has stepped up to replace X server, a piece of software that I believe has been holding linux on the desktop back. They are the only linux distribution that I know who has made great effort simplifying the desktop experience. I just hope they get there sooner, because I've had to install a copy of Windows 8 because 13.04 had been crashing on my system too often.
The biggest problem with Ubuntu is Mark Shuttleworth and his misguided attempts to monetise 'his' ecosystem. Behind Canonical is a brilliant team and a great distribution - even just taking stock Ubuntu and switching to Gnome 3 (or whatever window manager floats your boat) gives you a great, stable operating system. It also happens to disable all the monetised additions, so Shuttleworth works damn hard to discourage tampering and keep 'customers' on his straight and narrow path of trackable behaviours and microtransactions.
If Shuttleworth moved on to another project then Ubuntu would recover its top Linux position.
>To use a car analogy, Ubuntu is the Camry or Celica of the car world now
Neal Stephenson used to have a great analogy:
Windows: Family sedan
Mac: Nicer sports car
Linux: Tank (for free!)
But the problem was, he said, the Linux guys would shout "hey free tanks" and people would think "I don't know how to drive a tank" and pass Linux by.
The fact that describe Ubuntu as being "the Camry or Celica of the car world" just emphasizes how far Ubuntu has fallen from it's once glorius heights as the best *Linux* (ie. TANK!) OS.
http://www.3ds.com/products-services/draftsight/overview/
My father, a professional engineer for 50 years, finally replaced his AutoCAD installation under windows (actually had it running in VBox under Ubuntu 12.04) with DraftSight and has not looked back since. Says it does everything he needs and runs well on his desktop.
Yeah, mailed my dad an Ubuntu CD a few years back when his HD crashed as a stop-gap until my next trip back so I could either replace or recommend a new machine. Worked great. The next laptop still had windows, but I proved to myself that Ubuntu was "good enough" for dad use. Today, of course, I'd just get him a chromebook (linux underpinnings).
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Of course you can relearn to use the interface object location and eventually become used to the new version, but for the vast majority of people using desktops, having a list of items of all the applications you had actively running on the bottom of the screen, a "Start button" icon on the far left and the close/max/min icons on the upper right is HOW GOD INTENDED THINGS TO BE because we've used it for so long that we don't' even have to think about it.
While messing with these things MIGHT have some theoretical benefit, the constant irritation you feel when you boot to Ubuntu after using Windows at work or on your home gaming PC makes it a no-go. This is then compounded by the arrogant refusal to just PUT IT BACK that the majority of their user base has been screaming at them.
When you throw in the whole "spying on your keystrokes thing", it was just the final nail in their coffin
Congratulations Ubuntu, you blew the best chance (right tech and timing) to make Linux/FOSS the dominant desktop OS!
I am now a Debian user, since Debian have taken the good security features and improvements from Ubuntu and built on them properly.
Ubuntu is still a good contributor to Debian, but I won't be using Canonical's distro again.
Linux Mint
Ubuntu is a mess.
Its been added to for years without an ounce of thought for package dependency, or, performance.
You cant remove any packages without being told it needs to remove 100+ dependent packages.
I still run my own distro version of Debian + LXDE. Its what "Ubuntu should of been".
Fast, fluid, makes windows XP feel slow, and, allows YOU to control what you need this OS for. A true OS.
But those of you who think "Linux" and only "Ubuntu" comes to mind, well, lets just say you haven't lived yet.
In the mean time, there are happy OpenSUSE users laughing at this whole fiasco.
Sure we had some drama for awhile with KDE-4 being deployed before it was ready for prime time. But the developers actually listened and we're much happier.
Ubuntu will still be around as long as there are other popular distros like Mint, that are built on top of Ubuntu.
I didn't realize how luck I was that Ubuntu quit supporting non-PAE (i.e. all of my) machines. I was forced back to Fedora/MATE (GNOME was jumping the same shark) and it's nice to just use the machine again. They drove me off before I had a chance to hate Unity. So, thanks for that!
Is it just me, or is there an echo in here?
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Leaving aside the case for servers, for me the answer is the same for both. As a clueless (selectively, by choice) user, I just want my computer to work. When I build a new one, I just want to tick a box at installation to fully encrypt every attached drive.
In Ubuntu and Fedora, you just check the box. Uninstall the installer in Mint, intall the latest version, and you can do the same in Mint. (See: http://forum.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=118398&sid=af61d80a5eabe54c26935b841ccfacae )
For me, this little advantage means there's a whole body of knowledge about partitioning and file systems that I can simply ignore yet I get a machine where the data-at-rest problem is solved completely. I'm using Mint atm, as should be apparent from the link above. I haven't checked in a while, though. Do any other distros make whole-disk encryption this easy? That single feature has been my make-or-break decision factor for the better part of a decade, at least.
Linux fails compared to windows 7/8/8.1. Distro's are still too damn buggy and too many damn updates. It seems that the linux community releases buggy code and then patches it with other buggy code and this goes on and on and on and on..............runs in a loop. Is there any production code???? Well, it's free software so don't expect anything of quality.
I tried almost every distro and it's always some process that is crashing, gui parts like icons or taskbars disappearing, the whole OS crashing, samba not working, trying to detect other linux shares on the network does not work all the time, OS update manager permission denied have to go through cli, but than updates don't install look online for solutions for this fix, and this just keeps going and going. LINUX, TOO MANY PROBLEMS IT FEELS LIKE I'M BACK ON WINDOWS 98/ME.
Although, out of all linux distros, I like the Ubuntu the best. It's easier on the eyes and enjoyable to look at, but so many damn issues like the rest of distros.
To save you a headache, if you do serious work and gaming, windows 7 and windows 8 which go for $100 or $200 pro version are a better 5 year investment than any linux distro.
For me, Unity would take a long time to get used to. I found the MacOS-like unified menu bar to be flaky, hard to use, and worked badly with a lot of software. Unity was fine with most apps if I wanted one window on the screen at a time, but that's not even close to how I work.
I'm using Kubuntu at the moment on my laptop, and Gentoo on a desktop at home. I'm happy enough with kubuntu but it does require a lot of tweaking, care and maintenance. It certainly does not "just work" the way Ubuntu used to several years ago. My coworkers (who mostly use xubuntu) and I have a hard time with lockups and experience lots of installation issues. About half of these relate to Nvidia drivers and multi-monitor support, but that still leaves a lot of other problems to contend with. It just seems less stable than it used to for me. GTK and QT seem to work less and less well with each other, and Network Manager and the networking service sometimes fight each other (lockups on boot even). In my office there have been several instances of whole-system corruption where people had to re-install everything from scratch. Distribution upgrades have not been smooth. I used to be very happy with Ubuntu but these days I'm falling out of love with it.
A lot of this may be hardware-related. I notice that coworkers with newer laptops have many more problems than I do. Some of this is expected, but again not to the degree that I'm seeing it.
The thing is, the users aren't just SysAdmins or idiots. There are people who have used computers for ages, but have chosen not to learn to code or compile themselves. The computer-savvyness of youth means this group is growing fast. Ubuntu has turned its back on this group.
The success of OSX and Windows on the desktop and iOS and Android in mobile says otherwise. The younger generation have apps and programs in which they take an interest and show some skill. But system internals and customization? That I very much doubt.
>> After great initial success, Ubuntu and Canonical began to isolate themselves from the mainstream of the free software community.
From all accounts, a few million are running ubuntu. From scouring the internet, a few thousand are running the remaining distros. It appears to me that if anything, the world has isolated itself from what the article refers to as mainstream "free software community" and canonical is still closer to the real world.
I have been running linux since the first red hat and caldera CDs were being sold in comp USA and elsewhere 12 years ago. While basic h/w support has improved, the community always lags behind the curve in 1) quality driver support 2) paradigm shifts.
I haven't understood the rationale for not having a single package management system and thence having a single "app store" like repository for all distros. Android distros can do it, why can't linux ?
The politics, egomania and just rabid zealotry borne of vanity of the so called mainstream society leaves me wanting to migrate to the "canonical camp". Maybe they have it right. I will see how they fare by next spring.
heck, if crapple made OSX run on generic x64 h/w, I will dump linux in a minute.
This reminds me of Red Hat.
Is that they have been obsessed with chasing down Mac OSX. But rather than copy the entire UI, they're just copying bits and pieces of it. They would have been better off hacking on gnustep rather than hacking on gnome to do it. Meanwhile gnome 3 has completely gone off the rails with it's weird tablet/mobile UI which completely fails on a large multimonitor setup. As long as Ubuntu keeps stuffing up it's UI it's going to have problems with users fleeing it in droves. Everytime I hear someone is trying Linux, they usually ask me what distro to try after Ubuntu. Usually I point people to Debian itself. It's gotten a lot easier to install.
Long-time lurker, I expect to get skewered, but I agree absolutly with this comment. Linux user for *years* , used to think I need to be all CentOS on server and all Fedora on desktop - all the time, and that damned Gnome 3 just went to complete shit! I tried to like it, but just gave up. Originally a lover of Debian and still am, so Ubuntu is a natural. I also think Unity is going in the right direction as it can make the MacOS desktop look 'cartoonish' for my opinon. I know gramma will not use 'aptitutde' yes aptitude not just apt-get, but that's still the best software updater interfacer for my money. I think Mark is on to something and I would argue Ubuntu is not in decine, just in a quiet period - of development.
Mate was sluggish a year, or perhaps a bit more, ago. I mean the Mint Mate. I hear it's improved, but I haven't tried it recently.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I have been in the Ubuntu bandwagon since Warty Warthog and I'm pleased with history.
I am in th upgrade every 2yr plan and each time the experience have been somewhat painless.
Unity works for me because the more I work w/ a familar system, the less I care of the
underlying parts.
My pelasant surprise with my upgrade from Karmic Koala to Precise Pangolin was the integration
of my WiFi card with the network manager. Network services configured the card and the GUI took
care of the rest. So I hope Ubuntu keeps going strong.
I've only used Windows 7 for a little bit, but the configuration options I've seen are vastly superior to the current Ubuntu LTS (which mostly means they simply exist). You can tell it to stack/not stack things in the taskbar, for one.
If you're saying not all the computer-using youth will configure things, then you are absolutely right. But with pretty much 100% computer use the amount of more savvy users should also be larger.
Not to mention that if it is indeed harder to configure a desktop GUI than it is to buy software with *real money*, then someone is doing something horribly wrong.
I see you can't resist a willy goad. Shuttleworth goes goatse, and that's what cries out for comment.
In the past year I installed Ubuntu, having never used Linux before ... learned a little bit about Linux ... got sick of Ubuntu and switched to Arch. I'll never go back to Ubuntu, but I doubt I could have made the transition from Windows without it.
Linux on the desktop faced a big opportunity with the Windows 8 change to the Metro interface that received a mixed reception. But it lost everything by replacing Gnome 2 by Gnome 3 or Unity. Linux on the desktop is now less usable than it was before.
I tried Gnome 3, Unity, KDE and now work with xfec4. It's not better than Gnome 2, but it's the one that provides the smallest regression compared to the others options. I need a very stable desktop (I never close by session) that support a lot of running application (about 100 at the same time) organized into a big virtual desktop grid (usually 8*8) and a very fast way to switch between them (without animation or need to click, only CTRL+arrow). I also need a lot of status from the hardware, a lot of small quick start icons, a taskbar and an applications menu well organized where I can read the full name of the executable. Sloppy focus, not raising windows on click, overlapped windows, and past with the middle mouse button are also mandatory for me.
seconding this
Installing apps from the software centre and running Steam has got nothing to do with Unity. Replace Unity, for example by installing Xubuntu instead of Ubuntu, and all that stuff still works.
You have a lot of options with the menues in kde:
1) Chang to classic style in menu (left click in menu icon)
2) Add other kind of menu in the panel:
- Homerun: A unity-like menu
- Lancelot
- Alt+F2(krunner) to launch applications
I used to love Ubuntu bit the current direction is not one that i fancy. To me they feel like they are becomming more closed and removing ways I can easily adjust the OS to my preferances
I was only an Ubuntu user out of lazy convenience. I got out before they stopped packaging Xorg and started packaging adware.
I think it's hilarious that anyone still uses Ubuntu. Might as well just use Windows at that point.
Besides, Ubuntu is an enemy of the open source movement.
Every trollism an AC posts is prefixed, in my mind, with "A. Coward whined, in a weak and cowardly voice:"
The developers made the mistake of making the interface the star of the show. And not much of a star at that. And that does happen, no shame in it. With all the flavors of Linux out there, one or another was going to be a real dog at some point. And Ubuntu was the one IMO.
So I've personally abandoned Ubuntu, replacing it with Mint, which serves me admirably, and stays the heck out of the way. And that's what I want in an OS, Works, and stays out of the way.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I just starting playing with Arch. It's okay, but it is not a solution for serious work. RHEL/CentOS the way to go for serious tasks. RedHat has done a great job writing real management tools that allow an admin to control and manage hundreds of machines. The FreeIPA/RH IDM project itself has be long overdue in the land of Linux. For me, I stick with Fedora on my notebook and RHEL/CentOS on the server. Fedora keeps me up to date with that is on the horizon of RHEL. Fedora has the management tools that other distros lack. I have tons of respect for RedHat. Keep up the good work!
I work in a technology company that uses RHEL servers, and some developers use Fedora or Ubuntu.
I really have to scratch my head wondering what Canonical was thinking when they designed Unity. It's certainly not an improvement over KDE, or even, big breath, Gnome 3. It's like being in a well lit pretty prison cell.
I am pretty happy to have stuck with Fedora given some of the other complications we've seen on Ubuntu such as issues with dual monitors and various issues with VPN clients.
Moving out of the community seems to not just stick a finger to the Open Source community but adopts the Apple/Microsoft model of we know what's best so shut up.
the thrill is gone
The other day I was able to get an old program, Xephem, to compile from source. I needed to install one library after which I got a working binary that runs fine on Gnome Classic. Cannonical can experiment with bleeding edge stuff all it wants as long as it supports legacy going back as far as UNIX and X11. To build Xephem means that is still the case, and remember Ubuntu is still Debian.
So, I have used Unity, and decided that while it seems to be aimed at tablets and touch screens, it was not very useful on a desktop, but with U. 12.04 it got easier to use it and also to go back to Fnome Classic with the application menus which are still easier to use than HUD, Even with all the anger about Unity, there are still plenty of other alternative GUI solutions, I think that I even saw fvwm was out there.
Now I know the command line and there are times when it is the most useful and difinative way to work, but I understand why people don't use it and why a GUI is better for some things, anything multimedia, although there is enlightenment's terminal which combines a file manager with a shell terminal.
I have weighed in on Mark Shuttleworth's decisions, but as time goes on I realiize that as long as the legacy is carried forward that his efforts, whatever thier motivation, matter less and less as long as the tendency of Linux to resist market capture prevails.
Well, not exactly the same as Apple. To get an exact match Apple would have had to introduced iOS before the launch of the iPhone, adding a number of increasingly controversial and unpopular changes to their otherwise beloved OS X. They'd then rename the result "iOS" and launch a phone around it.
What Ubuntu is doing is closer to MS' strategy. Only without the u-turn to reinstate a conventional desktop and start menu and without Stephen Elop waiting in the wings to deliver them a mobile phone manufacturer at fire sale prices. And also without MS' ability to absorb the losses if they pour money down the drain developing something that nobody seems to want.
So "continuity over different devices" is more important than "works well on the device in question" then? I'm not sure I'd agree. Especially given that canonical don't seem to have an ecosystem of other devices to support.
Nah... the die-hards tend to run Debian or Slackware or Gentoo. Ubuntu has always been aimed at the non-techies or casual hobbists. I think I might have mentioned that earlier.
Well, yeah. Non-techies are the core of Ubuntu's users. If the non technical set weren't still showing interest Ubuntu it would pretty much be the end. No one is denying that Ubuntu has a lot of momentum. The question is whether they're gaining or losing that momentum.
I'm sure it is. Linux is growing in those regions, and Ubuntu is one of the better known distros. But if Ubuntu's share of the market (for want of a better term) shrinks relative to the other distros, that growth may not count for much. Just saying.
Completely off topic, but I love the way you put scarequotes around "choice". It's like you're saying "I don't really believe in this concept, but I'm going to reluctantly use the word in order to further the discussion".
That aside...
Done and done. I started with RedHat, moved to Gentoo and I've alternated between Debian and Gentoo ever since. I've never used Ubuntu, although I've installed it for a fair few friends and family. I think I might mentioned that in my earlier post as well.
That said, I like Ubuntu. I like the focus on humanity and usability that the project had when it was launched, and I think Shuttleworth can Canonical did a lot of good.
As such I'm concerned to see Ubuntu moving away from the principles that made it so great. They seem to be moving away from "Linux for Human Beings" and toward "Who cares about the users? They'll get what they're given and like it!" That may have worked for Microsoft when they were the only game in town, but as you point out, those days would seem to be ending.
And you know what? That would still be true if Ubuntu had kept Gnome as their main desktop and developed Unity as front end for mobile devices. Their penetration of the device market wouldn't (and couldn't) suck any more than it does right now, but they'd still have a legion of loyal and happy users.
But hey, users! Who cares about them, right?
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Say it isn't so... gotta have my Ubuntu. What could replace it?
Ive been a long term linux user. Gentoo, fedora and others andvthen i settled on ubuntu. It was more stable and had mostly just worked. (With minor tweaks) but then it became unstable.. and i hated unity. I tried mint but upgrades meant reinstalls. I tried fedora and several other dists and they just were buggy. I gave up. After years of being a linux bigot ive gone back to windows. I have a dual boot system but win 8 with retro ui is better for me . Easier to setup and use and work with. Thats my preference. I feel betrayed by canonical actually they forgot core values
I am lazy and chose Arch derivative called Manjaro.
Is the number of Ubuntu users declining? Or are they going after first time users?
I don't care if all the old timers hate Ubuntu, because they have 300 other distros to choose from. It's the converts that need something stable, E-Z, and close enough to Windows look that they aren't scared away. So I recommend Ubuntu or Zorin.
It has survived on hype alone, it is, will always be, and always has been a dogshit distro.
Like Debian, and all its down-syndrome children, Ubuntu is retarded.
For the server, Centos is the gold standard.
For desktop use, there is nothing more simple, complete, polished and smooth than OpenSUSE.
Using anything else is pointless.
Even half of the new supercomputers in the top 500 in the past year are running Windows or OS X. Linux was a fad in the past 15 years, but it's going away and people are switching back to Windows and OS X.
Uh. No. According to TOP500, which keeps statistics on these sorts of things, Linux has about 96% of the TOP 500 supercomputers today. 0.2% in 1998. 10% in 2000. 25% in 2002. 50% in 2004. 75% in 2006. 85% in 2008. 90% in 2010. 93% in 2002. I'd predict over 97% Linux saturation in the top 500 supercomputers in 2004.
MS is still kicking on the desktop and OS X is taking some of the share on the desktop. Microsoft is running many exchange mail and file sharing servers and some other silly app specific IIS boxes, but otherwise generally backend systems are entirely Linux today or migrating to Linux. Mac OS X in enterprise backends? Please.
You took the GP's quote from my message. You should have replied directly to him instead.
Firstly to mark Shuttkeworth & Canaonical. At the time when they cam on the scene Linux distro's were in a poor state. Shocking geeky installers & lousy device support. They gave the scene a big kick in the bollocks & we are all the better for it. Linux distro's have noticed & improved greatly. I agree witht the sentiment that Ubuntu is in decline. Its not going to happen overnight, but slowly & steadily Canonical is making heroic design changes which take them in an ever more proprietary direction. This is not a bad thing in itself if the changes were very popular / or made their distro awesomely better than the 'competition - but they have'nt. The result is loss of customer base. At the same time they have issues with unstable kernels & the PPA thing is just a easy way to break systems.. As a desktop user I am continually frustrated with dicotomy of stable+out of date applications stack _OR_ unstable+up to date applications stack. After a lot of testing I found Arch Linux to be very good (amazing performance & fullly up to date applications stack) but big the drawback is painfully labor intensive install process plus wild system borking changes inflicted with little warning by it's dev's. Enter Manjaro Linux (http://manjaro.org/) These guys are doing a "Linux Mint" to the wild beast of Arch - making it a very polished, feature complete & STABLE Arch based distro. Good, quick easy to use installer, semi rolling release which gives up to date applications stack but smooths out the wild swings in upstream. This is an up and coming desktop Linux, mark my words! Chris
I'm a long-time user of Fedora, but during Fedora 17s life, it went heavily experimental and trashed backward compatibility in the virtualization area, so I tried several other distros, including Ubunto. The installer scared me - am I not trusted to know what I want to install?? This installer faux-pas has since been taken up by Fedora, so anything after F17 is just a pain for the user (or hard work cleaning up the mess the installer made). Ubunto's belief that users don't need to be able to su into root had my work colleagues laughing - the question was "what did you install wrong?". Ubunto unfortunately treated me like I was untrustable. My response was 'sudo passwd -d root' - checkmate.
As a first experience, I found Ubunto to be only useful as a desktop for the seriously inexperienced or careless - ideal for end users maybe, but not for sysadmins. As a sysadmin (by various names) with over 30 years experience (ICL, VAX, IBM, Linux, even Windows for a laugh), it's not for me, since it seems to have been built by people who don't want me to play. Remember the old rule "If you don't let people play your game, they'll make up their own game, and that game just might be to get you!".
Freedom isn't freedom when the system keeps it to itself. I wish Ubunto a happy future, but that will need it so start letting the users take more responsibility and even to play more.
I switched my main work system from windows to a good linux/gnu distro and I have to say that openness is bliss. Just the idea is a reason to shift, each and every user can contribute to the betterment of a project. When I look back I can see how limited I was as a Windows User and the dangers of that blindness, in free software such does not happen because the software and choices are open and hence get shapped by the community: merge, branch and fork. Gnewsense, Parabola, Trisquel and other free linux/gnu distros are the way to go. I for one use Parabola. Ubuntu is not free, software model: Free and open source software with PROPRIETARY components. " Canonical Ltd. (is a UK-based privately held computer software ". "If what is in the public's interest is also in the private interest of government decision-makers, the public interest will be served." http://ingrimayne.com/econ/government/PublicPrivate.html Why should we chain ourselves to private interests if we can truly be free? The world should not be run by a toy in the shape of a person who for dough, sniffs til everyone's demise. I hope that someday people realize the best approach in life is to, from a collection of ideas reach the bottom goal/idea, a upside-down tree of epicness.