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?"

Comments

Re:Yes.

[marcello_dl]

Ubuntu to arch seems a drastic step (still it is possible and productive). To those who don't like it I suggest to pick among the dozen ubuntu derivatives you find at distrowatch so you can keep using your ubuntu knowledge. Mint comes to mind. Or fall back to debian.

Re:Yes.

[Chrisq]

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.

Its the "we're going our own way" decisions - like Mir instead of Wayland, etc. This leaves you thinking - If I keep with Ubuntu I will be out on a limb, forced to use Unity, etc.

Re:Yes.

[Christian Smith]

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.

Its the "we're going our own way" decisions - like Mir instead of Wayland, etc. This leaves you thinking - If I keep with Ubuntu I will be out on a limb, forced to use Unity, etc.

How is anyone forced to use Unity in Ubuntu? There's still Kubuntu, lubuntu etc. And even with straight Ubuntu, you can still install whatever desktop you want, and select it at login.

I personally don't mind Unity, I can pretty much work with whatever desktop is installed by default, as I use the apps and not the shell. So long as I can switch easily between apps, who cares.

And I guess most none-technical people just don't care either way. If it works, it works.

Re:Yes.

[hawkinspeter]

I tried Unity and didn't get on with it, so I just carried on using XUbuntu instead. If you don't like the desktop environment, it's trivial to replace it with a different one.

Hate unity? There are other *buntus.

[Chewbacon]

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.

Re:Yes.

[dmbasso]

s/-do were/-do was/

And just for clarification, I've been using Unity for only around a year because I waited as long as I could before I had to upgrade libraries and stuff. The upgrade to Gnome/gtk 3 broke all my gedit plugins, and I didn't have time to adapt them. Recently I decided to try Pluma (MATE's version of gedit), and it was a piece of cake to make plugins work.

So I can't thank you enough, MATE crew, you guys are awesome!

Re:Yes.

[gagol]

Been running Xubuntu (XFCE4 desktop instead of Unity) even since Unity was shoved down my throat. Could not be happier.

Re:Yes.

[Arancaytar]

(like when accidentally launching an application with meta+number)

HOLY SHIT.

Mystery solved. I've been dealing with that weird crap forever without realizing what keys I accidentally hit.

Re:Yes.

[clarkn0va]

Debian was my first and only distro until Ubuntu hit approximately 6.04. It was then that I felt Ubuntu offered a smooth enough experience to justify the "bloat" (funny how perspectives change) that came with the switch.

Having used mostly Ubuntu on my servers for the past seven years, there has been the odd time that I needed to squeeze Linux onto a small flash, and it was Debian to the rescue. Debian is great, but when you're used to Ubuntu it does feel unfamiliar in the way it handles some things.

A second thing that has me still preferring Ubuntu on servers is the quicker uptake of new features. SSD TRIM is a big one, as I started migrating all of my systems to SSD in 2008, and TRIM required the newest kernels. Yeah, I could have compiled my own kernels in Debian, but as any Debian user knows, updates are a different world when you step outside the Garden of Eden that is apt-get. Ubuntu made getting such new features a piece of cake and in a timely manner.

And lastly, there are advantages to being mainstream. There are tonnes of cool products being developed for Linux these days, and generally speaking, Ubuntu and RedHat/CentOS are the first distros to get support. Steam is one example. LTSP is another project that you're going to get way better developer support on if you're running Ubuntu. A counter example is VoIP software, including FreeSwitch and a bazillion Asterisk distros, which tend to be much better documented on CentOS.