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

Yes.

[Shadow of Eternity]

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.

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.

Re:Yes.

[Chrisq]

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.

Will be forced once X is replaced by Mir. You will have to laod the whole of Wayland (or X as a legacy) to be able to run other desktops then - which means that it will be very different from the straight Ubuntu. There are already questions in the kubuntu forum and about gnome ubuntu.

Re:Yes.

[caitriona81]

Nobody is forced to use Unity *yet*, but the alternatives are clearly treated as second class citizens that do not get the same level of attention to detail or integration, and makes for a substandard experience that's increasingly a throwback to the days where Linux on the desktop was *only* for geeks. With Mir on the horizon, and with many developers targeting Ubuntu specifically rather than Linux in general, that situation threatens to get worse, as we could conceivably have a large pool of software with Mir+Unity as hard dependencies very soon.

Re:Yes.

[Iskender]

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.

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

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.

I used the Gnome Ubuntu earlier and it was fine. Then came Unity. I tried to use the built-in KDE/Gnome, but they were buggy and slightly broken - no point to a distro if it doesn't work with itself.

Oh well, tried Unity instead. The main interface element (dock) has NO configuration options. Nothing. Basically: I'm supposed to either be their slave or install a working interface myself. No thanks. Too bad Ubuntu still appears to have a superior update system: I don't feel like going to Mint's "good until you have to hack your upgrade". I had enough of that with the earlier Ubuntus.

Re:Yes.

[trickstyhobbit]

I learned to love that menu. At first I was really annoyed with how much work I had to do to set up the system the way I liked it but I had just come from Ubuntu where everything is done for you. It was a real eye opener to see how much customization is possible in Linux. I think that using CrunchBang really changed what I expected from a distro and more than anything, it helped me learn the system as a new user and gave me quite a bit more confidence.

Re:Yes.

[dmbasso]

Exactly, some of my friends that used Ubuntu highly recommend Mint. But I think I'm switching back to Debian with MATE, let's see.
Funny thing is Canonical announced they were going to accept donations more or less at the same time they made the switch to Unity. At first I thought "great, I'll be able to easily show my support", but then I learned about the crap Unity was (and still is). After a year of using Unity I can safely say that it pisses me off (like when accidentally launching an application with meta+number) without bringing any advantage for my use case. The Dash is a joke... gnome-do were much better at it, even if I had to install the mono crap.

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu to Arch is drastic for someone who doesn't want to work at the command line. I do not fear the prompt, but I used Ubuntu because it tended to Just Work. When the bloat started, I considered good ol' Debian but tried Arch... and never looked back. Based on a few years of use, Arch is a surprisingly robust distribution and the community support is the best I've seen. A+++ WOULD INSTALL AGAIN

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.

[Lonewolf666]

As an occasional linux user I tried Mint Debian Edition with xfce some months ago, but was not entirely happy. My general impression was that maintanance had stopped shortly after the release. Latest kernel version from the Mint repository was 3.2.0.4 when kernel.org was around 3.2.0.38, and configuring the system was not entirely painless.

My next attempt was with xUbuntu, and it seems to be much better maintained while it also got rid of the Unity GUI (which I dislike). So that one is certainly worth a try :-)

Re:Yes.

[gagol]

That is why I am using Xubuntu these days.

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 for Debian. When I discovered a process in Ubuntu called Zeitgeist that was eating up my CPU (they since fixed that, but that's not the point) I looked into it. Turns out it was recording almost every event - for which I have no need - and was so tightly integrated into the Ubuntu system that the developer recommended not uninstalling it. I thought then that Ubuntu was getting more like Windows, so I moved to Debian. My only regret is that I didn't do so sooner. The speed difference is noticeable. I looked at Arch but that looked like a bit too much hard work for a dolt like me.

Re:Yes.

[Charliemopps]

I dunno, Mint still had some UI nonsense that drove me crazy. I went to puppy and really like it. I've no security concerns on my laptop, no files I'm worried about so the root user thing is a non-issue to me. I've never had a Linux distro instal with such ease, no driver issues, no package problems, and things just work the way I'd expect them to.

Re:Yes.

[RabidReindeer]

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.

The problem is that if people really wanted stuff rammed down their throats willy-nilly, they'd be running Windows 8. Linux is an operating system that people choose, so restricting choices goes against the nature of the demographic.

Re:Yes.

[Big Hairy Ian]

Or fall back to debian.

I'm waiting for Debian does Dallas :D

Re:Yes.

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

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.

I'm similarly non-fussed about the desktop since I've never really been a desktop power user anyway - as long as I can get to the things I use, I'm good.

However, I used to have a Gnome desktop where things were easy to find, and things worked reliably and I could resume from hibernate/suspend without X getting stuck and clocking 100% CPU.

So the thing that's making me consider switching is simply that Ubuntu isn't all that reliable any more, probably because much of the desktop code is now immature, but also because even running an LTS version, these bugs *never* get fixed.

Here's an example bug - super-W should spread the windows out, but often when you use it first windows fly off screen and unless you catch it in time by quickly unspreading, you'll loose them for good.

It's a really shitty bug from a user perspective because it means I fear loosing work (I do understand there are workarounds, but these are not ideal and not good for non-technical users). I also find it grating that this (and loads of other bugs) must be encountered by lots of users, and since it isn't being resolved, I have to conclude that the people resolving things are not using LTS versions - otherwise they'd be driven mad by it. Just like the end-users are now!

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.

The problem is that if people really wanted stuff rammed down their throats willy-nilly, they'd be running Windows 8. Linux is an operating system that people choose, so restricting choices goes against the nature of the demographic.

You could be right - but canonical's bet is that there are a lot of people who just want something free and easy to use. My feeling is that most of these will try it then go back to Windows because its "easier".

Re:Yes.

[smash]

It's called monetization. Trying to do that with open source has proven to be quite difficult. Redhat have managed it, not many others have.

Re:Yes.

[postbigbang]

Unity is an interesting idea, but Shutteworth is marching off a cliff with it. Mint takes the best bits and makes them better-- with rational UI choices-- for desktop users.

Ubuntu servers are still pretty lean and mean and understandable, however. Rip the Unity UI stuff away, and there's lots of stable Debian underneath and lots of great work.

Ubuntu One is a rational idea, too, as Shuttleworth wanted to bring the best of the Apple and Microsoft ecosystems, but didn't read his target audience very well, then mandated privacy invasions in terms of search. Add Unity's UI ideological fork to the sense that Ubuntu becomes a lot like Google, FB, and others that ignore outcries of commercial ad revenue rage at the sacrifice of privacy issues, and Shuttleworth takes Ubuntu rogue, IMHO.

Re:Yes.

[somersault]

I do not fear the prompt

This definitely needs to go into a "quote of the day" collection :)

Re:Yes.

[somersault]

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.

I minded very much that it had some hard-coded shortcut keys. If I could have configured them, I might have tried sticking with it for more than a week. As it was, I regularly use super-T to open a terminal in Linux - but in Unity it brings up the trashcan..

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 to this, Xubuntu is great, stable, fast, simple.

Re:Yes.

[moronoxyd]

Oh well, tried Unity instead. The main interface element (dock) has NO configuration options. Nothing.

What version of Ubuntu was the last one you tried out?
The current 13.04 brings some configuration options, and if you install an additional program (compiz-something-manager, if I remember correctly) you get even more options.

Re:Yes.

[wvmarle]

You could be right - but canonical's bet is that there are a lot of people who just want something free and easy to use.

And if so, indeed I think Canonical is absolutely right there.

For me there are two key reasons to use Linux (besides being much more familiar with it than Windows): it is free, and gives you heaps of very powerful options - all those command line tools, the many packages that are available, etc.

However after installation it's supposed to just work. Most of the time I am in the GUI, running Firefox, e-mail, Gimp, playing some movie, managing my photos and files - that kind of stuff. And my first experience with Unity was that it got so much in the way of doing that, I'm not even interested to try it again, even though it's said to be much better now (hard to make it worse, imho). It just left such a bad taste.

I still miss good old Mandriva. Dropped that for Ubuntu, which before Unity was a great Gnome2 desktop. Gnome3 came (can't blame Ubuntu there, really). Then Unity. I'm still on Ubuntu 12.04 (Gnome desktop) mostly because it pretty much works and I don't want to mess with it too much... should have a good look at Mint. Or maybe Xubuntu.

Basically, I'm looking for a system that's free and easy to use for daily tasks (most OSes nowadays fit the bill, including Windows and OS-X - Linux distros should make sure they at least cover this part), but that also allows me to get down and dirty with it. I don't have to; most of the time I won't; but if I want to or feel the need to, I can.

Mandriva was great; Ubuntu was great for that too. Unfortunately Mandriva the company went bust, and Ubuntu lost direction in the UI realm.

Re:Yes.

[arth1]

Been running Xubuntu (XFCE4 desktop instead of Unity) even since Unity was shoved down my throat.

I wonder what sick joke it was naming it Unity, given that it was rather obvious that it would cause diversion.

Re:Yes.

[moronoxyd]

The problem is that if people really wanted stuff rammed down their throats willy-nilly, they'd be running Windows 8. Linux is an operating system that people choose, so restricting choices goes against the nature of the demographic.

Distributions all the time make choices for the user. And just like with Ubuntu you can override most of these choices by using the package management of choice or, worst case, switching to a different distribution.

I was pissed when the Gnome developers decided that user didn't need certain things. Others where pissed to, as can be seen in Mate and Cinnamon.

Canonical doesn't really do anything that different from everybody else, but Canonical/Ubuntu seem to have become the favorite punching bag of pretty much everyone.

Re:Yes.

[Sockatume]

You might want to rethink combining those two expressions in future:

stuff rammed down their throats willy

Re:Yes.

[Arancaytar]

making incredibly unpopular design changes without giving people any real option to do things their own way

And everyone knows that's no way to build and hold on to a 90% market share. :P

Re:Yes.

[DragonTHC]

Honestly, ubuntu is only important to current users. I keep an install on my usb stick for emergencies, but I don't really use it that much.
I've been a Linux administrator for a decade and I still use windows at home.
Android has surpassed ubuntu in every way for usability and utility.
I always want to switch, but Steam keeps me using windows. Perhaps SteamOS will change that.

As for mobile, since there hasn't been much work done on ubuntu touch, now called ubuntu for phones, I don't think canonical is keeping up.

ubuntu for phones is starting to feel like symbian

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.

[c]

Oh well, tried Unity instead. The main interface element (dock) has NO configuration options. Nothing.

Yeah, it does. The first version didn't, but more recent versions have some options, although nothing compared to, say, KDE. The problem is they're buried in the compiz settings manager which, oddly enough, isn't accessible through the Ubuntu System Settings interface.

Re:Yes.

[F.Ultra]

How did Unity "get so much in the way"? It's more or less nothing more than a dock and a "search for applications and files" function. The only thing that I don't like about Unity is that the menu is not on applications windows, that is somewhat retarded, but I cannot fathom how it gets in the way?!

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu to arch seems a drastic step...

His preference is probably Gentoo but it's still compiling.

Re:Yes.

[LurkerXXX]

This! Unity and their unwillingness to listen to their user base drove me away. I used to be a huge Ubuntu fan and have it on a lot of the machines at work and at home. No more. It's not like their aren't other distros out there that will listen to the users.

Re:Yes.

[Arker]

Sounds like you should try Slackware. In my experience it's always the one that 'just works.' No idiot package-manage to fight with, no ABI breakage caused by munchkin compiler options, no big fancy system management system that you cant get to even run when you actually need it - just a nice sane system that does what it's told to do.

Re:Yes.

[Blaskowicz]

Not a huge deal : you can run X or Wayland as you say, or run XMir so you get a traditional desktop even with MIR, or you can install Ubuntu without MIR or Unity in the first place. Right now you already have zillions options to install Ubuntu without Unity, and you can install Ubuntu without any display server as well.

Re:Yes.

[Blaskowicz]

[replying to myself] The ability to install only a bare system, from network booting even if needed, is by the way why I use straight Ubuntu sometimes, else I use Mint. I liked being able to install Ubuntu 10.10 on a Pentium II 233 with 96MB and give it to a novice user (who never owned a computer before)

Re:Yes.

[armanox]

That is the path I took after trying Ubuntu back in 2007.

Re:Yes.

[runeghost]

Yep. Unity pushed me (and every other Ubuntu user I support) right over to Mint.

Re:Yes.

[kthreadd]

3.2.0-4 is the name Debian uses for their branch of the kernel. It is not the kernel version. Type uname -v and it will give you the actual version that it is based on. My Debian machine runs 3.2.0-4 but the actual kernel version which it is based on is 3.2.46.

Re:Yes.

[Hatta]

I work at the command line all the time. I run Debian Sid on almost all of my computers. I really tried to give Arch a shot, but damned if it didn't break on every other update. Yeah, yeah, I'm supposed to read the release notes, so it's "my fault". Whatever, I can "apt-get upgrade" Sid any time, no matter how long I've left the computer, and it works.

Here's an example. A the top of the news items on archlinux.org, we see:

Deprecation of /etc/sysctl.conf

2013-09-17

From version 207 on, systemd will not apply the settings from /etc/sysctl.conf anymore: it will only apply those from /etc/sysctl.d/*. Since the settings of our /etc/sysctl.conf shipped by procps-ng have become kernel defaults anyway, we have decided to deprecate this file.

Upon upgrading to procps-ng-3.3.8-3, you will be prompted to move any changes you made to /etc/sysctl.conf under /etc/sysctl.d. The easiest way to do this is to run:

pacman -Syu
mv /etc/sysctl.conf.pacsave /etc/sysctl.d/99-sysctl.conf

If you never customized /etc/sysctl.conf, you have nothing to do.

Why can't the package manager do that for me? Sure it's easy enough to do, but I'm lazy. This could easily be automated, and I don't have time to manually do things that could easily be automated. That's what computers are supposed to do for us.

I really wanted to like Arch. I ran it on my laptop for a year and a half. But I've gone back to Sid, it just works.

Re:Yes.

[ClayDowling]

KDE installed on ubuntu is quite nice, and is definitely not a second class citizen. I still have all of the easy GUI config tools, and I have the desktop that I prefer. So Right On, Brother! After all, it's Linux. If you don't like the desktop, it's trivial to install another one.

Re:Yes.

[ClayDowling]

Did you try one of the obvious solutions, like installing KDE (which has worked flawlessly for me), or another desktop? Fluxbox was a brain dead simple install for me. I don't use it that often, but on a netbook it really made my machine a lot zippier.

Re:Yes.

[artjermyn]

manually have to add new applications to that menu

apt-get install obmenu

Re:Yes.

[ClayDowling]

What restriction of choice has there been so far? Without having to jump through any hoops other than installing them through the app center, I can log in to Unity, KDE, Fluxbox and XBMC on my laptop. All of them are fully functional desktops (or in the case of XBMC, functional for its specific narrow usage). That looks like more choice to me, not less.

Re:Yes.

[Blaskowicz]

*Everything* is second class citizen on linux, already. You never know if you're running the "one true platform", be it distro, package management, init system, desktop. Should you run a .rpm or .deb distro? (with debian being the white knight according to a lot of the dorks). Is YAST the solution to all problems? Is systemd the true solution, or a lock-in like the one you describe? Is Xfce great, or second class? What about KDE? KDE is the epitome of big dependencies (installing one KDE app will pull in "half of KDE"). I'd wager installing a KDE app is a bigger problem that the imaginary Mir dependencies you openly fear.

Re:Yes.

[FictionPimp]

Their attitudes to open source is only a small part of why I moved away.

When I first started deploying linux in my professional life it was debian. I moved to ubuntu because it was easier and just as powerful. Eventually my employers worried about support and ubuntu's costs are very high. So we moved to redhat, which gave us support, but also vendor support for 3rd party products. This caused me to really learn Redhat and thus I started building my vapps with centOS so that the tools and commands were similar.

This made a natural desktop switch to Fedora make sense.

Re:Yes.

[Blaskowicz]

I didn't know Mandriva was a company and died, that must be why there's now Mageia (I never tried it)
For a no-shit desktop I've now identified linux Mint 15 Mate. (you still have to do a couple things like adding google search engine back to firefox - you can only add the english one btw). Before that I'd recommend Mint 13 Xfce.

Re:Yes.

[wvmarle]

It showed a limited selection of applications - not always the ones that I wanted. Searching for an application was hard (needed typing or so - forgot how it was exactly - other than that it was much harder than the standard Gnome menu).

Application chooser was huge, taking up the whole screen. Lots of extra mouse movement involved, all the time left to right, top to bottom - very irritating.

All applications tried to go full screen. No way to change that (at least not easily). Highly irritating. I recall ALT-TAB even didn't work out of the box, all making it hard to switch between windows.

Well it's been a few years, yet the bad taste remains.

Re:Yes.

[wvmarle]

Apt works great (aptitude, synaptic, apt-get, etc). Rarely if ever have issues with that. Don't want to do without.

Re:Yes.

[Blaskowicz]

Installing multiple desktops is not always trivial. The installation is but you can have duplicate or triplicate menu items like two "Screensaver", two "Appearance", two "System Monitor" and other shit like that. I still have a few such Gnome 3 leftovers (my system came with Mate, I installed Cinnamon, which threw me into Gnome Fallback so was useless, then used Mate again, then installed Xfce, then cleaned up the Cinnamon a bit by apt-get removing it).

Re:Yes.

[Iskender]

Tried the "built-in" KDE. Was impressed by its configurability (separate language and localisation, finally!). However, I read that apparently it's normal that you can't set the "mode" it boots into. I wanted the desktop mode as default, but if any other mode was used last it would boot to that.

I'm amazed they didn't include a setup option for that. The way it would boot into something random every time, along with subpar graphics support stopped it. I'll try some more distros soon though.

Re:Yes.

[ebh]

And on a t-shirt.

Re:Yes.

[Arker]

You might appreciate slapt-get then. Works about the same so far as you see as a user, just avoids the breakage of dpkg.

Re:Yes.

[wisnoskij]

I could live with the design choices, if they at least launched them when they were ready.
The last Ubuntu I installed included the horrendously unready beta Grub 2, that made by PC boot 10 times slower, and the completely unconfigurable and unusable Unity.

Re:Yes.

[Dimwit]

That right there says something. Ubuntu and Arch are at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of usability for new users.

Ubuntu is stuck between two communities: hardcore Linux users and everyone else. People complain about Ubuntu making user interface decisions, but you know what? Most people don't want an interface that's got a million different configuration options, they just want an interface that works. When they open up their settings, they want to see things like "Displays" not "LXRandR" which is inscruitable or "Gigolo" which is childish and uninformative.

Every "user friendly" distro I've ever looked at has been less user friendly than Ubuntu. The biggest problem I've noticed is a million different things in the configuration menu, each doing something slightly differently and with undescriptive names. A lot of users don't want to know what OpenBox is. Fedora is better in this regard by relying on GNOME heavily, but its installer isn't a polished as Ubuntu's and harder to use for new users, and its release and support cycle is too quick.

So that's the problem in a nutshell. Ubuntu is "too easy" (or, more charitably, "not configurable enough") for the hardcore Linux user and doesn't offer enough of an advantage over Windows or Mac OS X for the rest of the world. The average computer user just wants something that works, and doesn't know or care about "freedom" or "community". They see a computer for what it is - a tool to get their work done.

I personally use Linux because some flavor of Linux has been my primary operating system since I gave up my Amiga 20 years ago, and I use Ubuntu because it "just works" for the most part. I tried Fedora for a long time, but the rapid upgrades were distracting, yum isn't as good as apt for removing installed dependencies on uninstall, subjectively the available repos aren't as good, and I *hate* Evolution. I used Slackware and Arch for a long time (dwm, mailx, and Firefox were for a long time my default environment), but then I found that I was spending more time dealing with quirks or "customizing" my machine than I was doing actual work. One day, I was writing a script that I was running from .xsession that would periodically check my laptop's battery status and call xdialog to warn me if the battery got to low when I realized what I was doing - I was writing a script to do something that every modern desktop system would do for me, and better. Same for trying to get hotplugging USB keyboards to work with always swapping Ctrl and Caps Lock. While it reminded me of my early days of Slackware on an old Packard Bell in 1994, I'm just too old to care about that anymore. I have work to do.

Re:Yes.

[goose-incarnated]

Too bad Ubuntu still appears to have a superior update system: I don't feel like going to Mint's "good until you have to hack your upgrade". I had enough of that with the earlier Ubuntus.

That's news to me - every single upgrade of mine on LMDE 'just worked'; no futzing around needed.

Re:Yes.

[Windwraith]

That is truly not normal. I use Ubuntu with KDE4 and it always boots to desktop...in fact I just checked and seems the alternative KDE "modes" aren't even installed automatically anymore, seems you need to tell the package manager to install them.
Perhaps you got involved in a nasty bug, but I used every release since KDE4 existed and never got that strange behavior. Anyway, it sure is fixed now, you can't boot to notebook/tablet interfaces without explicitly asking for them.
(Then again I use nvidia drivers, it works well with my average-priced nvidia cards and only crashed on me once on...2004)

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 for Xubuntu. Been using it for the last 4 releases and loving XFCE!

Re:Yes.

[X0563511]

What I've never understood though is why one would want to use Ubuntu over straight-up debian on servers (or Fedora over RH/CentOS). I do understand you get newer package versions, but outside of the touchy-feely eye-candy desktop stuff, the difference isn't that wide, and frankly debian stable is stable in every meaning of the word.

Re: Yes.

[tom229]

All this Ubuntu hate is silly. While most distributions are networks of collaborating volunteers, Canonical is a company. Company's need to pay employees and have revenue.

Ubuntu is simply following the Google approach: create an open platform through which you can sell your services. Just like if you don't like Google apps you can use CyanogenMod, if you don't like unity or the software center or Mir, don't use them. Ubuntu is open source... You have the freedom to do what you want. We should be praising this model as its infinitely better than the Apple/Microsoft way of doing things. With Google and Canonical we finally have real companies making real products on open platforms that give the customer their choice and freedom back.

So stop listening to all these silly fossies everyone. We all can't live in our mom's basement clinging to silly ideals.

Re:Yes.

[TheCarp]

at a previous job we all built our own desktops, new guy came in all gung ho about Gentoo.... I remember it was like his third day and the compiler messages were still scrolling by, and he didn't even have X yet.

I totally get wanting the ability to recompile anything on the system, for several reasons, not the least of which is, yes, you may have some things you want to tweak the optomisations on and eek every little bit of performance you can out of your modern hardware.

What I don't get is thinking setting them globally and then recompiling everything including ls for perfomance.... just seemed a bit too much like chroming the engine block.

Re:Yes.

[postbigbang]

Straight-up Debian is nice, and it's stable, and it's sometimes painful to watch it evolve. Ubuntu's payload has all the stuff I need. I can strip it and make it light, then foist it up as a bunch of VMs and feed the instances through puppet or whatever, then tear them down easily.

With Deb or the RH/Fedora/CentOS/Oracle payloads, you have to take great pains to strip them down; Ubuntu is just easier. When I'm constructing payloads, it's easier to just strip junk out of Ubuntu, rather than build Deb up. I'm sooooo tired of either the kitchen sink of payloads, or the other side, which is the barest of bones, no upholstery at all, and maybe missing the steering wheel.

Re:Yes.

[hawkinspeter]

I get your point, but "apt-get install xubuntu" is pretty easy. The multiple versions of programs isn't usually a problem unless you've got a small hard drive.

Re:Yes.

[TheCarp]

and some of the docking was baindramaged too.

Maybe its fixed now, but a couple of years ago it was an absolute mess to try and use multiple instances of firefox with different profiles. The dock could only track the windows from one of them, which would be fine if it wasn't for the lack of any real other options for dealing with various application windows except the dock.

That was the real deal breaker for me. Aside from that I almost liked unity, I gave it a solid few days of trial before I reverted back to the gnome environment.

Re:Yes.

[X0563511]

Hell, apt-changelog (or is it apt-listchanges? or apt-bugs? hmm) makes it difficult to break yourself during an upgrade. The updater shows you the changelog and any outstanding bugs before proceeding!

Re:Yes.

[X0563511]

What kthreadd says. Also, remember that it's based off of Debian. Debian stable (and testing) does not use bleeding-edge items. Go read.

Re:Yes.

[X0563511]

I'd use Gentoo if the USE flags were better documented (eg "why you would use this" is missing. It tells you what they do, but not why that might matter)

Re:Yes.

[petteyg359]

Several years ago, compiling anything on single-CPU machines was a serious pain. Hence the popularity of "binary" (I hate that term... all computer code is binary, FFS) distributions. Now, with quad-, sex-, and octo-CPU machines (yes, that's sex-core. If they wanted to call it hex-core, then they should've called four-core tetra-core. http://phrontistery.info/numbers.html), compiling everything is a piece of cake. Going from "nothing" to X takes perhaps 20 minutes, and going from there to a full DE takes another 30 minutes to an hour. And through all that, I can tell it to keep everything gnome/gtk/gstreamer the heck off my system :)

Re:Yes.

[X0563511]

They do make some boneheaded decisions though.

It was a few years ago, but I remember one particularly fun instance: to shave a few seconds off of boot time, they made a change that caused PS/2 and AT keyboards to not function.

Read that again. Think about it.

Re:Yes.

[Requiem18th]

On way to state it is that they started as the friendly libre desktop and then at some point decided to become the "cheaper macintoch".

It's not just the design, they, or rather Mark, gave a full u-turn to the entire philosophy of the project. Sould we go back in time, you'd find that the project was full of idealism. Ubuntu was a philantropic project, free CDs were shiped, at Canonical's expense, to those willing to help others become free.

The promise was that together, as a comunity, we could overcome the technical and political issues that held FOSS back.

That's not the way ubuntu is advertised nowadays. Now ubuntu is advertised as this wonderful OS that does some of the same things MS and Apple can do but won't run any of the software you bought for those.

Personally, I blame the iPad. Ok it's Mark's fault first, but the iPad showed that people would ignore the problem of software incompatibilty as long a the thing was easy to use, had a web browser and was shiny.

So Mark decided to give the finger to the communy, called "Ubuntu is not a democracy" and embarked in a campaing to make ubunty the desktop version of an iPad: Shiny, dumbed down and incompatible with most Windows software, but with Firefox.

Actually I'm surprised ubuntu hasn't decided on Google chrome as their default browser, but even Mark realizes that would be handling the keys of the kingdom to a potential rival.

The obviousl problem is that, most people, including most ipad owners, already have a Windows PC where they do most of their work and any matter of serious gaming.

MS is the path of least resistance, and since it comes with most computers, it's "free". Apple is the luxury vendor. Ubuntu was de idealist but has lost it's original vision. Ubuntu really has nothing going for it nowadays. Mark is trying to fix that problem techically where it was a political problem to begin with.

Re: Yes.

[slydder]

I have an old t-shirt that says âoeroot@darkstar ~$ got_promptâoe all in brigt green text. ;)

Re:Yes.

[chuckinator]

Your experience with arch sounds like my experience with gentoo. I use Fedora, but any of Fedora, RHEL (or CentOS or Scientific Linux), and Debian are stable enough to meet anyone's needs for a mission critical system.

Re:Yes.

[VortexCortex]

Upon upgrading to procps-ng-3.3.8-3, you will be prompted to move any changes you made to /etc/sysctl.conf under /etc/sysctl.d. The easiest way to do this is to run:

pacman -Syu
mv /etc/sysctl.conf.pacsave /etc/sysctl.d/99-sysctl.conf

If you never customized /etc/sysctl.conf, you have nothing to do.

Perhaps you should slowly back away from the computer and stop using it. You seem to be too stupid to use it safely.

Or perhaps the Arch devs who couldn't add a diff, and conditional copy in a few lines of script that would have taken less time to write than the instructions for doing it manually are the ones who are too stupid to use a package manager safely. WTF is packaging even for if not this? AC, as moronic as ever.

Re:Yes.

[krovisser]

+1. I switched from Gentoo which was breaking all the time a couple years ago to Arch and haven't looked back.

Re:Yes.

[ClayDowling]

It's selectable at the login screen. The login screen remembers whatever your last chosen desktop was and uses that as the default. It's really very nice and well thought out.

Re:Yes.

[sgbett]

The gentoo way is that you should already know...

Of course, you should already know that ;)

Re:Yes.

[I'm New Around Here]

Or fall back to debian.

I'm waiting for Debian does Dallas :D

Says the Big (and Hairy) End-ian. @===3

Re:Yes.

[Monsuco]

Nobody is forced to use Unity *yet*, but the alternatives are clearly treated as second class citizens that do not get the same level of attention to detail or integration, and makes for a substandard experience that's increasingly a throwback to the days where Linux on the desktop was *only* for geeks. With Mir on the horizon, and with many developers targeting Ubuntu specifically rather than Linux in general, that situation threatens to get worse, as we could conceivably have a large pool of software with Mir+Unity as hard dependencies very soon.

Both Mir and Wayland are open source. If there's a compatibility issue, code from one would probably be used to build a compatibility wrapper for the other.

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.

Re:Yes.

[ahodgson]

Gentoo has its upsides for a desktop. Unless you really screw up, you'll only have to install it once. Software will be built with your preferences. You'll always have fairly recent versions of everything.

On the downside, the initial install does suck. And you really need to know what you're doing. It's certainly not for everyone, but I actually went back to it after a few years on Ubuntu, and it's been good. Compile times are a lot better than they were 10 years ago and, really, after the initial install, who cares, it's just background work you do once every few weeks. I'll trade incremental updates over giant distribution upgrades any day. But that's just me, and it's great to have other choices too.

Re:Yes.

[countach74]

Doing a Debian base install with "standard tools" is a great starting place. You will need to apt-get install databases, web servers, etc., but that's trivial. I stopped using Ubuntu server a few years ago when I kept running into problems of upgrades breaking things. As such, I completely disagree with the notion that Ubuntu server is stable (I was using an LTS, btw). To me, there has been no change in administration difficulty going from Ubuntu to Debian in the server world (and very little in the workstation world once you install a few extras).

Speaking of workstations, Debian Testing (Jessie) running KDE is awesome. I can't recommend it enough. KDE has come a long way since 4.0; it's everything I loved about Gnome 2, only better in my mind.

Re:Yes.

[countach74]

You can always using backports to get kernels from testing, thus avoid stepping outside of apt-get.

Re:Yes.

[countach74]

Or you can run Debian Testing and receive fairly recent software that pretty much "just works". And if there's a particular package you want to rebuild, there's always apt-source. :)

Re:Yes.

[skids]

as any Debian user knows, updates are a different world when you step outside the Garden of Eden that is apt-get

This can be true, but I've found kernel updates are the exception. There's a robust, packaging-aware system surrounding kernels built from source that will rebuild all your modules, redo your initrd, fw downlods, etc, and repos for bleeding edge kernels.

Re:Yes.

[skids]

I've been considering trying arch out because some of the crap from Ubuntu is starting to leak back into Debian, and when I google for how to undo the damage, it is usually arch users I find trying to do things properly. So I'll probably be giving arch a spin the next time I build something in a role that doesn't play to Debian's strengths.

Re:Yes.

[marcosdumay]

Whatever, I can "apt-get upgrade" Sid any time, no matter how long I've left the computer, and it works.

I do not really disagree. That's exactly my experience... Unless the computer has a NVidia GPU installed. When that's the case, you must carefully read the changes before applying, and consider your kernel something you don't upgrade.

Anyway, that's not a flaw of Debian. And the fact that you can upgrade Debian Stable at any time, even with an NVidia GPU is impressive... But Sid is not that stable.

Re:Yes.

[RabidReindeer]

What restriction of choice has there been so far? Without having to jump through any hoops other than installing them through the app center, I can log in to Unity, KDE, Fluxbox and XBMC on my laptop. All of them are fully functional desktops (or in the case of XBMC, functional for its specific narrow usage). That looks like more choice to me, not less.

And without having to jump through any hoops except visiting mozilla's website, I can install Firefox. But IE is what comes with the OS. So why is the EU so upset?

Re:Yes.

[RabidReindeer]

What restriction of choice has there been so far? Without having to jump through any hoops other than installing them through the app center, I can log in to Unity, KDE, Fluxbox and XBMC on my laptop. All of them are fully functional desktops (or in the case of XBMC, functional for its specific narrow usage). That looks like more choice to me, not less.

And without having to jump through any hoops except visiting mozilla's website, I can install Firefox. But IE is what comes with the OS. So why is the EU so upset?

Ack! I've been poisoned! "The OS". PLEASE don't tell me that the OS in question was Linux. I was referring to a certain other OS.

Re:Yes.

[marcosdumay]

Have you tried installing another DE? (I recommend KDE.) You know, whatever distro you are using, Unity is not mandatory.

Re:Yes.

[Iskender]

While it apparently has options, strictly speaking, that's really not far away from having to edit xorg.conf. If it has no visible GUI element, it's very close to "you have to edit a text file" level, since there's no way of knowing I wonder who thought a menu called "System Settings" needs to be dumbed down? I'm on the LTS version, too, so it should be polished (Lucid Lynx certainly was).

There's no right-click menu for the dock, either. Clicking the empty dock area with any mouse button does...nothing. Useful.

I don't really dislike Unity because of itself. I dislike it because Canonical keep crippling it through stupid mistakes and omissions.

Re:Yes.

[Hatta]

Generally when an upgrade might break Sid, you'll see the packages that might break it as "kept back" and it won't install them. Update a few days later when the devs have sorted everything out and it works fine.

Re:Yes.

[c]

While it apparently has options, strictly speaking, that's really not far away from having to edit xorg.conf.

That's entirely true. It's a silly way to handle it. At a technical level, I understand why they buried it in the Compiz settings (because Unity is really just a Compiz plugin), but why not expose the useful Compiz settings to the user in an obvious place? I can understand that some of the Compiz settings aren't something you want to let the average Joe mess with, but that doesn't mean they should go full GNOME on the options front.

Re:Yes.

[goarilla]

In my opinion informing and educating the user of userland changes is a plus.
Now are Arch's packages gpg'ed yet ?

Re:Yes.

[ClayDowling]

Not seeing your point here. Installing new software is trivially easy, especially under Ubuntu. Switching between desktop managers is likewise trivially easy. That's not ramming it down somebody's throat. That's giving people and choice and making it easy to exercise that choice. Pretty sure that's what is wanted.

Re:Yes.

[Knuckles]

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.

You are free to hate Unity, but what's that "without giving people any real option"? You can always apt-get any DE or WM you like, or switch to any other distro while taking your data with you. Options galore.

Re:Yes.

[GuB-42]

You can get an Ubuntu minimal CD and don't select any package at install time.
Then you'll have a barebone system that allows you to install any package from the Ubuntu repositories (using the "apt-get" command). This way, you can have your distribution exactly as you like it. The only difficulty is knowing the package names, all the details are handled by the package manager.
In fact there is very little difference between Debian and Ubuntu when used this way. And Arch is probably similar too, except that it uses pacman instead of apt.

Re:Yes.

[i.r.id10t]

Well, it sorta has unified all of us who hate it....

Re:Yes.

[sylvandb]

the fact that you can upgrade Debian Stable at any time, even with an NVidia GPU is impressive... But Sid is not that stable.

I've been running Sid for over 11 years and some mixed Testing/Sid for just about as long. I even pull in stuff from experimental when fancy strikes.

Sid is that stable unless you push it and make it do things it warns you not to do.

The system has never had 'stability' problems except when hardware was failing. Upgrades have been great, especially compared to RedHat pre-Yum (don't know about now, don't care either).

I've swapped processors and motherboards, cloned it to new hard disks and etc. I have not reinstalled that Sid system since the day I installed it from a Knoppix 1.x CD as my first Debian experience.

I've broken it a few times by being aggressive about updates and etc. But since Debian has text-based package state tracking, even those are recoverable. I've had to boot from CD/USB a few times when I screwed up the bootloader. Surprisingly those times were not when I was going from LiLo to Grub to Grub2 and those times have been rare since grub2. (The last time was when I decided my new root disk should be LVM'd and mirrored and I found out that my version of Grub2 did not know how to use the md module support in LVM.)

Re:Yes.

[fwarren]

Duh, it is a huge deal. Ubuntu / Canonical maintains all the Xorg stuff. This will also be true of the Wayland stuff.

What do you do when there are ZERO xorg or wayland packages used is Ubuntu? That means Kubuntu/Xubuntu/Mint/etc will have to borrow from Debian and deal with whatever bugs pop up.Or each distro will create their own set of packages. Or they will have to join forces, make some sort of consortium and work up their own packages as a group.

The truth is none of these groups have the time to do that AND remove dumb Ubuntu stuff AND create their own non-unity programs of new features in Ubuntu.

Re:Yes.

[timmyf2371]

I chose Ubuntu for my home server 4 years ago over the alternatives. I've experimented with distros in the past but I'm by no means a Linux expert and I found that most of the easy to follow tutorials and guides were based on Ubuntu, hence my decision.

Re:Yes.

[goarilla]

You should try Slackware.

Re:Yes.

[HiThere]

What you're missing that that in a very short period of time both of the major window managers, Gnome and KDE, made VERY unpleasant choices. KDE has since then largely recovered, but it's still not as good as KDE3 was. (There may be good reasons under the hood, I haven't looked. But I despised the early KDE4s, and I consider the current one to be less good than was KDE3.) Unity was an alternative "really bad"(tm) choice. You don't hear people saying nice things about Gnome3, either...not without suspecting them of being shills.

This series of changes in a short period of time sensitized people to being coerced into an environment that they didn't like. So they are much readier to "bolt the herd" than they were before these shenanigans began.

It is my suspicion that the entire mess is caused by thinking that the same interface would work on both a desktop and a tablet...and a frantic tablet envy. (There seems to be evidence that the Gnome developers tried to develop for the tablet without ever even using one.)

Re:Yes.

[Urza9814]

I've been running the same Arch install on my laptop since before they started systemd, and I have nothing in that file. This is only an issue if you've made modifications yourself, outside of the package manager, in which case it's nice to get a heads-up that those are going to break. If you've only installed from the package manager you can just run a standard update and it'll work fine.

Arch certainly has it's difficulties, but I've been using it for about two years now and actually spend FAR less time maintaining it than I ever have with any other distro -- it's just a bit less predictable. With the other distros I'd know once a year I'd have to find a time when I wouldn't need my computer for a week so I could upgrade -- and it might be a month or more until I had *everything* working again. Now I upgrade once a month or so, but one or two per year will break my system for a day or two. And FWIW, I *never* read the release notes ;)

Re:Yes.

[Urza9814]

Note that this ONLY applies if you have manually changed the config files. How do you expect the package manager know all the manual changes you've made, what you intended them to do, which may or may not still be needed, etc? If you know enough to make those changes, you know enough to migrate them.

Re:Yes.

[ClayDowling]

You do know, don't you, that Canonical and the KDE/Gnome teams are separate entities, right? This isn't a case of Ubuntu cramming software down anybody's throat. Two window managers did things you didn't like. Blaming it on a third party doesn't seem like a reasonable conclusion. I'd also point out that there are other, equally easy to install window managers available.

Re:Yes.

[bzipitidoo]

Steam is a reason to use Windows?! I dual boot, not because of Steam but because of the graphics drivers. If there were decent graphics drivers for Linux, and by that I mean open and supports 3D acceleration, games would be a lot more playable in Linux. But now, there are big changes brewing in the GUI. XWindows has loads of 1980s cruft that no one has used for at least a decade. We may have to wait for Wayland, or possibly Mir.

Seems like everyone kinda likes Steam. Why? It's DRM. It may be smoother, nicer, less obstructive and intrusive DRM, but it's still DRM. What happens if Steam's servers go down? Haven't heard Steam has done much yet for offline play.

Re:Yes.

[kintamanimatt]

The key to loving Unity is to use Gnome Shell for three weeks. Gnome Shell could make one grateful for Windows 95.

Re:Yes.

[Urza9814]

I'm a former Mandriva user as well, and I never found a distro I liked better until I found Arch. Installation is far more painful, but once it's installed you're done until you buy a new system. Upgrades sometimes break stuff but usually it's not too bad.

Re:Yes.

[Outtascope]

Patches. On Debian it seemed that I was constantly waiting 6 months for a show stopper to get patched, because it wasn't a show stopper for enough people. The only times I have gone to source to fix a problem since switching to Ubuntu was 1 for the G#d Da323ed A4 paper size crap with inkscape (which of course was on the desktop) and for a fix to Glassfish, which has nothing to do with Ubuntu at all. If Debian released things faster, I would use them again. But then Debian wouldn't be Debian, and the deliberation serves as a useful purpose.

Re:Yes.

[Shompol]

You are free to switch to any desktop ennvironment. When Unity came out I tried Canonical Gnome2, MATE, Cinnamon and Cinnamon was the least buggy. A year later I run into some hardware compartibility issues and my Cinnamon desktop went into "safe mode", which happens to be Gnome 2. Switched back to Gnome2 and it just works. I guess Canonical patched all the issues since the last time I tried.

PS: top result in my Google search when making this post:

Ad related to cinnamon gnome unity mint

Get Help Now - Find the Right Treatment for You

Re:Yes.

[mcgrew]

I still miss good old Mandriva. Dropped that for Ubuntu, which before Unity was a great Gnome2 desktop.

I went to ubuntu when I heard Mandriva was dying, but afaik it never did die. Tried Ubuntu, hated Gnome and went back to mandriva (I'd been using it since it was Mandrake). I found kubuntu and never looked back, being KDE it's very similar too mandrake/driva.

I don't think "free and easy to use" comes into play; Windows is "free" in that it's already installed on any computer you buy. I'd paid for DOS 3.3, DOS 6.2, W95, W98, and XP but I went to Linux because Windows kept pissing me off. The straw that broke the camel's back was XP. As soon as I installed it, it informed be that it had disabled the CD burning software that had come with the burner because it "made the OS unstable" despite the fact that I'd never had stability issues with W98, and it wouldn't let me uninstall the software and on every boot taunted me, "nya, nya, I disabled your burner!".

Then the day after I installed XP I couldn't get on the network. The ISP could see the modem but not the PC so my card must be bad. Tried a different cable, almost bought a network card but reinstalled XP to get rid of the program Microsoft disabled and wouldn't let me uninstall that it nagged me about every boot.

When I booted after the reinstall, the network worked fine. Microsoft had replaced a perfectly good driver with one that didn't work at all.

Discovering that Mandrake had features Windows lacked, and that installing it was way faster and easier than installing XP and what's more, didn't insist I did everything their way and came with all the apps I needed was icing on the cake. I'd have paid more for Mandrake than I had for XP because it was clearly WAY better.

To top it off, I'd installed dual-boot figuring there would be a huge learning curve (there wasn't) and Windows got flaky and started freezing and bluescreening and booting itself unexpectedly. I figured it was a corrupt registry until Linux stopped, too -- my power supply was going out. Linux kept chugging until the power supply died completely.

Windows is just crap. If computers didn't come with it preinstalled, nobody would use it.

Re:Yes.

[Iskender]

I'll look at it again, then. I should probably try a fresh install after all these years, too.

Re:Yes.

[doom]

Or fall back to debian.

That was my thought. After jumping through some new hoops they've put in the way (they won't just let you download an *.iso, you need to learn to deal with jigbo), I found that they're shipping with a new installer of their own that's pretty broken on my 5 year old dual opteron box. Their FAQ explains that this bold new break with backwards compatibility is so that they can do a better job of supporting text-only VMS installation, or some such.

I went back to doing an Ubuntu install, and just downloaded icewm, as I always do.

(If you have some clever boy on your team explaining why you need to break backwards compatibility now, there isn't really any need to sort through the arguments, just shoot him.)

Re:Yes.

[postbigbang]

The LTS server versions haven't given me problems, but I strip out most stuff.

And alas, altho KDE is great, I'm too invested in gaknome. I've been using Mint for desktop.... but it has all sorts of odd things that I've changed or wiped. I suppose I should get out of my rut and look again.

Re:Yes.

[countach74]

I actually ran into issues with upgrades breaking my systems to the point where they wouldn't boot. I think they actually removed some drivers from the kernel build from one version to the next. My memory is pretty foggy, but I remember I couldn't get the darned thing to boot. Kept hanging up somewhere early on.

Re:Yes.

[HiThere]

It doesn't matter that they are separate entities, they are entities whose actions affect the same group of people. So they reinforce each other. (Or, of course, the opposite if they weren't to make the same kind of bad decision...but that's a counterfactual argument.)

Re:Yes.

[postbigbang]

My successes surround stable kernel builds, but I strip out tons of stuff, and have but a few daemons running as base. 12.04 was a good release, and it's been genned many 100s of times without much difficulty, altho there was a BadJava era where all kinds of crazy stuff happened.

Re:Yes.

[someSnarkyBastard]

Is it still compiling?

Re:Yes.

[someSnarkyBastard]

Or for the RPM diehards there is always OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, rolling release with fairly fresh packages (last I looked my kernel was at 3.11 or so)

Re:Yes.

[PreparationH67]

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.

What's up Ubuntu to Arch Linux buddy

Re:Yes.

[armanox]

LOL no. Took about 24 hours to download and compile everything (3Mbs DSL, 1.7GHz Pentium 4 with 384 MB RAM). Longest Gentoo compile I ever did was two weeks on an SGI Octane (2x 400MHz MIPS R12K processors, 4GB RAM, 18GB SCSI drives).

Re:Yes.

[Blaskowicz]

I had trouble managing the screen saver / screen blanking, when I had two "Screen Saver" entries plus the power management options. One of the "Screen Saver" tool would say some stuff like "the daemon appears to not be running, do you want.. yes/no/cancel". I would configure "idleness" setting somewhere, screen saver timing somewhere else and it'd be a race between which stuff triggers first (I needed between one or two hour time out to watch full screen flash video). I would come back home and find out the monitor had not switched to stand by, wasting kilowatt-hours adding up to real money (I was running a massive CRT)

tl;dr, this was confusing stuff there, especially when running a Mate desktop with some Gnome 3 stuff (like running Nemo, the nautilus fork, or having gnome-terminal as the default terminal emulator). Xfce seems cleaner in only launching Xfce stuff and not being messed up by other DEs.
Still some crap : in start menu/Settings, I have two "Bluetooth" entries. It's okay as I don't have a bluetooth adpater, but same spelling, same icon.. If I come to need it I'll have to work out which is the "right" one.

Re:Yes.

[sharklasers]

Flat-out wrong. I distinctly recall changes made during some newer updates of GRUB that notified me that my grub files were different from upstream and whether to copy over, skip the copy or show a diff.

I accept that it's hard to know everything there is to know about a subject, but to assert ignorance as fact and then berate someone for telling something which is actually correct, is fucking disgraceful behavior.

Re:Yes.

[F.Ultra]

Agree on the problem with finding applications, that is a major headeache with all the new desktops (Unity, Gnome3, Windows7 and so on) in that one has to remember what that particular application was named. However I can understand why everyone has implemented it this way since if one have many applications installed the old Gnome2 (or Windows Start Menu) menu quickly gets so big it's no longer any fun.

ALT-TAB however have worked for me since day one (have used Ubuntu since 8.04 and upgraded to each version as they have come) so I don't know why it didn't for you.

Re:Yes.

[hawkinspeter]

Sounds like you installed "xfce" rather than "xubuntu" (or whatever version Mint might provide). Try "apt-get remove gnome-screensaver" and see if that improves it for you. If you're brave and have a recent backup, you could try removing gnome (apt-get remove gnome) to see if that helps.

Re:Yes.

[rdnetto]

Or even better, Sabayon. All the power of Gentoo, but with binary packages.

Re:Yes.

[X0563511]

You can rebuild packages with patches you want to include, and that knowledge transfers to Ubuntu as well. I'd look into it if only to understand how it might be done - you never know when you need to tweak/patch something and don't want to "break" dependencies or the like.

Re:Yes.

[marcello_dl]

> After jumping through some new hoops they've put in the way (they won't just let you download an *.iso, you need to learn to deal with jigbo)

You went to debian.org and couldn't find an .iso? Pretty ugly parallel universe you live in.

Re:Yes.

[Shadow of Eternity]

Arch does that for me without me needing to do a single thing. I don't know what version you're using but for the last two years I haven't had a problem with it.

Re:Yes.

[Shadow of Eternity]

And then you're still left with a massive ton of back-end bloat and half-assed compatibility to try and force you to keep using unity. Running Xubuntu doesn't feel like running XFCE, it feels like you're running unity with XFCE maximized on top of it trying to control unity underneath and never really quite working right. I used to be able to go from dead cold to typing notes in 13 seconds flat, now it takes a good minute or more just to start XFCE.

Re:Yes.

[Shadow of Eternity]

Same direction as always.

Re:Yes.

[someSnarkyBastard]

Fedora -- stable?! BWAHAHAHA

Fedora has never billed itself as stable, quite the opposite in fact, they are notable for introducing bleeding edge features that might bork your box. Install Fedora to production - let alone mission critical - systems at your peril.

Re:Yes.

[Knuckles]

Please list the processes of this supposed bloat that is supposedly used to force you to keep running unity.

Re:Yes.

[someSnarkyBastard]

Or you really like the idea of "one app for one purpose" or simply an possess anathema to clutter.

Re:Yes.

[Optali]

Sorry "Ubuntu-derivatives" ???

Wouldn't you rather mean Debian derivatives ??
Or to be true to the Faith "Debian GNU/Linux derivatives" ?

 

Re:Yes.

[danielkschneider]

Simpler solution if you can't stand Unity: just replace this desktop by Cinnamon. Solved my problems. Installing Cinnamon doesn't require much work. In addition, you always can pick Unity again, in case you regret. Unity will stay on the machine and you can switch back to it before you log in. Tested with Ubuntu 12.04:
  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-stable
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install cinnamon

Re:Yes.

[tuxgeek]

Falling "back to debian" translates to falling back to stability.

From time to time I give the latest release of Ubuntu/Mint another look @ to see whats happening on the bleeding edge. But every time after a few short weeks the system seems too unstable, and/or some feature/s I use gets squirrely and I end up returning to the latest Debian, currently Wheezy.

Ubuntu/Mint is what you get when you take Debian Sid, polish it somewhat, slap your name on it as yours, and throw it out there with great fanfare and media hype as the latest and greatest.

Re:Yes.

[Shirley Marquez]

The name Unity was meant to signify bringing together the desktop, phone, tablet, and netbook (small desktop screen) interfaces. It actually is the closest thing I have seen to a single interface that works acceptably for all of those devices (much better than Windows 8 for example, which fails badly for the desktop case unless you add in a bunch of stuff to turn it back into something more like the Windows 7 interface), though it's a compromise compared to a dedicated design for each.

The harder question is whether a single interface is a goal that makes sense. Ultimately I'm inclined to think that it does not. The desktop use case is sufficiently different from the other three to merit a design of its own.

Re:Yes.

[athenaprime]

...outside of the touchy-feely eye-candy desktop stuff....

Answered your own question there. :) In case the 9 bazillion people camped out overnight to buy the latest iPhone didn't tip you off, people dig touchy-feely eye-candy stuff.

I'm no fan of Unity's UI, but I have to say, it was the only UI that made sense to run on my little netbook (those were a thing, for about five minutes in between laptops and tablets). I really think on one level, it was visionary--the devs/designers could see tablets and phones on the horizon, and wanted to make something that would be native, natural, and perhaps become the default user expectation for a simple, portable, consumption device that also had enough under the hood to handle some task-work.

Unfortunately, they rather clunkily forced people who'd stuck with Gnome because of its design stability into Unity, a drastic change to even flexible desktoppers. It was a community fail on Canonical's part, and likely exacerbated by the fact that their customers by and large aren't paying customers, so it's doubly hard to gauge what's just background noise versus legitimate deal-breaking gripes.

Re:Yes.

[hawkinspeter]

In that case, you'd be better off installing xubuntu from scratch or maybe rolling your own distribution. At least with linux there's loads of choice and you can have it "your way".

Re:Yes.

[chuckinator]

You are purposefully neglecting to notice my mention of RHEL and CentOS and Debian as the option for production stable systems. I use Fedora for laptops and workstations so I don't have to be stuck in the hell of running "production stable" applications at a version that is 5 years old.

Re:Yes.

[X0563511]

What does any of this have to do with servers though? These concerns should be the last thing on your list of factors to consider, when talking about servers.

Re:Yes.

[doom]

Sorry, I meant a DVD-iso. When I was doing this I couldn't figure out where my CD-R blanks were (haven't needed any in ages).

I also ordered a set of DVDs on the off chance I felt like messing with it again.

But yes, they're pushing jigbo pretty heavily, though there's no doubt ways to dance around it.

Re:Yes.

[marcello_dl]

you might want to put the iso on a usb key instead. Debian live is isohybrid, maybe the other installers are too, else check out unetbootin.

Re:Yes.

[aplcomp]

I know 0 reasons not to use Mint. Hopefully they will persist & prosper.

Re:Yes.

[Blaskowicz]

When I tried it at least, the debian iso was not compatible with unetbootin. I had to set up a PXE booting server.

Re:Yes.

[doom]

Yeah, I know about the option, but I haven't done a usb boot yet, and I have no idea whether this particular box has the right firmware or whatever. There's a lot of variation in PC BIOSes, and I just wasn't feeling like playing around more

Re:Yes.

[hubie]

I always found the browser search hijack to be rather annoying. That, and the majority of my fortune quotes suddenly were from someone named Husse, who nice guy and all as he seemed to be, the quotes meant nothing to me since I never interacted with him on the Mint forum.

Re:Yes.

[shirosenshi]

I agree with Shadow of Eternity. I switched to Manjaro, easier and faster to install ;)

Re:Yes.

[AntiSol]

Yes. Unity was the reason I switched to Xubuntu. Mir will be the reason I switch to Arch or Mint - Do not want.

I agree

[Skiron]

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.

Re:I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with most people who say "is now non-standard in the *nix way of things" is that they generally have only used one *nix –generic linux.

What they don't realise is that the locations that they think are standard in all *nixes are actually very mutable, and many unixes put things in entirely different places. What they really mean is "is now not what I'm used to on linux".

Re:I agree

[Arker]

While it's easy to point out that every *nix has deviated at some point or another from the *nix way, that doesnt mean it doesnt exist. Various *nixes reflect it more or less in one area or another. Inside the linux family Slackware stands out for it.

Re:I agree

[someSnarkyBastard]

Actually there is such a thing as a standard Linux layout: the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard

That said, Ubuntu is not alone in ignoring it though... /me glares at Fedora

Only time will tell...

[internet-redstar]

It's hard to predict. But Mint, which builds on ubuntu, has some major flaws with Mint 15. We see Ubuntu still as the distribution of choice for developer workstations. Especially in the embedded linux space. Ubuntu in the server still has the advantage of having a recent kernel and being build on .deb packages instead of the horrible slow and unstable, unupgradeable yum/RPM combination.

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

Re:Only time will tell...

[bazorg]

If Ubuntu declines, then the question is to what?

Right now, Id say... Android.
I've signed up for a broadband service which is bundled with a sports TV channel. I can access that TV channel via the web or using a native app for Android and iOS. When I try using Firefox (on Windows 8 Pro 64) it just will not work. I try IE. Not compatible with that browser, tells me to try a different one.

I tap the Android app and... It just works. Now let's think of what can I do to have that same channel on a larger TV screen. Since I don't have a smart TV box (only free to air channels), I can use that old media centre PC I've been trying to set up for 2 years. Pay £100 for Windows and then get that kind of experience? nah. Pay £100 for Apple TV? Looks great at the shop but will not touch my local media collection. Install Ubuntu? OK, but during a recent upgrade the wifi stopped working with no explanation. Maybe I can get Android x86 and hope for the best, or I can get a cheap £50 android box and just get it over with.

Re:Only time will tell...

[taikedz]

Elementary OS with the extra trimmings provided by ElementaryUpdate.com, and after switching out some of the standard apps for better ones (Noise for Banshee, Geary for Evolution or Thunderbird, etc...), is great for the "newcomers" to the Linux world -- especially for people of the "I just want to use a mouse" kind of people.

I'm not convinced that any GNU/Linux is for the absolute non-techie, but there are plenty of distros out there with the explicit aim of being newbie-friendly (or in marketing terms, "focused on a great user experience"). Once your user knows how to Google effectively, and knows how to search based on desktop environment instead of distro, they should be able to fly solo fairly soon.

For those who have the patience to look things up and understand the basics of their systems and are not afraid of the occasional CLI operation, the entire Debian family is at their disposition, and the RedHat line is fairly well documented too due to the sheer sizes of both its family tree and comunities. It takes just some initial explanation to newcomers as to what differs between distros from a user perspective to get someone like a developer (or just a plain curious technically-minded person) productive with just about any new distro from one of the large families.

Re:Only time will tell...

[robthebloke]

If Ubuntu declines, then the question is to what?

Amiga OS?

Re:Only time will tell...

[internet-redstar]

Being popular as a distribution does not mean they are evil. And the comparison with Windows is just plain _stupid_
Microsoft promotes software patenting.
Microsoft embraces and extends open standards to break them - allows importing of data but only crappy exporting.

Now, I do agree that Ubuntu made some less popular decisions to make money.
While I don't like it either, they are easily apt-get removed.

Ubuntu also does their software development in OpenSource fashion.

I think some of the ubuntu-bashing is unjustified and unconstructive.

Ubuntu has a certain amount of critical mass which is very interesting and which leads to a better quality experience than for example with Fedora.
While I don't agree with all the 'dumbing down', it still allows power user to dive as deep as they want into the system and into the code. And I like the fact that it's not required for novice users.

Re:Only time will tell...

[sheepe2004]

What are the major flaws in Mint 15 that you mention? I've recently upgraded to it on one of my computers and it seems very similar to previous versions.

Re:Only time will tell...

[internet-redstar]

Yes, but it is slow.
And if you ever tried upgrading Fedora from the command line, you know what for a mess it is.
I'm certain it isn't used successfully by YOU on more than a few servers if you say that...
We support thousands of systems, and know what the difference is :)

It's workable for most situations, but it's crappy technology compared to .deb/apt-get

Re:Only time will tell...

[RoboJ1M]

Agreed.

Although I'm happy with the dumbing down if it means stuff actually works out of the box in a sane way.
What turned me off Linux based OSes 10-12 years ago was the amount of text file hacking that was required to get a usable system.
Gives me more time now to dig down into the stuff I'm actually interested in, building a cool home server full of services I like/need.
When it comes to low level tinkering I'm much happier playing with Raspbian on my Pi, because if I break it (and I do) I can still watch movies on the TV and do desktop browsing on the Ubuntu box.

And I like seeing they're take on OS design and not just cranking out *another* tinkerer's Linux, it's not like there isn't enough of those.
Microsoft, Apple and Canonical all have three distinctly different designs and that's great.
Although IMO anything =Windows 7 was just awful, from a design and usability perspective.

Re:Only time will tell...

[RoboJ1M]

pfffft, I *think* you'll find it's RISCOS FTW .

Re:Only time will tell...

[grcumb]

It's hard to predict.

Well, I'm not so sure about that. I predicted it back in 2011. Money quote:

Ubuntu is slipping out of control. Canonical have stopped listening and – more importantly – working with the community. The number of defects is growing, but Canonical’s response is to make it harder for mere mortals to submit bugs. They seem to think that strong guidance is needed for their product to grow in new and interesting ways. Fair enough, but they’re confusing leadership with control. They’re simply imposing their views because they don’t value the discussion. They’re treating criticism as opposition and shutting themselves off from valid feedback.

That's pretty much the argument being made in TFA, but I'm not going to try to take credit for oracular powers or anything. It's been pretty obvious for some time that they were on the wrong track.

Re:Only time will tell...

[fisted]

What turned me off Linux based OSes 10-12 years ago was the amount of text file hacking that was required to get a usable system.

Thank god for modern concepts like ,,Registry'' and non human-readable binary file formats. Yay:)

Re:Only time will tell...

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, Mint does have a release based directly on Debian which I have been running without issue for some time.

Re:Only time will tell...

[DF5JT]

Yes, but it is slow.

And if you ever tried upgrading Fedora from the command line, you know what for a mess it is.

I'm certain it isn't used successfully by YOU on more than a few servers if you say that...

We support thousands of systems, and know what the difference is :)

It's workable for most situations, but it's crappy technology compared to .deb/apt-get

Your thousands of servers sound like a way to boast your own ego, no more.

Thousands of server run by a pro do not run Fedora, they run either RHEL or CentOS, depending on how cheap you are.

And of course, for updates to thousands of systems a real admin knows how to use either Spacewalk or Red Hat Satellite, again depending on how cheap you are.

That said, yum update works fine on this machine.

What again was your point?

Re:Only time will tell...

[amiga3D]

I've been using Fedora for a few months now and I don't see that it's horribly slow or unstable. I still think I'm going back to an apt-get type of distro but I fell away from Ubuntu when Unity arrived. I really think I liked gnome 2 better than anything I've seen lately. At some point good enough is good enough and all these changes seem like change for change's sake. How about working on speed and compatibility.

Re:Only time will tell...

[Sarten-X]

If you prefer, s/text file//.

I remember well my first Linux system. LILO on a floppy disk, which I had to modify by hand because my hardware wasn't detected properly. Once I booted into the shell, I had to start X, which would crash, but then I could start it again and it'd work fine.

A decade ago, Linux was indeed a pretty shaky option for desktop use. In contrast, Windows XP was pretty straightforward to install and it worked well quickly - no hacking required.

That's exactly what Canonical's done well with Ubuntu. Ubuntu (or a derivative) is usually my first choice of distro, because I often work on donated hardware and I just need the drivers to work from the start. The only configuration I do by hand now is for customization, not getting it to work in the first place.

Re:Only time will tell...

[amiga3D]

I think Android is perfect for appliances like media boxes. I'd love to see a nice spec TV box running android.

Re:Only time will tell...

[internet-redstar]

"I've been using Fedora for a few months now "; I am happy for you. Just ignore my post and enjoy the joys of being a newbee on a new distro. It's fun to learn the differences between the different linux distro's!
Enjoy...

Re:Only time will tell...

[internet-redstar]

I understand your point.
I believe - just like Linus Torvalds - that there is something terrible wrong with the UI designers in Linux.
The kernel has learned from the very beginning that it needs to be stable to userspace, yet the UI designers try to make users change their behaviour with every major release of their crap.
Yesterday I heared that GNOME wants to drop the middle-mouse paste.
Who the fuck they think they are for messing with our user experience. It's just rude.

And that's also one of the major points of critique.
An operating system experience designer should not have to choose between 'dumb' and 'power user'.
Both need to be possible at the same time. But uninformed UI designers try to copy MacOS where they don't even know about the power user options within the Finder. They themselves think it's dumb. But in reality they are the only dumb ones.

In the FOSS context, we can however stick with Enlightenment or with any other window manager, and in the current situation small and light window managers indeed remain wildly competitive with dumb but bloated Unity or Gnome or KDE desktops which lack uniformity and power user options.

But I'm getting off topic; it's more of a general UI experience topic than a pure Ubuntu disaster.
I like the fact that Ubuntu tries with unity to do something new.
BUT it is not that more than a good-effort try. It doesn't work that great. It improved a bit with 13.10, I believe.

As I said, only time will tell if Ubuntu scared away too much power users.

Re:Only time will tell...

[moronoxyd]

Funny, we see Ubuntu as Canonical's variant of Windows(tm). For people who, for whatever reasons (stupid or legitimate), don't /want/ to get a clue about their machines.

If you think that Unity or Mir stop you from learning anything about Linux then you're doing it wrong.

Re:Only time will tell...

[internet-redstar]

Google on 'Cinnamon just crashed'...

Re:Only time will tell...

[armanox]

I have laptops that have been running upgrades from Fedora 12 -> 19. Home server has gone from FC 7 -> Fedora 14 (actually the install moved hardware a couple of times, and sorta got phased out when I moved everything to an i7 and starting using SL). In work environments I don't use Fedora on servers (do on my workstations), we use RHEL, OEL, or CentOS.

Re:Only time will tell...

[internet-redstar]

I'm sure you didn't upgrade Fedora 12 to 19 on the command line.
It isn't supported and it doesn't work.

It's a shame.
Ah and did you try this: rpm -qa | grep -i v fc19
how many old version shit is still hanging around?

We prefer Ubuntu over Fedora out of stability and software choices. Of course Ubuntu has its issues too. But you don't get that much of a 'leaking ship' feeling...

Re:Only time will tell...

[div_2n]

It's not just time -- it's whether or not their mobile gambit pays off. If, as Canonical has wagered, mobile continues to become the central and often only computing device for people, mobile processing/graphics power moves forward a few notches and their Mir efforts hit pay-dirt, then they will not decline but rather become THE undisputed non-Android Linux platform.

If any single one of those things fails to happen in the next 2 years, they're history. Plain and simple unless they recognize early enough and steer the ship back into standard desktop waters.

Re:Only time will tell...

[armanox]

Au contraire, I did do that. Just not all in one step. When it was time to upgrade, I ran 'preupgrade-cli $targetRelease' and let it go, until I got to Fedora 17, when it switched to using fedup instead.

Actually, quite a few old versions of stuff hangs around - some of it by my choice, like GRUB 1. There is a tool for cleaning those things up though, you may want to check out 'package-cleanup --orphans' which will clean that up.

Re:Only time will tell...

[internet-redstar]

It is sad that they didn't go for the Ubuntu phone - I was one of the (many) people who contributed to the kickstarter.
Having raised more than 10M usd and then not releasing it... WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT.

Maybe Marc is burning through his cash too quickly. Who knows.

But I still think he helped OpenSource and Free Software a lot, whatever direction it turns out to go into.
It looks like there will not be an Ubuntu phone ready for the Xmas shopping season this year, and that's sad, very sad!
Even Apple launched a new phone without having any real new features...

Re:Only time will tell...

[rasmusbr]

If we're talking popularity it would probably be a distro that's made by a company with a revenue stream and the staying power that comes with that and clear idea about what they're trying to accomplish, perhaps a distro that is super easy to play games on.

I think there was an announcement about an upcoming Linux distro that would fit that bill a couple of days ago...

People who can't do without a Win95-style UI will probably flock around something else, though.

Re:Only time will tell...

[aepervius]

What turned me off Linux based OSes 10-12 years ago was the amount of text file hacking that was required to get a usable system.

Thank god for modern concepts like ,,Registry'' and non human-readable binary file formats. Yay:)

Well the 90ies called back. As a normal user you have not needed to edit the registry in windows for *ages* (and even then it is relatively a simple matter of finding the correct key). I was still lately editing some config file or others in any linux version with arcane format.

Re:Only time will tell...

[div_2n]

I've said it before -- their campaign (on Indiegogo by the way, not Kickstarter) was an abject clinic in how not to do an online campaign. They did just about everything in exactly the worst way to ensure success. The miracle story of that campaign was how much money they got despite their (many) missteps.

Re:Only time will tell...

[amiga3D]

Yeah I like trying everything. I bounce from one distro to another every 6 months or so. They all work pretty well overall it's just the look and feel mostly that differentiate. I do prefer the ones using apt-get over the ones using Yum. The one I've spent the most time with is Mepis. I keep going back to it. I find features in all that I like, maybe if I could find a way to combine them. Too bad I lack the time and skill to package my own distro. I think I'm going to try Arch next. I read an article in a Linux mag recently that made it sound pretty attractive.

Re:Only time will tell...

[goarilla]

Who is this we ?

Re:Only time will tell...

[fisted]

Your X server didnt know what your window manager was doing, the window manager didnt know what the running programs were doing

Which is exactly how it should be.

Re:Only time will tell...

[fisted]

I don't think that, and i didn't say so. What it does, is discouraging the user from learning. Therefore, the overall effect is just the same.

Re:Only time will tell...

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

Mint is what Ubuntu should be.

Re:Only time will tell...

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

I just bought a new SSD and decided to put Mint 13 on it after having encountered a lot of minor niggles with 15. It's thoroughly tested and stable, and supported until 2017. I can play with cutting edge stuff on another partition if I want to.

Hopefully

[Redmancometh]

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.

Re:Hopefully

[somersault]

What's wrong with having a "pay store" as the app manager? It's better than having one place for paid apps, and one for free. All mobile devices use this method, and it works great. You can install the vast majority of your apps and libraries in one place, updates are all handled by one system rather than several.. it's one of the few things that they're actually doing right.

Why does it even matter what the package manager is, as long as it's still using .debs?

Re:Hopefully

[RoboJ1M]

Oh no, you don't understand, Linux means no money for anyone ever!

How dare they attempt to charge for their hard work!! *8@

And you are, of course, right.
The package manager is still apt or Aptitude or whatever it's called.
The Ubuntu Software Centre is GUI built on top of this and it's utterly fantastic.
Compared to the original Gnome Synaptic which was functional but utterly incomprehensible to all but the few percentiles of techies out there do this for a living.
And you still have the apt- command line tools, which are best for "power" use anyway.

Re:Hopefully

[silas_moeckel]

People use a gui for app installation? Long live yum -y install . Only ever used ubuntu on a netbook and can not say it was stellar.

Re:Hopefully

[etrusco]

Ubuntu just changed the *default* package manager *GUI*, it still uses vanilla apt and deb back-end. You can still use (I do) synaptic, aptitude, smart-pm, whatever.

Re:Hopefully

[drinkypoo]

What's wrong with having a "pay store" as the app manager?

There would be nothing wrong, if you got a checkbox for "only free"

I don't want to be advertised to by my package manager. That is wasteful and unnecessary.

Re:Hopefully

[marcosdumay]

If you make sure it does not spy on the users, and has no system wide DRM, no problem at all.

Re:Hopefully

[TopherC]

The itunes, google play, and other paid app stores seem to me to discourage open source development. AFAICT there is no standard way to go from the market page to a project or source code page. Very few Android apps are open source, and the few that are open are hard to identify as such and find the code. But most desktop Linux-based distributions have package managers that allow easy access to the source code.

There is something about the mobile development community that almost discourages open source. Part of this may be the ease of creating paid or add-supported apps. Is this drawing developers that otherwise would not be coding or just writing Windows software onto a (mostly) open-source platform? Or is it outright discouraging open-source development? I'm thinking it's mostly the former but a little of the latter too.

Re: Hopefully

[RoboJ1M]

Then it was badly set up or a bad choice of hardware, but that's a hardware suppliers thing not a Linux thing. Or you just didn't like it. My girlfriend uses a Dell mini 10 with Ubuntu and completed her degree using it. It is quiet clearly useable and suitable for general computing tasks.

Re:Hopefully

[rysiek]

Putting Skype and Ekiga in the same category ("Free"). This should be split between "Gratis" and "Libre". There is a huge difference.

Re:Hopefully

[somersault]

I have been tempted to write mobile apps from time to time. When I wrote games and AI stuff as a teenager, I did release the source to both of my "big" projects. I haven't made anything for public use since then. I'm not against open sourcing my stuff, but I have been tempted to write mobile apps to try to develop a little business on the side. It doesn't have much to do with whether it's open source or not, though as a development platform I do find the fact that Android is open source to be an attractive thing. Anyway, I don't think it's either encouraging or discouraging open source. It's maybe discouraging PC development, which probably will also mean less people working on open source desktop projects to an extent.

I see the mobile arena as kind of a replay of the days of shareware games. Those were the days when I was thinking about making games - when even the best games could still basically be made by just one person if they worked hard. Then came AAA games with millions in budget, voice acting, artwork, music, etc, etc. Mobile games/apps are a great chance for lone developers to get some viable exposure again. Seeing as I already have a full time job and other interests in life, I haven't been too bothered about following that particular dream yet.

Re:Hopefully

[someSnarkyBastard]

Most F/OSS Android apps usually include a link to github or the like in their descriptions...or at least the ones I use.

Try again.

Re:Hopefully

[Samizdata]

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.

I don't even use the standard apt-get, as I have become a serious fan of apt-fast with aria2c handling the actual downloads. Best of all worlds for me. Gives me easy CLI control over upgrading, with the ability to stack a clean at the end, and it actually really utilizes my bandwidth to boot.

Re:Hopefully

[Samizdata]

People use a gui for app installation? Long live yum -y install . Only ever used ubuntu on a netbook and can not say it was stellar.

Nope, as I mentioned above, I don't like the GUI installers as they only single thread downloads. Although, I must cop to flipping over to GUI tools for source management, as I use a metric fuckton of PPAs.

Linux Mint anyone?

[captainpanic]

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.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[Redmancometh]

I didn't like it because the training wheels, but ubuntu in the gnome2 era was pretty nice.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu got popular because the ordinary people who cannot figure out how a command line works could use it.

Hardly. It got popular because it was debian based and didn't require knowledge of every part of the system to get it up running acceptably - you installed it and most stuff worked without hours of research and hair-pulling.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[houghi]

I mean, even the close/minimize/maximize buttons had to be switched around to the top left... WHY?

Isn't that desktop and not distribution related?

I use openSUSE, because the _I_ can decode what I want to use. With the DVD you can select KDE or GNOME or with an extra click XFCE or LXDE. Or I add it afterwards, if I want to. I can even have multiple ones and let each user on the PC decide what they want. No need to change the distro if you want to change on of its programs.

Now if you do not like Unity, but do like Ubuntu, why not go for Xubuntu? Or something else from *buntu?

I see it all the time that people confuse the distro with the desktop. Even when professional reviews are done, what they test is not the distro, but the current version of the desktop.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[Christian Smith]

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?

Having the task bar at the side makes perfect sense on modern aspect ratio displays. Todays laptops are very genererous in width, but not so generous in height, so wasting height with a taskbar doesn't make sense if it can live on the side. When working in Windows, I move the taskbar to the side, which makes an enormous difference in usable screen on small laptops.

Putting the window decorations on the left just moves them closer to the left taskbar. Left? Right? Arbitrary really.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[Kjella]

Ubuntu got popular because the ordinary people who cannot figure out how a command line works could use it.

Linux was and is still predominantly used by people who can use a command line, but Ubuntu won a following with those who don't want to. I came from Debian which was a nice, solid base but very few cared about the desktop. That was something which just happened to run on top of the rock solid server they were building. Hell, when I switched Debian still didn't have a boot screen, it was text scrolling past because who cares on a server? But it was 2007 and it looked a DOS boot from the 1980s, I'm not going to pretend that was a big thing but it was representative of the attitude. To use the infamous car analogy, the only thing Debian focused on was the engine, gearbox, brakes, chassis and so on. Ubuntu came and said we'll give you that with a nice interior, leather seats, air condition, sun roof, metallic paint and a nice polish. Seemed like a win-win at the time.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[lennier1]

Ubuntu was the first distribution I used on a regular basis (back in the Gnome 2 days), because the large number of beginner-friendly tutorials and support forums made it easier to get started.

When Canonical and Gnome both began to screw up the system (Gnome 3 and Unity on the horizon) I moved on to greener pastures. Since I've developed a personal preference for Debian-based systems after years of exposure to different systems on desktops and servers, Mint with Xfce was the obvious choice for little ol' me.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[barista]

Todays laptops are very genererous in width, but not so generous in height, so wasting height with a taskbar doesn't make sense if it can live on the side.

Except it's more useful to me if it's at the bottom. If it takes up too much space, make it resizable, like the Dock in OS X.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

If I want to be a hipster, I'll get an Apple.

What? If anything we're old school. Our desktop UI hasn't drastically changed, X server is available to run our Unix programs, and we have command line interface just like you. It also works very well with Linux servers.

Just because you're pissed at Ubuntu doesn't mean you have to start ragging on us Apple users.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[RoboJ1M]

It also won a following from people who *can* use a command line but didn't necessarily spend every spare hour outside of work inside of one trying to get the GPU drivers to work or *insert common hardware name here*.

So no, no thank you to Linux Mint.
Ubuntu works and I like being able to load applications using Super + Search on the Dash or whatever it's called.
Which was the only feature I liked on Win7.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[captainpanic]

Ubuntu used to appeal to me because it worked (to my liking) straight out of the box. If I have to start testing multiple desktop environments before I can start enjoying it, that selling point is gone. In Mint, I haven't had to adjust any settings.

To your average uninformed user, there is the operating system, and there are apps. A desktop is not an app, so it must be the operating system. I kinda agree with that simplification. I didn't like Ubuntu with Unity, so I went for Mint, with whatever desktop I got with that (don't even know the name).

This article is about why Ubuntu is losing popularity, and that is certainly not because its user-base is so well-informed about work-arounds for the crap they don't like. Now get off my lawn.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[barlevg]

I'd actually argue the opposite. The people who care about the scrolling text are also the ones most likely to be able to revert a setting or customize their install to better suit their own purposes. Nitwits who get scared by walls of text are unlikely to be capable of making their own splash screens.

The ideal OS is one where 90% of the functionality is easily usable by 100% of the user base. There's nothing wrong with power users having to do a little work to get that extra 10%.

Re: Linux Mint anyone?

[techprophet]

I wasn't aware we needed a reason to rag on Apple users.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having the task bar on the side still doesn't make sense. On laptops with subpar pixel counts, the horizontal pixel count is also lacking. Take away those horizontal pixels for a task bar and things like webpages now require horizontal scrolling, which sucks.

Vertical task bars also have the problem with most languages being written horizontally (with tall, narrow letters), and to display a reasonable amount of the window title in the task bar, a horizontal task bar has to be several times wider than a usable vertical task bar is tall.

Even when I had an EEE PC with a 1024x600 display, I found the horizontal task bar far more practical, because those horizontal pixels were far more precious.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[jez9999]

It got popular because it was debian based and didn't require knowledge of every part of the system to get it up running acceptably

How come Debian didn't get popular, then?

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[Svartalf]

They didn't put as much effort into "it just works" with mostly the latest and greatest as Ubuntu did. Debian's got more amazing amounts of "stuff" than people were prepared to deal with- and the good stuff was oftentimes in "Sid" which meant you weren't as stable as Ubuntu USED to be.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[Arker]

"But it was 2007 and it looked a DOS boot from the 1980s, I'm not going to pretend that was a big thing but it was representative of the attitude."

An attitude that focused on results instead of marketing?

Oh how very unprogressive of them.

You claim it's not a big thing but you also attribute your choice of Ubuntu to it! Think about that for a moment. You could have had (and still can have) a system that *works* much better, but you are hung up on looks.

Maybe Ubuntu is exactly what you deserve.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[F.Ultra]

I actually prefer these buttons to be on the left. Switching to work in Windows to do some cross compiling of stuff always amazes my how much more I have to move the mouse due to these buttons beeing on the right side of the windows. And if you don't like it then you can change them to the right by changing the theme of the desktop.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[CQDX]

That and also Debian's refusal to not include or link to closed firmware/drivers. The last two Debian installs I did couldn't use the wifi on a laptop and a ethernet port on a server until I found the firmware on a different site and installed them with a USB key after the regular OS install completed. It required a bunch of extra steps and familiarity with Linux. Had I been a novice trying Linux for the first time I would have given up.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[thoth]

How come Debian didn't get popular, then?

My memory is a bit fuzzy, since it was years ago, but I remember installing an early Ubuntu (either warthog or hedgehog) and it had a nice graphical installer that didn't bombard you with questions.

I also installed debian from the same era. It was a text-mode installer, asked a bunch of obscure questions (assuming regular users) like which filesystem I wanted to use. After that, it was a extra work to get X up and working.

I'll let you figure out why debian didn't become popular in the demographic ubuntu was initially aimed at.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[snarfies]

No thanks. I don't appreciate their anti-semitism.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[Kjella]

The problem is not all people opinions are equal. The opinion of the people who don't know what any of that 'scrolling text' means is far less useful in the area of computing than that of those who do know what it means and consider it useful diagnostic information. Pandering to nitwits who think its important to have a shiny boot time display with a spinning logo does not a better platform make.

Diagnostic information is fine, if you're trying to diagnose something but 99.9% of the time I'm not and then I'd rather have a nice spinning logo and have the boot log appear on error or if it freezes hard then as a boot option on the next boot. But I guess that's "pandering to nitwits", so after 3.5 years of dealing with asshats like you I finally had enough verbal abuse and insults so I returned to Windows. You're the kind of person who makes me advice people stay away from Linux with a ten foot pole. Worst thing is, you probably enjoy it and take it as proof we're not "hardcore" enough to run Linux. I got tired of being attacked, when Windows has a problem we blame Microsoft and people try to help out while Linux seems all about throwing as much shit back in my face as possible. So I went back to my "Wintendo" as one of the people I asked for help called it.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[H0p313ss]

Ubuntu got popular because the ordinary people who cannot figure out how a command line works could use it.

Hardly. It got popular because it was debian based and didn't require knowledge of every part of the system to get it up running acceptably - you installed it and most stuff worked without hours of research and hair-pulling.

It's both, it was a nice compromise for neophyte, expert users, experienced linux users and old hacks like me. In 2007 it was a system that people from any of those groups could agree apon.

Both Unity and Gnome Shell are interesting UI experiments, but not ready for the main stream. This has annoyed the neophyte and expert users alike.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[drinkypoo]

You could get that functionality with gnome-do, or probably with several other packages, and avoid Ubuntu in the process.

In fact, I think I'll just go back to emerald and gnome-do. And some kind of dock. I dropped Unity for LXDE already, but I'm not ecstatic with it either.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[marcosdumay]

Installing Debian was once a hell of lots and lots of setup, obscure questions, and things that warned you that would burn your computer if you entered the wrong value. You often had to build boot disks with the modules required by your computer, and recompiling the kernel was often the first thing you'd do on a newly installed system (the second being reconfiguring X).

Ubuntu came, and didn't require any of those steps. Even if you needed proprietary drivers, it was just a matter of putting the CDs at the trail, and answering a few questions.

Fast forward to now, installing Debian is just a matter of connecting to the net, and answering very few questions, after that everything just works. Installing Ubuntu is just a matter fo putting a DVD on the trail, and answering very few questions, after that you better pray that everything works, because whatever don't, you won't be able to fix anymore (unless you replace most of the system).

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[kimgkimg]

+1 for Linux Mint. Love the distro. Nice, fast and does what I need it to do daily.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[Wookact]

I haven't had the time to really play with linux for a few years, but the last time I did I remember that the boot screen (Opensuse) had some sort of animated screen, but if you hit Esc then it dropped you to the scrolling text. Was this not an option in the distro you used? Honestly the whole things sounds like a tempest in a teapot. Does it really matter that much? I am not trying to be flippant but why does there HAVE to be a spinning logo?

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[fwarren]

I mean, even the close/minimize/maximize buttons had to be switched around to the top left... WHY?

I believe it is something like penis envy.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[rrohbeck]

Having the task bar at the side makes perfect sense on modern aspect ratio displays.

Unless you use multiple systems (with synergy) side by side. That makes any panel on the screen side a nonstarter.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[DworkinLV]

"But 99% of this planet's population are nitwits,"

This! If anyone has a clue at all in CS and IT they will acknowledge this first and then design for the nitwits, but ALSO design for the people that have brains. Because it's us with brains that have to maintain this crap for the nitwits.

Here's the problem, the two are ALMOST mutually exclusive. (Please note ALMOST). One group wants bling ("Ooooh Shiny!!") and the other group wants functionality/stability, or (at least a way to minimize or customize the bling).

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[shutdown -p now]

Putting the window decorations on the left just moves them closer to the left taskbar.

This is actually precisely why you don't want them there - because you end up accidentally closing windows when trying to switch apps.

On the other hand, with taskbar on the left and nothing on the right, it makes perfect sense to place the window buttons on the right, because that places the close button into the corner - and then Fitts' law applies.

Re: Linux Mint anyone?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

I would mod you funny!

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[Markos]

Ease of install. I remember installing Debian back then and having to futz around to get my monitor and my TV Tuner card working. When I first tried Ubuntu it set up everything without any interaction, I was quite impressed.

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[goarilla]

I see it all the time that people confuse the distro with the desktop. Even when professional reviews are done, what they test is not the distro, but the current version of the desktop.

They are testing the distribution's default configs for those desktops !

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[RoboJ1M]

Fair enough.

But why would I want to change OS and set it all up myself just to avoid Ubuntu?

It already does exactly what I need it to! :)

Re:Linux Mint anyone?

[F.Ultra]

Sure? Open a terminal and run:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences button-layout ':minimize,maximize,close'

leaving ubuntu could be nice...

[Anonymous Coward]

...if there was a tool able to transform an ubuntu install into a pure debian one.

Re:leaving ubuntu could be nice...

[behrooz0az]

Apt is preinstalled in ubuntu, just add experimental debian sources and apt-get dist-upgrade.Just make sure all packages are upgraded/removed/installed and nothing is left behind.

Re:leaving ubuntu could be nice...

[marcello_dl]

experimental has not got all debian packages, unstable does.
I suggest a backup, install debian on usb for a couple days to test it out, install on hd and restore /home from backup.

Yes and No

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

decline of Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Never knew what was wrong...

[cablepokerface]

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.

Re:Never knew what was wrong...

[marcello_dl]

> I mean c'mon, just make it f-in work out of the box.

You are addressing the hardware manufacturers, right? because they have the power to do that, all the others have to hack support into their drivers.

Re:Never knew what was wrong...

[cablepokerface]

You're right of course. It's not the OS' fault. You know this, and so do I. But it's beside the point. To make a succesful desktop OS you needn't concern yourself (like, ever) with those driver issues.

It's understandable, but then again, it really isn't.

Time to move

[andrea.sartori]

Ubuntu ceased being relevant sometime around 2011. The walled garden approach does not work with the open source crowd.

Re:Time to move

[Bert64]

There's an important distinction to make between software which is becoming essential to our day to day lives (like a browser), or is used to store our data, vs entertainment software like games...

The former are pretty much essential, in most developed countries almost everyone needs access to the internet and the basic software to do so these days. The idea of commercial companies locking up key resources, or your own personal data are extremely dangerous and definitely need to be avoided.

On the other hand, none of us *need* games. They are a luxury that we can do without if necessary, so people are far more willing to compromise when the stakes are so much lower.

Re:Time to move

[Metabolife]

Let's look at the different types of walled gardens we've been seeing: Apple - Completely closed off without some scrutiny, both paid and unpaid Ubuntu - Add any sources you want, includes paid Steam - Majority paid, they own your licenses These are different beasts. Steam is accepted here because it will bring Linux more into the mainstream. The reality is that Steam is far worse than any walled garden we've ever seen before. Be careful what you wish for.

Re:Time to move

[marcosdumay]

Currently Steam does not put walls around your software, and neither spies on you. Apple does both, Ubuntu does the spying, but currently does not create walls.

Re:Time to move

[Wookact]

I am curious. How is Steam by far the worse walled garden?
Do they prevent you from installing applications from other sources? No.
Do they remove installed content from your computer? No.
Are they planning a Open OS? Yes

Re:Time to move

[Samizdata]

Ubuntu ceased being relevant sometime around 2011. The walled garden approach does not work with the open source crowd.

Then, ummmmm, how do you account for the free PPA system? I use them substantially for apps that Canonical doesn't offer, while allowing me the convenience of having semi-automatic (I prefer my method to the canned Software Updater) updates.

Decline

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Don't think so

[aaaaaaargh!]

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.

Re:Don't think so

[RoboJ1M]

Oooh, snap.

Double points if you've got her parents using it as well.

Also I don't use the forums any more, for useful info AskUbuntu of (incredible) StackExchange fame is where it's at now.

Although there is a general Unix stack exchange, as far as I know only Ubuntu has a dedicated one.
Well, that and the Raspberry Pi on which you can ask Raspbian questions.

Re:Don't think so

[superzerg]

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.

Funny how girlfrinds (at leastyours and mine) can't google the problem and find these forum by themselves still ;)

Re:Don't think so

[drinkypoo]

Funny how girlfrinds (at leastyours and mine) can't google the problem and find these forum by themselves still ;)

Perhaps they have other talents. That was not entirely innuendo, either...

Re:Don't think so

[RazorSharp]

People who give a fuck can install another window/desktop manager, for example I give a fuck and use XFCE.

This is exactly how I feel. It's so strange to me how everyone around here bitches endlessly about Unity. I tried Unity and I didn't like it. Now I use XFCE and Unity isn't relevant to me in the least bit, despite the fact that I use Ubuntu daily. On another system I run Mint with Cinnamon. It runs all the same applications. If I were running XFCE on top of it rather than Cinnamon, I wouldn't even be able to tell the difference between the two.

Canonical pays people to work on Linux full time. I'm glad they do that and they have my support for doing so. Just because some of those people spend their time working on a crappy GUI doesn't mean I'll damn Canonical and renounce everything they do, as so many around here seem to be doing. I don't like the KDE desktop much, either, but I'm still glad they exist and I do use other software they produce. I think Stallman's an insufferable jackass but I still use plenty of GNU software.

Too many geeks seek ideological purity rather than functionality. If Ubuntu stops being functional for me, I'll transition to something that is. I couldn't care less about the doom and gloom pessimists who think Canonical will lock all Ubuntu platforms into Unity in the future. If they do that, it'll hurt Canonical, not me. It's just like all the doom and gloom pessimists who have been claiming that Apple is going to replace OS X with some desktop iOS. It would suck if Apple did that, and I probably would stop buying their stuff if they did, but I don't see it happening as they know people like me would abandon their platform. Just like Canonical knows that I would abandon their platform if XFCE didn't run on it.

Re:Don't think so

[epine]

All Shuttleworth had to do was to put some logic into the "upgrade" box that warned people away from Unity whose present system configuration indicated that Unity couldn't possibly amount to a preferred experience at that stage of Unity's evolution—if ever.

Timing the introduction of Unity around an LTS on the old Gnome with an extra year of support would have gone a long ways to keeping some of us old farts in the fold while the new world order shook itself out.

No, the flow of traffic changed from driving on the right to driving on the left without so much as a single advance sign, or a well-marked alternate route driving on the accustomed side of the road. Also changed were the width of the lanes, clearance height on the underpasses, and the legality of making a left turn at a red light (which used to be a right turn), with no posted warnings.

Those of us driving larger loads were blind-sided and left to fend elsewhere, as fast as our little feet could take us there on short notice.

With a tear in my eye, I have to concur..

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:With a tear in my eye, I have to concur..

[Anonymous Coward]

opensuse 12.3

Re:With a tear in my eye, I have to concur..

[jepsr]

I have found aptosid a good alternative. It is Debian based and easy to maintain once you consult the manual and learn a few basic commands.

Re:With a tear in my eye, I have to concur..

[goose-incarnated]

LMDE

Re:With a tear in my eye, I have to concur..

[columbus]

I'll second this.

I was using Debian 6 (squeeze) with gnome 2 on the desktop. I didn't upgrade to Debian 7 (wheezy) because I didn't want to mess around with gnome 3. I thought I'd give Linux Mint Debian Edition a try. The LMDE with MATE gives me a new kernel, better performance, same desktop environment I was used to.

Updates are a bit rougher, but I've been able to handle that. Overall, so far, so good.

A viewpoint from a lame long held Windows lover.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

As a [KX]ubuntu, yes

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:As a [KX]ubuntu, yes

[Bucc5062]

Power corrupts. I switched to Mint after Unity gummed up my home Linux Server. There was time when Linux was the go to OS for older systems, Ubuntu (and by extension Mint) changed that equation. On the positive side, as Linux is not a primary system for my work I can get back to playing/experimenting with other options to see what will fit my needs.

Ubuntu pulled me into the Linux World after years of dabbling. It is something that Ubuntu is now the one to push me away to other options.

Unity

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Unity

[RoboJ1M]

Agreed.
Started with Dapper, it's been (net) improving ever since.
Finally somebody stopped just copying other companies or previous desktops and tried something new.
Took a few years but it's now very usable.

Re:unity

[LurkerXXX]

You mean install Gnome and get a 1 pixel border that's almost impossible to grab on your 2560x1600 screen, because the folks making Ubuntu have tablets in mind and have rediculous defaults, making you spend a bunch of time going in and changing config files?

No thanks, downloading a Distro with decent destop defaults is much faster than downloading the new Ubuntu version and spending half a day fixing things up so they work sanely.

Re:unity

[tuckerteeth]

I guess it depends on whether you are installing afresh or just sick of an existing Ubuntu installation. I've done both, I prefer the clean sheets smell of a fresh Xubuntu installation but installing the Xubuntu package does the job.

Re:unity

[X0563511]

It would have been stupid easy: aptitude install xubuntu-desktop

That's it. Bam. Next login, chose XFCE for your session. You'd still have all the extra software, but you could remove the 'ubuntu-desktop' metapackage and lots of that would likely go away. Or you could leave it and just not run it - up to you, disk space is cheap.

Re:unity

[imnes]

Want a stable, proven desktop that isn't being upgraded with useless flash and features? This works nicely on Ubuntu(s)

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/

Re:unity

[znrt]

switch to my preference, which I will not state, as it is even less popular than unity.

prrrrleaseeeee!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53AP7fGGPoA#t=17

But if you want ice or enlightenment or windowmaker or kde, or classic gnome, they are all immediate options with just a few clicks.

not really true, depending on your choice you might have a bit of a hassle there. at least 12.04 lts, which is the only distro allowed at my work :/ they left a lot of confusion around regarding gtk config utilities, libs, traditional themes, specially if you want to preserve gnome settings. oh, and getting rid of that retarded scrollbar thing, for instance (some ui designers just deserve slow and painful death). ok, you might be lucky, but i thought "it just works" was one of the core ideas of ubuntu. linux for human beings, remember?

and that's exactly where canonical screwed totally up. unity would be all and good if you could happyly throw shove it away and get back to classic seamlessly if you so desired. but you couldn't. switching to xubuntu or even another distro was the most straightforward way out left. i'm glad to hear this was addressed in later releases but for me ubuntu fired itself into oblivion with 12.04, a release that defied it's most important (stated) purpose, no doubt. many thanks for the long ride, anyway.

Re:unity

[Shirley Marquez]

Installing one of the Ubuntu variants is a better way to switch than just installing a window manager, because it makes sure that you get all the software that's meant to go with your new choice of desktop. And it's dead simple; you only have to install ONE package (xubuntu-desktop, kubuntu-desktop, etc.) to get the new desktop choice you want.

Once you have done that, logging into the desktop of your choice is an option on the login screen. You can make your favorite the default.

If your system is tight on disk space (mostly important for laptops with SSDs) you might prefer to just install the variant you want from the start; that will likely save you a gigabyte or so. Otherwise it's no big deal; there is no performance penalty to having the extra options, just a space penalty.

Distributions rise and fall in popularity

[wjcofkc]

Distributions come and go. Linux lasts forever.

Re:Distributions rise and fall in popularity

[H0p313ss]

You're trolling, but sometimes you just gotta feed the troll.

Windows is like herpes, Linux is more like mitochondria.

Re:Distributions rise and fall in popularity

[iggymanz]

some linux distros are almost as old as Linux and endure like a rock, such as Slackware and Debian

Wrong premise

[illogicalpremise]

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.

Re:Wrong premise

[wisnoskij]

No, I would say the premise was that it has to satisfy some group of people, which it increasingly does not.

Re:Wrong premise

[umafuckit]

The core of Ubuntu users are more typically ex-Windows users trying linux for the first time.

I keep reading this here. Perhaps it's true that first-time Linux users initially try Ubuntu, but there seems to be the notion on /. that once you've learned Ubuntu you "move on" to a more "hardcore" distro. But why should you? If Ubuntu works for you, then why move to something "harder"? If you're using Ubuntu for work or home surfing then there's no productivity gain by switching distros. The only reasons I can think for doing so are ideological, or because you want to explore and learn more about Linux. In terms of actually doing work: there's no point and messing around with difficult distros just sucks up time.

Personally, I moved from XP to SuSE back in 2001 or so because I wanted more flexibility, a CLI that works, etc. The only reason I switched to Ubuntu was because I got fed up trying to install new versions of software on SuSE. I don't know if it's got better, but back then I wasted a lot of time searching websites to find the right RPMs to resolve version conflicts. That's all gone with Ubuntu. So my reason for switching distros was purely productivity related. Other than that, SuSE was just as beginner friendly as Ubuntu was back then.

Yes.

[Barryke]

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.

Ubu-Pop & GNU-Pop is rising

[keneng]

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.

Re:Ubu-Pop & GNU-Pop is rising

[Anonymous Coward]

In Germany, they are giving away Ubuntu CD's for all Windows XP users.

Funny thing is: half the install base of windows XP wont be able to run the current default Ubuntu install at acceptable speeds, they should have given away XUbuntu or similar lightweight configurations. Source: I had Ubuntu on severall former Windows XP systems until feature creep and outdated 3d hardware accelaration slowed anything down to a crawl. This might not be Ubuntus fault, it is just that Windows XP is rather acient and runs on similar aged hardware - Unity and Gnome 3 expect modern hardware.

Re:Ubu-Pop & GNU-Pop is rising

[RazorSharp]

It will just run failsafe mode if the system can't support Unity, which is basically an old version of Gnome. Failsafe mode is preferable to Unity anyway, and from there the user can install a better desktop environment such as XFCE.

dying desktop.

[jellomizer]

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.

Re:dying desktop.

[gagol]

Thank god for open-source. Diversity rocks!

Re:dying desktop.

[jellomizer]

How does one license a particular software make it more or less different then an other piece of software?

Windows and OS X and Linux are all very different. The uniqueness of Linux's interface isn't due to its open source, but due to the fact it's design was based on Unix and X-Windows, which usually requires a Windows Manager to run on top of the X-Server.

Re:dying desktop.

[Lumpy]

Too bad linux doesn't have any usable CAD packages.

Re:dying desktop.

[jawtheshark]

Not going to say it's worth any thing, but when I needed to open DWG files my architect sent me, DraftSight was sufficient. Since I have no idea how to use a CAD program, I can't say much about the usability though.

Re:dying desktop.

[Arker]

"Ok the desktop isn't going to die, but it is becoming more of a workstation than a personal computer."

Odd that you would say that. The whole 'desktop' fad in linux has resulted in the deprecation of lots of workstation quality software in favour of new, flashy, incompetent 'desktop' replacements. So are you predicting a reverse of that trend?

Re:dying desktop.

[bored_engineer]

Here is a pretty good list of CAD software available for Linux.

At home, I use Draftsight and FreeCAD. I had trouble with FreeCAD in the past, but it works quite well new. I tried gcad3d, but couldn't get used to it. I also used Cycas when I was designing a house, but it's a little different. Varicad is very nice, but it's too pricey for me.

Re:dying desktop.

[mcgrew]

How does one license a particular software make it more or less different then an other piece of software?

*head asplodes*

Are you REALLY that stupid, or are you trolling? Did you not see the GP saying "diversity rocks?" How many different versions of Windows can you buy in a store? One, W8. How many Mac desktops are available? One. Why? Because they control the code. You're not allowed to write an alternate desktop. OTOH there are many different choices for Linux; Gnome, KDE, Unity, Mint, the list goes on. If you don't like your W8 desktop, well, tough shit you should have bought your PC when they were still selling W7. Don't like Gnome? No problem, install a different one. Don't like any of them? You can write your own.

You can't do that with closed source software.

Really, that had to be explained to you? My oldest daughter is autistic to the point that she's on disability and she can figure it out. Jesus, man!

BTW, "it's" is a contraction of "it is". The posessive is its, no apostrophe, just as his and hers have no apostrophes.

Not linear

[trickstyhobbit]

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.

Decline, but not fall

[oneandoneis2]

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.

Weird positionning

[obarthelemy]

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, ...

No...it's already happened

[hideouspenguinboy]

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.

No, we've already seen it

[EmagGeek]

That ship sailed a loooooong time ago.

Server still isn't too bad, but Desktop is a botched abortion.

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.

Quality assurance, I tells ya

[jones_supa]

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:
* Brightness is changed in two steps at a time. Apparently the button press event gets handled by both OS and BIOS. Setting /sys/module/video/parameters/brightness_switch_enabled to 0 can be used as a workaround.
* 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 .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?

Unity Broke Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:A viewpoint from a lame long held Windows lover

[jones_supa]

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.

Re:Not just Ubuntu

[jones_supa]

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.

Ubuntu started declining with version 5.04.

[Max Threshold]

4.10 was revolutionary, but it was all downhill from there... at least in terms of expectation vs. reality.

Alt+drag

[tepples]

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.

Re:Alt+drag

[Blaskowicz]

Gnome2, Mate, Xfce have alt+drag for moving windows too, and probably other WM/DE.

Re:Alt+drag

[TheCarp]

alt-drag to move windows is actually a very old default. I first learned about it over a decade ago when a co-worker and I were talking about WM customization. For a LONG TIME I ran with no window decorations on my terminal windows, total borderless, and just used alt-drag and its companions (like all middle drag and alt right drag) to move and resize them.

I was pretty miffed when I found it was getting harder and less reliable to make windows borderless unless I want to be swapping out window managers... I feel like I have spent enough of my life swapping out and configuring window managers.

Re:Alt+drag

[X0563511]

What window manager were you using? There's usually a way to change this key assignment in a "control center" item somewhere - or at least under .config or the like in your home directory. Depends on the window manager of course.

I usually use Super (windows key) as I've yet to ever see a program use Super+mousebutton for anything. In my case, Blender likes alt+clickdrag. I never end up using it though, clicking and dragging on the titlebar is so strongly ingrained into my habits that I just... never think to do it differently.

Re:Alt+drag

[tepples]

What window manager were you using?

Whatever window manager shipped as the default in Puppy as of early 2008.

There's usually a way to change this key assignment in a "control center" item somewhere

I looked but failed to find it. In the past five years, has the default window manager of Puppy added such an option to its control center, or has Puppy switched to one that has such an option in its control center? I'd download and try it myself, but at the moment, I don't happen to have a spare machine handy on which to evaluate the latest Puppy.

Re:Alt+drag

[X0563511]

I thought one of the primary draws of puppy is it was a "live" system - no need to install.

I haven't used it in at least that long, myself - so I couldn't tell you if that was changed. To be honest I couldn't tell you what it looked like! I used puppy for a very short while. For me, DSL replaced it (and even then I didn't use that long, preferring instead to just install a "normal" distro). I've used what feels like dozens of distros and I keep landing back at either Debian or CentOS even for my desktop. They don't have that big a footprint unless you install everything :)

Re:What are you guys smoking?

[RoboJ1M]

Agreed.
But why so anonymous?

Its the linux 7 year itch...

[Lumpy]

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.

Decline can be helpful

[prefec2]

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.

A race towards irrelevance

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

"...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.

Community and OS declined, I switched to OSX.

[myvirtualid]

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.

Re:Community and OS declined, I switched to OSX.

[DiamondGeezer]

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.

I think you've nailed this ridiculous TFA on the head. The people who want to hack config files all the time are those people who have no lives.

For the rest of us, we want power and convenience without being boxed in by geeks or corporations. Ubuntu is fulfilling its role for large numbers of people who don't want to hack config files or search for obscure libraries to get shit done.

The operating system is there for a purpose. I do not live to make the OS happy.

As for the idiots who went to Slackware: "Good luck with losing your virginity".

Re:Community and OS declined, I switched to OSX.

[Parker Lewis]

I installed Ubuntu LTS with Unity due the same reason you switched to OSX: just works. In my DELL laptop, I just touched config to install Bumblebee. With a plus I can customize a lot of things if I want.
Additionally, as I'm a developer, much easier to handle apt-get than use brew. Mainly because is the same I can use in the servers.

Re:Community and OS declined, I switched to OSX.

[thoth]

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.

Exactly my sentiments! These days I just run linux in a vm - the abstracted hardware works great, snapshot before any risky config changes for easy recovery - and osx for day to day. And windows for some games.

Re:Community and OS declined, I switched to OSX.

[wvmarle]

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.

The main power-use for me would be occasional command line stuff to automate things. Like I have several cron jobs to get stuff done on a regular basis. Should work similar on OS-X. But surely wouldn't want to miss that option.

Re:Community and OS declined, I switched to OSX.

[Blaskowicz]

I guess I could survive using OSX, or even going back to watching TV and playing the NES. But what about the incomplete keyboard on the Macs? Hard to think page down, home etc. are power user features.

Re:Community and OS declined, I switched to OSX.

[MarcoAtWork]

just get a USB/PS2 keyboard adapter and use whatever keyboard you want. I still am using my first-generation microsoft natural keyboard and it's working great, with KeyRemap4MacBook I can also have all my 'weird' keybindings in emacs working perfectly too (super, hyper, ...)

I have been using linux since 1992 or so, but lately I find that OS/X is just better: a lot of distributions now seem to have nonsensical defaults (I was reading with dismay about removing the middle mouse paste here the other day, that's crazy) are iffy from a security/privacy perspective (since when should a distribution connect to random internet sites without me configuring it to, run it in a vm with something like little snitch and you'll see) and seem more geared towards windows users vs old linux users.

Paradoxically I feel more at home with OS/X, most things 'just work', via macports I can install all the things I need, little snitch is great, and with the already mentioned KeyRemap4MacBook, Alfred and BetterTouchTool I can configure the keyboard/trackpad exactly how I want it (I have to say that as much as the mouse is better for FPS games, the mac trackpad is awesome for desktop use), etc. etc.

I do miss linux when something doesn't work as well though (like on my old macbook that sometimes randomly beachballs, which is next to impossible to debug unfortunately) but overall right now on my primary desktop I am fairly happy with OS/X. I do run linux vms for certain things, but I am really not sure about what distro I would use nowadays if I wasn't on OS/X, probably scientific linux or centos, not sure.

Re:Community and OS declined, I switched to OSX.

[Arker]

So wait, you dont want to edit a simple config file, you prefer to wrestle with insane power-hungry GUI tools that tend to break when they are really needed, and you think this will help your chances with the opposite sex?

Bad news, buddy. Incompetence is actually not attractive.

Re:Community and OS declined, I switched to OSX.

[Yer Mom]

But what about the incomplete keyboard on the Macs?

On the laptops, yes — but just about every laptop seems to be the same, sadly.

On the desktop, you get a full keyboard if you spec your Mac with the wired keyboard. The wireless one is only available in the incomplete laptop style. (Why Apple can't make a wireless version is beyond me)

You may need to order direct from Apple, or buy through an Apple Store to do that, as anybody else selling Macs is likely to only have the standard configs, and I think only the Mac Pro specifies the wired keyboard as standard these days.

Re:Community and OS declined, I switched to OSX.

[StarFace]

The laptop keyboards have these keys, you just need to learn where they are because they are not printed on the key. They are where they have been on Mac keyboards for over a decade. You use the Fn key plus the right/left and up/down keys for home/end and pgup/pgdn respectively. Fn and delete for forward delete.

Re:Community and OS declined, I switched to OSX.

[StarFace]

You're making up issues that don't exist, either that or have no idea what you are talking about and are just repeating arguments you have heard elsewhere and have remembered only poorly. In all of the decades I have been using the hell out of computers, and I have used the hell out of them, I have never "automated" my config files. What the hell man? I can certainly perceive contrived scenarios where that might be useful, but that is not as burning desire for even geeks, let alone normal "power users".

What you probably heard people talking about is basic system control and "automation" (what we generally refer to as scripting), and the Mac has just as much of that as Linux does, and what it does not have installed by default, you can easily get, just like most modern Linux distributions.

With a new Mac I can get Zsh up and running with my eight year old dot files, dump all of my scripts written in Zsh, Ruby and Python into my home/bin, set up the path and be just as automated as I am on any Linux machine, and even more so, because I have access to surface layer software which is just so above and beyond anything provided within the Linux realm that it turns my entire GUI into something as keyboard driven and abbreviated as running pipes. Hell, with no more than eight keys I can tarball 15 files, upload it to my FTP server and then e-mail a copy to a proof pool. I have system-wide text abbreviation which triggers hand-coded scripts, boiler plates and just plain old things I'd otherwise have to type in over and over. Can you call up the results of a Ruby script within the search bar of your web browser? I can, and it is damn useful, too.

People that don't know how to use a Mac think it is all dumbed down and rigid, but that is only because they don't know how to use a Mac. They are as ignorant as the people that think you have to switch distributions if you don't like e default desktop manager.

Re:Community and OS declined, I switched to OSX.

[myvirtualid]

what about the incomplete keyboard on the Macs... page down, home, etc....

I was concerned about this as well, but it turned out to be a non-issue: fn-arrow, command-arrow, etc., provide these functions. It took a little while to learn, but not as long as I expected.

Re:Community and OS declined, I switched to OSX.

[myvirtualid]

main power-use for me would be occasional command line stuff to automate things... cron jobs... should work similar on OS-X

In general, yes, all the command line goodness is there. However! The OSX version of many utility functions has obviously suffered from lack of care and feeding. For example, grep under Linux will quite happily deal with pathnames with embedded dashes and spaces; OSX grep interprets these as additional, unrecognized switches. Sigh.

debootstrap

[phrank]

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.

What would you do if NSA knocked on your door

[HansKloss]

Decision maybe unpopular but many companies have no choice. They either sign gag order of cease to exist.

Better title

[Parker Lewis]

"Ask Slashdot: Are We Aspiring the Decline of Ubuntu?" Fixed.

Re:Not just Ubuntu

[slashdime]

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.

Cinnamon to the rescue!

[Max Threshold]

Fortunately, you can replace Unity with Cinnamon and get the best of both worlds.

Lubuntu!

[misfit815]

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.

Why end user blames OS publisher

[tepples]

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?

Yes. Ditch Canonical forever

[globaljustin]

Yes.

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:

unpopular design changes without giving people any real option to do things their own way and driving their own userbase away

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

Now?

[Arancaytar]

Unity for the desktop was introduced back in fucking 2011.

Re:Now?

[Arancaytar]

(Ironically, I'm writing this on my Ubuntu laptop because Debian can't get over its non-free phobia long enough to install any functioning wifi/graphics drivers. But at least I managed to replace Unity.)

Re:Not just ubuntu, all of Linux is in decline

[Lisias]

Between Windows 8.1, which is revolutionary, and OS X there is simply no room left for Linux any more.

Bullshit. I don't see a single server box running Windows 8.1 neither OS X. ;-)

On the Desktop, however, you can be right (with that "revolutionary" put aside - that bunch of scraps put together IS NOT revolutionary - it's just a tablet dumbed down to be used on a Desktop, and then hammered further to get the Desktop back).

I used to know half a dozen people who used Linux and now ALL of them have switched to something better.

I am one of these. But not because the options tuned better, but because what I was using became worse.

Windows is a bag of shit. Nuff said.

Mac OSX *is good*, very good. But not THAT good. There's nothing (eye candies aside) that my MaxOS Box do now that I didn't did at least so fast and conveniently with my (correctly configured) OpenSUSE 11.4 box running Gnome 2. The *BEST* professional box I ever used (and it's utterly missed).

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.

It's almost 10 years since I compiled a kernel for the last time (Gentoo doesn't count - it does all the job alone, freeing you to see PR0N all night!). And I *am* a Linux heavy user. It just happened that I know some guys (like OpenSUSE) that thought it could be a good idea doing that for me, and then charging me with support when I want to do something unusual. Guess what? This model works fine for me (not that sure for them, however).

The lack of device drivers for Linux *IT'S YOUR FAULT*. Stop buying shitty devices, and go for ones that Linux already supports. I don't see anyone buying Booster or any other shitty Stereo to install on their Mercedes, Porsche or whatever. WHY IN HELL people spend a lof of hundred of dollars on I7 computers with tons of RAM and SSD, and then go cheap on video, sound and ethernet?

You got what you pays for. Stop bitching about it, and grow up. You are the stupid and useless here. ;-)

And I haven't even begun with the security, performance and privacy flaws inherent to ALL open source software!

You haven't begun with it because there's no way to start with, at first place.

Every piece of software has flaws and insecurities. Open Source ones just happens to allow you to see for yourself.

Take *ANY* Windows update. Do you can see what they're fixing? No? Me neither. And one of these updates fucked up a entire country this year.

Yeah, I know you're just trolling. I know you're, at best, being paid to astro turf against open source (but chances are that you are just a moron doing it for free - some people just love to be slaved for free, what we can do?).

But it happens that I am in the mood today. :-)

Re: A viewpoint from a lame long held Windows love

[tepples]

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.

Decline?

[Dcnjoe60]

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.

Re:Decline?

[myvirtualid]

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?

Far from dead! The working world is still largely/mostly/all desktop! Sure, we have mobile and BYOD, but for the moment these are side-stories. Case 4 is becoming correct for home users but you'd need a Case 5 to be complete: "Case 5, Ubuntu has had sporadic and isolated success in the working world". Your Case 4 would then be more on-point .

Re:NOT YET.

[Lisias]

Ow, c'ommon... "Flame Bait"? X-D

If you're mod-trolling, at least try to pretend being honest... =P

Death by Unity

[Dakiraun]

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.

Re:Hate unity? There are other *buntus.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't upvote this enough. Kubuntu is a perfectly decent distro. KDE 4 has finally come of age.

My work pattern has been stomped on

[YoungHack]

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.

Re:My work pattern has been stomped on

[Arker]

Sounds like you should try Slackware. Linux as it was intended to be - simple, sane, and functional.

Re:My work pattern has been stomped on

[Blaskowicz]

Does mdm work? (It presume it stands for "mint display manager"). From the description, it says it support XDMCP. It's like everything went rogue or DE-specific, so Mint wrote a replacement that can do everything. The current version has crazy eye candy too :
http://segfault.linuxmint.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/mdm.png
Using HTML, which sounds crazy at first but the thing just shows up and it must mean anyone can give it any look.

Re:My work pattern has been stomped on

[YoungHack]

When I finally got the computer to boot with wdm (by editing the startup scripts) I quit looking for other solutions. But I admit I didn't try mdm. I went through the 8 or so display managers that are packaged with Ubuntu, and did not go outside to build something external like Mint.

Re:My work pattern has been stomped on

[WuphonsReach]

Try "FreeNX/NX" or "x2go" which are far better solutions then VNC. There's even an RDP server for Linux, but I can't recall the name off-hand.

Re:My work pattern has been stomped on

[Blaskowicz]

Alright, maybe it will be picked up more explicitly by future distros. I've read it's originnally "mate display manager", and a fork of gdm 2.20. From googling some people have it on debian sid, Arch AUR, or ubuntu with ppa. It's conflicts with gdm (lol! that's almost a feature)

Re:My work pattern has been stomped on

[vtcodger]

Hey, look. Slackware is fine if you like it -- which, as it happens, I do. But installing anything other than the subset of frequently used applications that are available as slackware packages is often somewhere between annoying if ./configure,make,make install works and do it yourself dentistry without anesthetic painful if it doesn't. Slackware simply isn't for everyone.

There's a lot to be said for apt-get. I sometimes wish I could tolerate Ubuntu for the convenience of apt-get. But I've tried it several times and it's never been remotely satisfactory. And trying to fix/work around problems ... my God. I'd rather deal with the *&^*$ Windows Registry.

Re:My work pattern has been stomped on

[Arker]

"But installing anything other than the subset of frequently used applications that are available as slackware packages is often somewhere between annoying if ./configure,make,make install works and do it yourself dentistry without anesthetic painful if it doesn't"

Installing with make is usually a breeze on slack. Every other distro I have tried seems to go out of their way to break this and make it painful. How this turns into an argument for using them instead of Slackware I dont know. That's just backwards thinking.

"There's a lot to be said for apt-get. I sometimes wish I could tolerate Ubuntu for the convenience of apt-get"

Ever heard of slapt-get?

People forget...

[Dcnjoe60]

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.

Yes

[gregthebunny]

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.

no. Ubuntu is a consumer product.

[Zecheus]

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.

brand

[ILongForDarkness]

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.

unity

[nten]

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.

Ubuntu is suffering the same problems as GNOME

[Improv]

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.

Re:A viewpoint from a lame long held Windows lover

[moronoxyd]

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.'

My Xfce has Super+drag

[tepples]

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.

When did it Incline?

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

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.

It's not so bad...

[bjoswald]

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?

Re:Hate unity? There are other *buntus.

[Big_Breaker]

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.

Old news

[GameboyRMH]

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.

Ubuntu Server

[MacColossus]

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.

Re:Ubuntu Server

[Samizdata]

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.

Heh. I still remember RPM hell. Now, if we could just get some way to get delta debs...

It depends on the user.

[NickFortune]

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The decline started for me...

[jschmerge]

A few releases before I switched to Mint.

not all that bad...

[__aauhdc3807]

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...

old gnome

[nten]

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.

Re:old gnome

[Shirley Marquez]

The impossible to grab borders are mostly a problem on 12.04. By 13.04 they had made the grab area significantly larger (though they did not make the borders VISUALLY fatter) so it is no longer a problem. I never installed 12.10 so I don't know whether the change was in that version.

Time to let others shine

[twocows]

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.

Rock And Hard Place

[EXTomar]

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.

Used to like it

[the eric conspiracy]

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.

Debian 7 Fast and Rock Solid Stable

[walterbyrd]

Just sayin'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG8ZSpUOJuw

Canonical's Hubris

[hduff]

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.

Re:Canonical's Hubris

[squiggleslash]

Of all the things you can accuse Canonical of, Hubris is the least of their issues, if not the exact opposite.

Canonical believes, with some justification, that the GNU/Linux desktop cannot stand still, that what they've done so far is not good enough. Their problem is that they've taken this principle too far. In what feels like a blind panic they've taken the Mac UI and dumbed it down considerably.

Why the blind panic? Well, two reasons: first, tablets. That's something on the mind of every desktop OS developer at the moment.

The other: GNOME. Canonical wasn't going to be able to just merge in upstream updates from GNOME any more, with GNOME 3 everything was changing, from revamped APIs, to the GNOME 3 UI itself. The available options to Canonical were simply this: maintain, alone, an obsolete branch of GNOME, use GNOME 3 with the deeply unpopular UI updates, or attempt a hybrid approach and merge in the core of GNOME 3 but with a UI that Canonical would be able to maintain and that would suit the rest of Canonical's agenda.

In a sense, they've done the same thing as Microsoft. They've ignored the fact they had an excellent UI that nobody was complaining about seriously, believing what they have to be not good enough for the future. Microsoft didn't develop Metro because they thought they were awesome, they developed it because they thought they weren't. And Canonical's done the same thing.

And unlike Microsoft, third parties - the GNOME developers - were pushing Canonical into a corner and had the power to do so.

And, you know, I'm not going to be like every Slashdot whiner and condemn Canonical for this. They're far sighted. They're trying to push things forward. It's just, ultimately, Unity (and, in all seriousness, there are no other serious problems with current versions of Ubuntu, all of the complaints are about Unity) is just not quite what's needed.

The hope, I guess, is that GNOME Classic will finally give Canonical an out, something they can use to bring back the friendly, familiar, and powerful UI of Ubuntu past.

I had no choice.

[Olmy's Jart]

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.

Re:I had no choice.

[YoungHack]

Yes, remote graphical desktop work of all kinds has been wrecked in the recent versions.

First BSD and then?

[lw54]

Well, now we can say BSD, Linux and Windows are all dying :)

Seriously, just learn Arch guys... It ain't hard!

[toogreen]

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.

Yes, Ubuntu is awful....

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Supported System

[randallman]

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.

Shuttleworth is the new bug #1

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Yes

[Rinikusu]

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).

Two words

[DougDot]

Linux Mint

Re:Two words

[CosaNostra Pizza Inc]

I'd mod you up, if I could. Bravo

Bloatware Mess

[danknight48]

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.

Happy OpenSUSE users

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Happy OpenSUSE users

[lpq]

Happy OpenSuSE users? Ha! W/the switch to away from initd to a windows systemservicesd that takes over the HW operations of other daemons in preparation for licenses tied to your HW config as on windows? Yeah, real happy.

There's always still Linux MINT :)

[CosaNostra Pizza Inc]

Ubuntu will still be around as long as there are other popular distros like Mint, that are built on top of Ubuntu.

PAE drove me off, thank goodness

[utoddl]

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!

Re:A viewpoint from a lame long held Windows lover

[HtR]

Is it just me, or is there an echo in here?

Why Ubuntu over debian, Fedora over RH?

[BenEnglishAtHome]

What I've never understood though is why one would want to use Ubuntu over straight-up debian... (or Fedora over RH/CentOS).

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.

Re:Why Ubuntu over debian, Fedora over RH?

[X0563511]

Oh I definitely see the draw when you're talking about someone's desktop, laptop, workstation etc - I'm speaking strictly of servers.

Linux, BLAH... Tired of it.

[Vince6791]

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.

Re:A viewpoint from a lame long held Windows lover

[TopherC]

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.

Or perhaps youth has turned its back on the geek.

[westlake]

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.

The problem with Ubuntu

[DMJC]

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.

Re:Hate unity? There are other *buntus.

[HiThere]

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.

Re:Or perhaps youth has turned its back on the gee

[Iskender]

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.

billy goat

[epine]

stuff rammed down their throats willy

I see you can't resist a willy goad. Shuttleworth goes goatse, and that's what cries out for comment.

Ubuntu = gateway drug

[RobocopsDad]

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.

Re:Not just ubuntu, all of Linux is in decline

[Lisias]

>> The lack of device drivers for Linux *IT'S YOUR FAULT*

really ?

Really! :-)

Often you don't know the devices installed on the computer. The product description only specifies the graphics card and the processor. And maybe the wifi card vendor but nothing else

But you do know the hardware being currently supported by Linux. A simple and direct question to the vendor and it's done (or not). The seller doesn't know? No problem, I'm not buying neither.

You don't know how to proceed? Ask for help. Paid help if needed.

But stop bitching about "I can't use Linux because there's no device drivers for my hardware". Be honest, say that you don't want to use Linux. PERIOD. This I can respect - I'm using MacOS X now for my desktop computing - I simply refused to use that crappy excuse for a Desktop called Gnome 3.

KDE? No thanks. If I were going to do the Windows way, I would prefer doing it on the original. :-)

But I'm still using Linux heavily on my servers. No regrets.

I am talking about notebooks.

Me too.

Re:Not just ubuntu, all of Linux is in decline

[Lisias]

Between Windows 8.1, which is revolutionary, and OS X there is simply no room left for Linux any more.

Bullshit. I don't see a single server box running Windows 8.1 neither OS X. ;-)

On the Desktop, however, you can be right[...]

Yeah, about that. I've upgraded 14 servers (all of them) in the past week or two to Server 2012 R2 (from 2008 R2), and it's pretty wonderful. There's also two Ubuntu server boxen, a SLES box, and a CentOS box. And ESXi 5.5 on the hosts.

And again, no Windows 8.1 neither MacOSX. Can you, please, stay on the subject? ;-)

I had already got my buzzwords quota about the marvels from Microsoft this week, anyway. People on my job are doing that Microsoft partnership tests, and my colleague are doing the Intune one.

So, yeah, I could generalize and say that all Linux users are tools, but the evidence points to it being just you.

Being the evidence... Wait... What evidences? :-)

At least, it appears to me that you are being PAID to astroturf us (or, at least, me) - I'm flattered.

I endorse all and every effort to milk something back from Microsoft! :-D

Debian Squeeze was a climax for professional use

[jcdr]

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.

Re:A viewpoint from a lame long held Windows lover

[gronofer]

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.

Hah, Ubuntu. Traitors.

[AbominousSalad]

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.

Ubuntu vs W8

[Ol Olsoc]

I certainly could believe that Ubuntu is going by the wayside. I could never get used to the interface, and it slowed me down, just as Windows 8 does.

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.

Re:Seriously, just learn Arch guys... It ain't har

[thule]

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 wouldn't say "exactly"

[NickFortune]

They're strategy is exactly the same as Apple (and now Microsoft).

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.

What was broke was an interface that a user could use on all these different devices and screen sizes and still maintain some continuity in it's use.

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.

Die-hard Linux geeks may be fleeing Ubuntu and Unity

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.

but I'm seeing a lot of non-techies picking it up and asking me about it.

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.

Ubuntu is growing in China and several other countries outside the U.S.

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.

In the past everyone touted "choice" and freedom of "choice".

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...

Ubuntu is just another choice among not only Linux, but operating systems in general. If you can't stand Unity or something Ubuntu does, then by all means please find an operating system that suites you.

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.

At least with Ubuntu my grandma or distant cousin has a choice against Apple or Microsoft or even Android!

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?

Say it isn't so...

[acps9016]

Say it isn't so... gotta have my Ubuntu. What could replace it?

Re:Yes to Manjaro

[Bigos]

I am lazy and chose Arch derivative called Manjaro.

What decline?

[vandamme]

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.

Re:Not just Ubuntu

[jones_supa]

You took the GP's quote from my message. You should have replied directly to him instead.

I agree with the sentiment of the articles

[chris2kari]

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

Happy new me

[hdru]

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.