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The Burning Bridges of Ubuntu
jammag writes "According to this article, 'Whether Ubuntu is declining is still debatable. However, in the last couple of months, one thing is clear: internally and externally, its commercial arm Canonical appears to be throwing the idea of community overboard as though it was ballast in a balloon about to crash.' The author points out instances of community discontent and apparent ham-handedness on Mark Shuttleworth's part. Yet isn't this just routine kvetching in the open source community?"
It's back to Debian?
That much has become clear for quite a while now. What's also become clear is they don't know how to do it, what direction they're in and they're unusual recent behaviour is just a bunch of initial death throes.
...it'll fork, and life will go on.
What's the big deal?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
kvetching
There you go. Dismiss it. Let us know how that goes for you.
Shame really. Upstart is nice. I've landed on systemd systems because of Shuttleworth, however.
Good will is more important than your vision, Mark. You're killing your own, platform. And I can't figure out why. You're years past your own deadline for profitability, yet here you are, beating this horse to death while people evacuate. WTF??
The stability of CentOS is great. I don't get all the fancy features but I don't want those anyway as they just get in the way. At work when we need something supported we just use RedHat and pay for the support. Moving development between CentOS and RedHat is totally transparent to me.
Cannonical is another failing company with Steve Jobs/Apple's attitude of "We will tell you what you like, and will like it." Everything from putting the window close button on the left hand side of the panel, to Unity, enabled by default Amazon search lens, and now Mir have been completely unilateral moves with no input from the community whether that decision meets the users wants or needs.
Lets be honest this is more about Mir and Unity(and maybe Amazon integration for a few of us), being promoted over *Alternatives* and both have been discussed on and off topic to death. Whatever you personally think of these choices, users currently have a choice of Desktop(and I am still not going to choose Unity), and Mir is still a twinkle Shuttleworth's eye. I am personally using the very polished Xubuntu(promoted by the Cinnamon split from Gmone), which smooths over the clash between GTK2/3, and other than a stupid oversight with the volume indicator. Has been the best desktop I have ever used...and yes I do miss a few Gnome features, but it has its own to love, and I am in love with Gmusicbrowser.
The bottom line it is still is the no brainer Linux install...unless you are wedded to (the still wonderful) Cinnamon (personally I am keeping my eye on Cut http://cut.debian.net/ ), I wish Canonical all the luck with their phone, If they can wed themselves to decent Chinese manufacturer that can produce low cost phones. It may be my next phone.
what's an example of a profitable linux distro company?
Red Hat are profitable, aren't they?
Canonical could have built a 'just works' Linux distro that people would have paid for, but they felt the need to go all Jobs on their users' asses instead. So most moved to Mint. Guess they'll have to move to the Debian version of Mint when Ubuntu goes away.
Ubuntu took a perfectly good Debian and fucks it up.
Ubuntu took a perfectly good Ubuntu and fucked it up. Luckily, there are distros like Xubuntu - which take the good parts, and leave off the bad parts (aka Unity).
Older, more mature, and runs everything guaranteed.
Kind of like XP is too some of the die hards who refuse to upgrade. I started to like Windows 7 again after Gnome 3/Unity and realized it really is not a bad OS anymore.
I also fell in love with CentOS again too and run it on a VM with FreeBSD if I want some hacking with things like smtp trace and ipf for my virtual networks.
RPM is not bad folks! Many of us in the 1990s had nightmares trying to get gnome 1 working with 1 million plus RPMs and therefore refuse to touch that POS AGAIN!! I was one of them, but my AMD hardware does not work well with debian distros. They work fine with redhat kernels. RPM > DEB. With Yum it is like apt-get and that was the last hurdle. .Debs leave crap all over your system when you uninstall. RPMs remove cleanly and I like the admin tools better. With yum there is no rpm hell like before.
http://saveie6.com/
The 'linux communities' have all devolved into petty little fiefdoms of some degree.
Except its a lie, As both a Gentoo and a Ubuntu user. I have enjoyed massive support both though chat and forums, and bug reports. In fact on a whole most OS communities are pretty helpful including those of Windows/Mac. People on the whole like to help.
The idea that Ubuntu is in decline, at least from the point of view of number of users, is not debatable, it is false. Ubuntu's numbers are up and steadily climbing. They may or may not be ignoring the community (I would argue they aren't given all of the community initiatives and offerings from Canonical of late) but whatever the Ubuntu team is doing is working for them. Their installation numbers are up.
What exactly is this Mozilla model that works so well? Besides charity from Google I mean. I wonder if Google keeps Firefox alive just to avoid antitrust issues with Chrome.
@de_machina
I hadn't heard about Elementary OS until this Wired write up yesterday. Out of curiosity, I tried it out in VirtualBox just to have a look at it. And yup, it's pretty, and simple, and it's not Unity. I considering giving it a try for real on my workstation, but it kind of barfed on my nfs shared home directory, so I think I'll pass for now. That has been my most current pet peeve; distributions that do not respect the 'Unix Way' of doing things, like having a network mounted home directory, so all my files and preferences go with me to which ever machine I log into on the network. I had just wrestled with Shotwell refusing to import some photos in my nfs home, and since the article talked up EOS's tight integration with all things Yorba, the authors of Shotwell, I didn't really want to go down that road. I did try out Yorba's email client, and liked it enough to install it on my Ubuntu machine. And it seems to work just fine so far with my networked home.
Anyhow, if you want to see what Wired is calling the Apple of Linux OSes, take a gander at Elementary OS. I can appreciate them striving for the 'Just Works' mantra, but it needs to 'Just Work' with the tried and true ways of doing things that Unix and friends have enjoyed for decades now.
And I'm not saying that it completely fails at an nfs mounted home directory, but it was competing with Ubuntu's settings (where that home directory mounts on my real machine) for simple things like the desktop wallpaper. I imagine it can be made to play nice, but I wasn't looking to spend time tweaking yet another distro to get things to work the way I want them to.
Red Hat is the Microsoft of the Linux world. When they eventually own (own as acting as gatekeepers to core projects) the whole stack, there won't be any room for startups like Canonical to come in an offer alternative technologies. Pretty soon Debian will die because it will become redundant since they'll just be packaging the same stuff from Fedora. They can barely keep up with the patching necessary in order to support systemd and Gnome while giving their users a choice of different technologies to use instead. As Red Hat makes everything more tightly interdependent on technologies which it produces, distros like Debian won't be able keep up.
The latest version opensuse actually is the best linux I have ever run, and that counts for a lot having run every major distribution since when the kernel was in the .9x timefame. That also includes all the recent versions of Ubuntu/mint/etc. It falls closer to the "it just works" mantra than any previous version (of course a few things still have hickups).
No one talks about Suse because we are off talking about more exciting things. That is the problem with having a stable sensible distribution that actually works.... Its doesn't have the latest $sexy to ignite peoples fires, or the latest $sucky to piss everyone off.
Personally, I suspect a fair number of people drop suse when they thought KDE jumped the shark a few years back. Now that it turns out its Gnome that jumped the shark no one remembers the one remaining major KDE based distribution.
Finally, there is SLES which is all the goodness of opensuse combined with long term vendor support as good as what is provided by redhat.
It's not charity, it's a perfectly reasonable business arrangement. Firefox still has a good 30% or so of all web users. _All web users_. That's a massive number of people. Being Firefox's default search engine is worth a significant amount of money to Google, and Google pays a significant amount of money for it. If Google didn't, I'm sure Yahoo or Microsoft would.
Hahahahahahaha, what the actual fuck.
-- Linux user #369862
Mozilla may depend on google.com alot for contributions but that doesn't mean it is not a success or sustainable company.
Most startups (including my favorite imgur.com) generate alot of revenue from small contributions from donors.
I'm not saying I'd use the donor model for Cannonical/Ubuntu
I'd probably have the 'Ubuntu Foundation' and use it to release a free OS *and* do things like the Electronic Frontier Foundation only targeted mostly on OS issues. Rootkits for example. We'd lobby for net neutrality and the like.
So the thing that releases Ubuntu is a non-profit
I'd have the actual profit company then own something the non-profit leases....like computer equipment, building space, etc...
then I'd have my for-profit company, in this case Cannonical, fork Drupal & make a FOSS wordpress/drupal kind of system...yes this is *TWO* FOSS projects, one from a non-profit, one from the for-profit company
profit comes from **consulting**
we could consult for general IT network setup for small to enterprise level business
'intranet' consulting on an Enterprise-level "content management system" based off our FOSS fork of the drupal core
web design - we'd use our 'in house' Drupal fork with all the bells and whistles to do websites for things like msnbc.com (just had a redesign....cost in the millions $$$ cha ching) or whitehouse.gov or...hell...**healthcare.gov**
software development consulting
domain name registration...why not offer it?
the best part is, all the business units and all the FOSS stuff **drive each other**
gotta add another dimension to make FOSS profitable long term
Thank you Dave Raggett
You're thinking CentOS (and derivatives), not Debian. See also.
Just change to: Arch Linux or Manjaro... They work good "like a rolling stone"... If you want to learn Linux start using Arch now. If you want to work and be free Manjaro (hopefully, there will be a version 1 release soon) is the word. Using at work: ubuntu (3), mint (0, changed to Manjaro), debian (+6) --- 3 words: "All Works Fine".
I've always been mysteriously partial to Kubuntu (mysterious as in, I can't really say why I keep installing it, other than I like KDE...)
No one talks about Suse because we are off talking about more exciting things. That is the problem with having a stable sensible distribution that actually works.... Its doesn't have the latest $sexy to ignite peoples fires, or the latest $sucky to piss everyone off.
No, nobody talks about SUSE because it is it got bought by Novell who then did a deal with the devil (Microsoft) on patents. Which was the kiss of death to us back when we were looking to trade-up from Gentoo to something more stable.
The only games in town for server Linux is now RHEL (CentOS or SciLinux if you are cheap) or Debian. Everything else is second class and generally requires compiling from source. And frankly, it's a whole lot easier to get a job if you have experience with RHEL over some other distro.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Have you tried dealing with major transitions in a rolling release? e.g. sysvinit to systemd or upstart? Non-SELinux to SELinux? Rolling releases do not(or historically have failed) to manage this gracefully. Remember when Arch switched to systemd? Fun times....
I get it though; glad it's working for you. I love rolling releases as well [at home], and it beats the grind of a major version upgrade - hoping your /home plays nicely. It's also appropriate you mentioned "non-enterprise". You can imagine it's difficult for a software company to say "we will support product X on distribution Y for N years" when Y is changing with a rolling release cycle.
Trackball users will be first against the wall.
Then I realized the only part about the UI that bothered me was Dash. Adding classicmenu fixed that.
Between Dash being a mess and its online integration, these two things account for the lions' share of dissatisfaction with Ubuntu's direction, IMO. The rest of the changes they're making remind me of the good parts of OS X and I welcome the effort Canonical is putting into them.
OTOH my limited time with Mint places it little better in terms of smooth operation than Fedora or Debian. I do NOT like my screen contents flashed for 3 sec when waking from sleep, and I do NOT like having security updates held back.
... is exactly what Mark Shuttleworth has been doing for almost a decade now. If that amount of effort hasn't helped the Ubuntu team initiate some drastic changes in otherwise community-run projects, then I very much understand why he's fed up and wants things to Just Work (TM).
This is irrespective of who did what, and whether they did the right thing, by the way. There's always multiple people at fault in any conflict. I'm talking purely about the desire to stop wasting time and money on something for which there is overwhelming evidence it doesn't work. If I had been in his position, I would have started my own Ubuntu-run competitor projects a lot earlier, but then I'm not a patient man.
So more power to him, I say.
People just forget the past so quickly. Sure, we can argue simple things like if "upstart" is a good runlevel daemon and all that, but think about all the improvements Ubuntu has brought to the Linux world over time. The high quality of other distros these days is due to Ubuntu pushing the bar higher.
Hardware detection: Ubuntu made all your devices "just work" without manual module configuration and kernel recompilation. Unity: good-looking, well-specced desktop that anyone can use. The community and documentation are great. Media playback works easily, printing works great. Nice and clean system configuration file structure. Ubuntu Software Center introduces newbies to high-quality picks of open source software without having to do random poking in the repositories. Ubuntu was stable enough platform to provide the base for Steam. And remember how Ubuntu made enabling non-free drivers easy: you just have that little PCI card tray icon, and from the pop-up dialog you select your device. Ubuntu comes with LibreOffice preinstalled, rivaling the MS Office monopoly from the start.
I mean, are you sure you would want a Linux world without all these improvements?
Let's not forget all the little things that Ubuntu has improved -- the things which we take for granted today.
Try Netrunner, it comes from the company that supports kubuntu, is based on kubuntu but is more polished and complete.
Thanks. I've been using Kubuntu for years and the whole family uses it now. I wonder if Ubuntu fades away what it will mean for Kubuntu...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I don't think that's his main target. Shuttleworth is one of the few people (Newell may be another) willing to make fundamental changes to gnu/linux desktop computer to bring it to masses as opposed to just opinionated geekdom. This non-traditional desktop experience is bound to annoy traditional gnu/linux power users who feel their vision is being ignored. What they fail to see is that their vision is not attractive enough for average people.
I for one welcome canonical's changes. For me, the more they deviate from 'traditional gnu/linux desktop', the better. I want to see how far they can push it and how many fresh ideas they can bring. KDE desktop has looked pretty much the same for the last 10 years. Gnome is getting uglier and less useful with each new version (but I do like that they're starting anew). Windows 8's interface, despite its questionable usability, is fresh and people who have used it for more than 10 minutes in a shop, like it.
Why do you think making something attractive for "average people" is a good idea? Look what happened with Windows 8 and Microsoft's take on the fact that everyone has the opinion of "OMG TOUCHSCREEN STUFF IS SO COOL LOL". Your "average people" don't know what they want, and only complain that their touchscreen device isn't touchy enough. Keep Linux what Linux meant to be: inaccessible to the masses, and it will keep being great.
I agree with your idea, but you got it a bit wrong: Xubuntu it still Ubuntu. I think many people hate Unity (I don't; I just treat it as an "early beta" of an idea that one day might work), but don't realize that things like Xubuntu and Kubuntu are very much still Ubuntu.
The desktop interface is a *very tiny* part of the OS, really. But it's the first thing most users see, and is crucial for PR.
I love Xubuntu. Hence, I also love Ubuntu (if not the Unity package) and the great work done by everyone involved.
Ubuntu should follow the openSUSE way: when you install it, it asks you which desktop you want. There's no realy need for separate distros, IMO.
Windows 8's interface, despite its questionable usability, is fresh and people who have used it for more than 10 minutes in a shop, like it.
No.
You mean changes like automatically reporting all search queries directly to Amazon? Keep on astroturfing...
Linux Mint already has multiple distros without Ubuntu (but Debian based). Therefore, Dcnjoe60 engages in fallacy.
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