Canonical Moving Away From GNOME Control Center

jones_supa writes "This announcement comes from the ubuntu-desktop mailing list. Due to GNOME Control Center already being a heavily patched version in Ubuntu, Canonical is planning to found their own fork called Unity Control Center. This would be a fork with a limited lifespan and later on they would move to something called Ubuntu System Settings, an in-house project. For now, a PPA has been set up to test the new fork."

Comments

NIH

[Anonymous Coward]

It's weird how a project that consists of repackaging everything Debian has developed such a NIH problem.

Re:NIH

[rahvin112]

Mod Parent up.

You shouldn't have posted anonymous because you nailed it with the first post. This NIH syndrome they've developed will ultimately be the end of Canonical. In the long run they can't sustain the independent development on all these separate and diverse features, not unless Shutleworth is going to continue to fund this with millions of his own money in perpetuity.

Re:NIH

[gstoddart]

This NIH syndrome they've developed will ultimately be the end of Canonical.

For me, their desire to monetize our searches and undermine our privacy is what is marking the end of Canonical.

Now I just need to find a suitable replacement, because every time I hear about Canonical these days I like them even less.

Re:NIH

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny. I'm the guy who posted first, and parent isn't me, but I would have said the same thing.

Re:NIH

[umafuckit]

It's weird how a project that consists of repackaging everything Debian has developed such a NIH problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here Because I didn't know what it meant.

Re:NIH

[mrchaotica]

Linux Mint, if you want a distribution geared towards the same kind of modernity and ease of use that made Ubuntu so popular to begin with.

Or Debian, if you want to pick a distribution whose organization is least likely to fuck it up or sell out.

Re:NIH

[MightyMartian]

Redhat and Canonical aren't even in the same league. Redhat is managing major projects like KVM. Canonical spends its energies on pointless projects that no one wants. I don't want to lionize Redhat in any way, but if Canonical fell into a hole in the Earth tomorrow, Linux was go merrily along, but if Redhat died, it would have a pretty serious and negative effect on a number of key projects.

Re:NIH

[skids]

Considering packaging is exactly where a distro's development focus should be, I'd say they are working just fine. Also, APT isn't the packaging system, dpkg is.

Re:NIH

[skids]

You should have just made up your own words to fit the letters.

Re:NIH

[rubycodez]

No, Ubuntu would have no business at all if some IT people weren't comfortable enough with it to get it in the door of the enterprise. That's how Red Hat got into the boardroom. but then Red Hat turned its back on the userbase. It closed off its server/workstation distro to the users, making alternative distro where users are guinea pigs. Because of that Redhat lost mindshare and customers (to Canonical, in many cases). We've gone from hundreds of Red Hat servers to one where I work, in favor of other distro

Re:NIH

[Arker]

"Mint wasn't very intuitive to me... granted I only ran it for a few hours"

The nipple is the only intuitive interface. All others are learned.

If people would quit chasing an impossible goal of an intuitive interface and focus on making functional interfaces instead, it would be a huge improvement.

Re:NIH

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you're not a mother. Proper nipple use is taught. If they're being too rough you don't leave them there. Reenforcement learning from the start. Babies naturally try to put everything in their mouth and we naturally hold babies near our nipples. Things work out, the baby feels better, so things continue to improve.

Re:NIH

[Mister Liberty]

Does Ubuntu use a Linux kernel?

Re:NIH

[Jane Q. Public]

"As I always say^H^H^Hask: point me to the word Linux on any of Canonical's web pages."

My point was that the word "canonical" has a meaning: "In simplest or standard form."

In the beginning, Ubuntu could at least lay some claim to being a "canonical" Linux distro. It was plain, simple, and had few frills, but had everything needed to make it usable.

Since then, it has deviated ever farther from "canonical" Linux. Now it's hardly recognizable. Ubuntu appears to be about as much Linux as OS X is BSD. (I'm exaggerating a bit, but not really that much.)

Re:NIH

[transporter_ii]

From here on out, it is nipple interfaces!

Re:NIH

[Dcnjoe60]

Mod Parent up.

You shouldn't have posted anonymous because you nailed it with the first post. This NIH syndrome they've developed will ultimately be the end of Canonical. In the long run they can't sustain the independent development on all these separate and diverse features, not unless Shutleworth is going to continue to fund this with millions of his own money in perpetuity.

Actually, most people see this as a positive step. For instance, if one wanted to run pure Gnome 3 on an Ubuntu base, all of the various patches that Canonical have made to various Gnome pieces, such as the control center, get in the way. By Canonical forking the gnome-control-center, one can choose to use Canonical's modifications or not.

That is a big step forward compared to the current situation of modifying Gnome components to make them work with Unity. That's not NIH, but being responsible as it keeps from borking Gnome just for the sake of Unity.

Re:NIH

[Dcnjoe60]

I post anonymous because I don't have, nor want, a traceable account.

Off Topic, but what makes you think posting anonymously actually keeps your from being traceable? Thinking you can't be traced because /. or any other webpage calls you anonymous is really poor security. Same with using incognito mode in a browser.

Re:NIH

[gnujohn]

The first commenter who alleged that Canonical / Ubuntu has a NIH syndrome may or may not be right. I use the damn Ubuntu just because it looks fair and it can be twisted into shape so I can crunch out some code, look at the 'net, and track my mail. If I want to write, I use Libre Writer. If someone is making some bucks from this, I am happy. I am glad to see Linux making some effing money for someone. I wish Red Hat as a corporation and Canonical as a corporation a bunch of luck, and all kinds of profit margins. Maybe they could throw their weight around in this country so MS and Apple aren't the only voices in the room. Purity and virginity are equally worthless. I am the only guy who looks at /. who isn't an addict to computer games, and I'm possibly one of the few who has never played one. But they are as popular as masturbation, so that's fine with me, if you need your desktop / laptop for games. I have my own weirdness: I read books. So who am I to criticize others? So long as Canonical delivers a fair - looking screen that can be forced into a haven for my command - line preferences, let them make a profit. Shuttlesworth isn't out litigating and trying to patent stuff, so let him fart around a little, once in a while. We're being cornholed every minute by a benevolent government that is trying to imprison its populace. Inequality of incomes is squeezing a huge part of the populace into penury. Idiots are successfully repealing laws that allowed black people to vote. A nation that isn't supposed to have an empire is now in the business of maintaining a world - wide empire of novel savagery in the name of morality. You've heard of the NSA, and you're complaining that Canonical is nosy? Some perspective, please.

kernel

[dmbasso]

I heard they have tons of kernel patches as well, so soon they'll start a new in-house project, called Hurd!

(Still) Ubuntu user here, but couldn't resist.

Why?

[lennier1]

Kinda strange, since Canonical and the Gnome guys definitely deserve each other.

Not surprising or newsworthy

[MrEricSir]

Ubuntu is steadily moving away from Gnome and aligning more with Qt. (See: Ubuntu Phone's QML-based UI.) Getting rid of Gnome's system settings is just another small step in that direction.

Re:Not surprising or newsworthy

[MrEricSir]

Canonical is moving towards Qt, not KDE.

Re:BFD

[X0563511]

It worked, didn't it?

In (future) related news...

[fahrbot-bot]

... Canonical is moving Ubuntu away from Linux to an in-house project named "invented here". Mark Shuttleworth assures that "invented here" will be ~100% backward compatible with Linux for "some time". Mr Shuttleworth went on to say "blah, blah, blah ... enhanced user experience". Many long-time Ubuntu users are annoyed and have vowed to switch to "alternate distro".

Re:In (future) related news...

[StripedCow]

# sudo apt-get upgrade
Extracting templates from packages: 100%
Selecting previously unselected packages.
(Reading database ... 84711 files and directories currently installed.)
Uninstalling package gnome
Uninstalling package linux-kernel
Uninstalling package X-server
Uninstalling package posix
Uninstalling package bash
Uninstalling package ext3
Installing package shuttleworth-os-almost-finished
Done
# /bin/bash: Text file non-existent
kernel panic

Re:In (future) related news...

[jones_supa]

I'm sorry, Ubuntu experienced an internal error...

Re:In (future) related news...

[chthon]

I think Mark Shuttleworth is a Furby (r). The one my daughter has does this also: bla, bla, bla, bla, and then something unintelligible.

Re:In (future) related news...

[reikae]

Why do you use sudo when you're already root? :)

Re:In (future) related news...

[mvdwege]

Because as an Ubuntu user he learned to always sudo, but never why.

Re:Ubuntu Linux

[game kid]

If you've been to the front pages of their website lately you'd notice an almost-complete lack of "Linux" now. I'm not sure how much the real reason for that is "trying not to break some arcane legal or Linux Mark Institute rules", or how much it's "awful covert marketing campaign for yet-unnamed replacement kernel".

Clearly they don't want to be associated with Linux...or, given their recent demeanor, most anyone.

Re:Hybryde Linux - they should follow them

[K. S. Kyosuke]

This is achieved via a highly customisable Hy-menu

"Hy-menu"? Somebody's been cherry-picking the dictionary here...

Re:Can anyone explain to me...

[Mister Liberty]

I call you a late comer. MCC on floppies, 1991.

Just Don't

[Murdoch5]

Unity might be the worst graphical interface I've ever used, it is a bad excuse at best for a high school level GUI project. Now Canonical want's to go further and decide to write a control centre? If history is any guide to how this will turn out, the control centre will be almost unusable, it will have a layout that will make you scratch your head and wonder who laid it out and overall it make more Ubuntu users jump over to gnome 3.

It is times (and posts) like these...

[sgage]

... that make we want to throw up my hands and just say frack it all to Linux, period. I've been working with Linux since 1998, and from the beginning, it's been whining, backbiting, complaining, dissing, bickering, moral posturing, and in general one big ball of negativity. The vast (vast) majority of it is ill-informed fanboi nonsense.

Use what you want, work on what you want to contribute to, but holy moly can we please stop tearing down everything and anything that doesn't meet our personal code of free-open-source-grooviness?

I sometimes think that demands for ideological purity is going to be the death of Free Software...

A logical step

[t_hunger]

Their new system is Qt based. I would not want to drag gnome dependencies into my Qt system if I could avoid it, too. even more so on a closed down device with limited resources like a phone. So they need to write a system settings app. It is only natural to use that on the desktop, too, especially when you want to sell the idea of "convergence".