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Canonical Founder Talks About Ubuntu Desktop Switching From Unity To GNOME, And Focus On Cloud (google.com)
Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth on Friday talked about the move to switch Ubuntu's desktop user interface from Unity to GNOME, and putting a stop to development of Ubuntu software for phones and tablet: I would like to thank all of you for your spirit and intellect and energy in the Unity8 adventure. [...] Many elements of the code in the Ubuntu Phone project continue -- snaps grew out of our desire to ship apps reliably and efficiently and securely, the unity8 code itself will continue to be useful for UBports and other projects. And the ideas that we have pushed for are now spreading too. Finally, I should celebrate that Ubuntu consists of so many overlapping visions of personal computing, that we have the ability to move quickly to support the Ubuntu GNOME community with all the resources of Canonical to focus on stability, upgrades, integration and experience. That's only possible because of the diversity of shells in the Ubuntu family, and I am proud of all of our work across that full range.
I have had the opportunity to use Gnome on an x86 tablet, and it is already there. It's funny, typically I do not like Gnome. But put it on a tablet and it is awesome. Granted, I am speaking as a nerd not a general consumer. Still, if you get the chance you will see what I mean.
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The main difference between Gnome and KDE is the underlying GDI & widget toolkits. KDE uses QT from Trolltech and GNOME uses GTK which is developed as a sub-project of GNOME. Of course their custom browsers and mail clients are different and have different names. The desktop file management paradigm is different and so is the menu/toolbar location. Politically, they are run by very different types of people without much cross-pollination.
The package management is a difference at the system/OS level, not the desktop, but you knew that. Neither "lost out", in my opinion because they were never much worth using in the first place. Unix variants are all about the CLI. If you want a consistent GUI with a benevolent tyrant running things and keeping it all standard, go buy a mac or run RISC-OS. Linux has been failing at that for more than 20 years now, despite the "takeover the world" mantra.
I can't stand hamburger UI, giant title bars and that annoying menu/title bar at the top so I never "upgraded" to GNOME. It seems to me that GNOME team took a bunch of macOS features and stitched together a DE. However, while macOS is quite logical and there's a reason why things are on that OS, much of how GNOME works makes little sense from usability point of view.
This is why I stuck with Xfce, Unity and Cinnamon. I run all three of these DEs on my various computers and laptops.
But now that Ubuntu is moving to GNOME, what's the point of using Ubuntu over Fedora? RedHat has all the GNOME devs and they have the best GNOME + Wayland implementation. And that implementation actually works without Xorg. Other distros that run GNOME still can't get Wayland working right. Can Canonical/Ubuntu team make a better version of GNOME than RedHat? Given the history, I'm willing to bet money against that.
I'm also quite sick of apt-get and inflexible PPAs and managing them has been an absolute hell. Things just break, packages end up conflicting and untangling the mess can take you hours. I find Fedora's DNF and Copr a lot more sane (almost as sane as pacman and AUR on Arch but probably not as good).
So in conclusion, I really don't see a point in using Ubuntu anymore. If you want APT, just use Debian instead. If you care about GNOME, use Fedora. I'll be replacing Ubuntu with Fedora on one of my laptops later this year... and not with next version of Ubuntu+GNOME.
He had no choice but to admit defeat. He's positioning the business for either an outside investment or an IPO (in other words, he wants to cash out). As for redirecting resources, some departments are being hit with layoffs of up to 60%.
Other failures:
And of course absolutely horrific color schemes ...
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Probably less dead now...
Ubuntu's challenge is they had success by being 'boring'. They collected the recent stable releases at a given point in time and released them in a well managed distribution. They were more aggressive than Debian, but not as over the top as RedHat/Fedora. (Fedora strategy is a slight step up from RedHat before. RedHat before would go to pre-release major software and then *never update*, Fedora at least avoids pre-release software, though they do embrace major changes whenever they feel like it, meaning it's not a stable desktop experience).
Ubuntu's problems crept in as they got these weird ass ambitions. They were going to make their own DE, their own UI design, their own display server. They didn't have good ideas and they really didn't have the talent to even execute on those ideas very well.
Of course it is ostensibly a business endeavor, and as a business endeavor, it has never found a viable path.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
1) Unity . baffling desktop .Debian: you get apt-get
2)
3) . Redhat: RPM
Kde used to be good but lost out.
WTF am I reading???? Talk about apples and oranges-- you're comparing desktop environments to entire Linux distributions!
...that liked Unity. And I'm NO casual. But it made excellent use of space on a Netbook. I dislike how they basically use every possible meta key combination, but in exchange for that, I get super fast virtual-desktop commands, moving windows inside a desktop, and moving windows across desktops. My little 2 GB RAM Chromebook with ~10 inch screen converted to Ubuntu is the workhorse of my day. I use it for clients, for RDP, I use it at home for fun and programming hobby games.
I honestly don't know what I'm going to switch to now. I hate that you can't customize everything in Unity, but what you could customize with a few tools, worked well for me.
I combine Unity with Guake. Guake is a top-down multi-tab terminal like the Quake drop-down console. So I've got virtual desktops for each task, one for personal internet, one for business internet, one for taking notes, and one for running Audacity while recording conferences. Meanwhile, I use Guake and quake pops down with F5, and goes back up with F5. And, Guake doesn't change when you change virtual desktops. So I can have four tasks running, and tasks inbetween them can be in Guake. (Of course, Guake also has multi-tabs.)
So between the two, I'm very fast and efficient with my keypresses. People will watch me work and be amazed. And I go, "This is Linux, and it's awesome."
But Unity is a big chunk of that efficiency for me. People say it's slow and fat, but my 2 GB RAM laptop seems to be just fine with it. It almost never crashes. I've got some plugins for it that work well for monitoring stats. Meanwhile, I open a single Google Doc in Chrome on my system and it takes almost half of my entire machine's memory and CPU usage. And even sites that aren't as notoriously fat as Google Docs, still fill up my RAM fast. So my entire supposedly "fat slow" system is dwarfed by most websites.
So, yeah, this kind of sucks. Just when these dumb twats at Canonical get people to change (while telling us the whole time "this is the BEST way to do Linux!") they change their minds and go back. So whatever high ground they had before, they just lost by going right back to GNOME3. Who the hell is running that company? A couple of monkey's humping a random number generator? I can't wait to find the next "modern feature" they shoved down our throats, only to change their minds on.
MATE is what Gnome 3 should have been.
FTFY.
I think they are referring to the decision making process, which is easier overall, which comes default with the most comfortable environment. I swapped from Kubuntu to Ubuntu and then Unity came out and I switched back to Kubuntu because trying to force unity back to gnome, was harder than just installing Kubuntu instead, yeah seriously, just that touch more thinking and effort was enough to swap because the choice was there and I simply made the easiest one at the time. Might swap back to Ubuntu with Unity gone or try another distribution (haven't done that in quite a while). So what you are reading is with a swap to Linux there are all sorts of choices and swapping from one to another is really arbitrary decision, choices on which one, are easy to do. Install are quick reconfigurations are not too bad, depending on how much you customise the desk top (they come back when you swap over which is fun).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen