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Dozens Of Canonical Employees Resign As Ubuntu Switches To GNOME, Shuttleworth Returns As CEO (theregister.co.uk)
Alexander J Martin, reporting for The Register: More than 80 Canonical workers are facing the axe as founder Mark Shuttleworth has taken back the role of chief executive officer. The number, revealed today by The Reg, comes as Shuttleworth assumed the position from CEO of eight years Jane Silber, previously chief operating officer. The Reg has learned 31 or more staffers have already left the Ubuntu Linux maker ahead of Shuttleworth's rise, with at least 26 others now on formal notice and uncertainty surrounding the remainder. One individual has resigned while others, particularly in parts of the world with more stringent labour laws (such as the UK), are being left in the dark. The details come after The Reg revealed plans for the cuts as a commercial get-fit programme instituted by Shuttleworth. The Canonical founder is cutting numbers after an external assessment of his company by potential new financial backers found overstaffing and that projects lacked focus.
I hope you don't get modded down because you're absolutely right. I had to stop using Ubuntu because systemd made it so unreliable. I experienced way too many times when my system wouldn't boot properly. Thankfully I had my phone and could search for help online but I just couldn't keep putting up with this. I've switched to FreeBSD and it's so good so far but I would like to use Ubuntu again. If they got rid of systemd and used Xfce I would gladly return to it.
Linux is the kernel and Linux is very successful in the embedded world on ARM. For example, Android is currently based on the Linux kernel. Many WiFI routers use Linux.. Linux is becoming strong in the automotive industry for Infotainment systems etc.
Linux is strong in web-servers. TiVo uses the Linux kernel. IBM is a big user of Linux in their super-computers.
The Linux kernel is not going to go away any time soon. It is much bigger than just Desktop Linux on a PC.
The success or failure of a Desktop environment project is independent of the Linux kernel because many of these projects are cross-platform. This cross-platform environment is helped by the use of GNU utilities and libraries which implement POSIX (and other standards). For example, you could use the free BSD kernel like Apple does for their iMacs.
Note that I am not a Ubuntu user as I prefer Mageia (Red Hat based) with a KDE Desktop environment. Mageia is a community run distribution so there is no corporate company behind it to muck things up.
A word of warning from history... do you remember the UNIX wars ? This was caused by commercial UNIX vendors introducing "diversity" to lock their clients into their UNIX systems.
The phrase you are looking for is the "convergence" of desktop environments. In fact, I would say that Ubuntu was using a divergent strategy which has now failed. This means the Desktop Linux systems become convergent again just like in the days before Ubuntu existed.
Canonical lost 31 of about 700 employees. Most linux distros have 0 employees and maybe a couple of hobbyists. I think Ubuntu can survive.
To the same extent as they always did. That's what makes them linux. Of course they do use different versions.
Actually the variety here has improved. Before systemd and upstart, everybody used sysvinit -- now there's a little variety and there are non-systemd debian forks.
Debian and Fedora both offer a wide variety of desktop environments. Who cares what the default selection may be?
Did they ever not?
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