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.

Comments

well

[sirber]

after the users left, it's normal that the devs leave afterward

Re:well

[bluefoxlucid]

It's weird to see a cult cutting membership, isn't it?

Re: well

[Anonymous Coward]

It does happen, usually everybody, including the leader, "leaves" at the same time though.

Which is it?

[Beacon11]

The title is "dozens resign" while the article (and summary) is "one resigned." Everyone else was laid off.

Re:Which is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Summaries here are always incoherent. You should be appreciative it isn't a dup.

Re: Which is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the specifics matter? I don't think so. What does matter is that the Ubuntu project is losing lots of contributors, and this can't be good. It doesn't matter if they resigned or were fired. What matters is that they won't be contributing to Ubuntu.

Re:Which is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Summaries here are always incoherent. You should be appreciative it isn't a dup.

Give it time

Re: Which is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter if they resigned or were fired.

Their next job interviewers may feel otherwise.

Re:Which is it?

[Daetrin]

They weren't laid off! Canonical volunteered them to be re-accommodated with resignations!

Re: Which is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those who resigned most likely already have a new job.

Re: Which is it?

[fwarren]

It could be good. If they fire 80 people and redirect remaining staff to work on upstream projects like Gnome and Wayland then we are better off.

Canonical has wasted lots of money on Unity and Mir.

Re:Which is it?

[Excelcia]

The summary isn't incoherent. It's intended to be slightly inflammatory, as their intention is to draw people in to make comments. Slashdot isn't what it used to be, and they now routinely resort to headline misrepresentation in order to draw in and incite people to engage.

Re:Which is it?

[DickBreath]

They're not laid off. They're re-accommodated.

Re: Which is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe Canonical forced a dozen transgender employees to resign.

Re:Which is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

their intention is to draw people in to make comments

A comparison of the comment counts on the "This day on Slashdot" box with the "Most discussed" box shows how well that is working (though it appears that today we do have one that made it to 800+ comments, usually the most discussed is showing 200-300 lately).

Summary is unclear

[93 Escort Wagon]

So part of the summary makes it sound like they're leaving in protest, while another part makes it sound like their positions will be going away - perhaps a "quit or be fired" sort of thing?

Of course I could just read the article, but I don't want to lose my Slashdot cred... so what's going on?

Re:Summary is unclear

[godrik]

Of course I could just read the article, but I don't want to lose my Slashdot cred... so what's going on?

I am sorry. You lost your Slashdot cred when you read the summary!

Re:Summary is unclear

[Anonymous Coward]

It's layoffs. Apparently a specific individual also resigned ahead of the layoffs.. and the article bothered to mention that detail.. which made it a little incoherent. The summary author ran with than and made an incoherent summary.

Re:Summary is unclear

[DrXym]

It's unclear to me why anyone would quit if they're about to be laid off. Chances are they'll get some kind of severance.

Re: Summary is unclear

[Anonymous Coward]

Not in bongo bongo land my friend

Re:Summary is unclear

[ebh]

Sometimes it goes the opposite direction: We'll offer you X if you resign, but that offer is only open for Y days, after which you may be lad off with no severance.

So then you have to decide whether the severance for resigning is a better deal than unemployment, which you'll only be eligible for if you are laid off.

Re:Summary is unclear

[drinkypoo]

So then you have to decide whether the severance for resigning is a better deal than unemployment, which you'll only be eligible for if you are laid off.

If you expect to get another job in time then it is always a better deal, because you leave your UI for the time when you're really going to need it. The question is, who is going to need employees like these? Someone else who wants to build a shitty WM that crashes a lot?

Re:Summary is unclear

[Anonymous Coward]

(Insert here a random noncoherent rant which is in no way related to your post or the parent)

Project lacks focus.

[Narcocide]

Yea, I hear Linux already had a desktop and they decided to make their own anyway.

Re:Project lacks focus.

[RotateLeftByte]

Linux had many different desktops but like Microsoft, they thought that one desktop from phone/tablet to mega server would rulez!
It was an admirable aim but personally, I never thought that it would work.

Re:Project lacks focus.

[Narcocide]

I'm not sure whether it would have ever worked, but probably where they went wrong wasn't in thinking it could work. Probably where they went wrong was in thinking that the right approach was to throw out everything and start over from scratch, free of the burdens of any respect for or awareness of existing communal efforts or ethics.

Re:Project lacks focus.

[nnull]

It did work, for a time. Ubuntu brought the desktop to linux that worked. The very fact that I could install Ubuntu on a laptop without having to tinker with ACPI and all other nonsense was a big plus (If anyone remembers installing linux on the laptop was a very painful experience pre-2010 days, still is). They fixed a lot of annoying little problems and contributed quite a bit to "get things working". They had the easiest installer of any linux distribution. They had an established community that was dedicated to Ubuntu and contributed a lot to fixing things. Being debian based just made it better.

Then they decided to make their own spinoffs of projects that really sucked and splitting off from all the desktop environments that worked, instead of contributing to fixing and making them better. The whole unity thing, Amazon and all the other nonsense. They should have stuck to what they were doing before, it was just fine, instead they tarnished their image and reputation with this crap.

The only spinoff which I think would have been fine is ubuntu on phones and tablets. They had quite a development following on those devices (They had a huge loyal following for the phone, ever since the whole NSA stink and a lot of people were very enthusiastic for it). The phones would been quite successful if they didn't have limited production (Seriously, they sold every handset they made). Their poor business decisions pretty much killed Ubuntu phone.

Re:Project lacks focus.

[vmartell]

Pls friends, don't take this a troll - but to me it looks like the wining linux desktop was Mac OSX!

I work in an all linux shop - in the server - I am one of very few linux laptop (and desktop) users - every meeting is the same, the lone Dell in a sea of lighted apples...

And indeed, it is a unix desktop! Just wish the machines were a little better - I bet Mac OSX would be great on my Dell Precision 7710...

Thnx!

v

Re:Project lacks focus.

[rtb61]

It could never work desktop is not a tablet is not a phone. Completely different usage patterns and usage styles and it was a huge mistake. Canonical and Ubuntu lost of lot of ground and they tried way harder than they should have, which caused them to lose more ground but hey Redhat, SuSe et al all had their moments and that is the nature of choice in Linux land.

Mir will or will not survive based upon one thing and one thing only, how well it plays games. So Linux has communications tied up via android and TVs tied up via many manufacturers and servers tied up via many distributions. Now it's time for games via Steam. In fact you could imagine a three way play Ubuntu, Steam and Sony (this as a one time thing to basically kill windows). M$ is busily seriously pissing off power users so they are extremely vulnerable at this time.

Re:Project lacks focus.

[Hognoxious]

If anyone remembers installing linux on the laptop was a very painful experience pre-2010 days, still is

I installed RH7 (not RHEL7) on a Gateway (anybody remember them?) lappie without any problems that weren't due to PEBKAC.

Re:Project lacks focus.

[BarbaraHudson]

FreeBSD-based fork named Darwin, not linux-based. (same as the PS3 and PS4 are based on FreeBSD)

Re:Project lacks focus.

[vmartell]

Right! but the point is that ( at least in my experience ) Mac OSX is the defacto desktop for all those linux developers and engineers - the broader point is that imho that situation makes the desktop linux war a bit pointless - and I think Ubuntu/Shuttleworth recognized that... not to mention the phone thing...

thnx!

Re:Project lacks focus.

[dave420]

The same MS which just released a massive update to its linux subsystem in Windows, incorporating all sorts of improvements, in order to appeal to the self same power users you mention?

I get that you don't like MS. I really do. There is a lot to criticise them for without resorting to making stuff up.

Re:Project lacks focus.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac OS X somewhen around version 10.4 (give or take one or two points) would have been an ok starting point for a desktop. It was in the same league as the various desktop choices that Linux have, and sure, it could have evolved to be a worthwhile choice today. But if you think Mac OS X 10.7 or later is in the same league as whatever most Linux users take for granted on a daily basis, you're nuts. Mac OS X today is ugly as fuck, hard to use, and weird. Beyond desktop issues, even, just trying to mount network drives, it's starting to have more and more problems. Mac OS X is mostly functional, but that's about it. It's way behind everything else now, except maybe Windows. (I haven't seen Windows 8 or 10 yet, but Windows 7 and XP were pretty bad.)

Re:Project lacks focus.

[xtronics]

It is not really a linux phone - it uses an android kernel with ubuntu stuff on top. No one really knows whats in the binary blobs. Real Linux is considered open software - this is not.

Hopefully

[Anonymous Coward]

they will get rid of systemd and their users will come back.

Re: Hopefully

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Hopefully

[jalbarl25]

Your comment shall forever shine in the darkness amongst the last beacons of sanity. Thank you, AC!

Re: Hopefully

[Anonymous Coward]

I am into Debian 9 without systemd. But I am switching over to FreeBSD

Re: Hopefully

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't recall if it was stated in one of the recent death-to-Unity articles, or if it was just an impression I picked up along the way, but I think Canonical is trying to refocus Ubuntu more on the cloud, where they're having the largest impact.

Regardless of how people feel about systemd on the desktop, I've heard almost exclusively negative opinions for headless servers, and I can only assume that cloud instances fall into that category as well. If systemd hurts enough there, canonical might be pressured into switching away from it (on something more like a 20.04 time scale), which would either necessitate working around the systemd dependency of gnome3 or switching to another DE. And they'd need another init system to use--presumably they'd switch back to upstart, but I'd like to see OpenRC get more attention.

Shuttleworth seems like a real tool

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy really has no brain. The ONLY reason to use Ubuntu is driver support! That has always been the only reason! Now there is really no reason to use Ubuntu. Time for Debian or CentOS.

Ubuntu cloud...Ha
Ubuntu phone...Ha
Unity...Ha - Did nothing but drive people apart.
Mir...Ha

Shuttleworth is nothing but bad choices.

Re:Shuttleworth seems like a real tool

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing I like about Shuttleworth is that he is a pretty motivated guy and actually manages to get things implemented (as opposed to the next 1000 guys with ideas that do nothing about them).

I think his problem is that he holds on to a losing model way too long (sort of like when you have a stock and it's going down and down and down and you are only relying on hope at that point when realistically you should cut your losses).

There is evidence to his broken model from an interview with him about 7 years ago when he was being asked about his "famous" Ubuntu Bug #1: Microsoft has too much market share. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1

He said, in that interview https://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/11/17/people-behind-debian-mark-shuttleworth-ubuntus-founder/ that this would be the solution: "The key to that dream is economics, and as always, a change in economics; it was clear to me that the flow of money around personal software would change from licensing (“buying Windows”) to services (“paying for your Ubuntu ONE storage”)." But I don't think that jives with reality. I don't think you can dominate with an Open Source project based on ideas relating to money.

You can even read in his blog and articles that his biggest frustration with Debian is that one person was not in charge, so it lacked a unified vision. That's great, but everything Shuttleworth does he wants to be the leader in, which is why he goes about re-implementing Canonical-only projects that already exist in the Linux-sphere that he could work with instead. And the problem with wanting to be the leader of everything is that when you are wrong you must realize it or you end up far outside of reality. But maybe he is starting to realize it now.

Re:Shuttleworth seems like a real tool

[Anonymous Coward]

I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but... I've met Mark and I'm pretty sure his IQ is in the 90th percentile. He's one smart motherfucker... seriously. Bit of a psychopath maybe, like many CEOs, but one smart motherfucker.

Yes, the phone, unity, and Mir were projects competing in saturated markets fighting uphill battles. He funded those out of passion, and put his own money on the table for it. Who can blame him for that? It sucks that he couldn't find the market for it. But driver support won't be impacted by this.

Ubuntu seems to be doing well in the cloud though, and Mark can't keep funding Canonical by himself forever. From a cold commercial perspective, this seems like a smart move.

Re:Shuttleworth seems like a real tool

[sexconker]

The last time I needed to set up a Linux box, I went with Mint because Ubuntu had clearly shat the bed. This was about a year ago.

Ubuntu was the single most successful flavor of Linux for desktop use. It was the closest Linux ever got to being widely appropriate for grandmas and neighbors and other people that people like us are sick of supporting.

I don't keep up with the various distros often enough to know the history of how Ubuntu failed, but I do know that it failed.

Re:Shuttleworth seems like a real tool

[AvitarX]

You missed Upstart

Re:Shuttleworth seems like a real tool

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that Mint is based on Ubuntu, right?

Re:Shuttleworth seems like a real tool

[HiThere]

This depends on the flavor of Mint you pick. Or at least it did the last time I tried it. There was a version based on Unbuntu, and another based directly on Debian. (Of course, Ubuntu is, itself, based on Debian...but it at least used to do lots of massaging for compatibility and adding drivers.)

Re:Shuttleworth seems like a real tool

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu seems to be doing well in the cloud though

Canonical Sues Cloud Provider Over 'Unofficial' Ubuntu Images.

Re:Shuttleworth seems like a real tool

[ebh]

I did the same thing a few years ago. Mint was the best of both worlds: It had all the parts of Ubuntu that Just Worked, but it kept GNOME, and even let you choose between GNOME 2 (Mate) and GNOME 3 (Cinnamon). Gets the job done, and on my HTPC, the kids can't tell the difference.

Re:Shuttleworth seems like a real tool

[Anonymous Coward]

An IQ in the 90th percentile is not really that smart. Sure, it's above average, but that's not saying much.

It takes an IQ in the 98th percentile to get into Mensa, and that's still only two standard deviations above the mean, an IQ of about 130.

Lots of people smarter than that. (Lots more dumber than that, but that's not saying much. Half the population is dumber than average.*)

(*Assuming a normal distribution, which IQ does in fact follow.)

Re:Shuttleworth seems like a real tool

[Anonymous Coward]

and even let you choose between GNOME 2 (Mate) and GNOME 3 (Cinnamon)

And xfce and kde

Re:Shuttleworth seems like a real tool

[sexconker]

HiThere covered most of it. The other part of it is what Canonical failed to realize.
When they ruin Ubuntu, others can just take the good and run with it.

Re:Shuttleworth seems like a real tool

[Hognoxious]

you choose between GNOME 2 (Mate) and GNOME 3 (Cinnamon).

Cinnamon is not Gnome 3. Not even close. Get a clue.

Re:Shuttleworth seems like a real tool

[ebh]

So this is wrong? "So they decided to create their own desktop environment, one that retains the same look and feel of a GNOME 2 (or MATE) desktop, but built atop GNOME 3 technologies. That was how Cinnamon came to be."

I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

So is Ubuntu Linux effectively a dead project/distribution at this point?

A shakeup of this magnitude can't be good for the project's health.

This really makes me worry about the health of the Linux ecosystem as a whole.

Between the PulseAudio, GNOME 3, Wayland, and systemd disasters, we Linux users have seen so much turmoil these past several years.

Now things are getting so uncertain within the Ubuntu world, with the whole Unity-to-GNOME-3 switch and now this news.

If the Ubuntu project falters, the Linux ecosystem will be getting even less diverse.

Even now there are fewer and fewer differences between Fedora and Debian.

In so many ways Debian and Fedora can be considered essentially the same: they use the same kernel, the same init system, the same desktop environment, and much of the same userland software.

Even the package management is almost identical now, with the main difference being whether we type "dnf" or "apt"!

This lack of diversity has resulted in stagnation.

I really want Linux to succeed, but all of these developments leave me feeling very uneasy.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[MightyMartian]

So, in other words, some investors came in and suggested "Just take a few dozen of the employees out back and shoot them, and that will totally focus the rest of the team!"

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the definition of the 'concern troll'?

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't bother me. What does bother me is the lack of information from freebsd.org about forthcoming releases (if any), as I use windowmaker under that OS for my desktop.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[AvitarX]

Linux as my primary desktop died in '08.

there were IO scheduler (allegedly) issues that caused lock-ups of my interface, and it never really got better from their.

I really liked the over-all gnome 2 interface, I liked the "ugly" colors of Ubuntu, and finally felt a Linux Desktop was a nice smooth interface, with Compiz giving it a nice smooth windows moving over windows, slight flourishes (gentle wobble on the windows really made dragging them feel nicer, a good minimize and maximize animation, etc) that made it all just feel connected and smooth.

Once Windows 7 came with it's mouse-over preview taskbar, and edge snapping, the ideal way to manage windows was no longer Linux for me, and it was relegated to when I needed it specifically.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[AvitarX]

And I didn't really mind Pulse Audio, per application volume was a big pro for me, and maybe it wasn't because of pulse audio, but they came about at the same time.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Endloser]

You realize there are more than 3 linux distributions, right? And saying that one of the most mainstream distros, known for feature instability, changing it's org structure (again) is killing diversity is kind of making me scratch my head. Like, what the hell are you talking about?

Re: I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

A shakeup of this magnitude might be the inly thing that saves it. They need to focus in a few core products rather than dipping into 10 different industries.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[jaklode]

I/O related lock ups, or well, extremely long hangs, were finally fixed in 4.10 with writeback throttling.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[AvitarX]

So, 10 years later?

Glad I gave up after a year rather than hung around.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[skullandbones99]

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.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you should not worry too about the way corporations are taking over Linux.
If it weren't for the Microsoft model, a lot of Mouse Clicking System Engineers would be doing something else for a living; lawyers maybe?
You have free choice to move and contribute to any other distribution that are gnome3/systemd/redhat/etc free.
Shame about the Debian leadership bending over to Poettering and Co but they made their bed afaik and lost.
If Slackware/Devuan/etc fails in that regard and becomes another corporation appendage there are the BSD flavors and they just happen to still be performance driven and actively developed.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

We are glad you are gone as well. We are also happy to listen to you post for ten years about how you left.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck the systemd distros, there is *BSD baby.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Gavagai80]

Canonical lost 31 of about 700 employees. Most linux distros have 0 employees and maybe a couple of hobbyists. I think Ubuntu can survive.

they use the same kernel

To the same extent as they always did. That's what makes them linux. Of course they do use different versions.

the same init system

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.

the same desktop environment

Debian and Fedora both offer a wide variety of desktop environments. Who cares what the default selection may be?

and much of the same userland software.

Did they ever not?

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think Ubuntu (a distro I don't use on the desktop) switching to Gnome (a desktop I don't use) is nearly as bad as you are making things out to be.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[thegarbz]

This lack of diversity has resulted in stagnation.

So are you proposing change for changes sake or are you actually saying that things like package managers are missing some killer features?

Where you see stagnation, I see maturity. It's nice that a lot of focus is on other projects that look to bring new functionality (e.g. containers) to the system.

Re: I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not bad, just Gnome is terrible and very unresponsive to users and UI designers. They have their own tune along with RedHat where they are too chummy with Microsoft thinking they can make it big on corporate desktops. Remember the Mono-everywhere years where they were all about trying to copy M$.

Somebody still needs to "gently" fork Gnome, like the Mint guys do, because Gnome won't do diversity on their own.

It's too bad KDE had a couple of rough revisions from the old v3 days. They have a lot of interesting things. The problem is that they don't meet the FLOSS purity test so the only big distribution putting them forward is SuSe.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[slack_justyb]

So is Ubuntu Linux effectively a dead project/distribution at this point?

Wow, hyperbole much? There's a lot of very profitable things with Ubuntu Linux and now they're going to focus on them. That your favorite part of "things Canonical" is being paired back doesn't mean the whole is dead.

A shakeup of this magnitude can't be good for the project's health.
This really makes me worry about the health of the Linux ecosystem as a whole.

Um, Linux is doing quite fine really. I think you're thinking Linux Desktop = All of Linux, which is an incorrect statement.

Between the PulseAudio, GNOME 3, Wayland, and systemd disasters, we Linux users have seen so much turmoil these past several years.

Okay at some point everyone is just going to have to move past this dead horse, it's turned into a jelly like substance from all the beating. All of these projects have evolved from the infantile stage they were once in, maybe some of the critics should too?

If the Ubuntu project falters, the Linux ecosystem will be getting even less diverse.
Even now there are fewer and fewer differences between Fedora and Debian.

The problem isn't that the ecosystem is less diverse, it's that your definition of the ecosystem is highly limited. If we limit all of Linux to just those two distros and their derivatives, then yeah, there's not much separating them, but news flash, there wasn't much separating them before.

Even the package management is almost identical now, with the main difference being whether we type "dnf" or "apt"!

(facepalm) Yes on the surface they look similar, so quick question do you scream this when talking about tools like sed, tar, diff? The whole point is to offer somewhat similar commands to make the life of admins a whole lot easier. However, if you look inside of dnf or apt you'll see that they operate differently on how they build internal databases, how they manage memory, etc. (since Slashdot loves car references) just because all cars have a gas and brake pedal doesn't mean all cars have the same engine.

This lack of diversity has resulted in stagnation.

A lot of people think diversity = innovation and that's not an exactly true statement. I think it should be obvious why that is. Additionally, if anything Linux in a broad sense is far from stagnant. Again, I think your statement comes from a limit of perspective to just the surface of a Linux Desktop. Even in Linux Desktop world a lot is going on under the hood. Not every release needs to include 50000 bells and whistles.

I really want Linux to succeed, but all of these developments leave me feeling very uneasy.

No. You want Linux Desktop to become the dominate choice and the fact is that's not happening, ever. People "computer" differently now a days and there are blends of "Linux" so to say that already address that space. RedHat or Ubuntu or whoever, might move into the workstation or they might not. But the home PC market is having a rough enough time trying to convince people to be in the "home PC market". Few if any are worrying about "home Windows market" versus "home Linux market" because they're just trying to address the core tenet here of actually getting PCs sold. So stop worrying about something that's not going to happen and be happy about the dozens of other ways that Linux has dominated in several different markets outside the PC.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Megol]

Not hyperbole - trolling. The likelihood of the OP just being an ignorant fool decreases greatly when taking into the account the choice of words and presentation.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Neuronwelder]

Hi Gavagai80, I'm a newbie to Linux..Thanks for making me feel better. I was getting quite nervous since I'm still running Ubuntu version 15. I tried Debian first, but did not have the knack of installing extra programs and finally gave up.. Between the book of 'Ubuntu Unleashed' and the Web I was able to also install Dos games; via 4Dos the Web and www.Gog.com. I'm not sure if Wine is dependent upon the Canonical system or not, but if it is; there go my Blood 2, Halflife, Wolfenstein, and more.. I'm almost ready to jump to Linux Mint because of the fighting.. But I don't know if it's any better. (P.S. I can't update because I will lose all the hard work I did to make my old Dos games work. Updating kills them. So I will have to use a new hard drive to stay current.)

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

So, in other words, some investors came in and suggested "Just take a few dozen of the employees out back and shoot them, and that will totally focus the rest of the team!"

The concept worked well for the Roman Legions...

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[cb88]

Wine has very little to do with Ubuntu...

I'm not sure why you are using 4DOS instead of DOSBOX to run Dos programs?

Consider, taking your ~/.wine prefix and just copying it to your new installation... I realize this suggestion isn't full instructions but it should point you in the right direction to keep you from having to reinstall everything.

https://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=18606

Re: I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

And if those 31 people that are being cut are in the systemd development department, then even better.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Darinbob]

This happens all the time in the corporate world. It's not good when it's you that is fired or encouraged to leave, but it very often leads to a boost in stock prices or increased profitability. If a company has too many employees and not enough profit, then you shrink the numbers. Maybe it happened because they grew to fast, there's a temporary down turn, etc.

If you think this is the death knell for Ubuntu, then do you think layoffs at other corporations are the death knell for those guys too?

Ubuntu has embraced snaps more than any other distribution so that sets them apart.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[h33t l4x0r]

Wait, Linux has audio now? When did that happen?

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

Now you're trolling. If you like Gnome 2 then use Mate. Even XFCE has Edge snapping. Ugly Colors? You talk as if the Colors can't be changed. Obvious Troll is Obvious.

Re: I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

GB did it 260 years ago on John Byng. This is not new

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[drinkypoo]

Canonical lost 31 of about 700 employees. Most linux distros have 0 employees and maybe a couple of hobbyists. I think Ubuntu can survive.

The vast majority of distributions without employees are just rehashes of someone else's distribution with a couple of extra packages added and a different desktop background and login manager theme.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Highdude702]

Linux has always had audio, you just used to had to be smart enough to set it up and enable it.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Highdude702]

The people that "Leave" after a short period are the same ones that complain how bad windows is, but want linux to adopt the same shit theyre complaining about windows systems sucking at. they dont want to learn, they want everything to "just work" even if it makes it insecure. the linux community is inherently against that model. so the crappy windows users will never jump ship because Linux isnt crappy enough for them.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Neuronwelder]

Thanks for the info! I'll practice is on another drive. I'm too new, and everyone knows that using Terminal and making a entry mistake is like stepping on a landmine. I made the idiot mistake of not recording my backup password... The reason I used Dos was just to see if my favorite ancient games would work (tinkering). Another one I wanted to see work was Audacity. As buggy as Audacity is, I forced it to record what I wanted to.. It's all about making things functional on Linux to me. I always thought that Linux was the future until now.. Windows has gone crazy as far as I'm concerned, and I want to bail that ship.. I wanted a life raft OS and thought it was Linux.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Highdude702]

Had i not commented above, I would mod you up. It seems people dont understand the difference between the kernel and the surrounding userspace. and they only thing the distros they commonly hear are the only ones that exist. Ive been around since the days of Slackware. As far as enterprise goes, Almost all of them use Linux in one way or another. Thats never going to change as nothing but BSD has the stability, and Linux has the advantage of ease of use over BSD and i feel thats why its winning on the server side.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Highdude702]

I thank you for clarifying that for users that dont know. I have tried in the past but can not bring myself to do it on every post about linux as the same comment you responded to are in every one. Its human nature to make excuses to abuse yourself with things that you have the power to change, but not the skill or ambition? is that the word im looking for? either way. Thank you and hopefullly you have helped a fed up user of windows/macos get the the courage to try to switch. The world needs more people like you.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Highdude702]

Heres some suggestions for the future, while setting your disks up, put your /home directory on its own drive, then you can transfer your user settings between almost any linux distro, Also for beginners Mint might be a better os as there is a little less of change this change that every version. IMO ubuntu ruined version 15, i would check out 16.04(you can upgrade without losing anything currently) i feel its a better os than 15.xx and google is your friend with linux, especially mint/ubuntu as there is huge community support i search like this 'problem i am having '

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Highdude702]

blah lets try this again 'problem i am having "distro" "version" ' obviously without quotes.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Shirley Marquez]

Ubuntu is dropping a bunch of projects. Development on Unity, Mir, and Ubuntu OS are all ending, so there is less need for developers.

Ubuntu's core products, the desktop and server distributions, appear to be healthy. Abandoning Unity will probably strengthen acceptance of the desktop version, as some users did not like that environment. Ubuntu as a convergence system for phones and tablets is dead, but overall I believe it's alive and well.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Shirley Marquez]

Ubuntu was pursuing a different convergence strategy. Like Microsoft, they believed that they could create a single user interface that would span desktop and laptop computers, phones, and tablets. They were wrong, and now they're abandoning that strategy.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Cajun Hell]

It's even less bad than that! It's no badness at all.

Even with Ubuntu, you can run whatever desktop you want to. The switch to GNOME means nothing, just like the past switch to Unity meant nothing. (Did anyone really use Unity anyway?) Complaining about which desktop it uses, is like complaining about which text editor gets installed by default. If you don't like it, install one of the other ones, and it isn't as though you aren't still running Ubuntu.

I don't have any passion (or even a side) in the systemd debate, and yet, that's way more of an important aspect of Ubuntu than the default desktop is.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Joey Vegetables]

I'm sorry. I have watched mine gradually improve. But my requirements are modest; I've generally used XFCE on Gentoo. Never had much luck with Gnome, and KDE is nice but uses more resources than I can generally afford.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Neuronwelder]

Thank you very much for your info, Hidude702, I really appreciate it!

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[ebvwfbw]

Nothing to worry about. Dump ubuntu and debian. They were never really viable in the first place and took a great deal of stuff from RedHat. I used to laugh a lot as things like the wifi driver and such came out and the ubuntu people were so proud. I'd say - yea, look at that code. Where did it come from? Oh yea, RedHat.

Pick up Fedora. I know, it doesn't have non free stuff. Not hard to get. I've found over the years its just way more stable. Even though Fedora is a test bed. RedHat actually makes money.

But don't answer yet. There are plenty of other distros. Linux isn't going anywhere.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Highdude702]

No problem, will always help somebody trying to get away from the microsoft freak-o-system when they want to try to better their computing situation. also dont believe the crap about there being no software, you just have to learn how to use google a bit better if you cant find what you need. in most instances the Open Source alternative ends up being better after you learn how to use it(which is often peoples gripe about leaving windows, they dont want to have to learn anything. bazaar) and if you are a programmer you can then customize the programs you do find to fit exactly your needs.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Anonymous Coward]

Just so you know a bit more. Wine is a set of libraries and executables that can make a Windows program (possibly) run on Linux. From Linux point of view, it is not a special feature of the Linux environment. It is more like an additionally installed program (like a game or a word processor) which provides an additional feature (a Windows-like environment). It is install-able on nearly any distro, with a few distros being slightly harder to get the version of Wine you wish than other distros. None of the major distros have any end-user differences difficulty with Wine.

So, I highly recommend you use a second, third, and fourth distro. People get blinded by thinking the distro they know is significantly better when starting with Linux. In reality, the Linux was better, and after they try a few different distros, they start to realize that most distros have the "better" they were focusing on, and their first distro isn't the sole source of Linux goodness.

 

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[AvitarX]

It wasn't exactly a short period of time, it was after years of slow progress culminating in a pretty excellent desktop.

Then it started locking up horribly with background IO, the interface went into flux (though it seems that is resolved pretty effectively, with gnome 2 related projects and xfce being pretty great), init systems went into flux, drivers went into flux (gallium, the move away from X).

The Desktop fell back to 90s era in quality, simultaneously, a few years later, the Windows Desktop got good as a way to manage application windows.

It seems 9 years later the IO issues are fixed, but that's not giving up after a short time, I gave up after a year or 2 when I could afford Windows 7.

I had also been funding Linux bundlers if not development to the tune of $100/year (Mandrake Club, Boxed Linux with Yast, boxed RedHat, and Ubuntu Merch).

It was when it cost me more money to have a system that locked if I didn't spend even more on an SSD, and a nice competing system came about, that I finally jumped ship.

Re:I'm a really worried longtime Linux user

[Highdude702]

I've been using Linux since about 97(boxed red hat) and I've had my fair share of issues but nothing that wasn't fixable, and I have also regimes a few systems changing things I shouldn't have. I have come to realize over the years most of the issues I had were issues I caused myself. I use Windows to game now but I prefer Linux for anything else. And everybody has their own story's of horror with Linux. But with the way Microsoft has been going o to to encourage anybody that is willing to learn to make the switch while it would still be easy to do.

LOLZ Converged!

[ZeroConcept]

This is what happens to SJW-converged institutions. Soon after they prioritize diversity over their core mission, the institution is unable to perform.

Linux identified this as a threat:
http://voxday.blogspot.mx/2016...
"The Foundation's action doesn't have anything to do with Karen Sandler being the executive director of the Software Freedom Conservancy, but rather, her having been the executive director of the Gnome Foundation, which she bankrupted in three years by devoting nearly 50 percent of the foundation's budget to a new Women's Outreach Program."

Re:LOLZ Converged!

[Anonymous Coward]

Voxday? Take your stinkin' alt-right drivel with you.

Re:LOLZ Converged!

[ZeroConcept]

Cuck!

Re: LOLZ Converged!

[Millennium]

I never did understand how the bitter unfuckables arrived at "cuck" as their concept of the ultimate sick burn. I mean, I get the idea of projection and all, but why expose one's own ultimate insecurity this way? How is that tactically sound?

Re:LOLZ Converged!

[Anonymous Coward]

Says the micropeened incel.

Re: LOLZ Converged!

[Anonymous Coward]

I get the idea of projection and all, but why expose one's own ultimate insecurity this way?

What's your take on how leftists label everybody and everything they dislike as "Nazi", "Hitler", "literally Hitler", "worse than Hitler", "racist", "sexist", "homophobic", "intolerant", "bigoted", "transphobic", and so forth?

Is it because deep down inside they tend to harbor divisive, totalitarian urges, perhaps even wanting to engage in genocide against those that they hate?

Re: LOLZ Converged!

[Daetrin]

I'm not sure if they're (capable of) thinking it through that thoroughly. One of them tried to insult a woman when she mentioned going on birdwatching trip with two male friends by telling her that her husband was a cuck.

...how does saying that to a woman about her partner even work as an insult? It fails on so many levels!

Re: LOLZ Converged!

[Anonymous Coward]

SJW is previous quarter's braindead stock phrase, currently you should be using 'special snowflake' for your inane comments, didn't you get the memo?

Re: LOLZ Converged!

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't argue facts, gotta bitch about the source?

Re: LOLZ Converged!

[imidan]

My theory is that the projection is so strong that it would never occur to them to question whether others have the same insecurity. It's not even worth evaluating to them: emasculation is the absolute worst thing for them, so it must be the worst thing for everyone, so trying to undermine their opponents' masculinity will be the most devastating attack they can make. Sadly, it differs from schoolyard insults only by vocabulary level, so it makes them look pretty pathetic, and because there's absolutely no way to reason with someone who thinks calling an opponent 'cuck' is a legitimate rhetorical approach, it tends to end the conversation and then they think they've 'won'. So they feel pretty good about it and keep doing it.

Re: LOLZ Converged!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cuck all you guys, I'm going home (to watch others doing it).

Re: LOLZ Converged!

[Millennium]

Although there is much to be said about the terminally-irresilient and their own issues with paranoia and jumping to conclusions about those they disagree with, there are also some marked differences that make them harder to pin down. Among other things, as you yourself have noticed, the conclusions they jump to actually vary: you had to assemble quite a list of varying list of insults to capture the breadth of vitriol the tumblrites can fling at a person, while the creeplords don't really seem to have anything other than "cuck".

GNOME

[imidan]

It's interesting. This article was first posted with the headline "Dozens Of Canonical Employees Resign, Shuttleworth Returns As CEO." Then it was re-posted less than a minute later as "Dozens Of Canonical Employees Resign As Ubuntu Switches To GNOME, Shuttleworth Returns As CEO."

The only difference between the two is "As Ubuntu Switches to GNOME," but if you look at TFA, the word 'gnome' does not appear. So someone went to the effort of editing this post to add gnome to the headline despite its having nothing to do with the article. I guess to give us a target for hating on? Two of the stories about gnome this month have gotten more than 300 comments, which is relatively big these days for Slashdot.

Just an observation and a theory about the way our overlords try to influence the discussion.

Re:GNOME

[31415926535897]

Yup, I think I'm going to join the masses and leave. This place sucks now. It's all clickbait and politics, and the summaries and comments of substance are long gone. Oh well.

Re:GNOME

[XXeR]

So someone went to the effort of editing this post to add gnome to the headline despite its having nothing to do with the article.

Haha, that reminds me of this line from Total Recall:

Someone..? We're talking about the fucking agency!

https://gointothestory.blcklst...

Re:GNOME

[Cro Magnon]

My first thought was that the employees were resigning BECAUSE Ubuntu is switching to Gnome! Understandable, but a little extreme. ;)

Re:GNOME

[Endloser]

It seems every other article is some website I'd never heard of until I decided to try reading slashdot again, yesterday: Next Web. The only stories I've seen on their site are ones with intentional misdirection via lack of context that is freely available among most other outlets reporting the same thing. Seems this last /. buyout was a bust for those of us who prefer objective reporting. Oh well, I'll try back in a few more months and see if they cut the crap. Or maybe I won't. I'm kind of tired of this seesaw bullshit between objective and clickbait articles.

Re:GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

I am personally convinced that Microsoft is intentionally sabotaging the Linux community one group at a time through subversive means.

Who wins if Linux dies?

Re:GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot owners and editors come and go, but one thing is constant over the years: whiny posters threatening to leave because they're fed up that the site's no longer as good as it used to be.

Re:GNOME

[hey!]

Well, it didn't actually say the two events were related. You could just as well have written the title as "Dozens of Canonical Employees Missing in Aftermath of April Fool's Day."

Re:GNOME

[BarbaraHudson]

Well, they ARE switching back to Gnome ... hence no need for the Unity folks.

Re:GNOME

[x_t0ken_407]

I noticed that in the headline and immediately thought that the resignations had to do with the switch to GNOME...lol @ /. for this click-bait stuff...

From my perspective

[jediborg]

The Unity vs GNOME debate is just like this comic: http://extrafabulouscomics.com...

but i use KDE so i don't really know what i'm talking about

Re:From my perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Nicholas Gurewitch should be flattered - http://pbfcomics.com/20/

I'm okay with that though, since PBF is no longer producing.

Re:From my perspective

[__aaclcg7560]

That's nothing. I typically ignore the default desktop and install Xfce instead. For older hardware, Xfce works a lot better.

Re:From my perspective

[synaptik]

You use a window manager? That's cute.

Re:From my perspective

[sexconker]

PBF is no longer producing.

No longer regularly producing.

Re:From my perspective

[__aaclcg7560]

You use a window manager? That's cute.

I prefer the CLI. But engineers at some companies I've worked with will throw a hissy fit if they don't have a GUI to play with. Xfce doesn't provoke religious wars like KDE and Gnome does.

Re:From my perspective

[HiThere]

xfce has it's points, but I *do* prefer KDE. Usually. A few features that I use were broken the last time I tried xfce. (Windows getting stuck under menubars, etc. And if I hid the menubar I had to log out&in to get it back.)

I could have gotten around this by only having the menubar at the bottom of the screen rather than both top and bottom as I prefer, or even not having full width menubars. But it was annoying. (OTOH, I'm not running on slow hardware either, so the advantage was less.)

Re:From my perspective

[synaptik]

You're doing this wrong. You're supposed to imply that I'm the actual noob here, and then demand that I egress from your meticulously manicured landscape.

Re:From my perspective

[__aaclcg7560]

You're doing this wrong. You're supposed to imply that I'm the actual noob here, and then demand that I egress from your meticulously manicured landscape.

I would never disrespect a Slashdot elder no matter how wrong. :P

Re:From my perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Window managers are great. You can have multiple terminals on screen at the same time.

Fuck Shuttleworth

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck Ubuntu.

Burn the motherfucker down.

They are related.

[Anonymous Coward]

They are canceling development on two big in-house projects, Mir and Unity, and laying off many of the people who worked on those projects. The Register article is a followup on a previous article (which they linked), where this is explicitly confirmed by Canonical.

Re:They are related.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then include a link in the summary to an article about Ubuntu dropping GNOME. Don't make us play 6 degrees to find the content from the headline.

If you're fat then losing weight is healthy

[erapert]

From TFS:

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.

So Shuttleworth is being a responsible adult and cutting the people who aren't doing anything useful and getting things back on track so that they don't waste man/woman hours on projects that don't have any point?
If so then good.

Does this also mean Canonical is going to ditch Mir and focus on helping to improve Wayland instead? Why reinvent a different and incompatible wheel when you could just help refine the one that is already there? This seems to be the reasoning behind switching back to GNOME as the default DE.
Does this mean Canonical is going to stop wasting time on dumb and redundant ideas like Ubuntu phone? I hope so.

If they're cutting these sorts of time wasters then it makes sense that they'd also cut the people that worked on those projects. Unlike Apple, Canonical is showing real bravery here by cutting employees from an already controversial company (open source people like to get angry). But if that's what brings the company back on track then more power to Shuttleworth.

What's curious to me is how Canonical got off onto those bullshit projects in the first place. Seems to me like the execs who suggested such fad-chasing (Ubuntu phone) and wheel-reinventing (Mir and Unity) should also be on the chopping block if they aren't already.

(full disclosure: I use Ubuntu on all of my computers at home and at work)

Re: If you're fat then losing weight is healthy

[Anonymous Coward]

You should probably know that gnome is no longer a desktop environment project, but a racist and sexist "diversity" scam.

See: "outreachy"

Re:If you're fat then losing weight is healthy

[DrXym]

The wheel-reinventing was a direct consequence of their phone ambitions. They wanted the phone / tablet cake all to themselves so they put bits into the stack that were encumbered with GPL3 for everyone else while they could do with them as they saw fit.

Upstream projects and contributors had a problem with this and so the work of maintaining Mir and backends for upstream projects was pushed back on Ubuntu. Then when the phone flopped all the stuff became surplus to requirements.

I think they would have enjoyed more success with their mobile platform to have used Wayland in the first place. They wouldn't have had to hire so many people to work on it, wouldn't have alienated other contributors, and would probably still have held stewardship of their mobile platform. Even if it still flopped it would have been a cheaper flop than the one they're facing now.

Re:If you're fat then losing weight is healthy

[Anonymous Coward]

Why isn't it "instead of" rather than "also" when it comes to the execs? The staffers being axed couldn't have been retasked elsewhere?

Re:If you're fat then losing weight is healthy

[Anonymous Coward]

(open source people like to get angry)

I'm sick of these fucking allegations!!

Re:If you're fat then losing weight is healthy

[thegarbz]

Seems to me like the execs who suggested such fad-chasing

In a world seeing a rise in portable devices, a new form factor in the form of slate devices, and a dramatic increase in the number of touch enabled devices all combined with a general decline in the desktop and laptop computers, I wouldn't call it a fad.

A fad is something that comes and goes. For them to have chased a fad, the market needs to shift back first. It hasn't. It also doesn't look like it's going to.

Things like Unity may have been an abortion, but not focusing on interfaces right now will simply mean that in 10 years we'll be saying: Ubuntu still needs a keyboard and mouse, it's archaic, maybe they can fix this and 2028 can be the year of Linux on desktop.

Re:If you're fat then losing weight is healthy

[dbIII]

to have used Wayland in the first place

Wayland came in after they had started and was initially far more hype than substance. It's initial design was also incredibly unrealistic until some other developers came on board. It took a while before it was even clear that Wayland development would proceed instead of vanishing in a puff of hype.

Re:If you're fat then losing weight is healthy

[Anonymous Coward]

So Shuttleworth is being a responsible adult and cutting the people who aren't doing anything useful and getting things back on track so that they don't waste man/woman hours on projects that don't have any point?

If so then good.

You can cut projects without cutting the people working on them. I take it Canonical has no open positions since it's removing more than 80 people it previously felt were good employees?

Re:If you're fat then losing weight is healthy

[Ramze]

My understanding is that Mir sprung out of the need for a different feature set than what Wayland allowed -- specifically because of Unity and its use on the mobile platform.

With Unity dead, Mir is aborted, and Gnome is moving forward with Wayland, so Ubuntu will be moving forward with Wayland when it uses Gnome as its default DE.

It's about the only positive news from all this. Diversity is good, but pooling resources around a common shared goal is often better.

Re:If you're fat then losing weight is healthy

[DrXym]

No it didn't. Wayland (and Weston) had reached 1.0 were working even as Mir was announced. As you well know.

Re:If you're fat then losing weight is healthy

[dbIII]

Interesting definition of "working". It was working so well at that time that Daniel Stone "forgot his cables" when it was time to present it at a conference with a few thousand linux developers with laptops and a variety of cables.
Also the initial stated design goals of Wayland (linux only, single window manager hard coded in, no support of current X applications etc etc) were not compatible with what Ubuntu wanted to do. Those goals have of course changed and there's no point pretending otherwise unless you want to pointlessly kick other projects when they are down.

Re:If you're fat then losing weight is healthy

[DrXym]

Wayland and Weston dropped 1.0.x and 1.1.0 early in 2013 before Mir was announced. The protocol format was frozen, the core functionality was frozen, there was a client/server implementation, there was a reference window manager. So Wayland was an actual functioning, demonstrable system that upstreams proceeded to make work with their own code. Even the GTK and QT backends were in a working state of development in 2013. Full desktops began appearing in development form from 2014 onwards. Fedora defaulted to Wayland in 2016. This is not conjecture, it is very easy to verify.

What's hilarious is you know all this.

Re:If you're fat then losing weight is healthy

[erapert]

Diversity is good, but pooling resources around a common shared goal is often better.

Agreed.

But, to add some nuance that I hope we can both agree on: diversity is strong when the way forward isn't clear, pooling around a shared goal is strong when a good way forward is already known and/or restarting from scratch is difficult or expensive.

As long as the code is open then the hazards of pooling around a common solution are minimized-- and Wayland is open source.

Switches *TO* GNOME?

[damn_registrars]

Hasn't GNOME been the default GUI for Ubuntu for years? You can still install other ones - and the Kubuntu release has KDE as default - but I don't recall there being another default for the base install.

Re:Switches *TO* GNOME?

[iggymanz]

you missed the whole Unity fiasco, just a wee six years of that as default

Re:Switches *TO* GNOME?

[jandrese]

One could be forgiven for mistaking Unity for Gnome 3 since they are so similar and originated from the same codebase.

Re:Switches *TO* GNOME?

[iggymanz]

also they're both steaming piles of shit. so yes, the confusion is understandable. making them and/or using them is what is unforgivable

Gnome?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who wants a smelly foot on their desktop?

Re:Gnome?

[RenderSeven]

Who wants someone else's smelly foot on their desktop?

FTFY

Re:Gnome?

[Anonymous Coward]

One of Us

Re:Gnome?

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer lies within deviantart.

Going away party

[Dareth]

They at least have a going away party with kool-aid provided.

I'm conflicted

[Bill Hayden]

I'm conflicted here. On one hand, I despise Unity, so I think dropping it is a very welcome change. How refreshing that a company is actually listening to its users. I only wish it would have happened a long time ago. It's a bit ironic that the primary UI is shifting to GNOME though, who practically make a living from ignoring their users' wishes.

On the other hands, I feel really bad for these people who are now out of a job. They were most likely the devs who were just following orders to move Unity forward.

piss poor subject

[TimMD909]

These headlines are so horribly written that they're misleading at worst, and confusing at best. After over 15 years visiting this site, I think I've finally had enough.

Re:piss poor subject

[coofercat]

You'll be back - just like the rest of us ;-)

Nobuntu

[Drunkulus]

I've never used Ubuntu and never will. Canomical is a vanity company, prizing the Benevolent Dictator's ego over being a good open source citizen. Ubuntu is by far the buggiest OS ever released, open source or proprietary. Proponents say that Ubuntu is good for linux, which is true in the same way that factory farming is good for chickens.

Re:Nobuntu

[s122604]

Ubuntu is by far the buggiest OS ever released, open source or proprietary.

That's why I stick with stable, bug-free, Windows ME, although I'm hearing good things about Vista

Re:Nobuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be *the* CentOS guy. Hi.

Re:Nobuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

You apparently never used Gentoo. "Recompile it yourself" does not a good distribution make.

Company is healthy

[execthis]

From Wikipedia:

 

Canonical employs staff in more than 30 countries and maintains offices in London, Boston, Taipei, Shanghai, Tokyo and the Isle of Man.

and:
 

Canonical has more than 500 employees.

Isn't it the most popular Linux distro? It seems like one of the major OSes of choice for VMs and servers, not to mention desktops. If you count the multifarious derivatives based on it, it's huge.

Re:Company is healthy

[Hognoxious]

I'd have thought DeadRat (and relatives like CentOS, Scientific & Larrynux) and SLES would have been bigger on servers.

Re:Company is healthy

[BarbaraHudson]

And yet it's cutting more than 80 (not the 31 from the summary). 31 is to total so far ...

Re:Company is healthy

[Anonymous Coward]

It tends to be bleeding edge, and to have "grand vision" projects brought in early. The result is not stable enough for most production environments.

Re:Company is healthy

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you believe everything you read on Wikipedia?

Re:Company is healthy

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked at a mid-sized company with about 200 employees which primarily sold a single software product. Now I work a another mid-sized company of about 200 that sells only a single software product. Both companies have presences in multiple other countries. Typically those presences are more of a "vendor" presence, like a sales team.

If a single product company can get to 200, then 500 employees for a distro doesn't seem to be a bit deal. RedHat has just over 10,000 employees. It is no wonder that I've seen issue after issue with Canonical, they're acting like they're neck-in-neck in competition with RedHat, yet they have 1 person for every 50 to actually do the work, and now they have even less.

The "SJW" menace is in your warped mind

[Anonymous Coward]

You are obsessed with them, yet you likely rarely ever encounter any in person working in tech. You're essentially rebelling against the age old "college activist", which is nothing new and is not going to just disappear because you keep ranting about them in every goddamn comment. Easy solution to the SJW menace you think exists, stop visiting redpill, tumblrinaction, the_donald, Breitbart, watching Sargon of Akkad videos, following people on Twitter who obsess over them, and suddenly you should notice they in fact are not all over the place.

Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we get them to also switch away from Debian base as well? I've never seen Debian so fucked up as it is right now. Thanks Ubuntu backporters. This is probably really good news for KDE fans I would assume.

Is Microsoft behind Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

They do have a history of 1) Embrace 2) Extend 3) extinguish. It makes a lot of sense to me that they would fuck up the most stable distro base (Debian) and the most organized desktop framework (KDE). Next target: gnome!

I bet will be good for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Truth is hard sometimes.

I was told time and time again...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was told time and time again that "The best part about Linux is, if you don't like something, just change it. So stop your whining and go fix it."
Is this no longer the case?

volunteers

[Anonymous Coward]

At least these volunteers didn't get their faces bloodied, or has Canonical adopted United's version of volunteering?

BSD != Linux

[mschaffer]

Which version of Linux does MacOS run?

Re:BSD != Linux

[vmartell]

Yes, mac osx is not linux - is in the post! I called it a *unix* desktop... the mention of it as linux desktop was *sarcastic* - again the *BROADER* point is that seeing pretty much every linux developer (at least in my company) sporting a mac, made me see the forest - I think that the linux desktop battle became pointless - and none of the combatants won ! someone else did ! :D

only defacto desktop ... on Macs

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mac OSX desktop is only the defacto desktop on Macs. Many Linux developers do not use Macs.

Ding, Dong!

[arctother]

Unity Is Dead! And there was great rejoicing!

"Dozens"

[rtkluttz]

So, of the 30 users who don't think Unity is a counterproductive pile of shit that works against the user if you do anything more than consume media, we now find out that "dozens" of those users were actually the developers of it.

Thomas Voss on GUI by centerfold

[epine]

Interview: Thomas Voss of Mir — October 2014

Obviously there are disadvantages to having only one graphics language, but the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. ... Android made the same decision to go that way. Even Wayland to a certain degree has been doing that. They have to support EGL and GL, simply because it's very convenient for app developers and toolkit developers — an open graphics language. That was the part that inspired us, and we wanted to have this one graphics language and support it well. And that takes a lot of craft.

So, once you can say: no more weird 2D API, no more weird phong API, and everything is mapped out to GL, you're way better off. And you can distil down the scope of the overall project to something more manageable. So it went from being impossible to possible. And then there was me, being very opinionated. I don't believe in extensibility from the beginning — traditionally in Linux everything is super extensible, which has got benefits for a certain audience.

If you think about the audience of the display server, it's one of the few places in the system where you've got three audiences. So you've got the users, who don't care, or shouldn't care, about the display server.

How is it that I never fall into the category of people described as "users"?

Does what I do for ten hours a day, every day, not fall into the semantic category of "using"? Me, and everyone like me? How do we always find ourselves filed under "a certain audience"? Well, this "certain audience" is today crying no giant room-temperature crocodile tears—neither any small, steamy gnat tears.

Here's the underlying problem: "user", as fantasized by far too many software developers, is the centerfold normalization of real womanhood.

Version numbers

[dbIII]

With the greatest possible respect (I'm sure you are good at something) ambitious version numbers are not a substitute for a mature project.

So Wayland was an actual functioning, demonstrable system

Seriously? In 2013? When it couldn't even be demoed at a conference? Who told you that? Perhaps you should take a look at the mailing list archive of the time or ask someone who was paying attention at the time.
It's come a very long way since 2013.

Re:Version numbers

[DrXym]

I was paying attention at the time.

Ubuntu have different goals to you

[dbIII]

Then you clearly either have no clue whatsoever or have some agenda to push.
Wayland just did not do what Ubuntu wanted in 2013 and probably does not even do it now. Ubuntu have different goals to you.
I am getting a very strong impression here that you are trying to deliberately mislead the readers for some incredibly petty reason or other. I do not think we should be doing that with software projects and should instead judge them on their actual merits.

Re:Ubuntu have different goals to you

[DrXym]

No dipshit, the only "agenda" I have to push is that for a modern, user-friendly performant Linux. I encourage and am supportive of things that make it happen. If we want to talk about "agenda" then you can start with yourself because you leap out of the woodwork on every Wayland post going all the way back beyond 2012 to whine and spread fud about it.

Re:Ubuntu have different goals to you

[dbIII]

Wayland post going all the way back beyond 2012 to whine and spread fud about it.

With respect (which is probably entirely unearned) I was addressing all of that "X sux" misinformation at the time and correcting fanboys instead of attacking the developers who were doing what they wanted to do without creating the massive amount of hype about the project.
It didn't take you long to get into the personal insults did it? You clearly are attempting to push an agenda with your misinformation.

November 2013

[dbIII]

OK - let's be very generous and go for the end of the year instead of when Ubuntu made their choice.

20th November 2013 - Wayland's Weston Received New Features Yesterday

On the "finished" window manger - beyond version 1.0, so it must be finished by your definition above.

That will not be useful since it's not meant to be used in production environnement. These feature will be implemented by gnome or Kwin when they will be ready. Weston is just a live example of how to implement a wayland compositor. Nothing more. Don't expect it to be a usable DE. It will not. There's no minimizing because there is not universal way to do it thus it don't belong in a reference compositor.

On minimising windows:

No, the protocol is not there. Wayland clients need a protocol to ask the compositor to minimize them when the user clicks on the minimize button in the window decoration. Then the compositor will aknoweledge that and effectively minimize it, with fancy animations or whatnot.

The developers were not spreading bullshit. They were being completely honest about where they were up to and working towards a goal.
Why are you offsetting their excellent efforts by being a whining fanboy and revisionist? What did they ever do to you apart from give you a toy to play with?

Re:November 2013

[DrXym]

Your obsession is just sad. Get over yourself.

Re:November 2013

[dbIII]

Is that all you have to write when you have been caught out in a lie? Pretend that the lie does not matter?

Shocking layoffs

[Anonymous Coward]

50 out of 700 working on projects that _lacked focus_ *GASP*