
Ubuntu in 2013 - zimbatm
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1221
======
meaty
That is the vomitous self-congratulatory thing I've ever read and what I've
come to expect from our multi-millionare South African marketing overlord.
Mark: if you're reading this, please take note.

Translated:

We're going to push our own goals rather than asking what people want, you
know like Amazon again.

We're including everyone in our statement, apart from those people with an
opinion other than ours.

Giving, giving, giving dammit giving giving!

We're lying about Unity with a sample size of 15 people that we all knew
already, even though the community hates Unity. It's like Ballmer saying how
everyone loves Windows 8 Metro but it's not selling.

Mobile bandwagon jumpy jump. Let's dumb it down so it can be use for
gefingerpoken as well as anything else (not going to happen - probably worse
than Windows 8).

More cloud tie in - we want your data just like all the other vendors.

Completely ignore the foundation that everyone else such as GNU, Linux kernel
people, Xorg and surprisingly Debian have provided them.

Completely ignore the humongous bug database which makes Ubuntu like a pre-
Alpha release of Windows for reliability.

Ugh it makes me sick. Sorry to sound cynical, but the above is 5 years of
using Ubuntu canned in a few statements.

~~~
zimbatm
So how much did you contribute back in these 5 years ?

~~~
meaty
Cash, promotion, merchandise, landscape subscription, bug reports, forum help
(I have over 3000 posts on Ubuntu forums), stackoverflow, testing to name a
few...

~~~
iamtherockstar
And Mark with his millions out of pocket to invest in a company he believes
in. If they were votes, he wins.

Do the capitalist thing and stop giving them money if you hate it ohsomuch.

~~~
meaty
I doubt it. Much as myself, I wouldn't invest without expecting a sensible
return.

I did stop giving about 2 months ago and poured it all into debian.

Now I'm doing the capitalist thing of whinging about how my investment was
misused.

------
keithpeter
"And in this regard, we know, _scientifically_ , that Ubuntu with Unity is
better than anything else out there."

Quote from the linked article, emphasis added. I'm actually interested in the
_methodology_ in use by Canonical. I can find the following reference
easily...

[http://design.canonical.com/2010/11/usability-testing-of-
uni...](http://design.canonical.com/2010/11/usability-testing-of-unity/)

together with some work on application software

[http://design.canonical.com/2011/08/thunderbird-evolution-
us...](http://design.canonical.com/2011/08/thunderbird-evolution-usability-
testing/)

Anyone got anything else solid from Canonical?

PS: I know and rather like Unity as manifest in 12.04/12.10. It will be
interesting to see how the UI changes and what implications the UI have for
the underlying system as the transition to mobile device moves forward. I
think that users should stick to LTS or move to a 'rolling distro' if they
need very reliable and/or specific interfaces. Of course, that will reduce the
pool of testers and the range of hardware tested, but it looks as if Canonical
will be working with hardware manufacturers anyway.

------
andrewcooke
it's hard to read that without feeling the huge weight of criticism (all the
kow-towing and talking about experts). and then i come here and 2 out of 4
posts are complaining.

really, can't you just go somewhere else? ubuntu is fine for my laptop. it
might even do for my mother's next time i visit. if you want something else,
either use something else or at least have the graciousness to complain
without "fuck up" and "muckety muck". you're beyond tiring. go away. please.

~~~
PommeDeTerre
Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe there's something to the huge
amount of criticism? You know, maybe we should all consider listening to it?

The Ubuntu community got so large because Ubuntu was something that people
found very useful. Then a few years ago, questionable decisions started being
made. They brought a very poor experience to a huge number of people, without
offering any benefit.

The criticism is valid, and it should be voiced loudly and often.

It's not isolated to Ubuntu, either. There are other major open source
projects that have started to actively defecate upon their existing user base.
Firefox and GNOME are two big ones. We see the same kind of widespread, large-
scale anger from their communities, too.

The leadership of Ubuntu, GNOME and Firefox have all chosen to essentially
ignore the ever-growing disillusionment within their existing communities. I
think it will cost them dearly. We've already seen a lot of people moving to
alternatives.

More importantly, these are the power users who are moving away. These are the
very people who are needed by any project that really wants to succeed.
They're the ones who help drive others to use the given product. Without them,
the project is nothing. It may take a few more years, but I do think that
we'll see GNOME, Ubuntu and Firefox go the way of XFree86, if things don't
change today.

~~~
rlpb
Remember that Ubuntu flavors such as Xubuntu and Lubuntu exist, and that their
existence is supported from the top (just read TFA). Members of the Ubuntu
community who don't like Unity just use them instead. No dissenting voices are
needed within the community, since all are accommodated.

> ignore the ever-growing disillusionment within their existing communities

You assume that the voices of dissent come from within their existing
communities. I don't think that's true. I think they come from people who wish
their own favourite project/fork were as popular, but fail to see why it
isn't.

~~~
PommeDeTerre
Any time I've tried Xubuntu or Kubuntu in the past, I've found the experience
to be quite horrible and unpolished.

I got the impression that they were second-class citizens within the Ubuntu
world, whether they're intentionally held down, or just neglected and without
as much attention.

I have consistently found that the integration of Xfce and KDE with Debian,
for example, is much more robust and sound than what's offered by Ubuntu
"flavors" like Xubuntu and Kubuntu.

Deny it if you wish, but the anger within the Ubuntu, Firefox and GNOME
communities is coming from long-time users who have known better times. It's
much more about people who now suffer from a far worse experience when using
said software. People who have seen their productivity drop because they've
been forced to use Unity, or because Firefox's UI has been screwed up, or
because GNOME 3 embodies just about every bad decision that can possibly be
made.

I think it's an extreme minority of people who complain out of some
ideological want for their chosen project or variant to be more popular.

~~~
rlpb
> Any time I've tried Xubuntu or Kubuntu in the past, I've found the
> experience to be quite horrible and unpolished.

Then please spend some of your time making it better. Your contribution will
be welcome.

With fewer people helping, any open source project will suffer from being
horrible and unpolished.

> whether they're intentionally held down, or just neglected and without as
> much attention.

There is definitely no intentional holding down that I'm aware of. It is clear
that the flavors do receive less attention, but that's just down to
popularity. Those who care about them more than the Unity route should
contribute!

> People who have seen their productivity drop because they've been forced to
> use Unity

Nobody has been forced to use Unity. Xubuntu has existed for a long time, and
more recently so has Lubuntu.

If anything has been forced, it is the dropping of GNOME 2. But that has
happened upstream (including in Debian) and Ubuntu cannot reasonably be held
responsible (even though this seems to be an unfortunately common
misunderstanding). AIUI, difficulties with GNOME upstream is one of the
reasons that Unity was created.

------
mattdeboard
> "That’s why Unity in 2013 will be all about mobile"

Cool, but don't fuck up my desktop experience with your experimentation like
you have been doing.

~~~
w1ntermute
Just switch to Xubuntu. Xfce isn't changing any time soon. None of the
"interface innovation" Unity is notorious for.

~~~
chmike
I'll switch to Xubuntu too because I need remote access. It's not just a
matter of UX. Cloud service doesn't solve my problem.

The future looks dark because applications won't be able to support Wyland and
X11. There will be a fork and Ubuntu is betting on it with the goal to compete
with Android and iOs. On this path, users like me are left as orphan. I've
change OS before, I can do it again.

~~~
hollerith
It's not just Ubuntu pushing Wayland, though. The Wayland project was started
by a core X11 developer and seems to have the support of most X11 developers.

------
Aardwolf
I wish there was a new great desktop environment focusing on THE DESKTOP.

~~~
sandGorgon
Cinnamon desktop - the same one that powers Linux Mint

------
zimbatm
This blog-post refers to, but doesn't cite, Ubuntu's recent integration of
Amazon search results to the desktop and the inclusion of non-free apps in
their App store. I liked the pragmatism and neutrality of this post.

~~~
mattdeboard
Er, Mark Shuttleworth is a big muckety muck for Canonical. This is a marketing
piece.

------
uvtc
If you like the ease-of-use of Ubuntu, but don't like Unity nor Gnome 3, just
use Xubuntu (or Lubuntu).

Xubuntu in particular provides what I think of as a regular no-surprises
desktop --- exactly what I want and expect from a desktop OS.

------
reinhardt
Zorin [1] (based on Ubuntu) looks sweet, has anyone played with it?

[1] <http://zorin-os.com/gallery.html>

~~~
_account
Zorin is really good. Personally, I grew tired of little bugs with their
window manager switching stuff.

Also, worth trying is crunchbang(debian w/ openbox) and pinguyos(ubuntu w/
gnome2).

