
Is Ubuntu Driving Users Away?  - darkduck
http://www.datamation.com/open-source/is-ubuntu-driving-users-away-1.html
======
mvanga
Most people seem to be fixating on the changes introduced by Unity rather than
the stability and usability of the entire distribution as a whole. My
thoughts:

On Unity: The fact is, Canonical cannot possibly satisfy every single Ubuntu
user with a single interface. They will alienate some users and acquire others
with their changes. In the end, I think Unity is a good development for the
Linux community as a whole as it will probably attract many users to Linux who
wouldn't normally have been. The ones who really know what they want will find
a way to get around it one way or another (that is a sort of universal
constant in geeks).

I can also see why they are unwilling to provide a simple option to allow both
Unity and GNOME2 (in future releases I mean). Having a single codebase for a
desktop environment will probably allow them to focus on real usability issues
rather than compatibility ones (and whether the usability suits us hardcore
geeks or not, I suspect Canonical does usability testing on these interfaces
before introducing major changes. Can anyone corroborate this?). Overall, I
think it's good. I have friends who would never have touched Linux with a 10
foot pole who are now loving Ubuntu with Unity (and more importantly, the
ideas and community behind it).

On general stability: I think the Ubuntu team is doing a better job than most
can possibly hope for. There are bugs and they will take time to fix. I
suspect the priorities of these bugs is different for Ubuntu developers and
for us here on HN, thus the complaints. I don't know much about their
development process and efficiency level so I won't say more.

~~~
zalew
> I don't know much about their development process and efficiency level so I
> won't say more.

<http://netsplit.com/2011/09/08/new-ubuntu-release-process/>

------
wladimir
I don't agree. Personally I really like the new UI (Unity), and the
improvements that they bring with every version. They really seek to innovate
in UI space, and like taking a fresh look at it, something that is seems rare
in both open and closed-source OSes.

However, Kubuntu might be an option if you prefer a more traditional UI with a
launchbar at the bottom etc.

------
darklajid
Gnome-shell user here.

Ubuntu's not for me, mostly because they cannot give me 'vanilla' software
easily. They started with smaller changes (the notification patches come to my
mind here) and now push their own agenda of a shell.

I'm still having some issues with gnome-shell, but I'm sure they'll be fixed.
At least I'm sure that this is software that is maintained by the Gnome guys
(I trust their code quality more, again due to the notification patch issues
in the past) and - this is the big one - I don't want to use an interface that
is distribution dependent.

I can easily use gnome-shell on a variety of different machines. Unity is a
Ubuntu only (? Did any other distribution think about including this thing at
all? Why would they?) UI and therefor a fail in my open source rule book.

~~~
rbanffy
You can always opt for traditional Gnome (Shell will be available on 11.10).
It's a one-time change (you choose it on login) and works well. You'll never
have to look at Unity again.

And, of course, you can run Debian or Fedora or any other distro you want.

~~~
sesteel
Works well is subjective. It can be flaky.

~~~
rbanffy
How can a simple desktop environment selection control (you click, a list pops
up, you select one item, it closes down) be flaky?

------
nl
I've been using Ubuntu on all my home computers since 8.04, and generally I'm
quite happy. But I do sometimes feel Ubuntu does tend to spend a lot of effort
on things that don't really match my priorities. The XKCD comic springs to
mind: <http://xkcd.com/619/> (although in this case it is a new form of 3D
desktop effects to replace the previous effects.. sigh.)

------
drdaeman
My problem with newer Ubuntu was not with Unity itself, but with lesser
ability to configure anything decently (for example, move the launcher panel).
I'd have to literally hack my way through the code and config files, and I
didn't like it.

Once upon a time I was a Gentoo guy. I've ran wmii (and later moved to xmonad)
and had my own portage overlay with quite a lot of near-to-the-bleeding-edge
versions and personalization patches to various software. Then I've graduated,
got a job and had significantly less time to maintain patches and fiddle
around with customizations and compile software. So I've moved to Ubuntu,
where everything worked almost "out of the box", and I've mostly had to click
around the GUI or edit some simple config files to make the system suit my
tastes.

With the relatively recent changes, I had a feeling that the system had become
less "open", harder to customize. So, as a first step, I've moved to Kubuntu
(but don't really like it due to various KDE glitches).

I want a distro, with a recent packages, that would decently work out-of-the-
box, but doesn't hide everything deep under the hood. Ubuntu started to lack
that, so I've moved a bit (to Kubuntu) and now lazily looking for the
alternatives.

------
lwhi
They haven't driven me away - I like Unity, it's not perfect, but it works
well. I find that Unity lets me get on with my work, and provides access to
every thing I need to do so in a fairly logical, economical way.

There are always sacrifices that need to be made when working with Linux - but
the advantages out way the disadvantages for me. I expect to have to spend
time configuring my system because I have freedom to choose the what runs on
my system and how I choose to use it.

Change is uncomfortable - but unless it occurs incrementally, any open source
OS is going to stagnate.

When all other competing closed source operating systems are stretching the
paradigms they operate within, this kind of stagnation would mean that Ubuntu
would be left behind. Ubuntu needs to innovate if it's going to remain useful
and relevant.

Perhaps part of the problem was that Ubuntu had been tied to Gnome for so
long. It seems to me that in order to address this, the current period of
development is less of an increment - and more of a leap - than it comfortably
_should_ have been.

------
zalew
> _you can install a Gnome classic fall back option. This provides users with
> the ability to enjoy a classic Gnome experience. It's unfortunate, however,
> that I had to do multiple search engine queries just to find out if this was
> even a possibility. Despite the time spent searching, the fact is that it's
> possible. Thanks to the Ubuntu team pushing Unity adoption, I'm 99% positive
> you'll never hear about this option through official Ubuntu channels._

because that doesn't make much sense. Gnome went 3.x and you should naturally
expect a decline in popularity of the "old" version, there is no reason to
promote this fallback unless someone forks Gnome 2.x as Linus suggested, which
is unlikely to happen. the alternative is switch to another DE such as XFCE
(lxde, kde), or how to say it by Ubuntu terms - install Xubuntu (lubuntu,
kubuntu).

------
forgottenpaswrd
I recently installed 10.10 because 10.04 does not work with Unity.

The distro tries to use the nvidia open source drivers and it conflicts with
the only that fully works and is needed. I had to blacklist nouveau for it to
display X.

Now that I can use Unity, it is Alpha software, not even beta, the main
launcher has icons witch do not display text to know what they are for, like
the stupid fullscreen one that I though was like the apple resize, but it
didn't work, until I finally realize that you need to click on it like an
normal icon, not drag it(why then you put it in the corner instead of the main
menu?)

The file manager is ugly without borders and full screen while put itself
behind the icon launcher.

Search does not work either, it can't find my pictures or music or books
unless I use the "official" folders for it I suppose(they do not find it right
now).

Alt-F2 and 3d cube does not work either.

They copied mac without the design and aesthetics(and talent) that mac
designers have.

Wait for X to wayland transition to come to see new bugs coming that makes it
hard for me to recommend linux to anyone for two years.

Don't get me wrong, I love linux and I have been tweaking and loosing so much
of my time trying to make linux work since 12 years ago, it was funny then. I
don't use it in my main machine anymore, I use mac on it as it just works.

~~~
rbanffy
> I recently installed 10.10 because 10.04 does not work with Unity.

I assume you say 11.10. If not, you should try to use a newer release.

> I had to blacklist nouveau for it to display X.

When someone tells me they have an Nvidia board and ask for help, my first
advice is to buy a decent computer and stop supporting manufacturers that
don't publish free drivers (or sufficient specs so that driver writers can do
their work for them). I have no respect for manufacturers like them.
Seriously, stop complaining and support manufacturers that care about open
source.

> Now that I can use Unity, it is Alpha software

Ubuntu gets unstable when major upgrades are done. Unity is receiving a huge
one right now and some turbulences are to be expected.

> The file manager is ugly without borders

It's been acknowledged. Something that didn't work out as expected and they
had to go back to older pieces for a while.

> They copied mac without the design and aesthetics(and talent) that mac
> designers have.

I have a Mac to the left of this machine and I can't see much similarity
except the use of the menu on the top of the screen, which makes a lot of
sense if your screen is small and much less if you have multiple big ones
(much like Macs) and the window buttons to the left, which makes the
transition from Macs much easier (and punishes Windows users, but, by now and
after Vista, those seem to be used to if, if not anxious for some more abuse
(Metro on Win8, anyone?). I'm not sure if Gnome 3 has the same menu, but it's
a huge departure from the Gnome desktop we have been using since the early
2000's.

> Wait for X to wayland transition to come to see new bugs coming that makes
> it hard for me to recommend linux to anyone for two years.

I'm actually anxious to get wayland available. X has served us well for the
past 20 or so years, but it's time to go forward. New bugs will manifest
themselves and be corrected. In the meantime, I bet you'll still be able to
use X, specially with hardware whose manufacturers will take years to come up
with new drivers.

~~~
kolektiv
"When someone tells me they have an Nvidia board and ask for help, my first
advice is to buy a decent computer..."

Wow. Do you find that many people keep listening to you after this or is this
just a strategy to free your time of annoying "people"? The *nix community is
generally quite friendly, but it doesn't grow faster because of statements
like this. Sure, maybe it's a valid opinion but hell, at least explain why
they should care!

~~~
rbanffy
> Do you find that many people keep listening to you after this or is this
> just a strategy to free your time of annoying "people"?

Works both ways. It's good advice for one, because you really shouldn't
support hardware makers that really don't care about you or the software you
run. It also helps by making the more annoying people who can't be bothered to
read the supported hardware list, yet ask for free support and complain driver
developers are one or two generations behind Nvidia (or ATI's) employees with
access to confidential information, go away.

BTW, I have a T-shirt that says "no, I won't fix your computer" too.

> The *nix community is generally quite friendly

Indeed it is. Sometimes a friend is someone who says stuff you need to hear,
even if you don't like to hear it.

If you really care about your Nvidia board, please, by all means, learn
everything you can about it, about driver development and help the people who
give you their time for free.

------
dazzawazza
I've had nothing but annoyance from Ubuntu. One week printing works,
update.... now it doesn't. One week the wacom tablet works, update now it
doesn't. The list goes on an on, small failings week after week.

Nothing fails completely. The printing just stalled on large images, the wacom
pressure sensitivity stopped working. It all smells of lack of in depth
testing before release.

Luckily it's not my workhorse machine.

------
georgemcbay
They haven't driven me away but they have nullified the advantage they had of
being the Linux install I could count on to put on a new desktop/laptop
machine and have it basically Just Work.

Now I have to undo the damage of the silly UI after the install. I still tend
to pick Ubuntu out of habit, but one more iffy release and that will probably
change.

------
sasha-dv
_> Is Ubuntu Driving Users Away?_

It drow me away for sure.

The main reason I run Unix is the freedom it gives me to make my system the
way I like it. For me _Unix=freedom to customize_. Considering that, the
direction they've took at Cannonical is absurd. With each new release it's
harder and harder to customize your system. If you want to configure it you
have to hack it. Today, it's easier to customize Windows than it is to
customize Ubuntu.

In the last few months I've played with Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Mint LXDE,
Debian, OpenBSD, Arch, and ArchBang. I'm running ArchBang now and I love it!

P.S. I would have stayed with OpenBSD if it had a better support for flash.
Flash on Linux sucks, but on OpenBSD it blows. Other than that, I was really
impressed with it, installation is fast, it runs fast, it's stable, and it's
secure, but you knew that already :)

~~~
vacri
Canonical have always said that they're aiming for a general user product, not
power or niche users. There really isn't a distro for that kind of user at the
moment, but there are plenty for power users.

~~~
sasha-dv
I know that and I respect it. What I don't know is why are they investing so
much time in making it impossible to customize Ubuntu? What it has to do with
their mission? Is it impossible to build a system with good defaults so that
general population can use it with no configuration requiered, and let more
advanced users pimp it up the way they want it.

The Unity developers had been answering questions on redit some time ago
(<http://gd.is/dgzY>) and the majority of people were complaining about it
only to find out that the developers have no authority to implement some basic
conf tool.

------
drblast
I still use Ubuntu because all the hardware works on my laptop. Changing UI's
is easy, changing OS's is less so.

I heartily recommend XFCE with Nautilus. Simple and works like a charm for
quickly loading and switching applications, which is essentially all a desktop
environment needs to do.

------
Mavrik
Well, there are some of us who don't want to be guinea pigs for UI testing
every 6 months so we're switching to something more stable.

For me, Mint has been a good option - I retain the repositories without the
silly GUI change and half-broken software stuff.

~~~
snowtiger
I also hate it, plus I think everyone would be better off if Canonical helped
to improve Gnome or KDE not waste developers and users time with such
experimental time

------
StavrosK
Am I the only one who tried Unity, decided they didn't like it, clicked
"Ubuntu classic" in the next login and went on with their lives?

It looks like it's easier to write a blog post complaining than to select
Gnome in that damn combo box...

~~~
rbanffy
Come on. Unity is not that bad. And with Gnome 3, I fear this will no longer
be an option. Between Shell and Unity... Tough choice, but I'll stick to
Unity. I like the pixels it frees up. I have paid for them.

And think of the poor Windows 8 users who will be confronted with a Metro UI
on boot. Think of all the moms who will desperately call their children (on
the phone, because they'll never be able to find Microsoft Live Skype Premium
by themselves)

~~~
StavrosK
I didn't say I hate Unity, I just liked Gnome better. I could live with Unity,
or I could use another manager altogether...

Actually, Unity might be nice, I just like my Compiz shortcuts (center window
et al).

------
tintin
This is a really good question: _"Is Unity the best place to invest man-hours
with extended development right now?"_

It's very hard to balance the needs of the commercial department and the
development department.

~~~
rbanffy
It's a really weird question in fact. How much do you need to change a program
that works in a traditional Gnome desktop (even ignoring the fact Gnome has
moved on too) so that it integrates seamlessly with Unity?

My best guess is "nothing at all". Am I that wrong?

Are the people complaining about investing man-hours in extender development
really developing desktop apps for Gnome/Unity?

------
vrotaru
On that revamped UI question (Unity).

Ubuntu was pretty much forced into it, when they became less than enthusiastic
about Gnome3 (gnome-shell).

A sentiment which I entirely shared. Then, at least.

------
nemoniac
Long before Unity, Ubuntu began to frustrate me for two reasons. Gratuitous
changes in the default apps and failure to separate concerns.

I switched to Arch and I'm much happier with it.

------
cturner
Why do successful platforms overhaul established successful user interfaces?
Gnome2 could have used some polish but the building blocks were right. Windows
2000 was fine. These changes are value destruction. The world would be a
better place had the developers had gone on holiday instead of making
overhauls. Were the gnome changes driven by focus groups?

~~~
acabal
Because it's more fun to develop a new codebase using cool new tools and
technologies than maintain an old one and try to hack new technology into it.
Not that that makes it right.

~~~
rbanffy
> Not that that makes it right.

But it is. Every once and then you should start off a clean slate. You should
throw away old code, even if it works, and rewrite it in better ways than
possible when it was originally written. You have to incorporate what you
learned into it.

The fact Windows probably contains code written for release 2.x is a weakness,
not a strength.

~~~
cturner

        > The fact Windows probably contains code written
        > for release 2.x is a weakness, not a strength.
    

No way - it's a strength, so much so that I think you're getting downvotes
because saying otherwise reads like a troll. Maybe you can support your
position better.

Code that is battled-tested by millions of hours of runtime is extremely
valuable. Consider protocol code. Or processor-optimised assembly language
that has backwards compatibility and which hardware manufacturers have
developed against.

Microsoft is a great example of a company that has been far too ready to
rewrite. They could have had happier consumers for far less effort, and be in
a better strategic position now if they'd followed a conservative OS strategy
and tried to preserve NT and leveraged virtualisation to get the feature and
security advances they needed. There was precedent for this (IBM VM) and they
had experience with that kind of thing with their OS/2 v2 exposure (win32s API
ran on OS/2 v2, and OS/2 1.x stuff ran on NT4), which isn't to say they would
have needed to exactly mirror either of those approaches.

Even with near-infinite resources at their disposal they have struggled with
the pace of change they've put Windows through, and significantly alienated
the customer base in the process.

~~~
rbanffy
There is a huge difference between code that's been optimized for decades and
code that's plain old and there just because nobody ever touched it again.

Even code like IBM's VM should be updated when new processors appear (zSeries
CPUs get updated from time to time).

As for code that's there just because it's old (and not because it has been
carefully maintained for decades), I advise you to look into it. You probably
learned something in the past decade that can improve it.

~~~
cturner
if it works and have stuff built against it, why would you touch it again?

~~~
rbanffy
To improve it. Even IBM's VM could be improved (and was). The trick is trying
not to break interfaces.

But even that is something you should do from time to time. I don't think many
current versions of Windows support Win16 software.

------
pmarin
I recently switched to Debian Stable with non-free and backports repositories.
The default desktop is Gnome 2.30.2 and installs by default all the similar
software Ubuntu used to install like Openoffice, transmission, etc. My desktop
is even able to resume and suspend (Ubuntu stopped to do it with the version
9.04)

~~~
rbanffy
> My desktop is even able to resume and suspend (Ubuntu stopped to do it with
> the version 9.04)

Well... works here, flawlessly (has been, since 6.04, across five different
computers)

------
pointyhat
Yes it is. It has driven me away. It's so damn inconsistent and chock full of
bugs, even in the LTS releases. Not only that, Launchpad is about as likely to
get a fix released as Microsoft Connect is. Fedora rawhide is more stable!

Bar one stubborn piece of equipment hanging on 10.04LTS, I've entirely
switched to Debian which can actually be trusted, has a decent release QA and
doesn't change every two seconds.

