

Ubuntu moves away from GNOME - e1ven
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/67880

======
darklajid
The main problem I see with this [1] is mostly exactly what they, Canonical,
try to want to reach desperately: To differ even at substantial costs.

See, I'm not one of these "Linux on the desktop" guys, but I do use it on a
daily basis and have a rich social network that slipped into Linux-Land by
various means. Be it talking about it, seeing cool things on my desktop or
just being annoyed by the big players. Some of them, a majority even, runs
Ubuntu now. It's just really easy to work with, the guys do (did?) quite an
amazing job.

What I fear is that someone with that large of a market penetration wanders
off and creates "yet another desktop". We're used to KDE and Gnome, I know
lots of people that use fluxbox/openbox, there's the tiling wm niche, you can
run Moblin/MeeGo and I'm sure I forget the best wm anyway and the comments are
going to try to enlighten me.

Moving into a new direction is painful. It breaks with everything and everyone
else. You should have a good reason and a compelling argument. Forking
OpenOffice.org is a good example in my book. Unity is the fork that no one on
the forking side wants to acknowledge. And for what? To "diversify the
platform" (i.e. marketing crap)? Ubuntu UI patches (think
notifications/libindicator for example) are already debated today and even
create problems with upstream packages _now_. Going for a completely new
shell/ui is just going to increase the burden here and will end up with this:
"Please create a package for Gnome (on linux or bsd, for whatever
distribution) and a special one for Ubuntu."

1: Disclaimer is the same for me as for the guy in the link: Gnome member and
(occasional) contributor.

~~~
YooLi
"Ubuntu UI patches (think notifications/libindicator for example) are already
debated today and even create problems with upstream packages _now_."

This is the problem, not 'we want to be different so badly'. Why do design
decisions made by Canonical have to be debated? Don't they have the right to
make any kind of desktop changes they want without having to get them
'approved' by Gnome?

~~~
darklajid
Hell, yes!

But you miss two things here. The less important one is just that the Gnome
brand, as it is, sucks. Not because the experience is bad, it is just not well
defined. I.e. you cannot say "this is not Gnome" or "this is Gnome". Which
_is_ hard if you want consistency.

This point is alone the Gnome's guys fault though and needs to be handled
there. If Gnome can come up with a definite set of rules what they consider
fine, everyone else can either agree or use the source, make it "different" -
but without calling it Gnome anymore. Think the Firefox brand.

The bigger problem is something else though: The samples I gave _break_
existing applications. They are not only UI bling or moving window buttons
around, they are patches to functionality - and sometimes poorly done.

Now - again: They have all the right in the world to do that. But
unfortunately our world isn't perfect and this lead to several problems in the
past: The (downstream only) patch sucked, causing loss of functionality.
Ubuntu users empirically complain not at all (those that are less tech savvy),
or in Launchpad only (which would be great for bugs that are Ubuntu specific,
but only if the patch itself is maintained well).

This leads to a good share of the huge Ubuntu user base to think that this
application of yours is crap - while really just someone thought that an
integrated menu of some sorts would be a nice idea and can easily be tacked on
to every upstream Gnome package.

Combined these two issues shine: It's supposed to be Gnome and it breaks in
subtle ways -> Bad Gnome? Do what you want, UI or otherwise, but take the
blame and show some respect towards the free time of the upstream guys.. You
know what Uncle Ben said about great power..

~~~
YooLi
You make good points (admittedly to someone not as versed in the finer details
as yourself) and I thank you for your reply.

Would it have made a difference if Ubuntu had removed all Gnome branding from
their desktop? Then things like this wouldn't matter, no? -- "It's supposed to
be Gnome and it breaks in subtle ways -> Bad Gnome?"

If Ubuntu users do not complain or complain only in Launchpad, wouldn't they
also be the type of user who doesn't know what Gnome is unless it's labeled as
such? How would they think Gnome is crap if nothing was labeled as Gnome?

~~~
darklajid
I don't want to claim the expert title either.. :)

Regarding the specific questions:

I doubt that it would be good if Canonical would actually fork Gnome (or the
drop the brand). Leave aside my attachment to the brand as it is: Canonical
has done a lot of good things for this platform in the past. I think it would
be detrimental so the adoption of Gnome to send them away (or let them leave).
A middle ground of some sorts needs to be found.

How would those users think Gnome is crap if nothing is labeled as Gnome: Here
I was referring to the Gnome ecosystem. If they patch GEdit to do X but it
crashes now on every 10th launch, the application is getting the blame. You
are right: I'm not sure if the connection between blaming application X and
losing faith in the desktop project isn't overly pessimistic, now that I think
about it again.

------
adambyrtek
The title of this article doesn't conform with the facts. According to Jono
Bacon[1]:

"There is going to be some questions about this decision in relation to GNOME.
I want to make something crystal clear: Ubuntu is a GNOME distribution, we
ship the GNOME stack, we will continue to ship GNOME apps, and we optimize
Ubuntu for GNOME. The only difference is that Unity is a different shell for
GNOME, but we continue to support the latest GNOME Shell development work in
the Ubuntu archives."

[1] [http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/10/25/ubuntu-11-04-to-ship-
uni...](http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/10/25/ubuntu-11-04-to-ship-unity/)

~~~
darklajid
Let's be straight: Jono Bacon, while a nice guy, is employed by Canonical.
That does give him the insider credibility, but he's also obviously "we're the
nice guys" biased. He's the "Ubuntu Community Manager" (last I checked that
was the title?) after all and his job is to promote the use of Ubuntu and to
keep the community alive and favorable.

Let's bring Dave Neary[1] to the table for readers that might want to
understand why the title of the article _might_ (you judge - but probably only
time will tell) be perfectly valid. I'd suggest reading both links to
understand the corporate message and statement of intention on the one side
and a (note: Not _the_, obviously there's not a single Gnome hive mind)
representative opinion for the disappointment about these latest decisions on
the other side.

1: [http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2010/10/25/ubuntu-to-move-to-
un...](http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2010/10/25/ubuntu-to-move-to-unity-as-
default-desktop-for-11-04/)

------
mseebach
And for those as confused as me, Unity is this: <http://unity.ubuntu.com/>

Maybe someone else can elaborate on what a GNOME Shell is?

~~~
dmn
A new simplified GUI by GNOME

<http://vimeo.com/13797705>

~~~
barnaby
I can see the resemblance. Thank you for that link.

------
lukifer
Without having tried Unity, it looks nice. I'd much rather use an OSX-inspired
GUI than a WinXP-inspired GUI. :P

I do wish, though, there was more willingness in the OSS community to push the
boundaries of UI, using completely new ideas such as 10/GUI:
<http://10gui.com/>

~~~
vegai
"I do wish, though, there was more willingness in the OSS community to push
the boundaries of UI..."

We kinda did: <http://www.suckless.org>

Sometimes you have to move backwards to move forwards...

------
catechu
Unity looks nice, but its improvements over GNOME seem to be mainly cosmetic
-- not compelling enough to pull me away from the simplicity of dwm
(<http://dwm.suckless.org/>), at least not yet.

~~~
someone_here
I don't think people who know what a window manager is are the target market
for Unity.

~~~
jpr
As a person who knows what a wm is and just tried out Unity, I can confirm
this on my part.

------
mxavier
Unity looks silly to me. This moreover confirms to me that Ubuntu is turning
the distro into something that everyone's mom/dad can use. While that's fine
for popularizing linux, that isn't the OS I signed up for years ago. Switching
to Arch is going to be painful but I guess I'll be better off for it.

~~~
mseebach
That doesn't have to be a conflict. Just as you can easily use KDE or XFCE
with Ubuntu through the Kubuntu and Xubuntu distributions, I'm sure you can
easily choose "classic" GNOME.

~~~
Adam503
or... GNubuntu :-D

