What if Ubuntu goes away

[herbie643]

I read all the time that there wouldn't be Linux Mint if it weren't for Ubuntu. It kind of irritates me but brings up a valid point, "What would happen to Linux Mint if Ubuntu went away?"
I hope I haven't touched on a 'touchy' subject, just asking a what I feel is a vaild question.

[cwsnyder]

There is always Linux Mint Debian Edition. That is not based on Ubuntu. If Ubuntu went away, you could always run LMDE with some of the Sid repositories for 'bleeding edge' packages and the Minty goodness.

[herbie643]

I have run LMDE and it is a great distro. BUT, and a big but, Printing doesn't work for me. I have a Kodak printer and it works fine but not on LMDE. Ubuntu must be doing something different. Wish I knew what it was and if I did, I would run LMDE exclusively.

[cwwgateway]

Clem was interviewed on MintCast here: http://www.mintcast.org/2011/01/episode-50-interview-with-clem-lefebvre/. They did discuss what would happen if it became too much of a challenge to base off of Ubuntu (if they made it Unity-only, for example), and Clem says that at that time (which was January 17th, 2011) that they were confident that they could move to Debian. I think LMDE suffers right now because it doesn't have a large userbase (about 13% of Mint's overall userbase according to Clem) and it therefore doesn't get the amount of work it needs to be a replacement for the main edition, and because it isn't a replacement for the main edition (for many people) people don't use it. If Mint committed to switching fully, I'm confident that they could make it work well and iron out all of the kinks. SolusOS, which is a great Debian Stable based distro (although some people in their community aren't big fans of Mint ), one part time developer who was the person who originally worked on a lot of parts of LMDE. They have other contributors, but he does most of the work, and they have made a lot of improvements on Debian with those small resources. Mint doesn't exactly have a lot of resources, but we have two full time devs (clem and fredg) as well as a number of contributors and good name recognition, so it would be feasible to switch and improve.

The Mint 15 roadmap is here: https://github.com/linuxmint/Roadmap, and in this roadmap at the bottom it says:

R&D on "from scratch" package base and investigation on pros and cons of dpkg compared to other packaging systems (multi-version installation, static/dynamic support, snapshots, delta, update reversals etc..)

This suggests that Clem and team are at least looking at other bases/package managers. If there is enough R&D they could be fairly prepared for Ubuntu not being a feasible base (or if it dies).

[SurfaceUnits]

gnomebuntu to the rescue:
viewtopic.php?f=61&t=115347

[cwwgateway]

gnomebuntu to the rescue:
viewtopic.php?f=61&t=115347

If Ubuntu "disappeared" off of the face of the earth, then gnoembuntu couldn't do a new release. All Ubuntu-based distros are based off of Ubuntu, so if Ubuntu goes, then they have lost their base. My guess is that if Ubuntu were to be discontinued, it would be picked up by the community, but I believe the hypothetical situation is if Ubuntu was stopped and it wasn't going to be continued (in which case gnomebuntu would have no new release to base off of and couldn't do a new release without switching bases).

[SurfaceUnits]

12/21/12 didn't end the world or Ubuntu

[cwwgateway]

12/21/12 didn't end the world or Ubuntu

Very true (and I'm very thankful for that ). I doubt Ubuntu will ever go away completely, although I bet they said the same thing about Mandrake back in the day.

[cwsnyder]

And Mandrake >> Mandriva >> Mageia hasn't gone away.

[cwwgateway]

And Mandrake >> Mandriva >> Mageia hasn't gone away.

That's basically how I would envision the community picking up Ubuntu (in a similar way to Mageia has picked up Mandriva). I guess Mandriva hasn't gone completely, but it isn't exactly doing great.

[altair4]

There's always Plan9: http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/

[herbie643]

Thanks to everyone for these replies to my question. From what I can see the future Mint looks promising. Clem and the Mint Team are doing a fantastic job.

[bimsebasse]

It would be an awful loss but there doesn't seem to be any risk of it happening any time soon. Mint is what it is because it has stood on the shoulders of Ubuntu. I am a bit worried that the creation of Unity will ultimately lead to a divorce, though, in some years to come, but maybe the dependency has lessened by then.

[cwsnyder]

The divorce will be more likely over Wayland than Unity, and may send many of the less technical Ubuntu users scrambling for cover even more than the switch to Unity desktop if Wayland isn't any better prepared than Unity or GNOME 3 were prepared before they were pushed as the new default.

[Wolfen69]

12/21/12 didn't end the world or Ubuntu

Very true (and I'm very thankful for that ). I doubt Ubuntu will ever go away completely, although I bet they said the same thing about Mandrake back in the day.

But Ubuntu has been around 9 yrs now and still going strong. I doubt it's going anywhere for a long time. Ubuntu 13.04 will be installable on the Google Nexus line of tablets.

[igor83]

I believe that people are generally smart and do things for a reason, so the same principle applies to Canonical. Like Microsoft, they're business types chasing the money trail. There isn't quite as much money to be made in desktops these days. I consider myself a desktop diehard and will give up my big, fat keyboard when it is pried from my cold, dead hands--but I know that the crazy money is being spent on handhelds, laptops, phones, and that explains both Windows 8 and Unity, which mimic the micro scene with its severe limitations. They dumb the OS down for their desired userbase (people with more money than time) and for the desired devices (micros), in the fevered hunt for the cash cow. Whether their strategy will be successful, I don't know, because I'm more of an engineer than a suit, but it seems like a mistake to try to make a desktop like a cellphone. But maybe with the younger generation, that's what they want? I don't know. I'd like to hear from younger people and see what they have to say about Windows 8 and Unity.

For Linux Mint in the future, there are plenty of alternatives like the aforementioned LMDE and many other bases. I don't think OpenSuse would mind if LM made a distro based upon their stuff. In fact, I think they'd be delighted. Lots of possibilities, as well as forking from old versions. I think that we live in interesting times. The fragmentation of the Linux world, I know it's distressing and inefficient. I like Linux Mint Nadia and it works well for my purposes, so that's what matters to me. Whatever comes around the corner, I'm sure the LM developers are wily enough to deal with it and come up winners.

[SurfaceUnits]

^^^not bad for someone who just aged 100 milion years the other day

[SurfaceUnits]

Adam Jackson (ajax), who is also an X.Org developer, said that Fedora is likely to eventually use Wayland by default, “…because it's a serious win for a lot of things, and the downsides are pretty negligible despite the fear from the peanut gallery.

The divorce will be more likely over Wayland than Unity, and may send many of the less technical Ubuntu users scrambling for cover even more than the switch to Unity desktop if Wayland isn't any better prepared than Unity or GNOME 3 were prepared before they were pushed as the new default.

[cwsnyder]

I stand by my statement on Wayland. Windows Vista was a not-bad upgrade from Windows XP, but it had some unforeseen drawbacks for the non-technical crowd which were not in the 'invited' beta-testers. Said beta-testers were mostly the tech minded. The same sort of 'beta-testers' who pushed Unity, GNOME 3.0, and KDE 4.0. All I am implying is that they had better be prepared for the non-technical to bale completely if they don't leave obvious fall-back modes to operate the way the people expected their old systems to operate.

[Condorman]

This is a really interesting discussion, and I think any Mint user must have had this thought at the back of their minds at some point. Even if Ubuntu popularity was to suddenly skyrocket, there would still be a concern that the ladder could be pulled up from Linux Mint. As it is, with Ubuntu seemingly losing its status as the go-to Linux desktop, this could put Mint in a precarious position.

Or not, as it seems to me that Clem has more than considered this possibility. I heard the MintCast interview, and it sounds 100% to me that Clem and the Mint team would be capable of switching to a Debian base successfully should they need to, and with minimal disruption to the regular user. I think that if this shift were to happen then it would be a real shame for Linux generally, as it would mean that Ubuntu had failed and has disappeared. A terrible, terrible loss to computing. But would Mint survive? Undoubtedly.

I would say at the moment that the future of Ubuntu is more in question than the future of Mint. I find the idea of Ubuntu struggling a bit sad personally.