Ubuntu drops Unity and moves back to GNOME

[Lysander666]

I do take the point that fanboys are irritating though, and it seems the more active a forum is, there more there are of them. I tend to just ignore them. I will say again though, that there already - to me - appears to be a big difference in the Mint in comparison to Ubuntu community with regard to what is allowed to be discussed. It is a huge relief. Most likely because Mint is not tied to a corporation, I imagine.

(bold emphasis above mine)
That is really the core of what happened here. I think if Ubuntu survives intact it will be because they become another Redhat. Compare that to Debian which is a community organized Linux distribution. Or even Mint which is something between the two but smaller and better able to adapt. I think what is getting overlooked is the fact that Ubuntu will be 'following the money'. We have already seen some of this with Amazon being stuck into Ubuntu Unity search, etc. Shuttelworth has made clear that is exactly why all these changes have taken place. Only the users can decide where this leaves them in relationship to Ubuntu. For me I'm taking a harder look and moving back toward Debian. It also makes me appreciate Mint more.

It's not only with Canonical, but Microsoft. Very recently a thread was closed when people started to criticise Microsoft. So it's not just Canonical, but their partners. You will see this primarily with business forums, they will close/delete threads with hardly any notice if people start to pick holes in the company, its staff or its affiliates. It's understandable: I suppose money had to be pumped into Ubuntu to make it what it is, and to make it accessible, but it also means people are not allowed to criticise the developers if money could be at stake somewhere down the line. Linux: freedom of choice, freedom of development, freedom of distribution... but not always freedom of speech, unfortunately.

[xenopeek]

This seems as good a time as any to let Yoda have a say:

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

Let's try and keep this topic free of conjecture before this degrades into FUD about what other FOSS projects or their communities could be doing in the future that you don't agree with. We don't like it when it's done to Linux Mint. We don't like it when it's done to others. http://segfault.linuxmint.com/2016/09/addressing-fud/

Many millions of people are happily using Ubuntu, either directory or through a derivative distro like Linux Mint. Let's keep some optimism for the future

[Lysander666]

This seems as good a time as any to let Yoda have a say:

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

Let's try and keep this topic free of conjecture before this degrades into FUD about what other FOSS projects or their communities could be doing in the future that you don't agree with. We don't like it when it's done to Linux Mint. We don't like it when it's done to others. http://segfault.linuxmint.com/2016/09/addressing-fud/

Many millions of people are happily using Ubuntu, either directory or through a derivative distro like Linux Mint. Let's keep some optimism for the future

Indeed, xenopeek. As I have continued to say in my short time in this forum, Ubuntu is an excellent distro. I don't believe I have personally criticised it, nor Canonical. I am very optimistic for Ubuntu's future since I am a fan of GNOME. Interesting post from Clem as well. Things for Mint seem very promising, and this community is a great place to be, as it is great to be a Mint user [Mint 'user' almost sounds like entry-level herbalism, but you get my point].

[KBD47]

Good article on FUD by Clem! The Linux community is rife with FUD and it is easy to slip into the habit or get caught up in it if we are not careful.
On the topic in this thread we need wisdom and common sense, not FUD.
Shuttleworth said he took the actions of dropping staff and letting go of Unity and convergence for investors. That we know is not FUD. What will it mean for Mint? It all depends who those investors are and what comes next. What we do know is Clem has made wise decisions when big things have happened with Ubuntu in the past. Because of Clem's decisions we have two awesome desktops: Cinnamon & MATE, and also LMDE. And he also chose to focus on OS stability which we have benefited from. So whatever Ubuntu does, history has shown Mint will make good choices. OK, how is that for "no FUD" xenopeek?

[Jedinovice]

I shouldn’t say this… it’s not fair... but I just can’t help myself.

YES!!!!!

Cough. I will explain. I know that Unity is not dying out. It has already been forked. But the problems with Unity as a desktop GUI are legion! It was an improvement over the original Gnome 3 back in the day that was hardly a compliment. I hold that Windows 3 was a better GUI than Gnome 3 back then.

But the real problem for me has been that Ubuntu Unity is the ONLY distro that is installed on commercial machines you can buy via Amazon or the local retailer – very important in places like Indonesia where I reside.

One look at Unity and its often hate at first sight.
“This is it? A few buttons on the side?”

I mean, a lot of users are smartphone fanatics and do not really ‘get’ the desktop interface. But the trouble is that, while those users may have liked the smartphone style of Unity… it was completely locked down!! Doing anything other than running up Firefox or Libreoffice required dropping to the command line! Confirming the welded in belief that in order do anything in Linux required expert command line skills. Furthermore, those that like the smartphone interface... love smartphones and hate laptops. So Unity, I suspect, did not pick up the IT illiterate crowd who get smartphones but not laptops.

[And this is also why I dislike Synaptic being dropped from Mint 17.3 to be replaced by… the command line, in essence. Sigh.]

I think Unity is a GUI that served no useful purpose on the desktop and actively hindered desktop adoption of Linux. It was a slow, resource hungry slob of a UI with no power to the user, no configurability and you even had to learn fixed keyboard shortcuts to do things!!!

Now, I have always said that a man’s desktop it his castle and I do not normally take it upon myself to criticize a GUI in Linux since it is a matter of taste and workflow. Normally.

But Unity? I yuck!
Trying to use Unity was like push a mountain over.

Yes, it’s fine to be forked. Great for those who want it. But having an old style Gnome interface will make Linux look like a ‘real operating system’ to those who have only ever seen Windows. Unity made Linux look like an expensive toy.

At least Gnome has stepped back from the brink and there are various tools that can be added in to make Gnome usable now. Unity…??

*Cough.*

We now return you to your normal scheduled ranting.

[Lucap]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/12 ... _face_chop

80-plus people to be dropped and founder Mark Shuttleworth takes back the role of CEO.

[mike acker]

Ubuntu Linux uncertainty continues as Canonical CEO walks away

excerpt

The timing of this could not be worse, as there is already a lot of uncertainty in the Ubuntu community -- some stability would have been appreciated after all of the other recent chaos. Canonical would have been wise to wait a bit longer before making this announcement. After all, Silber isn't leaving today, but in a few months -- is the company trying to give Ubuntu users and developers ulcers? There are reports that there's been a bit of an exodus by Canonical employees as a result.

[Lysander666]

Ubuntu Linux uncertainty continues as Canonical CEO walks away

excerpt

The timing of this could not be worse, as there is already a lot of uncertainty in the Ubuntu community -- some stability would have been appreciated after all of the other recent chaos. Canonical would have been wise to wait a bit longer before making this announcement. After all, Silber isn't leaving today, but in a few months -- is the company trying to give Ubuntu users and developers ulcers? There are reports that there's been a bit of an exodus by Canonical employees as a result.

I hadn't read that whole comment from Mark S before. That's really quite illuminating, and quite surprising that a CEO of a company would say something like that in public. I understand that what he's talking about is highly frustrating, but his choice of language needs.... improvement.

My impression is that the s*** has really hit the fan at Canonical. And as for Jane Silber stepping down, well, one wonder if this was her decision.

I am being very careful not to go with the FUD line here, but things looks quite bad at Canonical, and that there is much that is not being reported. And this comment:

"We're now entering a new phase of accelerated growth at Canonical, and it’s time to pass the baton to both seasoned hands and a new generation of Canonical leaders."

Seems to be a way of saying there is radical change happening at the company, and not all of it good either.

[rene]

80-plus people to be dropped

Isn't that illegal age discrimination?

[mike acker]

{snip}

Seems to be a way of saying there is radical change happening at the company, and not all of it good either.

methinks,........ hmmmmmmm

it was interesting to me that when I loaded a straight Debian distro a couple days ago they had check boxes with the installer offering various DE -- including Cinamon and others -- working from pure memory here -- that we like a lot ---- KDE, Mate ...

I just took the defaults so I think I got a plain Gnome DE

I want to play with it a bit more. it's quite different from the LMDE/Cinamon I'm running on this box -- and a lot less "Windows Like" -- but -- I didn't have any trouble finding my way around

I like this Mint project a lot

if there's one thing I fuss over though it's the app/update thing. I like the backports. and I have no trouble installing from .deb packages

WGET seems to work rather well too so I wonder if we really need to fuss so much over these "ppa" things

the Software Repository that we have is excellent

with these things in mind there is no reason for any FUD: as far as I can see there are plenty of FOSS type options to work with and I look forward to being a part of it.

as I was rebuilding the LMDE/2 system on my Research box yesterday one of the first things I wanted to re-activate was Dropbox. I opened Firefox and selected the Dropbox logon page and then took the INSTALL option. the system immediately prompted me: "There is an older version of this program. Support may be better, do you want the older version instead?" Of course not, keeping software current is important. But this is symptomatic of the software maintenance that I encounter with Mint DE. I make these notes as it occurs to me that if MINT were to be drawn into some sort of reconfiguration this might be an area to look at

thoughts?

[ColdBoot]

Ubuntu Linux uncertainty continues as Canonical CEO walks away

excerpt

The timing of this could not be worse, as there is already a lot of uncertainty in the Ubuntu community -- some stability would have been appreciated after all of the other recent chaos. Canonical would have been wise to wait a bit longer before making this announcement. After all, Silber isn't leaving today, but in a few months -- is the company trying to give Ubuntu users and developers ulcers? There are reports that there's been a bit of an exodus by Canonical employees as a result.

Thanks for sharing the link even though it seems to me that this guy is a cheap tabloid kind of journalist. The sort that speculates, slanders and foremost judges, as if there is no higher than his own petty opinions. I usually don't pay any attention to what such have to say.

However, there is something Mark S said, mentioned in the text, that made me reconsider if I was wrong in one of my previous posts in this thread. So( ), like every good dog, I'll eat my own vomit and say that GNOME3 is a great desktop envirnoment among many other, also great desktop environments created for Linux. I wish to thank them all for keeping up the good work!

P.S. and It is indeed a great pity that the development of Unity has ended.

[xenopeek]

I guess I'm not the only one who wondered what the news meant for Ubuntu GNOME. They've just announced the development teams from both Ubuntu GNOME and Ubuntu Desktop will be merging resources and focusing on a single combined release. Ubuntu GNOME will not be a separate flavor. Read more on their blog announcement: https://ubuntugnome.org/ubuntu-gnome-17-04-released/

[KBD47]

{snip}

Seems to be a way of saying there is radical change happening at the company, and not all of it good either.

methinks,........ hmmmmmmm

it was interesting to me that when I loaded a straight Debian distro a couple days ago they had check boxes with the installer offering various DE -- including Cinamon and others -- working from pure memory here -- that we like a lot ---- KDE, Mate ...

I just took the defaults so I think I got a plain Gnome DE

I want to play with it a bit more. it's quite different from the LMDE/Cinamon I'm running on this box -- and a lot less "Windows Like" -- but -- I didn't have any trouble finding my way around

I like this Mint project a lot

if there's one thing I fuss over though it's the app/update thing. I like the backports. and I have no trouble installing from .deb packages

WGET seems to work rather well too so I wonder if we really need to fuss so much over these "ppa" things

the Software Repository that we have is excellent

with these things in mind there is no reason for any FUD: as far as I can see there are plenty of FOSS type options to work with and I look forward to being a part of it.

as I was rebuilding the LMDE/2 system on my Research box yesterday one of the first things I wanted to re-activate was Dropbox. I opened Firefox and selected the Dropbox logon page and then took the INSTALL option. the system immediately prompted me: "There is an older version of this program. Support may be better, do you want the older version instead?" Of course not, keeping software current is important. But this is symptomatic of the software maintenance that I encounter with Mint DE. I make these notes as it occurs to me that if MINT were to be drawn into some sort of reconfiguration this might be an area to look at

thoughts?

Older software/packages are not necessarily a bad thing. I think most users, particularly those new to Linux would hardly notice the difference if they booted into LMDE Cinnamon vs Ubuntu-based Mint Cinnamon. LMDE is polished and looks and works amazing. Loss of PPA is not major for as you mention there are Debian backports and other software available outside of Debian as deb packages. Vanilla Debian is much easier to install than it once was, and you end up with a nice and usable desktop based upon what you choose. But it is not as polished and 'contrib non-free' needs to be enabled in the sources for several things to make it more usable. LMDE is only slightly more complicated to install than the Ubuntu-based version. I doubt it would be overly challenging to install for your average computer user. So no, there is no reason for FUD. Indeed, I am not to sure that Mint going pure Debian would be a bad move at all. No more Ubuntu drama would be nice

[Lucap]

Ubuntu 17.04 Available to Download Now, This is What’s New
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/04/ubun ... w-features

Ubuntu 17.04 flavors are now available to download, including Ubuntu GNOME
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/04/down ... 04-flavors

Poll at the bottom of the page " Which Ubuntu flavor do you use? "

Ubuntu GNOME 27.68% (447 votes)
Ubuntu 27.43% (443 votes)

Only 1,600 votes but way ahead of the others.

[mr_raider]

I thought cinnamon was gnome 3 with a bunch of extensions and mint specific apps and configs.

Any development efforts towards gnome should benefit cinnamon independently.

[maxreason]

I'm probably missing something (make that definitely missing something), but:

#1: Is Ubuntu trying to take over the Linux Mint (at least Cinnamon) "market" with this change?

#2: What will be the difference between Ubuntu and Linux Mint (at least Cinnamon) going forward?

As a self-employed scientist, engineer, inventor, product-developer... I have never-ending work to do on my computers, which is why Unity sent me fleeing in panic and made me so appreciate Linux Mint (especially Cinnamon) ever since Unity arrived.

The entire notion of creating an identical GUI for phones, tablets and 43-inch diagonal 3840x2160 desktop displays (and growing, which is where I'm at now) is completely insane! Unless, that is, the process now works in reverse and phone and tablet GUIs adopt slight variants of the desktop GUIs... which makes sense since those little displays seem to have 2K resolution or better these days from what I hear (though obviously some parallel touchscreen metaphor needs to replace mouse motion for mobile devices).

DISCLAIMER: I never owned a mobile phone or ipad-type device and never will. Let others fry their brains and become enslaved addicts controlled by their devices (rather than the other way around)! With apologies to all you Linux fans infected with the virulent diseases of dinkitis and/or mobilitis, of course.

[mike acker]

Suggested reading:

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for Linux and Open Source | April 14, 2017

Ubuntu 17.04: The bittersweet Linux release

Excerpt

I tested Ubuntu 17.04 in an Oracle VirtualBox virtual machine (VM) on my main Linux Mint system. I also installed it on my primary Ubuntu PC. This is an ASUS desktop with an 3.4GHz third-generation i7 3770 processor, and 8GBs of RAM. Ubuntu runs like a champ on this box.

Under the hood, this edition of Ubuntu uses the Linux 4.10 kernel. This means it supports the AMD Ryzen and Intel Kaby Lake processors.

( Emphasis added )

[xenopeek]

I thought cinnamon was gnome 3 with a bunch of extensions and mint specific apps and configs.

Common misconception that GNOME 3 is Gnome Shell. GNOME 3 is the entire collection of software developed by the GNOME project of which Gnome Shell is but one, though prominent, part. See https://github.com/GNOME for a (long) list of GNOME projects.

Cinnamon and its window manager Muffin are forks of respectively Gnome Shell and its window manager Mutter. Cinnamon depends on many pieces of software developed by the GNOME project. System components, libraries and services like Clutter, dconf, GLib, GTK+, NetworkManager and many more. The Cinnamon edition of Linux Mint further uses GNOME programs such as Archive Manager, Calculator, Disk Usage Analyzer, Disks, Document Viewer, Help, Rhythmbox, System Monitor, Terminal and more.

X-Apps on Linux Mint 18 replace some GNOME programs with forks of earlier versions. These are also built on top of GNOME technology.

[xenopeek]

I'm probably missing something (make that definitely missing something), but:

#1: Is Ubuntu trying to take over the Linux Mint (at least Cinnamon) "market" with this change?

#2: What will be the difference between Ubuntu and Linux Mint (at least Cinnamon) going forward?

Canonical's decision to drop Unity and move Ubuntu back to GNOME has nothing to do with Linux Mint or Cinnamon.

Going forward the difference between Ubuntu and Linux Mint remains the same as it is currently. Both Ubuntu with Unity and Linux Mint with Cinnamon were using their own shell for GNOME. While Ubuntu will move back to use Gnome Shell that doesn't change the fact Ubuntu and Linux Mint will still be using a different shell. On top of that Linux Mint will continue to provide you with a desktop that looks more classical (panel at the bottom with a menu to launch programs, optionally quick launch icons besides that, a list of open windows taken and at the end a status area with clock) with its own themes and customization, with its own programs added like Software Manager, Update Manager, the X-Apps and all the Linux Mint developed programs.

[thom_A]

The entire notion of creating an identical GUI for phones, tablets and 43-inch diagonal 3840x2160 desktop displays (and growing, which is where I'm at now) is completely insane!

It's their vision. Can't criticize them for it. I myself am still trying to make sense of it. I have an 8" tablet that I no longer use, but I can't imagine using the same GUI with so many complex layers of menus without a keyboard. Strange part is it always assumes you're still carrying a keyboard with you, thus the shortcut keys. I mean if you're going to design a GUI, make sure everything is accessible via your finger or stylus. You can then add the shortcuts.