Why Don’t Other Linux Distros Use Unity? A Few Thoughts
Jan. 23rd, 2012 by Christopher Tozzi
Last week I wrote about spinoffs of Ubuntu, noting that some of the once popular ones have now gone dormant. But later, I realized something else interesting: No Ubuntu variant — not a single one — uses Unity as its default desktop interface. Keep reading for some thoughts on why this might be, and what it says about Ubuntu and Canonical.
Admittedly, I have to give most of the credit for noticing the lack of Unity-based spinoffs of Ubuntu to an attentive reader of my earlier post named Jake, who pointed out in the comments that most Ubuntu remixes predate the adoption of Unity. Indeed: According to DistroWatch, there are exactly two Linux distributions that ship with Unity as their default interface: Ubuntu and Leenux, a relatively obscure spinoff that on its webpage actually appears to use the old Netbook Remix interface that Unity replaced. So that means that of the approximately 125 official and unofficial Ubuntu variants out there, Ubuntu itself is the only one based on Unity.
That’s kind of a big deal. I can’t think of any other Linux distribution that’s so unique with regard to its interface. Nor do any of the mainstream distros, with the exception of Ubuntu, use desktop environments developed in-house; instead, most of them are built around GNOME Shell or KDE, which are third-party projects.
All Part of the Plan?
Why might this be so? There are several potential explanations.
The first — which will appeal to those users who wish that Unity had never been created — is that the interface is simply unpopular. That might be part of the answer, but it’s not sufficient on its own. While there has been plenty of trepidation regarding Unity, there are also people who actually like it — and not all them, believe or not, work for Canonical. In addition, as Ubuntu developers continue to revamp the interface and fix the problems that marked earlier versions, it stands to gain a larger following. Attributing the lack of Unity-based Ubuntu spinoffs to user rejection alone is not a satisfying explanation.
Some might argue also that Unity is harder to work with from a technical standpoint. But I’d disagree. This might be a point best debated by serious developers, but based on my own limited experience remastering Linux distributions, it doesn’t seem to me that Unity should make things any more difficult. Like any other desktop environment, it’s just a set of packages that can be added or removed to a remixed software stack pretty easily.
The third explanation, and the one which makes the most sense to me, is that no one has spun off Unity because Canonical has kept the interface so close to home, so to speak. Precisely because Unity is different from GNOME Shell, KDE and the like in the sense that it’s developed by Canonical rather than partners elsewhere in the open source channel, Canonical has been able to exert much more rigid control over it.
Unity is open source, of course, and anyone is legally entitled to do with it what he or she wants as long as he or she respects the relevant licenses. But Unity is so tightly integrated with Ubuntu itself that it hasn’t made sense to build Ubuntu spinoffs based on Unity. For Unity to work well it needs the software stack that ships with Ubuntu proper.
It’s also telling that Unity has not been distributed outside of Ubuntu’s own channel. An effort to port it to Fedora fizzled out, and I couldn’t even find RPM packages of the software anywhere. Meanwhile, the only up-to-date Launchpad PPA for Unity currently supports Ubuntu 12.04 alone. In other words, even just installing Unity on a distribution that’s not Ubuntu remains a tall order, too difficult for most people to consider.
And my suspicion is that this is exactly the way Canonical wanted things. The company has been stingy with Unity most likely because it believes Ubuntu will be most successful if it has a unique desktop environment that allows it to stand out from the constellation of competing Linux distributions. Canonical wants Ubuntu to be something special, and Unity — as it exists today, and as it will evolve in the future as it expands to TVs and beyond — is a central part of that formula.
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This is nonsense.
Why should anyone want to reinvent Unity through a copy of Ubuntu, for they can easily fork out another distro. In fact there are many Ubuntu derived distros that happily, presumably use Ubuntu, or they could have forked back off Debian. In that Mint with it’s slavish adherence to Gnome is the odd one out.
I find Ubuntu with Unity lean and clean and once you’ve got over the loss of Gnome, very straightforward and clearsighted.
If I really had an addiction to impossible code, I’d use Windows or the paper tape I grew up with.
My OPINION (i.e. not stating the facts) is that Ubuntu/Canonical’s failure to get real influence in Gnome lead to Unity. To me, it always seemed like Gnome couldn’t care less about Ubuntu, even though Ubuntu was the top recruiting service to Gnome 2. Something was bound to happen.
Believe Ubuntu want to distance themselves from not only spinoffs, but also the rest of the Linux desktop distros. In other words, they are trying to “pull an Android”.
They may very well be able to do that. They’ve added Qt support (Will Qt software vendors port to Ubuntu only)?
As I understand your article, Unity is a “twist” on the Netbook UXes, and I agree. That’s also where I belive trouble starts.
So far I have not seen one single Netbook UX that was good. Netbooks still exists and will continue to sell in some “emerging economies”, but as a concept for the future it’s pretty much dormant and not very interesting. But again: No Netbook UX was ever good. (In my book the best one was HP’s for Mini ME, and that died fast.)
So, Canonical has picked the Netbooks for UX. Wrt user expericence and concept they haven’t done much to improve it. Brand new code and soforth – fine, but the experience hasn’t really improved at all.
Now, they are talking about TV, pads and everything. They want to conquer the world on multiple formfactors.
Most companies that makes such attempts have a base product that is already successful and they spin off from that. That way success drizzles on to new formfactors.
Unity is not such success. The UX was not good on Netbooks, and it didn’t improve (rather the other way around) on it’s way to the laptop and desktop.
Canonical have to do really major changes to Unity before it becomes a viable alternative.
I’ve felt for a while that someone should create a spin-off distro based solely on Unity-2D, which is the QT-based part of the desktop, then supply QT apps and developer tools. The biggest problem is that some parts depend on GTK+, which defeats the whole purpose of creating that distro in the first place, so it would need to be a fork more than a spin-off, really.
Could be a nice dev platform, though.
As a simple user please let me chime in.
Ubuntu shot themselves in the foot twice with 11.04
1.I was surprised and happy when I saw the Upgrade option in the update manager. I did that upgrade and it failed, leaving me very POed. A friend had mentioned Mint so I checked it out. 10.10 was working just fine, I had faith in Ubuntu… no more.
2. After recovering most of my data I did a clean install only to find my desktop filled with huge icons and no facility to modify them. I still have a partition with 11.10 and boot to it regularly. It totally frustrates me. I do read about the enhancements to Unity, and yes I played with 2D and Gnome shell. Ugly and difficult in my view.
I now use Pinguy and LMDE.
Pinguy, for me, is a bit bloated, but I easily trim it down (Un-Install Docky, GnomeDo, and that silly universal Gnome2 app to start) and have a efficient and useful work environment.
LMDE is a great base to build on, and I sidestep Conical entirely… that is important to me as I believe Conical may be getting “too big to fail” and will eventually kill the Ubuntu forks.
Just my view, right or wrong. Peter
As much as some people love Unity, which is very rare to hear any Ubuntu users say that often anywhere, but I don’t use it. I’m on 10.04 LTS for just that reason. For a very long time, I was one of those Ubuntu users that was quite happy installing the latest version of Ubuntu every time they would roll out a new animal. And I really enjoyed that kind of progression, and something suprising to play with. Now, Unity has made my desktop a real pain in the ass. I don’t enjoy fumbling around with that crap on side of my screen, that interferes with my work sometimes, whenever I accidentally forget that if I move my mouse anywhere on the left of my screen, that crap is going to pop out, and pop back away… I can’t describe how much that really upsets me. Plus, I install this for a living on new user’s computers, and I have to say, it really doesn’t seem familar enough for new Ubuntu users who are switching from Windows 7 or previous version of Windows. So they don’t even really have any idea where to find anything.. It is too different, and too soon. And honestly Unity is made for small Tablets, and Maybe Ubuntu TV like setups. But for me who relies on a simple desktop, with a simple windows like start button and neat lists of apps, I’m sticking with Gnome 2 for long as possible. And when I need to install this OS for a client, I will continue to use 10.04 LTS for as long as possible too. Unity is a good replacement for that Ubuntu Remix DE, but it isn’t for normal Desktop PC users. I’m sorry, but that is just my experience with Unity. I still love Ubuntu, and I love the fact that it is completely free. But until Unity gets to be more “customizable” I’m not going to use Unity until they do.
Please look at the facts: Unity as it will appear in 12.04 or 12.10 will never reach the masses of Linux users because it’s not usable for the daily work flow! No more to say!
I’m not Jesus, but I guess you’ll see Unity disappear sooner or later.
“I can’t think of any other Linux distribution that’s so unique with regard to its interface.”
… um … LinuxMint now has its own unique desktop, Cinnamon, which arguably is a restatement of Gnome2, but it works well and now offers version 1.2. It is getting notice with other distros, too. (cinnamon.linuxmint.com)
revdjenk: good point. I thought about that when I was writing the piece but decided Mint and Cinnamon weren’t really a fair comparison to Ubuntu and Unity because Mint is not so uniquely committed to Cinnamon. Also, Cinnamon is only a few weeks old; given time it may well be picked up by other distributions.
others don’t use it because it sucks. take the plain truth or fabricate an elaborate excuse. whichever way you like to waste your time on the nets.
when Ubuntu first came out with unity man was i lost i thought the system crashed i must have reinstalled it 5 times before i seen what was going on…now it is GREAT they should have done it long ago i find it very nice we dont want to learn new things… that is only human and yes i know commands and i have used linux for a very long time well since red hat 4.0 and when corel came out with linux it was very good for the time i guess what i am trying to say is WAY TO GO UBUNTU..GREAT WORK.
Ben B: then you would be the person to ask.
I can not figure out how to get the cinnamon PPA to work… I was able to add the resources but terminal gives some unusual error messages when I try to update, and Update Manager ignores the source.
I am willing to try… Thanks
PS: using a clean install of 11.10 now, a real install, not a virtual box thingie
Quoting myself in #2 – here’s a real U-turn for you:
“”So far I have not seen one single Netbook UX that was good. Netbooks still exists and will continue to sell in some “emerging economies”, but as a concept for the future it’s pretty much dormant and not very interesting. But again: No Netbook UX was ever good. (In my book the best one was HP’s for Mini ME, and that died fast.)
So, Canonical has picked the Netbooks for UX. Wrt user expericence and concept they haven’t done much to improve it. Brand new code and soforth – fine, but the experience hasn’t really improved at all.
…deleted stuff…
Unity is not such success. The UX was not good on Netbooks, and it didn’t improve (rather the other way around) on it’s way to the laptop and desktop.
Canonical have to do really major changes to Unity before it becomes a viable alternative.”"
—————
So, I decided to do something I normally never do. Take Alphas for a spin, or should I say daily build.
The user experience in Unity v5 (daily build 23 jan) is totally different from Ubuntu 11.10 – enormous improvement.
…Ubuntu 11.10 is still a big no-no. But I’m shure 12.04 will do just fine both for me and my “charity users”.
I agree with Jo-Erlend Schinstad that Unity will do just fine – thus hats off for Ubuntu.
Jack,
Unity is quite usable now, as you have seen. The keyboard shortcuts are especially nice. Will Ubuntu and Unity get past the negative press of the past year? Wait and watch.
For me, it’s useable with 12.04. But there are still lots to do.
Running it on ATI GPU doesn’t exactly make it shine and did call for synaptic intervention. No such problems with my Nvidia.
The “menu-window” doesn’t really scale and pokes my nose.
When using a big monitor (2560×1440) I maximise 2 or 3 appliactions vertically and it seems that some needed functionality is missing (or did i miss it?). It’s about the maximation itself and how they integrate into the “status bar”.
The panel is still in need for a lot more flex and dynamics.
All DE’s have shortcuts and all DE’s becomes more efficient if the shortcuts are “in the marrow”. But it doesn’t really compensate for lack of intuitiveness.
I still believe the repos are messy. Tons of 32 bit packages visible from a 64 bit installation makes it really bad.
Even though their “appshop” covers up for fresh users I still regard it as a negative.
They have done a great job so far and it becomes increasingly more about preferences than problems.
I still don’t understand anyone who would recommend 11.10 to anyone but those curious and in a testing state of mind.
In my view the Ubuntu enthusiasts would have done Ubuntu a huge favour by recommending people to stick to the LTS.
As far as I can tell (and I have no idea if I’m either typical or right) is that you quickly skipped over the correct answer. It is #1. Unity is unpopular. Whether that is justifiable or not is a different matter, but it doesn’t change the fact that the majority of Linux users I’ve talked to about it don’t like Unity. I’d posit that it is the most frequently first-removed package on a clean Ubuntu install.
Sure – Unity is unpopular.
Question is:
- Have they fixed Unity to the extent that the disgruntled masses can live with it? Or even like it?
- Or has direction become more obvious, making users believe/trust/anticipate that the next version or the one thereafter will solve whatever users dislike?
Unlikely that Ubuntu will turn those being political about it. But the rest is up for grabs.
I admit I hated Unity when it frst came in in 12.04, ans went as far as putting in Mint just to get rid of it. But in the process I felt I was cutting myself off from Ubuntu and though Mint might be upto date daily with what Ubuntu was spiritually it wasn’t. It was just slavishly being Ubuntu without the Unity.
Shuttleworth has done a lot to get decent stuff – Linux – out of the ned geek and hobbyist market and turn it into something that really rather good.
Until 11.10 I though well why doesn’t Shuttleworth simply ship Ubuntu in a bare form with switches to get Unitu or gnome flavours, rather like the fact Ubuntu produces kubuntu and edubuntu.
But that is not I think Shuttleworth’s vision. It is to be the best bloody software offering out there. And for the most part his vision is spot on, though it takes a while for Paradise to arrive.
11.10 was much easier to get the hang of than 11.04, and I really don’t need to go back to the old gnome desktop.
For 12.04 we are offered an arrangeeable launcher – I think at the moment its ordered according to the date you installed a package, or possibly according to frequency of use.And HUD.
Ecah of Shuttleworth’s little ideas has had its reason. My favourite one was the 100 papercuts, which was very good, and something the community could really get stuck into.
The management of the development community, handsoff, subtle, not didactive, welcoming, and a whole lot differnent from the commercial software industry in which I worked for may years with its continually missed dealines, bugs that would never go away and personal ego politics of managers crawling up the sticky pole is so wonderfully different.
Its not Gates one size must fit all and it must make money and if you get a BSOD it’s your fault not ours and give me the dough. OK I’ll give lots to charity, but I want to give my money to charity I’ll give it directly rather than giving it to a functional monopolist first and while saving children’s lives from disease is very worth while there seems to be little in Gates’ vision beyond saving the life the grinding poverty, suffering, war, stupid religions and family values and the like are never addressed. Gates’ charitable works are rather like the Catholic Churches attitude to sex. You must be celibate for religious it you fall have lots of children, the female ones who will prefably be chaste and if they can’t be produce lots more children.
Shuttlewroth’s vision is entirely different. It about producing really good software and free to users and at the same time commercially supporting itself.
Shuttleworth is my kind of secular saint.
It’s not Apple
easy answer for me: competition, the main motor for both free and commercial software.
have you ever tried gnome shell 3.0?
no game
let interface makers make interface (gnome, apple) and let distro makers make distros!
I disagree… Ubuntu spins do not choose Unity because
1. It is not Mature enough yet
2. Because of it’s immaturity… It is not worthy of a default full replacement of the desktop environment currently chosen by these projects. As Unity (if unity) becomes accepted by the masses of Ubuntu users and raises in popularity… you will see more ubuntu spins use Unity. But it aint there yet….
kaddy
A lot of distros use Ubuntu as a base and that’s a fork off Debian.
The only one that has removed Unity and inserted Gnome is Mint. It is a fork of Ubuntu.
I don’t know whether Cinnamon forks off Mint or Ubuntu or even Debian.
I don’t know of any other potential Mint forks.
So, logically, other forks that use Ubuntu, use Unity.
n’est ce pas?
It sounds like I’m going the other way from most other posters here. I’ve gotten fed up with the lack of stability within Ubuntu over the past several years. Worse, I’m a KDE fan which has gotten less and less love from Ubuntu over time. I’ve decided to migrate from 10.04 LTS to Debian stable combined with squeeze-backports. That gets me an extremely solid foundation upon which to add the handful of applications that I really need to be the most up to date possible.
However, I did take a quick look at Unity before making my move. In my view, there are two critical things that it lacks.
The first is one that even Shuttleworth recently acknowledged is missing; discoverability. There’s no good way for a new user to find their way around the system. This is HUGE and the fact that Canonical’s UI design people didn’t make this a key tenet is mind boggling. Retro-fitting Unity to include this basic concept is going to be very difficult.
The second issue is one that’s outside of Canonical’s control and I think that ultimately, may very well doom it. Unity as a metaphor will not be adopted by any major application that is cross platform because it’s too different from everything else. Each major application already maintains its own UI metaphor. They’re not about to throw all that work out the window unless Unity becomes the metaphor that is common across the industry. Yeah, like THAT is likely to happen.
Geezus! Do you want some cheese with your “whine”??? I am a power user who uses Ubuntu (w/Unity) on a daily basis for work and at home. I do video and photo editing, blogging, research and tons of other stuff and Unity never gets in my way or messes up my workflow. In fact, it makes my workflow easier. With the buttons and the launcher on the left, I consistently know where to click. Keyboard shortcuts make life even easier. I have install Ubuntu with Unity on a lot of my customers computers with no complaints whatsoever. I don’t know what kind of insane hardware you are using but Ubuntu “just works” on every machine I use, from my newest boxes to my older P4′s. Quit your ballyhooing because Ubuntu is still Linux. You can add Gnome Shell, Gnome2/Mate, KDE, Xfce, Lxde, Enlightenment, and even Cinnamon. Use what you like and move on folks.
Well said, Shark.
Agreed shark… whatever you prefer is best for you.
For me, Gnome 2 works great, I see no need to try to learn something “new and improved”.
I have been poking around with Mate, it seems to work OK but does not have the usability in my environment, yet… maybe never.
I am curious how cinnamon will work, so I have a new Mint12 install to play with… maybe that will be the wave of the future, maybe not.
Personally, I think LMDE is clean and stable, after all Debian is the source that Ubuntu builds from…
Namaste
The reason no one else is using Unity is because NOBODY LIKES UNITY. It is Spaceman Mark’s pet project and he is openly hostile towards its critics, but outside of Canonical there are no fans of Unity. That’s why so many Linux users are leaving Ubuntu for greener pastures. It’s a shame, really — Ubuntu was shaping up to be *the* standard desktop Linux, and they blew it.
And I agree with PeterE, and if Gnome 2 works just great, for him so be it. Just don’t go on about Ubuntu having dine something impossible, and the interface is broken, because you haven’t bothered to work with the changes and understand what they are about. Shuttleworh provokes us with a new way of working but he isn’t capricious. He does it because he genuinely believes that what he is doing is better than he’s done before and he doesn’t want to give anything but the best.
If you really can’t stand it you can always go bck to Gates and endure all those nag screens and spend top dollar on rubbish.
Both of Christopher Tozzi’s articles give too much credence to a Distrowatch search for distros “based on Ubuntu.” In fact one specific example he cites, Linspire, was first issued in 2001 and first listed on Distrowatch in 2002 — but Ubuntu itself was first issued in 2004. So how can Linspire be “based on Ubuntu”? Well, it borrowed some things from Ubuntu, but it was mostly based on Debian. If you search Distrowatch for distros “based on Debian” you will find most of the same distros as you will find “based on Ubuntu.” If you look at the actual Distrowatch PAGE for Linspire and most of these others, you will see it says they are based on Debian AND Ubuntu. Some of them use the Debian repos, not the Ubuntu repos; they just add to sources.lst their own distro-specific repo, where they put the Ubuntu packages they use. Of course many are essentially remixes of Ubuntu, but some of them, like Linspire, are remixes of Debian with a few Ubuntu add-ons.
Unity is too new. It is very subject to change. It Will change to be a usable and ‘beautiful’ UI. too much controversy.
That’s why no one going to the trouble of mixing a new flavor will risk putting Unity on there yet.
Don’t forget that one of the primary targets for Ubuntu is the phone and maybe tablet markets. So their approach is necessary.
Meanwhile I keep looking for the way to narrow that side ribbon and make it look nicer. User controls to modify the appearance of that ribbon and consolidate the top bar features into the ribbon (so only one to claim real estate) will go a long way to making it acceptable. 12.04 will be pivotal. I hope they add the user controls.
I think Unity is perfect – simple and clean – i love it !
the reason i’ve been using Gnome2 for past couple of years (rather than my favourite KDE since the 90s) is because i was lumbered with it via Ubuntu distros – the same reason so many users will settle into Unity
Users of Ubuntu perfectly happy with its simplicity and seamless integration with Ubuntu, nice fonts etc
The past two weeks i have tried Fedora with its Gnome3, and a KDE – and followed that with 11.10
the Ubuntu installation experience and look and feel, is great – easy and pretty – and Unity is exactly what most people need – nothing more and nothing less
simple, usable, innovative… i can say enough good things about – it’s the future!
Your conclusion is not, as you put it, a “satisfying explanation” either. You write:
> For Unity to work well it needs the software
> stack that ships with Ubuntu proper.
What software stack would that be, exactly? And why, since it’s all open source, would it be any harder for a distro based on Ubuntu to include Unity, than it is for Ubuntu to include Unity?
You haven’t satisfactorily answered your own question yet.
Contrast your observation that so few (one?) Ubuntu-based distros use Unity, to the number of GNOME 3-based distros. GNOME 3 apparently made it easy enough to modify the UI that you have a plethora of distros packaged with (easily-installed) extensions; and there are distros coming out with modified versions (“forks”) of GNOME shell (e.g. Mint with Cinnamon; Asturix with “on shell”; and Linux Deepin with its own desktop, to name 3).
Whatever the reasons, I think it is telling that not only many users have turned their backs on Ubuntu because of Unity, but also that Gnome 3 shell has not become the desktop that they have adopted. Instead Not only has linux Mint taken the bulk of former Ubuntunites, but has responded by building their own desktop environment: Cinnamon.
The thing about Cinammon is that even though it is currently only an Alpha build it is already finding itself to the Repos of most of the major Distros that used to Use Gnome as their primary Desktop Environment. I think that alone speaks volumes about user dissatisfaction with both Unity and Gnome 3 shell.
The fact that most linux users “shun” Unity might be one of the reasons why Linux itself has trouble taking over the desktop world…it requires too much change…
Roger,
Just look at the VAR Guy’s article on why most people still need to use MS Office as to why “Linux” has trouble taking over the desktop world. You notice that it didn’t have much trouble in markets that weren’t locked in, like routers and phones.
Daeng,
Now what needs would those be?
Oppenoffice and Libreoffice will handle Microsoft documents (say containing tables) far better than Microsoft will handle OO of LO ones , which tends to garbageize them.
When it comes to using the Internet Firefox is always much faster and more reliable than IE (of any number).
Linux has a tradition of backward compatibility, which Microsoft often seems to observe in the beach.
You might find a small number of Microrubbish products that can’t be used.
And there’s always Wine.
So, how many bits of software need obligate use of Windows on a Windows machine.
Remember you can always dual-boot.
Games?
Which ones?
If there are such eird and wonderful and necessary bits of software, and I cannot name a single one, is it not Microsoft’s duty to make it available on other platforms,
Charles Norrie
In general the ones having major difficulties with Linux desktop are:
Those who never will use it anyway……
In general the ones having major difficulties with LibreOffice are:
Those who never will use it anyway…
It’s like winter – a huge problem when laxing with a Gin Tonic sundowner in the Maldives….
Charlie,
You misunderstand me. I’ve used Linux since 1997, and exclusively since 2000. I don’t have a Windows partition or a VM. To do so and to claim “Linux is ready for the desktop!” is duplicitous.
I’m lucky. I stay in jobs where I don’t need MS. There is, however, a good amount of software which has no Linux port and which uses a proprietary file format which either hasn’t been reverse engineered or has been incompletely. There are literally thousands of these programs, mostly niche.
Do you have something which depends on AD? Well, you can run an Alpha version of Samba 4 for your business, or you can run Windows Server 20??. I don’t really support either, but sometimes there are ugly choices to make.
When I was working in Korea just two years ago, all the government websites were designed for IE and all online banking required an ActiveX plugin _by law_. The chat program they used was CoolChat or something created in Japan, I think, and although the server was designed for Linux, no clients existed and the only ones that worked in Wine didn’t support the current protocol, meaning that they didn’t support logging in.
I could go on for paragraphs about the kinds of programs that make life difficult if you don’t use MS, but you can just ask your nearest OS X user.
I support Google’s HTML5 vision specifically because of this.
Dear Mr Deang,
That’s rather your take, and I’ve used Ubuntu since GG and have done without Windows since about II.
If there is anything that has not been ported, or can use Wine, please tell me.
I don’t really know what AD is. Is it important? I was made to learn Latin at school, but I have never used it is real life. Do we need to use obscure Windows? Microsoft is quite willingl to abandon bits of software it doesn’t want to support, or more probably, it doesn’t think will be profitable.
Korea is a bit behind the edge and ordinary administrative activities could me moved to Linux.
And if there is a bit of software that isn’t supported, why not help to write the replacement plug in.
In your last line why don’t you follow your own advice.
I started computing with paper tape. I wouldn’t want to go back there!
Chuck,
As I said, I haven’t used Windows in twelve years. That’s before there was Ubuntu and Fedora, when Red Hat wasn’t RHEL. Yes, I’m saying I used Linux before it was cool to do so. I’m a Linux hipster. Shoot me. Please.
Korea is one of the most forward-looking tech giants in the world, which is how they managed to get ActiveX into law. 128-bit SSL hadn’t been standardized for HTTPS yet when they made that law, you see, and since 98% of the world used Windows at that time, well ….
AD is Active Directory, and since you don’t know what that is, and apparently didn’t actually read my comment with any comprehension, I’m not going to waste further time.
The elephant in the room is that Ubuntu users mostly hate change; so it’s surprising that those sort of people still use Ubuntu, a six monthly bleeding-edge distribution.
Ubuntu users howled when Network Manager was introduced, despite the fact that connecting to a Wifi network previously required a command-line. You still get people claiming that any Wifi problem can be fixed by removing Network Manager.
Ubuntu users howled when Pulseaudio was introduced. It had a few annoying bugs to begin with, but even after it became a trouble-free piece of software there were still complaints about its inclusion.
Ubuntu users howled when Gnome rewrote GDM and made it unthemable. They complained that Ubuntu was removing options – it wasn’t, it was Gnome’s fault.
Ubuntu users howled when upstream Xorg changed the Control-Alt-Delete keyboard combination to “Alt-Printscreen-K”. Except, they blame Ubuntu and claim that the keyboard combination was “removed”, not that it was changed to something else.
Ubuntu users howled loudest when Ubuntu changed the order of the window buttons. It was simple to change it back and even easier to get used to, but I guess it was the double shock of the default wallpaper and theme changing, PLUS the window butttons. This was Ubuntu 10.04, and every man and his dog claimed that they were going to switch to a different distro because the window buttons were wrong.
Now Ubuntu users are howling about Unity, and claiming that 10.04 was perfect. I’m getting sick of people howling that something has been changed. Computing == change. What’s more annoying is that people insist that they never complained about those earlier changes.
In less than a year, we’ll get people telling us that Ubuntu 11.10 was “perfect, why did they have to change it”. It’s the same old story, except that a bigger change invites bigger howls. And it’s getting to be a very old meme now.
Chris Lees could not put it any better.
We love something when it works and hate to leave the bath for another one of warmer, cleaner and more bubbly bathwater, possibly with a glass of champagne on the side!
Sometimes changes in technology are hard, and we have a tendency to assume that what is new, is time-wasting, money consuming and won’t do what went before.
The airheads who insist that what happens on their computer must be exactly like their Windows experience are the most notorious sort, though the get BSODs, anti-malware pop-up screens demanding money, almost with menaces as well as viral attacks, perpetually spinning disk drives and the like.
I’ve always though that Ubuntu should produce a version that looked exactly like Windows but was Ubuntu under the hood, and virally distribute that for free. But perhaps Redmond wouln’t like that and the lawyer-scum would be put to work to prevent it. Pity that if you’re going to be ripped off you have to know you’re genuinely being ripped off.
But the Ubuntu community could do just a bit more to make transition less of an upheveal. There are few bits of explanation, loaded at the time of a software update that say “don’t use that key or gesture, use this one”, and if there were little explanatory packages (at kepress level) that did that, life’d be dandy. The reason is quite obvious. The creators of a new product have invested all their time in it, and probably hold the old product in disdain. But they’d be there once in developing the new product.
This is not about the skills in using the new product and especially not those in using a computer, but a situation where an intelligent user of an old product turns to a new.
I have been using various linux distros exclusively for three years. I admit that I am not nearly as experienced as most of you guys, but i have used Ubuntu, Opensuse, Arch, Mint, and Debian along with a few others. I have even compiled my own kernel…but for the life of me I can’t get Citrix Receiver to work on Ubuntu-even after following every piece of advice on the forums. This may be a Citrix problem, it may be an Ubuntu problem, it may be lack of knowledge on my part…BUT when it comes to my job, I don’t care whose fault it is,I just want the thing to work!
What I really don’t understand is why Opensuse can run the Citrix gateway with no problem, but Ubuntu can’t…Opensuse can play my Netflix rentals (even Sony, Disney and the Wchowski Bros DVD’s with file obfuscation) while Ubuntu can’t…the drive grinds for hours under Ubuntu and simply “just works” under Opensuse…and yes all appropriate ‘stuff’ is installed, transcode, VLC, restricted codecs, etc. While at the same time, Ubuntu networks (as long as the rest of the network is Ubuntu as well) SO MUCH BETTER than Suse, even when all appliances are Suse. For the avg user, this is unacceptable.
Canonical needs to focus on getting the Linux Distro that is supposed to “Just work” to actually WORK for the average user. Now, you can argue all you want that Linux isn’t for the avg user, but Canonical’s TV and Tablet plan is aimed at the avg user so your argument is inapplicable. Also, that fact completely nullifies the argument that “If you don’t like Unity just install a different DE” because most people don’t know how.
Also, though I am a Linux fanboy, I wonder if linux is truly ready for primetime….Android, being based on the Linux Kernel, is full of probs. Both my Asus and Moto tabs have the same Dcom errors CONSTANTLY. Is this an android fault, an OEM fault, or a linux fault?
Netflix, I know this is a DRM/Netflix/Sliverlight/M$ issue, but I only know that because I am a bit more advanced than your avg user…everyone else is going to just assume that it’s a Linux problem.
And before any “cheese and whine” comments about “free” software, lets remember, there is no such thing as free. Everything costs, either in time or dollars. Even at minimum wage, linux is more costly than MS for many users.
And no arguments about server market penetration or the BSOD (which I have NEVER seen under winblows, at least not on my own PC) or viruses, because: 1. severs have limited uses, thus a limited number of ports open, plus an entire team of IT pros securing them compared to the home desktop. 2nd, as android has proven, as market penetration increases, the amount of viruses and malware will increase as well.
I support Linux, and always will, but we have to be honest with ourselves, the avg user wants their stuff to work, without using the command line or looking in forums or whatever. The avg user doesn’t care whose fault it is, they will either blame the OEM or the OS, even when the user is the one who dloaded the virus from the porn site they just visited.
Just my two cents. Thanks.
And I’ve had plenty of BSODs and no kernel panic. And I don’t know what a DComm is, and Linux runs all sorts of things from big parallel machines to servers. And do you really need Citrix, or is there another package that will do.
One of the problems of Linux is the oodles of choice, though things I really want just don’t exist.
Yeah, I’ve seen plenty of BSOD’s on other’s machines, fixed ‘em too. Only had 1 virus and 1 trojan in 10 years of winblows. Maybe I’m just lucky, maybe I’m careful, not sure which. As for Citrix, neither myself nor my hospital’s IT team can figure out why its not working on my setup (it works with opensuse on my laptop, netbook, and desktop, as well as in a virtual machine running suse, just not Ubuntu for some weird reason, and I seem to be the only one having this problem), not sure if another platform is available, IT hasn’t suggested anything, almost all of our stuff is branded ‘Citrix’ so…kinda doubt another platform would work, but I’m open to suggestions!
And you are completely right about the choice in the Linux environment. Not only are there too many options, but those options are out of scope for all but the most experienced of users. Maybe if the selection were simpler in some way…but prob not, at least in the US, we like to be told what to do, unfortunately, but that’s a topic for another forum, LOL!
I really can’t stand Unity. I used to like Ubuntu, but Mint did a better Ubuntu….Pinguy was even better if you like to save hours of work and you like his tweaks…..Well, now Mint is king of the hill how, and their Cinnamon is a WAY better implementation of Gnome3 than Unity is. The only thing missing is the ability to pin anything to the panel, but Cinnamon free’s up a panel and allows you to use a dock, so whatever.
I also like XFCE….Backbox has a better implementation than Xubuntu.
I never liked KDE and still dont. Its not that I dont like the “options” but I dislike the inefficiency. I hate the layout, the bugs, the extra clicks to do things, and how slow it is…..Unity however crawls on middle of the road hardware.
I am starting to appreciate Mint Debian edition. I prefer it to having all those unity dependencies in the repos.
Debian has the best and biggest collection of repos, even more than Ubuntu.
I guess its all about personal experience and aesthetics. Personally, Unity is too oppressive for me. I feel constrained. It’s probably that I am used to the older desktop schemes (Gnome, KDE, etc.) but they’re good enough for me. I can tweak them any way I want without getting into much trouble.
I agree with Nick about Ubuntu – it was just fine with Gnome which you can reconfigure it to use however you wish. Lately, I have been using Xubuntu simply because it is not very oppressive. I’ll check out “Backbox”.