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That's not true, as much as people want to believe that. Ubuntu and Canonical jumped on AWS quickly and started to generate supported images that people liked

That's not true, as much as people want to believe that. Ubuntu and Canonical jumped on AWS quickly and started to generate supported images that people liked that gave them fresh stuff that they couldn't really get with Amazon Linux and RHEL was still stuck in the 90's enterprise pricing model, so Ubuntu was a natural fit there. Sadly, most Ubuntu users are on mac clients, and Canonical isn't going to care about 1 laptop when they need to spend the money to support the millions of instances that one laptop is spawning on AWS, Azure, GCP. The few "linux desktop" people who are left will still have the same desktop, as long as they get their vscode, docker, cloud tools, and a terminal/ssh they won't care much.

michaelmrose 7y ago
"most Ubuntu users are on mac clients," What? "The few "linux desktop" people who are left" Citation needed.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  The 1% on Steam hardware survey.
  - overgard 7y ago
    1% of 90 million monthly users is almost a million users. Supporting something with 900,000 users seems, at the very least, somewhat compelling. Especially since they were already doing it. It's not like they have to actively recruit these people, but what they're definitely doing is telling them to f-off. Also, this isn't just losing Steam: wine apps with 32 bit installers is a major source of software. I know personally I actually do want to use a Linux distro now that Unity 3D support is coming, and Ubuntu would have been my first choice, but I know I'm definitely going elsewhere now :-/
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Unless those million users generate a worthwhile monthly stream of money they are useless versus the remaining 99%.
      - overgard 7y ago
        I think that's an over-simplistic way to look at it. Ahem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader If anything loss leaders are more important for platforms, since learning a platform is a big time investment and people will reach for what they know when the time comes to choose something. I can't claim to know if this was the right economic decision for Canonical because it's a very complicated question, but what I can say with certainty is they just gave 900,000+ people a reason not to use their platform, along with sending a strong signal to a lot of observers that might be thinking about investing time in their platform. Is the engineering time they save going to gain them something that makes them attractive to 900,000 new users? That's a lot of people to appeal to.
        pjmlp 7y ago
        Canonical already gave up the desktop long time ago, following up Red-Hat footsteps, because those loss leaders were dragging the company down into insolvency.
        overgard 7y ago
        Considering that they’re shipping a lot of desktop improvements in 19, that seems objectively untrue.
        pjmlp 7y ago
        Not searching for it now, but they definitely made public statements in that regard, including an interview with management. So those improvements are just a nice to have thing, unless they changed direction.
        username444 7y ago
    - bb88 7y ago
      1% could also be seen as a blip in the signal. You might lose that 1%, but by concentrating on the 99% you might gain 2-5% more year over year.
      - suby 7y ago
        I cannot possibly imagine that this would result in a net gain of users.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

michaelmrose 7y ago

"most Ubuntu users are on mac clients," What? "The few "linux desktop" people who are left" Citation needed.

pjmlp 7y ago
The 1% on Steam hardware survey.
- overgard 7y ago
  1% of 90 million monthly users is almost a million users. Supporting something with 900,000 users seems, at the very least, somewhat compelling. Especially since they were already doing it. It's not like they have to actively recruit these people, but what they're definitely doing is telling them to f-off. Also, this isn't just losing Steam: wine apps with 32 bit installers is a major source of software. I know personally I actually do want to use a Linux distro now that Unity 3D support is coming, and Ubuntu would have been my first choice, but I know I'm definitely going elsewhere now :-/
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Unless those million users generate a worthwhile monthly stream of money they are useless versus the remaining 99%.
    - overgard 7y ago
      I think that's an over-simplistic way to look at it. Ahem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader If anything loss leaders are more important for platforms, since learning a platform is a big time investment and people will reach for what they know when the time comes to choose something. I can't claim to know if this was the right economic decision for Canonical because it's a very complicated question, but what I can say with certainty is they just gave 900,000+ people a reason not to use their platform, along with sending a strong signal to a lot of observers that might be thinking about investing time in their platform. Is the engineering time they save going to gain them something that makes them attractive to 900,000 new users? That's a lot of people to appeal to.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        Canonical already gave up the desktop long time ago, following up Red-Hat footsteps, because those loss leaders were dragging the company down into insolvency.
        overgard 7y ago
        Considering that they’re shipping a lot of desktop improvements in 19, that seems objectively untrue.
        pjmlp 7y ago
        Not searching for it now, but they definitely made public statements in that regard, including an interview with management. So those improvements are just a nice to have thing, unless they changed direction.
      - username444 7y ago
  - bb88 7y ago
    1% could also be seen as a blip in the signal. You might lose that 1%, but by concentrating on the 99% you might gain 2-5% more year over year.
    - suby 7y ago
      I cannot possibly imagine that this would result in a net gain of users.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]