4 ms·

Do you have a case in point? I've seen plenty of things were they couldn't meet the demand, but were they were simply taking the high ground?

worik 6y ago
I cannot give you details, like dates or version numbers, but I can give you a anecdote about when I lost the trust. When they introduced Unity (? Their version of Gnome Shell, I think that is what it was called). I found unity after I did a `full-upgrade`. Suddenly my user interface was something that I could not understand, had no idea of how to use, and did not work very well. There was no path back to the user interface I knew well. I had to stop everything I was doing with the computer, way beyond what I had allocated for the upgrade. I grizzled on our local Linux users email group (I vented I think) which was interesting because two people who worked for Canonical (Ubuntu's maker) and took it personally that I would call their employer a whole lot of bad things, for giving me "free software". I was furious. Turns out I found later that Unity was not even ready for release and had been rushed out (I think I remember the reasons, but not sure enough to relate them). All they needed to do was do a parallel release then I could have learnt it, evaluated it, they could have debugged it. I went back to Ubuntu when they adopted the Gnome Shell - it is a good interface, I am convinced now. But wind on several years and software I needed to have, but not use often, had to be installed in snaps was the final straw. Not just the waste (I want my laptop to be a integrated system, not a mess of different walled off packages) but the fact that I would no longer be in control of the updates. After the debacle of having a very buggy user interface foisted on me I am not ready to give them such control. I understand what snaps are good for, but I am headed in a different direction.
- necovek 6y ago
  It's a funny anecdote: at the time half-baked Unity was rolled out, Gnome Shell was introduced as well, and it was worse (no really: even if you liked the UX design, it was so buggy to be really unusable; Unity was simply a plugin for Compiz trying to turn off all features that were buggy). And that's coming from someone with "emeritus" @gnome.org email address. So basically you were going to get an entirely unfamiliar interface anyway. You could get unpolished Red Hat contraption of Gnome Shell, or unpolished Canonical contraption of Unity. If anything, Unity had more resemblance to the interface of old (eg you had static virtual desktops, which you only kinda have even today with Gnome), and if you ever used a spatial grid of workspaces (to leverage your human spatial memory: I used 3x3 grid with Emacs in the centre one and task-based workspaces around it), you were out of luck with Gnome 3. I think Gnome 3 has become significantly more robust even before Unity's demise, but UX design-wise, Unity is much better even today after being unmaintained for years (though buggy as hell).
  - worik 6y ago
    Interesting. At the time I looked at Gnome Shell. I do not recall the details but I retreated to Mate (? was that the name of the Linux Mint desktop?) that had the old style. I thought I decided I wanted the comfort of the familiar. Over time it won me over. Which was my point. Canonical at the time were so arrogant that they did not try to win me over, they dumped me in it
    - necovek 6y ago
      Exactly, you retreated to Mate that shipped with Gnome 2 because Gnome 3 sucked too :) However, Gnome 2 was all but abandoned at the time, and it did not make sense for Canonical to commit to supporting it for the next 5 years with their LTS release without the help of the upstream. All the big distributions were "forced" to switch to an unfamiliar interface. Fedora did too with Gnome Shell. Ubuntu at least had derivatives like Mate or Kubuntu that you could easily move to with an apt-get install.
      - worik 6y ago
        But they could have had a transition. They did not. Users == Lusers thinking.
        necovek 6y ago
        You seem to overestimate the resources Canonical had on Ubuntu, and especially on Ubuntu Desktop. But you seem to have been already decided that they did it because they are mean, so I don't think it makes sense to continue the discussion.

worik 6y ago

I cannot give you details, like dates or version numbers, but I can give you a anecdote about when I lost the trust. When they introduced Unity (? Their version of Gnome Shell, I think that is what it was called). I found unity after I did a `full-upgrade`. Suddenly my user interface was something that I could not understand, had no idea of how to use, and did not work very well. There was no path back to the user interface I knew well. I had to stop everything I was doing with the computer, way beyond what I had allocated for the upgrade. I grizzled on our local Linux users email group (I vented I think) which was interesting because two people who worked for Canonical (Ubuntu's maker) and took it personally that I would call their employer a whole lot of bad things, for giving me "free software". I was furious. Turns out I found later that Unity was not even ready for release and had been rushed out (I think I remember the reasons, but not sure enough to relate them). All they needed to do was do a parallel release then I could have learnt it, evaluated it, they could have debugged it. I went back to Ubuntu when they adopted the Gnome Shell - it is a good interface, I am convinced now. But wind on several years and software I needed to have, but not use often, had to be installed in snaps was the final straw. Not just the waste (I want my laptop to be a integrated system, not a mess of different walled off packages) but the fact that I would no longer be in control of the updates. After the debacle of having a very buggy user interface foisted on me I am not ready to give them such control. I understand what snaps are good for, but I am headed in a different direction.

necovek 6y ago
It's a funny anecdote: at the time half-baked Unity was rolled out, Gnome Shell was introduced as well, and it was worse (no really: even if you liked the UX design, it was so buggy to be really unusable; Unity was simply a plugin for Compiz trying to turn off all features that were buggy). And that's coming from someone with "emeritus" @gnome.org email address. So basically you were going to get an entirely unfamiliar interface anyway. You could get unpolished Red Hat contraption of Gnome Shell, or unpolished Canonical contraption of Unity. If anything, Unity had more resemblance to the interface of old (eg you had static virtual desktops, which you only kinda have even today with Gnome), and if you ever used a spatial grid of workspaces (to leverage your human spatial memory: I used 3x3 grid with Emacs in the centre one and task-based workspaces around it), you were out of luck with Gnome 3. I think Gnome 3 has become significantly more robust even before Unity's demise, but UX design-wise, Unity is much better even today after being unmaintained for years (though buggy as hell).
- worik 6y ago
  Interesting. At the time I looked at Gnome Shell. I do not recall the details but I retreated to Mate (? was that the name of the Linux Mint desktop?) that had the old style. I thought I decided I wanted the comfort of the familiar. Over time it won me over. Which was my point. Canonical at the time were so arrogant that they did not try to win me over, they dumped me in it
  - necovek 6y ago
    Exactly, you retreated to Mate that shipped with Gnome 2 because Gnome 3 sucked too :) However, Gnome 2 was all but abandoned at the time, and it did not make sense for Canonical to commit to supporting it for the next 5 years with their LTS release without the help of the upstream. All the big distributions were "forced" to switch to an unfamiliar interface. Fedora did too with Gnome Shell. Ubuntu at least had derivatives like Mate or Kubuntu that you could easily move to with an apt-get install.
    - worik 6y ago
      But they could have had a transition. They did not. Users == Lusers thinking.
      - necovek 6y ago
        You seem to overestimate the resources Canonical had on Ubuntu, and especially on Ubuntu Desktop. But you seem to have been already decided that they did it because they are mean, so I don't think it makes sense to continue the discussion.