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I remember what happened I think. There was a thread here on HN a few years back presenting something new Ubuntu Unity related and discussion developed about ho

by antman 4y ago

I remember what happened I think. There was a thread here on HN a few years back presenting something new Ubuntu Unity related and discussion developed about how Unity was bad. Someone from Ubuntu team saw the thread and said he did not know people hated it so much and they will look into into it/change it back to gnome? Apparently forgotten and I can't find the thread to verify the details!

knorker 4y ago
What i remembered is that it was widely hated, and canonical was shoving it down everyone's throats and saying things like "we know that unity is objectively the best desktop environment that ever existed", allowing them to discard any critique. But eventually they had to face reality, and gave up. I'm sure there were people who liked it. I never met one.
- lproven 4y ago
  Hi. I wrote the article at the top of this post. I am still using Unity now as I have been doing for about a decade.
bitcharmer 4y ago
I don't think Canonical cares at all about community input on things like that (just look at snap). It was just that unity really was that bad. No need to blame HN crowd for this.
- antman 4y ago
  I am not blaming, the opposite.
- lproven 4y ago
  This is incorrect. What Canonical did is exactly what HN asked them to do in this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821
  - akho 4y ago
    …mixed DPI, better battery, better handling of input devices, better sleep/wake handling, first-party hardware? Some of those things happened, but not because of Canonical listening to those comments. There is no meaningful discussion of Unity in that post. A lot of hate for Mir though.
    - lproven 4y ago
      I did not hate Mir, but given that Canonical was attempting to develop so many projects at the same time: - a conventional PC desktop; - a mobile device desktop; - a packaging format; - a mobile OS for smartphones and tablets. It seemed foolish to me to work on a new display server as well. And yet, oddly, while both the desktops, and the mobile OS, are now abandoned by their creator company, the display server is alive and well, and is now being turned into a Wayland compositor. And of course the package format, too.
bmacho 4y ago
Canonical and Unity went to the direction of Mir/phones/cars but then they gave up, and Unity died.
bregma 4y ago
I doubt very much that that anecdote is true. I was involved in the development of Unity at Canonical, just as I was involved in the development of the Eee PC at Xandros before that. Unity developers were very well aware that there was a small but extremely vocal minority of users who expressed their strong dislike and contempt for their work. We were also aware of the much larger and quieter plurality of people who liked and appreciated it, and maybe the majority of people who just turned on their computer and got to work without a second thought about the desktop environment. A part of my job was managing the negative feedback from users... I think would have been aware of any decision to change back to Gnome based on the strident and biased opinion of some rando on the internet. For the record, Unity was discontinued as a business decision to make Canonical more profitable for its investors. Plain and simple. Normal everyday business.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  > Unity developers were very well aware that there was a small but extremely vocal minority of users who expressed their strong dislike and contempt for their work. We were also aware of the much larger and quieter plurality of people who liked and appreciated it, and maybe the majority of people who just turned on their computer and got to work without a second thought about the desktop environment. How would you tell? If most people don't say anything and most of the ones that do say something have negative feedback, how do you distinguish between most people being okay with it versus most people hating it quietly?
lproven 4y ago
[Article author here] I am astonished at what a short memory HN has. The Ubuntu project manager did an "ask HN" post on what people wanted to see next. It is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821 The result was fairly overwhelming: stop Unity, Mir, the mobile stuff, etc. So that is what happened. I personally feel it was a huge mistake. :shrug:
- simion314 4y ago
  >I am astonished at what a short memory HN has. I remember this events too, probably HN hate was not the main reason but probably it was the final straw. Then you see some dudes ehre hating on snap, dudes calm down, your fucking flatpacks are not equivalent, they are GNOME/desktop centric, can't use them on a server.
- akho 4y ago
  I opened that post. The top comment asks for mixed DPI, trackpad gestures, and better power management. I had to scan (and click the next page thing) quite a lot to get to something that looked vaguely critical of Unity (and even then it was "collaborate with Gnome more"). I wish they took the other suggestions as seriously… Unity was entirely pointless though.
  - lproven 4y ago
    Unity was not pointless. The point was that Microsoft was threatening to sue any company distributing a Windows-like desktop Linux. https://www.theregister.com/2006/11/20/microsoft_claims_linux_code https://www.theregister.com/2006/11/20/microsoft_claims_linu... SUSE signed a patent-sharing agreement; Red Hat and Canonical said no. Both developed their own non-Windows-like desktops. RH sponsors GNOME, and many RH people worked on GNOME 3. Canonical tried to get involved and was rebuffed. E.g. https://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/tag/gnome https://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/tag/gnome So it rebuilt its existing "Netbook Launcher" as a general-purpose desktop. MS didn't sue anyone in the end, but it got what it wanted: massive fragmentation in the Linux world, no harmony, lots of split and duplicated effort. My analysis, from a decade ago, is here: https://www.theregister.com/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft_for_linux_desktop_fail/ https://www.theregister.com/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft_for_l...

by antman 4y ago

knorker 4y ago

What i remembered is that it was widely hated, and canonical was shoving it down everyone's throats and saying things like "we know that unity is objectively the best desktop environment that ever existed", allowing them to discard any critique. But eventually they had to face reality, and gave up. I'm sure there were people who liked it. I never met one.

lproven 4y ago
Hi. I wrote the article at the top of this post. I am still using Unity now as I have been doing for about a decade.

bitcharmer 4y ago

I don't think Canonical cares at all about community input on things like that (just look at snap). It was just that unity really was that bad. No need to blame HN crowd for this.

antman 4y ago
I am not blaming, the opposite.
lproven 4y ago
This is incorrect. What Canonical did is exactly what HN asked them to do in this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821
- akho 4y ago
  …mixed DPI, better battery, better handling of input devices, better sleep/wake handling, first-party hardware? Some of those things happened, but not because of Canonical listening to those comments. There is no meaningful discussion of Unity in that post. A lot of hate for Mir though.
  - lproven 4y ago
    I did not hate Mir, but given that Canonical was attempting to develop so many projects at the same time: - a conventional PC desktop; - a mobile device desktop; - a packaging format; - a mobile OS for smartphones and tablets. It seemed foolish to me to work on a new display server as well. And yet, oddly, while both the desktops, and the mobile OS, are now abandoned by their creator company, the display server is alive and well, and is now being turned into a Wayland compositor. And of course the package format, too.

bmacho 4y ago

Canonical and Unity went to the direction of Mir/phones/cars but then they gave up, and Unity died.

bregma 4y ago

I doubt very much that that anecdote is true. I was involved in the development of Unity at Canonical, just as I was involved in the development of the Eee PC at Xandros before that. Unity developers were very well aware that there was a small but extremely vocal minority of users who expressed their strong dislike and contempt for their work. We were also aware of the much larger and quieter plurality of people who liked and appreciated it, and maybe the majority of people who just turned on their computer and got to work without a second thought about the desktop environment. A part of my job was managing the negative feedback from users... I think would have been aware of any decision to change back to Gnome based on the strident and biased opinion of some rando on the internet. For the record, Unity was discontinued as a business decision to make Canonical more profitable for its investors. Plain and simple. Normal everyday business.

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
> Unity developers were very well aware that there was a small but extremely vocal minority of users who expressed their strong dislike and contempt for their work. We were also aware of the much larger and quieter plurality of people who liked and appreciated it, and maybe the majority of people who just turned on their computer and got to work without a second thought about the desktop environment. How would you tell? If most people don't say anything and most of the ones that do say something have negative feedback, how do you distinguish between most people being okay with it versus most people hating it quietly?

lproven 4y ago

[Article author here] I am astonished at what a short memory HN has. The Ubuntu project manager did an "ask HN" post on what people wanted to see next. It is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821 The result was fairly overwhelming: stop Unity, Mir, the mobile stuff, etc. So that is what happened. I personally feel it was a huge mistake. :shrug:

simion314 4y ago
>I am astonished at what a short memory HN has. I remember this events too, probably HN hate was not the main reason but probably it was the final straw. Then you see some dudes ehre hating on snap, dudes calm down, your fucking flatpacks are not equivalent, they are GNOME/desktop centric, can't use them on a server.
akho 4y ago
I opened that post. The top comment asks for mixed DPI, trackpad gestures, and better power management. I had to scan (and click the next page thing) quite a lot to get to something that looked vaguely critical of Unity (and even then it was "collaborate with Gnome more"). I wish they took the other suggestions as seriously… Unity was entirely pointless though.
- lproven 4y ago
  Unity was not pointless. The point was that Microsoft was threatening to sue any company distributing a Windows-like desktop Linux. https://www.theregister.com/2006/11/20/microsoft_claims_linux_code https://www.theregister.com/2006/11/20/microsoft_claims_linu... SUSE signed a patent-sharing agreement; Red Hat and Canonical said no. Both developed their own non-Windows-like desktops. RH sponsors GNOME, and many RH people worked on GNOME 3. Canonical tried to get involved and was rebuffed. E.g. https://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/tag/gnome https://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/tag/gnome So it rebuilt its existing "Netbook Launcher" as a general-purpose desktop. MS didn't sue anyone in the end, but it got what it wanted: massive fragmentation in the Linux world, no harmony, lots of split and duplicated effort. My analysis, from a decade ago, is here: https://www.theregister.com/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft_for_linux_desktop_fail/ https://www.theregister.com/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft_for_l...