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Just like they wasted time and effort on Unity and shuttered it in favor of Gnome, and they wasted time and effort on Mir and shuttered it in favor of Wayland,

by sevagh 2y ago

Just like they wasted time and effort on Unity and shuttered it in favor of Gnome, and they wasted time and effort on Mir and shuttered it in favor of Wayland, and they wasted time and effort on Upstart and shuttered it in favor of systemd. Canonical will fail once again, but only after jerking the community around for multiple years.

NewJazz 2y ago
They didn't invest much into Upstart at all, and quickly announced a switch after Debian adopted systemd. They still maintain Mir, as a Wayland display server. Unity was one of the most popular desktop environments and brought Ubuntu users a lot of value over the years. It even influenced the design of GNOME 3.
- freedomben 2y ago
  Yeah I'm generally critical of Canonical for these moves, but Upstart is one I actually think was good and well done, as was their decision to move to systemd. Upstart was more pre-systemd anyway. IIRC Red Hat also used Upstart for a major release as well before moving all the way to systemd.
- extraduder_ire 2y ago
  I didn't understand much of the unity hate, especially compared to things like gnome 3. Really wish I could have HUD, combined titlebar/top panel, and typo-resilient search back. The latter two are possible with gnome extensions but don't work quite as well.
  - sevagh 2y ago
    It's not so much hating what they do but the manner in which they do it. CLAs and not contributing upstream from the get-go means Canonical's special stuff cannot go further than Canonical.
    - NewJazz 2y ago
      Community forks of e.g. Unity have cropped up that ditch the CLA. Open source is open source, after all. That said I do agree that the CLA has doomed most of their projects from gaining considerable adoption in the wider Linux community. At least while Canonical is still running the project.
3v1n0 2y ago
> Just like they wasted time and effort on Unity and shuttered it in favor of Gnome Unity served well for years, it would have needed a rewrite anyway for the post x11 era, so indeed there have been wasted resources, but experiments are also important in technology, and many still love what was (is) the unity user experience. > and they wasted time and effort on Mir and shuttered it in favor of Wayland Mir is still there and it's used. It's now a Wayland compositor but it maintains its API, the different communication protocol doesn't change its purposes. > and they wasted time and effort on Upstart and shuttered it in favor of systemd. When Upstart started and was used no systemd existed or was designed, so it served many well for years. Not a waste.

by sevagh 2y ago

NewJazz 2y ago

They didn't invest much into Upstart at all, and quickly announced a switch after Debian adopted systemd. They still maintain Mir, as a Wayland display server. Unity was one of the most popular desktop environments and brought Ubuntu users a lot of value over the years. It even influenced the design of GNOME 3.

freedomben 2y ago
Yeah I'm generally critical of Canonical for these moves, but Upstart is one I actually think was good and well done, as was their decision to move to systemd. Upstart was more pre-systemd anyway. IIRC Red Hat also used Upstart for a major release as well before moving all the way to systemd.
extraduder_ire 2y ago
I didn't understand much of the unity hate, especially compared to things like gnome 3. Really wish I could have HUD, combined titlebar/top panel, and typo-resilient search back. The latter two are possible with gnome extensions but don't work quite as well.
- sevagh 2y ago
  It's not so much hating what they do but the manner in which they do it. CLAs and not contributing upstream from the get-go means Canonical's special stuff cannot go further than Canonical.
  - NewJazz 2y ago
    Community forks of e.g. Unity have cropped up that ditch the CLA. Open source is open source, after all. That said I do agree that the CLA has doomed most of their projects from gaining considerable adoption in the wider Linux community. At least while Canonical is still running the project.

3v1n0 2y ago

> Just like they wasted time and effort on Unity and shuttered it in favor of Gnome Unity served well for years, it would have needed a rewrite anyway for the post x11 era, so indeed there have been wasted resources, but experiments are also important in technology, and many still love what was (is) the unity user experience. > and they wasted time and effort on Mir and shuttered it in favor of Wayland Mir is still there and it's used. It's now a Wayland compositor but it maintains its API, the different communication protocol doesn't change its purposes. > and they wasted time and effort on Upstart and shuttered it in favor of systemd. When Upstart started and was used no systemd existed or was designed, so it served many well for years. Not a waste.