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Canonical tried and failed many times to be the driver behind improvements to Linux and the Linux desktop. They want control and influence across the stack, but

by sevg 2y ago

Canonical tried and failed many times to be the driver behind improvements to Linux and the Linux desktop. They want control and influence across the stack, but so far their biggest bets have mostly been failures. They pushed Upstart. It fell to systemd. They pushed Unity. It fell to GNOME. They pushed Mir. It fell to Wayland. They pushed bazaar. It fell to git. And so on. Also worth noting that they've never been big contributors to the Linux kernel itself. Top contributors include Intel, AMD, Red Hat, Google, Meta, Linaro, SUSE. Even Oracle. Canonical? Nowhere to be seen.

soulbadguy 2y ago
Damn if you do, damn if you don't... Canonical approaches has always been to develop missing pieces in the desktop eco-system. And use anything external when possible. Unity started more than a year before gnome 3, and lasted a good 10 years. Calling it a failure seem exagerated. Same for upstart,mir and bazaar. At the moment of their inceptions, the landscape was very different.
- Kwpolska 2y ago
  Wayland is older than Mir, and Mir was a failure that never really shipped. Bazaar is only one week older than Git.
  - seba_dos1 2y ago
    Even if it was one week younger, it wouldn't really change anything in the point made by GP. Mir, however, was a mistake from the very beginning indeed.
grumpyprole 2y ago
I don't think the "failures" are necessarily always technical, e.g. upstart versus systemd or GNOME versus Unity. To me it looks like Red Hat has possibly too much control and influence.
pauby 2y ago
You forgot the disaster that is Snap.
KronisLV 2y ago
I actually quite liked Unity and thankfully it’s still alive: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Unity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Unity Nowadays I mostly use Cinnamon with Mint but either of those two felt more pleasant to me than stock GNOME.
- soulbadguy 2y ago
  Same. I never quite got the collective hate against unity. It always felt more driven by an anti canonical sentiment than anything else.

by sevg 2y ago

soulbadguy 2y ago

Damn if you do, damn if you don't... Canonical approaches has always been to develop missing pieces in the desktop eco-system. And use anything external when possible. Unity started more than a year before gnome 3, and lasted a good 10 years. Calling it a failure seem exagerated. Same for upstart,mir and bazaar. At the moment of their inceptions, the landscape was very different.

Kwpolska 2y ago
Wayland is older than Mir, and Mir was a failure that never really shipped. Bazaar is only one week older than Git.
- seba_dos1 2y ago
  Even if it was one week younger, it wouldn't really change anything in the point made by GP. Mir, however, was a mistake from the very beginning indeed.

grumpyprole 2y ago

I don't think the "failures" are necessarily always technical, e.g. upstart versus systemd or GNOME versus Unity. To me it looks like Red Hat has possibly too much control and influence.

pauby 2y ago

You forgot the disaster that is Snap.

KronisLV 2y ago

I actually quite liked Unity and thankfully it’s still alive: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Unity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Unity Nowadays I mostly use Cinnamon with Mint but either of those two felt more pleasant to me than stock GNOME.

soulbadguy 2y ago
Same. I never quite got the collective hate against unity. It always felt more driven by an anti canonical sentiment than anything else.