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Wait, so #1 is basically "A lot of people don't like Unity, so I don't consider Ubuntu to be pushing open source forward anymore"? And why, exactly, is Canonica

Wait, so #1 is basically "A lot of people don't like Unity, so I don't consider Ubuntu to be pushing open source forward anymore"? And why, exactly, is Canonical being criticized here for building a new (open source and GPL) shell rather than contributing to GNOME?

MBCook 14y ago
These points often contradict eachother. Let's assume for the sake of argument that Ubuntu is no longer pushing things forward because people don't like their new GUI. That means... #4 is wrong because the meritocracy has decided that Unity isn't good enough and it's failing #7 is wrong because Ubuntu is trying to innovate on the desktop with Unity and #8 is wrong because the fact that Unity exists and Ubuntu isn't shipping GNOME. Really, #8 is very weak. User polls may favor Debian based distributions, but I'd expect that if you went by install base RPM is winning thanks to all the RHEL servers out there. Git is more popular than SVN because it's demonstrably better for many use cases, but we also have Hg. LibreOffice is the only real office suite out there, Google Docs is not quite the same thing. #8 then goes to point out that we do have KDE vs. GNOME, which as the face of the desktop is a BIG difference. It also points out the hot competition between Chromium and Firefox, web browsers being one of the most used apps on any computer. Listing 5 different Debian based distros and deciding that's a monoculture seems odd on it's face.
- mistercow 14y ago
  Also regarding #8: >Overall, the numbers fall short of a monopoly To say that when "the numbers" in question are close to 50% is an understatement to say the least.
- swdunlop 14y ago
  Agree entirely. I charged straight for the comments to rant about the stupidity of #8 (the monoculture argument) in the face of how Ubuntu and GNOME (prior monocultures by their criteria) are now on the wane in the face of more projects that are more responsive to their users.
  - pekk 14y ago
    It's not really responsiveness to users so much as being more like Gnome 2. That's it. xfce didn't really have to do anything to get those users.

MBCook 14y ago

These points often contradict eachother. Let's assume for the sake of argument that Ubuntu is no longer pushing things forward because people don't like their new GUI. That means... #4 is wrong because the meritocracy has decided that Unity isn't good enough and it's failing #7 is wrong because Ubuntu is trying to innovate on the desktop with Unity and #8 is wrong because the fact that Unity exists and Ubuntu isn't shipping GNOME. Really, #8 is very weak. User polls may favor Debian based distributions, but I'd expect that if you went by install base RPM is winning thanks to all the RHEL servers out there. Git is more popular than SVN because it's demonstrably better for many use cases, but we also have Hg. LibreOffice is the only real office suite out there, Google Docs is not quite the same thing. #8 then goes to point out that we do have KDE vs. GNOME, which as the face of the desktop is a BIG difference. It also points out the hot competition between Chromium and Firefox, web browsers being one of the most used apps on any computer. Listing 5 different Debian based distros and deciding that's a monoculture seems odd on it's face.

mistercow 14y ago
Also regarding #8: >Overall, the numbers fall short of a monopoly To say that when "the numbers" in question are close to 50% is an understatement to say the least.
swdunlop 14y ago
Agree entirely. I charged straight for the comments to rant about the stupidity of #8 (the monoculture argument) in the face of how Ubuntu and GNOME (prior monocultures by their criteria) are now on the wane in the face of more projects that are more responsive to their users.
- pekk 14y ago
  It's not really responsiveness to users so much as being more like Gnome 2. That's it. xfce didn't really have to do anything to get those users.