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I don't understand all the negative reactions. Canonical is recognizing various problems in making GNU/Linux mainstream. They are then innovating at a deeper le

I don't understand all the negative reactions. Canonical is recognizing various problems in making GNU/Linux mainstream. They are then innovating at a deeper level (fixing root causes rather than duct-taping) to ultimately attempt to really attract the layman to a mobile or desktop GNU/Linux distro. Devs don't need to target Mir if they don't want to, Linux users can switch to another Debian if they don't like it, and the Layman discovers that Linux can possibly be just as shiny as Mac OS. Can someone explain to me why this is all so horrible?

ihsw 14y ago
You are sacrificing your objectivity, there is no reason other distros cannot be 'just as shiny' as Ubuntu or Mac OS. Furthermore it is horrible because Canonical has a history of secrecy and authoritarianism and they absolutely go against the spirit of open source software development.
- chc 14y ago
  If the "spirit of open-source software development" can't stand for distro maintainers to have strong control over what goes in their own distros, this open-source spirit sounds pretty authoritarian itself. If (for example) I want to maintain my own window manager for my distro and I provide the source under a free license but don't accept outside contributions into my own distribution, what is wrong with that? Isn't that part of the freedom of free software?
  - zobzu 14y ago
    In my experience distros attempting to keep things as close as possible to packages upstream (except for bug fixes) are always the most useable, stable, etc. So I sort of prefer the "authoritarianism" from upstream. Additionally, an upstream package has authority only on ONE component. The distro has authority on ALL components. That makes ALL the difference.
    - chc 14y ago
      I actually agree. I like Debian better than Ubuntu because I feel like its packages are generally more reliable for my use. But that doesn't mean I would declare Ubuntu to be "horrible" — just not to my taste. I respect Ubuntu's ambition and hope they are successful in what they are trying to accomplish.
      - zobzu 14y ago
        Yeah, I'm not saying Ubuntu is horrible by any means, but I have better luck with distros taking another direction, for the reasons mentioned
  - forgottenpaswrd 14y ago
    Agreed. So many geek people hating Ubuntu this days, probably because they feel "betrayed" as they make Linux more user friendly. Most of them had contributed zero to Linux, so I don't know where this entitlement sense and emotional response comes from. If you don't like it, go use whatever you want.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
hmo09 14y ago
Regardless of the technical considerations, Linux and its surrounding ecosystem has a long history of many different companies co-operating on core software. Canonical's philosophy seems to fly directly against that - so far we have: Launchpad / Upstart / Unity / Mir Launchpad is free-software by name only, and Canonical actively discourage you to setup your own instance. Upstart hasn't been widely adopted outside of Ubuntu, and has been replaced by the technically superior systemd. Unity has been extremely unpopular from a user-experience point of view, and now we have Mir. So past history isn't filling me with confidence. Their philosophy seems to be "patch first, ask questions later". I'm amazed how Canonical has the resources to keep branching out so much while producing a distribution every 6 months. I was under the impression they weren't yet making a profit.
- IgorPartola 14y ago
  Upstart is a bad example. pacman is a package manager only used by Arch Linux and nowhere else. Should Arch abandon it because it hasn't seen wide use yet? Better yet, there are plenty of package managers that are better than both aptitude and pacman (http://nixos.org/ http://nixos.org/). Should we abandon the technically inferior solutions for the technically superior ones? Unity is the same way: it is open source. If you don't like it, fork it and fix it. Or use one of the alternatives. This is not Windows or OS X. Vote with your feet and move over to Gnome 3, Xfce, LXDE, or another DE. If enough people do, Canonical will see the effects and stop putting effort into Unity. IMHO, Linux and its surrounding ecosystem has a long history of everyone trying to pull it into their own direction. Companies are often forced to cooperate when they don't have another choice, but if they did, they would push their own ideas of what the infrastructure should be on everyone else.
  - allerratio 14y ago
    It's not the same. Unity heavily relies on Ubuntu specific patches. There was quite some effort to get unity running under arch Linux
  - zobzu 14y ago
    "better" is generally subjective. there's a reason why nixos, upstart, etc, don't catch on. For pacman vs nix, well, pacman is extremely simple. Extremely reliable. Nix has some design advantages, but that don't translate all that well in the practical world right now. Maybe in the future.
sneak 14y ago
If Linux idiots weren't senselessly married to terrible in-group traditions and the status quo, it wouldn't have taken 20 years (or Canonical) to replace the clusterfuck that is X.
- ihsw 14y ago
  The problem isn't Linux idiots (whatever that means) or their cautionary tendencies, it's Canonical.
  - chao- 14y ago
    Care to elaborate? Your comment reads as a sentence-long "NO, YOU!" right now. What about Canonical is a problem, and who are they causing the problem for? As a "Linux idiot" myself, I hear your disapproval of the parent post, but am curious to hear the details that support your opinion (I might be able to learn something from it).
    - LukeShu 14y ago
      This is how I parsed the conversation: pilgrim689: Why is everybody hating on Canonical for ditching X11? sneak: Because they're "Linux idiots" who love X11. ihsw: They don't love X11, they just hate Canonical. ihsw is saying that the change isn't getting negative reactions because of the change itself, but because it is being made by Canonical. edit: I accidentally using the wrong verb form.
      - zanny 14y ago
        I thought everyone was hating on Canonical for ditching X because rather than support the fledgling standard replacement for X, Wayland, they once again (just like with systemd vs upstart, compiz vs mutter/kdm) go off and do their own thing. And if it turns out like either of those, they end up with an inferior barely maintained product that gets pushed to the sidelines once they show it off on a showroom floor.
0x09 14y ago
I think there are probably three obvious reasons. 1) For the past two years or so the community has been led to believe Canonical would be adopting Wayland. After the slow build of anticipation over that, it was dropped out of the blue. 2) Simple distrust of Canonical's homemade projects after the Unity fiasco. 3) Fragmentation of effort to unseat X. The chance of repeating the history of every other display server that was going to "replace X within Y years" becomes that much higher with two competing alternatives marginalizing each other. If this news had come three years ago I imagine the response would be wildly different.
- scotu 14y ago
  "Unity fiasco": any data on the net decrease of ubuntu users caused by unity?
  - csense 14y ago
    I personally dropped Ubuntu for Linux Mint. I've heard a lot of people say they hate Unity. It's not hard data, but it's anecdotal evidence that there's a substantial set of people that really hate it.
    - vidarh 14y ago
      Personally I love it. I had planned on installing a tiling window manager, but after 10 minutes with Unity I decided to stick with it. It's the first Linux GUI I've found ok since Enlightenment 0.16, and the first time since I left the Amiga behind I've had an environment I'd say I'm happy with. And most people I've heard who have used Unity love it. The only people I hear complaining are typically people who expect the Linux desktop to remain static and unchanging the way it was when they first used it. Unity might be a fiasco with a small subset of old Linux users, but Unity or something like it will be essential for Canonical to keep attracting new users, who are expecting polish at the level of OS X rather than at the level of the Linux desktop of a decade ago.
      - Karunamon 14y ago
jlgreco 14y ago
> the Layman discovers that Linux can possibly be just as shiny as Mac OS. Why do we want the layman to be using Linux? To give Valve more Linux customers or something? We should let them be. Laymen will invariably be better served by Microsoft or Apple, trying to win them over in some sort of misguided drive to "win" market-share seems foolish. Linux should focus on it's niche, and Microsoft and Apple theirs. This market-share envy makes no sense to me. Does Artic Cat stare with envy at Ford's userbase and expend effort trying to get suburban parents to drive their kids to school on snowmobiles? That would just be silly.
- zamnedix 14y ago
  I agree. This is why I dislike Ubuntu. It constantly tries to appeal to Mac and Windows users.
  - hazov 14y ago
    Simply don't use it...
    - VLM 14y ago
      Embrace extend extinguish. Wait until the only way to run FF / Chrome / 3-d accelerated video driver / vi / emacs / something else thats "critical" is to switch to Mir. After all its free, all you have to do is abandon everything else. What could go wrong? Simply don't use it is like telling people to take up a new hobby once theirs has been destroyed. But I don't want to take up a new hobby and I like this one. Sorry, no, someone else has decided to destroy it, so don't complain or try to work around the damage just select a new hobby. Hey, you look like a technical type of person, sorry about the death of free software and all that, but I bet you'd like Ham Radio or maybe advanced model railroading? ...
      - eurleif 14y ago
        If a free software program decided to stop supporting X and Wayland, it would be because no one cared enough to contribute the code for continued support, which would imply that very few people were still choosing to use X or Wayland over Mir. If Mir really ends up being that wonderful, why shouldn't it win? How does one free software program replacing another constitute the death of free software?
pnathan 14y ago
Basically, Canonical appears not to be publically consulting with the other distros (e.g., RH, Gentoo, Arch) about their changes. If they were, and there was a general consensus of a plan, I would personally not be bothered at all. But they seem to be content to pursue unilateral forking of what Linux means, and IMO that's not ok.
- oneweekwonder 14y ago
  Canonical is a business, I believe they do care for Linux because otherwise I don't see why they will be part of the Linux Foundation. But they are a business. And like most businesses they need to make unilateral decisions. The only difference is that Canonical makes these decision public knowledge while it is trying to achieve a hectic roadmap, for business purposes.
donniezazen 14y ago
Ubuntu has been a Canonical project that is based on Linux for so many years. It is hardly community driven OS that people believe. I think it is a good thing. They are moving forward in some direction. They will make mistakes. Hopefully they will learn out of it. There is nothing wrong in it. In general Linux userspace is very fragmented. Organizations and developers seldom agree on anything. Ubuntu can't provide a true desktop user experience in such a space. And there are always distributions like Arch Linux which offer true freedom and completely stick to Linux specs.
jerf 14y ago
The Wayland people really sound like they know what they are talking about, based on decades of experience. See, for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44 Are these people designing a better answer to Wayland because it's really better, or because it always looks easy when you don't intimately understand the problem space? I honestly don't know, but it's a question I'd like answered before I get excited.
- Symmetry 14y ago
  It looks like they have design goals such as using Android drivers that Wayland doesn't address.
- zanny 14y ago
  I'd like to hope since Wayland has been in development hell for ~5 years now, that if the Mir people are doing their job, they are intimate with both X and Wayland, see where Wayland improved, and where it made mistakes, and fix those.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
zem 14y ago
especially since people have been slamming canonical for years for being mere repackagers who were not contributing any significant code to the ecosystem.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
snowwrestler 14y ago
The Layman doesn't want a desktop at all; they want a smartphone or a tablet. Want to drive mass adoption of Linux? Write a killer app for Android. The folks who do want desktops, want those desktops to run software like MS Office or Adobe CS. If Linux can't do that, it does not matter how shiny it is.

ihsw 14y ago

You are sacrificing your objectivity, there is no reason other distros cannot be 'just as shiny' as Ubuntu or Mac OS. Furthermore it is horrible because Canonical has a history of secrecy and authoritarianism and they absolutely go against the spirit of open source software development.

chc 14y ago
If the "spirit of open-source software development" can't stand for distro maintainers to have strong control over what goes in their own distros, this open-source spirit sounds pretty authoritarian itself. If (for example) I want to maintain my own window manager for my distro and I provide the source under a free license but don't accept outside contributions into my own distribution, what is wrong with that? Isn't that part of the freedom of free software?
- zobzu 14y ago
  In my experience distros attempting to keep things as close as possible to packages upstream (except for bug fixes) are always the most useable, stable, etc. So I sort of prefer the "authoritarianism" from upstream. Additionally, an upstream package has authority only on ONE component. The distro has authority on ALL components. That makes ALL the difference.
  - chc 14y ago
    I actually agree. I like Debian better than Ubuntu because I feel like its packages are generally more reliable for my use. But that doesn't mean I would declare Ubuntu to be "horrible" — just not to my taste. I respect Ubuntu's ambition and hope they are successful in what they are trying to accomplish.
    - zobzu 14y ago
      Yeah, I'm not saying Ubuntu is horrible by any means, but I have better luck with distros taking another direction, for the reasons mentioned
- forgottenpaswrd 14y ago
  Agreed. So many geek people hating Ubuntu this days, probably because they feel "betrayed" as they make Linux more user friendly. Most of them had contributed zero to Linux, so I don't know where this entitlement sense and emotional response comes from. If you don't like it, go use whatever you want.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]

hmo09 14y ago

Regardless of the technical considerations, Linux and its surrounding ecosystem has a long history of many different companies co-operating on core software. Canonical's philosophy seems to fly directly against that - so far we have: Launchpad / Upstart / Unity / Mir Launchpad is free-software by name only, and Canonical actively discourage you to setup your own instance. Upstart hasn't been widely adopted outside of Ubuntu, and has been replaced by the technically superior systemd. Unity has been extremely unpopular from a user-experience point of view, and now we have Mir. So past history isn't filling me with confidence. Their philosophy seems to be "patch first, ask questions later". I'm amazed how Canonical has the resources to keep branching out so much while producing a distribution every 6 months. I was under the impression they weren't yet making a profit.

IgorPartola 14y ago
Upstart is a bad example. pacman is a package manager only used by Arch Linux and nowhere else. Should Arch abandon it because it hasn't seen wide use yet? Better yet, there are plenty of package managers that are better than both aptitude and pacman (http://nixos.org/ http://nixos.org/). Should we abandon the technically inferior solutions for the technically superior ones? Unity is the same way: it is open source. If you don't like it, fork it and fix it. Or use one of the alternatives. This is not Windows or OS X. Vote with your feet and move over to Gnome 3, Xfce, LXDE, or another DE. If enough people do, Canonical will see the effects and stop putting effort into Unity. IMHO, Linux and its surrounding ecosystem has a long history of everyone trying to pull it into their own direction. Companies are often forced to cooperate when they don't have another choice, but if they did, they would push their own ideas of what the infrastructure should be on everyone else.
- allerratio 14y ago
  It's not the same. Unity heavily relies on Ubuntu specific patches. There was quite some effort to get unity running under arch Linux
- zobzu 14y ago
  "better" is generally subjective. there's a reason why nixos, upstart, etc, don't catch on. For pacman vs nix, well, pacman is extremely simple. Extremely reliable. Nix has some design advantages, but that don't translate all that well in the practical world right now. Maybe in the future.

sneak 14y ago

If Linux idiots weren't senselessly married to terrible in-group traditions and the status quo, it wouldn't have taken 20 years (or Canonical) to replace the clusterfuck that is X.

ihsw 14y ago
The problem isn't Linux idiots (whatever that means) or their cautionary tendencies, it's Canonical.
- chao- 14y ago
  Care to elaborate? Your comment reads as a sentence-long "NO, YOU!" right now. What about Canonical is a problem, and who are they causing the problem for? As a "Linux idiot" myself, I hear your disapproval of the parent post, but am curious to hear the details that support your opinion (I might be able to learn something from it).
  - LukeShu 14y ago
    This is how I parsed the conversation: pilgrim689: Why is everybody hating on Canonical for ditching X11? sneak: Because they're "Linux idiots" who love X11. ihsw: They don't love X11, they just hate Canonical. ihsw is saying that the change isn't getting negative reactions because of the change itself, but because it is being made by Canonical. edit: I accidentally using the wrong verb form.
    - zanny 14y ago
      I thought everyone was hating on Canonical for ditching X because rather than support the fledgling standard replacement for X, Wayland, they once again (just like with systemd vs upstart, compiz vs mutter/kdm) go off and do their own thing. And if it turns out like either of those, they end up with an inferior barely maintained product that gets pushed to the sidelines once they show it off on a showroom floor.

0x09 14y ago

I think there are probably three obvious reasons. 1) For the past two years or so the community has been led to believe Canonical would be adopting Wayland. After the slow build of anticipation over that, it was dropped out of the blue. 2) Simple distrust of Canonical's homemade projects after the Unity fiasco. 3) Fragmentation of effort to unseat X. The chance of repeating the history of every other display server that was going to "replace X within Y years" becomes that much higher with two competing alternatives marginalizing each other. If this news had come three years ago I imagine the response would be wildly different.

scotu 14y ago
"Unity fiasco": any data on the net decrease of ubuntu users caused by unity?
- csense 14y ago
  I personally dropped Ubuntu for Linux Mint. I've heard a lot of people say they hate Unity. It's not hard data, but it's anecdotal evidence that there's a substantial set of people that really hate it.
  - vidarh 14y ago
    Personally I love it. I had planned on installing a tiling window manager, but after 10 minutes with Unity I decided to stick with it. It's the first Linux GUI I've found ok since Enlightenment 0.16, and the first time since I left the Amiga behind I've had an environment I'd say I'm happy with. And most people I've heard who have used Unity love it. The only people I hear complaining are typically people who expect the Linux desktop to remain static and unchanging the way it was when they first used it. Unity might be a fiasco with a small subset of old Linux users, but Unity or something like it will be essential for Canonical to keep attracting new users, who are expecting polish at the level of OS X rather than at the level of the Linux desktop of a decade ago.
    - Karunamon 14y ago

jlgreco 14y ago

> the Layman discovers that Linux can possibly be just as shiny as Mac OS. Why do we want the layman to be using Linux? To give Valve more Linux customers or something? We should let them be. Laymen will invariably be better served by Microsoft or Apple, trying to win them over in some sort of misguided drive to "win" market-share seems foolish. Linux should focus on it's niche, and Microsoft and Apple theirs. This market-share envy makes no sense to me. Does Artic Cat stare with envy at Ford's userbase and expend effort trying to get suburban parents to drive their kids to school on snowmobiles? That would just be silly.

zamnedix 14y ago
I agree. This is why I dislike Ubuntu. It constantly tries to appeal to Mac and Windows users.
- hazov 14y ago
  Simply don't use it...
  - VLM 14y ago
    Embrace extend extinguish. Wait until the only way to run FF / Chrome / 3-d accelerated video driver / vi / emacs / something else thats "critical" is to switch to Mir. After all its free, all you have to do is abandon everything else. What could go wrong? Simply don't use it is like telling people to take up a new hobby once theirs has been destroyed. But I don't want to take up a new hobby and I like this one. Sorry, no, someone else has decided to destroy it, so don't complain or try to work around the damage just select a new hobby. Hey, you look like a technical type of person, sorry about the death of free software and all that, but I bet you'd like Ham Radio or maybe advanced model railroading? ...
    - eurleif 14y ago
      If a free software program decided to stop supporting X and Wayland, it would be because no one cared enough to contribute the code for continued support, which would imply that very few people were still choosing to use X or Wayland over Mir. If Mir really ends up being that wonderful, why shouldn't it win? How does one free software program replacing another constitute the death of free software?

pnathan 14y ago

Basically, Canonical appears not to be publically consulting with the other distros (e.g., RH, Gentoo, Arch) about their changes. If they were, and there was a general consensus of a plan, I would personally not be bothered at all. But they seem to be content to pursue unilateral forking of what Linux means, and IMO that's not ok.

oneweekwonder 14y ago
Canonical is a business, I believe they do care for Linux because otherwise I don't see why they will be part of the Linux Foundation. But they are a business. And like most businesses they need to make unilateral decisions. The only difference is that Canonical makes these decision public knowledge while it is trying to achieve a hectic roadmap, for business purposes.

donniezazen 14y ago

Ubuntu has been a Canonical project that is based on Linux for so many years. It is hardly community driven OS that people believe. I think it is a good thing. They are moving forward in some direction. They will make mistakes. Hopefully they will learn out of it. There is nothing wrong in it. In general Linux userspace is very fragmented. Organizations and developers seldom agree on anything. Ubuntu can't provide a true desktop user experience in such a space. And there are always distributions like Arch Linux which offer true freedom and completely stick to Linux specs.

jerf 14y ago

The Wayland people really sound like they know what they are talking about, based on decades of experience. See, for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44 Are these people designing a better answer to Wayland because it's really better, or because it always looks easy when you don't intimately understand the problem space? I honestly don't know, but it's a question I'd like answered before I get excited.

Symmetry 14y ago
It looks like they have design goals such as using Android drivers that Wayland doesn't address.
zanny 14y ago
I'd like to hope since Wayland has been in development hell for ~5 years now, that if the Mir people are doing their job, they are intimate with both X and Wayland, see where Wayland improved, and where it made mistakes, and fix those.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

zem 14y ago

especially since people have been slamming canonical for years for being mere repackagers who were not contributing any significant code to the ecosystem.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

snowwrestler 14y ago

The Layman doesn't want a desktop at all; they want a smartphone or a tablet. Want to drive mass adoption of Linux? Write a killer app for Android. The folks who do want desktops, want those desktops to run software like MS Office or Adobe CS. If Linux can't do that, it does not matter how shiny it is.