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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. Af

by 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
      >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. Or who are stuck on older hardware (why was 2d retired, again?)... Or who think it's utterly silly you have to write a INI (.desktop) file to put arbitrary links in the "dock".. Or who think that the interface wastes a lot of space... You've went and generalized a lot of people with legitimate complaints about that DE. Kind of like Ubuntu's developers do.
  - bduerst 14y ago
    I like cinnamon, but you can run cinnamon on Ubuntu and don't need Mint. What are the pros of sticking with Linux Mint? Are they performance based?
  - mindcrime 14y ago
    I despise Unity. I'm only using it right this minute because our company standard desktop at the $DAYJOB is Ubuntu. Personally I find the state of desktop Linux to be fairly close to abysmal at the moment. I'm not sure we're any better off now than we were with Gnome circa 2000 or so. I had, and still have, high hopes for KDE once Qt went LGPL, and I do run KDE on my personal laptop. It's not bad, but there are some major pieces of software that don't have Qt native versions. sigh
- lhnn 14y ago
  I do not have scientific data on the subject. I know a lot of people have expressed their disdain for Unity, with not so many expressing affection (though people bitch more than compliment.) I personally switched to Xubuntu and shaped the desktop to act like GNOME 2. There wasn't much reason to do so before Unity; Xubuntu's take on XFCE is almost as heavy as GNOME2 was.
chetzit 14y ago
"Unity fiasco" Wait, what?
oneweekwonder 14y ago
1 ) I was also under that impression, but coming to think about it who created that expectation, the community or Canonical? I don't know. 2) Calling unity a fiasco, is like calling it a failure. Which I believe is simply not true. Yes some people didn't like it and moved on or made their opinions heard on forums etc. But Canonical has a plan with Unity, and at the end of the day it gives a better user experience to me and hopefully a lot of other Ubuntu users. 3) There is reasons to unseat X and there is reasons not to unseat X. But what to unseat it with lies with the people that have certain problems, and maybe the problems Ubuntu face with mir is differently to the problems wayland and its community face. I personally would like to see two different tools, then one large tool like X, and if you read the article they explain why they decided on mir instead.
- runeks 14y ago
  > 1 ) I was also under that impression, but coming to think about it who created that expectation, the community or Canonical? I don't know. Mark Shuttleworth created that expectation, when he made a blog post saying Unity would be switching to Wayland: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551
  - oneweekwonder 14y ago
    Thanks for the link! I did a quick google for "ubuntu having problems with wayland" and some interesting links got returned regarding developers struggling to get wayland working, so it didn't get dropped suddenly. It seems that the mir spec is a public statement that after 2 years they are giving up for a alternative, with reasons and a alternative. With some individuals up in arms with the discusion, but how should Ubuntu have handles it differently, while keeping to a deadline.
- 0x09 14y ago
  > Calling unity a fiasco, is like calling it a failure. This has gotten singled out so I'd better say that I meant to find a more polite way of saying "shitstorm". It's not a judgement on Unity itself, but I think it's fair to call the reaction at the time a fiasco.

by 0x09 14y ago

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
    >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. Or who are stuck on older hardware (why was 2d retired, again?)... Or who think it's utterly silly you have to write a INI (.desktop) file to put arbitrary links in the "dock".. Or who think that the interface wastes a lot of space... You've went and generalized a lot of people with legitimate complaints about that DE. Kind of like Ubuntu's developers do.
- bduerst 14y ago
  I like cinnamon, but you can run cinnamon on Ubuntu and don't need Mint. What are the pros of sticking with Linux Mint? Are they performance based?
- mindcrime 14y ago
  I despise Unity. I'm only using it right this minute because our company standard desktop at the $DAYJOB is Ubuntu. Personally I find the state of desktop Linux to be fairly close to abysmal at the moment. I'm not sure we're any better off now than we were with Gnome circa 2000 or so. I had, and still have, high hopes for KDE once Qt went LGPL, and I do run KDE on my personal laptop. It's not bad, but there are some major pieces of software that don't have Qt native versions. sigh
lhnn 14y ago
I do not have scientific data on the subject. I know a lot of people have expressed their disdain for Unity, with not so many expressing affection (though people bitch more than compliment.) I personally switched to Xubuntu and shaped the desktop to act like GNOME 2. There wasn't much reason to do so before Unity; Xubuntu's take on XFCE is almost as heavy as GNOME2 was.

chetzit 14y ago

"Unity fiasco" Wait, what?

oneweekwonder 14y ago

1 ) I was also under that impression, but coming to think about it who created that expectation, the community or Canonical? I don't know. 2) Calling unity a fiasco, is like calling it a failure. Which I believe is simply not true. Yes some people didn't like it and moved on or made their opinions heard on forums etc. But Canonical has a plan with Unity, and at the end of the day it gives a better user experience to me and hopefully a lot of other Ubuntu users. 3) There is reasons to unseat X and there is reasons not to unseat X. But what to unseat it with lies with the people that have certain problems, and maybe the problems Ubuntu face with mir is differently to the problems wayland and its community face. I personally would like to see two different tools, then one large tool like X, and if you read the article they explain why they decided on mir instead.

runeks 14y ago
> 1 ) I was also under that impression, but coming to think about it who created that expectation, the community or Canonical? I don't know. Mark Shuttleworth created that expectation, when he made a blog post saying Unity would be switching to Wayland: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/551
- oneweekwonder 14y ago
  Thanks for the link! I did a quick google for "ubuntu having problems with wayland" and some interesting links got returned regarding developers struggling to get wayland working, so it didn't get dropped suddenly. It seems that the mir spec is a public statement that after 2 years they are giving up for a alternative, with reasons and a alternative. With some individuals up in arms with the discusion, but how should Ubuntu have handles it differently, while keeping to a deadline.
0x09 14y ago
> Calling unity a fiasco, is like calling it a failure. This has gotten singled out so I'd better say that I meant to find a more polite way of saying "shitstorm". It's not a judgement on Unity itself, but I think it's fair to call the reaction at the time a fiasco.