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Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go? 778

inkscapee writes "Used to be Ubuntu was the big Linux hero, the shining knight that would drive Linux onto every desktop and kick bad old Windows to the curb. But now Ubuntu is the Bad Linux. What's going on, is it typical fanboy fickleness, or is Canonical more into serving their own interests than creating a great Linux distro?"
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Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go?

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  • What's going on? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:21PM (#35283814)
    "What's going on, is it typical fanboy fickleness, or is Canonical more into serving their own interests than creating a great Linux distro?"

    Yes
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      Exactly!

    • by amicusNYCL ( 1538833 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:51PM (#35284274)

      I'm thinking that this is a loaded question, due to the fact that the only link in the "summary" is on the text "Canonical more into serving their own interests".

      Slashdot summaries are frequently a bunch of opinions stated as if true, followed by pointless questions, submitted by people with a vested interest in the topic. Is this actual journalism, an opening for debate, or does this suggest another purpose [wiktionary.org]?

      • by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) * on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @05:28PM (#35284818) Journal

        Slashdot summaries are frequently a bunch of opinions stated as if true, followed by pointless questions, submitted by people with a vested interest in the topic.

        Exactly so. It's funny that within a few hours we had a story with a single link in a summary that posited an inexorable decline for Google because of a "slew" of "negative stories" and then another summary, with a single link, that describes Ubuntu's decline. Somebody took the time to post these stories, to post those single links and to wrap them in a summary with an air of inevitability. Google's run is "finished". Ubuntu is "done" These links were not posted with summaries saying "This is what so-and-so said" but rather "This is the truth". Faits accomplis.

        A rapidly increasing amount of our "news" is driven by press releases put out by astroturf specialists which get polished by lazy journalists into stories that serve the interests of their bosses. In the last few days, I've read at least a half-dozen news stories about the "over-privileged" schoolteachers of Wisconsin, whose average "gold-plated" pensions of $20k/year makes them "bottom-feeders", "pigs" and "fat cats". The peaceful protests are characterized as "riots". Who stands to benefit from these mis-characterizations?

        When such a large portion of the information that people consume is agenda-driven, and barely concealed agit-prop in support of groups with the resources to saturate the media, what chance do we have to make decisions, to act based on reliable data? But I guess that's the whole point.

        • the only answer is censorship on slashdot...

          the whole double-edged sword thing.

          the only acceptible solution is that people develop better bullshit detectors and participate more in the pruning of submissions.

          but me? i like to watch the shitstorm. it's good entertainment and small things amuse small minds.

          • by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) * on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @10:18PM (#35287020) Journal

            the only acceptible solution is that people develop better bullshit detectors and participate more in the pruning of submissions.

            I've met some very powerful minds in my life, but none of them, not one, was capable of completely making themselves immune to the science of well-funded marketing or public relations. Even though we all laughed at those poor losers who majored in "Communications", it seems that they are having the last laugh. Using the extremely potent psy ops weapons at their disposal, they can convince you of nearly everything, sell you almost anything, and make you doubt your most strongly-held beliefs. They can't do it perfectly, but they can do it well enough to turn our world to shit.

            Honestly, I'm starting to believe that we need serious regulations on advertising, public relations and commercial media. Even though that goes against everything I believe (back to those "most strongly-held beliefs") I'm watching the society in which I live turned against itself to satisfy the urges of a very few powerful folks. Net Neutrality would be a step, but you've got those poor simpletons driving around in their cars listening to the radio and buying into the most shameful propaganda since The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Every day. And they come home and pop on Fox News and that stuff beams straight into their heads, into their reptile brains, bypassing judgment, bypassing morals, even bypassing the survival instinct.

            I don't mean to sound so pessimistic. I'm not really so. But I think we're at a point where we're going to have to write off huge sections of our society and prepare for some very very bad times ahead.

            And that's just my reaction to about an hour of channel surfing. If I had to watch an entire evening of reality shows or Fox News I'd probably be driven to do a great deal of damage, probably to myself.

      • *Troll mode off *

        In fairness to them it's really just a commentary and discussion site. Yes they're biased. But aren't we all? They post that way because It sparks conversation, which is the draw here. I like the threaded format and you can really find some "gold nuggets" of knowledge here. There are some very sharp guys that linger and post. Not as many as there used to be AFAIK but you still see a great rotation of good commentary.

    • by h4rm0ny ( 722443 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:54PM (#35284322) Journal
      Actually, have we established that something actually is going on? Maybe I've been too busy to notice the tides of distro-politics, but asking why people are turning on Ubuntu is the first I've heard of people turning on Ubuntu. So is there somewhere else that would back this up and show it's not just someone muck-raking?
      • by fredjh ( 1602699 )

        First I've heard of any problems, and I've been using Ubuntu since 7.x... so... sounds like someone's muck raking to me, probably a small group of "disenfranchised" users.

        • Ubuntu's made some dumb choices recently in GUI layout and package selection. Not huge issues, but they are PITA issues and that's what's caused a lot of Ubuntu hate. Also over the years people have been getting increasingly pissed off at the fact that Ubuntu is a bleeding-edge distro and updates tend to break stuff. Because of these issues a lot of people have been switching to Debian.

          • Re:What's going on? (Score:4, Interesting)

            by shellbeach ( 610559 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @07:52PM (#35286136)

            Ubuntu's made some dumb choices recently in GUI layout and package selection. Not huge issues, but they are PITA issues and that's what's caused a lot of Ubuntu hate.

            Well, the great thing about linux is that you can change stuff as much as you like. I've never liked any distro's default choices ... but I'm prepared to take the time to tweak things to my own liking, safe in the knowledge that I can.

            Also over the years people have been getting increasingly pissed off at the fact that Ubuntu is a bleeding-edge distro and updates tend to break stuff. Because of these issues a lot of people have been switching to Debian.

            The funny thing is that when I started using linux back in 1999, the big criticism of Debian was that it wasn't bleeding edge enough! I guess you can't win in the linux world ...

            Personally, I've been using Ubuntu for the last few years. I used to use a really minimalist distro and compile everything myself, but I don't have the time or inclination to do that any more ... and for that purpose, for me, Ubuntu works great. It's the first distro I've been confident enough to present to my parents as an alternative to windows, and one which they actually liked and preferred to windows.

            But, you know, if people don't like Ubuntu they don't have to use it. There's a billion and one distros out there, catering for any whim or fancy in the world ... and if not, you can always roll your own. If Ubuntu changes enough to be unpopular with end users, then some other distro will catch on and we'll all be praising that one. Plus ça change ...

            • by Belial6 ( 794905 )
              Sure you can win in the linux world. You use Debian until you decide you would rather have a bleeding edge distro. Then you switch to Ubuntu. When you get tired of the issues of having a bleeding edge distro, you switch back to Debian until you start wanting bleeding edge again. Maybe you use one of the in between distros for a while when you feel like it. Sounds like a win to me. There are time and uses that I want bleeding edge. There are times and uses that I want stability. The fact that I get t
      • Yeah, it's not like there was a story on Slashdot today about how the German government got fed up and went back to Windows after a decade long experiment, citing among other reasons Ubuntu switching around the UI constantly.

    • by martin-boundary ( 547041 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:57PM (#35284384)

      "What's going on, is it typical fanboy fickleness, or is Canonical more into serving their own interests than creating a great Linux distro?"

      Yes

      Kosh, is that you? Fancy meeting you here! Last I heard you'd left the galaxy!

      • by mjwx ( 966435 )

        Kosh, is that you? Fancy meeting you here! Last I heard you'd left the galaxy!

        yes

    • For the longest time I would not consider another distro. Each distro has their own agenda. Each one is self centered. Few if any really understand the goal of bringing this powerful easy to use operating system to the masses. Canonical has that goal still, even if they have become more financially centered--less altruistic.

      Some of Canonical's choices of recent are not synergistic to my goals. I am not interested in Unity (total piece of shit software--pardon my bluntness). It shouldn't have been prop

      • by semi-extrinsic ( 1997002 ) <asmunder@nOSPAm.stud.ntnu.no> on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @05:25PM (#35284792)

        Some of Canonical's choices of recent are not synergistic to my goals.

        I regret to inform you that the remainder of your statement was rendered void by your use of the (non-)word "synergistic".

      • I am not interested in Unity (total piece of shit software--pardon my bluntness). It shouldn't have been proposed and absolutely it's seems a violation to consider it.

        Even my 9 and 12 year-old Ubunutu fangirl daughters hate Unity! If little girls with puppy and monkey desktops don't like Unity, then who does?

      • by Creepy ( 93888 )
        Well IMO the problem isn't really with Unity, which is meant to draw a younger audience, not codgers like me, it is the fact that Unity still doesn't make Linux play Windows games, so their attempt to draw in teens will probably backfire (and WINE is still far too difficult to use in many cases, even if it works).

        I've been helping a Linux noob, and several suggestions:
        1) avoid acronyms and abbreviations. Everyone is guilty of this, but Linux is worst - do you think /dev/sda means ANYTHING to a Linux noob? W
        • Re:What's going on? (Score:4, Informative)

          by vadim_t ( 324782 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @06:01PM (#35285166) Homepage

          1) avoid acronyms and abbreviations. Everyone is guilty of this, but Linux is worst - do you think /dev/sda means ANYTHING to a Linux noob? Well I can tell you for a fact that it doesn't, because I've been helping one. She didn't even know that was referring to her primary disk drive until I told her (and she's a tech geek in every way except Linux - and yes married [to my best friend, but he's less of a geek than she is]).

          There are several things here:

          1. It's a device file. Changing names for those can lead to problems with little benefit
          2. It is hard to give them intuitive names. You'd prefer /dev/scsi/hard-disk/primary/master perhaps? But now it's long and still confusing. What's a primary master? Or maybe /dev/scsi/INTEL_SSDSA2M080G2GC would be better? (that's what my disk calls itself). This stuff isn't for end users, and tends to come out ugly any way you slice it. Something of this sort was tried before with devfs a few years back. It was a huge pain to switch over to, had little benefit, and didn't stick.
          3. As an end user, you're not supposed to mess with this stuff in /dev anyway. The GUI is supposed to make it accessible easily.

          2) Program names need to tell the user what they do. Do you know what "Ruby" is? I'd guess a color or a gem, not a scripting language. Windows isn't very good at that, either (Microsoft Silverlight? wtf is that?!)- Apple is much better (for instance, iTunes makes a pretty nice mnemonic for what it does, but they've had their failures too - QuickTime?! The only time I want time to go quick is when I'm working and not under a tight deadline).

          This is already mostly solved. In my Ubuntu install stuff appears as:

          in the "Internet" section:

          BitTorrent Client
          KTorrent

          Seems pretty clear.

          Ruby is something you shouldn't even see really, it might be needed for some program to work, but those are implementation details.

        • by Nick Ives ( 317 )

          The Windows counterpart to /dev/sda is \\.\PhysicalDisc0, is that more or less intuitive? Windows hides all that stuff from users, which is what all the issues you list boil down to: Windows has something approaching a clear and consistent UI, something Linux still lacks.

          Getting a clear basic interface on Linux wouldn't be that big a challenge these days I don't think. I use Windows 7 on my desktop simply for DirectX 11 support, but aside from games the only apps I use are Chrome and a media player. I also

          • by Darkness404 ( 1287218 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @08:04PM (#35286218)
            If you use GNOME and use only GNOME programs (or, to a lesser extent, KDE and only KDE programs) you get a clean minimal interface (yes, Linux still sucks on the games department), but really, Windows isn't much better. (see http://origin.arstechnica.com/articles/culture/microsoft-learn-from-apple-II.media/vista-small.png [arstechnica.com] ). The problems with graphical inconstancy comes when people choose programs for their features rather than their UI and different people have different preferences.

            There are two barriers to widespread Linux adoption the first is niche software support. Things like professional audio and photography programs and games. And the second is that people expect it to work just like Windows. OS X avoids this because people are getting a brand new computer when they get OS X and they expect it to be different. People don't know what an operating system is and assume that if its running on the same box it should be the same if its running Linux or Windows.
        • Linux is worst

          No, it's just that almost everyone has been exposed to Windows and have been desensitized to its quirks. Ever try to explain the lettered drive system to someone who's 50+ and hasn't used computers before? It's just (if not more) bizarre - skipping A and B (except for computers that still have floppy drives and unless a USB drive pretends to be a floppy drive), the difference in drive naming on systems that ship with recovery partitions, the semi-random drive letter assignment to different fl

  • Free software (Score:5, Insightful)

    by devxo ( 1963088 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:22PM (#35283816)
    Freedom means you should also be able to make money and act selfishly with your distro or open source project. I really don't get why it's always such a problem for open source advocates. If you want truly free software you let everyone do whatever they want with it.
    • by jedidiah ( 1196 )

      Being free to do what you want never means being free from community criticism.

      If you treat 3rd parties like they work for you personally, or do various stupid things then you are likely to inspire some enmity.

      It is far less likely that everyone will follow you off the cliff in the Unix community.

    • And as long as the source code is provided how can people really object to their focus on things that make a profit? They need to survive and that means making money.

  • what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) * on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:22PM (#35283828)

    Since when is Ubuntu the 'bad linux'?

    • Re:what? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anthony Mouse ( 1927662 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:23PM (#35283852)

      Since when is Ubuntu the 'bad linux'?

      Since they put the window buttons on the left hand side, if I remember correctly.

      • Re:what? (Score:4, Funny)

        by h4rr4r ( 612664 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:34PM (#35284020)

        Yeah, a real tragedy that you have to go switch the side the buttons are in the settings.

        • He's not talking about the buttons being switched to the left side of the window title. He's talking about the heavy handedness of their actions.

        • Re:what? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ebuck ( 585470 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @05:15PM (#35284636)

          Yeah, a real tragedy that you have to go switch the side the buttons are in the settings.

          They changed it without writing the simplest of gui configurable dialog to set it (or set it back). Instead you had to work around the default configuration with gnome's own command line configuration hacking. Then in the same breath you mention that Ubuntu is a "desktop" distro, meant for the masses while your CEO then takes the time to lambast the complaining user base that "free doesn't mean you get what you want, you get what we want".

          Technically, Ubuntu didn't do a thing wrong; however, people go out of their way to avoid such behavior in friends, associates, or even strangers.

      • I hated it too at first but now I like the buttons on the other side. People are just hard-headed and resistant to change, even if it's better.

        Also, as Ubuntu gets popular the "geeks" won't feel special/superior any more and have to go somewhere else to boost their ego.

        I think I'm a pretty hard core Linux person. I have been using it for something like 17 or 18 years now. I used to like hacking the system but once I got a handle on that what I want to do now is get work done. I'm happy Ubuntu is popular

      • by Xyrus ( 755017 )

        They refuse to open their eggs from the little end!

    • Re:what? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SpeedStreet ( 924467 ) <johnv@t[ ]house.com ['he-' in gap]> on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:25PM (#35283874)

      Since when is Ubuntu the 'bad linux'?

      Since a blogger blogging for a blogging website blogged about it. Also, blog.

    • Re:what? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Lord Ender ( 156273 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:28PM (#35283926) Homepage

      Since when is Ubuntu the 'bad linux'?

      ... since some blogger realized he gets more attention by writing inflammatory nonsense than by being honest.

      • ... since some slashdotter realized he gets more attention by writing inflammatory nonsense than by being honest.

        There, oblagitoried that for you

    • Re:what? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ironchew ( 1069966 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:28PM (#35283930)

      "It's popular, so it sucks" is the mantra here.
      Some fanboys just want to make their e-penis bigger by saying they use obscure, obfuscated distro X all the time. Nothing new here.

      • Re:what? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jedidiah ( 1196 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:32PM (#35283986) Homepage

        I dunno.

        There's nothing more obscure sounding than dumping the standard GNOME desktop and X along with it.

        It doesn't get much more set apart from Linux and Unix in general than that.

      • "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." Yogi Berra

      • "Ubuntu used to be cool, but then it went all mainstream."

    • ***Since when is Ubuntu the 'bad linux'?***

      Great question. I used Ubuntu for a while and didn't much like it, but I think I'm one of a very small minority. Except for a few eccentrics like me, the only reason that I can think of for not using Ubuntu is that when malware starts seriously attacking Unix, it'll probably go after Ubuntu first.

    • by mlts ( 1038732 ) *

      I must not be up to current events, but from what I see, Ubuntu is still a very strong distribution being arguably the front-runner when it comes to the desktop Linux offerings.

      Every distro has their growing pains. RedHat went through theirs, Slackware had its trials, and so on.

      Regardless of the drama that might surround Ubuntu, it still will be one of the top distributions out there. Of course, there may be forks, but Ubuntu has a solid development effort behind it and is standing up to the test of time.

    • by ozbird ( 127571 )
      Apparently the "fully sick Linux" was already taken.
    • I believe that this blog was written and posted on slashdot in an attempt to make it true. If they can get people thinking that enough others think Ubuntu is "Bad Linux", they think they can get people to think that Ubuntu is "Bad Linux". Unfortunately for them, many of the first slashdotters to see the post went, "What are you talking about? I think Ubuntu is great/nice/pretty good, even though I use a different distro."
  • flamebait (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bsDaemon ( 87307 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:22PM (#35283832)

    I don't even particularly care for Ubuntu (as if my nick name wouldn't be a tip off), but even I think this is probably the most flamebait summary I've seen on Slashdot in a while... wtf?

    • Many of the links in that article are actually quite useful, especially if you skip the internal references. One of them, from the 2008 Linux Plumbers Conference [kroah.com], which is dedicated to the lower-level aspects of the operating system (mostly the kernel, GNU, and X), was of particular interest as it talks about how Canonical isn't carrying its own weight, falling well below any other backer of a commercial distribution (or other Linux-depending company) on pretty much any metric and even well behind communit

  • Fincancial realities? Stick with Debian (www.debian.org), they have showed that their commitment is consistent. BTW, Ubuntu is a slightly rewoked [sic] version of Debian. RedHat created Fedora so they wouldn't 'taint' their commercial version. Again financial realities. No news in that.

  • Huh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anrego ( 830717 ) * on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:24PM (#35283864)

    I admit I’m not a ubuntu fan, but I don’t take the fact that the entire FOSS community hasn’t immediately dropped everything to fall in line with Ununtu as a sign of hate.

    Ubuntu seems to be as popular as ever. In fact a lot of my fellow die hard “ew, ubuntu” friends are now using it (not me though.. never.. NEVVERRRR!!!).

    I think much like the google article earlier, ubuntu has gone from young upstart to just “there”. Still strong and doing it’s thing.. but everything they do is no longer news worthy, and they have attracted the usual amount of criticism and people who just plain don’t like them. This is normal.

  • Who's this guy ? (Score:4, Informative)

    by burdicda ( 145830 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:26PM (#35283888)

    Every single word is negative
    Just like he's being paid
    A Microsoft Ad to begin the article
    All other articles at bottom of page also negative towards Linux

    I say this guy's a troll in the first degree

    ciao

    burdicda

  • by SpooForBrains ( 771537 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:26PM (#35283890)
    Ubuntu has always been the villain. Or, you know, the thing that you watch other people use in bemusement and begrudging appreciation that your goals at least are getting served even if it's not by methods of which you approve.

    The old joke was that Ubuntu is Swahili for "can't install Debian". I may even have heard it here.
    • by Dutchmaan ( 442553 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:32PM (#35283988) Homepage

      Ubuntu has always been the villain. Or, you know, the thing that you watch other people use in bemusement and begrudging appreciation that your goals at least are getting served even if it's not by methods of which you approve. The old joke was that Ubuntu is Swahili for "can't install Debian". I may even have heard it here.

      I have the distinct feeling that because Ubuntu is viewed as a distro 'for the masses', and die hard Linux users tend to view themselves as 'above the masses', it makes perfect sense that Ubuntu was/is seen as the 'villain' distro. After all, if the masses started using Linux then all the die hards would have to go somewhere else to feel superior.

    • by kwark ( 512736 )

      >The old joke was that Ubuntu is Swahili for "can't install Debian". I may even have heard it here.

      I've been running Debian for years (slink). From stable on servers, testing on the development machines and unstable on my personal (desk|lap)tops. But I finally caved for Ubuntu for my personal desktop after I found that a Ubuntu live CD managed to work out of the box on my HP TX1100, the usual exceptions off course the fingerprint reader and ndiswrapper for wlan (thank you Broadcom for crappy drivers and

  • Ubuntu use is growing year by year, more people must think its OK than the "bad" Linux There are other distros with a better philosophy, sure, like Debian. But they lack the polish to allow me to get up and running quickly, I've years ago tired of having to spend dozens of hours to get everything to work. Ah well, I could say my ubuntu desktop is 85% Debian
  • by raddan ( 519638 ) * on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:27PM (#35283918)
    The author seems to intentionally conflate normal differences of opinion as "controversial", and he clearly sees forking as a bad thing. Anybody who's spent time on github knows that forks are a sign that a project is interesting enough to attract eyeballs... Anyway, as a regular (and satisfied) Ubuntu user, this is the first I've heard that I'm not happy...
  • by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:29PM (#35283940) Journal

    To Arch. A bare bones distro with excellent documentation turns out to be a much better experience than layers and layers of GUI junk that never works right anyway.

  • by trollertron3000 ( 1940942 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:30PM (#35283952)

    The article claims the company is unprofitable but how would anyone outside know if Canonical is profitable? Isn't it privately held? I've never heard of a private company publishing their numbers. I couldn't find any data to back up either side outside of rumor or hearsay. Does anyone have any info regarding this?

  • User satisfaction renders your flamebait irrelevant.
  • One thousand ads for a shitty article, half of which is Ubuntu's history and not actual information.
  • by dkegel ( 904729 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:32PM (#35283980) Homepage
    Really? Bruce Byfield is upset that Ubuntu switched its /etc/init.d handler to upstart? That's an awfully picky thing to complain about, especially since other distros did, too. Switching to the Unity shell is a bit edgy, but hey, it's been a while since there's actually been competition in desktops, we could use some. Most people long ago picked Gnome or KDE, and those projects have to some extent been coasting. Perhaps Unity will light a fire under Gnome like Chrome did for Firefox...
  • that you get when trying to herd cats! It is mazing that most FOSS users will even agree on using the Linux Kernel and a quick search reveals plenty of bruised egos even there. IMHO this is both one of t e great advantages and the great disadvantages of Linux - INFINITE customisation! There are not merely 2000+ "distros", but 20M "custom installations"!
  • BLOGMYGOD (Score:5, Informative)

    by SpeedStreet ( 924467 ) <johnv@t[ ]house.com ['he-' in gap]> on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:35PM (#35284034)
    Yet another incendiary post on a site that generates revenue by number of browser clicks. I'll skip TFA, thanks. Ubuntu seems to be doing just fine. They are generating attention with their new UI, the Ubuntu Server release is one of the best out there, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of reasons for people to 'hate' on it since it benefits upstream as well as down. Who's letting this trash get to the default RSS?
  • by sgage ( 109086 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:48PM (#35284230)

    Perhaps this trolling story has accomplished its goal: I'm about to abandon all Linux Distros forever just to avoid being considered a part of such an assholish "community" (gag). Seriously, people were down on Ubuntu the minute it became popular. If Ubuntu was successful, obviously it must be evil. And if their distro is coherent, easy to install, use and update, well then it's for the newbie masses, and must be ungood.

    Or they set up defaults in a way that didn't please you, though you can easily configure it any way you wanted. No, they were "ramming their dictatorial decisions down my throat". Godz, how many times have I heard that! Oh, but asking someone to configure something is too hard for the newbies. But wait a minute, I thought Ubuntu was bad because it was too newbie-friendly.

    A bunch of confused, hypocritical, self-contradictory, whining assholes. If you don't like a distro, FFS don't use it - it's really quite that simple. There's a distro out there for everyone.

    • Huh, funny, I've never noticed to Linux community to be any more assholish than any other community out there. There are elitist dicks in every crowd (Apple, MS, hell, even Google/Android is starting to get a following) but that doesn't speak for the community as a whole. In my experience, folks in the Linux community tend to be pretty friendly, and the ones who are piss-ranters that rip on newbies etc. etc. tend to get shunned to their mother's basements pretty quickly.

      The only real difference I've noti
  • by bmo ( 77928 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @05:02PM (#35284462)

    And the article itself is a bunch of hooey.

    It's almost like I'm on 4chan/g/

    Personally, I like Ubuntu even while I find fault with it. While nothing is perfect, out of all the distributions, it has the least amount of BS.

    That is until you try to add the kubuntu meta-package. Friends don't let friends add the kubuntu meta-package - they do kde-full instead.

    Speaking of which, the Pardus team could certainly teach the kubuntu idiots how to configure KDE. Pardus is god-tier KDE.

    Particular note to any Kubuntu devs here: You have done more harm to the adoption of KDE than anyone else on the planet. You're incompetent.
    --
    BMO

  • by jgtg32a ( 1173373 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @05:05PM (#35284488)
    Vista SP1 and Window 7 came out it which dealt with a great deal of the "complaints" that the target audience of Ubuntu had (more or less beginners and XP converts). Couple that with them not really being in the news (free advertisement) and that'll do quite a bit to your reputation.
  • by rivaldufus ( 634820 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @05:48PM (#35285032)
    www.apple.com

    The remaining fanbois went on to post on phoronix.
    • by Chuck Chunder ( 21021 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @06:33PM (#35285478) Journal
      There is some truth in that I suspect.

      I got the shits with Ubuntu when they went from FSpot to Shotwell with no migration path. I have a large amount of data that means a lot to me personally and all of a sudden it's simply deprecated. (FSpot is still installable but bugs that render it useless [launchpad.net] simply don't get fixed).

      Changing window managers, colour schemes etc is one thing but abandoning software that looks after things that people have significant personal investment in is a recipe for justified discontent.

      Seeing as I would have to re-import all my photos into Shotwell anyway I decided to buy an iMac and have them all tucked safely away in iPhoto instead.

      I still have my Ubuntu box and will continue to follow future releases but I'm not sure I will trust it with anything important until it demonstrates that transitioning user data to new releases is looked after well. I like the sometimes experimental nature of Ubuntu but it needs to temper that with supporting users through any change.
  • by recharged95 ( 782975 ) on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @10:26PM (#35287062) Journal

    How is this different from Redhat/Fedora and Novell/OpenSuSE?

    The author has a point: Canonical has finally reached the same levels of RedHat and Novell--that's the conclusion I got from his article, everything else is opinion.

    FYI, all 3 make great products and work with the FOSS, they don't manage the FOSS community...

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