What Does Ubuntu's Post-Unity Future Look Like? (techrepublic.com) 121
intensivevocoder quotes TechRepublic: Following Canonical's pivot away from its internally-developed Unity user interface and Mir display server, Ubuntu has enjoyed two relatively low-drama years, as the Linux Desktop market homogenized during its transition back to a customized GNOME desktop. In a review of the most recent release, TechRepublic's Jack Wallen declared that "Ubuntu 19.04 should seriously impress anyone looking for a fast and reliable Linux desktop platform."
Largely, it's been a slow-and-steady pace for Ubuntu since the pivot from Unity to GNOME, though the distribution made headlines for plans to end support for 32-bit support. This prompted Valve, operators of games marketplace Steam, to re-think its approach toward Ubuntu, which it previously characterized as "as the best-supported path for desktop users."
TechRepublic's James Sanders interviewed Will Cooke, director of engineering for Ubuntu Desktop at Canonical, about the distribution's long-term plans for legacy 32-bit support, shipping a desktop in a post-Unity-era Ubuntu, and why Linux should be the first choice for users migrating from Windows 7 prior to the end of support.
From the interview:
When we did the switch to GNOME Shell from Unity, we did a survey [asking] people straightforward questions like, "What sort of features do you want to see continue in Ubuntu Desktop?" The answer came through very, very clearly that people liked having the launcher on the left, and they wanted to keep that feature there. They liked having desktop icons and they wanted to keep that feature there.
We've made decisions based on data from our user base, from our community. They have provided that feedback and we've done what the majority of people want.
Sometimes that doesn't go with the ideals of GNOME design, but we're comfortable with delivering what we see as value on top of GNOME. That's delivering a product which gives people consistency between the old days of Unity 7, and the new days of GNOME Shell. That transition was as easy as possible, everybody had a chance to have a say in it, and the answers were pretty clear.
Largely, it's been a slow-and-steady pace for Ubuntu since the pivot from Unity to GNOME, though the distribution made headlines for plans to end support for 32-bit support. This prompted Valve, operators of games marketplace Steam, to re-think its approach toward Ubuntu, which it previously characterized as "as the best-supported path for desktop users."
TechRepublic's James Sanders interviewed Will Cooke, director of engineering for Ubuntu Desktop at Canonical, about the distribution's long-term plans for legacy 32-bit support, shipping a desktop in a post-Unity-era Ubuntu, and why Linux should be the first choice for users migrating from Windows 7 prior to the end of support.
From the interview:
When we did the switch to GNOME Shell from Unity, we did a survey [asking] people straightforward questions like, "What sort of features do you want to see continue in Ubuntu Desktop?" The answer came through very, very clearly that people liked having the launcher on the left, and they wanted to keep that feature there. They liked having desktop icons and they wanted to keep that feature there.
We've made decisions based on data from our user base, from our community. They have provided that feedback and we've done what the majority of people want.
Sometimes that doesn't go with the ideals of GNOME design, but we're comfortable with delivering what we see as value on top of GNOME. That's delivering a product which gives people consistency between the old days of Unity 7, and the new days of GNOME Shell. That transition was as easy as possible, everybody had a chance to have a say in it, and the answers were pretty clear.
people not liking the GNOME3 either (Score:5, Interesting)
Doesn't the success of Linux MInt show people would rather be using Ubuntu with MATE and Cinnamon?
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I wonder how many of them would prefer Xfce but have never been introduced to it.
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it's called GNUStep and GNUStep Application Project
Re:people not liking the GNOME3 either (Score:4, Informative)
a lot, so one of the flavors of Mint is Linux Mint Xfce
https://linuxmint.com/rel_tess... [linuxmint.com]
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Flavors, like it's a god damn cooking competition. You can't just make one good UI the is good for the 99%. You have to dick around with 100 stupid ass "almost good" implementations that no one can agree on.
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Nonsense, you can run all the major wares under any of the window managers just fine. It doesn't take anything away from you the GNOME3 or KDE user if I use something else
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I've tried XFCE several times over the years, but I strongly prefer the Mate Desktop to it.
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Re:people not liking the GNOME3 either (Score:4, Insightful)
>"Doesn't the success of Linux MInt show people would rather be using Ubuntu with MATE and Cinnamon?"
Yes. But speaking for myself (and a number of friends and family), I am quite happy with Mageia and KDE (Plasma), and have been for many years. KDE lets you put anything wherever you want, customize most anything, and always has. GNOME went 100% user-hostile with GNOME 3. Not just because the defaults were horrible, but trying to FORCE people to use their strange idea of how a "desktop" works is a sure way to piss off a huge number of their users. Ubuntu showed just as much arrogance with Unity and Mir, and look at those results.
For desktop use I recommend Mageia and Mint and nothing else at this point.
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>"Why won't Plasma allow me to have English as my language and ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD) for my date?"
It does for me. I just pulled up to check and it says "Date format: ISO date. And that is what is on my clock. Plus, you can hand-edit it to any format you desire.
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>"Yeah look at those results."
They lost a LOT of users after that fiasco.
>"Number #1 most used distribution in the Linux community."
By what metric and which "Linux Community"? I know Linux Communities where CentOS is #1, and others where Debian is #1.
And MS-Windows is #1 by the total community. Doesn't say anything about its quality, price, reliability, privacy, or freedom, though.
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That was pretty much my reaction to both Unity and Gnome3: WTF have they done with my desktop? Where'd everything go? what is this, Android 1.0 on a big screen?? why does it take so much flapping around to get to anything? It went from tolerable to -- I think I prefer Windows 10, and yes that's horrible.
I like PCLinuxOS myself, with either KDE or Trinity, but Mageia would be my next choice (main drawback being it needs a lot more hardware to run well, and I've come to appreciate rolling updates). Stuff wor
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The kicker is that Debian (Gnome home) and Ubuntu (Unity ex-home) are now available with the MATE and Cinnamon desktops. In fact those two (Mate & Cinnamon) are on every major distro! Gnome devs don't listen to the user base, or are being paid to be deaf.
Xfce is light (eg MX Linux who bake it the best), but I find too many things don't work as I have become accustomed to work.
My biggest ongoing complaint against Debian and downstream Ubuntu and Mint is: too many "international" fonts. My work centers
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I find the thing I like best about xfce is the incredibly customizable panels (aka task bar(s)) And the fact that those run beautifully on most other desktops lets me get the best of two worlds.
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Doesn't the success of Linux MInt show people would rather be using Ubuntu with MATE
Not possible. There are only two kinds of people in the world. Windows users and Ubuntu users. Having a userbase that "prefers" anything other than two choices is simply unfathomable.
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Don't forget abuot snaps! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Oh snap!
If they wanted to package software with all their dependencies, just compile it statically. Either way, it’s going to be more bloated.
Re: Don't forget abuot snaps! (Score:5, Interesting)
How about snap refusing to run because your home directory is /home/corp_name/username ? Just ran into that at work some months ago.
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Re:Don't forget abuot snaps!Fair p (Score:2)
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Arch Linux. Doesn't have dependencies much at all so you can build whatever kind of system you want. You could also use Artix for the same but no Systemd, and Pulseaudio is completely optional in both (but apulse is required for Firefox and probably a few more applications)
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>"Ubuntu also keeps pushing the Snap-packaging."
+1. It is a pretty stupid way to package your own stuff. Large, complicated, irritating, mess of a config. I couldn't agree more with you that it only makes sense for "foreign" stuff, like proprietary software or things like Steam. Thankfully I am not an Ubuntu user (and if I was, I certainly would have left after the whole Unity/Mir crap; I will take Mageia + KDE /Plasma + X11, thank you).
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but Canonical seems insistent on shipping also regular packages as a snap.
Yes, and for good reason. If you want something to be up to date then it's best not to have to rely on the blessing of a packaging manager from your distribution to do so. Sure you can start adding custom repositories and hope the result doesn't horribly screw up your system, but Snap is ultimately a solution to a big problem the repo / distro system has, and those problems include standard software as much as it does proprietary.
You want to run vlc 3.0.7-1 on Ubuntu? Snap or GTFO, the mainline repo is stil
Re:Don't forget about snaps! (Score:2)
Yes, and for good reason. If you want something to be up to date then it's best not to have to rely on the blessing of a packaging manager from your distribution to do so.
Why? If anything the Debian package manager is proven technology that has proven itself over the past 20+ years.
Sure you can start adding custom repositories and hope the result doesn't horribly screw up your system, but Snap is ultimately a solution to a big problem the repo / distro system has, and those problems include standard software as much as it does proprietary.
That's not a matter of 'hope'. It's a matter of engineering. Incompetent (or less experienced) engineers will always be able to screw up - no matter the package manager.
You want to run vlc 3.0.7-1 on Ubuntu? Snap or GTFO, the mainline repo is still on 3.0.6-1
I do want to run a recent version of vlc, and I do so using plain old Debian packages. Works like a charm.
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As much as I dislike Gnome it is so much better than Unity.
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We love Unity. It made our shop's transition to Fedora that much easier.
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"The answer came through very, very clearly that people liked having the launcher on the left, and they wanted to keep that feature there."
Haven't used GNOME in 12 years, can you really not change the launcher location in GNOME? Seems like I haven't missed much.
Yes you can. All this is saying is that they kept it on the left because most of there users preferred that. Oh the horror
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That's gnome's fault, not Ubuntu's
If ubuntu chooses gnome, then its also ubuntu's fault.
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An interesting insight into the mind of the average Ubuntu user that their biggest concern when a major desktop change comes around is that their favorite default setting is preserved.
You are inventing things. Nobody said it was their biggest concern. It was one of the questions Canonical asked and most respondents preferred to keep it on the left. Nothing wrong with asking, nothing wrong with the answer. Your hate is blinding you.
There are better alternatives now (Score:5, Interesting)
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>"It's a bit pity openSUSE is not as widely used or recognized as Ubuntu. Very stable and polished system, nothing else matches it."
Mageia is close. Doesn't have the mindshare, but every bit as stable, established (Mandrake-> Mandriva-> Mageia), and polished... top-rate KDE/Plasma, great defaults, great artwork, really nice GUI management tools, large selection of packages (both official and third-party), prompt updating, good installer. As long as you don't need enterprise support or rolling-rel
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>"Can you describe a few benefits of Mageia over OpenSUSE? And/or over Mint (if we ignore the different choice of default desktop environments)?"
It is more than the choice of default desktop, it is the implementation of that desktop... and it matters. I think Mageia does KDE better than any distro- the closest second being OpenSUSE. So don't discount that.
Over Mint- it is more Redhat-like, which is an advantage if that is your preference or background. I think it also has much better GUI management t
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I switched to MX linux when Ubuntu announced that they were dropping 32-bit support. They're not going to miss me or anything, no doubt. But I probably won't switch again until MX linux pisses me off, or goes away.
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MINT is very popular as an alternative to Ubuntu. It is available with MATE, Cinnamon, or Xfce desktops. MATE is pretty much improved Gnome2. Cinnamon is a highly customizable desktop that is gtk3 based and has many of the advancements of Gnome3 without deciding how you should do things. Xfce is a modular, super configurable, very lightweight desktop. It i s not Gnome in anyway but, last I checked, uses gtk2 as it's toolkit.
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The latest KDE is just as bad (different, but bad) unless you config and customize the hell out of it.
But then you could do the same with Gnome3.
What kind of people did you ask??? (Score:1)
Launcher on the left? WTF?
Is this like the thrash icon that couldn't be removed because canonical's brainfucked designers decided so?
For me this has been the final bit that pushed me to finally customize a plasma desktop to look like something usable.
It's not perfect, but admittedly better than unity was.
Still Sticking With Mint (Score:5, Informative)
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I usually don't reply to ACs, but I think your comment merits a response.
1. systemd. Linux distros should really just go off systemd, right now. It's not impossible - it's not even very difficult. Devuan has shown the way.
I don't really have much interest in the whole systemd controversy. I understand systemd solves as many problems as it creates, so it's a wash as far as I'm concerned. If it were so bad, then fewer distros would have gotten aboard the systemd train.
2. It's (mainly) based on Ubuntu rathe
Errrm, like a Gnome 3 desktop ... (Score:2)
... in Ubuntu design? I guess?
sudo apt-get install i3 (Score:2)
works for me ...
Best misnomer (Score:3)
Unity was anything but unifying. Great name.
kubuntu (Score:1)
My Ubuntu's Post-Unity future looked like Kubuntu - 10 years ago!
Questionable Survey Results. (Score:1)
From the interview:
"The answer came through very, very clearly that people liked having the launcher on the left, and they wanted to keep that feature there."
Well, yeah, everyone that didn't like the launcher on the left ditched Ubuntu long long ago for Mint, or another distribution, and so wouldn't be responding to Ubuntu's survey. Unless they ran the survey on DistroWatch or something, there is going to be a hell of a lot of participation bias in those results.
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Find ANYWHERE where I said that I worked for Siemens. And your claim that excel uses 255-byte pascal strings is so last century. They’ve been Unicode compliant for almost as long as you’ve been unemployed.
How do you justify your existence, incel?
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This is t21st century - get with it. Get a job. After decades of unemployment you really should do something constructive.
The #1 reason APK will always be unemployable (Score:2)
#3 - nobody likes somebody who spends all their time posting blog spam. Doesn’t look good on a resume.
#2 - your skill set is obsolete after a couple of decades not working - doesn’t look good on a resume
#1 - you have been referring to me as a tranny monstrosity for more than a decade - you’re a toxic law suit waiting to happen to HR and Legal.
Nobody can risk hiring you. All you’ve got for the rest of your life is your Hosts File. You can’t even do volunteer work becaus
APK is talking to himself again... (Score:1)
Fuck, APK. I leave for a couple of hours and you’re talking to yourself again. I have enough experience that I can write c without buffer overflow issues. That you can’t just means you don’t know your tools.
Visual Basic is dead. So your using TIOBE to say that Delphi, which ranks under VB, just makes the point it is even more dead. It’s not pining for the fjords. Dead end project written in a dead end language.
I hit retirement age more than 3 years ago. I don’t have to jus
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Still waiting for you to justify your existence as a human being.
You’re a leech who hasn’t had a real job since the mid-90s. But oh boa, your ship will come in if you just keep flogging your Hosts File long enough .
Still haven’t heard anything that justifies your waste of oxygen.