Intel Reverts Plans, Will Not Support Ubuntu's XMir

[Serge]

There's room for more than one competitors on the mobile market... if you consider that only about 50-60% of phones are currently smartphones, that means the smartphone market has room to grow to almost twice its current size. There's an emerging low-end-smartphone market, which will eventually replace all or almost all dumbphones.

I predict that Firefox OS will take most of the low-end smartphone market, while Tizen & Sailfish will compete with Android for the midlevel market. iOS is pretty much already just on the high-end market and falling already even there, except for USA where Apple is over-represented for political reasons (patent warfare, friendly courts). The high-end market will probably be contested by Sailfish, Android and iOS.

If Ubuntu plays their cards right, they might be able to compete with Firefox OS for some of the low-end market. That would require Canonical to start making some actually smart decisions for a chance. I really sincerely hope for that to happen, but I'm not keeping my hopes up too much... probably, Ubuntu will remain a niche OS on the mobile, mostly for geeks who load it on their phones themselves.

Windows phone? I'm not even going to mention it. It's a dead platform, same as blackberry or webOS.

I'm sorry, but your suggestion that there's room for so many platforms in mobile requires an explanation of why the "dead platforms" you mention at the end of your post failed to be those extra platforms. For the first several major revisions of Microsoft's phones, usability can be considered the cause, and possibly that has left such bad taste with consumers that interest in Windows phones remains low due to traditional perception rather than current usability problems. You can't say the same for BlackBerry or webOS, however. And let's not forget Symbian, either. Sure, Symbian had some grave technical problems, but if the demand for another competitive mobile platform was there, then the interest in fixing Symbian's problems would have been higher.

If RIM aka BlackBerry, which enjoyed tremendous mindshare gained from being a successful early mover, could not maintain market position and still struggles to ensure long-term sustainability, what's to say solutions like Firefox OS, Sailfish OS and Ubuntu Touch will be successful? Challenge a normal customer to explain what is missing from the currently available mobile offerings, or what it is that Firefox OS, Sailfish OS or Ubuntu Touch offer that current solutions lack.

Don't get me wrong, I find these platforms exciting, and would even be willing to pay a premium to get one of these over Android... as I'm sure would you, and many other people who post on these forums. But tech geeks like us are a miniscule minority. The kind of people that cause devices to move simply don't care about this shit. Firefox OS, Sailfish OS and Ubuntu Touch are as dead as BlackBerry, webOS and Symbian (Windows phone gets a stay of execution for the time being on account of Microsoft's continued massive investment into the platform).

Only Tizen stands a chance, and that's because it's naive to assume that Samsung will remain happy selling devices running the same platform (Android) as all of their competitors sans Apple. Tizen has the advantage of politics and Samsung's global brand recognition and manufacturing might on its side. There's your third mobile OS. Anyone else competing there will be offering highly specialized niche products sold at a premium mark-up, and mostly with no carrier subsidies.

[johnc]

Chrome OS = Gentoo Linux fork

Yes but Chrome is no more "community driven" than Ubuntu.

If Chrome did become successful it would just be another example to prove the point that leaving a consumer product up to the whims of a nebulous "community" is a path to failure.

[Serge]

Mint is based on Ubuntu.

You people just don't want to admit the importance of Ubuntu in making Linux usable. When somebody wants to try Linux, they go with Ubuntu first and foremost. If Ubuntu dies it's gonna be really bad. Not saying that there isn't any other distro in the world, just saying that there isn't another well publicized easy to use, somewhat idiot proof distro. And the Ubuntu forums are really useful, you get a lot of issues fixed from there.

BO$$, seriously, I hate how you try to destroy every discussion you inject yourself into, but once in a while you point out something that is spot-on. I agree with you here. When Canonical put spyware in Ubuntu, I began looking at alternatives that I can recommend to friends and family for beginner-friendly conversion from Windows. The alternatives are a joke. Fedora is the closest I have come to finding something that I think is simple enough that a beginner would be able to handle, but unfortunately Fedora's primary focus is prototyping for RHEL, not ease of use. Getting it up and running is one thing (just don't try to do custom partitioning . Keeping it running is another story entirely. As for Linux Mint, Mageia, etc.? No way is it reasonable to expect a computer novice to be able to pick up and work with those. Remember, the typical computer user is not impressed by Linux Mint's nifty driver selection tool because the typical computer user doesn't have a clue as to what a driver is in the first place.

With that said, I do believe that if Canonical support for Ubuntu dies, either the community will take over, or another solution will rise up fairly quickly to replace it. At worst I assume about 12 months of downtime where we have no good beginner-friendly "conversion" distro.

[Luke]

More like nobody is going to wait for a store to ORDER a machine

It's not the 1990s anymore. This excuse held some water in the past, but no longer. You can buy a Dell with Linux. Nobody wants it. There's no market for desktop Linux.

Shelf space in a store is expensive, so only the most common machines will go there. You might be able to order one of those Dell Linux boxes, but why wait for the order-and WHY give the store your name and address. With all this NSA shit, cash and no name/no information is the only way to buy electronic hardware these days.

Who is going to wait for a custom order when they can buy a $100 cheaper (hardware level) machine than they would otherwise have bought to cover the Windoze Tax(or a Chrome OS machine), take it right out the door, wipe Windoze and install the distro of their choice. I would not consider a custom order for another reason as well: No way in hell I would alllow the vendor to know that I am the one buying or who bought a particular computer, given who I am (activist hostile to local regime) and all that NSA shit. Letting them know in advance would be just begging for a keylogging BIOS/UEFI. Instead, I would look at the laptops in question, make sure on the store's computer that there are no surprises in its UEFI setup and that the hard drive is NOT soldered down, and buy from stock. ChromeOS if they have it, otherwise Windoze 8. Pull the drive and boot into UEFI. Install my OS on the drive from one of my images of my installed OS, setup up the bootloader and drop it back into the laptop.

As for desktops, I would never buy one new, all of mine are either salvaged or custom built. I can build a desktop from parts, much less install onto a new netbook, faster than any store can deliver a custom order.

[johnc]

Shelf space in a store is expensive, so only the most common machines will go there. You might be able to order one of those Dell Linux boxes, but why wait for the order-and WHY give the store your name and address. With all this NSA shit, cash and no name/no information is the only way to buy electronic hardware these days.

Who is going to wait for a custom order when they can buy a $100 cheaper (hardware level) machine than they would otherwise have bought to cover the Windoze Tax(or a Chrome OS machine), take it right out the door, wipe Windoze and install the distro of their choice. I would not consider a custom order for another reason as well: No way in hell I would alllow the vendor to know that I am the one buying or who bought a particular computer, given who I am (activist hostile to local regime) and all that NSA shit. Letting them know in advance would be just begging for a keylogging BIOS/UEFI. Instead, I would look at the laptops in question, make sure on the store's computer that there are no surprises in its UEFI setup and that the hard drive is NOT soldered down, and buy from stock. ChromeOS if they have it, otherwise Windoze 8. Pull the drive and boot into UEFI. Install my OS on the drive from one of my images of my installed OS, setup up the bootloader and drop it back into the laptop.

As for desktops, I would never buy one new, all of mine are either salvaged or custom built. I can build a desktop from parts, much less install onto a new netbook, faster than any store can deliver a custom order.

I'm not going to say anything against that. But most people don't do what you do. And we were just generally talking about the complete inability of Linux to make any inroads in the desktop market.

I think it's all somewhat moot anyway. The desktop is done. It's finalized: Microsoft has it. That will never change. Ever. Desktop = Windows. Linux had its chance and came up short. Now all the doors are shut.

Even Canonical knows this and that's why they're shifting to mobile where there is still a sliver of opportunity for success. And that's what this Mir is all about anyway.

Though I think the mobile market is quickly consolidating around Android. I'm not saying it's as much a done deal as the desktop, but newcomers are starting off at least a lap behind.

[shmerl]

The desktop is done. It's finalized: Microsoft has it. That will never change. Ever. Desktop = Windows.

What? Linux desktop usage is growing. Microsoft smokes some heavy stuff lately, with their obsession on mobile. Windows 8 fiasco clearly shows they don't pay attention to the desktop anymore, and this will bite them hard, killing their monopoly dinosaur. Windows desktop is already on its way out, it just didn't realize it yet.

[Ramiliez]

You're the one that argued that there are no Linux desktops for sale because Microsoft is strong-arming vendors to prevent it from happening.

I think it's more likely that none are on sale because there is no market for them.

Dell is owned indirectly by Microsoft now so Dell with Ubuntu is past

[F i L]

It's sad really. The last few pages of this thread are a perfect example of how fucked up Canonical's choice to fragment such a fundamental piece of the Linux ecosystem was. You Mir supporters can point fingers at Intel all day, but the fact of the matter is upstream should not include and maintain a distro-specific patch in their code, especially when there is a distro-agnostic alternative (Wayland) that is technically superior and much more mature.

The other truth is that, yes, Ubuntu does hold a significant share of general linux users. Canonical is also responsible for creating a half-decent, user-friendly software center not found in any other distro (even Mint). For the life of me I don't know why other distro maintainers don't see the importance of pictures, comments, user-ratings, and basic categorization in their software center applications. However, that's a much easier piece to write than something like a DS/WM.

What you Mir supporters really have to ask yourselves is: who is responsible for this discord in the community? Intel for not supporting and maintaining something distro-specific upstream? Or Canonical for expecting special upstream treatment with literally zero technical reason (and in the face of the superior alternative with no bullshit like CLA and secret development).

Had Canonical never made Mir and continued porting to Wayland, Ubuntu would be on the eve of a fully-functioning Wayland-Unity desktop (instead of a under-performing XMir hack which only works for Intel hardware), Nvidia/AMD/Valve would have a clear choice in the near future, and we would all (mostly) be looking forward to Canonical's popularity and influence in both the desktop and mobile space. Now however, not only will many upstream developers not support Mir out of principle (at least for awhile), they've shaded themselves in arrogance by expecting everyone else to blindly follow them.

[liam]

Intel just went pussy. Now the real pros at Canonical will have to do the work. No problem with that.

But if this trend continues and idiotic companies and idividual start screwing Canonical then Ubuntu will die and Linux will die along with it. Again, Ubuntu == Linux. With the current anti Canonical attitude you can all start moving your stuff from Ubuntu to Windows. Because there is no chance for Linux except through Canonical. In 5 years, with the current attitude, you will all run Windows 8 and like it. Bill Gates might finally win and take everything.

Intel of course has nothing against you moving to Windows after all... less platforms to support.

And this is how Linux will die, by imploding, not by Microsoft doing anything. Isn't it sweet? Stallman and his fanbois were wrong. Proprietary is the only viable way. Because the free world attracts self destructing basement dwellers with no future. He thought that theoretically the free software way is better, without considering what kind of people this movement attracts. Big boys are right, directionless amateurs aren't.

You're mistaken. Red hat == Linux for vendors.
Canonical== Linux to people who don't use Linux.
That's not an insult just an observation of the kind of people who equate the two.
I also think it very arguable how much canonical has really contributed over the last 10 years besides the amazing community.
Let us not forget mandriva, after all.

[bobwya]

Future predication...

After re-writing all their Desktop platform software and their phone/tablet OS using the Qt toolkit... Canonical/Mark eats humble pie and adopts systemd and Wayland...

What's really sad is amount of developer time Canonical is pissing away, every day, on creating redundant software and interfaces. When they could be turning things around for the Linux ecosystem by actively plugging the software and driver gaps - and thereby get more community support and even perhaps some real donations!! In early days Canonical were setting a nice direction for Ubuntu - the desperately fumbled attempts to monetise "something... anything!!" just make them look extremely amateurish these days... Sad times...