Mark Shuttleworth Comments Following Ubuntu Community Friction, Uncertainty

[Vistaus]

I would argue it is better. Debian isn't steered by a for-profit company so it doesn't do things like shove snaps down our throats. I'm not a huge fan of systemd (I love the concept, I dislike the implementation and feature creep), but it's hard to beat Debian as a robust and broadly accessible platform and the community is friendly and helpful.

Void and Slackware will forever be my go-to Linux distros, along with OpenBSD on the other side of the valley, but I keep a Debian netinstall flash drive handy so I can play with it on any new system I buy or build just to keep up with it. I also run it on a few of my Pis via Raspbian and I have no complaints there.

Debian is better, the only problem is that is has too fews devs, according to the project leader: https://debconf20.debconf.org/talks/...-from-the-dpl/

[Vistaus]

Why would your average user want to upgrade the OS twice a year?
For most people (outside of gaming) if it works, that's good enough.

Tell that to Microsoft who shoves Windows 10 upgrades down people's throats, sometimes through automatic updates even...

[starshipeleven]

"Community" caused more damage to the Linux world than anything else with their extremism and holy wars against this or that. Linux "community" is probably among the most toxic of all tech communities.

Umm no Sir it is not a "tech community". I mean how can someone opposing systemd or pulseaudio claim to know anything about tech. I've seen so much complete bs arguments over the years...

[starshipeleven]

I agree and since every guy who works with Ubuntu or canonical is blashed, they become more private, without ubuntu and canonical the linux desktop it simple doesnt exist, Debian have a horrible experience, only good to server, arch and based (we have breaks every few months), Mint is only ubuntu with old desktop paradigma, suse is dead, fedora is unstable

The only correct thing in your post is that Ubuntu and canonical is bashed, the rest is complete bs.

SUSE is dead????? Get out

[Almindor]

*eats popcorn sitting comfortably in his Arch chair* go on...

[starshipeleven]

Why would your average user want to upgrade the OS twice a year?
For most people (outside of gaming) if it works, that's good enough.

Why would your average user want to update at all?
Updates aren't because they want them, but because they need them

[schmidtbag]

I disagree. They might sometimes go against the grain but it usually is in the interest of Linux as a whole. Because when they do, they do it for users (not just theirs but the MacOS and Windows potential switchers).

Good intentions isn't always enough. Take Mir for example - that was completely unnecessary and really threw a wrench in the progress of Wayland, just so Canonical could develop Unity, which they eventually abandoned. So they didn't just go against the grain, they screwed over another project that outlived their own. They weren't trying to be malicious, but the thing about Linux is it's very community driven, and it's kinda anti-community when you're doing things your own way. Hence Ubuntu's shrinking community members.

On the other hand, Ubuntu is usually pulling their UI from the users, to make them at ease and take into account the diversity of the workflows and use cases. They are going against the grain but I believe on the contrary this usually ends up by removing barriers to entry in the Linux world. Some narrow-minded developer-centric distro enthusiasts might not see it because they're a bit blindsided but at some point when you present a pragmatic view and it's not heard and some of the parallel projects are detrimental to the user, you got to do what you got to do, and it might be to decide going your own way.

Right, and that's exactly what got Ubuntu to be so popular - they made tools and found ways to make Linux easier to adopt. That's not the problem. The problem is, they keep trying to write new systems (whether anyone asked for them or not) from scratch. That is why they're being alienated.

Unity was clearly a good move in such a context, as it ended being feature complete for users around 2012-2013 while Gnome is only getting there in the last few versions (with the help of the dozens and dozens of popular extensions user rely on for their own specific workflow to be bearable). Sometimes, it was a necessary move, even though the community didn't and still don't understand it due to some closed-mindedness and to having the wrong approach of pushing features instead of pulling them (by listening).

I don't disagree, but I question if that was the most optimal solution. Canonical could have just contributed toward Gnome instead of making their own fork. Combining resources to make a better product is more effective than sharing a few crumbs but otherwise going your own way. That being said, neither Gnome nor Unity were very polished for years, and Unity was abandoned by Canonical.

Keep in mind, my points could have been invalidated had Canonical actually finished what they started, because sometimes they were on a good track. Unity was actually becoming pretty decent. Upstart was a fast, lightweight, and easy init system. A lot of the work to make Linux (without Android) more phone-friendly was valuable. But none of that matters because they gave up on such things. I could see this hurting morale of contributors.

[ping-wu]

A couple of weeks ago, I started switching to Oracle Linux 8.2 (Wayland) as my desktop OS (having been a Ubuntu user for 15 years). With essentially all my major applications now on AppImage (LibreOffice, GIMP, Krita, Inkscape, etc.) and Google Chrome providing its repository (both deb and rpm), whatever OS I use really doesn't make much difference. Using a server OS like Oracle Linux actually makes the system respond snappier and the battery last longer. A lot longer.

[CochainComplex]

Using a server OS like Oracle Linux actually makes the system respond snappier and the battery last longer. A lot longer.

That is interessting because kernel compiled for servers have a not so realtime like behaviour. Preemption is switched off or reduced. If you want a snappy behaviour of a Desktopsystem usually you tune the kernel to the realtime full preemption etc. Powersavings I don't know but I would assume Desktop Distros are more aggressive concerning batterysaving - but here im not sure.

[beowuff]

*eats popcorn sitting comfortably in his Arch chair* go on...

Ooo, good idea!
*Gets up from his FreeBSD chair and grabs popcorn, Jr Mints, and a nice malty Scotch Ale.*