Ubuntu 14.10 Is Codenamed The Utopic Unicorn

[Aleve Sicofante]

You've echoed many of my thoughts in your post but one thing that stands out to me in particular is this point. When I think about it, even though I dislike some of the decisions of major projects in the Linux community and criticize them for it (Gnome, KDE, openSUSE, Fedora, and Unity as well), I tend to do it once and move on. I don't go into every news article on Gnome and repeat all the things I hate about it that have nothing to do with the topic itself. Or quote the positive things people say and troll them. I don't think I will ever understand the motivation to attack something that is not negative to you in any way, but maybe that is a result of how I perceive the Linux ecosystem. Even if I choose not to use Gnome, I like some of the ideas that come out of the project and want them to be adopted in my desktop. I don't view the entire Gnome project as a diversion of scarce resources that MY project of choice could benefit from.

I think engaging with dee is a waste of time, but I enjoyed reading your post so thank you. I only wish more people in the Linux community were as accepting and positive about projects doing things differently. I think it would make a much better impression on new users and lead to a better desktop experience for everyone.

Amen.

[Aleve Sicofante]

You are putting words in my mouth

That's what he does. Don't even bother to argument. He'll twist your words just for fun. It's called trolling.

[cynical]

And no one here explained why non Ubuntu users have such strong criticism for a product they do not use. Fear of Ubuntu dictating terms to upstream? Not going to happen, not even if Ubuntu becomes very big, so why are non Ubuntu users so concerned with a product that will not affect their favorite distribution or development of Linux in general? I am still waiting for rational answers on that. I am not denying them the right to criticize but I am "denying" them the right to act as fanatics whose sole purpose is not constructive criticism, but inciting arguments and bashing Canonical for the sake of it, often with rather vulgar words.

You've echoed many of my thoughts in your post but one thing that stands out to me in particular is this point. When I think about it, even though I dislike some of the decisions of major projects in the Linux community and criticize them for it (Gnome, KDE, openSUSE, Fedora, and Unity as well), I tend to do it once and move on. I don't go into every news article on Gnome and repeat all the things I hate about it that have nothing to do with the topic itself. Or quote the positive things people say and troll them. I don't think I will ever understand the motivation to attack something that is not negative to you in any way, but maybe that is a result of how I perceive the Linux ecosystem. Even if I choose not to use Gnome, I like some of the ideas that come out of the project and want them to be adopted in my desktop. I don't view the entire Gnome project as a diversion of scarce resources that MY project of choice could benefit from.

I think engaging with dee is a waste of time, but I enjoyed reading your post so thank you. I only wish more people in the Linux community were as accepting and positive about projects doing things differently. I think it would make a much better impression on new users and lead to a better desktop experience for everyone.

[Cerberus]

With that out of the way, I can see you've adopted the same general tone as most devoted Ubuntu fans: "everyone else are just haters who are jealous and want Canonical to fail"... "others just want Linux to be hard and only use command line"... "Canonical is the ONLY one innovating on Linux, without Ubuntu, Linux will fail"...

You are putting words in my mouth, I never said anything of the sort. If I did then quote me, you cant because I never said that.

And as I've said before, it's no wonder - this rhetoric comes directly from Shuttleworth. Shuttleworth is, although a misguided, grandiose, and at times downright a pompous fool, also a charismatic person who has the gift to make people believe in what he's saying. That's not a bad quality for a leader as such, but it's also meaningless - and potentially dangerous - if not used responsibly...

Many times I've now seen this same rhetoric being used by Shuttleworth, and then numerous Ubuntu fans come to forums and parrot his talking points - and it's only natural, it comes with the territory: you're a huge Ubuntu fan, you idolize Shuttleworth, you take your behavioural cues from him. Too bad that the rhetoric Shuttleworth uses is increasingly often arrogant, fallacious, passive-aggressive and even downright slanderous (remember the whole Mir FUD debacle...)

Mark has a tendency to make strawman arguments. He likes to dress up his opponents as foolish old dodderers who are too set in their ways to see Mark's brilliance. And this is a narrative that is very effective - we tend to root for the underdog, the story of the little guy who nobody believed in, who everyone laughed at but triumphed at the end against overwhelming odds is ingrained very deeply in our culture: it's a story told thousands of times in various forms... it's a formula used very often in Hollywood movies, because it's an effective narrative, it's something people relate with very easily, and has appeal to most people. We want the little guy to win.

And this is the narrative that Mark also uses - he wants to craft this story where he is a lonely, misunderstood genius, where the Old Guard laughs at him and doesn't believe in his brilliance...

Of course there has been many good things made by Canonical, they've made some very useful contributions to the Linux ecosystem - but recently they've also made some very questionable moves, and it's delusional behaviour to claim that there hasn't been controversies because of those decisions.

That is your viewpoint on Shuttleworth and that is perfectly fine, problem is I never mentioned Shuttleworth in my posts and he is not even relevant to what I wanted to say.

The problem is, when you accept Mark's narrative of "everyone is just a mean jerk who wants to keep us down, they just don't understand our visionary brilliance", you're also shutting out all criticism and honest debate about the decisions of Canonical. When your counter to all arguments made against Canonical, all criticism expressed towards Canonical's decisions, is to say "you're just a hater who wants to see Canonical fail"... that's a problem, because then, who is there to question the actions of Canonical?

No man, no business, no government, no corporation, no organization should have our unconditional trust. You should never follow anyone blindly. Always think for yourself... Nothing is holy - everything should be open to be questioned and debated against.

You are presuming that you know who I am and how I think, and that I accepted "Mark's narrative" as you call it, you do not know me.

I never ever said no one has the right to criticize Canonical, it is everyone's right to disagree with Canonical. Your reply missed my whole point, if one criticizes something why make an obssession out of it? Many of those who criticize Canonical cant stop coming to Canonical and Ubuntu related news all over the Internet and start flame wars, is that sane criticism? No, it is hate bordering fanaticism, religiously following news concerning something one doesnt like is not really a healthy attitude is it. So the issue is not whether one can or cannot criticize Canonical, the issue is why some people are so obssessed by it that they need to start flame wars and derail ANYTHING coming out of Canonical. Those are not rational critics with arguments, those are haters plain and simple. Or you think that sort of behavior is normal, constructive criticism? If you think so then we have nothing else to discuss.

And why do you think that if one defends Canonical's vision, one automatically accepted everything they said and is having Canonical do the thinking for them? Maybe some people support their vision because they LIKE it?

Unity? I like it and Unity 8 is going to be faster and better. Mir? If it works properly I dont mind it being an Ubuntu only project. Convergence? You bet I like it. See? I like how they are doing things, that does not mean I will agree with everything coming from them in the future, but Ubuntu is Canonical's project, project they invested a lot of money in, and they have every right to do as they please with it, Ubuntu users may or may not like it, those who like it will stay and those who dont will move on. Or you are denying Canonical the right to do with their distribution as they please? They are obviously doing something right because number of Ubuntu users is rising, and even the supposedly much hated Unity is used by a good deal of Ubuntu users.

And no one here explained why non Ubuntu users have such strong criticism for a product they do not use. Fear of Ubuntu dictating terms to upstream? Not going to happen, not even if Ubuntu becomes very big, so why are non Ubuntu users so concerned with a product that will not affect their favorite distribution or development of Linux in general? I am still waiting for rational answers on that. I am not denying them the right to criticize but I am "denying" them the right to act as fanatics whose sole purpose is not constructive criticism, but inciting arguments and bashing Canonical for the sake of it, often with rather vulgar words.

[dee.]

Dont bother, people like him will never change or see how unreasonable they behave,

First of all, some friendly advice: please learn to use paragraphs and punctuation. Long posts without paragraph breaks are physically painful to read, and run-in sentences with 20 commas just make you seem like an out-of-breath teenager venting about his/her FEELINGS... neither of which do any favours to your credibility.

With that out of the way, I can see you've adopted the same general tone as most devoted Ubuntu fans: "everyone else are just haters who are jealous and want Canonical to fail"... "others just want Linux to be hard and only use command line"... "Canonical is the ONLY one innovating on Linux, without Ubuntu, Linux will fail"...

And as I've said before, it's no wonder - this rhetoric comes directly from Shuttleworth. Shuttleworth is, although a misguided, grandiose, and at times downright a pompous fool, also a charismatic person who has the gift to make people believe in what he's saying. That's not a bad quality for a leader as such, but it's also meaningless - and potentially dangerous - if not used responsibly...

Many times I've now seen this same rhetoric being used by Shuttleworth, and then numerous Ubuntu fans come to forums and parrot his talking points - and it's only natural, it comes with the territory: you're a huge Ubuntu fan, you idolize Shuttleworth, you take your behavioural cues from him. Too bad that the rhetoric Shuttleworth uses is increasingly often arrogant, fallacious, passive-aggressive and even downright slanderous (remember the whole Mir FUD debacle...)

Mark has a tendency to make strawman arguments. He likes to dress up his opponents as foolish old dodderers who are too set in their ways to see Mark's brilliance. And this is a narrative that is very effective - we tend to root for the underdog, the story of the little guy who nobody believed in, who everyone laughed at but triumphed at the end against overwhelming odds is ingrained very deeply in our culture: it's a story told thousands of times in various forms... it's a formula used very often in Hollywood movies, because it's an effective narrative, it's something people relate with very easily, and has appeal to most people. We want the little guy to win.

And this is the narrative that Mark also uses - he wants to craft this story where he is a lonely, misunderstood genius, where the Old Guard laughs at him and doesn't believe in his brilliance...

Of course there has been many good things made by Canonical, they've made some very useful contributions to the Linux ecosystem - but recently they've also made some very questionable moves, and it's delusional behaviour to claim that there hasn't been controversies because of those decisions.

The problem is, when you accept Mark's narrative of "everyone is just a mean jerk who wants to keep us down, they just don't understand our visionary brilliance", you're also shutting out all criticism and honest debate about the decisions of Canonical. When your counter to all arguments made against Canonical, all criticism expressed towards Canonical's decisions, is to say "you're just a hater who wants to see Canonical fail"... that's a problem, because then, who is there to question the actions of Canonical?

No man, no business, no government, no corporation, no organization should have our unconditional trust. You should never follow anyone blindly. Always think for yourself... Nothing is holy - everything should be open to be questioned and debated against.

[cynical]

Be careful what you wish for. A dominant Canonical and a ubiquitous Ubuntu, while bringing all the benefits of a mono-culture, like everybody and their dog standardising on and writing for and using Ubuntu, it'll also bring all the negatives. Once Canonical takes up the top spot in the OS market and network effects forces a majority of computer users to use Ubuntu as well, you'll be beholden to whatever Canonical deems best for their business and dependent on whatever functionality Ubuntu provides.

Ubuntu being open source won't protect you against this. Forking only makes sense when one can deviate from whatever is unwanted in the parent. If Ubuntu has top spot and everybody writes to their homegrown software (Mir/Unity/Click), a fork needs to closely follow Ubuntu to be able to use all the third party infrastructure and applications written against ubuntu. A fork in such a situation becomes a symbolic relabeling, while still being Ubuntu for all intents and purposes.

That seems to contradict what happened with Ubuntu in the first place. It's not like they started as the dominant Linux distribution, they only achieved that by being a better choice than the alternatives for their users. There is nothing stopping any other distribution from taking that position today. Applications that are written against Ubuntu are going to use the same toolkits as everyone else, there is zero risk that they are going to be incompatible with another desktop. (maybe incompatible with desktop specific features like quicklists, but they will run just fine)

Say that Mir somehow becomes more popular and dominant because of Ubuntu. That's not going to stop people from developing wayland, or Intel from investing resources into it. Gnome 2 became dominant relative to KDE and many other desktops but their developers didn't just give up and decide to fork Gnome 2 instead....

Windows is dominant on the desktop but we're not beholden to Microsoft because we use open standards.

[Cerberus]

99% agree. But, don't call the person you quoted and responded to, a "hater". He wrote a lengthy and well thought out statement, as you did, but in his own opinion and from his own point of view. As in all opinions, they are neither right or wrong, just different.

That being said, I also don't think Ubuntu being dominate (they already are, according to "most figures" in users, but not in thnk space yet) will be harmful for linux. They could bring confindence for developers and hardware makers that linux is serious is a serious contender like ubuntu came above the noise of hundreds of distros and set a standard to target. This confindence would bring more apps to linux which will be 99% compatible with the rest of the eco system by nature of the upstream tech Ubuntu uses is the SAME as everyone else, and that won't change.

I said haters, not hater, I did not mean the guy I replied to, I was speaking generally. And I agree with your post, people that bash Canonical do not realize that they should be happy if Ubuntu succeeds globally both as desktop operating system and on the mobile market, because that will make Linux more visible and attract attention from hardware and software companies. Much of the attention Linux got in recent years was due to Ubuntu expanding on desktops, coming preinstalled on laptops, and appearing as a desktop of choice for various public institutions around the world. Success of Ubuntu is success of Linux as a whole but some people refuse to see it. And you are absolutely right about coming on top of hundreds of distributions and setting a standard, Linux needed a standard that companies can rely on, Ubuntu became that.

[dh04000]

I doubt it would be that bad if Ubuntu gains a larger portion of overall Linux users. As Canonical does not develop any upstream projects upon which all distributions depend. They could continue as usual, forks could have a problem yes if Ubuntu becomes increasingly difficult to fork, but they have other options like LMDE efforts of Mint. It is much more likely that Ubuntu will become a ecosystem of its own, still Linux and fully compatible with Linux, and .deb packages arent going anywhere in Ubuntu, click packages are mainly targeted at mobile use, some will find their way on the desktop but they will not be dominant. Canonical aims at a greater server market share too, they are doing quite well on the cloud server market, and aiming at that requires Ubuntu to remain fully compatible, it is likely that in the end users on desktop wont see much difference compared to the situation now. Ubuntu will gain its own applications like file manager and music player but everything else will remain pretty much the same. The only problem might be forking Ubuntu, but maybe not even that if Canonical keeps X.org and other standard components present in Ubuntu repositories, which they probably will. I have been a Linux user since 90s and Canonical vision is a welcome change for me, I always wanted to see Linux create something unique and convergence is certainly unique, others will continue on their own while Ubuntu tries to make new things. No one forces anyone to use Ubuntu, if they dont like it they are free to install whatever Linux distribution they like better. Linux is supposedly all about freedom so what is the big issue with Canonical pushing their own ideas on their own distribution, it is not like they are trying to force Unity, Mir and convergence on everyone else. Which is why I dont understand the haters who constantly attack Ubuntu, no one forces them to use it, plenty of distributions out there to switch to if you dont like Ubuntu.

99% agree. But, don't call the person you quoted and responded to, a "hater". He wrote a lengthy and well thought out statement, as you did, but in his own opinion and from his own point of view. As in all opinions, they are neither right or wrong, just different.

That being said, I also don't think Ubuntu being dominate (they already are, according to "most figures" in users, but not in thnk space yet) will be harmful for linux. They could bring confindence for developers and hardware makers that linux is serious is a serious contender like ubuntu came above the noise of hundreds of distros and set a standard to target. This confindence would bring more apps to linux which will be 99% compatible with the rest of the eco system by nature of the upstream tech Ubuntu uses is the SAME as everyone else, and that won't change.

[Cerberus]

Be careful what you wish for. A dominant Canonical and a ubiquitous Ubuntu, while bringing all the benefits of a mono-culture, like everybody and their dog standardising on and writing for and using Ubuntu, it'll also bring all the negatives. Once Canonical takes up the top spot in the OS market and network effects forces a majority of computer users to use Ubuntu as well, you'll be beholden to whatever Canonical deems best for their business and dependent on whatever functionality Ubuntu provides.

Ubuntu being open source won't protect you against this. Forking only makes sense when one can deviate from whatever is unwanted in the parent. If Ubuntu has top spot and everybody writes to their homegrown software (Mir/Unity/Click), a fork needs to closely follow Ubuntu to be able to use all the third party infrastructure and applications written against ubuntu. A fork in such a situation becomes a symbolic relabeling, while still being Ubuntu for all intents and purposes.
The strength of the Linux distro system up till now, iss that most of them are roughly equivalent. It gives users the power to reject unwanted changes, because they can swap distro X for distro Y and carry on with computing like nothing changed at all. It is an incentive for distributors to deliver systems devoid of anti-features.

In a world with 90% Ubuntu and the rest fringe systems, you'll be back in the late 90's, early 2000's. Fine if you happen to like what Canonical releases, but a major nuisance when you don't fancy it.

I doubt it would be that bad if Ubuntu gains a larger portion of overall Linux users. As Canonical does not develop any upstream projects upon which all distributions depend. They could continue as usual, forks could have a problem yes if Ubuntu becomes increasingly difficult to fork, but they have other options like LMDE efforts of Mint. It is much more likely that Ubuntu will become a ecosystem of its own, still Linux and fully compatible with Linux, and .deb packages arent going anywhere in Ubuntu, click packages are mainly targeted at mobile use, some will find their way on the desktop but they will not be dominant. Canonical aims at a greater server market share too, they are doing quite well on the cloud server market, and aiming at that requires Ubuntu to remain fully compatible, it is likely that in the end users on desktop wont see much difference compared to the situation now. Ubuntu will gain its own applications like file manager and music player but everything else will remain pretty much the same. The only problem might be forking Ubuntu, but maybe not even that if Canonical keeps X.org and other standard components present in Ubuntu repositories, which they probably will. I have been a Linux user since 90s and Canonical vision is a welcome change for me, I always wanted to see Linux create something unique and convergence is certainly unique, others will continue on their own while Ubuntu tries to make new things. No one forces anyone to use Ubuntu, if they dont like it they are free to install whatever Linux distribution they like better. Linux is supposedly all about freedom so what is the big issue with Canonical pushing their own ideas on their own distribution, it is not like they are trying to force Unity, Mir and convergence on everyone else. Which is why I dont understand the haters who constantly attack Ubuntu, no one forces them to use it, plenty of distributions out there to switch to if you dont like Ubuntu.

[GreatEmerald]

But seeing that Ubuntu has now really started going to a direction of their own (that not many are pleased with), focusing on mobile, introducing mir and their own package manager, core apps for pretty much everything etc, I'm not sure if I want to "upgrade" to future versions of it anymore. And so Elementary OS Isis is becoming a more compelling alternative day by day.

That said, I've yet to try it out. If someone knows a "better" linux desktop/distribution alternative to Ubuntu(Unity), please let me know.

You should give openSUSE a try. It's quite similar to Ubuntu in terms of package variety (with OBS, which is similar to ppas) and target audience, plus you get YaST for quickly doing administrative tasks and SUSE Studio to create your own LiveCDs. It's on the other side of the DEB/RPM fence, but it's not that hard to get used to. As for DEs similar to Unity, well, that's a harder question. You'll probably have to try several DEs out to find what you really want to have and what parts you don't really care about as much.

Overall I have to agree with the positivist attitude. I don't like the direction Canonical is going too, but it's a better use of time to try out other distros and DEs instead of complaining. That way you learn more about the variety we have and keep a positive outlook.