Ubuntu 14.10 Is Now Open For Development

[Herem]

They have practically no chance of success, yet they're betting the farm on it.

Years ago people were saying the same thing about Linux in data centres but none questions it today. Business isn't about taking the easy paths all the time that it's the surest way to failure, it's about taking calculated risks and the bigger the risks the bigger the rewards.

In this case Canonical have obviously decided the risk in following their vision is worth while. If they succeed or not only time will tell; this may turn out to be a catastrophic mistake in which case Canonical could disappear like many companies before them but if they succeed it could put them on a path to becoming a serious contender.

[blackout23]

So the intention here is to make Ubuntu an OS for third-world countries that have 50-year old technology and dirt-poor markets?

Also isn't that Firefox OSs market? They already have 4 devices out and 2 more in the pipeline for mid-2014. Firefox is also a stronger brand than Ubuntu.

As for Ubuntu bugs that never get fixed, my PC can't boot any Ubuntu version >=13.04 it just immediately kernel panics. I have tried dozens of distros and booted hundrets of different kernels on Arch and Ubuntu is the only one that just flatout doesn't work. The problem seem to be not so rare and all "solutions" like adding some acpi related kernel parameter don't do shit (don't need them with any other distro anyway).

[sonnet]

Real problem of Canonical is that they didn't go for qt4 already 4 years ago.
I still don't get why they chose this crazy road of unity based on compiz.
They wasted lot of resources and time about it.

QML was released in the middle of 2010 and first unity release came up with 11.04.
They could have used KDE as based and started heavily modding it.
It would have been much easier.

[Pajn]

I don't think well see Unity 8 on Mir by default on 14.10. As far as I know they haven't even started working on the desktop shell. It's not a trivial thing and a lot more complex than some smartphone interface where you only toggle between fullscreen surfaces basically. They already hinted that it might be delayed to 15.04

Well, the Unity 8 shell will probably not come. However there are other stuff
from this move that can hopefully be ready. I'm thinking of the Gallery app
for example, desktop Ubuntu have no good alternative. Friends is another
good candidate. Calculator could be moved in, not that the current one isn't
good, but getting to feature parity isn't too much work.

I don't know if the Unity 8 scopes can be used in Unity 7, but if they can I
hope they will come in as well. The new indicators is also much nicer than
the current ones.

[Anarchy]

If you were mark, what would you do? Just make a distro with paid support avaliable?

Mandriva tried that and failed miserably. For a time it was my absolute favorite distro. They were super stable and had awesome support. I even bought the paid version. Because it was that awesome. But after KDE4 everything went to the toilet. I guess that is one of the reasons why Mandriva went bankrupt. So, with all due respect when someone says that Canonical should just stick to the desktop that's like giving them the capital punishment. Mandriva tried that, even RedHat tried that and both failed. RH nowadays earns its money exclusively from DoD and very specific server projects. SUSE covers the more traditional Linux enterprise workstation market.

The other problem is the total and complete instability of the Linux desktop environments. I guess that's Canonical's trying to steer away from any specific non qt5 technologies.

Meh... we'll see what's going to happen in a couple of years.


p.s. johnc is a complete troll. just ignore it.

[dee.]

p.s. johnc is a complete troll. just ignore it.

Sigh... Once more: "troll" is not a synonym for "person I disagree with".

[Anarchy]

Sigh... Once more: "troll" is not a synonym for "person I disagree with".

sigh. high previous posts are a classical case of trolling. don't become one!

[startzz]

So the intention here is to make Ubuntu an OS for third-world countries that have 50-year old technology and dirt-poor markets?

God no. Linux works terrible on old and slow hardware, if works at all, old linux versions are terrible things in general, and newer versions focuses on newer hardware. Ubuntu with unity de is even worse, intel hd graphics is minimum requirement to run it, but that will be with medium performance. And oh the irony, you shouldnt buy too new hardware too, as linux doesnt work well with it too, it takes months or a year for new hardware to get full support for linux

[doom_Oo7]

God no. Linux works terrible on old and slow hardware, if works at all,

Yes, that's why it's in every phones, embedded board, etc....

[johnc]

If you were mark, what would you do? Just make a distro with paid support avaliable?

If I were Mark I'd probably close up shop and save my money. It's pretty clear that there is no realistic path to profitability considering the market conditions.