Discussion on:

The Canonical conundrum: Why the Ubuntu hate?

Jack you nailed it. I've been following this nonsense since 11.04 and yes Ubuntu is the only Distro pushing itself beyond being another distro. Mark S should be thanked for getting Ubuntu into the world beyond us IT guys.

Sometimes I think Linux users are their own worst enemies. What Ubuntu (and its derivatives) has done is made the Linux desktop as easy as boot CD, next, next, next, reboot. Sorry if that pisses you off, but if I wanted to spend my days on the command line, I would still run DOS.

My children still have no idea what runs their computer. They save as .docx so their teachers can read their homework without a problem. That the spyware that comes with some of their game sites doesn't like the OS in their computer is just a bonus blessing.

It starts off sounding that the "hate" is from Ubuntu changing interfaces and such. But then moves into a rant about "Hate" because Ubuntu wants to be mainstream.

Can someone clear this up for me?

many Linux advocates claim they hate Ubuntu. Jack's position is that they have done more good than harm.

It's because Ubuntu dropped the ball a few times, so now people have moved to Mint. Which as you know, is Ubuntu with extra polish.

I would even say, it is in the nature of open source projects for people to be overly critical and jealous. Precisely because people are doing it for free, people seek reward in appreciation. When someone dumps their project they feel personally offended. When some other distro is more successful they feel threatened.

And then we have we also have a group of fundamentalists under the lead of Richard M. Stallman who charge at unbelievers or deviants of the holy faith and wish to burn them at the stakes.

I think it is mostly funny.

I can only bring my appreciation to Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical, all the people in the Ubuntu community and all the people in the Linux community for making it happen. No need for quarrel, use the energy rather in a constructive way. Like Mark Shuttleworth writes: do not poison the well you leave behind. I think that is well put. you want to make another project or distro great? Then do just that.

Whenever there is criticism on Ubuntu, there are people advertising Mint. Coincidence?

As Mint is based on Ubuntu, it should rather thank Ubuntu than criticize it. I installed it and I think it is all right, but I went back to Ubuntu. It is a carefree system. I did however install the Cairo Dock and made the Launcher to hide. This gives me even more buttons, and I get many extra's like a classic app menu, a shortcuts box for favourite folders, a folder menu, a recent activities window, a drop box, a shortcuts box om which you can drop favourite documents and folders. And then you have these great applets like a clock, netspeed meter, workspace changer, weather, that you can also put on the deskop as gadgets. I like that because the screenlets and conki often get messed up.

Just installing Cairo Dock made Mint superfluous for me, because I love the Hud, but I also like a configuralble dock and a classic app menu. As it autohides on fullscreen it works perfectly together with the Launcher. I totally stopped configuring. I just install the the Cairo dock and I feel fine.

There are other distro's based on Ubuntu, I like Elementary OS best. They totally revamped the desktop and made it look pixtel perfect and made it minimalistic in a good way. It is a delight to work with and ideal for people new to Linux. I think it is great the interface now gets a lot of attention. KDE has become pretty good and Gnome3 works fine with all the extensions. There is plenty to choose nowadays.

But other distro's do not draw much new people to Linux, they try to draw them from Ubuntu instead. Ubuntu is drawing people to Linux. Canonical has the right contacts in the industry to get them to preinstall Linux on devices. Ubuntu has brought gaming to the Linux platform. Ubuntu is bringing Linux to phones and tablets. Ubuntu is installed in the cloud. Linux needs this spearhead. Without it the Linux desktop remains a backwater. The industry wants a professional partner. If Ubuntu becomes a huge succes, other distro's can profit from this, both in development as in attracting more users.

I can't give examples using Linux, but I can use Internet explorer. My parents still can't find the home button, the history button, the favorites button.
Thats why I gave them Avant, and set it up with text icons and the biggest buttons possible, they love it, minimalist sucks.



I know someone is going to yell at me for only using one example. But outside the geekend blog, reading comprehension is pretty low here so why bother.

I feel the same way about Chrome and IE. They may be slicker than greased snot, but I need the visual cues.

Those arguing against Ubuntu (or anything else that imposes a single standard) seem always to miss the point that the mass market does not want choice. They don't want to be able to choose a desktop, window manager, one of fifteen office suites and so on. My employers offer a B2B product that is immensely configurable and flexible. You wouldn't believe the number of potential customers who have recoiled in fright at that power - "it's too complicated, we don't want to have to make decisions, rather than have something that can be made to do exactly what we want we'd rather have something that we can't change and we'll get used to it." I'm not joking.
If Canonical with Ubuntu offers a single consistent user experience across devices and thus a convincing alternative to The Other OS, and thus gains wide acceptance for GNU/Linux I wish them well. And praise be to Debian, which makes it possible. The geeks amongst us can still fiddle and tweak with it, if we want.

The success of Apple is ample proof the the masses (sheep) don't want choice. They want to play without having to think. I was on another site and a user was wailing about the lack of "instant gratification" at movie theaters.

It's just not for me.
It's squarely and to be fair accurately aimed at appliance users.

I'm not one of them...

What everyone conveniently forgets, is Ubuntu is itself based on Debian, and no one ever seems to give it credit for anything.

There's plenty of banter about Mint (and others) being based on Ubuntu, but that's only part of the story.

I installed Ubuntu 10.04 on my VM which is on a laptop. The resolution for the laptop is 1600X900, but there is no choice for this under Ubuntu. A search online found a very complicated work around which I decided was too complicated for me to follow. No simple installation program is available, and the great programmers for Ubuntu do not care or have time to resolve this problem even though many laptops have this resolution. Ubuntu only offers 4:3 resolution ratios.

I use Ubuntu on a Dell D630 with a 1440x900 resolution. That is clearly not 4:3, but 16:10.
However, I also use Oracle Virtualbox on the same laptop and also have issues in setting the desired resolution for new Ubuntu versions and ChromeOS.
Why use it in a VM?? If you don't want to change your harddrive, use a live-CD. That gets much closer to the real experience.
I use a dual-boot installation since I have applications that are not available for Ubuntu (or any Linux flavor for that matter) and also do not run in WINE.

or workstation.
I've been using both on my laptop (1600x900) and after instyalling vmware tools, it doesn't matter which size I make the vm, the guest os (ubuntu, mint, xp, 7, 8 ...) adapt seamlessly to these settings, including full screen

I agree with most of your points, but please, a "takeaway" is a substandard comestible purchased for speed over quality. Unless that is why you used the term, of course, would you please not?. "Abstract" or "Summary" seem perfectly adequate.

This article by Matt Baxter-Reynolds on TechRepublic pretty much said it simply enough for me to understand.

MB-R writes for ZDNet, not TR. Plus, he jumped to conclusions that cannot
be supported by the percentages he referenced. He has a history of dissing
anything Microsoft, which is fine, but when you erroneously use some arbitrary
percentage to support your thesis, you set yourself up for failure...and he did!
By the by, I am not only a moderator here, but also at ZDNet. Suffice it to say
that MB-R is one of a handful of bloggers there that only post click-bait
garbage just to fan the flames of all the shills, fanboys/fangirls and trolls.
Also, please try to stay on topic.
Wizard57M
TR Moderator
ZDNet Moderator

Personnally, I think most of you underestimate the hacker mentality. Many feel angry about Mir, which is the latest thing, because Mir is solving the same problem as Wayland. Don't believe me? Read: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#believe2. What's worse, Ubuntu already has a reputation for not contributing back upstream, and now they circumvent outright what was perceived as upstream in Wayland.

The attitude of Canonical is therefore seen as a lack of interest towards the larger Linux community. There is, I believe, a view by which Canonical is building it's success on the Linux community's effort like a parasite. I don't agree, but that is what I perceive. It seems there are some unwritten rules where the software is free/libre but just as long as the social construct's boat isn't rocked too much...

That being said, Wayland isn't doing it for me. That's because Wayland isn't on my system, in fact Wayland isn't really anywhere to be found except for a few rare exceptions. So, since Mir is opensource, and Wayland is useless right now, I'm rather glad for the competition. Let the better project win!