Aaron Seigo on Canonical's recent memory lapses and new corporate vision

[40hz]

This one probably won't be of interest to anyone other than the people (i.e. Deo) who read my last post here.

Here we have KDE president and FOSS developer Aaron Seigo calling Canonical out on some of the reality warping that seems to be going on with Ubuntu lately.

A couple of highlights from his post:

The biggest issue I see is that they are going it on their own and diverging from the rest of the Free software ecosystem with a software stack they have been developing behind closed doors and which will require you to sign over your copyright in order for you to contribute to it.

So perhaps in a year's time (probably more) they will have delivered what they have said they are doing right now, and my objection will then be erase. If that happens, it will be at the cost of becoming another "not really Linux" Linux that lives in its own universe. It will be Android minus Google.

the practice of changing the names on everything they use that could remotely be traced back to others says something about the thought processes. See, they don't use Status Notifiers .. no, they have Application Indicators. They don't do "device spectrum" they do "device convergence", etc. It would be understandable if they were the first to any of these ideas, but they aren't; and it makes having conversations about these issues so much more complex than it needs to be.

The truly crazy part is that they are writing their own display manager to accomplish this. They dismiss Wayland, though it has pretty much the same design. The main differences are that Canonical doesn't control Wayland development and Canonical's system will weld everything into one process: display manager, desktop shell, window management, output management, input event handling ... It's an interesting approach. Not one I'd take for technical reasons, but hey ..

The biggest issue I see is that they are going it on their own and diverging from the rest of the Free software ecosystem with a software stack they have been developing behind closed doors and which will require you to sign over your copyright in order for you to contribute to it.

They have effectively sealed themselves off from the rest of the Free software world. They will shoulder porting and maintaining Qt, Gtk+, XUL, etc. to their system. They will shoulder porting applications to the integration points (most of which will be delivered in Qt apps). They will not be sharing desktop shell infrastructure with anyone else, and using their Free software on other platforms will become increasingly more difficult.

Before closing, I would like to point out that Canonical is once again trying to rewrite the present as well as history as can be seen in the intro of the UnityNextSpec: "From the very beginning, Unity's concepts were tailored with a converged world in mind, where the overall system including the UI/UX scales across and adapts to a wide variety of different form factors." Looking at the very beginning of Unity right up until today, this is obvious nonsense. The rest of the spec spends its time explaining why none of the original design decisions in Unity will also translate other than it being a shell "a shell, with a launcher, indicators, switcher, dash etc.". Well .. yeah.

What is perhaps a more accurate statement is that Canonical fumbled through various ideas and technologies iteratively until they landed on the current concepts, dictated in part by technology and in part by business. There is nothing wrong with this, it's often how creativity happens. It is not, however, the 6 year prescience being claimed .. especially as we're still at least one year away from possibly seeing the current vision being achievable in practice.

So we have a new separate silo competing with the rest of the silos plus the open efforts (e.g. Wayland) while we are asked to accept a rewrite to a history Canonical is evidently not proud of ... "but this time it will be different, guys!"

Love it.

Those contemplating getting involved with or exploring Linux (as opposed to Ubuntu) had best start looking elsewhere. Because it's becoming increasingly clear that Ubuntu does not consider itself to be a part of the established GNU/Linux community any more. Assuming (in the light of their current reality warping) they ever really did.



 

[TaoPhoenix]

Those contemplating getting involved with or exploring Linux (as opposed to Ubuntu) had best start looking elsewhere. Because it's becoming increasingly clear that Ubuntu does not consider itself to be a part of the established GNU/Linux community any more. Assuming ... they ever really did.

-40hz (March 05, 2013, 12:42 PM)

Well, I missed that last post but idly I've surveyed the Linux landscape. I think *at one time* Ubuntu really did consider itself a Linux distro, aimed to "make it easy for newbies". Not sure where the line got really grayed out, but for a chunk of the early days, sure.

Then it def. got more and more isolationist, like a rebellious teenager.

Just for lack of time and interest, I lost track of the landscape, so I don't know anymore what distro I'd use. I think I like the Debian family, but now it would have to be some kind of non-Ubuntu newbie distro.

[40hz]

Just for lack of time and interest, I lost track of the landscape, so I don't know anymore what distro I'd use. I think I like the Debian family, but now it would have to be some kind of non-Ubuntu newbie distro.

-TaoPhoenix (March 05, 2013, 02:18 PM)

I'd suggest

Mint (Cinnamon edition) for ease of use, a very polished desktop, and minimal learning curve coming fresh off Windows.

CrunchBang if you like things clean and mean, actually have work to do, and aren't opposed to learning something.

Debian if you want to forgo everybody else's nonsense and get back to she who is magna mater to us all.

And Arch if you're dead serious about Linux, want to stop pretending, intend to learn how Linux works from the inside out, and don't mind getting dirty or busting your hump for about the first three months you're using it. If it's still on your machine - and you're actually still using it at the end of six months - you will grok Linux as few others do...

Also:

With the newest version of KDE (now at 4.10) showing so much promise, Suse (the traditional bastion of KDE admirers everywhere) will also be meriting another look once 4.10 becomes their default desktop. Few have done as nice a job of providing a beautiful and well integrated KDE experience as Suse has. And now that KDE's development team has abandoned some of the inadvisable and overly ambitious design directions they've embarked on over the last few years, KDE looks to be back on track. (Even if Linus Torvalds recently ditched it and went back to using Gnome. )

If none of that works for you, there are another zillion or so alternatives to choose from. Like dogs - there's at least one penguin out there for everyone.

--------------------

Servers are an easier matter IMHO. Two words: CentOS or BSD. End of script.   

[ewemoa]

And Arch if you're dead serious about Linux, want to stop pretending, intend to learn how Linux works from the inside out, and don't mind getting dirty or busting your hump for about the first three months you're using it.

-40hz (March 05, 2013, 03:53 PM)

Arch has some nice docs and being able to easily tweak the package building (like the BSDs and gentoo ) is nice.

Quite wary of using it for a server for serious things though for various reasons.  For a server, more inclined to go with Debian.

[Edvard]

Servers are an easier matter IMHO. Two words: CentOS or BSD. End of script.

-40hz (March 05, 2013, 03:53 PM)

Aw, come on, no love for a headless 'Debian Stable' box? 

Admittedly, mine gets minimal usage beyond as a NAS and testbed for some net stuff I get interested in from time to time, but stable and solid, it is. 

[40hz]

Servers are an easier matter IMHO. Two words: CentOS or BSD. End of script.

-40hz (March 05, 2013, 03:53 PM)

Aw, come on, no love for a headless 'Debian Stable' box?  

Admittedly, mine gets minimal usage beyond as a NAS and testbed for some net stuff I get interested in from time to time, but stable and solid, it is.  

-Edvard (April 03, 2013, 10:44 PM)

It's ok as a server. (And I have a lot of love for Debian.) But why reinvent the wheel when a distro addressing the requirements for a stable server has already been assembled? If I were ever really that gung-ho about doing my very own server base, I'd probably start with Arch so I knew exactly what was in it. (And just for the record: I ain't that gung-ho!)

For NAS use I prefer to stick with FreeNAS since it just works. Someday I might consider going with OwnCloud once it matures a bit more. (OC is still a little 'squishy' in places AFAIC.)

But that's the beauty of Linux. There's the perfect 'something' out there for everybody who takes the time to look. Just like dog breeds and ice cream.

[Edvard]

I've installed OwnCloud on it (part of the afore-mentioned net stuff to play with) and it works, kinda.  Using it as a way to play selections from my music archive stored there is not that convenient; I'd like something like a Grooveshark interface rather than a "pick the file and click play" sort of thing you get with OwnCloud.

*Back On Topic*
I left Canonical back around 9.10 or 10.04 and never looked back.  I saw the direction they were going even then and it didn't look pretty.  Debian treats me right, I think I'll keep her...  

[40hz]

*Back On Topic*
I left Canonical back around 9.10 or 10.04 and never looked back.  I saw the direction they were going even then and it didn't look pretty.  Debian treats me right, I think I'll keep her...  

-Edvard (April 04, 2013, 01:43 AM)

Yes indeed. 10.04 was when the "smart money" began bailing out en masse in the wake of what Ubu loyalists were calling "rumors" while simultaneously accusing Canonical's critics of "reading too much" into things.

In many respects these apologists were right. Some of the moves by Canonical weren't nearly as bad as they originally seemed. As it turned out, they were significantly worse.

And good ol' Debian still remains a reliable and trusted friend despite some of the distancing and Microsoft kowtowing going on in the Linux world. Especially on the part of a few mature distros that really should know better than to get sucked into playing Redmond's old game. But there you have it. They'll learn their lesson eventually since Microsoft's track record on how they treat their strategic "allies" and business "partners" is none too stellar.

So be it.

[ewemoa]

And good ol' Debian still remains a reliable and trusted friend despite some of the distancing and Microsoft kowtowing going on in the Linux world.

-40hz (April 04, 2013, 06:11 AM)

The Arch Linux Package signing issue was what significantly increased my appreciation of Debian's clear admirable (TM) intentions.

I found and continue to find Arch really useful and helpful, but after reading up on the aforementioned issue, find it hard to convince myself of using it for longer term server things.