Ubuntu 12.10 will include advertisements for products on Amazon. It will look like this – if you search, product suggestions will pop up. This seems like a rather slippery slope to me, and I certainly wouldn’t want this on my desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet, or anywhere else. On the web – fine, I’m on your site, not mine – but my desktop is mine, and mine alone. Not that it matters – open source, someone will disable them. Biggest concern: does this mean my search queries get sent across the web?
This is a good start. But Windows laptops are still ahead. Maybe next release they can install some shortcuts to Ebay, and install some trial versions of McAffee Total Awesome Complete Protection 2012Elite.
Only then will Linux catch up to desktop Windows.
Those are pre-installed by PC vendors, not by Microsoft.
Try harder next time.
I don’t know what all the hype is about, but it looks like to be just a fu**ing lens! Don’t like it? Don’t install it! Simple as that! And please stop spreading all this FUD!
Don’t install what? Ubuntu or the lens? Not installing Ubuntu is certainly possible, but this “lens” will probably be installed by default with the OS. Otherwise, how else would they be able to get those kickbacks from Amazon, sending all of everyone’s HUD searches to Amazon while they’re at it? If that’s the case, then you can only uninstall it after it has already been installed. It’s easier to just install one of the many other Linux distributions–and IMO, preferably one that is not based directly on Ubuntu.
I have to say I find the whole thing fascinating myself. I mean here is the company that the community gushed over, now when they are bleeding to death and trying to keep the lights on its “ZOMG they are trying to make money! How dare they not do everything for free, i’ll switch OSes first!” Wharrgarbl!
I guess like communism the whole FOSS philosophy just don’t work, at least on the desktop. As i have said before it will take at least 100 million dollars to bring Linux up to the same level as Windows and OSX, you have whole subsystems like X and Pulse that will need to be replaced or rebuilt, docs, regression testing, QA and QC, yet as Canonical found out there is simply no way to make money on a Linux desktop. How many “Ubuntu derived” distros are there, enjoying the fruits of Canonical labor without throwing them even a beer? I rest my case.
The big mistake Shuttleworth made was using Linux in the first place, if he’d have used BSD as Jobs did he could have kept his work, charged $20 a pop once the buzz built up and would now have the money to not only continue but actually improve the system. Instead we’ll see Canonical join Mandriva, Xandros, Linsprie and the rest on the scrapheap of history and nothing will ever get any better. Different and prettier yes, but NOT better. Heck you can’t even update the system without Pulse or WiFi or something breaking, this is 2012 and Linux behaves like its 1993 when it comes to drivers, that just won’t cut it.
I have to admit, I never did get the big deal with Ubuntu back in those days. I kept trying it, version after version, trying to figure out what the big deal was with no success. And later on, for a while they started to do the right things, so it was interesting–but it was still just Debian, only with an installable live CD, more up-to-date applications, a custom theme, less stability, and the commercial backing of a billionaire.
I despised advertising back then, and I despise advertising now. For me, nothing’s changed. Hell, I only used Ubuntu for a brief time, mostly back in 2008. Back when it really was starting to get good. Before and shortly after then, as well as now, I was and have been using something else.
You make that seem like a bad thing, but Canonical itself seems to be enjoying it. Most recent example: Lubuntu.
Yes, because we all want another god damn proprietary operating system.
Yes, because we all want another god damn proprietary operating system.
Why the hell not? It would help create some bona fide competition on the desktop market, which IMO Apple and Microsoft badly need, both being effective monopolies in their respective niches.
Anyway, the problem with OSes isn’t that they have proprietary licenses, it’s that they have unfriendly licenses. Take Windows for example… You pay $100+ for a physical medium that’s licensed to maybe 3 computers, no exception for VMs, have to buy a new license when installing on a new computer, etc. This is not a user-friendly state of affairs, but MS can afford to keep things this way because they have the market cornered. Having alternative, proprietary desktop OSes available might force them to price and license their OS more competitively.
I don’t see how adding another proprietary operating system to the mix will help anything.
As you said, the license is the real problem for most proprietary software including both Microsoft’s and Apple’s, and not just for operating systems. The problem is, the licenses are practically always a problem and I don’t imagine that magically changing out of nowhere. Companies know people don’t care, they’ll just buy the software anyway, not even reading the license.
The companies know they have their customers by the balls because they don’t even get to *read* the license until after they tear away the shrink-wrap and put the disc in the drive, and by that time it’s too late: the store won’t take it back for a refund, because you’ve already opened it, and they suspect you to have copied the disc and registration key, you dirty thief!
I would be surprised if any company would ever come up with a license for their proprietary software product that I could truly agree with, and actually mean it when I am forced to click “I agree” to proceed with the installation. Sorry, but I just don’t see it happening.
Partly wrong. You are correct that most sys admin will not read the whole long license agreement, but they do review it for the sake of legality. We received faxes from authorities asking us to validate our software licenses, or else the police will come, so its wrong to say COMPANIES will not read licenses. Home users, yes.
By “review it” do you actually mean:
“quickly skim through it, looking for any potential problem wording; slow down at such red flags and actually read these sections where potential legal problems may arise to protect ourselves from lawsuits (aka. money loss); continue skipping through to the end”… and then click next just like everyone else does?
Edited 2012-09-24 07:55 UTC
$100 dollars for a license that never runs out, is supported for 10 years (works out at about $10 a year … and you call that expensive).
The cost argument is negligible given the amount of time, you have support.
I still have my original XP and 2000 licenses and they still work and install fine. $100 is a pittance.
Edited 2012-09-23 13:45 UTC
What does Windows support look like?
Updates for ten years.
Well, since most computers come with Windows anyway, it’s a non-issue for most consumers unless they want to upgrade.
Support, eh? Where is this support you mention? The last time I wanted to report a problem I found in Windows there was nothing but an auto-reply email.
2000 always will, though good luck finding updated apps that’ll still install on it without some manual effort. As for XP… well, we’ll see if it still installs and runs just fine once Microsoft takes the XP activation servers offline.
It is pretty hard to find hardware that will work with Windows 2000, for Windows XP the same will happen in a couple of years.
I see some people clinging to their Windows XP, they don’t like Windows Vista, Windows 7 and especially not Windows 8.
I think their only long term option is to but Windows 7 now before you can’t buy that anymore.
Dunno,
KB, Updates etc etc.
Support isn’t just first line support crap, oh well.
You are aware you can still go to Microsoft.com for Windows 98 updates?
*rem*
Edited 2012-09-24 08:19 UTC
I don’t necessarily want another proprietary operating system, but I’m enough of a realist to know that software doesn’t get developed up to a high standard of quality unless the developers are getting paid, and the easiest way to make a return on ones investment is to sell the product at a fair price. The trouble with open source operating systems is that, when push comes to shove, there’s very little money to be made from one on the home desktop. It works fine in a professional setting because most companies are willing to pay for support contracts and other services, so companies like Red Hat can make their money that way and give the operating system itself out at no cost. Home users, however, won’t typically go in for such a plan and so the easiest way to make a high quality product they will want is to sell it and, where something like GNU/Linux is concerned, selling to home users is impractical as they can just get it for free anyway. This is one of the reasons why Linux on the average home desktop doesn’t work: Most companies are concentrating on the corporate workstation and server since those markets are the cash cows and so home users are considered last if at all. I see no real way to avoid this except to sell a proprietary system and, unlike a lot of people here, I don’t dislike the idea of proprietary software. A group of people create something and, if it’s successful, they have the right to proffit from their good work. I don’t much care for the licenses of most proprietary software, but that’s a problem with lawyers not with the idea of closed software in and of itself.
The other thing is, what about a split open OS/proprietary applications model, and use the app store model to make money?
Basically, loss leader the OS to sell apps.
FOSS works fine on the desktop for single applications, or IMO even software collections like the GNU userland. What it doesn’t work fine with is a huge agglomeration of software produced by different developers with vastly different ideas of what’s sensible.
Can you give an example of a single FOSS desktop application that has a company with developers 100% dedicated to it, that makes money out of it?
Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice don’t count as the revenue source is not from the application they develop.
No, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about software quality as far as the end user is concerned.
OpenERP.
This is no desktop application, as it runs server side.
Then why am I using it as a desktop app?
No, you are using a browser that shows content created in a remote server somewhere. Probably with some parts generated dynamically on the browser thanks to JavaScript. This is not a desktop application.
As a vendor of such software I can make money out of you, by restricting on how your browser is able to access the server.
If you don’t pay, there is no more server access to you.
This a complete different usage scenario from desktop applications, specially where the majority don’t do any type of network access.
Then this GTK Client is a fiction of my imagination.
http://nightly.openerp.com/6.0/releases/openerp-client-6.0-latest.d…
I failed to see there is a desktop client at all.
The home page online has screenshots of the “application” running inside safari.
Me as a prospective customer am presented with the options Online Demo and Subscribe & Start.
I though downloadwould be for the server application.
So I wonder how much money they make on the desktop application vs the online access.
This is not a company that only sells desktop software.
[q]
Regardless of how you spin it now, it fulfils the requirements in the original comment.
It’s FOSS
It’s desktop.
It’s developed by people that spend 100% of their time on only that application.(Yes they are a group of people in that company, but they work on the desktop client 100%)
You are the one trying to work around my comment, not me.
Your example is not a company that lives only from selling 100% desktop software based in open source software.
Oh… Now it has to sell it!
Moving goalposts – you’re good at it!
No, what the Linux community was impressed with initially was the fact that an African millionaire decided to produce a Debian Linux spin-off that would be available for 2nd and 3rd World countries.
Ubuntu, the distro, however, is not Canonical, the corporation. Shuttleworth is independently wealthy and annual revenues for their services still nets them around $30 million. No that is not Apple, but it is hardly bleeding out and struggling to keep the lights on.
FOSS and Linux are not the same as ‘corporate capitalism’ though they are hardly ‘communistic’ in opposition to it. But you obviously confuse the two numerous times in this post. Most complaints these days about Ubuntu and Canonical are that they do not know how to separate the two either.
For example, Ubuntu’s insistence on using Unity and now adding by default (i.e., I must opt-out not opt-in) integrated Amazon search are two examples of this inappropriate fusing of two radically different philosophies where both become watered down. Freedom is removed from Ubuntu, and Canonical is still not the African Apple or Microsoft.
If they want to be financially more successful, they could learn a thing or two from the market segment leaders like IBM, Red Hat, etc. Red Hat and Fedora keep and maintain this separation. If Fedora wants to be bleeding edge and do something stupid like adding Gnome 3, then they can. If it is a screw-up, someone will fork it, maintain Gnome 2, etc. Red Hat’s corporate Linux is very conservative and maintains stability for long-term business customers and thereby provides them a much more stable and growing revenue stream. After all, RHEL versions 4, 5 & 6 ship with Gnome 2.8, 2.16, & 2.28 respectively.
Shuttleworth made his millions in the ‘dot-com’ high as a venture capitalist. He is a ‘personality’ and not necessarily the best person to run a successful long-term corporate entity in the ‘Linux’ world.
Wow. Well if that’s it, then it truly is ironic that Ubuntu is now trying to advertise shit from Amazon to people in those same second- and third-world countries. Including that continent the distribution itself originates from.
Edited 2012-09-23 04:27 UTC
That was my observation at the time in the professional worlds I am in with those who use Linx, and yes, I definitely agree that it is ironic as hell!
Personally, I was never impressed with Shuttlworth nor Ubuntu. I will just use Debian proper.
Exactly how does this remove any freedom from Ubuntu?
Ah, so they should create an enterprise product that is partly closed source and relies on Windows?
So you admit that you too are confused when it comes to Open Source, Linux, and FSF? Not surprising as many are.
Relies on Window? In what universe does RHEL rely on Windows? They are interoperable in the Enterprise space but dependent and reliant? Where does IBM rely on Microsoft? Again, the Power Series with AIX & GNU/Linux are interoperable with Windows, but reliant and dependent? WTF are you smoking?!
Closed source? AIX is Unix not Linux but the Linux portion of IBM’s services is Open Source. I run Scientific Linux which is from RHEL – in other words, Open Source. IBM & Red Hat know how to sell services and keep their divisions apart, make changes much more conservatively as any large business should, and are not run by ‘personalities’.
Facts be damned eh, if it goes against your ‘world-view’ or chosen tech religion?
No, I am not confused at all. RHEV-M, a core component of RHEV, only recently became Open Source and freed from it’s dependence on Windows Server.
Edited 2012-09-23 05:09 UTC
RHEV isn’t RHEL, and no one cares about RHEV anyway.
Yes but this was in relation to Red Hat, the company, not RHEL, the product.
True that.
RHEV is virtualization software and management built on various foundations including closed source Qumranet, open source oVirt, and type 1 hypervisor of which numerous OS’s have that including Linux with KVM and Windows with Hyper-V. You have confused yourself in believing for some odd reason that RHEV is based on Hyper-V hypervisor by Microsoft but it is in fact based on KVM hypervisor and then uses the other referenced management software already listed above. Red Hat acquired Qumranet in 2008 and yes just open sourced the virtualization technology. This technology is exactly as I previously stated about interoperability, and it is NOT based on Windows.
I am by no means and expert on RHEL nor a certified engineer, however, we do use it at my workplace. Hell, even Wikipedia has the correct information as I stated above, and I quote:
“Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV), an enterprise virtualization product produced by Red Hat, is based on the KVM hypervisor. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization uses the SPICE protocol and VDSM (Virtual Desktop Server Manager) with a RHEL-based centralized management server.
Some of the technologies of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization came from Red Hat’s acquisition of Qumranet. Other parts derive from oVirt.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RHEV
No, that’s not at all what I am saying.
Until RHEV 3 it required a Windows server. The management console was written in C# and only ran on Windows.
I started using RHEV with version 3, so I do stand corrected that prior to that version, it did require a Windows product in order to manage it.
You have perhaps miscommunicated but you suggested that Red Hat in the enterprise server space has only until recently been dependent upon Microsoft servers for functioning and THAT is why they are successful. That is simply not true. Only one component of their virtualization software ‘required’ that until they ported it to Java and removed any future need to use a Windows product. Other aspects of their server technology in the enterprise is interoperable with Windows but never was dependent upon it. And prior to the creation of their own virtualization ‘product’ VMWare and other software tools were used.
So my point still stands that Canonical/Ubuntu could still learn a thing or two about being a successful Linux business from Red Hat/Fedora in their very boundaried way of keeping Red Hat and Fedora separate and yet still connected. Blurring that line by adding Amazon advertisements to the Ubuntu 12.10 distro in order to ‘raise’ revenues for Canonical will lead to future business and distro failure, IMHO.
BTW, have you ever tried Solaris for x86? It’s proprietary (again) but freeware for personal use. Oracle probably puts a lot of effort into QC for it, and it has several advantages Linux (like being much more secure by default than 90% of distros last I checked). Honestly no idea what it’s like on the desktop though, or what sort of hardware support it has.
Who cares about Solaris anymore ? The fork is open:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc
Yes and nobody would have buy it. And you forget that the community is helping a lot in the bug finding fixing and quality control which you have to do yourself in a proprietary system. Everybody seems to forget that apple was struggling before 5-6 years ago before they came up with the iphone. I am not saying you can make money on the desktop but it’s not the model problem.
And no search on my desktop lens not seem so disruptive. I can live with that.
Oh, come one … what “fruits of Canonical labour”? are you being serious? Just install Debian and you’ll see that Ubuntu is exactly the same as Debian, not mentioning some silly stuff like upstart or Unity which Canonical developed.
They are rather a parasite, and your analogy to communism is highly inappropiate. I know USA has a century-isuess with mythical communism, but come-on!
FLOSS development model is working great and it is benefits both individuals and corporations. There is NO “communism” [BTW – you would be more accurate if you would have say “socialism”] there. There’s something you won’t understand as long as you’re sticking to anarchocapitalistic terms of life – this “something” is kindness, selflessness and altruism.
But yeah, go ahead and buy yourself some sincere sympathy.
I guess like communism the whole FOSS philosophy just don’t work, at least on the desktop
It’s time to stop posting, buddy, if you don’t want to look embarrassing even more.
Uhm, if Shuttleworth had made Ubuntu a closed source fork of *BSD, he wouldn’t have had much hype, and he would have had to put in significant resources to get various drivers (most notably for graphics) close to Linux’s level. FreeBSD is currently years behind Linux as a desktop OS, for the simple reason that Linux is what all the desktop work goes in to. For your imaginary closed *BSD Ubuntu to get close to Windows, you would have to multiply your imaginary 100 million dollars with a real number higher than 1.
And despite the fact that no one seems to make much money off the Linux desktop (nor BSD), it strangely does seem to work rather well.
The real money in GNU/Linux and BSD is in the background, not as a retail consumer desktop OS. Put it on a server, sell services running on that server, and make some bucks.
Every web host I’ve ever used or researched seemed to be more successful with their *nix based packages than Windows. Unless you need something specifically offered by Windows IIS, there is simply no reason to run it given the licensing costs passed on to the user.
“Instead we’ll see Canonical join Mandriva, Xandros, Linsprie and the rest on the scrapheap of history”
Don’t taunt me. I’d love nothing better than to see Ubuntu and Arch go that route.
Edited 2012-09-23 14:43 UTC
Hey, don’t be hating Arch. Arch at least says it’s a bleeding-edge volunteer effort. And the community is actually helpful.
Edited 2012-09-23 15:50 UTC
I didn’t used to, until their most recent round of “upgrades.” What’d they fuck up the filesystem structure for, which completely broke my system? Why bother with systemd when they actually had something that worked before? Whose brilliant idea was it to move all libraries into /usr/lib, breaking any multi-partition setups? I guess they did what most people in Linux land do: If it actually works, let’s break it so we can have some fun. Meanwhile, the rest of us have a life.
They were outed a few days after the big changes were made. A couple of the senior members admitted they not only don’t want any new users, they would be perfectly happy to drop down into obscurity and close up the forums if possible. They apparently want the OS to become a members-only club where only the leetest of the leet are allowed in.
There was a minor backlash but I think most of the people against the changes sucked it up and kept using it anyway, and the rest did like me and dropped the project altogether.
Shit. That doesn’t sound good.
But if their intent is to slide into obscurity, then by all means let them have it. Me, I’ll pick some other distro.
They could have just asked their users for donations to keep the train rolling. That is working fine for Mint.
Then again, Canonical pretends to be a business and not a millionaires plaything, so selling users to Amazon is more business like…
Don’t install the lens. It’s not embedded in Ubuntu itself.
I’m really tired of that kind of replies.
People are not moaning here senselessly. Canonical doesn’t give you choice with this hardcoded option, and it’s kinda not what Linux is all about.
I would presume that your avatar would have something to do not only with FLOSS OS, but also FLOSS philosophy, but it looks like it doesn’t.
To sum up: “take it or leave” *IS NOT A REAL CHOICE*. It’s an ultimatum. In such case you have only one choice, the other one is dropping the offer and leaving with nothing [in theoretical situation]. I know there are other distros, but what If someone loves Unity and Ubuntu that much and hates ads? So please, stop copying this “take it or leave it” Windows-world attitude. It doesn’t help a bit to anyone. It is actually senseless.
The last thing is the privacy thing: don’t know about you, but I would NEVER allow anything to display me ANY sort of ads on MY own computer and OS. NE-VER!
Yes they are.
What philosophy would that be, exactly? FLOSS is bigger than Linux and the FSF. I’m pretty sure that making design choices isn’t something that “philosophy” prohibits. Maybe it’s against ads? Hmmmm..nope.
Or, you know, just uninstall the damn lens. That’s a choice.
Really? How about all the choices that are “hardcoded” into every single distro, like SusE’s Yast or Slackware’s lack of sysv init or systemd that will soon make it into RH/CentOS. What if I don’t like those choices? Am I being deprived of my freedoms by Patrick Volkerding?
Come on, the very reason we have different distros is BECAUSE they’re different and does things differently.
Also, being a default is not the same as being hard-coded. There are some pretty fundamental differences between the two, actually.
Remove. The. Lens.
Remove. The. Lens.
Remove. The. Damn. Lens.
I’m pretty sure no-one has denied you that right.
[quote]What philosophy would that be, exactly? FLOSS is bigger than Linux and the FSF. I’m pretty sure that making design choices isn’t something that “philosophy” prohibits. Maybe it’s against ads? Hmmmm..nope. [/quote]
Well, yes. You may be right here. It’s not against “open source” philosophy for sure.
[quote]Or, you know, just uninstall the damn lens. That’s a choice. [/quote]
Is it even possible? how do you know? have you tested it? I must admit I am not quite sure whether it’s possible yet. I’m quite sure they’ll make it nearly impossible, as it will become their way to increase their revenue. It will probobly require some low-level hackery, which … guess what? not many users will be able to perform.
[quote]Really? How about all the choices that are “hardcoded” into every single distro, like SusE’s Yast or Slackware’s lack of sysv init or systemd that will soon make it into RH/CentOS. What if I don’t like those choices? Am I being deprived of my freedoms by Patrick Volkerding?
Come on, the very reason we have different distros is BECAUSE they’re different and does things differently.
Also, being a default is not the same as being hard-coded. There are some pretty fundamental differences between the two, actually. [/quote]
This is inadequate. Can’t you see any difference between commercial ADS [externally submitted] and internal system architecture/technology [which is also free/libre]? how on earth are lenses even close to systemd or sysv init scripts? are you serious? I don’t think so.
Yes.
Because Unity is open source. One way or the other it will always be possible to remove that feature.
In terms of choice they’re not different. Every distro makes a number of different design and policy decisions. Being ad supported is just another decision and it’s in no way against what Linux is all about.
They’re all software.
Just when Ubuntu supposedly starts making something halfway decent out of the atrocity known as Unity, they go ahead and do this. 😐
Canonical has been proving time and time again that they can be trusted with the quality and consistency of the product as much as Microsoft can be with theirs (in other words: not at all), and with this, they’re proving that this remains true. Increasingly Apple is showing they can’t be trusted either, although I would say that they’ve already reached the point long ago where I wouldn’t trust them with a ten-foot pole myself.
Move the window manager icons on left. Remove the GIMP. Announce ditching the X Window System for the still far from proven Wayland. Announce that a still buggy and incomplete graphical environment designed for netbooks and other screen-limited devices is going to be made the standard for ALL computers. Switch from a shitty (literally) brown theme to another horrible looking theme that looks like a kid dumped purple and orange food colorings in a shallow pan of milk. Move on over Microsoft, it looks like you have a competitor that doesn’t give two shits about their users… just like you.
Ubuntu fans, down-mod away. You know you want to. But really, this has already crossed the line of “ridiculous” a while back… and it’s still only getting worse. At this point, I fully expect Ubuntu to reach the point of Apple and Microsoft: users be damned, we don’t care what you want, we’re working for ourselves. And yet they’ll keep that philosophy claiming that it’s a “free operating system for everyone to use.” You know, that “humanity toward others” nonsense. Okay, Canonical… who are you advertising those Kindle Fires to? Some poor AIDS and malaria patients somewhere in Africa?
Just another reason not to use or recommend Ubuntu to anyone I know… and I haven’t since probably 2008, when they started going downhill. The real question is, can this shit be turned off? Not that it really matters in the end, because Ubuntu is already too far lost to even consider again in the future.
Edited 2012-09-23 01:13 UTC
As an Ubuntu user and someone who likes Unity, I don’t want this. I don’t want all my local searches, all my use of the dash shared with Amazon, I don’t want targeted advertising and I don’t want adware, spyware etc. Presumably it can be removed but it shouldn’t be there, and if it stays I would likely reluctantly change distro.
I don’t have a problem with a shopping lens, but I need to be able to not use it, putting it in the home lens is not acceptable.
Oh noes.
Hmm,I can see gimp right there, install-able from the software center. Doesn’t look removed to me.
It’s an announcement that they want adopt wayland early and when it’s ready. Oh my, what a horrible thing to do. You may have noticed that it hasn’t happened yet.
You do know that different cultures favors different colors, right? Personally I’ve always liked the earthy Ubuntu colors. It’s a design choice, it doesn’t have to suit everyone. Sure beats the billions of boring blue/gray color schemes out there.
You must be talking about your own comments.
Note, I didn’t mod you down.
Wow. Just wow. I’m sure that wasn’t intended to sound as judgmental as it did but still.
Edited 2012-09-23 03:45 UTC
I knew that one was coming. Here, let me clarify what I meant in a more complete explanation. I admit I was a bit vague on what exactly I meant, and it was too late to update the post:
“Remove the GIMP, without providing a decent, suitable alternative in its place on the standard installation disc.”
Yes, it’s in the repositories, always has been. It’s a simple “sudo apt-get install gimp” away for anyone who knows how and wants to use the command line. Hell, it’s even somewhere in the software center as you mentioned (I would hope so, considering the software center is just a glorified GUI for the package management system, dumbed down for people who don’t know Linux).
But should a regular user be forced to go out of their way to install, of all things, a bitmap image editor? F-Spot or whatever it is was *not* a suitable replacement. It is an image organizer/library application that wants you to make copies of all your pictures in a another directory just to use it (no thanks, I have a file system and don’t want copies of my pictures all over the place), and it offers no real bitmap creation/editing support.
And don’t try to say that crop, rotate and remove red-eye provide proper, complete image editing functionality.
Just as they “adopted” Unity when it was “ready”? Note the sarcasm.
Hey, if you like the color of dirt, mud and shit, by all means, enjoy yourself. You might just be one of the few people who has less post-install configuration to do.
Who cares? Why does the default install have to come with a bitmap editor? Most people don’t need a bitmap editor and if/when they do it’s easily install-able. That’s what important. Besides, considering GIMP’s godawful UI pretty much ANYTHING is better for the average use case.
Unity is their own project, Wayland isn’t. Besides, you seem to put an awful lot of importance in something that hasn’t even happened.
Good job insulting everyone, which happen to be a large part of the non-western world, who like different colors.
Well then, why has Windows come with Paint practically since its inception? Did it really hurt anyone when Microsoft included a bitmap editor as a standard feature of their operating system? While on the topic, let’s go back a bit further. What about MacPaint? Surely that wasn’t needed as a feature of the original Macintosh, was it? Even if you don’t need it, a bitmap editor should be like a text editor; it should just be there, in case you do need it. I would consider it basic expected functionality.
Even at an early stage stage of someone’s life (ie. kids) its availability and accessibility makes it valuable as a teaching tool. And in today’s GUI-driven computing world, isn’t there even the slightest bit of importance in knowing the basics of how to use a bitmap editor? Images are used everywhere, from web and product design to advertising. An early introduction surely can’t hurt anyone. And yet, Ubuntu basically did away with it completely in their base install/live environment.
You know, there are other actual image editors that they could have replaced it with and I would see no problem then. There are bitmap editors that are faster, that take up less space, and are easier to use/learn. Which goes back to my point that F-Spot–despite what Canonical claimed–is NOT a replacement image editor. Yet, they acted as if it were a drop-in replacement. An image organizer with no real image editing functionality is not a replacement.
You talk as if brown is the only color there is and that everyone in non-western cultures just loves it.
Either way, I’m done arguing colors and bitmap editors… no longer an Ubuntu user myself so the horrible themes don’t really phase me, and I’ve said enough about Ubuntu’s lack of a bitmap editor.
Edited 2012-09-23 05:44 UTC
A GNOME Shell user? If yes, then you loved that horrible/ugly icons, boring grey, wasting so much space, and the Activities area where you can view the launcher, are filled with so many icons that I can no longer see what’s in there because it gets smaller and smaller as you run applications.
So, please understand that this is a subjective issue when it comes to design, but the consensus if you want to know is GNOME Shell is a design failure, compared to Unity.
GNOME 3, or more specifically the “GNOME Shell,” is an atrocity. That horrible environment is another discussion entirely, which I’d rather not get too much into (I’ve slammed it plenty in the past already, no need to again). And given that Ubuntu didn’t even want to use it (they chose to use their own Unity that they originally designed for netbooks, after all) makes it matter even less in the context of this news item/discussion anyway.
But while already slightly off-topic… Between those two environments plus Microsoft’s Metro, I honestly couldn’t say which one is the worst (at least when talking about traditional desktop/laptop computers with keyboard and mouse/trackpad). Maybe GNOME 3, by just a hair? I don’t know. Doesn’t matter, they all suck and I refuse to use any of them. The KDE guys were the only ones who got it right by keeping a traditional-style desktop while simply adding an alternate GUI for those devices that were better-suited to something different.
I actually agree with most of your issues, which is why I don’t use Ubuntu for much of anything anymore. When I do I use Lubuntu and build up from there; it’s a great starting point.
But a few things you said are a bit nonsensical. You said:
Honestly, if the default color scheme of an OS bugs you enough to stop using it, especially when it’s an OS that makes it dead simple to change themes, you’ve got some serious personal issues to address. That’s not an attack, it’s simply an observation, and I think it was a poor choice for your rant. Again, just my opinion.
That was a low blow and uncalled for. Those people have done nothing to you and should not be used as a pawn to make a silly point. But beyond that, Ubuntu happens to have a huge presence in the U.S., Europe and Asia compared to other GNU/Linux distros and it’s those eyes they are targeting. I don’t like the idea of the Amazon lens myself, but I’m not going to stoop to your level to make the argument.
That’s exactly what it is, despite how we feel about the company behind it. Until the day Canonical stops using the Linux kernel and GNU utilities, stops giving out the source code, and stops giving away the OS for free, it will remain a free/Free OS.
Bottom line, just don’t use it anymore. Recommend something else to your friends. Everyone else, just like you, is free to make up their own mind.
You are free to use something else if you don’t like it.
I think it is awesome that Amazon believes they can make money from this. Honestly, I’m hoping it works and both sides make money. If nothing else it would prove that not only hardcore computer nerds are using Linux, since most of us probably just open Amazon.com if we want something from their site.
to some but running a business like Canonical and to sponsor a project like Ubuntu COSTS MONEY.
Don’t like it? Uninstall the lens or use a different distro. There’s choice, ya know.
So a Linux user finally admits that there is no money to be made from a desktop distribution?
lol ubuntu is terrible. it feels like they want to strangle me. but I’d strangle them first.. if they weren’t already strangling themselves
So far we’ve got:
– Unity, a pretty GUI that is extremely annoying to use. (Why do you have to click through 3-4 things to get to the CD burner application?)
– Unnecessary 3D rubbish on the desktop, plus transparency and blur effects ad nauseum, despite the fact that Linux graphics drivers suck moose. Doing fancy stuff without the framework to support it is a recipe for failure, people.
– The apt-xapian-index cron job, which eats up all available CPU cycles for 10 minutes or so once a week so that apt-get can be a tiny bit faster. Sure you can disable it, but what do you think Uncle Jim-Bob’s opinion on Ubuntu will be when his desktop goes catatonic?
– And now desktop advertising by default. Yeah, that’s going to go over well.
…
BTW, how does Canonical make money? Selling tech support?
If you hate the mouse like I do, unity is great.
I can launch anything by hitting Meta, typing two or three letters, then hitting enter.
likewise with things like connecting VPNs, and launching menu items, from he HUD.
Unity is designed around searching and the keyboard, which is why I love it.
I’ll be using it, and just removing this lens.
I don’t live in the US, so Amazon sucks for me.
The eyecandy is annoying, but I didn’t buy a powerful computer only to have it idle the whole time.
I think canonical make their money from support, and from leeching off of Shuttleworth’s other company.
Edited 2012-09-23 06:27 UTC
I agree. The keyboard and search focus of Unity is one of the reasons I too love it. If just the SSH lens would get fixed to understand ecdsa.
I don’t really know why eyecandy people are complaining about. I don’t see any useless effects and the default ones are useful to me.
At least there are no wobbly windows and crap like that.
Besides, if you don’t want the effects you can use Unity 2d which is functionally equivalent to Unity 3d.
I think you nailed it perfectly, namely the reason why Ubuntu (and Gnome Shell) have alienated a good share of their users: they got rid of a perfectly working paradigm (WIMP) to adopt one that appeals to a much smaller audience.
It’s not only that they tried to fix what wasn’t broken, but that the fix is much worse than what we had before. Hint: when you’re playing catchup with the bigger players and want to expand your current user base, you either come up with such an incredibly good new thing that everyone will fall for it, or you play it safe and slowly build on what you had before. Unity (and Gnome Shell) failed miserably at the former while giving up to the latter for the sake of “innovation”, which explains the current pitiful, fragmented, buggy (3D desktop by default because you privilege the bling to functionality? when you still don’t have decent support for that? that’s nonsense) state of the Linux desktop.
There, I said it, much as I don’t like it the fact is that the Linux desktop is in much worse shape today than it was two years ago.
Rehdon
I’ve got Unity on my netbook and it works great in such small screens, specially when using it on the train and planes.
You and Soulbender sound like perfect candidates for a Smart Phone or Tablet. A very small minority of people prefer this type of behavior on a Desktop.
Have you tried a Tablet or Smart Phone? Sounds like that’s what you really need instead of a Desktop. Just saying.
You speak like you’re some kind of authority on the subject. I doubt you are.
I can’t speak for anyone else but no, it’s not what I need (or want).
Uh uh. Or maybe we just like when the OS gets out of the way and we can get things done quickly and efficiently. Maybe we’re not afraid of change and actually like when technology evolve.
Just sayin’.
Fact is, the burden of proof is on the people who want to change, not on those who’re happy with the current UI paradigm: where are the usability studies showing that the Unity/Gnome Shell approach is better? where are the comprehensive test groups that I would expect for such important UI changes?
Point number two, I agree that the features you describe are indeed useful, at least for keyboard-oriented people, but was it absolutely necessary to make things so obnoxious for mouse-oriented people? do you really think those couldn’t be added within the WIMP paradigm?
Rehdon
There’s actually no burden of proof on anyone. This is not a democracy, it’s a private project.
But…they are added within the WIMP paradigm. In Unity I still have Windows (with titlebars even), there are icons and menus and it till has full mouse functionality. It’s just a different spin on, or layout of, the traditional WIMP paradigm.
It was you talking about “authority”, if you’re happy just quoting your personal experience that’s fine by me as well.
Good point.
Unity is still a WIMP system only different, just like how the BeOS WIMP system is different.
I used ‘WIMP’ as a shortcut to the traditional, document-centric desktop. With their application-centered model, overlay modes, aversion to menus and configuration options for the user both Unity and Gnome Shell change the user’s workflow in a very deep way.
Unity happens to be a little better on the UI side (you can still have icons on the desktop, indicators, lenses and lots of small interesting features), but worse on the technical side (Gnome Shell feels faster, less resource intensive), but 1) many users didn’t feel at home in either of them (my impression after reading reviews and thousands of comments on forums and blogs, plus my personal experience with all my Linux-using friends: not one is using either atm) 2) the fragmentation and the waste of resources that ensued don’t bode well for future development of either.
At the moment I’m using Cinnamon 1.6 and I’m reasonably happy with it, hoping that will pick up the most innovative features while letting me do things in a sane way.
Touch interfaces are worse than the mouse.
the dash/hud bring the autocompletion and universal launching of the terminal and programs like vim to the desktop.
I actually find it more keyboard friendly than ratpoison, because I can launch files and access menus via search, which is far faster than tabbing through menus or autocompleting a directory to access a file.
I’m basically in it for the keyboard, is what I’m saying.
QFT. Hate to say it, but you nailed it right there. GNOME is also guilty. Maybe before fully working and fully capable open-source drivers are available for nVidia and ATI cards on Linux, Unity and GNOME will have their 2D capability and feature sets up to par with their 3D counterparts.
Why they chose to go 3D first and 2D later never made any sense to me, for the same reason you mentioned. It makes sense with Apple and Microsoft since they’ve got all the hardware companies in their pockets and can basically do what they want and the companies will agree, but Linux or any other open source OS? What the hell?
Canonical is only trying this, because as all the dead companies before Canonical (Linspire, Mandrake/Mandriva, Xandros,…) prove, there is no money to be made from desktop users.
The only Linux based distributions that managed to make money out of Linux based software are targeting the enterprise with contracts at the same level as closed source support contracts.
The only successful distribution is Android, and even then it is thanks to the people buying hardware, which happen to have Android as operating system.
Selling hardware systems with Linux pre-installed won’t help, because as the netbooks have shown, most OEM have their own crapware based distribution. On top of that many people bought Linux based netbooks just to get the cheaper version and install a pirate version of Windows later on.
As I mentioned in another threads, if you need to make people pay for free software, while keeping a standard influx of money per month, it is not easy.
Sadly this won’t work for Canonical, because everyone will just change distribution, thanks to the choice available in the open source world. And with time Ubuntu will be another victim in the deskop.
It’s really simple and easy. You don’t have to change a distribution at all. I like Ubuntu, I dislike unity but I like gnome 3. So I install Ubuntu with Gnome 3.
Does upgrading to 12.10 will change anything? No.
If you like Ubuntu, nothing much changed. If you don’t like Ubuntu, nothing changed either, you just add another excuse to your list of rants. It’s nothing but a storm in a tea cup.
Edited 2012-09-23 10:27 UTC
Personally I don’t mind, as I support Ubuntu.
My rant about changing distribution goes to everyone now crying all over the Internet that they are now dropping Ubuntu.
I use ubuntu for about 7 years, now I use 10.04 LTS. It was the last time I upgraded even before official launch. The reason is simple: I want a simple system. It is just my opinion, but ubuntu is getting worse every version. Linux Mint seems to be a good way to go now..
I can see why canonical forked debian and over the years it makes sense that a business would do these things.
Why does everyone feel such an unwarranted self importance over their os? I used ubuntu, then as i learn’t more i dropped it for debian. I didn’t like the way things were changing and i felt software freedom was more important than corporate backing.
Obviously anyone who feels that corporate interests don’t fit in Linux should probably look at alternatives as canonical is a business. They really don’t owe you anything.
If the money went partly towards improving X.org and partly towards improving Unity, I would give it a thumbs up. Hey folks, I thought funding an open source project through ads and search engine sponsorships was cool.
But unfortunately, the money will go only to Unity, which means Gnome and Unity will keep being based on the rotten foundation known as X.org.
+100. Not sure why this was modded down, as you’re absolutely correct. X.org and the sorry state of Linux audio are the two reasons it’s not viable for me as a desktop os. I wish it were, believe me. I know X.org has its fans but, to be blunt, while it might have some amazing features for the corporate world, on the home desktop it’s a bloated unstable mess. The ALSA/Pulse combination… well, I just ate a good breakfast and don’t want to spoil my appetite thinking about that ugly mess right now.
“+100. Not sure why this was modded down, as you’re absolutely correct. X.org and the sorry state of Linux audio are the two reasons it’s not viable for me as a desktop os.”
My guess is that the Linux fans don’t want to admit their OS has technical deficiencies, and they want to pretend the reason Linux Desktop can’t break the 1% mark is for purely superficial reasons: like lack of DVD codecs on some distros (hint: XP didn’t support DVD out of the box and is still used by people, and was bought with new PCs well into 2007 via downgrade rights), Microsoft having unholy alliances with OEMs (which OEMs mysteriously have no problem installing RHEL in their servers and Android in their cellphones, and even Ubuntu before they got burnt by PulseAudio) and other silly “reasons” like these. See the “Linux Desktop: The Dream is Dead” over at pcworld for an example of the madness.
Or see the “Unix” book by Graham Glass and King Ables, where they spend an entire chapter praising (yes! praising) X Window System for an example of the madness. They just don’t wont to admit that some things in their favorite OS are broken.
“does this mean my search queries get sent across the web?”
Yip, they are totally going to see you buy a new smartphone every three months:)
As people mentioned earlier, you can still switch to standard Gnome, or in fact any other desktop environment. While, from my personal computing point of view, the presence of an Amazon plug in your OS is sickening, people seem to be forgetting that Ubuntu is a product. Product that is being developed by a certain vendor, and a product that just happens to be free. It may look like very much a community driven initiative, but in the end it’s not the users who decide. Canonical will make whatever decisions they see fit. Suck it up, customise it, or switch. Luckily, all you usually need is a copy of your home directory.
Maybe you will be able to remove these features for a certain sum of money – like with one of the Kindles
sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping
It’s not hard, you know. They are going to be implementing a selection option for which lenses appear in the home lens eventually, but until then, it is as easy as typing a single line into the terminal.
I can see this being useful, but am personally against local searches being submitted to ubuntu’s website (and, unencrypted, for now).
Until they have that selection dialog, I’m just going to keep using unity sans this lens, because I very much like the direction it is moving in.
Edited 2012-09-24 01:04 UTC
Ten years ago, most people would have been thankful to amazon for sponsoring a linux distro, now is the oposite.
Edited 2012-09-23 18:37 UTC
Mr. Shuttleworth,
Don’t get me wrong but they just have sent Curiosity to Mars. Don’t you want to pay Curiosity a visit?
Perhaps we would have a vacation from your clever Linux desktop innovations 🙂
Cheers
What a long, sad slide for Ubuntu. Bugs, Unity, and now this.
Well, Android even has advertisement framework installed by the vendor, but no one complains. Umm, complains a bit actually..
“What a long, sad slide for Ubuntu. Bugs, Unity, and now this.”
I love how people pretend Ubuntu was perfect before Unity and that things went to hell only after Unity arrived.
Sorry folks, but X.org and PulseAudio have been ruining the party even before Unity arrived. I remember booting a live CD with Edgy and getting an xserver error. On a plain radeon X1600 card. Bang! Instant failure for the eyes of the average user. And what about the PulseAudio mess that broke most Ubuntu PCs after the upgrade? Which by the way happened just when Dell was starting to embrace Ubuntu… Oh, and countless X.org breakages with graphics cards over the years, so many that fangirl nixiepixel over at youtube has a video tutorial to fix the mess manually.
It hurts me to say it, but Linux (not just Ubuntu) is not OK for the average user (= my mom, dad and sister). Unless someone manages to convince the graybeards and script kiddies behind X.org and PulseAudio to stop breaking things at a whim, or to replace them with better alternatives, Linux Desktop is not ready. Compatibility is important.
Sorry for the strong language, but I am a Greek and I do not like to flower my words.
Edited 2012-09-24 10:11 UTC
Ubuntu coming with targeted advertising crapware pre-installed directly? Not vendor injected, but as an actual part of stock Ubuntu? …..Now that’s funny.
Actually, put in those words, it’s more disturbing than I originally thought… so ironic and somewhat funny at the same time…