Is Ubuntu’s Dominance on Personal Desktops Slipping?
For at least five years, Ubuntu has been the pre-eminent Linux distribution for desktop users. None of the other polished distros, such as Fedora or Debian, came close to capturing Canonical’s market share or mind share in the open source world. But writing on the wall is beginning to suggest that the Age of Ubuntu could be coming to an end, at least on the desktop. Here’s why.
Lest I come off as too sensationalist, let me point out that neither Ubuntu nor Canonical is going to disappear anytime soon. Even if Ubuntu ceases to be the most popular Linux for personal desktops, we can expect it to remain important as a second or third choice for years to come.
More importantly, Ubuntu has evolved into much more than a distribution for personal PCs. It’s well-entrenched on corporate desktops, servers and cloud systems, and there’s no sign of its dominance waning in those niches. At the same time, Canonical has immense resources that the developers behind other distros lack, from strong relationships with OEMs and channel partners to a diverse array of revenue streams to the personal fortune of Ubuntu founder and self-styled benevolent dictator Mark Shuttleworth. There’s much more to Ubuntu and Canonical than the desktop.
Ubuntu Alternatives
Yet there have been some noticeable indications recently that Ubuntu’s unquestioned pre-eminence as the desktop Linux distribution of choice for users around the world may be in decline.
For one, Linux Mint, a distribution based heavily on Ubuntu but with its own take on user-friendliness, recently slipped ahead of Ubuntu in statistics maintained by distrowatch.com. Of course, as any seasoned observer of the open source channel knows, distrowatch’s figures mean little more than the number of page hits that the site gets for users seeking information about each distro; they’re hardly a universal measure of popularity. But with few other resources available for tracking such metrics in the open source world, the distrowatch change is one worth noticing.
Meanwhile, if some Ubuntu users have been defecting to the Ubuntu derivative of Linux Mint, others have been exploring the other direction of Ubuntu’s genealogical tree by considering a switch to Debian. Ubuntu remains highly dependent on Debian for much of its code, but for a long time the former’s image as the more user-friendly of the two distros ensured that the Debian crowd was a decidedly geekier one.
Blame Ubuntu, or GNOME?
Why are some Ubuntu users exploring other options? Most conventional wisdom points to the major changes introduced in recent Ubuntu releases, as the traditional GNOME 2 desktop environment was replaced by Canonical’s Unity interface. As one blogger writes, “Ubuntu is facing some new challenges from users who are not very happy with the whole Unity switch.”
If it’s true that grumbles about desktop environments are the major issue at play here, they may not be that serious for Ubuntu in the long run. Linux Mint and Debian both still offer versions of GNOME 2, but they can’t do that forever, since the GNOME project itself has retired that code in favor of GNOME 3, which is subject to many of the same complaints as Unity.
Unless someone decides to bring GNOME 2 back from the dead and fork it into an independent project, even Linux Mint and Debian users will have to accept a radically new interface sooner or later. (True, a fork of GNOME 2 already exists as Mate, but it has so far remained pretty obscure and I wouldn’t place many bets that it will remain viable in the long term.)
Where will Ubuntu end up vis-à-vis other Linux distributions in two or three years’ time? It’s pretty safe to assume it will still be on the short list of influential distros, but the areas in which it enjoys the greatest popularity may shift away from the desktop and toward other poles, such as servers or mobile devices, which Shuttleworth recently highlighted as Ubuntu’s next frontier.
People seem to forget about Xubuntu, its a brilliant os with a classic desktop.
seriously true that ubuntu is losing its grip over desktop market. I used to love ubuntu for as long as it was shipped with gnome 2. Ubuntu messed with unity, gnome with itself and now ubuntu is total crap! i’ve used ubuntu for more than 5 years. now when i go to windows, i feel sad for everything
Here is a very good suggestion for those who dislike Unity amp; for Ubuntu users who liked the ‘good old’ Ubuntu: Install Cairo / AWN Dock
Ubuntu 11.10 + Cairo / AWN Dock = Awesome!
This way you have the eye candy of Unity amp; Cairo Dock. I find Cairo Dock has some functionality amp; accessibility that has yet to come to Unity.
I run it on Unity amp; am very pleased.
I have installed Compiz Config Settings Manager amp; Selected “Autohide” in the ‘Hide Launcher’ option.
So when the computer boots you only see the Cairo Dock. But Unity is always there when you need it (Mouse over Left border of the screen).
In fact, some “Themes” in Cairo are like the screen shots I saw when I Googled images of Gnome 3. (Clock on the top amp; Center).
Another solution I got thanks to Jo-Erlend Schinstad: “However, if you just want a window switcher at the bottom of the screen, then you can easily get that with Unity. We have several panels to choose from, like xfce4-panel, which you can install by following this link: http://apt.ubuntu.com/p/xfce4-panel. When it is installed, you can run it by pressing alt+f2 and typing xfce4-panel. If you want to keep using it, then you’ll want to add that command to your startup applications. If you want to see a screenshot, here you go:http://ubuntuone.com/0X1JuF6HRTwEb5U1JyIk1D
. As you can see, it’s perfectly possible and easy to have both.”
There have always been alternatives, and it has always been easy to switch, since all the desktop distros offer the same apps anyway.
Here’s a tip: I like to set up multiple OS partitions on my hard drive of, say, 20GB each, plus one swap partition approximately the size of my physical RAM. All the rest of the hard drive becomes the /home partition, for user files.
Here’s the clever trick: all those OS installs can share the same /home partition (and the same swap partition, but that’s not so important). That way I can switch distros with a simple reboot, and all my user files are still immediately accessible, no need to do a lot of copying back and forth.
Makes it very convenient to try out a whole lot of options.
The VAR Guy himself sees this story a bit differently. While Canonical promoted Ubuntu for desktops, notebooks and netbooks, Canonical also tried to define a market it called Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs).
But seemingly out of nowhere, Apple defined the MID market with a little something called iPad. Then Google positioned Android for tablets. At least initially, Canonical and Ubuntu have largely missed out on the massive tablet/mobile internet device wave.
PC clients are only one piece of a bigger universe: Customer endpoints. And in the overall customer endpoint market, The VAR Guy suspects Ubuntu’s market share is sinking because tablet sales are rising so quickly… …
Just a theory, of course.
-TVG
1. You said it yourself, Distrowatch is everything but a statistical reference and it’s so fluctuant it can’t seriously be reliable. Canonical should not be worried on this basis.
2. Furthermore, many new Linux Mint users have switched on an impulse, in a negative reaction to GS and Unity, because Mint is still based on Gnome 2. But Mint has already notified they’ll switch in the next version to a (arguably ugly) mix of G3 and MATE, and I bet such an uncertain move will have a negative impact on the short term (because of the confusion of 2 universes and because of bringing GS in the end)
3. In the long run, as you state, many people are eventually going to move forward (again) at some point to some recent DE, before being outdated. So Ubuntu with Unity (or GS-based distributions) will have a big advantage, they’ll be at a much more advanced stage of integration and customization.
All in all, I don’t believe Linux Mint will maintain nor even keep its current inflow of users.
A nice example of the Haemorrhaging Horse. For background, check this out: http://blog.sighworld.com/2011/11/03/ubuntu-haemorrhaging-horse/
I agree that Ubuntu is suffering from the decline of laptop and desktop sales. That’s not the entire story, but it has significance.
In my surroundings there’s one major player when it comes to laptops – MacBook Air, and consumers are less likely to install Ubuntu on a MacBook Air.
Whereas Microsoft obviously is a victim of the decline in sales, it is also obvious that W7 is less miserable than Vista. W7 is not lousy enough to trigger replacement with Ubuntu.
For a long time Canonical/Ubuntu have had a bad time trying to influence Gnome. Gnome sticks to what they want despite Ubuntu being the most significant supplier of users.
Canoncial either had to resign to Gnome or start doing something themselves. KDE was not really an option as the Ubuntu tribe are not Qt people. Thus they had to come up with something on their own.
For now, neither Gnome 3 nor Unity are brilliant, but to be honest – Ubuntu peaked 2-3 years ago. It is not as significant as it was.
Question is what Linux distro will establish them selves as a viable commercial alternative – replacing Ubuntu. Mint? Not this year and not next year.
The runner up is a old pal – OpenSUSE/SLED. Their problem is that they have lost most of their credibility due to the 100 mill USD sponsorship by Microsoft and their hard push of now obsolete Mono. Hardly any FOSS/Linux “fans” recommend or promote OpenSUSE.
From a technical/quality perspective it’s a shame. From a competitive Linux perspective it is only natural.
I’ve been told that Debian has now replaced Gnome 2 in testing. Mint has gained some momentary popularity by fooling people into thinking that MATE has a future. But it doesn’t. The last five or six years, hardly any work has been done on Gnome Panel which, after all, it the main thing people are complaining about. If Gnome, Ubuntu, Debian, RedHat and Fedora with their thousands of developers can’t find anyone willing to do the work, then how is a tiny project like MATE going to manage? People have tried this several times before, and it’s always been a complete failure. Look at this bug, for instance: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-panel/+bug/44082. Look at the report date, and look at the latest comment date. That’s more than five years. The reality is that Gnome Panel has been dead for years, and it’s not healthy to cling to software that doesn’t have any developers.
The interesting thing is that Gnome Panel 3 could be made quite nice and similar to Gnome Panel 2 with relative ease. Certainly, it would be extremely easy compared to forking the entire Gnome desktop environment. Adding a few config GUIs that’s currently missing, also isn’t such a large task. It just needs to be done. However, people are so angry about it not being perfect that rather than fixing it, they’re moving to a different panel. Not realizing that a panel is just an app, like any other, they choose radical approaches like installing a different operating system.
People also forget that angry people write more comments than happy people. From reading comments on websites, people think that everyone hates Unity, and since people tend to follow trends, they explore their options. That is a good thing. However, trusting sites like Distrowatch for things like this, is nonsense. The fact that people are curious about other distros, do not mean they’ll switch. And even if they give other distros a try, I’m sure most will return to Ubuntu. I think people don’t understand what a great disservice they’re doing Fedora when they talk about it as if it was an alternative to Ubuntu. Fedora has completely different values. Ubuntu will use some proprietary software in order to make things easy, whereas Fedora will sacrifice user friendliness for the sake of having a completely free operating system. You can’t easily install Flash, for instance. Or VLC. Because that’s against Fedoras values. And I applaud that. I have the utmost respect for the project, and their focus on complete freedom is admirable. Fedora is a very important operating system — but it targets a completely different type of user. Giving a false impression of what Fedora is, will only result in a lot of people getting a very bad impression about it, and it’s unfair.
Mr. Tozzi. Please stop referring to Unity as a replacement for Gnome or Gnome 2. It is not. Neither is Google Chrome a replacement for MS Windows. It is a ludicrous comparison, but it does confuse people, and you should be doing the opposite.
[email protected]: The VAR Guy doesn’t necessarily think Canonical is suffering from declining Ubuntu sales. In fact, Ubuntu sales could be growing. However, The VAR Guy thinks Ubuntu could be suffering from an overall market share decline on endpoint devices (PCs, notebooks, netbooks, tablets) since Canonical really doesn’t have a big presence on tablets and much of the US netbook market has switched away from Linux to Windows…
In other words, Canonical’s sales could be rising. But Canonical’s growth rate could be slower than that of the broader market, which leads to a market share decline.
Everything above is hypothetical, of course, since The VAR Guy doesn’t have market share data at his fingertips.
-TVG
I always regarded Netbooks as a fluke despite millions of units shipped. I have yet to see a very good UX for netbooks, and the some of the Windows ones are a nightmare due to low spec.
Ubuntu probably have influx in emerging markets and Ubuntu is still popular most places. But they don’t have the same impact and momentum as before – as far as I can see.
It is further my impression that they get less media coverage than before.
I believe it is still early days for Unity, and I believe they have to modify it quite a bit before it’s a winner.
The mobile/pad market will be a crowded place and it will be very different competing against a pile of commercial solutions compared to the desktop market where there by all practical means are only one competitor – Microsoft (who define the rules).
There’s a dramatic shift from laptops/desktops to pads/phones wrt internet traffic – 58% (?) now origins from non-desktop-non-windows clients.
Seems like many tend to forget that Google/Android is not only powderizing Microsoft on portable units. They have killed off WebOS, Kno (sadly) and MeeGO too. Microsoft didn’t do that. 🙂
Even if Ubuntu/Unity provides a viable alternative, I’m not all that optimistic wrt market share and commercial success.
Jack: Your points about Android killing off a range of rival OSes are on the mark. The VAR Guy agrees.
-TVG
Ubuntu has some rather significant advantages, though. It already has lots of developers, users and apps. True, most applications in Ubuntu aren’t designed for small screens. However, a very large number of these applications do not have a hardcoded GUI. Instead, they use GUI definition files, which means that their UIs can easily be changed. Being able to use native apps on all your devices, and using a web browser, which GTK now supports, is a huge advantage. And we’re not only talking about consumers anymore, when we consider tabs, phones, etc. Businesses use them just as much, and that means you’ll need an IT staff to administrate. By having the same operating system on all these different types of devices, you reuse knowledge, which means you get more bang for your buck.
Sure, Android has made life difficult for WebOS and other small, narrowly defined projects. Has it had any impact on the desktop, laptops, etc? Hardly any. And I really don’t believe people will stop working in offices because of tabs and phones. They’ll still use desktops and laptops, as they have before. Phones and tabs are additional devices, not replacements.
It’s not only about UX. The applications are structured and coded for desktop thus their functionality needs to be broken down to smaller elements and the code needs to be optimized – I believe A LOT. Apple and KDE has done that ground up already.
Ubuntu are hedging with Qt, but that is a challenge as they then need dual set of libraries etc.
“Same OS on all platforms” is both an advantage and a showstopper. (A small company – Microsoft – does that). Winmo 6.5 proves that it’s can flip the wrong way. The failure of Windows 7 on tablets shows that tablets are a different ballgame. iOS is evidence of the opposite, and bits and pieces from iOS are slowly drizzling into OSX. Don’t believe Apple has cracked it yet though.
The concept is nothing new. Apple, Microsoft and KDE have been working on this for years now.
Disregarding WebOS++ is a mistake. They had commercial products in the market. For tablets and phones, Ubuntu has nothing commercial to show for it. WebOS and e.g Kno/WeTAB proves that it will be extremely difficult to get a commercial breakthrough.
But again, It’s up to Ubuntu and Unity to prove their concept and convince users that it’s a winner.
For the sake of good order:
I WANT Ubuntu to succeed with this. I just don’t see how they can – if they don’t make significant changes to Unity.
Listen… Windows Mobile and Windows Phone are different systems from Windows desktop, though the names are similar. You could not install Windows Phone on your laptop and run MS Office on it. In other words, that’s a completely different thing. WebOS proves that it will be difficult for Ubuntu? I don’t understand that. They are completely different things.
I agree that it’s up to Ubuntu to prove that it’s a good operating system. Those who have been using Ubuntu for a long time, are the ones who are complaining. Most of them seem to think that Gnome 3 is a shell and that Unity is a new desktop environment. It is obvious that you wouldn’t use the exact same system on an 80″ TV that you would use on a 5″ phone. You seem to think that Unity is an implementation. A program with a certain look. But that’s not all it is. It is also a set of DBus interfaces which makes apps blend into, become recognizable and work well within the system. Unity is a set of specifications, a few complete implementations, and more partial implementations, like indicator support in LXDE, Xfce, Windows, KDE, etc. Then you have the launcher. The lenses. They have to provide the same features, work in a similar way and be recognizable.
It’s not about Qt, GTK or Nux at all.
WebOS was quite widely acclaimed – it got better reviews than Android. Still it can now be regarded as a commercial failure. Quality/Technical excellence/great concept is not enough to succeed. Ubuntu is not even close to WebOS – it’s years behind. Thus no success is guaranteed even if they get the concept right. Which I believe they don’t.
I don’t really see this blog as an arena for technical discussions.
But everyone would see the heritage between Winmo and XP (please make a distiction between Winmo and WP – I do.)
I do not really need lessons in what Unity is – I’ve been involved with Linux for more than a decade.
So, like me, you’ve spent more than a decade not using Unity and therefore don’t need a lesson in what Unity is. Ok, that doesn’t really make sense to me, but that’s fine. I would be interested in hearing why you think Ubuntu will not get the concepts right, when the concepts haven’t even been discussed yet. I mean, if you think the concepts are wrong, then you must have some sort of idea what the concepts are?
That’s troublesome right? That people don’t get it?
The very essence of a successful modern OS for whatever formfactor is that people get it. Immediately. If they don’t – there’s something not right with the design, concept or both.
It’s extremely important already – tomorrow it will be critical, and it should REALLY give reason for concern. For Linux on desktop in general and for Ubuntu in particular.
I have been using Mint for a few years now, and before that I was an Ubuntu user for a couple of years. The funny thing is I still consider myself an Ubuntu user. I still use their Repositories in Mint and I bet I could still buy apps from their app store. I am pretty sure I could sign up for the online storage or the music service.
My point is a gain for Mint isn’t necessarily a loss for Ubuntu if they can still sell their services to those users.
Jack: it isn’t troublesome at all. The _idea_ was launched about two weeks ago. The discussion forums was opened twelve hours ago. It would be far more troublesome if people _did_ get the concepts, since they don’t exist yet. The design you claim to be wrong, doesn’t even have mockups. It takes a little longer than one week to make an operating system.
Matthews: I completely agree with that. Indeed, it is the users of common GNU/Linux that is most important. Once you have a software for GNU/Linux, it’s easy to make it available on all distros. The key is to become a large enough number of users that the software industry can no longer ignore GNU/Linux. I think Ubuntu is well on its way. If someone comes from Windows to Ubuntu, learn about GNU/Linux in general and then move onto another distro as they become comfortable, that’s fine. Fedora has corporate backing and Ubuntu has corporate backing. They’re still community distros.
If I have a deck of cards and I give one third to Jack, one third to you and keep a third for myself, then we have three stacks, but it’s still one deck.
So it takes a little more than a week to make an operating system? Who could guess that…
I relate to Unity as Ubuntu ships it today. If that’s what they have in mind for their future on desktop – be my guest.
I really enjoy progress wrt technology and user friendliness. Unity is not progress. It’s a twist based upon the many poor Netbook UX that derivated from Gnome and Ubuntu. It’s not innovative at all. And it’s not an improvement but systematic awkwardness. On the desktop.
Do i want Gnome 2.x ? Nope. But I would like to see Ubuntu delivering something better than Gnome 2.x when they turn it all around. Unity just isn’t.
What is it you’re looking for, then? I think it’s a little bit primitive to just make claims without any reasoning or explanations. Come to think of it, it makes the entire discussion meaningless and boring.
Just a quick note to say The VAR Guy is watching the dialog and digesting the comments to help potentially shape our future coverage.
-TVG
I am not part of the Ubuntu community (anymore), and whatever opinion I may express won’t change a single line of code. Thus what’s the point really?
I provided you with a reference to the Netbook UX-sphere surrounding Ubuntu and Gnome. The only buntu/gnome UX made for netbooks which had slight potential was the one made by HP, and that was pulled pretty fast. I suggest you start (or continue) playing with OSX, W8 (metro), The KDEs, Gnome 3, iOS, WebOS and Android. Look at the trend for the lot and evaluate how they solve the UX challenges.
What do you miss in the various UXes? Whatever you miss is probably a good indicator of what’s universal and needed.
Unity is in my view very rigid. That’s fine for a good UX, and it’s probably smart for a fully developed one. Unity is neither.
Therefore Unity really needs some flexibility to allow (external) devs to play with it and thereby initiate changes. It needs flexibility for users to play and come up with suggestions for improvements. That’s how Gnu/Linux has evolved throughout the years.
When one find something that doesn’t work well in Unity one cannot really adjust the desktop at all. To keep such rigidity the UX better be good. And Unity just isn’t.
You should probably sit back and have a look at Unity from the outside – leaving some prestige behind. Distance is a good thing. 🙂
I think Canonical needs to pull Mint in a little closer. At the end of the day Canonical is a services company they don’t sell a product they sell services around that product. They need to make sure their services are still advertised to Mint users adequately so they don’t lose any potential revenue.
Debian is a little trickier the code base isn’t as compatible however Canonical would do well to expand their money making offering while not forgetting Ubuntu is their main advertising venue.
What do you think Var Guy is this a loss for Ubuntu or an opportunity to rethink strategy?
«and whatever opinion I may express won’t change a single line of code.»
It is true for all open source software I know, that if the people writing code doesn’t agree with ideas put forth, it doesn’t get written. However, it is my experience that most Ubuntu developers are very open to listen to ideas as long as they’re well expressed. Ubuntu is attracting a lot of new users, and many of these do not understand the concept of free software. Many think that Ubuntu is made by Canonical, just like Windows and OS X, except that users have votes. That’s not how it works. Ubuntu is a lot larger than Canonical and though Canonical have some resources, they’re not limitless. Anyway, the shell is just an app, and Ubuntu has many of them. This is one thing I believe to be a great strength compared to Android, IOS, Windows and OS X.
«Unity is in my view very rigid. That’s fine for a good UX, and it’s probably smart for a fully developed one. Unity is neither.»
Again, that is not an explanation. If you want to change something, then you have to come up with ideas that are better, not just say that an idea is bad. You’re right that it isn’t fully developed. Remember that it was first used in late April — this year. Gnome 2 was very rigid in the beginning as well. It took several years before you could edit the application menus, for instance. Unity is already a lot more configurable than Gnome 2 was in the beginning.
Unity is a radical step. You might say it’s a small revolution of the Ubuntu desktop. As you point out, we want evolution and not revolution. In order for that to happen, we need a solid foundation from which to evolve. For that reason, I think that adding configuration options should wait until the default is rock solid and polished. Of course, you have lots of add-ons for Unity, with many more to come, and that’s good. They don’t change the core, but they enable the user to use the system efficiently.
Once we have a good shell that is stable and works well for most cases, then we can start to evolve it by slYou should probably sit back and have a look at Unity from the outside – leaving some prestige behind. Distance is a good thing. owly testing and adding configuration options. I really don’t believe in the ability to configure software into an unusable state. I don’t think anyone is against making Unity more flexible and configurable, as long as they’re well thought through.
Let me provide you with an example of why this is important. Nautilus has a setting, “click-policy”, that can be set to single or double. When set to single, a single click on an item will launch it. This is fine for icon view, where you have empty space between items. In list view, however, this means that you can’t select files by using the mouse. You’ll have to press ctrl or shift. In this example, I think it would make sense if click-policy could not be set to single if in list view, and vice versa.
If you add a lot of configuration options at an early stage, you won’t be able to understand how they affect one another. This is the shortcut to a poor user experience. By adding configuration options slowly, you can make sure that a new option doesn’t conflict with earlier ones.
«You should probably sit back and have a look at Unity from the outside – leaving some prestige behind. Distance is a good thing.»
I have no prestige in Unity. I’m not part of that community of developers and I have nothing to do with Canonical. I do make add-ons for Unity, and I love how easy it is to do and the features it provides. I also love many other shells. I use Lxpanel, Xfce4 Panel, Gnome Panel, Gnome Shell and others. As I said before, they’re just apps. Liking one, does not mean disliking others.
In fact, I don’t dislike any free software. I just choose the one I like best. Presently, that is Unity and Unity 2D. They have lots of bugs, but their specs are good and they’re maturing rapidly. They already provide an efficiency and productivity I’ve never come close to in any other shell. If it’s elegant and aesthetically pleasing as well, that doesn’t hurt one bit.
@Jo-Erlend Schinstad
The question I would put to you here is where does Canonical go from here on a business level… Do they give the classic Gnome2 users what they want and put Unity to the side thus sacrificing a huge investment and possible giving up future tablet aspirations? Do they defer Gnome2 users to Mint and look to build a closer relationship with Mint? Or do you have some other strategy you think Canonical should follow?
I am getting the impression you have a dislike of Unity and really miss gnome2. Canonical does have other interfaces. Gnome2 is no longer technically supported upstream, Canonical decided to take a risk with Unity that may or may not pan out.
Canonical has limited resources, I imagine it was a business decision. However I don’t think CanonicalUbuntu Main is big enough to put it’s full support behind Unity and Gnome2 forks as well as the multiple lesser supported offshoots.
@Jo-Erlend Schinstad I am sorry I misread your post in haste I see you support Unity on a second reading.
Matthews: That’s alright. 🙂
I don’t miss Gnome 2 at all, but as a user, I have been very fond of Gnome Panel. I would be pleased to see people like Mint focusing on fixing Gnome Panel 3 instead of kicking on the dead panel. There are underlying technologies in Gnome 3 that users don’t see, but which makes it a lot easier to make user friendly applications. That is something users will see.
As I said before, I have nothing to do with Canonical, but I can promise you that they won’t go back to Gnome 2. It is difficult to predict the future, but I feel confident when I say that Mint will also abandon Gnome 2 once Ubuntu stops supporting it, which will happen in April 2013. I have absolutely no faith in the MATE project, and I personally think it’s a complete waste of time. It is their time to waste, though. But it would be more productive to recreate the user experience in Gnome 3 rather than halt progress.
I have some hope that XFCE may come close to filling the UI gap left by Gnome2 in the near future.
Gnome Panel — the shell used in earlier versions of Ubuntu — has been upgraded to Gnome 3. It is configurable, supports applets, etc. It just needs a little TLC. The config GUI needs to be ported, for instance. Right now you have to make the changes in dconf-editor, which isn’t very user friendly. But porting the config GUI is a lot less work than recreating the experience in Xfce. In any case, it is better to improve what Gnome Panel is, than to make Xfce into something it isn’t.
Naturally they had to put the foundation out there to make it evolve. Canoncal/Ubunut HAVE to play “hardball” to stay focused on their UX and to avoid the UX slipping into something else than planned.That’s pretty evident.
The drama is expected, and it creates the same trouble with the users as KDE got. Many Linux users (AND some devs) are extremely conservative, and that’s why the shift becomes a big one.
I am really not interested in discussing the bits and pieces of Ubuntu, and this blog isn’t the right place either.
Are panels really needed in any operative system? Think not. Most panels are poor quality and locks the UX designers into an anachronism. Having said that – if there’s panels they better be good.
[email protected]: The first line of your comment asks the most important question of all — “where does Canonical go from here on the business level?”
Although Canonical is privately held, it would be great to get some high-level updates on revenue growth, potential march toward profitability, revenue diversification across various Ubuntu products and services, hiring trends, etc.
-TVG
The Unity switch is a pretty radical change that will take time for users to adjust and effort for applications to properly integrate. I’ve been using it since it first debuted in the Netbook Remix (remember that!). Over time, I’ve really grown to like it over gnome 2.
It takes time for software to mature and users to accept change. In the end it’ll be a better computer experience then what we had in gnome2.
I leave you with some Gnome 2 Issues that drove me crazy:
1. Change app location in Application menu
2. Move your shortcut icons on your top bar with the mouse
3. Random order of applets in tray on boot up
Jamie: Are you by any chance referring to this bug? 🙂 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-panel/+bug/44082. During the ten year life-time of Gnome 2, that bug was never fixed. Ubuntu minimized the impact of it by moving to indicators in one applet.
That was extremely annoying to me since I used a terminal server a lot with clients with different resolutions. I had to reorganize my applets many times every day. My “solution” eventually became to use three floating upper panels. One for left, one for center and one for right. Incidentally, that became the solution to the problem in gnome-panel as well, as you can see in Gnome Panel 3.
That was sort of a birth defect that you just have to live with for your entire life. It was very annoying, but now that Gnome 2 is history, I’ll remember it fondly. It’s like the neighbors dog that keeps barking at all times of the day, and when it finally dies, you sort of miss it a little bit. 🙂
In the transition from Windoze to Linux, I was very happy with Ubuntu 10.XX but Unity scared me away however once i realised that i was really missing that warm and cosy windows look that every one out there is familiar with. It will take time but people have to realise that the old desktop manager from Windoze is a dated concept and embrace the modern world, Ubuntu will come back.
I tried Mint Linux several times but found it to be to buggy and nowhere near as reliable as Ubuntu, so I swithced back.
People try so hard to get away from Windoze but in reality they just want the Windows look and feel without the virus prone core. Wake up people, Linux is NOT windoze, thank christ!!!
My 2 cents.